University of California Berkeley 
 
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ESSAYS. 
 
ESSAYS: 
 
 BY 
 
 R. W. EMERSON 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCXLI. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841 , by 
 JAMES MUNROE & Co., in the Clerk's Office of the District 
 Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PRINTED BY FREEMAN AND BOLLES, 
 
 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 Page. 
 BISTORT 3 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 SELF - RELIANCE 35 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 COMPENSATION 75 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 105 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 LOVE 137 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 FRIENDSHIP 157 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 PRUDENCE 181 
 
 ESSAY VIIL 
 HEROISM 201 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 THE OVER- SOUL 219 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 CIRCLES 247 
 
 ESSAY XI. 
 INTELLECT 237 
 
 ESSAY XII. 
 ART.. ...287 
 
HISTORY. 
 
 There is no great and no small 
 To the Soul that maketh all : 
 And where it cometh, all things are ; 
 And it cometh every where. 
 
I am owner of the sphere, 
 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
 
 Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
 
 Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain. 
 
ESSAY I. 
 HISTORY 
 
 THERE is one mind common to all individual men. 
 Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the 
 same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason 
 is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato 
 has thought, he may think ; what a saint has felt, he 
 may feel ; what at any time has befallen any man, 
 he can understand. Who hath access to this universal 
 mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for this 
 is the only and sovereign agent. 
 
 Of the works of this mind history is the record. 
 Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. 
 Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. 
 Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes 
 forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, 
 every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in 
 appropriate events. But always the thought is prior 
 to the fact ; all the facts of history preexist in the 
 mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circum- 
 
4 ESSAY I. 
 
 stances predominant, and the limits of nature give 
 power to but one at a time. A man is the whole 
 encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand 
 forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, 
 Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first 
 man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, 
 republic, democracy, are merely the application of 
 his manifold spirit to the manifold world. 
 
 This human mind wrote history and this must read 
 it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the 
 whole of history is in one man, it is all to be ex 
 plained from individual experience. There is a re 
 lation between the hours of our life and the centuries 
 of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the 
 great repositories of nature, as the light on my book 
 is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles 
 distant, as the poise of my body depends on the 
 equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so 
 the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the 
 ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind 
 each individual man is one more incarnation. All its 
 properties consist in him. Every step in his private 
 experience flashes a light on what great bodies of 
 men have done, and the crises of his life refer to 
 national crises. Every revolution was first a thought 
 in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs 
 to another man, it is the key to that era. Every 
 reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall 
 be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem 
 of the age. The fact narrated must correspond to 
 something in me to be credible or intelligible. We 
 
HISTORY. 5 
 
 as we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, 
 priest, and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten 
 these images to some reality in our secret experience, 
 or we shall see nothing, learn nothing, keep nothing. 
 What befell Asdrubal or Ca3sar Borgia, is as much an 
 illustration of the mind's powers and depravations as 
 what has befallen us. Each new law and political 
 movement has meaning for you. Stand before each 
 of its tablets and say, ' Here is one of my coverings. 
 Under this fantastic, or odious, or graceful mask, did 
 my Proteus nature hide itself.' This remedies the 
 defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. This 
 throws our own actions into perspective : and as crabs, 
 goats, scorpions, the balance and the waterpot, lose 
 all their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiack, 
 so I can see my own vices without heat in the distant 
 persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Catiline. 
 
 It is this universal nature which gives worth to 
 particular men and things. Human life as con 
 taining this is mysterious and inviolable, and we 
 hedge it round with penalties and laws. All laws 
 derive hence their ultimate reason, all express at last 
 reverence for some command of this supreme illim 
 itable essence. Property also holds of the soul, 
 covers great spiritual facts, and instinctively we at 
 first hold to it with swords and laws, and wide and 
 complex combinations. The obscure consciousness 
 of this fact is the light of all our day, the claim of 
 claims ; the plea for education, for justice, for charity, 
 the foundation of friendship and love, and of the 
 heroism and grandeur which belongs to acts of self- 
 
6 ESSAY I. 
 
 reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily we al 
 ways read as superior beings. Universal history, 
 the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest 
 pictures, in the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in 
 the triumphs of will, or of genius, anywhere lose our 
 ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this 
 is for our betters, but rather is it true that in their 
 grandest strokes, there we feel most at home. All 
 that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a 
 boy that reads in the corner, feels to be true of him 
 self. We sympathize in the great moments of his 
 tory, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, 
 the great prosperities of men ; because there law 
 was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was 
 found, or the blow was struck for MS, as we ourselves 
 in that place would have done or applauded. 
 
 So is it in respect to condition and character. We 
 honor the rich because they have externally the free 
 dom, power and grace which we feel to be proper to 
 man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise man 
 by stoic or oriental or modern essayist, describes to 
 each man his own idea, describes his unattained but 
 attainable self. All literature writes the character of 
 the wise man. All books, monuments, pictures, con 
 versation, are portraits in which the wise man finds 
 the lineaments he is forming. The silent and the 
 loud praise him, and accost him, and he is stimulated 
 wherever he moves as by personal allusions. A wise 
 and good soul, therefore, never needs look for allu 
 sions personal and laudatory in discourse. He hears 
 the commendation, not of himself, but more sweet, of 
 
HISTORY. 7 
 
 that character he seeks, in every word that is said 
 concerning character, yea, further, in every fact that 
 befalls, in the running river, and the rustling corn. 
 Praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows from 
 mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the 
 firmament. 
 
 These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and 
 night, let us use in broad day. The student is to read 
 history actively and not passively ; to esteem his own 
 life the text, and books the commentary. Thus com 
 pelled, the muse of history will utter oracles, as never 
 to those who do not respect themselves. I have 
 no expectation that any man will read history aright, 
 who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by 
 men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper 
 sense than what he is doing to-day. 
 
 The world exists for the education of each man. 
 There is no age or state of society or mode of action 
 in history, to which there is not somewhat corres 
 ponding in his life. Every thing tends in a most won 
 derful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its whole 
 virtue to him. He should see that he can live all 
 history in his own person. He must sit at home with 
 might and main, and not suffer himself to be bullied 
 by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than 
 all the geography and all the government of the world ; 
 he must transfer the point of view from which history- 
 is commonly read, from Rome and Athens and London 
 to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the 
 Court, and if England or Egypt have any thing to say 
 to him, he will try the case ; if not, let them forever 
 
8 ESSAY I. 
 
 be silent. He must attain and maintain that lofty 
 sight where facts yield their secret sense, and poetry 
 and annals are alike. The instinct of the mind, the 
 purpose of nature betrays itself in the use we make 
 of the signal narrations of history. Time dissipates 
 to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. No 
 anchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a 
 fact. Babylon and Troy and Tyre and even early 
 Rome are passing already into fiction. The Garden 
 of Eden, the Sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry 
 thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the 
 fact was, when we have thus made a constellation of 
 it to hang in heaven an immortal sign ? London and 
 Paris and New York must go the same way. " What 
 is History," said Napoleon, " but a fable agreed 
 upon ? ' This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, 
 Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colonization, Church, 
 Court, and Commerce, as with so many flowers and 
 wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more 
 account of them. I believe in Eternity. I can find 
 Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, the 
 genius and creative principle of each and of all eras 
 in my own mind. 
 
 We are always coming up with the facts that have 
 moved us in history in our private experience, and ver 
 ifying them here. All history becomes subjective ; 
 in other words, there is properly no History ; only 
 Biography. Every soul must know the whole lesson 
 for itself must go over the whole ground. What it 
 does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. 
 What the former age has epitomized into a formula 
 
HISTORY. 9 
 
 or rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all the 
 good of verifying for itself, by means of the wall of 
 that rule. Somewhere or other, some time or other, 
 it will demand and find compensation for that loss by 
 doing the work itself. Ferguson discovered many 
 things in astronomy which had long been known. The 
 better for him. 
 
 History must be this or it is nothing. Every law 
 which the state enacts, indicates a fact in human na 
 ture ; that is all. We must in our own nature see 
 the necessary reason for every fact, see how it could 
 and must be. So stand before every public, every 
 private work ; before an oration of Burke, before a 
 victory of Napoleon, before a martyrdom of Sir Tho 
 mas More, of Sidney, of Marmaduke Robinson, be 
 fore a French Reign of Terror, and a Salem hanging 
 of witches, before a fanatic Revival, and the An 
 imal Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We as 
 sume that we under like influence should be alike af 
 fected, and should achieve the like ; and we aim to 
 master intellectually the steps, and reach the same 
 height or the same degradation that our fellow, our 
 proxy has done. 
 
 All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting 
 the pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the 
 Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis, is the desire to 
 do away this wild, savage and preposterous There 
 or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and 
 the Now. It is to banish the Not me, and supply 
 the Me. It is to abolish difference and restore 
 unity. Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy- 
 1* 
 
10 ESSAY I. 
 
 pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end 
 of the difference between the monstrous work and 
 himself. When he has satisfied himself, in general 
 and in detail, that it was made by such a person 
 as himself, so armed and so motived, and to ends 
 to which he himself in given circumstances should 
 also have worked, the problem is then solved; his 
 thought lives along the whole line of temples and 
 sphinxes and catacombs, passes through them all like 
 a creative soul, with satisfaction, and they live again 
 to the mind, or are now. 
 
 A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us, 
 and not done by us. Surely it was by man, but we 
 find it not in our man. But we apply ourselves to 
 the history of its production. We put ourselves into 
 the place and historical state of the builder. We re 
 member the forest dwellers, the first temples, the ad 
 herence to the first type, and the decoration of it as 
 the wealth of the nation increased ; the value which 
 is given to wood by carving led to the carving over 
 the whole mountain of stone of a cathedral. When 
 we have gone through this process, and added thereto 
 the Catholic Church, its cross, its music, its proces 
 sions, its Saints' days and image- worship, we have, as 
 it were, been the man that made the minster ; we 
 have seen how it could and must be. We have the 
 sufficient reason. 
 
 The difference between men is in their principle of 
 association. Some men classify objects by color and 
 size and other accidents of appearance ; others by 
 intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and 
 
HISTORY. 11 
 
 effect. The progress of the intellect consists in the 
 clearer vision of causes, which overlooks surface dif 
 ferences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the 
 saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events pro 
 fitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is 
 fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. 
 Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal 
 in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of 
 appearance. 
 
 Why, being as we are surrounded by this all-cre 
 ating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, should 
 we be such hard pedants, and magnify a few forms ? 
 Why should we make account of time, or of magni 
 tude, or of form ? The soul knows them not, and gen 
 ius, obeying its law, knows how to play with them as 
 a young child plays with greybeards and in churches. 
 Genius studies the causal thought, and far back in 
 the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one 
 orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. 
 Genius watches the monad through all his masks as 
 he performs the metempsychosis of nature. Genius 
 detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, 
 through the grub, through the egg, the constant type 
 of the individual ; through countless individuals the 
 fixed species ; through many species the genus ; 
 through all genera the steadfast type ; through all 
 the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. 
 Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never 
 the same. She casts the same thought into troops of 
 forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. 
 Beautifully shines a spirit through the bruteness 
 
12 ESSAY I. 
 
 and toughness of matter. Alone omnipotent, it con 
 verts all things to its own end. The adamant streams 
 into softest but precise form before it, but, whilst I 
 look at it, its outline and texture are changed alto 
 gether. Nothing is so fleeting as form. Yet never 
 does it quite deny itself. In man we still trace the ru 
 diments or hints of all that we esteem badges of ser 
 vitude in the lower races, yet in him they enhance his 
 nobleness and grace ; as lo, in JEschylus, transformed 
 to a cow, offends the imagination, but how changed 
 when as Isis in Egypt she meets Jove, a beautiful 
 woman, with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the 
 lunar horns as the splendid ornament of her brows. 
 The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the 
 diversity equally obvious. There is at the surface 
 infinite variety of things ; at the centre there is sim 
 plicity and unity of cause. How many are the 
 acts of one man in which we recognise the same 
 character. See the variety of the sources of our in 
 formation in respect to the Greek genius. Thus at 
 first we have the civil history of that people, as 
 Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch have 
 given it a very sufficient account of what manner 
 of persons they were, and what they did. Then we 
 have the same soul expressed for us again in their 
 literature ; in poems, drama, and philosophy : a very 
 complete form. Then we have it once more in their 
 architecture, the purest sensuous beauty, the per 
 fect medium never overstepping the limit of charming 
 propriety and grace. Then we have it once more in 
 sculpture, " the tongue on the balance of expres- 
 
HISTORY. 13 
 
 sion," those forms in every action, at every age of 
 life, ranging through all the scale of condition, from 
 god to beast, and never transgressing the ideal serenity, 
 but in convulsive exertion the liege of order and of 
 law. Thus, of the genius of one remarkable people, 
 we have a fourfold representation, the most various 
 expression of one moral thing : and to the senses what 
 more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble Centaur, 
 the Peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last actions of 
 Phocion ? Yet do these varied external expressions 
 proceed from one national mind. 
 
 Every one must have observed faces and forms 
 which, without any resembling feature, make a like 
 impression on the beholder. A particular picture or 
 copy of verses, if it do not awaken the same train of 
 images, will yet superinduce the same sentiment as 
 some wild mountain walk, although the resemblance 
 is nowise obvious to the senses, but is occult and out 
 of the reach of the understanding. Nature is an 
 endless combination and repetition of a very few 
 laws. She hums the old well known air through 
 innumerable variations. 
 
 Nature is full of a sublime family likeness through 
 out her works. She delights in startling us with 
 resemblances in the most unexpected quarters. I 
 have seen the head of an old sachem of the forest, 
 which at once reminded the eye of a bald mountain 
 summit, and the furrows of the brow suggested the 
 strata of the rock. There are men whose manners 
 have the same essential splendor as the simple and 
 awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, 
 
14 ESSAY I. 
 
 and the remains of the earliest Greek art. And 
 there are compositions of the same strain to be found 
 in the books of all ages. What is Guide's Ros- 
 pigliosi Aurora but a morning thought, as the horses 
 in it are only a morning cloud. If any one will but 
 take pains to observe the variety of actions to which 
 he is equally inclined in certain moods of mind, and 
 those to which he is averse, he will see how deep is 
 the chain of affinity. 
 
 A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree 
 without in some sort becoming a tree ; or draw a 
 child by studying the outlines of its form merely, 
 but, by watching for a time his motions and plays, the 
 painter enters into his nature, and can then draw him 
 at will in every attitude. So Roos " entered into the 
 inmost nature of a sheep." I knew a draughtsman 
 employed in a public survey, who found that he could 
 not sketch the rocks until their geological structure 
 was first explained to him. 
 
 What is to be inferred from these facts but this ; 
 that in a certain state of thought is the common ori 
 gin of very diverse works ? It is the spirit and not 
 the fact that is identical. By descending far down 
 into the depths of the soul, and not primarily by a 
 painful acquisition of many manual skills, the artist 
 attains the power of awakening other souls to a given 
 activity. 
 
 It has been said that " common souls pay with 
 what they do ; nobler souls with that which they are." 
 And why ? Because a soul, living from a great depth 
 pf being, awakens in us by its actions and words, by 
 
HISTORY. 15 
 
 its very looks and manners, the same power and 
 beauty that a gallery of sculpture, or of pictures, 
 are wont to animate. 
 
 Civil history, natural history, the history of art, 
 and the history of literature, all must be explained 
 from individual history, or must remain words. There 
 is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not 
 interest us kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron 
 shoe, the roots of all things are in man. It is in the 
 soul that architecture exists. Santa Croce and the 
 Dome of St. Peter's are lame copies after a divine 
 model. Strasburg Cathedral is a material counterpart 
 of the soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true poem 
 i-s the poet's mind ; the true ship is the ship-builder. 
 In the man, could we lay him open, we should see 
 the sufficient reason for the last flourish and tendril 
 of his work, as every spine and tint in the sea-shell 
 preexist in the secreting organs of the fish. The 
 whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A 
 man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with 
 all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. 
 
 The trivial experience of every day is always ver 
 ifying some old prediction to us, and converting into 
 things for us also the words and signs which we had 
 heard and seen without heed. Let me add a few ex 
 amples, such as fall within the scope of every man's 
 observation, of trivial facts which go to illustrate great 
 and conspicuous facts. 
 
 A lady, with whom I was riding in the forest, said 
 to me, that the woods always seemed to her to wait, 
 as if the genii who inhabit them suspended their 
 
16 ESSAY I. 
 
 deeds until the wayfarer has passed onward. This 
 is precisely the thought which poetry has celebrated 
 in the dance of the fairies which breaks off on the 
 approach of human feet. The man who has seen 
 the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, 
 has been present like an archangel at the creation of 
 light and of the world. I remember that being abroad 
 one summer day, my companion pointed out to me a 
 broad cloud, which might extend a quarter of a mile 
 parallel to the horizon, quite accurately in the form 
 of a cherub as painted over churches, a round 
 block in the centre which it was easy to animate 
 with eyes and mouth, supported on either side by 
 wide stretched symmetrical wings. What appears 
 once in the atmosphere may appear often, and it was 
 undoubtedly the archetype of that familiar ornament. 
 I have seen in the sky a chain of summer lightning 
 which at once revealed to me that the Greeks drew 
 from nature when they painted the thunderbolt in the 
 hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along the 
 sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the idea 
 of the common architectural scroll to abut a tower. 
 
 By simply throwing ourselves into new circum 
 stances we do continually invent anew the orders and 
 the ornaments of architecture, as we see how each 
 people merely decorated its primitive abodes. The 
 Doric temple still presents the semblance of the 
 wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. The Chi 
 nese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. The Indian 
 and Egyptian temples still betray the mounds and 
 subterranean houses of their forefathers. " The 
 
HISTORY. 17 
 
 custom of making houses and tombs in the living 
 rock," (says Heeren, in his Researches on the Ethi 
 opians) " determined very naturally the principal 
 character of the Nubian Egyptian architecture to the 
 colossal form which it assumed. In these caverns 
 already prepared by nature, the eye was accustomed 
 to dwell on huge shapes and masses, so that when art 
 came to the assistance of nature, it could not move on 
 a small scale without degrading itself. What would 
 statues of the usual size, or neat porches and wings 
 have been, associated with those gigantic halls be 
 fore which only Colossi could sit as watchmen, or 
 lean on the pillars of the interior?" 
 
 The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude 
 adaptation of the forest trees with all their boughs to 
 a festal or solemn arcade, as the bands about the cleft 
 pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. 
 No one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, 
 without being struck with the architectural appearance 
 of the grove, especially in winter, when the bareness 
 of all other trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. 
 In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as 
 readily the origin of the stained glass window with 
 which the Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors 
 of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing 
 branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of nature 
 enter the old piles of Oxford and the English cathe 
 drals without feeling that the forest overpowered the 
 mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw, and 
 plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, 
 its locust, its pine, its oak, its fir, its spruce. 
 
18 ESSAY I. 
 
 The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone sub 
 dued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. 
 The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal 
 flower with the lightness and delicate finish as well 
 as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable 
 beauty. 
 
 In like manner all public facts are to be individ 
 ualized, all private facts are to be generalized. Then 
 at once History becomes fluid and true, arid Biogra 
 phy deep and sublime. As the Persian imitated in 
 the slender shafts and capitals of his architecture the 
 stem and flower of the lotus and palm, so the Persian 
 Court in its magnificent era never gave over the 
 Nomadism of its barbarous tribes, but travelled from 
 Ecbatana, where the spring was spent, to Susa in 
 summer, and to Babylon for the winter. 
 
 In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism 
 and Agriculture are the two antagonist facts. The 
 geography of Asia and of Africa necessitated a no 
 madic life. But the nomads were the terror of all 
 those whom the soil or the advantages of a market 
 had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore 
 was a religious injunction because of the perils of the 
 state from nomadism. And in these late and civil 
 countries of England and America, the contest of 
 these propensities still fights out the old battle in each 
 individual. We are all rovers and all fixtures by 
 turns, and pretty rapid turns. The nomads of Africa 
 are constrained to wander by the attacks of the gad 
 fly, which drives the cattle mad, and so compels the 
 tribe to emigrate in the rainy season and drive off the 
 
HISTORY. 19 
 
 cattle to the higher sandy regions. The nomads of 
 Asia follow the pasturage from month to month. In 
 America and Europe the nomadism is of trade and 
 curiosity. A progress certainly from the gad-fly of 
 Astaboras to the Anglo and Italo-mania of Boston 
 Bay. The difference between men in this respect is 
 the faculty of rapid domestication, the power to find 
 his chair and bed everywhere, which one man has, 
 and another has not. Some men have so much of 
 the Indian left, have constitutionally such habits of 
 accommodation, that at sea, or in the forest, or in the 
 snow, they sleep as warm, and dine with as good ap 
 petite, and associate as happily, as in their own house. 
 And to push this old fact still one degree nearer, we 
 may find it a representative of a permanent fact 
 in human nature. The intellectual nomadism is the 
 faculty of objectiveness or of eyes which everywhere 
 feed themselves. Who hath such eyes, everywhere 
 falls into easy relations with his fellow-men. Every 
 man, every thing is a prize, a study, a property to 
 him, and this love smooths his brow, joins him to 
 men and makes him beautiful and beloved in their 
 sight. His house is a wagon ; he roams through all 
 latitudes as easily as a Calmuc. 
 
 Every thing the individual sees without him, cor 
 responds to his states of mind, and every thing is in 
 turn intelligible to him, as his onward thinking leads 
 him into the truth to which that fact or series belongs. 
 
 The primeval world, the Fore-World, as the Ger 
 mans say, I can dive to it in myself as well as grope 
 for it with researching fingers in catacombs, libraries, 
 and the broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. 
 
20 ESSAY I. 
 
 What is the foundation of that interest all men feel 
 in Greek history, letters, art and poetry, in all its pe 
 riods, from the heroic or Homeric age, down to 
 the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four 
 or five centuries later ? This period draws us because 
 we are Greeks. It is a state through which every man 
 in some sort passes. The Grecian state is the era of 
 the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, of 
 the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the 
 body. In it existed those human forms which sup 
 plied the sculptor with his models of Hercules, Phoe 
 bus, and Jove ; not like the forms abounding in the 
 streets of modern cities, wherein the face is a con 
 fused blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, 
 sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose eye- 
 sockets are so formed that it would be impossible for 
 such eyes to squint, and take furtive glances on this 
 side and on that, but they must turn the whole head. 
 
 The manners of that period are plain and fierce. 
 The reverence exhibited is for personal qualities, 
 courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, 
 swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury is not 
 known, nor elegance. A sparse population and want 
 make every man his own valet, cook, butcher, and 
 soldier, and the habit of supplying his own needs 
 educates the body to wonderful performances. Such 
 are the Agamemnon and Diomed of Homer, and not far 
 different is the picture Xenophon gives of himself and 
 his compatriots in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. 
 " After the army had crossed the river Teleboas in 
 Armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops lay 
 
HISTORY. 21 
 
 miserably on the ground, covered with it. But Xeno- 
 phon arose naked, and taking an axe, began to split 
 wood ; whereupon others rose and did the like." 
 Throughout his army seemed to be a boundless lib 
 erty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, they 
 wrangle with the generals on each new order, and 
 Xenophon is as sharp-tongued as any, and sharper- 
 tongued than most, and so gives as good as he gets. 
 Who does not see that this is a gang of great boys 
 with such a code of honor and such lax discipline as 
 great boys have ? 
 
 The costly charm of the ancient tragedy and in 
 deed of all the old literature is, that the persons speak 
 simply, speak as persons who have great good 
 sense without knowing it, before yet the reflective 
 habit has become the predominant habit of the mind. 
 Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the 
 old, but of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective 
 but perfect in their senses, perfect in their health, 
 with the finest physical organization in the world. 
 Adults acted with the simplicity and grace of boys. 
 They made vases, tragedies, and statues such as 
 healthy senses should that is, in good taste. Such 
 things have continued to be made in all ages, and are 
 now, wherever a healthy physique exists, but, as a class, 
 from their superior organization, they have surpassed 
 all. They combine the energy of manhood with the en 
 gaging unconsciousness of childhood. Our reverence 
 for them is our reverence for childhood. Nobody 
 can reflect upon an unconscious act with regret or 
 contempt. Bard or hero cannot look down on the 
 
22 ESSAY I. 
 
 word or gesture of a child. It is as great as they. 
 The attraction of these manners is, that they belong 
 to man, and are known to every man in virtue of 
 his being once a child ; beside that always there 
 are individuals who retain these characteristics. A 
 person of childlike genius and inborn energy is still 
 a Greek, and revives our love of the muse of Hellas. 
 A great boy, a great girl, with good sense, is a 
 Greek. Beautiful is the love of nature in the Phi- 
 loctetes. But in reading those fine apostrophes to 
 sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains, and waves, I 
 feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the 
 eternity of man, the identity of his thought. The 
 Greek had, it seems, the same fellow beings as 
 I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his 
 heart precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted 
 distinction between Greek and English, between Clas 
 sic and Romantic schools seems superficial and pe 
 dantic. When a thought of Plato becomes a thought 
 to me, when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar 
 fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two 
 meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged 
 with the same hue, and do, as it were, run into one, 
 why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should 
 I count Egyptian years ? 
 
 The student interprets the age of chivalry by his 
 own age of chivalry, and the days of maritime ad 
 venture and circumnavigation by quite parallel mini 
 ature experiences of his own. To the sacred history 
 of the world, he has the same key. When the voice 
 of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely 
 
HISTORY. 23 
 
 echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of 
 his youth, he then pierces to the truth through all the 
 confusion of tradition and the caricature of institu 
 tions. 
 
 Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, 
 who disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men 
 of God have always, from time to time, walked 
 among men and made their commission felt in the 
 heart and soul of the commonest hearer. Hence, ev 
 idently, the tripod, the priest, the priestess inspired 
 by the divine afflatus. 
 
 Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. 
 They cannot unite him to history or reconcile him 
 with themselves. As they come to revere their intui 
 tions and aspire to live holily, their own piety ex 
 plains every fact, every word. 
 
 How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoro 
 aster, of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves 
 in the mind. I cannot find any antiquity in them. 
 They are mine as much as theirs. 
 
 Then I have seen the first monks and anchorets 
 without crossing seas or centuries. More than once 
 some individual has appeared to me with such negli 
 gence of labor and such commanding contemplation, a 
 haughty beneficiary, begging in the name of God, as 
 made good to the nineteenth century Simeon the 
 Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins. 
 
 The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Ma- 
 gian, Brahmin, Druid and Tnca, is expounded in the 
 individual's private life. The cramping influence of 
 a hard formalist on a young child in repressing his 
 
24 ESSAY I. 
 
 spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and 
 that without producing indignation, but only fear and 
 obedience, and even much sympathy with the tyran 
 ny, is a familiar fact explained to the child when he 
 becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of 
 his youth is himself a child tyrannized over by those 
 names and words and forms, of whose influence he 
 was merely the organ to the youth. The fact teaches 
 him how Belus was worshipped, and how the pyra 
 mids were built, better than the discovery by Cham- 
 pollion of the names of all the workmen and the cost of 
 every tile. He finds Assyria and the Mounds of 
 Cholula at his door, and himself has laid the courses. 
 
 Again, in that protest which each considerate per 
 son makes against the superstition of his times, he 
 reacts step for step the part of old reformers, and in 
 the search after truth finds like them new perils to 
 virtue. He learns again what moral vigor is needed to 
 supply the girdle of a superstition. A great licen 
 tiousness treads on the heels of a reformation. How 
 many times in the history of the world has the Lu 
 ther of the day had to lament the decay of piety in 
 his own household. " Doctor," said his wife to Mar 
 tin Luther one day, " how is it that whilst subject to 
 papacy, we prayed so often and with such fervor, 
 whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very 
 seldom ? " 
 
 The advancing man discovers how deep a property 
 he hath in all literature, in all fable as well as in 
 all history. He finds that the poet was no odd fellow 
 who described strange and impossible situations, but 
 
HISTORY. 25 
 
 that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true 
 for one and true for all. His own secret biography 
 he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, yet 
 dotted down before he was born. One after another 
 he comes up in his private adventures with every 
 fable of ^Esop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of 
 Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with his own 
 head and hands. 
 
 The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper 
 creations of the Imagination and not of the Fancy, 
 are universal verities. What a range of meanings 
 and what perpetual pertinence has the story of Pro 
 metheus ! Beside its primary value as the first chap 
 ter of the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly 
 veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic 
 arts, and the migration of colonies,) it gives the his 
 tory of religion with some closeness to the faith of 
 later ages. Prometheus is the Jesus of the old mytho 
 logy. He is the friend of man ; stands between the 
 unjust ' justice ' of the Eternal Father, and the race 
 of mortals ; and readily suffers all things on their ac 
 count. But where it departs from the Calvinistic 
 Christianity, and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, 
 it represents a state of mind which readily appears 
 wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, 
 objective form, and which seems the self-defence of 
 man against this untruth, namely, a discontent with 
 the believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that 
 the obligation of reverence is onerous. It would steal, 
 if it could, the fire of the Creator, and live apart 
 from him, and independent of him. The Prome- 
 2 
 
26 ESSAY I. 
 
 theus Vinctus is the romance of skepticism. Not less 
 true to all time are all the details of that stately apo 
 logue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the 
 poets. Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god 
 playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its in 
 sane angels into our world as to an asylum, and 
 here they will break out into their native music and 
 utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven ; 
 then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow 
 like dogs. When the gods come among men, they 
 are not known. Jesus was not ; Socrates and Shak- 
 speare were not. Antreus was suffocated by the 
 gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his 
 mother earth, his strength was renewed. Man is the 
 broken giant, and in all his weakness, both his body 
 and his mind are invigorated by habits of conver 
 sation with nature. The power of music, the power 
 of poetry to unfix, and as it were, clap wings to all 
 solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus, which 
 was to his childhood an idle tale. The philosophical 
 perception of identity through endless mutations of 
 form, makes him know the Proteus. What else am 
 I who laughed or wept yesterday, who slept last 
 night like a corpse, and this morning stood and ran ? 
 And what see I on any side but the transmigrations 
 of Proteus ? I can symbolize my thought by using 
 the name of any creature, of any fact, because every 
 creature is man agent, or patient. Tantalus is but 
 a name for you and me. Tantalus means the impos 
 sibility of drinking the waters of thought which are 
 always gleaming and waving within sight of the soul. 
 
27 
 
 The transmigration of souls : that too is no fable. 
 I would it were ; but men and women are only half 
 human. Every animal of the barn-yard, the field and 
 the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are un 
 der the earth, has contrived to get a footing and to 
 leave the print of its features and form in some one 
 or other of these upright, heaven-facing speakers. 
 Ah, brother, hold fast to the man and awe the beast ; 
 stop the ebb of thy soul ebbing downward into 
 the forms into whose habits thou hast now for many 
 years slid. As near and proper to us is also that old 
 fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the road 
 side and put riddles to every passenger. If the man 
 could not answer she swallowed him alive. If he 
 could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What 
 is our life but an endless flight of winged facts or 
 events ! In splendid variety these changes come, all 
 putting questions to the human spirit. Those men 
 who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts 
 or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber 
 them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of rou 
 tine, the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to 
 facts has extinguished every spark of that light by 
 which man is truly man. But if the man is true to 
 his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the do 
 minion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race, 
 remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then 
 the facts fall aptly and supple into their places ; they 
 know their master, and the meanest of them glo 
 rifies him. 
 
 See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that every 
 
28 ESSAY I. 
 
 word should be a thing. These figures, he would say, 
 these Chirons, Griffins, Phorkyas, Helen, and Leda, 
 are somewhat, and do exert a specific influence on 
 the mind. So far then are they eternal entities, as 
 real to-day as in the first Olympiad. Much revolving 
 them, he writes out freely his humor, and gives 
 them body to his own imagination. And although 
 that poem be as vague and fantastic as a dream, yet 
 is it much more attractive than the more regular dra 
 matic pieces of the same author, for the reason that 
 it operates a wonderful relief to the mind from the 
 routine of customary images, awakens the reader's 
 invention and fancy by the wild freedom of the de 
 sign, and by the unceasing succession of brisk shocks 
 of surprise. 
 
 The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature 
 of the bard, sits on his neck and writes through his 
 hand ; so that when he seems to vent a mere caprice 
 and wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. 
 Hence Plato said that " poets utter great and wise 
 things which they do not themselves understand." 
 All the fictions of the Middle Age explain themselves 
 as a masked or frolic expression of that which in 
 grave earnest the mind of that period toiled to 
 achieve. Magic, and all that is ascribed to it, is man 
 ifestly a deep presentiment of the powers of science. 
 The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the 
 power of subduing the elements, of using the secret 
 virtues of minerals, of understanding the voices of 
 birds, are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right 
 direction. The preternatural prowess of the hero, 
 
HISTORY. 29 
 
 the gift of perpetual youth, and the like, are alike 
 the endeavor of the human spirit " to bend the shows 
 of things to the desires of the mind." 
 
 In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul, a garland and 
 a rose bloom on the head of her who is faithful, and 
 fade on the brow of the inconstant. In the story of 
 the Boy and the Mantle, even a mature reader may be 
 surprised with a glow of virtuous pleasure at the tri 
 umph of the gentle Genelas ; and indeed, all the pos 
 tulates of elfin annals, that the Fairies do not like to 
 be named ; that their gifts are capricious and not to 
 be trusted ; that who seeks a treasure must not speak ; 
 and the like, I find true in Concord, however they 
 might be in Cornwall or Bretagne. 
 
 Is it otherwise in the newest romance ? I read the 
 Bride of Lammermoor. Sir William Ashton is a 
 mask for a vulgar temptation, Ravenswood Castle, 
 a fine name for proud poverty, and the foreign mis 
 sion of state only a Bunyan disguise for honest in 
 dustry. We may all shoot a wild bull that would toss 
 the good and beautiful, by fighting down the unjust 
 and sensual. Lucy Ashton is another name for fi 
 delity, which is always beautiful and always liable to 
 calamity in this world. 
 
 But along with the civil and metaphysical history of 
 man, another history goes daily forward that of the 
 external world, in which he is not less strictly im 
 plicated. He is the compend of time : he is also the 
 correlative of nature. The power of man consists 
 in the multitude of his affinities, in the fact that his 
 life is intertwined with the whole chain of organic 
 
30 ESSAY I. 
 
 and inorganic being. In the age of the Cassars, out 
 from the Forurn at Rome proceeded the great high 
 ways north, south, east, west, to the centre of ev 
 ery province of the empire, making each market- 
 town of Persia, Spain and Britain, pervious to the sol 
 diers of the capital : so out of the human heart go, as 
 it were, highways to the heart of every object in na 
 ture, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A 
 man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose 
 flower and fruitage is the world. All his faculties re 
 fer to natures out of him. All his faculties predict 
 the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the fish fore 
 show that water exists, or the wings of an eagle in 
 the egg presuppose a medium like air. Insulate and 
 you destroy him. He cannot live without a world. 
 Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his faculties 
 find no men to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake 
 to play for, and he would beat the air and appear 
 stupid. Transport him to large countries, dense pop 
 ulation, complex interests, and antagonist power, 
 and you shall see that the man Napoleon, bounded, 
 that is, by such a profile and outline, is not the vir 
 tual Napoleon. This is but Talbot's shadow ; 
 
 His substance is not here : 
 For what you see is but the smallest part, 
 And least proportion of humanity ; 
 But were the whole frame here, 
 It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, 
 Your roof were not sufficient to contain it. 
 
 Henry VI. 
 
 Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. 
 Newton and Laplace need myriads of ages and thick- 
 
HISTORY. 31 
 
 strown celestial areas. One may say a gravitating 
 solar system is already prophesied in the nature of 
 Newton's mind. Not less does the brain of Davy 
 and Gay Lussac from childhood exploring always the 
 affinities and repulsions of particles, anticipate the 
 laws of organization. Does not the eye of the hu 
 man embryo predict the light ? the ear of Handel 
 predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound ? Do not 
 the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, 
 Arkwright predict the fusible, hard, and temperable 
 texture of metals, the properties of stone, water and 
 wood ? the lovely attributes of the maiden child pre 
 dict the refinements and decorations of civil society ? 
 Here also we are reminded of the action of man on 
 man. A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and 
 not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of 
 love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself be 
 fore he has been thrilled with indignation at an 
 outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has 
 shared the throb of thousands in a national exul 
 tation or alarm ? No man can antedate his expe 
 rience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new 
 object shall unlock, any more than he can draw to 
 day the face of a person whom he shall see to-mor 
 row for the first time. 
 
 I will not now go behind the general statement to 
 explore the reason of this correspondency. Let it 
 suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, 
 that the mind is One ; and that nature is its correl 
 ative, history is to be read and written. 
 
 Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and 
 
32 ESSAY I. 
 
 reproduce its treasures for each pupil, for each 
 new-born man. He, too, shall pass through the whole 
 cycle of experience. He shall collect into a focus 
 the rays of nature. History no longer shall be a dull 
 book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise 
 -man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a 
 catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall 
 make me feel what periods you have lived. A man 
 shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk, as the 
 poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted 
 all over with wonderful events and experiences ; 
 his own form and features by their exalted intelligence 
 shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him the 
 Foreworld ; in his childhood the Age of Gold ; the 
 Apples of Knowledge ; the Argonautic Expedition ; 
 the calling of Abraham ; the building of the Temple ; 
 the Advent of Christ ; Dark Ages ; the Revival of 
 Letters ; the Reformation ; the discovery of new 
 lands, the opening of new sciences , and new regions 
 in man. He shall be the priest of Pan, and bring 
 with him into humble cottages the blessing of the 
 morning stars and all the recorded benefits of heaven 
 and earth. 
 
 Is there somewhat overweening in this claim ? 
 Then I reject all I have written, for what is the use of 
 pretending to know what we know not ? But it is the 
 fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one 
 fact without seeming to belie some other. I hold our 
 actual knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the 
 wall, see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under 
 foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know sym- 
 
HISTORY. 33 
 
 pathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of 
 life ? As long as the Caucasian man - perhaps 
 longer these creatures have kept their counsel be 
 side him, and there is no record of any word or sign 
 that has passed from one to the other. Nay, what 
 does history yet record of the metaphysical annals of 
 man ? What light does it shed on those mysteries 
 which we hide under the names Death and Immor 
 tality ? Yet every history should be written in a 
 wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and 
 looked at facts as symbols. I am ashamed to see 
 what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. 
 How many times we must say Rome, and Paris, and 
 Constantinople. What does Rome know of rat and 
 lizard ? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these 
 neighboring systems of being ? Nay, what food 
 or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux 
 seal-hunter, for the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fish 
 erman, the stevedore, the porter ? 
 
 Broader and deeper we must write our annals 
 from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the 
 ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would 
 truelier express our central and wide-related nature, 
 instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride 
 to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already 
 that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, 
 but the path of science and of letters is not the way 
 into nature, but from it, rather. The idiot, the In 
 dian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, come 
 much nearer to these, understand them better than 
 the dissector or the antiquary. 
 2* 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 Ne te quaesiveris extra. 
 
 " Man is his own star, arid the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man, 
 Command all light, all influence, all fate, 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 
 
 Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune. 
 
Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
 Suckle him with the she- wolf 's teat : 
 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
 Power and speed be hands and feet. 
 
ESSAY II. 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE, 
 
 I READ the other day some verses written by an emi 
 nent painter which were original and not conven 
 tional. Always the soul hears an admonition in such 
 lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment 
 they instil is of more value than any thought they 
 may contain. To believe your own thought, to be 
 lieve that what is true for you in your private heart, is 
 true for all men, that is genius. Speak your latent 
 conviction and it shall be the universal sense ; for al 
 ways the inmost becomes the outmost, and our 
 first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of 
 the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the 
 mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, 
 Plato, and Milton, is that they set at naught books 
 and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they 
 thought. A man should learn to detect and watch 
 that gleam of light which flashes across his mind 
 from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of 
 
38 ESSAY II. 
 
 bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his 
 thought, because it is his. In every work of genius 
 we recognise our own rejected thoughts : they come 
 back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great 
 works of art have no more affecting lesson for us 
 than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous 
 impression with good humored inflexibility then most 
 when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. 
 Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly 
 good sense precisely what we have thought and felt 
 all the time, and we shall be forced to take with 
 shame our own opinion from another. 
 
 There is a time in every man's education when he 
 arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that 
 imitation is suicide ; that he must take himself for 
 better, for worse, as his portion ; that though the wide 
 universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn 
 can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that 
 plot of ground which is given to him to till. The 
 power which resides in him is new in nature, and none 
 but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does 
 he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, 
 one character, one fact makes much impression on 
 him, and another none. It is not without preestab- 
 lished harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The 
 eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it 
 might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him 
 speak the utmost syllable of his confession. We but 
 half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that di 
 vine idea which each of us represents. It may be 
 safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 39 
 
 it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his 
 work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine 
 man to exhibit any thing divine. A man is relieved 
 and gay when he has put his heart into his work and 
 done his best ; but what he has said or done otherwise, 
 shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which 
 does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts 
 him ; no muse befriends ; no invention, no hope. 
 
 Trust- thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron 
 string. Accept the place the divine Providence has 
 found for you ; the society of your contemporaries, 
 the connexion of events. Great men have always 
 done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius 
 of their age, betraying their perception that the 
 Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through 
 their hands, predominating in all their being. And 
 we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind 
 the same transcendent destiny ; and not pinched in a 
 corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but 
 redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be 
 noble clay plastic under the Almighty effort, let us 
 advance and advance on Chaos and the Dark. 
 
 What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in 
 the face and behavior of children, babes and even 
 brutes. That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of 
 a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the 
 strength and means opposed to our purpose, these 
 have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as 
 yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we 
 are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody : all 
 conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four 
 
40 ESSAY II. 
 
 or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. 
 So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood 
 no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it 
 enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, 
 if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has 
 no force because he cannot speak to you and me. 
 Hark ! in the next room, who spoke so clear and em 
 phatic ? Good Heaven ! it is he ! it is that very lump of 
 bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks has done 
 nothing but eat when you were by, that now rolls out 
 these words like bell-strokes. It seems he knows how 
 to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, 
 he will know how to make us seniors very unneces 
 sary. 
 
 The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a din 
 ner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say 
 aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of hu 
 man nature. How is a boy the master of society ; in 
 dependent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner 
 on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sen 
 tences them on their merits, in the swift summary 
 way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, 
 troublesome. He cumbers himself never about con 
 sequences, about interests : he gives an independent, 
 genuine verdict. You must court him : he does not 
 court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into 
 jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once 
 acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, 
 watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds 
 whose affections must now enter into his account. 
 There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 41 
 
 again into his neutral, godlike independence ! Who can 
 thus lose all pledge, and having observed, observe 
 again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, 
 unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable, 
 must always engage the poet's and the man's regards. 
 Of such an immortal youth the force would be felt. 
 He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which 
 being seen to be not private but necessary, would sink 
 like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. 
 
 These are the voices which we hear in solitude, 
 but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into 
 the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy 
 against the manhood of every one of its members. 
 Society is a joint-stock company in which the mem 
 bers agree for the better securing of his bread to each 
 shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of 
 the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. 
 Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and 
 creators, but names and customs. 
 
 Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. 
 He who would gather immortal palms must not be hin 
 dered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it 
 be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity 
 of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you 
 shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an an 
 swer which when quite young I was prompted to make 
 to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with 
 the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, 
 What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, 
 if I live wholly from within ? my friend suggested 
 " But these impulses may be from below, not from 
 
42 ' ESSAY II. 
 
 above." I replied, ' They do not seem to me to be 
 such ; but if I am the devil's child, 1 will live then 
 from the devil.' No law can be sacred to me but that 
 of my nature. Good and bad are but names very 
 readily transferable to that or this ; the only right is 
 what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is 
 against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence 
 of all opposition as if every thing were titular and 
 ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily 
 we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies 
 and dead institutions. Eveiy decent and well-spoken 
 individual affects and sways me more than is right. 
 I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude 
 truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat 
 of philanthropy, shall that pass ? If an angry bigot 
 assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes 
 to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should 
 I not say to him, ' Go love thy infant ; love thy wood- 
 chopper : be good-natured and modest : have that 
 grace ; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable 
 ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk 
 a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' 
 Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth 
 is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your 
 goodness must have some edge to it else it is none. 
 The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the coun 
 teraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and 
 whines. I shun father and mother and wife and bro 
 ther, when my genius calls me. I would write on the 
 lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat 
 better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 43 
 
 in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I 
 seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not 
 tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to 
 put all poor men in good situations. Are they my 
 poor ? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I 
 grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such 
 men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not be 
 long. There is a class of persons to whom by all 
 spiritual affinity I am bought and sold ; for them I 
 will go to prison, if need be ; but your miscellaneous 
 popular charities ; the education at college of fools ; 
 the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which 
 many now stand ; alms to sots ; and the thousandfold 
 Relief Societies ; though I confess with shame I 
 sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked 
 dollar which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to 
 withhold. 
 
 Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the ex 
 ception than the rule. There is the man and his vir 
 tues. Men do what is called a good action, as some 
 piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay 
 a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on pa 
 rade. Their works are done as an apology or exten 
 uation of their living in the world, as invalids and 
 the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are pen 
 ances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life 
 is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not 
 for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a 
 lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it 
 should be glittering and unsteady- I wish it to be 
 sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. 
 
44 ESSAY II. 
 
 My life should be unique ; it should be an alms, a 
 battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evi 
 dence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from 
 the man to his actions. I know that for myself it 
 makes no difference whether I do or forbear those 
 actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot 
 consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic 
 right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actu 
 ally am, and do not need for my own assurance or 
 the assurance of my fellows any secondary testi 
 mony. 
 
 What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what 
 the people think. This rule, equally arduous in ac 
 tual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole dis 
 tinction between greatness and meanness. It is the 
 harder, because you will always find those who think 
 they know what is your duty better than you know it. 
 It is easy in the world to live after the world's opin 
 ion ; it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but 
 the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd 
 keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of sol 
 itude. 
 
 The objection to conforming to usages that have be 
 come dead to you, is, that it scatters your force. It 
 loses your time and blurs the impression of your char 
 acter. If you maintain a dead church, contribute 
 to a dead Bible-Society, vote with a great party 
 either for the Government or against it, spread your 
 table like base housekeepers, under all these 
 screens, I have difficulty to detect the precise man 
 you are. And, of course, so much force is with- 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 45 
 
 drawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and 
 I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall re 
 inforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind- 
 rnan's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know 
 your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a 
 preacher announce for his text and topic the expedi 
 ency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I 
 not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a 
 new and spontaneous word ? Do I not know that 
 with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of 
 the institution, he will do no such thing ? Do I not 
 know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at 
 one side ; the permitted side, not as a man, but as a 
 parish minister ? He is a retained attorney, and these 
 airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, 
 most men have bound their eyes with one or another 
 handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one 
 of these communities of opinion. This conformity 
 makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of 
 a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every 
 truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, 
 their four not the real four : so that every word they 
 say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to 
 set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip 
 us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we 
 adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and fig 
 ure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine ex 
 pression. There is a mortifying experience in par 
 ticular which does not fail to wreak itself also in the 
 genera] history ; I mean, " the foolish face of praise," 
 the forced smile which we put on in company where 
 
46 ESSAY II. 
 
 we do not feel atease in answer to conversation which 
 does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously 
 moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow 
 tight about the outline of the face and make the most 
 disagreeable sensation, a sensation of rebuke and 
 warning which no brave young man will suffer twice. 
 
 For non-conformity the world whips you with its 
 displeasure. And therefore a man must know how 
 to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance 
 on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. 
 If this aversation had its origin in contempt and re 
 sistance like his own, he might well go home with a 
 sad countenance ; but the sour faces of the multitude, 
 like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, disguise 
 no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, 
 and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the 
 multitude more formidable than that of the senate 
 and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man 
 who knows the world to brook the rage of the culti 
 vated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, 
 for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. 
 But when to their feminine rage the indignation of 
 the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor 
 are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that 
 lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and 
 mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion 
 to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our 
 consistency ; a reverence for our past act or word, 
 because the eyes of others have no other data for 
 computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are 
 loath to disappoint them. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 47 
 
 But why should you keep your head over your 
 shoulder ? Why drag about this monstrous corpse of 
 your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have 
 stated in this or that public place ? Suppose you 
 should contradict yourself; what then ? It seems to 
 be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory 
 alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, 
 but bring the past for judgment into the thousand- 
 eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust 
 your emotion. In your metaphysics you have de 
 nied personality to the Deity : yet when the devout 
 motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and 
 life, though they should clothe God with shape and 
 color. Leave your theory as Joseph his coat in the 
 hand of the harlot, and flee. 
 
 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little 
 minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers 
 and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply 
 nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with 
 his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips ! 
 Sew them up with packthread, do. Else, if you 
 would be a man, speak what you think to-day in words 
 as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what 
 to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it con 
 tradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, ex 
 claim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misun 
 derstood. Misunderstood ! It is a right fool's word. 
 Is it so bad then to be misunderstood ? Pythagoras 
 was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Lu 
 ther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and 
 every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To 
 be great is to be misunderstood. 
 
48 ESSAY II. 
 
 I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the 
 sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his be 
 ing as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are 
 insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it 
 matter how you guage and try him. A character is 
 like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza ; read it for 
 ward, backward, or across, it still spells the same 
 thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God 
 allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought 
 without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it 
 will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and 
 see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound 
 with the hum of insects. The swallow over my win 
 dow should interweave that thread or straw he carries 
 in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. 
 Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that 
 they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt 
 actions and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath 
 every moment. 
 
 Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever 
 variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural 
 in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be har 
 monious, however unlike they seem. These varieties 
 are lost sight of when seen at a little distance, at a lit 
 tle height of thought. One tendency unites them all. 
 The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hun 
 dred tacks. This is only microscopic criticism. See 
 the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens 
 itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action 
 will explain itself and will explain your other genuine 
 actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act sin- 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 49 
 
 gly, and what you have already done singly, will justify 
 you now. Greatness always appeals to the future. 
 If I can be great enough now to do right and scorn 
 eyes, I must have done so much right before, as to de 
 fend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Al 
 ways scorn appearances, and you always may. The 
 force of character is cumulative. All the foregone 
 days of virtue work 'their health into this. What 
 makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the 
 field, which so fills the imagination ? The conscious 
 ness of a train of great days and victories behind. 
 There they all stand and shed an united light on the 
 advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible es 
 cort of angels to every man's eye. That is it which 
 throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into 
 Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. 
 Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. 
 It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day, be 
 cause it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it hom 
 age, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, 
 but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an 
 old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young 
 person. 
 
 I hope in these days we have heard the last of con 
 formity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted 
 and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for 
 dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. 
 Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man 
 is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please 
 him : I wish that he should wish to please me. I will 
 stand here for humanity, and though I would make it 
 3 
 
50 ESSAY II. 
 
 kind, I would made it true. Let us affront and repri 
 mand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment 
 of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, 
 and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, 
 that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor 
 moving wherever moves a man ; that a true man be 
 longs to no other time or place, but is the centre of 
 things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures 
 you, and all men, and all events. You are constrained 
 to accept his standard. Ordinarily every body in soci 
 ety reminds us of somewhat else or of some other 
 person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing 
 else. It takes place of the whole creation. The man 
 must be so much that he must make all circumstances 
 indifferent, put all means into the shade. This all 
 great men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a 
 country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces and num 
 bers and time fully to accomplish his thought ; and 
 posterity seem to follow his steps as a procession. A 
 man Caesar is born, and for ages after, we have a Ro 
 man Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds 
 so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confound 
 ed with virtue and the possible of man. An institution 
 is the lengthened shadow of one man ; as, the Refor 
 mation, of Luther ; Quakerism, of Fox ; Methodism, 
 of Wesley ; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton 
 called " the height of Rome ;" and all history resolves 
 itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and 
 earnest persons. 
 
 Let a man then know his worth, and keep things un 
 der his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 51 
 
 and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or 
 an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But 
 the man in the street finding no worth in himself which 
 corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculp 
 tured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. 
 To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an 
 alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, 
 and seem to say like that, ' Who are you, sir ?' Yet 
 they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his 
 faculties that they will come out and take possession. 
 The picture waits for my verdict : it is not to command 
 me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That pop 
 ular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in 
 the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and 
 dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, 
 treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, 
 and assured that he had been insane, owes its popu 
 larity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of 
 man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then 
 wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true 
 prince. 
 
 Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In his 
 tory, our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. 
 Kingdom and lordship, power and estate are a gaudier 
 vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small 
 house and common day's work : but the things of life 
 are the same to both : the sum total of both is the 
 same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scander- 
 beg, and Gustavus ? Suppose they were virtuous : 
 did they wear out virtue ? As great a stake depends 
 on your private act to-day, as followed their public and 
 
52 ESSAY II. 
 
 renowned steps. When private men shall act with 
 vast views, the lustre will be transferred from the ac 
 tions of kings to those of gentlemen. 
 
 The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, 
 who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has 
 been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual rever 
 ence that is due from man to man. The joyful loy 
 alty with which men have every where suffered the 
 king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among 
 them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men 
 and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with 
 money but with honor, and represent the Law in his 
 person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely 
 signified their consciousness of their own right and 
 comeliness, the right of every man. 
 
 The magnetism which all original action exerts is 
 explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. 
 Who is the Trustee ? What is the aboriginal Self on 
 which a universal reliance may be grounded ? What 
 is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, 
 without parallax, without calculable elements, which 
 shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure 
 actions, if the least mark of independence appear ? 
 The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence 
 of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life, 
 which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote 
 this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teach 
 ings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact be 
 hind which analysis cannot go, all things find their 
 common origin. For the sense of being which in 
 calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 53 
 
 diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, 
 from man, but one with them, and proceedeth obvious 
 ly from the same source whence their life and be 
 ing also proceedeth. We first share the life by 
 which things exist, and afterwards see them as 
 appearances in nature, and forget that we have 
 shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action 
 and the fountain of thought. Here are the lungs of 
 that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, of that in 
 spiration of man which cannot be denied without im 
 piety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense in 
 telligence, which makes us organs of its activity and 
 receivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when 
 we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow 
 a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, 
 if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all meta 
 physics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its 
 absence is all we can affirm. Every man discerns 
 between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his invol 
 untary perceptions. And to his involuntary percep 
 tions, he knows a perfect respect is due. He may err 
 in the expression of them, but he knows that these 
 things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. 
 All my wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving ; 
 the most trivial reverie, the faintest native emotion 
 are domestic and divine, Thoughtless people contra 
 dict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opin 
 ions, or rather much more readily ; for, they do not 
 distinguish between perception and notion. They fan 
 cy that I choose to see this or that thing. But percep 
 tion is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my 
 children will see it after me, and in course of time, all 
 
54 ESSAY II. 
 
 mankind, although it may chance that no one has 
 seen it before me. For my perception of it is as 
 much a fact as the sun. 
 
 The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so 
 pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It 
 must be that when God speaketh, he should communi 
 cate not one thing, but all things ; should fill the world 
 with his voice ; should scatter forth light, nature, time, 
 souls, from the centre of the present thought ; and 
 new date and new create the whole. Whenever 
 a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, 
 then old things pass away, means, teachers, texts, 
 temples fall ; it lives now and absorbs past and 
 future into the present hour. All things are made sa 
 cred by relation to it, one thing as much as another. 
 All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, 
 and in the universal miracle petty and particular mir 
 acles disappear. This is and must be. If, therefore, 
 a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries 
 you backward to the phraseology of some old moul 
 dered nation in another country, in another world, 
 believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak 
 which is its fulness and completion ? Is the parent 
 better than the child into whom he has cast his ri 
 pened being ? Whence then this worship of the past ? 
 The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and 
 majesty of the soul. Time and space are but phy 
 siological colors which the eye maketh, but the soul is 
 light ; where it is, is day ; where it was, is night ; and 
 history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be 
 anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable 
 of my being and becoming. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 55 
 
 Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer up 
 right. He dares not say ' I think,' ' I am,' but quotes 
 some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade 
 of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my 
 window make no reference to former roses or to bet 
 ter ones ; they are for what they are ; they exist with 
 God to-day. There is no time to them. There is 
 simply the rose ; it is perfect in every moment of its 
 existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life 
 acts ; in the full-blown flower, there is no more ; in 
 the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satis 
 fied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There 
 is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers ; 
 he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye 
 laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that sur 
 round him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He 
 cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with 
 nature in the present, above time. 
 
 This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong 
 intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak 
 the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremi 
 ah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price 
 on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children 
 who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and 
 tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents 
 and character they chance to see, painfully recol 
 lecting the exact words they spoke ; afterwards, when 
 they come into the point of view which those had who 
 uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are 
 willing to let the words go ; for, at any time, they can 
 use words as good, when occasion comes. So was it 
 
56 ESSAY II. 
 
 with us, so will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, 
 we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man 
 to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When 
 we have new perception, we shall gladly disburthen 
 the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. 
 When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet 
 as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. 
 And now at last the highest truth on this subject re 
 mains unsaid ; probably , cannot be said ; for all that 
 we say is the far off remembering of the intuition. 
 That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to 
 say it, is this. When good is near you, when you 
 have life in yourself, it is not by any known or ap 
 pointed way ; you shall not discern the foot-prints of 
 any other ; you shall not see the face of man ; you 
 shall not hear any name ; the way, the thought, the 
 good shall be wholly strange and new. It shall ex 
 clude all other being. You take the way from man 
 not to man. All persons that ever existed are its fu 
 gitive ministers. There shall be no fear in it. Fear 
 and hope are alike beneath it. It asks nothing. 
 There is somewhat low even in hope. We are then 
 in vision. There is nothing that can be called grat 
 itude nor properly joy. The soul is raised over pas 
 sion. It seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a 
 perceiving that Truth and Right are. Hence it be 
 comes a Tranquillity out of the knowing that all things 
 go well. Vast spaces of nature ; the Atlantic Ocean, 
 the South Sea ; vast intervals of time, years, centuries, 
 are of no account. This which I think and feel, un 
 derlay that former state of life and circumstances, as 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 57 
 
 it does underlie my present, and will always all cir 
 cumstance, and what is called life, and what is called 
 death. 
 
 Life only avails, not the having lived. Power 
 ceases in the instant of repose ; it resides in the mo 
 ment of transition from a past to a new state ; in the 
 shootin'g of the gulf ; in the darting to an aim. This 
 one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes ; for, 
 that forever degrades the past ; turns all riches to pov 
 erty ; all reputation to a shame ; confounds the saint 
 with the rogue ; shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. 
 Why then do we prate of self-reliance ? Inasmuch 
 as the soul is present, there will be power not confi 
 dent but agent. To talk of reliance, is a poor exter 
 nal way of speaking. Speak rather of that which re 
 lies, because it works and is. Who has more soul 
 than I, masters me, though he should not raise his fin 
 ger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of 
 spirits ; who has less, I rule with like facility. We 
 fancy it rhetoric when we speak of eminent virtue. 
 We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a 
 man or a company of men plastic and permeable to 
 principles, by the law of nature must overpower and 
 ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are 
 not. 
 
 This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach 
 on this as on every topic, the resolution of all into the 
 ever blessed ONE. Virtue is the governor, the crea 
 tor, the reality. All things real are so by so much of 
 virtue as they contain. Hardship, husbandry, hunting, 
 whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are some- 
 3* 
 
58 ESSAY II. 
 
 what, and engage my respect as examples of the 
 soul's presence and impure action. I see the same 
 law working in nature for conservation and growth. 
 The poise of a planet, the bended tree recovering it 
 self from the strong wind, the vital resources of every 
 vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the 
 self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All his 
 tory from its highest to its trivial passages is the vari 
 ous record of this power. 
 
 Thus all concentrates ; let us not rove ; let us sit at 
 home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the in 
 truding rabble of men and books and institutions by a 
 simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid them take the 
 shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our 
 simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law 
 demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside 
 our native riches. 
 
 But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe 
 of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, 
 to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, 
 but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns 
 of men. We must go alone. Isolation must pre 
 cede true society. I like the silent church before the 
 service begins, better than any preaching. How far 
 off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt 
 each one with a precinct or sanctuary. So let us 
 always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our 
 friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit 
 around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood ? 
 All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not 
 for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 59 
 
 the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isola- - 
 tion must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must 
 be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be 
 in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. 
 Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all 
 knock at once at thy closet door and say, ' Come out 
 unto us.' Do not spill thy soul ; do not all descend ; 
 keep thy state ; stay at home in thine own heaven ; 
 come not for a moment into their facts, into their hub 
 bub of conflicting appearances, but let in the light of 
 thy law on their confusion. The power men possess 
 to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man 
 can come near me but through my act. " What we 
 love that we have, but by desire we bereave our 
 selves of the love." 
 
 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedi 
 ence and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, 
 let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor arid 
 Woden, courage and constancy in our Saxon breasts. 
 This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking 
 the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying af 
 fection. Live no longer to the expectation of these 
 deceived and deceiving people with whom we con 
 verse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, 
 O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after ap 
 pearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. 
 Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no 
 law less than the eternal law. I will have no cove 
 nants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my 
 parents, to support my family, to be the chaste hus 
 band of one wife, but these relations I must fill after 
 
60 ESSAY II, 
 
 a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your 
 customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself 
 any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for 
 what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I 
 will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be 
 myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I 
 will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do 
 strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly re 
 joices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, 
 I will love you ; if you are not, I will not hurt you 
 and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are 
 true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your 
 companions ; I will seek my own. I do this not self 
 ishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest 
 and mine and all men's, however long we have dwelt 
 in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day ? 
 You will soon love what is dictated by your nature 
 as well as mine, and if we follow the truth, it will 
 bring us out safe at last. But so you may give 
 these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liber 
 ty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, 
 all persons have their moments of reason when they 
 look out into the region of absolute truth ; then will 
 they justify me and do the same thing. 
 
 The populace think that your rejection of popular 
 standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere an- 
 tinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the 
 name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law 
 of consciousness abides. There are two confession 
 als, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. 
 You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 61 
 
 yourself in the direct, or, in the reflex way. Con 
 sider whether you have satisfied your relations to 
 father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and 
 dog ; whether any of these can upbraid you. But 
 I may also neglect this reflex standard, and ab 
 solve me to myself. I have my own stern claims 
 and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to 
 many offices that are called duties. But if I can 
 discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the 
 popular code. If any one imagines that this law is 
 lax, let him keep its commandment one day. 
 
 And truly it demands something godlike in him 
 who has cast off the common motives of humanity, 
 and has ventured to trust himself for a task-master. 
 High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, 
 that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law 
 to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as 
 strong as iron necessity is to others. 
 
 If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
 called by distinction society, he will see the need of 
 these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to 
 be drawn out, and we are become timorous despond 
 ing whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of 
 fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. 
 Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We 
 want men and women who shall renovate life and 
 our social state, but we see that most natures are in 
 solvent ; cannot satisfy their own wants, have an am 
 bition out of all proportion to their practical force, 
 and so do lean and beg day and night continually. 
 Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupa- 
 
62 ESSAY II. 
 
 tions, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, 
 but society has chosen for us. We are parlor sol 
 diers. The rugged battle of fate, where strength is 
 born, we shun. 
 
 If our young men miscarry in their first enterprizes, 
 they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, 
 men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at 
 one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office 
 within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of 
 Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to 
 himself that he is right in being disheartened and in 
 complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from 
 New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the 
 professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a 
 school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, 
 buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, 
 and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth 
 a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast 
 with his days, and feels no shame in not ' study 
 ing a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, 
 but lives already. He has not one chance, but a 
 hundred chances. Let a stoic arise who shall reveal 
 the resources of man, and tell men they are not lean 
 ing willows, but can and must detach themselves ; that 
 with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall ap 
 pear ; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed 
 healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of 
 our compassion, and that the moment he acts from 
 himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and 
 customs out of the window, we pity him no more 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 63 
 
 but thank and revere him, and that teacher shall re 
 store the life of man to splendor, and make his name 
 dear to all History. 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance, a 
 new respect for the divinity in man, must work a 
 revolution in all the offices and relations of men ; in 
 their religion ; in their education ; in their pursuits ; 
 their modes of living ; their association ; in their prop 
 erty ; in their speculative views. 
 
 1. In what prayers do men allow themselves ! That 
 which they call a holy office, is not so much as brave 
 and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some 
 foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, 
 and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and su 
 pernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer 
 that craves a particular commodity any thing less 
 than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contem 
 plation of the facts of life from the highest point 
 of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and 
 jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing 
 his works good. But prayer as a means to ef 
 fect a private end, is theft and meanness. It sup 
 poses dualism and not unity in nature and con 
 sciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, 
 he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all ac 
 tion. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field 
 to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the 
 stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard through 
 out nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in 
 Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the 
 mind of the god Audate, replies, 
 
64 ESSAY II. 
 
 " His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors, 
 Our valors are our best gods." 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. 
 Discontent is the want of self-reliance : it is infirm 
 ity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby 
 help the sufferer ; if not, attend your own work, and 
 already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympa 
 thy is just as base. We come to them who weep 
 foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead 
 of imparting to them truth and health in rough elec 
 tric shocks, putting them once more in communica 
 tion with the soul. The secret of fortune is joy in 
 our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is 
 the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung 
 wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all 
 eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him 
 and embraces him, because he did not need it. We 
 solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate 
 him, because he held on his way and scorned our dis 
 approbation. The gods love him because men hated 
 him. " To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, 
 " the blessed Immortals are swift." 
 
 As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are 
 their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say 
 with those foolish Israelites, ' Let not God speak to us, 
 lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, 
 and we will obey.' Everywhere I am bereaved of 
 meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his 
 own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his 
 brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new 
 mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 65 
 
 uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a 
 Hutton, a Bentham, a Spurzheim, it imposes its clas 
 sification on other men, and lo ! a new system. In 
 proportion always to the depth of the thought, and so 
 to the number of the objects it touches and brings 
 within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But 
 chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which 
 are also classifications of some powerful mind acting 
 on the great elemental thought of Duty, and man's 
 relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quaker 
 ism, Swedenborgianism. The pupil takes the same 
 delight in subordinating every thing to the new termi 
 nology that a girl does who has just learned botany, 
 in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It 
 will happen for a time, that the pupil will feel a real 
 debt to the teacher, will find his intellectual power 
 has grown by the study of his writings. This will 
 continue until he has exhausted his master's mind. 
 But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is 
 idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily 
 exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system 
 blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the 
 walls of the universe ; the luminaries of heaven seem 
 to them hung on the arch their master built. They 
 cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, 
 how you can see ; ' It must be somehow that you 
 stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive, 
 that, light unsystematic, indomitable, will break into 
 any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile 
 and call it their own. If they are honest and do 
 well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too 
 
66 ESSAY II. 
 
 strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and van 
 ish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, 
 million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the 
 universe as on the first morning. 
 
 2. It is for want of self-culture that the idol of Tra 
 velling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, re 
 mains for all educated Americans. They who made 
 England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagina 
 tion, did so not by rambling round creation as a moth 
 round a lamp, but by sticking fast where they were, 
 like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel 
 that duty is our place, and that the merry men of cir 
 cumstance should follow as they may. The soul is 
 no traveller : the wise man stays at home with the 
 soul, and when his necessities, his duties, on any oc 
 casion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, 
 he is at home still, and is not gadding abroad from 
 himself, and shall make men sensible by the expres 
 sion of his countenance, that he goes the missionary 
 of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a 
 sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet. 
 
 I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation 
 of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and 
 benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or 
 does not go abroad with the hope of finding some 
 what greater than he knows. He who travels to be 
 amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, 
 travels away from himself, and grows old even in 
 youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his 
 will and mind have become old and dilapidated as 
 they. He carries ruins to ruins. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 67 
 
 Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our 
 first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At 
 home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be in 
 toxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack 
 my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, 
 and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is 
 the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that 
 I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I 
 affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but 
 I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever 
 I go. 
 
 3. But the rage of travelling is itself only a symp 
 tom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intel 
 lectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the 
 universal system of education fosters restlessness* 
 Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay 
 at home. We imitate ; and what is imitation but 
 the travelling of the mind ? Our houses are built 
 with foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished with 
 foreign ornaments ; our opinions, our tastes, our 
 whole minds lean, and follow the Past and the Distant, 
 as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul 
 created the arts wherever they have flourished. It 
 was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. 
 It was an application of his own thought to the thing 
 to be done and the conditions to be observed. And 
 why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model ? 
 Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint 
 expression are as near to us as to any, and if the 
 American artist will study with hope and love the 
 precise thing to be done by him, considering the cli- 
 
68 ESSAY II. 
 
 mate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the 
 people, the habit and form of the government, he will 
 create a house in which all these will find them 
 selves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied 
 also. 
 
 Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift 
 you can present every moment with the cumulative 
 force of a whole life's cultivation ; but of the adopted 
 talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, 
 half possession. That which each can do best, none 
 but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows 
 what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. 
 Where is the master who could have taught Shak 
 speare ? Where is the master who could have in 
 structed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or New 
 ton. Every great man is an unique. The Scipionism 
 of Scipio is precisely that part he could not bor 
 row. If any body will tell me whom the great man 
 imitates in the original crisis when he performs a 
 great act, I will tell him who else than himself can 
 teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the 
 study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee, 
 and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much. 
 There is at this moment, there is for me an utterance 
 bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phi 
 dias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, 
 or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly 
 will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven 
 tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if I can hear what 
 these patriarchs say, surely I can reply to them in the 
 same pitch of voice : for the ear and the tongue are 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 69 
 
 two organs of one nature. Dwell up there in the sim 
 ple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and 
 thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. 
 
 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look 
 abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men 
 plume themselves on the improvement of society, and 
 no man improves. 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
 side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only ap 
 parent, like the workers of a treadmill. It undergoes 
 continual changes : it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is* 
 christianized, it is rich, it is scientific ; but this change 
 is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, 
 something is taken. Society acquires new arts and 
 loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well- 
 clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a 
 watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, 
 and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a 
 club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a 
 shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the two 
 men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength the 
 white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, 
 strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or 
 two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck 
 the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send 
 the white to his grave. 
 
 The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the 
 use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but 
 loses so much support of muscle. He has got a fine 
 Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour 
 by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, 
 
70 ESSAY II. 
 
 and so being sure of the information when he wants 
 it, the man in the street does not know a star in the 
 sky. The solstice he does not observe ; the equi 
 nox he knows as little ; and the whole bright calendar 
 of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note 
 books impair his memory ; his libraries overload his 
 wit; the insurance office increases the number of 
 accidents ; and it may be a question whether machi 
 nery does not encumber ; whether we have not lost 
 by refinement some energy, by a Christianity en 
 trenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of 
 wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic ; but in 
 Christendom where is the Christian ? 
 
 There is no more deviation in the moral standard 
 than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater 
 men are now than ever were. A singular equality 
 may be observed between the great men of the first 
 and of the last ages ; nor can all the science, art, re 
 ligion and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail 
 to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three 
 or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is 
 the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxago- 
 ras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. 
 He who is really of their class will not be called by 
 their name, but be wholly his own man, and, in his turn 
 the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of 
 each period are only its costume, and do not invigo 
 rate men. The harm of the improved machinery 
 may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring 
 accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to as 
 tonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhatfst- 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 71 
 
 ed the resources of science and art. Galileo, with 
 an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of 
 facts than any one since. Columbus found the New 
 World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the 
 periodical disuse and perishing of means and ma 
 chinery which were introduced with loud laudation, 
 a few years or centuries before. The great genius 
 returns to essential man. We reckoned the improve 
 ments of the art of war among the triumphs of sci 
 ence, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the 
 Bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked* 
 valor, and disencumbering it of all aids. The Em 
 peror held it impossible to make a perfect army, 
 says Las Casas, " without abolishing our arms, mag 
 azines, commissaries, and carriages, until in imitation 
 of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his 
 supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his 
 bread himself." 
 
 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but 
 the water of which it is composed, does not. The 
 same particle does not rise from the valley to the 
 ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons 
 who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and 
 their experience with them. 
 
 And so the reliance on Property, including the re 
 liance on governments which protect it, is the want 
 of self-reliance. Men have looked away from them 
 selves and at things so long, that they have come to 
 esteem what they call the soul's progress, namely, 
 the religious, learned, and civil institutions, as guards 
 of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, 
 
72 ESSAY II. 
 
 because they feel them to be assaults on property 
 They measure their esteem of each other, by what each 
 has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man 
 becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of what 
 he has, out of new respect for his being. Especially 
 he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, 
 came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime ; then 
 he feels that it is not having ; it does not belong to 
 him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, be 
 cause no revolution or no robber takes it away. But 
 *that which a man is, does always by necessity ac 
 quire, and what the man acquires is permanent and 
 living property, which does not wait the beck of ru 
 lers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or 
 bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever 
 the man is put. " Thy lot or portion of life," said 
 the Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; therefore be 
 at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on 
 these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for 
 numbers. The political parties meet in numerous 
 conventions ; the greater the concourse, and with 
 each new uproar of announcement, The delega 
 tion from Essex ! The Democrats from New Hamp 
 shire ! The Whigs of Maine ! the young patriot feels 
 himself stronger than before by a new thousand of 
 eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers sum 
 mon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. 
 But not so, O friends ! will the God deign to enter 
 and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the re 
 verse. It is only as a man puts off from himself all 
 external support, and stands alone, that I see him to 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 73 
 
 be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every 
 recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a 
 town ? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mu 
 tation, thou only firm column must presently appear 
 the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who 
 knows that power is in the soul, that he is weak on 
 ly because he has looked for good out of him and 
 elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesi 
 tatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands 
 in the erect position, commands his limbs, works 
 miracles ; just as a man who stands on his feet is 
 stronger than a man who stands on his head. 
 
 So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble 
 with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. 
 Bu tdo thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and 
 deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In 
 the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the 
 wheel of Chance, and shalt always drag her after 
 thee. A political victory, a rise of rents, the re 
 covery of your sick, or the return of your absent 
 friend, or some other quite external event, raises 
 your spirits, and you think good days are preparing 
 for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. 
 Nothing can bring you pejice but yourself. No 
 thing can bring you peace but the triumph of prin 
 ciples. 
 
COMPENSATION. 
 
ESSAY III. 
 
 COMPENSATION 
 
 EVER since I was a boy, I have wished to write a 
 discourse on Compensation : for, it seemed to me 
 when very young, that, on this subject, Life was ahead 
 of theology, and the people knew more than the 
 preachers taught. The documents too, from which 
 the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by 
 their endless variety, and lay always before me, 
 even in sleep ; for they are the tools in our hands, the 
 bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, 
 the farm, and the dwelling-house, the greetings, the 
 relations, the debts and credits, the influence of char 
 acter, the nature and endowment of all men. It 
 seemed to me also that in it might be shown men a 
 ray of divinity, the present action of the Soul of this 
 world, clean from all vestige of tradition, and so the 
 heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of 
 eternal love, conversing with that which he knows 
 
78 ESSAY III. 
 
 was always and always must be, because it really is 
 now. It appeared, moreover, that if this doctrine 
 could be stated in terms with any resemblance to 
 those bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes 
 revealed to us, it would be a star in many dark hours 
 and crooked passages in our journey that would not 
 suffer us to lose our way. 
 
 I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing 
 a sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed 
 for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner 
 the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that 
 judgment is not executed in this world ; that the 
 wicked are successful ; that the good are miserable ; 
 and then urged from reason and from Scripture a 
 compensation to be made to both parties in the next 
 life. No offence appeared to be taken by the con 
 gregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe, 
 when the meeting broke up, they separated without 
 remark on the sermon. 
 
 Yet what was the import of this teaching ? What 
 did the preacher mean by saying that the good are 
 miserable in the present life ? Was it that houses and 
 lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by 
 unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and de 
 spised ; and that a compensation is to be made to 
 these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifi 
 cations another day, bank-stock and doubloons, 
 venison and champagne ? This must be the com 
 pensation intended ; for, what else ? Is it that they 
 are to have leave to pray and praise ? to love and 
 serve men ? Why, that they can do now. The 
 
COMPENSATION. 79 
 
 legitimate inference the disciple would draw, was ; 
 1 We are to have such a good time as the sinners have 
 now ;' or, to push it to its extreme import, c You 
 sin now ; we shall sin by-and-by ; we would sin 
 now, if we could ; not being successful, we expect 
 our revenge tomorrow.' 
 
 The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the 
 bad are successful ; that justice is not done now. 
 The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring 
 to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes 
 a manly success, instead of confronting and convict 
 ing the world from the truth ; announcing the Presence 
 of the Soul ; the omnipotence of the Will : and so 
 establishing the standard of good and ill, of success 
 and falsehood, and summoning the dead to its present 
 tribunal. 
 
 I find a similar base tone in the popular religious 
 works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by 
 the literary men when occasionally they treat the re 
 lated topics. I think that our popular theology has 
 gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the su 
 perstitions it has displaced. But men are better than 
 this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. 
 Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doc 
 trine behind him in his own experience ; and all men 
 feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot de 
 monstrate. For men are wiser than they know. 
 That which they hear in schools and pulpits without 
 afterthought, if said in conversation, would probably 
 be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a 
 mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, 
 
80 ESSAY III. 
 
 he is answered by a silence which conveys well 
 enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, 
 but his incapacity to make his own statement. 
 
 I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to 
 record some facts that indicate the path of the law of 
 Compensation ; happy beyond my expectation, if I 
 shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. 
 
 POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every 
 part of nature ; in darkness and light ; in heat and 
 cold ; in the ebb and flow of waters ; in male and fe 
 male ; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and 
 animals ; in the systole and diastole of the heart ; in 
 the undulations of fluids, and of sound ; in the cen 
 trifugal and centripetal gravity ; in electricity, gal 
 vanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnet 
 ism at one end of a needle ; the opposite magnetism 
 takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, 
 the north repels. To empty here, you must con 
 dense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, 
 so that each thing is a half, and suggests another 
 thing to make it whole ; as spirit, matter ; man, 
 woman ; subjective, objective ; in, out ; upper, under ; 
 motion, rest ; yea, nay. 
 
 Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of 
 its parts. The entire system of things gets repre 
 sented in every particle. There is somewhat that re 
 sembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, 
 man and woman, in a single neeclle of the pine, in a 
 kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal 
 tribe. The reaction so grand in the elements, is re- 
 
COMPENSATION. 81 
 
 peated within these small boundaries. For example, 
 in the animal kingdom, the physiologist has observed 
 that no creatures are favorites, but a certain compen 
 sation balances every gift and every defect. A surplus 
 age given to one part is paid out of a reduction from an 
 other part of the same creature. If the head and neck 
 are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. 
 
 The theory of the mechanic forces is another ex 
 ample. What we gain in power is lost in time ; and the 
 converse. The periodic or compensating errors of 
 the planets, is another instance. The influences of 
 climate and soil in political history are another. The 
 cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does not 
 breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 
 
 The same dualism underlies the nature and condi 
 tion of man. Every excess causes a defect ; every 
 defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour ; every 
 evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of 
 pleasure, has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is 
 to answer for its moderation with its life. For every 
 grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing 
 you have missed, you have gained something else ; 
 and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If 
 riches increase, they are increased that use them. If 
 the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the 
 man what she puts into his chest ; swells the estate, 
 but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and ex 
 ceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily 
 seek a level from their loftiest tossing, than the vari 
 eties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is 
 always some levelling circumstance that puts down the 
 4* 
 
82 ESSAY III. 
 
 overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, sub 
 stantially on the same ground with all others. Is a 
 man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper 
 and position a bad citizen, a morose ruffian with a 
 dash of the pirate in him ; nature sends him a 
 troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting 
 along in the dame's classes at the village school, and 
 love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to cour 
 tesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite 
 and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, 
 and keeps her balance true. 
 
 The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
 things. But the President has paid dear for his White 
 House. It has commonly cost him all his peace and 
 the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a 
 short time so conspicuous an appearance before the 
 world, he is content to eat dust before the real mas 
 ters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men 
 desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of 
 genius ? Neither has this an immunity. He who by 
 force of will or of thought is great, and overlooks 
 thousands, has the responsibility of overlooking. 
 With every influx of light, comes new danger. 
 Has he light ? he must bear witness to the light, 
 and always outrun that sympathy which gives him 
 such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revela 
 tions of the incessant soul. He must hate father 
 and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the 
 world loves and admires and covets ? he must 
 cast behind him their admiration, and afflict them by 
 faithfulness to his truth, and become a by- word and 
 a hissing. 
 
COMPENSATION. 83 
 
 This Law writes the laws of cities and nations. It 
 will not be baulked of its end in the smallest iota. It 
 is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. 
 Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt 
 diu male administrari. Though no checks to a new 
 evil appear, the checks exist and will appear. If the 
 government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. 
 If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. 
 If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will 
 not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial can 
 endure. The true life and satisfactions of man seem 
 to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and 
 to establish themselves with great indifferency under 
 all varieties of circumstance. Under all governments 
 the influence of character remains the same, in 
 Turkey and in New England about alike. Under 
 the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly con 
 fesses that man must have been as free as culture 
 could make him. 
 
 These appearances indicate the fact that the uni 
 verse is represented in every one of its particles. 
 Every thing in nature contains all the powers of na 
 ture. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff ; as the 
 naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, 
 and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a 
 swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a 
 rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the 
 main character of the type, but part for part all the 
 details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, ener 
 gies, and whole system of every other. Every occu 
 pation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the 
 
84 ESSAY III. 
 
 world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is 
 an entire emblem of human life ; of its good and ill, 
 its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And 
 each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, 
 and recite all his destiny. 
 
 The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The mi 
 croscope cannot find the animalcule which is less per 
 fect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, 
 resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that 
 take hold on eternity, all find room to consist in the 
 small creature. So do we put our life into every act. 
 The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God re 
 appears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. 
 The value of the universe contrives to throw itself 
 into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil ; 
 if the affinity, so the repulsion ; if the force, so the 
 limitation. 
 
 Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. 
 That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of 
 us is a law. We feel its inspirations ; out there in 
 history we can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. 
 All nature feels its grasp. " It is in the world and the 
 world was made by it." It is eternal, but it enacts 
 itself in time and space. Justice is not postponed. 
 A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. 
 Ol xuftoi 4ios <iet etntmocri. The dice of God are al 
 ways loaded. The world looks like a multiplication- 
 table or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how 
 you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, 
 its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. 
 Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every 
 
COMPENSATION. 85 
 
 virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence 
 and certainty. What we call retribution, is the univer 
 sal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a 
 part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. 
 If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk 
 to which it belongs, is there behind. 
 
 Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, inte 
 grates itself, in a twofold manner ; first, in the thing, or, 
 in real nature ; and secondly, in the circumstance, or, 
 in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the re 
 tribution. The causal retribution is in the thing, and is 
 seen by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance, 
 is seen by the understanding ; it is inseparable from 
 the thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so 
 does not become distinct until after many years. The 
 specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but 
 they follow because they accompany it. Crime and 
 punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a 
 fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the 
 pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means 
 and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the 
 effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists 
 in the means, the fruit in the seed. 
 
 Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to 
 be disparted, we seek to act partially ; to sunder ; to 
 appropriate ; for example, to gratify the senses, we. 
 sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the 
 character. The ingenuity of man has been dedicated 
 always to the solution of one problem, how to detach 
 the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual 
 bright, &c. from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the 
 
86 ESSAY III. 
 
 moral fair ; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off 
 this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless ; 
 to get a one end, without an other end. The soul 
 says, Eat ; the body would feast. The soul says, The 
 man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul ; the 
 body would join the flesh only. The soul says, Have 
 dominion over all things to the ends of virtue ; the 
 body would have the power over things to its own 
 ends. 
 
 The soul strives amain to live and work through 
 all things. It would be the only fact. All things 
 shall be added unto it, power, pleasure, knowledge, 
 beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody ; 
 to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for a pri 
 vate good ; and, in particulars, to ride, that he may 
 ride ; to dress, that he may be dressed ; to eat, that he 
 may eat ; and to govern that he may be seen. Men 
 seek to be great ; they would have offices, wealth, 
 power and fame. They think that to be great is to 
 get only one side of nature the sweet, without the 
 other side the bitter. 
 
 Steadily is this dividing and detaching counteracted. 
 Up to this day, it must be owned, no projector has 
 had the smallest success. The parted water re-unites 
 behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant 
 things, profit out of profitable things, power out of 
 strong things, the moment we seek to separate them 
 from the whole. We can no more halve things and 
 get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an in 
 side that shall have no outside, or a light without a 
 shadow. " Drive out nature with a fork, she comes 
 running back." 
 
COMPENSATION. 87 
 
 Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which 
 the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another 
 brags that he does not know ; brags that they do not 
 touch him ; but the brag is on his lips, the conditions 
 are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part, they 
 attack him in another more vital part. If he has es 
 caped them in form, and in the appearance, it is that 
 he has resisted his life, and fled from himself, and the 
 retribution is so much death. So signal is the failure 
 of all attempts to make this separation of the good 
 from the tax, that the experiment would not be tried, 
 since to try it is to be mad, but for the circum 
 stance, that when the disease began in the will, of re 
 bellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, 
 so that the man ceases to see God whole in each ob 
 ject, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an 
 object, and not see the sensual hurt ; he sees the mer 
 maid's head, but not the dragon's tail ; and thinks he 
 can cut off that which he would have, from that which 
 he would not have. " How secret art thou who 
 dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou 
 only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied Provi 
 dence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have 
 unbridled desires !"* 
 
 The human soul is true to these facts in the paint 
 ing of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of con 
 versation. It finds a tongue in literature unawares. 
 Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind ; but 
 having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions t 
 
 * St. Augustine : Confessions, B. I. 
 
88 ESSAY III. 
 
 they involuntarily made amends to Reason, by tying 
 up the hands of so bad a god. He is made as help 
 less as a king of England. Prometheus knows one se 
 cret, which Jove must bargain for ; Minerva, another. 
 He cannot get his own thunders ; Minerva keeps the 
 key of them. 
 
 " Of all the gods I only know the keys 
 That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
 His thunders sleep." 
 
 A plain confession of the in-working of the All, 
 and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends 
 in the same ethics ; and indeed it would seem impos 
 sible for any fable to be invented and get any currency 
 which was not moral. Aurora forgot to ask youth 
 for her lover, and so though Tithonus is immortal, 
 he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable ; for 
 Thetis held him by the heel when she dipped him in 
 the Styx, and the sacred waters did not wash that 
 part. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite im 
 mortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bath 
 ing in the Dragon's blood, and that spot which it cov 
 ered is mortal. And so it always is. There is a 
 crack in every thing God has made. Always, it would 
 seem, there is this vindictive circumstance stealing in 
 at unawares, even into the wild poesy in which the 
 human fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to 
 shake itself free of the old laws, this back-stroke, 
 this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; 
 that in Nature, nothing can be given, all things are 
 sold. 
 
COMPENSATION. 89 
 
 This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps 
 watch in the Universe, and lets no offence go un- 
 chastised. The Furies, they said, are attendants on 
 Justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress his 
 path, they would punish him. The poets related that 
 stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had 
 an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners ; 
 that the belt which Ajax gave Hector, dragged the 
 Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car 
 of Achilles ; and the sword which Hector gave Ajax, 
 was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded 
 that when the Thasians erected a statue to Theogenes, 
 a victor in the games, one of his rivals went to it by 
 night, and endeavored to throw it down by repeated 
 blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal and 
 was crushed to death beneath its fall. 
 
 This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It 
 came from thought above the will of the writer. 
 That is the best part of each writer, which has nothing 
 private in it. That is the best part of each, which he 
 does not know, that which flowed out of his constitu 
 tion, and not from his too active invention ; that which 
 in the study of a single artist you might not easily 
 find, but in the study of many, you would abstract 
 as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, but the 
 work of man in that early Hellenic world, that 1 would 
 know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, how 
 ever convenient for history, embarrasses when we 
 come to the highest criticism. We are to see that 
 which man was tending to do in a given period, and 
 was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by 
 
90 ESSAY III. 
 
 the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of 
 Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at the moment 
 wrought. 
 
 Still more striking is the expression of this fact in 
 the proverbs of all nations, which are always the lite 
 rature of Reason, or the statements of an abso 
 lute truth, without qualification. Proverbs, like the 
 sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the 
 Intuitions. That which the droning world, chained 
 to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his 
 own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs with 
 out contradiction. And this law of laws which the 
 pulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly 
 preached in all markets and all languages by flights 
 of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omni 
 present as that of birds and flies. 
 
 All things are double, one against another. Tit for 
 tat ; an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a tooth ; blood for 
 blood ; measure for measure ; love for love. Give 
 and it shall be given you. He that watereth shall be 
 watered himself. What will you have ? quoth God ; 
 pay for it and take it. Nothing venture, nothing 
 have. Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast 
 done, no more, no less. Who doth not work shall not 
 ea t. Harm watch, harm catch. Curses always re 
 coil on the head of him who imprecates them. If you 
 put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end 
 fastens itself around your own. Bad counsel con 
 founds the adviser. The devil is an ass. 
 
 It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our ac 
 tion is overmastered and characterised above our will 
 
COMPENSATION. 91 
 
 by the law of nature. We aim at a petty end quite 
 aside from the public good, but our act arranges itself 
 by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of 
 the world. 
 
 A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With 
 his will, or against his will, he draws his portrait 
 to the eye of his companions by every word. Every 
 opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread- 
 ball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains in 
 the thrower's bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon thrown 
 at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in 
 the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or not well 
 thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, 
 or to sink the boat. 
 
 You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. 
 " No man had ever a point of pride that was not in 
 jurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fash 
 ionable life does not see that he excludes himself from 
 enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The ex- 
 clusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the 
 door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out 
 others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you 
 shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their 
 heart, you shall lose your own. The senses would 
 make things of all persons ; of women, of children, 
 of the poor. The vulgar proverb, " I will get it from 
 his purse or get it from his skin, " is sound philosophy. 
 
 All infractions of love and equity in our social rela 
 tions are speedily punished. They are punished by 
 Fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fel 
 low man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We 
 
92 ESSAY III. 
 
 meet as water meets water, or a current of air meets 
 another, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of 
 nature. But as soon as there is any departure from 
 simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me 
 that is not good for him, my neighbor feels the 
 wrong ; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk 
 from him ; his eyes no longer seek mine ; there is 
 war between us ; there is hate in him and fear in 
 me. 
 
 All the old abuses in society, the great and univer 
 sal and the petty and particular, all unjust accumula 
 tions of property and power, are avenged in the same 
 manner. Fear is an instructer of great sagacity, and 
 the herald of all revolutions. One thing he always 
 teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He 
 is a carrion crow, and though you see riot well what 
 he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our 
 property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated 
 classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and 
 mowed and gibbered over government and property. 
 That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indi 
 cates great wrongs which must be revised. 
 
 Of the like nature is that expectation of change 
 which instantly follows the suspension of our volun 
 tary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the eme 
 rald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the in* 
 stinct which leads every generous soul to impose on 
 itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious vir 
 tue, are the tremblings of the balance of justice 
 through the heart and mind of man. 
 
 Experienced men of the world know very well 
 
COMPENSATION. 93 
 
 that it is always best to pay scot and lot as they go 
 along, and that a man often pays dear for a small 
 frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. Has 
 a man gained any thing who has received a hun 
 dred favors and rendered none ? Has he gained 
 by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his 
 neighbor's wares, or horses, or money ? There arises 
 on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on 
 the one part, and of debt on the other ; that is, of su 
 periority and inferiority. The transaction remains in 
 the memory of himself and his neighbor ; and every 
 new transaction alters, according to its nature, their 
 relation to each other. He may soon come to see 
 that he had better have broken his own bones than to 
 have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that 4t the 
 highest price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it." 
 
 A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of 
 life, and know that it is always the part of prudence 
 to face every claimant, and pay every just demand on 
 your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay ; 
 for, first or last, you must pay your entire debt. Per 
 sons and events may stand for a time between you 
 and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must 
 pay at last your own debt. If you are wise, you will 
 dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. 
 Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit 
 which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who 
 confers the most benefits. He is base, and that is 
 the one base thing in the universe, to receive fa 
 vors and render none. In the order of nature we can 
 not render benefits to those from whom we receive 
 
94 ESSAY III. 
 
 them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive 
 must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, 
 cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much 
 good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and 
 worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 
 
 Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. 
 Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What 
 we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some 
 application of good sense to a common want. It 
 is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or 
 to buy good sense applied to gardening ; in your 
 sailor, good sense applied to navigation ; in the house, 
 good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving ; in 
 your agent, good sense applied to accounts and af 
 fairs. So do you multiply your presence, or spread 
 yourself throughout your estate. But because of the 
 dual constitution of all things, in labor as in life there 
 can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. 
 The swindler swindles himself. For the real price of 
 labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and 
 credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may 
 be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they repre 
 sent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be coun 
 terfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be 
 answered but by real exertions of the mind, and 
 in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the de 
 faulter, the gambler cannot extort the benefit, cannot 
 extort the knowledge of material and moral nature 
 which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. 
 The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall 
 have the power ; but they who do not the thing have, 
 not the power. 
 
COMPENSATION. 95 
 
 Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharp 
 ening of a stake to the construction of a city or an 
 epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect com 
 pensation of the universe. Every where and always 
 this law is sublime. The absolute balance of Give 
 and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price ; 
 and if that price is not paid, not that thing but 
 something else is obtained, and that it is impossible 
 to get any thing without its price, this doctrine is not 
 less sublime in the columns of a leger than in the 
 budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, 
 in all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot 
 doubt that the high laws which each man sees ever 
 implicated in those processes with which he is conver 
 sant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel- 
 edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot- 
 rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the 
 shop-bill as in the history of a state, do recommend 
 to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his 
 business to his imagination. 
 
 The league between virtue and nature engages all 
 things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beauti 
 ful laws and substances of the world persecute and 
 whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged 
 for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide 
 world to hide a rogue. There is no such thing as 
 concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made 
 of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat 
 of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the 
 woods the track of every partridge and fox and squir 
 rel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word. 
 
96 ESSAY III. 
 
 you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw 
 up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Al 
 ways some damning circumstance transpires. The 
 laws and substances of nature, water, snow, wind, 
 gravitation, become penalties to the thief. 
 
 On the other hand, the law holds with equal sure- 
 ness for all right action. Love, and you shall be 
 loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as 
 the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good 
 man has absolute good, which like fire turns every 
 thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any 
 harm ; but as the royal armies sent against Napo 
 leon, when he approached, cast down their colors 
 and from enemies became friends, so do disasters of 
 all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, prove bene 
 factors. 
 
 " Winds blow and waters roll 
 Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 
 Yet in themselves are nothing." 
 
 The good are befriended even by weakness and de 
 fect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was 
 not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that 
 was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in 
 the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet, but 
 when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and after 
 wards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed 
 him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his 
 faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth 
 until first he has contended against it, so no man has 
 a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or tal 
 ents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and 
 
COMPENSATION. 97 
 
 seen the triumph of the other over his own want of 
 the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him 
 to live in society ? Thereby he is driven to enter 
 tain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help ; 
 and thus, like" the wounded oyster, he mends his 
 shell with pearl. 
 
 Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not un 
 til we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, 
 awakens the indignation which arms itself with secret 
 forces. A great man is always willing to be little. 
 Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to 
 sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he 
 has a chance to learn something ; he has been put on 
 his wits, on his manhood ; he has gained facts ; learns 
 his ignorance ; is cured of the insanity of conceit ; 
 has got moderation and real skill. The wise man 
 always throws himself on the side of his assailants. 
 It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak 
 point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him, 
 like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo ! 
 he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than 
 praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As 
 long as all that is said, is said against me, I feel a cer 
 tain assurance of success. But as soon as honied 
 words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one 
 that lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, 
 every evil to which we do not succumb, is a benefac 
 tor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the 
 strength and valor of the enemy he kills, passes into 
 himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we 
 resist. 
 
 5 
 
98 ESSAY III. 
 
 The same guards which protect us from disaster, 
 defect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from sel 
 fishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best 
 of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark 
 of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long, under the 
 foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it 
 is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one 
 but himself, as for a thing to be, and not to be, at the 
 same time. There is a third silent party to all our 
 bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on 
 itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, 
 so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you 
 serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. 
 Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. 
 The longer the payment is withholden, the better for 
 you ; for compound interest on compound interest is 
 the rate and usage of this exchequer. 
 
 The history of persecution is a history of endea 
 vors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to 
 twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whe 
 ther the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. 
 A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving 
 themselves of reason and traversing its work. The 
 mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of 
 the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its ac 
 tions are insane like its whole constitution. It perse 
 cutes a principle ; it would whip a right ; it would 
 tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage 
 upon the houses and persons of those who have these. 
 It resembles the prank of boys who run with fire-en 
 gines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the 
 
COMPENSATION. 99 
 
 stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against 
 the wrong doers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. 
 Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every pri 
 son a more illustrious abode ; every burned book or 
 house enlightens the world ; every suppressed or ex 
 punged word reverberates through the earth from 
 side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused ; 
 reason looks out and justifies her own, and malice 
 finds all her work vain. It is the whipper who is 
 whipped, and the tyrant who is undone. 
 
 Thus do all things preach the indifFerency of cir 
 cumstances. The man is all. Every thing has two 
 sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its 
 tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of com 
 pensation is not the doctrine of indifFerency. The 
 thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, 
 What boots it to do well ? there is one event to good 
 and evil ; if I gain any good, I must pay for it ; if I 
 lose any good, I gain some other ; all actions are in 
 different. 
 
 There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensa 
 tion, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a com 
 pensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all this 
 running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and 
 flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of 
 real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation, or 
 a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, 
 excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up 
 all relations, parts and times, within itself. Nature, 
 truth, virtue are the influx from thence. Vice is the 
 
100 ESSAY III. 
 
 absence or departure of the same. Nothing, False 
 hood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade, 
 on which, as a back-ground, the living universe paints 
 itself forth ; but no fact is begotten by it ; it cannot 
 work ; for it is not. It cannot work any good ; it 
 cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is 
 worse not to be than to be. 
 
 We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil 
 acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and con 
 tumacy, and does not come to a crisis or judgment 
 any where in visible nature. There is no stunning 
 confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. 
 Has he therefore outwitted the law ? Inasmuch as he 
 carries the malignity and the lie with him, he so far 
 deceases from nature. In some manner there will be 
 a demonstration of the wrong to the understanding 
 also ; but should we not see it, this deadly deduc 
 tion makes square the eternal account. 
 
 Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the 
 gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There 
 is no penalty to virtue ; no penalty to wisdom ; they 
 are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action, 
 I properly am ; in a virtuous act, I add to the world ; 
 I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and No 
 thing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the 
 horizon. There can be no excess to love ; none lo 
 knowledge ; none to beauty, when these attributes 
 are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses 
 all limits. It affirms in man always an Optimism, 
 never a Pessimism. 
 
 His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct 
 
COMPENSATION. 101 
 
 is trust. Our instinct uses " more " and " less " in ap 
 plication to man, always of the presence of the sowZ, 
 and not of its absence ; the brave man is greater than 
 the coward ; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more 
 a man and not less, than the fool and knave. There 
 is, therefore, no tax on the good of virtue ; for, 
 that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute 
 existence, without any comparative. All external 
 good has its tax, and if it came without desert or 
 sweat, has no root in me and the next wind will blow 
 it away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, and 
 may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, 
 by labor which the heart and the head allow. I no 
 longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for ex 
 ample, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it 
 brings with it new responsibility. I do not wish more 
 external goods, neither possessions, nor honors, nor 
 powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent : the 
 tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge 
 that the compensation exists, and that it is not desira 
 ble to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a 
 serene eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of 
 possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Ber 
 nard, " Nothing can work me damage except myself ; 
 the harm that I sustain, I carry about with me, and 
 never am a real sufferer but by my own fault." 
 
 In the nature of the soul is the compensation for 
 the inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of 
 nature seems to be the distinction of More and Less. 
 How can Less not feel the pain ; how not feel indig 
 nation or malevolence towards More ? Look at those 
 
102 ESSAY III. 
 
 who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows 
 not well what to make of it. Almost he shuns their 
 eye ; almost he fears they will upbraid God. What 
 should they do ? It seems a great injustice. But 
 face the facts, and see them nearly, and these moun 
 tainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them all, as 
 the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and 
 soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and 
 Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my brother, and 
 my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and out 
 done by great neighbors, I can yet love ; I can still 
 receive ; and he that loveth, maketh his own the gran 
 deur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that 
 my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the 
 friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and 
 envied, is my own. It is the eternal nature of the soul 
 to appropriate and make all things its own. Jesus and 
 Shakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I 
 conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious 
 domain. His virtue, is not that mine ? His wit, 
 if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. 
 
 Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The 
 changes which break up at short intervals the prosper 
 ity of men, are advertisements of a nature whose law 
 is growth. Evermore it is the order of nature to 
 grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quit 
 ting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, 
 and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its 
 beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of 
 its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In pro 
 portion to the vigor of the individual, these revolu- 
 
COMPENSATION. 103 
 
 tions are frequent, until in some happier mind they 
 are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very 
 loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a transparent 
 fluid membrane through which the form is alway seen, 
 and not as in most men an indurated heterogeneous 
 fabric of many dates, and of no settled character, in 
 which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be en- 
 largement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognises 
 the man of yesterday. And such should be the out 
 ward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead 
 circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment 
 day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting 
 not advancing, resisting not cooperating with the di 
 vine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. 
 
 We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let 
 our angels go. We do not see that they only go out, 
 that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of 
 the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, 
 in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not 
 believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re-cre 
 ate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins 
 of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter 
 and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, 
 and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so 
 dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in 
 vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, ' Up and on 
 ward forevermore ! ' We cannot stay amid the ruins. 
 Neither will we rely on the New ; and so we walk 
 ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look 
 backwards. 
 
 And yet the compensations of calamity are made 
 
104 ESSAY III. 
 
 apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals 
 of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappoint 
 ment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends seems at the 
 moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure 
 years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies 
 all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, 
 lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat 
 later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius ; for it 
 commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, 
 terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which 
 was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupa 
 tion, or a household, or style of living, and allows the 
 formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of 
 character. It permits or constrains the formation of 
 new acquaintances, and the reception of new influen 
 ces that prove of the first importance to the next 
 years ; and the man or woman who would have re 
 mained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its 
 roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the fall 
 ing of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is 
 made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and 
 fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 5* 
 
ESSAY IY. 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 WHEN the act of reflection takes place in the mind, 
 when \ve look at ourselves in the light of thought, we 
 discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Be 
 hind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, 
 as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and 
 stale, but even the tragic and terrible are comely, 
 as they take their place in the pictures of mem 
 ory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the 
 old house, the foolish person, however neglected in 
 the passing, have a grace in the past. Even the 
 corpse that has lain in the chambers has added a sol 
 emn ornament to the house. The soul will not know 
 either deformity or pain. If in the hours of clear 
 reason we should speak the severest truth, we should 
 say, that we had never made a sacrifice. In these 
 hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can be 
 
108 ESSAY IV. 
 
 taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain is 
 particular : the universe remains to the heart unhurt. 
 Distress never, trifles never abate our trust. No man 
 ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow 
 for exaggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden 
 hack that ever was driven. For it is only the finite 
 that has wrought and suffered ; the infinite lies 
 stretched in smiling repose. 
 
 The intellectual life may be kept clean and health 
 ful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import 
 into his mind difficulties which are none of his. No 
 man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him 
 do and say what strictly belongs to him, and though 
 very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield him 
 any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our young 
 people are diseased with the theological problems of 
 original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the 
 like. These never presented a practical difficulty to 
 any man, never darkened across any man's road, 
 who did not go out of his way to seek them. These 
 are the soul's mumps and measles, and whooping- 
 coughs, and those who have not caught them, cannot 
 describe their health or prescribe the cure. A simple 
 mind will not know these enemies. It is quite ano 
 ther thing that he should be able to give account of 
 his faith, and expound to another the theory of his self- 
 union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet 
 without this self-knowledge, there may be a sylvan 
 strength arid integrity in that which he is. " A few 
 strong instincts and a few plain rules " suffice us. 
 
 My will never gave the images in my mind the rank 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 109 
 
 they now take. The regular course of studies, the 
 years of academical and professional education have 
 not yielded me better facts than some idle books 
 under the bench at the Latin school. What we do 
 not call education is more precious than that which 
 we call so. We form no guess at the time of receiv 
 ing a thought, of its comparative value. And educa 
 tion often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and 
 baulk this natural magnetism which with sure discrim 
 ination selects its own. 
 
 In like manner, our moral nature is vitiated by any 
 interference of our will. People represent virtue as 
 a struggle, and take to themselves great airs upon 
 their attainments, and the question is every where vexed, 
 when a noble nature is commended, Whether the man 
 is not better who strives with temptation ? But there 
 is no merit in the matter. Either God is there, or he 
 is not there. We love characters in proportion as 
 they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man 
 thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like 
 him. Timoleon's victories are the best victories ; 
 which ran and flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch 
 said. When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, 
 graceful and pleasant as roses, we must thank God 
 that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly 
 on the angel, and say, ' Crump is a better man with his 
 grunting resistance to all his native devils.' 
 
 Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of na 
 ture over will in all practical life. There is less in 
 tention in history than we ascribe to it. We impute 
 deep-laid, far-sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon ; 
 
110 ESSAY IV. 
 
 but the best of their power was in nature, not in them. 
 Men of an extraordinary success, in their honest mo 
 ments, have always sung, ' Not unto us, not unto us.' 
 According to the faith of their times, they have built 
 altars to Fortune or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their 
 success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, 
 which found in them an unobstructed channel ; and 
 the wonders of which they were the visible conduct 
 ors, seemed to the eye their deed. Did the wires ge 
 nerate the galvanism ? It is even true that there 
 was less in them on which they could reflect, than 
 in another ; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth 
 and hollow. That which externally seemed will and 
 immovableness, was willingness and self-annihilation. 
 Could Shakspeare give a theory of Shakspeare ? 
 Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical ge 
 nius convey to others any insight into his methods ? If 
 he could communicate that secret, instantly it would 
 lose all its exaggerated value, blending with the day 
 light and the vital energy, the power to stand and to go. 
 The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations 
 that our life might be much easier and simpler than 
 we make it, that the world might be a happier place 
 than it is, that there is no need of struggles, convul 
 sions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and 
 the gnashing of the teeth ; that we miscreate our own 
 evils. We interfere with the optimism of nature, for, 
 whenever we get this vantage ground of the past, 
 or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to 
 discern that we are begirt with spiritual laws which ex 
 ecute themselves. 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. Ill 
 
 The face of external nature teaches the same les 
 son with calm superiority. Nature will not have us 
 fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or 
 our learning, much better than she likes our frauds 
 and wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the 
 bank, or the Abolition convention, or the Temperance 
 meeting, or the Transcendental club, into the fields 
 and woods, she says to us, " So hot ? my little sir." 
 
 We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs 
 intermeddle, and have things in our own way, until the 
 sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love 
 should make joy ; but our benevolence is unhappy. 
 Our Sunday schools and churches and pauper-socie 
 ties are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to 
 please nobody. There are natural ways of arriv^ 
 ing at the same ends at which these aim, but do not 
 arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the 
 same way ? Why should all give dollars ? It is very 
 inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think 
 any good will corne of it. We have not dollars. Mer 
 chants have. Let them give them. Farmers will 
 give corn. Poets will sing. Women will sew. La 
 borers will lend a hand. The children will bring 
 flowers. And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday 
 school over the whole Christendom ? It is natural and 
 beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity 
 should teach ; but it is time enough to answer questions, 
 when they are asked. Do not shut up the young peo 
 ple against their will in a pew, and force the children to 
 ask them questions for an hour against their will. 
 If we look wider, things are all alike ; laws, an.di 
 
112 ESSAY IV". 
 
 letters, and creeds and modes of living, seem a tra- 
 vestie of truth. Our society is encumbered by pon 
 derous machinery which resembles the endless aque 
 ducts which the Romans built over hill and dale, and 
 which are superseded by the discovery of the law that 
 water rises to the level of its source. It is a Chinese 
 wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a 
 standing army, not so good as a peace. It is a gra 
 duated, titled, richly appointed Empire, quite superflu 
 ous when Town-meetings are found to answer just as 
 well. 
 
 Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always 
 works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. 
 When the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The 
 circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking 
 of man and all animals is a falling forward. All 
 our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, 
 splitting, digging, rowing, and so forth, are done by 
 dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, 
 comet, sun, star, fall forever and ever. 
 
 The simplicity of the universe is very different from 
 the simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral 
 nature out and out, and thoroughly knows how 
 knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pe 
 dant. The simplicity of nature is not that which may 
 easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last analy 
 sis can no wise be made. We judge of a man's wis 
 dom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the 
 inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. 
 The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our 
 rigid names and reputations with our fluid conscious- 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 113 
 
 ness. We pass in the world for sects and schools, for 
 erudition and piely, and we are all the time jejune 
 babes. One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew 
 up. Every man sees that he is that middle point 
 whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied 
 with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very 
 wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels 
 what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-pedlar. 
 There is no permanent wise man, except in the fig 
 ment of the stoics. We side with the hero, as we 
 read or paint, against the coward and the robber ; 
 but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, 
 and shall be again, not in the low circumstance, 
 but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the 
 soul. 
 
 A little consideration of what takes place around 
 us every day, would show us that a higher law, than 
 that of our will, regulates events ; that our painful la 
 bors are very unnecessary, and altogether fruit 
 less ; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action 
 are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obe 
 dience we become divine. Belief and love, a be 
 lieving love will relieve us of a vast load of care. 
 O myb rothers, God exists. There is a soul at the 
 centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so 
 that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so 
 infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we 
 prosper when we accept its advice, and when we 
 struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued 
 to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole 
 course of things goes to teach us faith. We need 
 
114 ESSAY IV. 
 
 only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by 
 lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why 
 need you choose so painfully your place, and occupa 
 tion, and associates, and modes of action, and of en 
 tertainment ? Certainly there is a possible right for 
 you that precludes the need of balance and wilful 
 election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and 
 congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of 
 the stream of power and wisdom which flows into 
 you as life, place yourself in the full centre of that 
 food, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to 
 right, and a perfect contentment. Then you put all 
 gainsay ers in the wrong. Then you are the world, 
 the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will 
 not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, 
 the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion 
 of men, would go on far better than now r and the 
 Heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, 
 and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would 
 organize itself, as do now the rose and the air and the 
 sun* 
 
 I say, do not choose ; but that is a figure of speech 
 by which I would distinguish what is commonly called 
 choice among men, and which is a partial act, the 
 choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, 
 and not a whole act of the man. But that which I 
 call right or goodness, is the choice of my constitution ; 
 and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire 
 after, is the state or circumstance desirable to my 
 constitution ; and the action which I in all my years 
 tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We must 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 115 
 
 hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his 
 daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any 
 longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his 
 trade. What business has he with an evil trade ? 
 Has he not a calling in his character. 
 
 Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the 
 call. There is one direction in which all space is 
 open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him 
 thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a 
 river ; he runs against obstructions on every side but 
 one ; on that side, all obstruction is taken away, and 
 he sweeps serenely over God's depths into an infinite 
 sea. This talent and this call depend on his organi 
 zation, or the mode in which the general soul incar 
 nates itself in him. He inclines to do something 
 which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but 
 which no other man can do. He has no rival. For 
 the more truly he consults his own powers, the more 
 difference will his work exhibit from the work of any 
 other. When he is true and faithful, his ambition is 
 exactly proportioned to his powers. The height of 
 the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. 
 Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat 
 unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence 
 that he has another call, a summons by name and 
 personal election and outward " signs that mark him 
 extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men," 
 is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that 
 there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect 
 of persons therein. 
 
 By doing his work, he makes the need felt which 
 
116 ESSAY IV. 
 
 he can supply. He creates the taste by which he is 
 enjoyed. He provokes the wants to which he can 
 minister. By doing his own work, he unfolds him 
 self. It is the vice of our public speaking, that it has 
 not abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator 
 but every man should let out all the length of all the 
 reins ; should find or make a frank and hearty expres 
 sion of what force and meaning is in him. The com 
 mon experience is, that the man fits himself as well 
 as he can to the customary details of that work or 
 trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. 
 Then is he a part of the machine he moves ; the 
 man is lost. Until he can manage to communicate 
 himself to others in his full stature and proportion as 
 a wise and good man, he does not yet find his voca 
 tion. He must find in that an outlet for his character, 
 so that he may justify himself to their eyes for doing 
 what he does. If the labor is trivial, let him by his 
 thinking and character, make it liberal. Whatever 
 he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is 
 worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will 
 never know and honor him aright. Foolish, when 
 ever you take the meanness and formality of that 
 thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedi 
 ent spiracle of your character and aims. 
 
 We like only such actions as have already long 
 had the praise of men, and do not perceive that any 
 thing man can do, may be divinely done. We think 
 greatness entailed or organized in some places or 
 duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see 
 that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 117 
 
 Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered 
 lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors ; and 
 Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful 
 habitation and company in which he was hidden. 
 What we call obscure condition or vulgar society, is 
 that condition and society whose poetry is not yet 
 written, but which you shall presently make as envi 
 able and renowned as any. Accept your genius, and 
 say what you think. In our estimates, let us take a les 
 son from kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection 
 of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thou 
 sand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, 
 and a royal mind will. To make habitually a new 
 estimate, that is elevation. 
 
 What a man does, that he has. What has he to do 
 with hope or fear ? In himself is his might. Let him 
 regard no good as solid, but that which is in his nature, 
 and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. 
 The goods of fortune may come and go like summer 
 leaves ; let him play with them, and scatter them on 
 every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite 
 productiveness. 
 
 He may have his own. A man's genius, the qual 
 ity that differences him from every other, the suscep 
 tibility to one class of influences, the selection of what 
 is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines 
 for him the character of the universe. As a man 
 thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he 
 and so is nature. A man is a method, a progressive 
 arrangement ; a selecting principle, gathering his like 
 to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his own, 
 
118 ESSAY IV. 
 
 out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round 
 him. He is like one of those booms which are set 
 out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or 
 like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. 
 
 Those facts, words, persons which dwell in his me 
 mory without his being able to say why, remain, be 
 cause they have a relation to him not less real for be 
 ing as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of 
 value to him, as they can interpret parts of his con 
 sciousness which he would vainly seek words for in 
 the conventional images of books and other minds. 
 What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go 
 to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand 
 persons, as worthy, go by it, to whom I give no regard. 
 It is enough that these particulars speak to me. A 
 few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, 
 face, a few incidents have an emphasis in your mem 
 ory out of all proportion to their apparent signifi 
 cance, if you measure them by the ordinary stand 
 ards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their 
 weight, and do not reject them and cast about for 
 illustration and facts more usual in literature. Re 
 spect them, for they have their origin in deepest na 
 ture. What your heart thinks great, is great. The 
 soul's emphasis is always right. 
 
 Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and 
 genius, the man has the highest right. Every where 
 he may take what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor 
 can he take any thing else, though all doors were 
 open, nor can all the force of men hinder him from 
 taking so much. It is vain to attempt to keep a se- 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 119 
 
 cret from one who has a right to know it. It will tell 
 itself. That mood into which a friend can bring us, 
 is his dominion over us. To the thoughts of that state 
 of mind, he has a right. All the secrets of that state 
 of mind, he can compel. This is a law which states 
 men use in practice. All the terrors of the French 
 Republic, which held Austria in awe, were un 
 able to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon 
 sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old no 
 blesse, with the morals, manners and name of that 
 interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the 
 old aristocracy of Europe, men of the same connex 
 ion, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. 
 M. Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all 
 the secrets of the Imperial Cabinet. 
 
 A mutual understanding is ever the firmest chain. 
 Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be under 
 stood. Yet a man may come to find that the strong 
 est of defences and of ties, that he has been under 
 stood ; and he who has received an opinion, may come 
 to find it the most inconvenient of bonds. 
 
 If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to 
 conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated 
 into that as into any which he publishes. If you pour 
 water into a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is 
 vain to say, I will pour it only into this or that ; it will 
 find its own level in all. Men feel and act the con 
 sequences of your doctrine, without being able to show- 
 how they follow. Show us an arc of the curve, and 
 a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. 
 We are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen, 
 
120 ESSAY IV. 
 
 Hence the perfect intelligence that subsists between 
 wise men of remote ages. A man cannot bury his 
 meanings so deep in his book, but time and like-minded 
 men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had 
 he ? What secret can he conceal from the eyes of 
 Bacon ? of Montaigne ? of Kant ? Therefore, Aris 
 totle said of his works, " They are published and not 
 published." 
 
 No man can learn what he has not preparation for 
 learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A 
 chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a car 
 penter, and he shall be never the wiser, the secrets 
 he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. God 
 screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our 
 eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare 
 us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is 
 ripened, then we behold them, and the time when 
 we saw them not, is like a dream. 
 
 Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and 
 worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is in 
 debted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. 
 " Earth fills her lap with splendors " not her own. The 
 vale of Tempe, Tivoli, and Rome are earth and wa 
 ter, rocks and sky. There are as good earth and 
 water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting ! 
 
 People are not the better for the sun and moon, the 
 horizon and the trees ; as it is not observed that the 
 keepers of Roman galleries, or the valets of painters 
 have any elevation of thought, or that librarians 
 are wiser men than others. There are graces in the 
 demeanor of a polished and noble person, which are 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 121 
 
 lost upon the eye of a churl. These are like the 
 stars whose light has not yet reached us. 
 
 He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are 
 the sequel of our waking knowledge. The visions 
 of the night always bear some proportion to the 
 visions of the day. Hideous dreams are only exag 
 gerations of the sins of the day. We see our own 
 evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On 
 the Alps, the traveller sometimes sees his own sha 
 dow magnified to a giant, so that every gesture of his 
 hand is terrific. " My children," said an old man to 
 his boys scared by a figure in the dark entry, " my 
 children, you will never see any thing worse than 
 yourselves." As in dreams, so in the scarcely less 
 fluid events of the world, every man sees himself in 
 colossal, without knowing that it is himself that he 
 sees. The good which he sees, compared to the evil 
 which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. Every 
 quality of his mind is magnified in some one acquaint 
 ance, and every emotion of his heart in some one. 
 He is like a quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, 
 west, north, or south ; or, an initial, medial, and ter 
 minal acrostic. And why not ? He cleaves to one 
 person, and avoids another, according to their likeness 
 or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking himself in his 
 associates, and moreover in his trade, and habits, and 
 gestures, and meats, and drinks ; and comes at last to 
 be faithfully represented by every view you take of 
 his circumstances. 
 
 He may read what he writeth. What can we see 
 or acquire, but what we are ? You have seen a skilful 
 6 
 
122 ESSAY IV. 
 
 man reading Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand 
 books to a thousand persons. Take the book into 
 your two hands, and read your eyes out ; you will 
 never find what I find. If any ingenious reader 
 would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight he 
 gets, he is as secure now the book is Englished, as if 
 it were imprisoned in the Pelews tongue. It is with 
 a good book as it is with good company. Introduce a 
 base person among gentlemen : it is all to no purpose : 
 he is not their fellow. Every society protects itself. 
 The company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of 
 them, though his body is in the room. 
 
 What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of 
 mind, which adjust the relation of all persons to each 
 other, by the mathematical measure of their havings 
 and beings ? Gertrude is enamored of Guy ; how 
 high, how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and man 
 ners ! to live with him were life indeed : and no pur 
 chase is too great ; and heaven and earth are moved 
 to that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy : but what now 
 avails how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his 
 mien and manners, if his heart and aims are in the 
 senate, in the theatre, and in the billiard room, and 
 she has no aims, no conversation that can enchant 
 her graceful lord ? 
 
 He shall have his own society. We can love no 
 thing but nature. The most wonderful talents, the 
 most meritorious exertions really avail very little with 
 us ; but nearness or likeness of nature, how beau 
 tiful is the ease of its victory ! Persons approach us 
 famous for their beauty, for their accomplishments, 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 123 
 
 worthy of all wonder for their charms and gifts : 
 they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the 
 company ; with very imperfect result. To be sure, 
 it would be very ungrateful in us not to praise them 
 very loudly. Then, when all is done, a person of 
 related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to 
 us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if 
 it were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as 
 if some one was gone, instead of another having 
 come : we are utterly relieved and refreshed : it is a 
 sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly think, in our 
 days of sin, that we must court friends by compliance 
 to the customs of society, to its dress, its breeding and 
 its estimates. But later, if we are so happy, we learn 
 that only that soul can be my friend, which I encoun 
 ter on the line of my own march, that soul to which 
 I do not decline, and which does not decline to me, 
 but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its 
 own all my experience. The scholar and the prophet 
 forget themselves, and ape the customs and costumes 
 of the man of the world, to deserve the smile of 
 beauty. He is a fool and follows some giddy girl, 
 and not with religious, ennobling passion, a woman 
 with all that is serene, oracular and beautiful in her 
 soul. Let him be great, and love shall follow him. 
 Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of 
 the affinities by which alone society should be formed, 
 and the insane levity of choosing associates by others' 
 eyes. 
 
 He may set his own rate. It is an universal maxim 
 worthy of all acceptation, that a man may have that al- 
 
124 ESSAY IV. 
 
 lowance he takes. Take the place and attitude to which 
 you see your unquestionable right, and all men acqui 
 esce. The world must be just. It always leaves every 
 man with profound unconcern to set his own rate. Hero 
 or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will cer 
 tainly accept your own measure of your doing and 
 being, whether you sneak about and deny your own 
 name, or, whether you see your work produced to the 
 concave sphere of the heavens, one with the revolu 
 tion of the stars. 
 
 The same reality pervades all teaching. The man 
 may teach by doing, and not otherwise. If he can 
 communicate himself, he can teach, but not by words. 
 He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. 
 There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into 
 the same state or principle in which you are ; a trans 
 fusion takes place : he is you, and you are he ; then 
 is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad 
 company can he ever quite lose the benefit. But 
 your propositions run out of one ear as they ran in at 
 the other. We see it advertised that Mr. Grand will 
 deliver an oration on the Fourth of July, and Mr. 
 Hand before the Mechanics' Association, and we do 
 not go thither, because we know that these gentlemen 
 will not communicate their own character and being 
 to the audience. If we had reason to expect such a 
 communication, we should go through all inconve 
 nience and opposition. The sick would be carried in 
 litters. But a public oration is an escapade, a non 
 committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communica 
 tion, not a speech, not a man. 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 125 
 
 A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. 
 We have yet to learn, that the thing uttered in words 
 is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no 
 forms of grammar and no plausibility can give it 
 evidence, and no array of arguments. The sentence 
 must also contain its own apology for being spoken. 
 
 The effect of any writing on the public mind is 
 mathematically measurable by its depth of thought. 
 How much water does it draw ? If it awaken you 
 to think ; if it lift you from your feet with the great 
 voice of eloquence ; then the effect is to be wide, 
 slow, permanent, over the minds of men ; if the 
 pages instruct you not, they will die like flies in the 
 hour. The way to speak and write what shall not 
 go out of fashion, is, to speak and write sincerely. 
 The argument which has not power to reach my own 
 practice, I may well doubt, will fail to reach yours. 
 But take Sidney's maxim : " Look in thy heart, and 
 write." He that writes to himself, writes to an eter 
 nal public. That statement only is fit to be made 
 public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy 
 your own curiosity. The writer who takes his sub 
 ject from his ear and not from his heart, should know 
 that he has lost as much as he seems to have gained, 
 and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, 
 and half the people say ' what poetry ! what ge 
 nius ! ' it still needs fuel to make fire. That only 
 profits which is profitable. Life alone can impart 
 life ; and though we should burst, we can only be 
 valued as we make ourselves valuable. There is no 
 luck in literary reputation. They who make up the 
 
126 ESSAY IV. 
 
 final verdict upon every book, are not the partial and 
 noisy readers of the hour when it appears ; but a 
 court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to 
 be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon 
 every man's title to fame. Only those books come 
 down which deserve to last. All the gilt edges and 
 vellum and morocco, all the presentation-copies to all 
 the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation 
 beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Wai- 
 pole's Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Black- 
 more, Kotzebue, or Pollok may endure for a night, but 
 Moses and Homer stand forever. There are not in 
 the world at any one time more than a dozen persons 
 who read and understand Plato : never enough to pay 
 for an edition of his works ; yet to every generation 
 these come duly down, for the sake of those few per 
 sons, as if God brought them in his hand. " No 
 book," said Bentley, " was ever written down by any 
 but itself." The permanence of all books is fixed by 
 no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific 
 gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents 
 to the constant mind of man. " Do not trouble your 
 self too much about the light on your statue," said 
 Michael Angelo to the young sculptor ; " the light of the 
 public square will test its value." 
 
 In like manner the effect of every action is meas 
 ured by the depth of the sentiment from which it 
 proceeds. The great man knew not that he was 
 great. It took a century or two, for that fact to ap 
 pear. What he did, he did because he must : he used 
 no election : it was the most natural thing in the world, 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 127 
 
 and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. 
 But now, every thing he did, even to the lifting of his 
 finger, or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, 
 and is called an institution. 
 
 These are the demonstrations in a few particulars 
 of the genius of nature : they show the direction of 
 the stream. But the stream is blood : every drop is 
 alive. Truth has not single victories : all things are 
 its organs, not only dust and stones, but errors and 
 lies. The laws of disease, physicians say, are as 
 beautiful as the laws of health. Our philosophy is 
 affirmative, and readily accepts the testimony of nega 
 tive facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By a 
 divine necessity, every fact in nature is constrained to 
 offer its testimony. 
 
 Human character does evermore publish itself. It 
 will not be concealed. It hates darkness, it rushes 
 into light. The most fugitive deed and word, the 
 mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, 
 expresses character. If you act, you show character ; 
 if you sit still, you show it ; if you sleep, you show 
 it. You think because you have spoken nothing, when 
 others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, 
 on the church, on slavery, on the college, on parties 
 and persons, that your verdict is still expected with 
 curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise ; 
 your silence answers very loud. You have no oracle 
 to utter, and your fellow men have learned that you 
 cannot help them ; for, oracles speak. Doth not wis 
 dom cry, and understanding put forth her voice ? 
 
 Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of 
 
128 ESSAY IV. 
 
 dissimulation. Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling 
 members of the body. Faces never lie, it is said. 
 No man need be deceived, who will study the changes 
 of expression. When a man speaks the truth in the 
 spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. 
 When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is 
 muddy and sometimes asquint. 
 
 I have heard an experienced counsellor say, that he 
 feared never the effect upon a jury, of a lawyer who 
 does not believe in his heart that his client ought to 
 have a verdict. If he does not believe it, his unbelief 
 will appear to the jury, despite all his protestations, 
 and will become their unbelief. This is that law 
 whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, sets us in 
 the same state of mind wherein the artist was, when 
 he made it. That which we do not believe, we can 
 not adequately say, though we may repeat the words 
 never so often. It was this conviction which Swe- 
 denborg expressed, when he described a group of 
 persons in the spiritual world endeavoring in vain to 
 articulate a proposition which they did not believe : 
 but they could not, though they twisted and folded 
 their lips even to indignation. 
 
 A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is 
 all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, 
 and idle is all fear of remaining unknown. If a man 
 know that he can do any thing, that he can do it 
 better than any one else, he has a pledge of the 
 acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. The 
 world is full of judgment days, and into every assembly 
 that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 129 
 
 guaged and stamped. In every troop of boys that 
 whoop and run in each yard and square, a new comer 
 is as well and accurately weighed in the balance, in the 
 course of a few days, and stamped with his right 
 number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his 
 strength, speed, and temper. A stranger comes from 
 a distant school, with better dress, with trinkets in his 
 pockets, with airs, and pretension : an old boy sniffs 
 thereat, and says to himself, 4 It 's of no use : we 
 shall find him out tomorrow.' ' What hath he 
 done ? ' is the divine question which searches men, 
 and transpierces every false reputation. A fop may sit 
 in any chair of the world, nor be distinguished for his 
 hour from Homer and Washington ; but there can 
 never be any doubt concerning the respective ability 
 of human beings, when we seek the truth. Pretension 
 may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned 
 an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an 
 Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the 
 world, nor abolished slavery. 
 
 Always as much virtue as there is, so much ap 
 pears ; as much goodness as there is, so much reve 
 rence it commands. All the devils respect virtue. 
 The high, the generous, the self-devoted sect will 
 always instruct and command mankind. Never a 
 sincere word was utterly lost. Never a magnanimity 
 fell to the ground. Always the heart of man greets 
 and accepts it unexpectedly. A man passes for that 
 he is worth. What he is, engraves itself on his face, 
 on his form, on his fortunes, in letters of light which 
 all men may read but himself. Concealment avails 
 6* 
 
130 ESSAY IV. 
 
 him nothing ; boasting, nothing. There is confession 
 in the glances of our eyes ; in our smiles ; in saluta 
 tions ; and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, 
 mars all his good impression. Men know not why 
 they do not trust him ; but they do not trust him. His 
 vice glasses his eye, demeans his cheek, pinches 
 the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of 
 the head, and writes O fool ! fool ! on the forehead 
 of a king. 
 
 If you would not be known to do any thing, never 
 do it. A man may play the fool in the drifts of a 
 desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see. 
 He may be a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his 
 foolish counsel. A broken complexion, a swinish 
 look, ungenerous acts, and the want of due know 
 ledge, all blab. Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an lach- 
 imo be mistaken for Zeno or Paul ? Confucius ex 
 claimed, " How can a man be concealed ! How can 
 a man be concealed ! " 
 
 On the other hand, the hero fears not, that if he 
 withhold the avowal of a just and brave act, it will 
 go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it, him 
 self, and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace, 
 and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the 
 end a better proclamation of it than the relating of 
 the incident. Virtue is the adherence in action to the 
 nature of things, and the nature of things makes it 
 prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of 
 being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God is 
 described as saying, I AM. 
 
 The lesson which all these observations convey, is, 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 131 
 
 Be and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our 
 bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine cir 
 cuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let 
 us lie low in the Lord's power, and learn that truth 
 alone makes rich and great. 
 
 . If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for 
 not having visited him, and waste his time and deface 
 your own act ? Visit him now. Let him feel that the 
 highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest 
 organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend 
 by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted 
 him or complimented him with gifts and salutations 
 heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with 
 real light, and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. 
 Common men are apologies for men ; they bow the 
 head, they excuse themselves with prolix reasons, 
 they accumulate appearances, because the substance 
 is not. 
 
 We are full of these superstitions of sense, the 
 worship of magnitude. God loveth not size : whale 
 and minnow are of like dimension. But we call the 
 poet inactive, because he is not a president, a mer 
 chant, or a porter. We adore an institution, and do 
 not see that it is founded on a thought which we have. 
 But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of 
 our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a 
 calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and 
 the like, but in a silent thought by the way-side as we 
 walk ; in a thought which revises our entire manner 
 of life, and says, ' Thus hast thou done, but it were 
 better thus.' And all our after years, like menials, do 
 
132 ESSAY IV. 
 
 serve and wait on this, and, according to their ability, 
 do execute its will. This revisal or correction is a 
 constant force, which, as a tendency, reaches through 
 our lifetime. The object of the man, the aim of these 
 moments is to make daylight shine through him, to 
 suffer the law to traverse his whole being without ob 
 struction, so that, on what point soever of his doing 
 your eye falls, it shall report truly of his character, 
 whether it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, 
 his society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now 
 he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray 
 does not traverse ; there are no thorough lights : but 
 the eye of the beholder is puzzled, detecting many 
 unlike tendencies, and a life not yet at one. 
 
 Why should we make it a point with our false mo 
 desty to disparage that man we are, and that form of 
 being assigned to us ? A good man is contented. I 
 love and honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be 
 Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world of 
 this hour, than the world of his hour. Nor can you, 
 if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by 
 saying, ' he acted, and thou sittest still.' I see action 
 to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be 
 also good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take 
 him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, if 
 his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords 
 space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why 
 should we be busy-bodies and superserviceable ? 
 Action and inaction are alike to the true. One 
 piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, and one for 
 the sleeper of a bridge ; the virtue of the wood is ap 
 parent in both. 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 133 
 
 I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I 
 am here, certainly shows me that the soul had need 
 of an organ here. Shall I not assume the post? 
 Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unseason 
 able apologies and vain modesty, and imagine my be 
 ing here impertinent ? less pertinent than Epaminon- 
 das or Homer being there ? and that the soul did not 
 know its own needs ? Besides, without any reasoning 
 on the matter, I have no discontent. The good soul 
 nourishes me alway, unlocks new magazines of pow 
 er and enjoyment to me every day. I will not 
 meanly decline the immensity of good, because I have 
 heard that it has come to others in another shape. 
 
 Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of 
 Action ? 'T is a trick of the senses , no more. 
 We know that the ancestor of every action is a 
 thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself to 
 be any thing, unless it have an outside badge, some 
 Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic prayer- 
 meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, 
 or a high office, or, any how, some wild contrasting 
 action to testify that it is somewhat. The rich mind 
 lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think 
 is to act. 
 
 Let us, if we must have great actions, make our 
 own so. All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the 
 lea^t admits of being inflated with the celestial air 
 until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one 
 peace by fidelity. Let me do my duties. Why need 
 I go gadding into the scenes and philosophy of 
 Greek and Italian history, before I have washed my 
 
134 ESSAY IV. 
 
 own face, or justified myself to my own benefactors ? 
 How dare I read Washington's campaigns, when I 
 have not answered the letters of my own correspon 
 dents ? Is not that a just objection to much of our 
 reading ? It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work 
 to gaze after our neighbors. It is peeping. Byron 
 says of Jack Bunting, 
 
 " He knew not what to say, and so, he swore." 
 
 I may say it of our preposterous use of books : He 
 knew not what to do, and so, he read. I can think of 
 nothing to fill my time with, and so, without any con 
 straint, I find the Life of Brant. It is a very extrava 
 gant compliment to pay to Brant, or to General Schuy- 
 ler, or to General Washington. My time should be 
 as good as their time : my world, my facts, all my 
 net of relations as good as theirs, or either of theirs. 
 Rather let me do my work so well that other idlers, if 
 they choose, may compare my texture with the tex 
 ture of these and find it identical with the best. 
 
 This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and 
 Pericles, this under-estimate of our own, comes from 
 a neglect of the fact of an identical nature. Bona 
 parte knew but one Merit, and rewarded in one and 
 the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, 
 the good poet, the good player. Thus he signified 
 his sense of a great fact. The poet uses the names 
 of Caesar, of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius ; 
 the painter uses the conventional story of the Virgin 
 Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not, therefore, de 
 fer to the nature of these accidental men, of these 
 
SPIRITUAL LAWS. 135 
 
 stock heroes. If the poet write a true drama, then he 
 is Csesar, and not the player of Csesar ; then the self 
 same strain of thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, 
 motions as swift, mounting, extravagant, arid a heart 
 as great, self-sufficing, dauntless, which on the waves 
 of its love and hope can uplift all that is reckoned 
 solid and precious in the world, palaces, gardens, mo 
 ney, navies, kingdoms, marking its own incompar 
 able worth by the slight it casts on these gauds of 
 men, these all are his, and by the power of these 
 he rouses the nations. But the great names cannot 
 stead him, if he have not life himself. Let a man be 
 lieve in God, and not in names and places and per 
 sons. Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's 
 form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, 
 go out to service, and sweep chambers and scour 
 floors, and its effulgent day-beams cannot be muffled or 
 hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appear su 
 preme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of 
 human life, and all people will get mops and brooms ; 
 until, lo, suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in 
 some other form, and done some other deed, and that 
 is now the flower and head of all living nature. 
 
 We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf 
 and tinfoil that measure the accumulations of the 
 subtle element. We know the authentic effects of 
 the true fire through every one of its million dis 
 guises. 
 
LOVE. 
 
ESSAY V 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 EVERY soul is a celestial Venus to every other soul. 
 The heart has its sabbaths and jubilees, in which the 
 world appears as a hymeneal feast, and all natural 
 sounds and the circle of the seasons are erotic odes 
 and dances. Love is omnipresent in nature as motive 
 and reward. Love is our highest word, and the sy 
 nonym of God. Every promise of the soul has 
 innumerable fulfilments : each of its joys ripens into 
 a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flowing, fore- 
 looking, in the first sentiment of kindness anticipates 
 already a benevolence which shall lose all particular 
 regards in its general light. The introduction to this 
 felicity is in a private and tender relation of one to 
 one, which is the enchantment of human life ; which, 
 like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on 
 man at one period, and works a revolution in his mind 
 and body ; unites him to his race, pledges him to the 
 
140 ESSAY V. 
 
 domestic and civic relations, carries him with new 
 sympathy into nature, enhances the power of the 
 senses, opens the imagination, adds to his character 
 heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and 
 gives permanence to human society. 
 
 The natural association of the sentiment of love 
 with the heyday of the blood, seems to require that 
 in order to portray it in vivid tints which every youth 
 and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing 
 experience, one must not be too old. The delicious 
 fancies of youth reject the least savor of a mature 
 philosophy, as chilling with age and pedantry their 
 purple bloom. And, therefore, I know 1 incur the 
 imputation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from 
 those who compose the Court and Parliament of Love. 
 But from these formidable censors I shall appeal to 
 my seniors. For, it is to be considered that this pas 
 sion of which we speak, though it begin with the 
 young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather suffers no 
 one who is truly its servant to grow old, but makes 
 the aged participators of it, not less than the tender 
 maiden, though in a different and nobler sort. For, 
 it is a fire that kindling its first embers in the narrow 
 nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering 
 spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges 
 until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and 
 women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights 
 up the whole world and all nature with its generous 
 flames. It matters not, therefore, whether we attempt 
 to describe the passion at twenty, at thirty, or at 
 eighty years. He who paints it at the first period, 
 
LOVE. 141 
 
 will lose some of its later, he who paints it at the last, 
 some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be hoped that 
 by patience and the muses' aid, we may attain to that 
 inward view of the law, which shall describe a truth 
 ever young, ever beautiful, so central that it shall 
 commend itself to the eye at whatever angle beholden. 
 
 And the first condition is, that we must leave a too 
 close and lingering adherence to the actual, to facts, 
 and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope and 
 not in history. For, each man sees his own life de 
 faced and disfigured, as the life of man is not, to his 
 imagination. Each man sees over his own experi 
 ence a certain slime of error, whilst that of other 
 men looks fair and ideal. Let any man go back to 
 those delicious relations which make the beauty of 
 his life, which have given him sincerest instruction 
 and nourishment, he will shrink and shrink. Alas ! 
 I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter 
 in mature life all the remembrances of budding senti 
 ment, and cover every beloved name. Every thing 
 is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as 
 truth. But all is sour, if seen as experience. Details 
 are always melancholy ; the plan is seemly and no 
 ble. It is strange how painful is the actual world, 
 the painful kingdom of time and place. There dwells 
 care and canker and fear. With thought, with the 
 ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it 
 all the muses sing. But with names and persons and 
 the partial interests of to-day and yesterday, is grief. 
 
 The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion 
 which this topic of personal relations usurps in the 
 
142 ESSAY V. 
 
 conversation of society. What do we wish to know 
 of any worthy person so much as how he has sped 
 in the history of this sentiment ? What books in the 
 circulating libraries circulate ? How we glow over 
 these novels of passion, when the story is told with 
 any spark of truth and nature ! And what fastens 
 attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage 
 betraying affection between two parties ? Perhaps we 
 never saw them before, and never shall meet them 
 again. But we see them exchange a glance, or be 
 tray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. 
 We understand them, and take the warmest interest 
 in the development of the romance. All mankind 
 love a lover. The earliest demonstrations of compla 
 cency and kindness are nature's most winning pic 
 tures. It is the dawn of civility and grace in the 
 coarse and rustic. The rude village boy teazes the 
 girls about the school house door ; but to-day he 
 comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child 
 arranging her satchel : he holds her books to help her, 
 and instantly it seems to him as if she removed her 
 self from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. 
 Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, 
 but one alone distances him : and these two little 
 neighbors that were so close just now, have learned to 
 respect each other's personality. Or who can avert his 
 eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways 
 of school girls who go into the country shops to buy 
 a skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an 
 hour about nothing, with the broad-faced, good-natured 
 shop-boy. In the village, they are on a perfect equal- 
 
LOVE. 143 
 
 ity, which love delights in, and without any coquetry 
 the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows out in 
 this pretty gossip. The girls may have little beauty, 
 yet plainly do they establish between them and the 
 good boy the most agreeable, confiding relations, 
 what with their fun and their earnest, about Edgar, 
 and Jonas, and Almira, and who was invited to the 
 party, and who danced at the dancing school, and 
 when the singing school would begin, and other no 
 things concerning which the parties cooed. By-and- 
 by that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily 
 will he know where to find a sincere and sweet mate, 
 without any risk such as Milton deplores as incident to 
 scholars and great men. 
 
 I have been told that my philosophy is unsocial, and, 
 that in public discourses, my reverence for the intellect 
 makes me unjustly cold to the personal relations. But 
 now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such dispar 
 aging words. For persons are love's world, and the 
 coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young 
 soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, with 
 out being tempted to unsay as treasonable to nature, 
 aught derogatory to the social instincts. For, though the 
 celestial rapture falling out of heaven seizes only upon 
 those of tender age, and although a beauty overpow 
 ering all analysis or comparison, and putting us quite 
 beside ourselves, we can seldom see after thirty years, 
 yet the remembrance of these visions outlasts all other 
 remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on the 
 oldest brows. But here is a strange fact ; it may 
 seem to many men in revising their experience, that 
 
144 ESSAY V. 
 
 they have no fairer page in their life's book than the 
 delicious memory of some passages wherein affection 
 contrived to give a witchcraft surpassing the deep at 
 traction of its own truth to a parcel of accidental and 
 trivial circumstances. In looking backward, they may 
 find that several things which were not the charm, have 
 more reality to this groping memory than the charm it 
 self which embalmed them. But be our experience in 
 particulars what it may, no man ever forgot the visita 
 tions of that power to his heart and brain, which crea 
 ted all things new ; which was the dawn in him of mu 
 sic, poetry and art ; which made the face of nature 
 radiant with purple light, the morning and the night 
 varied enchantments ; when a single tone of one voice 
 could make the heart beat, and the most trivial cir 
 cumstance associated with one form, is put in the am 
 ber of memory : when we became all eye when one 
 was present, and all memory when one was gone ; 
 when the youth becomes a watcher of windows, and 
 studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of 
 a carriage ; when no place is too solitary, and none 
 too silent for him who has richer company and 
 sweeter conversation in his new thoughts, than any old 
 friends, though best and purest, can give him ; for, the 
 figures, the motions, the words of the beloved object 
 are not like other images written in water, but, as Plu 
 tarch said, " enamelled in fire, " and make the study of 
 midnight. 
 
 " Thou art not gone being gone, where e'er thou art, 
 Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving 
 heart." 
 
LOVE. 145 
 
 In the noon and the afternoon of life, we still throb 
 at the recollection of days when happiness was not 
 happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of 
 pain and fear ; for he touched the secret of the mat 
 ter, who said of love, 
 
 " All other pleasures are not worth its pains : " 
 
 and when the day was not long enough, but the night 
 too must be consumed in keen recollections; when 
 the head boiled all night on the pillow with the gen 
 erous deed it resolved on ; when the moonlight was 
 a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters, and the 
 flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song ; 
 when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the 
 men and women running to and fro in the streets, 
 mere pictures. 
 
 The passion re-makes the world for the youth. It 
 makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows 
 conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree 
 sings now to his heart and soul. Almost the notes 
 are articulate. The clouds have faces, as he looks on 
 them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass and 
 the peeping flowers have grown intelligent ; and al 
 most he fears to trust them with the secret which they 
 seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. 
 In the green solitude he finds a dearer home than with 
 men. 
 
 " Fountain heads and pathless groves, 
 Places which pale passion loves, 
 Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
 Are safely housed, save bats and owls, 
 A midnight bell, a passing groan, 
 These are the sounds we feed upon." 
 
 7 
 
146 ESSAY V. 
 
 Behold there in the wood the fine madman ! He 
 is a palace of sweet sounds and sights ; he dilates ; 
 he is twice a man ; he walks with arms akimbo : he 
 soliloquizes ; he accosts the grass and the trees ; he 
 feels the blood of the violet, the clover and the lily in 
 his veins ; and he talks with the brook that wets his 
 foot. 
 
 The causes that have sharpened his perceptions of 
 natural beauty, have made him love music and verse. 
 It is a fact often observed, that men have written good 
 verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot 
 write well under any other circumstances. 
 
 The like force has the passion over all his nature. 
 It expands the sentiment ; it makes the clown gentle, 
 and gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and 
 abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the 
 world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved 
 object. In giving him to another, it still more gives 
 him to himself. He is a new man, with new percep 
 tions, new and keener purposes, and a religious so 
 lemnity of character and aims. He does not longer 
 appertain to his family and society. He is somewhat. 
 He is a person. He is a soul. 
 
 And here let us examine a little nearer the nature 
 of that influence which is thus potent over the human 
 youth. Let us approach and admire Beauty, whose 
 revelation to man we now celebrate, beauty, wel 
 come as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, which 
 pleases everybody with it and with themselves. Won 
 derful is its charm. It seems sufficient to itself. The 
 lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and 
 
LOVE. 147 
 
 solitary. Like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, 
 informing loveliness is society for itself, and she teaches 
 his eye why Beauty was ever painted with Loves 
 and Graces attending her steps. Her existence makes 
 the world rich. Though she extrudes all other per 
 sons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, yet 
 she indemnifies him by carrying out her own being 
 into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that 
 the maiden stands to him for a representative of all 
 select things and virtues. For that reason the lover 
 sees never personal resemblances in his mistress to 
 her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a 
 likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not 
 of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except 
 to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rain 
 bows and the song of birds. 
 
 Beauty is ever that divine thing the ancients esteem 
 ed it. It is, they said, the flowering of virtue. Who 
 can analyze the nameless charm which glances from 
 one and another face and form ? We are touched 
 with emotions of tenderness and complacency, but 
 we cannot find whereat this dainty emotion, this wan 
 dering gleam point. It is destroyed for the imagina 
 tion by any attempt to refer it to organization. Nor 
 does it point to any relations of friendship or love that 
 society knows and has, but, as it seems to me, to a 
 quite other and unattainable sphere, to relations of 
 transcendant delicacy and sweetness, a true faerie 
 land ; to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. We 
 cannot get at beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'- 
 neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it re- 
 
148 ESSAY V. 
 
 sembles the most excellent things, which all have this 
 rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropria 
 tion and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter sig 
 nify, when he said to music, " Away ! away ! thou 
 speakest to me of things which in all my endless life 
 I have found not, and shall not find." The same fact 
 may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. 
 The statue is then beautiful, when it begins to be in 
 comprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, 
 and can no longer be defined by compass and meas 
 uring wand, but demands an active imagination to go 
 with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing. The 
 god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a 
 transition from that which is representable to the 
 senses, to that which is not. Then first it ceases to 
 be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. 
 And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls 
 and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with 
 new endeavors after the unattainable. Concerning it, 
 Landor inquires " whether it is not to be referred to 
 some purer state of sensation and existence." 
 
 So must it be with personal beauty, which love wor 
 ships. Then first is it charming and itself, when it 
 dissatisfies us with any end ; when it becomes a story 
 without an end ; when it suggests gleams and visions, 
 and not earthly satisfactions ; when it seems 
 
 " too bright and good, 
 For human nature's daily food ; " 
 
 when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness ; 
 when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were 
 
LOVE. 149 
 
 Caesar ; he cannot feel more right to it, than to the fir 
 mament and the splendors of a sunset. 
 
 Hence arose the saying, " If I love you, what is 
 that to you ? " We say so, because we feel that 
 what we love, is not in your will, but above it. It is 
 the radiance of you and not you. It is that which 
 you know not in yourself, and can never know. 
 
 This agrees well with that high philosophy of 
 Beauty which the ancient writers delighted in ; for they 
 said, that the soul of man, embodied here on earth, 
 went roaming up and down in quest of that other 
 world of its own, out of which it came into this, but 
 was soon stupefied by the light of the natural sun, and 
 unable to see any other objects than those of this 
 world, which are but shadows of real things. There 
 fore, the Deity sends the glory of youth before the 
 soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids 
 to its recollection of the celestial good and fair ; and 
 the man beholding such a person in the female sex, 
 runs to her, and finds the highest joy in contem 
 plating the form, movement, and intelligence of this 
 person, because it suggests to him the presence of 
 that which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause 
 of the beauty. 
 
 If, however, from too much conversing with material 
 objects, the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction 
 in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow ; body being 
 unable to fulfil the promise which beauty holds out; 
 but if, accepting the hint of these visions and sugges 
 tions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes 
 through the body, and falls to admire strokes of char- 
 
150 ESSAY V. 
 
 acter, and the lovers contemplate one another in their 
 discourses and their actions, then, they pass to the 
 true palace of Beauty, more and more inflame their 
 love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base 
 affection, as the sun puts out the fire by shining on 
 the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By con 
 versation with that which is in itself excellent, mag 
 nanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes to a warmer 
 love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension 
 of them. Then, he passes from loving them in one, 
 to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul 
 only the door through which he enters to the society 
 of all true and pure souls. In the particular society 
 of his mate, he attains a clearer sight of any spot, 
 any taint, which her beauty has contracted from this 
 world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual 
 joy that they are now able without offence to indicate 
 blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give to 
 each all help and comfort in curing the same. And, 
 beholding in many souls the traits of the divine 
 beauty, and separating in each soul that which is 
 divine from the taint which they have contracted in 
 the world, the lover ascends ever to the highest beauty, 
 to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps 
 on this ladder of created souls. 
 
 Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of 
 love in all ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it 
 new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, so 
 have Petrarch, Angelo, and Milton. It awaits a 
 truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that sub 
 terranean prudence which presides at marriages with 
 
LOVE. 151 
 
 words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one 
 eye is eternally boring down into the cellar, so that 
 its gravest discourse has ever a slight savor of hams 
 and powdering-tubs. Worst, when the snout of this 
 sensualism intrudes into the education of young wo 
 men, and withers the hope and affection of human 
 nature, by teaching, that marriage signifies nothing but 
 a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no 
 other aim. 
 
 But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only 
 one scene in our play. In the procession of the soul 
 from within outward, it enlarges its circles ever, like 
 the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light proceed 
 ing from an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on 
 things nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses 
 and domestics, on the house and yard and passengers, 
 on the circle of household acquaintance, on politics, 
 and geography, and history. But by the necessity of 
 our constitution, things are ever grouping themselves 
 according to higher or more interior laws. Neigh 
 borhood, size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by de 
 grees their power over us. Cause and effect, real 
 affinities, the longing for harmony between the soul 
 and the circumstance, the high progressive idealizing 
 instinct, these predominate later, and ever the step 
 backward from the higher to the lower relations is 
 impossible. Thus even love, which is the deification 
 of persons, must become more impersonal every day. 
 Of this at first it gives no hint. Little think the youth 
 and maiden who are glancing at each other across 
 crowded rooms, with eyes so full of mutual intelli- 
 
152 ESSAY V. 
 
 gence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to pro 
 ceed from this new, quite external stimulus. The 
 work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of 
 the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, 
 they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then 
 to fiery passion, to plighting troth and marriage. 
 Passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. The soul 
 is wholly embodied, and the body is wholly ensouled. 
 
 " Her pure and eloquent blood 
 Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 
 That one might almost say her body thought." 
 
 Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to 
 make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no 
 other aim, asks no more than Juliet, than Romeo. 
 Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, are all 
 contained in this form full of soul, in this soul which 
 is all form. The lovers delight in endearments, in 
 avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. 
 When alone, they solace themselves with the remem 
 bered image of the other. Does that other see the 
 same star ; the same melting cloud, read the same 
 book, feel the same emotion that now delight me ? 
 They try and weigh their affection, and adding up all 
 costly advantages, friends, opportunities, properties, 
 exult in discovering that willingly, joyfully, they 
 would give all as a ransom for the beautiful, the be 
 loved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed. 
 But the lot of humanity is on these children. Dan 
 ger, sorrow, and pain arrive to them, as to all. Love 
 prays. It makes covenants with Eternal Power, in 
 behalf of this dear mate, The union which is thus 
 
LOVE. 153 
 
 effected, and which adds a new value to every atom 
 in nature, for it transmutes every thread throughout 
 the whole web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes 
 the soul in a new and sweeter element, is yet a tem 
 porary state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, 
 protestations, nor even home in another heart, content 
 the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself 
 at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts on 
 the harness, and aspires to vast and universal aims. 
 The soul which is in the soul of each, craving for a 
 perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects, and 
 disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence 
 arises surprise, expostulation, and pain. Yet that 
 which drew them to each other was signs of loveli 
 ness, signs of virtue : and these virtues are there, 
 however eclipsed. They appear and reappear, and 
 continue to attract ; but the regard changes, quits the 
 sign, and attaches to the substance. This repairs the 
 wounded affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it 
 proves a game of permutation and combination of ail 
 possible positions of the parties, to extort all the re 
 sources of each, and acquaint each with the whole 
 strength and weakness of the other. For, it is the 
 nature and end of this relation, that they should rep 
 resent the human race to each other. All that is in 
 the world which is or ought to be known, is cun 
 ningly wrought into the texture of man, of woman, 
 
 " The person love does to us fit, 
 Like manna, has the taste of all in it." 
 
 The world rolls : the circumstances vary, every 
 hour. All the angels that inhabit this temple of the 
 
 7* 
 
154 ESSAY V. 
 
 body appear at the windows, and all the gnomes and 
 vices also. By all the virtues, they are united. If 
 there be virtue, all the vices are known as such ; they 
 confess and flee. Their once flaming regard is 
 sobered by time in either breast, and losing in violence 
 what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good 
 understanding. They resign each other, without com 
 plaint, to the good offices which man and woman are 
 severally appointed to discharge in time, and exchange 
 the passion which once could not lose sight of its 
 object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether 
 present or absent, of each other's designs. At last 
 they discover that all which at first drew them to 
 gether, those once sacred features, that magical 
 play of charms, was deciduous, had a prospec 
 tive end, like the scaffolding by which the house was 
 built ; and the purification of the intellect and the 
 heart, from year to year, is the real marriage, foreseen 
 and prepared from the first, and wholly above their 
 consciousness. Looking at these aims with which 
 two persons, a man and a woman, so variously and 
 correlatively gifted, are shut up in one house to spend 
 in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, I do not 
 wonder at the emphasis with which the heart proph 
 esies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse 
 beauty with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, 
 and nature and intellect and art emulate each other 
 in the gifts and the melody they bring to the epitha- 
 lamium. 
 
 Thus are we put in training for a love which knows 
 not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but which seeketh 
 
LOVE. 155 
 
 virtue and wisdom every where, to the end of increas 
 ing virtue and wisdom. We are by nature observers, 
 and thereby learners. That is our permanent state. 
 But we are often made to feel that our affections are 
 but tents of a night. Though slowly and with pain, 
 the objects of the affections change, as the objects of 
 thought do. There are moments when the affections 
 rule and absorb the man, and make his happiness 
 dependent on a person or persons. But in health the 
 mind is presently seen again, its overarching vault, 
 bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm 
 loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, must 
 lose their finite character, and blend with God, to at 
 tain their own perfection. But we need not fear that 
 we can lose any thing by the progress of the soul. 
 The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is 
 so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be 
 succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beau 
 tiful, and so on for ever. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 
 
ESSAY VI. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 WE have a great deal more kindness than is ever 
 spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills like 
 east winds the world, the whole human family is 
 bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. 
 How many persons we meet in houses, whom we 
 scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor 
 us ! How many we see in the street, or sit with in 
 church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to 
 be with ! Read the language of these wandering 
 eye-beams. The heart knoweth. 
 
 The effect of the indulgence of this human affec 
 tion is a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and 
 in common speech, the emotions of benevolence and 
 complacency which are felt towards others, are 
 likened to the material effects of fire ; so swift, or 
 much more swift, more active, more cheering are 
 these fine inward irradiations. From the highest 
 
160 ESSAY VI. 
 
 degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of 
 good will, they make the sweetness of life. 
 
 Our intellectual and active powers increase with 
 our affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all 
 his years of meditation do not furnish him with one 
 good thought or happy expression ; but it is necessary 
 to write a letter to a friend, and, forthwith, troops of 
 gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with 
 chosen words. See in any house where virtue and 
 self-respect abide, the palpitation which the approach 
 of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is ex 
 pected and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt 
 pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a house 
 hold. His arrival almost brings fear to the good 
 hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, 
 all things fly into their places, the old coat is ex 
 changed for the new, and they must get up a dinner if 
 they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good 
 report is told by others, only the good and new is 
 heard by us. He stands to us for humanity. He is, 
 what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, 
 we ask how we should stand related in conversation 
 and action with such a man, and are uneasy with 
 fear. The same idea exalts conversation with him. 
 We talk better than we are wont. We have the 
 nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our dumb 
 devil has taken leave for the time. For long hours 
 we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich 
 communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest ex 
 perience, so that they who sit by, of our own kins 
 folk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 161 
 
 our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger be 
 gins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his de 
 fects, into the conversation, it is all over. He has 
 heard the first, the last and best, he will ever hear 
 from us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, igno 
 rance, misapprehension, are old acquaintances. Now, 
 when he comes, he may get the order, the dress, and 
 the dinner, but the throbbing of the heart, and the 
 communications of the soul, no more. 
 
 Pleasant are these jets of affection which relume 
 a young world for me again. Delicious is a just and 
 firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling. 
 How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, 
 the steps and forms of the gifted and the true ! The 
 moment we indulge our affections, the earth is meta 
 morphosed : there is no winter, and no night : all 
 tragedies, all ennuis vanish; all duties even; no 
 thing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all 
 radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured 
 that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its 
 friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for 
 a thousand years. 
 
 I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for 
 my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call 
 God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to 
 me in his gifts ? I chide society, I embrace solitude, 
 and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, 
 the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to 
 time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who under 
 stands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time. 
 Nor is nature so poor, but she gives me this joy seve- 
 
162 ESSAY VI. 
 
 ral times, and thus we weave social threads of our 
 own, a new web of relations ; and, as many thoughts 
 in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by-and- 
 by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no 
 longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. 
 My friends have come to me unsought. The great 
 God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine 
 affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, 
 not I, but the Deity in me and in them, both deride 
 and cancel the thick walls of individual character, re 
 lation, age, sex and circumstance, at which he usually 
 connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I 
 owe you, excellent, lovers, who carry out the world 
 for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the 
 meaning of all my thoughts. These are not stark 
 and stiffened persons, but the new-born poetry of 
 God, poetry without stop, hymn, ode, and epic, 
 poetry still flowing, and not yet caked in dead books 
 with annotation and grammar, but Apollo and the 
 Muses chanting still. Will these too separate them 
 selves from me again, or some of them ? I know 
 not, but I fear it not ; for my relation to them is so 
 pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius 
 of my life being thus social, the same affinity will 
 exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these 
 men and women, wherever I may be. 
 
 I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on 
 this point. It is almost dangerous to me to " crush 
 the sweet poison of misused wine " of the affections. 
 A new person is to me always a great event, and 
 hinders me from sleep. I have had such fine fancies 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 163 
 
 lately about two or three persons, as have given me 
 delicious hours ; but the joy ends in the day : it 
 yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it ; my action 
 is very little modified. I must feel pride in my 
 friend's accomplishments as if they were mine, 
 wild, delicate, throbbing property in his virtues. I 
 feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when 
 he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over 
 estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness 
 seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his 
 temptations less. Every thing that is his, his name, 
 his form, his dress, books, and instruments, fancy en 
 hances. Our own thought sounds new and larger 
 from his mouth. 
 
 Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not 
 without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. 
 Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too 
 good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maid 
 en, half knows that she is not verily that which he 
 worships ; and in the golden hour of friendship, we 
 are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. 
 We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in 
 which he shines, and afterwards worship the form to 
 which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In 
 strictness, the soul does not respect men as it respects 
 itself. In strict science, all persons underlie the same 
 condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to 
 cool our love by facing the fact, by mining for the me 
 taphysical foundation of this Elysian temple ? Shall 
 I not be as real as the things I see ? If I am, I shall 
 not fear to know them for what they are. Their es- 
 
164 ESSAY VI. 
 
 sence is not less beautiful than their appearance, 
 though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The 
 root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though 
 for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And 
 I must hazard the production of the bald fact amidst 
 these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an 
 Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands 
 united with his thought, conceives magnificently of 
 himself. He is conscious of a universal success, even 
 though bought by uniform particular failures. No 
 advantages, no powers, no gold or force can be any 
 match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own 
 poverty, more than on your wealth. I cannot make 
 your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the 
 star dazzles ; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I 
 hear what you say of the admirable parts and tried 
 temper of the party you praise, but I see well that for 
 all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is 
 at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O 
 friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal in 
 cludes thee, also, in its pied and painted immensity, 
 thee, also, compared with whom all else is shadow. 
 Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is, thou 
 art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that. Thou 
 hast come to me lately, and already thou art seizing 
 thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth 
 friends, as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, 
 by the germination of new buds, extrudes the old 
 leaf? The law of nature is alternation forevermore. 
 Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The 
 soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 165 
 
 a grander self-acquaintance or solitude ; and it goes 
 alone, for a season, that it may exalt its conversation 
 or society. This method betrays itself along the 
 whole history of our personal relations. Ever the in 
 stinct of affection revives the hope of union with our 
 mates, and ever the returning sense of insulation re 
 calls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his 
 life in the search after friendship, and if he should re 
 cord his true sentiment, he might write a letter like 
 this, to each new candidate for his love. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 If I was sure of thee, sure of 
 thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I 
 should never think again of trifles, in relation to thy 
 comings and goings. I am not very wise : my moods 
 are quite attainable : and I respect thy genius : it is to 
 me as yet unfathomed ; yet dare I not presume in 
 thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to 
 me a delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. 
 
 Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for 
 curiosity, and not for life. They are not to be in 
 dulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. 
 Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, 
 because we have made them a texture of wine and 
 dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. 
 The laws of friendship are great, austere, and eter 
 nal, of one web with the laws of nature and of mo 
 rals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, 
 to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slow- 
 
166 ESSAY VI. 
 
 est fruit in the whole garden of God, which many 
 summers and many winters must ripen. We seek 
 our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate pas 
 sion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In 
 vain. We are armed all over with subtle antago 
 nisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and 
 translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all peo 
 ple descend to meet. All association must be a com 
 promise, and, what is worst, the very flower and 
 aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures 
 disappears as they approach each other. What a per 
 petual disappointment is actual society, even of the 
 virtuous and gifted ! After interviews have been 
 compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented 
 presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable 
 apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, 
 in the hey-day of friendship and thought. Our facul 
 ties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved 
 by solitude. 
 
 I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no 
 difference how many friends I have, and what content 
 I can find in conversing with each, if there be one to 
 whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from 
 one contest, instantly the joy I find in all the rest be 
 comes mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if 
 then I made my other friends my asylum. 
 
 " The valiant warrior famoused for fight, 
 After a hundred victories, once foiled, 
 Is from the book of honor razed quite, 
 And all the rest forgot for which he toiled." 
 
 Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashful- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 167 
 
 ness and apathy are a tough husk in which a delicate 
 organization is protected from premature ripening. 
 It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the 
 best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own 
 it. Respect the naturlangsamkeit which hardens the 
 ruby in a million years, and works in duration, in 
 which Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. 
 The good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the 
 price of rashness. Love, which is the essence of 
 God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man. 
 Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards ; 
 but the austerest worth ; let us approach our friend 
 with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in 
 the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foun 
 dations. 
 
 The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, 
 and I leave, for the time, all account of subordinate so 
 cial benefit, to speak of that select and sacred relation 
 which is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the 
 language of love suspicious and common, so much is 
 this purer, and nothing is so much divine. 
 
 I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with 
 roughest courage. When they are real, they are 
 not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing 
 we know. For now, after so many ages of experi 
 ence, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves ? 
 Not one step has man taken toward the solution of 
 the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of 
 folly stand the whole universe of men. But the 
 sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from 
 this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself 
 
168 ESSAY VI. 
 
 whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and 
 shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend ! It 
 might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to en 
 tertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the 
 solemnity of that relation, and honor its law ! It is no 
 idle band, no holiday engagement. He who offers 
 himself a candidate for that covenant, comes up, like an 
 Olympian, to the great games, where the first-born of the 
 world are the competitors. He proposes himself for 
 contests where Time, Want, Danger are in the lists, 
 and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his 
 constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty 
 from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of for 
 tune may be present or absent, but all the hap in that 
 contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the con 
 tempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to 
 the composition of friendship, each so sovereign, that 
 I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why 
 either should be first named. One is Truth. A 
 friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Be 
 fore him, I may, think aloud. I am arrived at last in 
 the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may 
 drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, 
 courtesy, and second thought, which men never put 
 off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and 
 wholeness, with which one chemical atom meets ano 
 ther. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems 
 and authority, only to the highest rank, that being per 
 mitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court 
 or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At 
 the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 169 
 
 We parry and fend the approach of our fellow man 
 by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by af 
 fairs. We cover up our thought from him under a 
 hundred folds. I knew a man who, under a cer 
 tain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and omit 
 ting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to 
 the conscience of every person he encountered, and 
 that with great insight and beauty. At first he was 
 resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But per 
 sisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some 
 time in this course, he attained to the advantage of 
 bringing every man of his acquaintance into true re 
 lations with him. No man would think of speaking 
 falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat 
 of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was 
 constrained by so much sincerity to face him, and 
 what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of 
 truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most 
 of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side 
 and its back. To stand in true relations with men in 
 a false age, is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? 
 We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we 
 meet requires some civility, requires to be humored ; 
 he has some fame, some talent, some whim of re 
 ligion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be 
 questioned, and so spoils all conversation with him. 
 But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my in 
 genuity but me. My friend gives me entertainment 
 without requiring me to stoop, or to lisp, or to mask 
 myself. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in 
 nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature 
 8 
 
170 ESSAY VI. 
 
 whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to 
 my own, behold now the semblance of my being in 
 all its height, variety and curiosity, reiterated in a for 
 eign form ; so that a friend may well be reckoned 
 the masterpiece of nature. 
 
 The other element of friendship is Tenderness. 
 We are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, 
 by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, 
 by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and 
 trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much charac 
 ter can subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can 
 another be so blessed, and we so pure, that we can offer 
 him tenderness ? When a man becomes dear to me, 
 I have touched the goal of fortune. I find very little 
 written directly to the heart of this matter in books. 
 And yet I have one text which I cannot choose but 
 remember. My author says, " I offer myself faintly 
 and bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and ten 
 der myself least to him to whom I am the most de 
 voted." I wish that friendship should have feet, as 
 well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on 
 the ground, before it walks over the moon. I wish it 
 to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub. 
 We chide the citizen because he makes love a com 
 modity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans ; 
 it is good neighborhood ; it watches with the sick ; it 
 holds the pall at the funeral ; and quite loses sight of 
 the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But 
 though we cannot find the god under this disguise of 
 a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot forgive 
 the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does not 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 171 
 
 substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of 
 justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the pros 
 titution of the name of friendship to signify modish 
 and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of 
 plough-boys and tin-pedlars, to the silken and per 
 fumed amity which only celebrates its days of en 
 counter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, 
 and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friend 
 ship is a commerce the most strict and homely that 
 can be joined ; more strict than any of which we 
 have experience. It is for aid and comfort through 
 all the relations and passages of life and death. It is 
 fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country 
 rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, ship 
 wreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company 
 with the sallies of the wit arid the trances of religion. 
 We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and 
 offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wis 
 dom and unity. It should never fall into something 
 usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive, and 
 add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery. 
 
 For perfect friendship it may be said to require na 
 tures so rare and costly, so well tempered each, and 
 so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced, (for 
 even in that particular, a poet says, love demands 
 that the parties be altogether paired,) that very sel 
 dom can its satisfaction be realized. It cannot sub 
 sist in its perfection, say some of those who are learn 
 ed in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more than 
 two. I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps 
 because I have never known so high a fellowship as 
 
172 ESSAY VI. 
 
 others. I please my imagination more with a circle 
 of godlike men and women variously related to each 
 other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. 
 But I find this law of one to one, peremptory for con 
 versation, which is the practice and consummation of 
 friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best 
 mix as ill as good and bad. You shall have very use 
 ful and cheering discourse at several times with two 
 several men, but let all three of you come together, 
 and you shall not have one new and hearty word. 
 Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot 
 take part in a conversation of the most sincere and 
 searching sort. In good company there is never such 
 discourse between two, across the table, as takes place 
 when you leave them alone. In good company, the 
 individuals at once merge their egotism into a social 
 soul exactly coextensive with the several conscious 
 nesses there present. No partialities of friend to friend, 
 no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, 
 are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may 
 then speak who can sail on the common thought of 
 the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now 
 this convention, which good sense demands, destroys 
 the high freedom of great conversation, which requires 
 an absolute running of two souls into one. 
 
 No two men but being left alone with each other, 
 enter into simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that de 
 termines which two shall converse. Unrelated men 
 give little joy to each other ; will never suspect the 
 latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great 
 talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent pro- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 173 
 
 perty in some individuals. Conversation is an evan 
 escent relation, no more. A man is reputed to 
 have thought and eloquence ; he cannot, for all that, 
 say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse 
 his silence with as much reason as they would blame 
 the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun 
 it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his 
 thought, he will regain his tongue. 
 
 Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt like 
 ness and unlikeness, that piques each with the pres 
 ence of power and of consent in the other party. Let 
 me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that 
 my friend should overstep by a word or a look his 
 real sympathy. I am equally baulked by antagonism 
 and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to 
 be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is 
 that the not mine is mine. It turns the stomach, it 
 blots the daylight ; where I looked for a manly fur 
 therance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a 
 mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side 
 of your friend than his echo. The condition which 
 high friendship demands, is, ability to do without it. 
 To be capable of that high office, requires great and 
 sublime parts. There must be very two, before there 
 can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large 
 formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, 
 before yet they recognise the deep identity which be 
 neath these disparities unites them. 
 
 He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous. 
 He must be so, to know its law. He must be one 
 who is sure that greatness and goodness are always 
 
174 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 economy. He must be one who is not swift to inter 
 meddle with his fortunes. Let him not dare to inter 
 meddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ages to 
 grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eter 
 nal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We 
 must not be wilful, we must not provide. We talk of 
 choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. 
 Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as 
 a spectacle. Of course, if he be a man, he has 
 merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor, 
 if you must needs hold him close to your person. 
 Stand aside. Give those merits room. Let them 
 mount and expand. Be not so much his friend that 
 you can never know his peculiar energies, like fond 
 mammas who shut up their boy in the house until he 
 is almost grown a girl. Are you the friend of your 
 friend's buttons, or of his thought ? To a great heart 
 he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, 
 that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave 
 it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and 
 to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure instead 
 of the pure nectar of God. 
 
 Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long pro 
 bation. Why should we desecrate noble and beauti 
 ful souls by intruding on them ? Why insist on rash 
 personal relations with your friend ? Why go to his 
 house, or know his mother and brother and sisters ? 
 Why be visited by him at your own? Are these 
 things material to our covenant ? Leave this touch 
 ing and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A mes 
 sage, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 175 
 
 want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics, 
 and chat, and neighborly conveniences, from cheaper 
 companions. Should not the society of my friend be 
 to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature 
 itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in com 
 parison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the 
 horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides 
 the brook ? Let us not vilify but raise it to that stand 
 ard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty 
 of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on re 
 ducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his 
 superiorities. Wish him not less by a thought, but 
 hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy great 
 counterpart; have a princedom to thy friend. Let 
 him be to thee forever a sort of beautiful enemy, un 
 tamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conven- 
 iency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues 
 of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be 
 seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a 
 letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems 
 to you a little. Me it suffices. It is a spiritual gift 
 worthy of him to give and of me to receive. It pro 
 fanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will 
 trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out 
 the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the 
 annals of heroism have yet made good. 
 
 Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as 
 not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impa 
 tience for its opening. We must be our own, before 
 we can be another's. There is at least this satisfac 
 tion in crime, according to the Latin proverb ; you 
 
176 ESSAY VI. 
 
 can speak to your accomplice on even terms. Crimen 
 quos inquinat, cequat. To those whom we admire 
 and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of 
 self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire re 
 lation. There can never be deep peace between two 
 spirits, never mutual respect until, in their dialogue, 
 each stands for the whole world. 
 
 What is so great as friendship, let us carry with 
 what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, so 
 we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not inter 
 fere. Who set you to cast about what you should say 
 to the select souls, or to say any thing to such ? No 
 matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and 
 bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and 
 wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. 
 Wait, and thy soul shall speak. Wait until the neces 
 sary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and 
 night avail themselves of your lips. The only money 
 of God is God. He pays never with any thing less 
 or any thing else. The only reward of virtue, is vir 
 tue : the only way to have a friend, is to be one. 
 Vain to hope to come nearer a man by getting into 
 his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster 
 from you, and you shall catch never a true glance of 
 his eye. We see the noble afar off, and they repel 
 us ; why should we intrude ? Late very late 
 we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, 
 no consuetudes, or habits of society, would be of any 
 avail to establish us in such relations with them as we 
 desire, but solely the uprise of nature in us to the 
 same degree it is in them : then shall we meet as 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 177 
 
 water with water : and if we should not meet them 
 then, we shall not want them, for we are already they. 
 In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a 
 man's own worthiness from other men. Men have 
 sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if 
 they would signify that in their friend each loved his 
 own soul. 
 
 The higher the style we demand of friendship, of 
 course the less easy to establish it with flesh and 
 blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such 
 as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime 
 hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in 
 other regions of the universal power, souls are now 
 acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and 
 which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves 
 that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and 
 of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are 
 finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic 
 hands. Only be admonished by what you already 
 see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap 
 persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience 
 betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no 
 God attends. By persisting in your path, though you 
 forfeit the little, you gain the great. You become 
 pronounced. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put 
 yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you 
 draw to you the first-born of the world, those rare 
 pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature 
 at once, and before whom the vulgar great, show as 
 spectres and shadows merely. 
 
 It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too 
 8* 
 
178 ESSAY VI. 
 
 spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. 
 Whatever correction of our popular views we make 
 from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, 
 and though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay 
 us with a greater. Let us feel, if we will, the abso 
 lute insulation of man. We are sure that we have all 
 in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or 
 we read books, in the instinctive faith that these will 
 call it out and reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. 
 The persons are such as we ; the Europe, an old faded 
 garment of dead persons ; the books, their ghosts. 
 Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over this men 
 dicancy. Let us even bid our dearest friends fare 
 well, and defy them, saying, ' Who are you ? Unhand 
 me : I will be dependent no more.' Ah ! seest thou 
 not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again 
 on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, 
 because we are more our own ? A friend is Janus- 
 faced : he looks to the past and the future. He is 
 the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of 
 those to come. He is the harbinger of a greater 
 friend. It is the property of the divine to be repro 
 ductive. 
 
 I do then with my friends as I do with my books. 
 I would have them where I can find them, but I sel 
 dom use them. We must have society on our own 
 terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. 
 1 cannot afford to speak much with my friend. If he 
 is great, he makes me so great that I cannot descend 
 to converse. In the great days, presentiments hover 
 before me, far before me in the firmament. I ought 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 179 
 
 then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may 
 seize them, I go out that I may seize them. I fear 
 only that I may lose them receding into the sky in 
 which now they are only a patch of brighter light. 
 Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to 
 talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my 
 own. It would indeed give me a certain household 
 joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, 
 or search of stars, and come down to warm sympa 
 thies with you ; but then I know well I shall mourn 
 always the vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, 
 next week I shall have languid times, when I can well 
 afford to occupy myself with foreign objects ; then I 
 shall regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish 
 you were by my side again. But if you come, per 
 haps you will fill my mind only with new visions, not 
 with yourself but with your lustres, and I shall not be 
 able any more than now to converse with you. So I 
 will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. 
 I will receive from them not what they have, but what 
 they are. They shall give me that which properly 
 they cannot give me, but which radiates from them. 
 But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtle 
 and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and 
 part as though we parted not. 
 
 It has seemed to me lately more possible than I 
 knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, with 
 out due correspondence on the other. Why should I 
 cumber myself with the poor fact that the receiver is 
 not capacious ? It never troubles the sun that some 
 of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space^ 
 
180 ESSAY VI. 
 
 and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let 
 your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. 
 If he is unequal, he will presently pass away, but 
 thou art enlarged by thy own shining ; and, no longer 
 a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with 
 the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace 
 to love unrequited. But the great will see that true 
 love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends in 
 stantly the unworthy object, and dwells and broods 
 on the eternal, and when the poor, interposed mask 
 crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, 
 and feels its independency the surer. Yet these 
 things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery 
 to the relation. The essence of friendship is entire- 
 ness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not sur 
 mise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as 
 a god, that it may deify both. 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
ESSAY VII. 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 WHAT right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I 
 have little, and that of the negative sort ? My pru 
 dence consists in avoiding and going without, not in 
 the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit 
 steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to 
 make money spend well, no genius in my economy, 
 and whoever sees my garden, discovers that I must 
 have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate 
 lubricity, and people without perception. Then I 
 have the same title to write on prudence, that I have 
 to write on poetry or holiness. We write from 
 aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experi 
 ence. We paint those qualities which we do not 
 possess. The poet admires the man of energy and 
 tactics ; the merchant breeds his son for the church 
 or the bar : and where a man is not vain and egotis 
 tic, you shall find what he has not, by his praise. 
 
184 ESSAY VII. 
 
 Moreover, it would be hardly honest in me not to 
 balance these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship 
 with words of coarser sound, and whilst my debt to 
 my senses is real and constant, not to own it in pass 
 ing. 
 
 Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the sci 
 ence of appearances. It is the outmost action of the 
 inward life. It is God taking thought for oxen. It 
 moves matter after the laws of matter. It is content 
 to seek health of body by complying with physical 
 conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the in 
 tellect. 
 
 The world of the senses is a world of shows ; it 
 does not exist for itself, but has a symbolic character ; 
 and a true prudence or law of shows, recognises the 
 co-presence of other laws ; and knows that its own 
 office is subaltern ; knows that it is surface and not 
 centre where it works. Prudence is false when de 
 tached. It is legitimate when it is the Natural History 
 of the soul incarnate ; when it unfolds the beauty of 
 laws within the narrow scope of the senses. 
 
 There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge 
 of the world. It is sufficient, to our present purpose, 
 to indicate three. One class lives to the utility of the 
 symbol ; esteeming health and wealth a final good. 
 Another class live above this mark to the beauty of 
 the symbol ; as the poet, and artist, and the naturalist, 
 and man of science. A third class live above the beauty 
 of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified ; these 
 are wise men. The first class have common sense ; the 
 second, taste ; and the third, spiritual perception. Once 
 
PRUDENCE. 185 
 
 in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees 
 and enjoys the symbol solidly ; then also has a clear 
 eye for its heauty, and, lastly, whilst he pitches his tent 
 on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer 
 to build houses and barns thereon, reverencing the 
 splendor of the God which he sees bursting through 
 each chink and cranny. 
 
 The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and 
 winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to 
 matter as if we possessed no other faculties than the 
 palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear ; a pru 
 dence which adores the Rule of Three, which never 
 subscribes, which gives never, which lends seldom, 
 and asks but one question of any project Will it 
 bake bread ? This is a disease like a thickening of 
 the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But 
 culture, revealing the high origin of the apparent 
 world, and aiming at the perfection of the man as the 
 end, degrades every thing else, as health and bodily 
 life, into means. It sees prudence not to be a seve 
 ral faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue con 
 versing with the body and its wants. Cultivated men 
 always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the 
 achievement of a civil or social measure, great per 
 sonal influence, a graceful and commanding address 
 had their value as proofs of the energy of the spirit. 
 If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in 
 any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be 
 a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man. 
 
 The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is 
 the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of 
 
186 ESSAY VII. 
 
 all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore litera 
 ture's. The true prudence limits this sensualism by 
 admitting the knowledge of an internal and real 
 world. This recognition once made, the order of 
 the world and the distribution of affairs and times be 
 ing studied with the co-perception of their subordinate 
 place, will reward any degree of attention. For, our 
 existence thus apparently attached in nature to the 
 sun and the returning moon and the periods which 
 they mark ; so susceptible to climate and to country, 
 so alive to social good and evil, so fond of splendor, 
 and so tender to hunger and cold and debt, reads 
 all its primary lessons out of these books. 
 
 Prudence does not go behind nature, and ask, 
 whence it is ? It takes the laws of the world whereby 
 man's being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps 
 these laws, that it may enjoy their proper good. It 
 respects space and time, climate, want, sleep, the law 
 of polarity, growth and death. There revolve to 
 give bound and period to his being, on all sides, the 
 sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky : here 
 lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its 
 chemical routine. Here is a planted globe, pierced 
 and belted with natural laws, and fenced and distri 
 buted externally with civil partitions and properties 
 which impose new restraints on the young inhabitant. 
 
 We eat of the bread which grows in the field. 
 We live by the air which blows around us, and we 
 are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too hot, 
 too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so va 
 cant, indivisible and divine in its coming, is slit and 
 
PRUDENCE. 187 
 
 peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be 
 painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, 
 or meal, or salt ; the house smokes, or I have a head 
 ache ; then the tax ; and an affair to be transacted 
 with a man without heart or brains ; and the stinging 
 recollection of an injurious or very awkward word, 
 these eat up the hours. Do what we can, summer 
 will have its flies. If we walk in the woods, we must 
 feed musquitoes. If we go a fishing, we must expect 
 a wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to 
 idle persons. We often resolve to give up the care of 
 the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain. 
 We are instructed by these petty experiences 
 which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil and 
 four months of snow make the inhabitant of the 
 northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fel 
 low who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. The 
 islander may ramble all day at will. At night, he 
 may sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a 
 wild date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer 
 even, spread a table for his morning meal. The 
 northerner is perforce a householder. He must 
 brew, bake, salt and preserve his food. He must pile 
 wood and coal. But as it happens that not one stroke 
 can labor lay to, without some new acquaintance with 
 nature ; and as nature is inexhaustibly significant, the 
 inhabitants of these climates have always excelled 
 the southerner in force. Such is the value of 
 these matters, that a man who knows other things, 
 can never know too much of these. Let him have 
 accurate perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, 
 
188 ESSAY VII. 
 
 handle ; if eyes, measure and discriminate ; let him 
 accept and hive every fact of chemistry, natural his 
 tory, and economics ; the more he has, the less is he 
 willing to spare any one. Time is always bringing 
 the occasions that disclose their value. Some wisdom 
 comes out of every natural and innocent action. 
 The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his 
 kitchen clock, and the airs which the logs sing to him 
 as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others 
 never dream of. The application of means to ends, 
 ensures victory and the songs of victory not less in a 
 farm or a shop, than in the tactics of party, or of war. 
 The good husband finds method as efficient in the 
 packing of fire- wood in a shed, or in the harvesting 
 of fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or 
 the files of the Department of State. In the rainy 
 day he builds a work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in 
 the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored with nails, 
 gimlet, pincers, screwdriver, and chisel. Herein he 
 tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like 
 love of garrets, presses, and corn-chambers, and of 
 the conveniences of long housekeeping. His garden 
 or his poultry-yard, very paltry places, it may be, 
 tell him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find 
 argument for optimism, in the abundant flow of this 
 saccharine element of pleasure, in every suburb and 
 extremity of the good world. Let a man keep the 
 law, any law, and his way will be strown with 
 satisfactions. There is more difference in the quality 
 of our pleasures than in the amount. 
 
 On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of 
 
PRUDENCE. 189 
 
 prudence. If you think the senses final, obey their 
 law. If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at 
 sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of 
 cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes, to deal 
 with men of loose and imperfect perception. Dr. 
 Johnson is reported to have said, " If the child says, 
 he looked out of this window, when he looked out of 
 that, whip him." Our American character is 
 marked by a more than average delight in accurate 
 perception, which is shown by the currency of the 
 by-word, " No mistake." But the discomfort of 
 unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of 
 inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no na 
 tion. The beautiful laws of time and space once 
 dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If 
 the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead 
 of honey, it will yield us bees. Our words and ac 
 tions to be fair, must be timely. A gay and pleasant 
 sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings 
 of June ; yet what is more lonesome and sad than 
 the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle, when it is 
 too late in the season to make hay ? Scatter-brained 
 and " afternoon men" spoil much more than their own 
 affair, in spoiling the temper of those who deal with 
 them. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of 
 which I am reminded, when I see the shiftless and un 
 happy men who are not true to their senses. The last 
 Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of superior under 
 standing, said ; "I have sometimes remarked in the 
 presence of great works of art, and just now espe 
 cially, in Dresden, how much a certain property con- 
 
190 ESSAY VII. 
 
 tributes to the effect which gives life to the figures, 
 and to the life an irresistible truth. This property is 
 the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre 
 of gravity. I mean, the placing the figures firm upon 
 their feet, making the hands grasp, and fastening the 
 eyes on the spot where they should look. Even life 
 less figures, as vessels and stools, let them be 
 drawn ever so correctly, lose all effect so soon as 
 they lack the resting upon their centre of gravity, 
 and have a certain swimming and oscillating appear 
 ance. The Raphael, in the Dresden gallery, (the only 
 greatly affecting picture which I have seen), is the 
 quietest and most passionless piece you can imagine ; 
 a couple of saints who worship the Virgin and child. 
 Nevertheless, it awakens a deeper impression than 
 the contortions of ten crucified martyrs. For, beside 
 all the resistless beauty of form, it possesses in the 
 highest degree the property of the perpendicularity of 
 all the figures." This perpendicularity we demand 
 of all the figures in this picture of life. Let them 
 stand on their feet, and not float and swing. Let us 
 know where to find them. Let them discriminate 
 between what they remember, and what they dreamed. 
 Let them call a spade a spade. Let them give us 
 facts, and honor their own senses with trust. 
 
 But what man shall dare tax another with impru 
 dence ? Who is prudent ? The men we call greatest 
 are least in this kingdom. There is a certain fatal 
 dislocation in our relation to nature, distorting all our 
 modes of living, and making every law our enemy, 
 which seems at last to have aroused all the wit and 
 
PRUDENCE. 191 
 
 virtue in the world to ponder the question of Reform. 
 We must call the highest prudence to counsel, and 
 ask why health and beauty and genius should now be 
 the exception, rather than the rule of human nature ? 
 We do not know the properties of plants and animals 
 and the laws of nature through our sympathy with 
 the same ; but this remains the dream of poets. Po 
 etry and prudence should be coincident. Poets should 
 be lawgivers ; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration 
 should not chide and insult, but should announce and 
 lead the civil code, and the day's work. But now 
 the two things seem irreconcilably parted. We have 
 violated law upon law, until we stand amidst ruins, 
 and when by chance we espy a coincidence between 
 reason and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beauty 
 should be the dowry of every man and woman, as in 
 variably as sensation ; but it is rare. Health or sound 
 organization should be universal. Genius should be 
 the child of genius, and every child should be in 
 spired ; but now it is not to be predicted of any child, 
 and nowhere is it pure. We call partial half-lights, 
 by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to 
 money, talent which glitters to-day, that it may dine 
 and sleep well to-morrow ; and society is officered by 
 men of parts, as they are properly called, and not by 
 divine men. These use their gifts to refine luxury, 
 not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic ; and piety 
 and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a dis 
 ease, and they find beauty in rites and bounds that 
 resist it. 
 
 We have found out fine names to cover our sensu- 
 
192 ESSAY VII. 
 
 ality withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. 
 The man of talent affects to call his transgressions of 
 the laws of the senses trivial, and to count them nothing 
 considered with his devotion to his art. His art rebukes 
 him. That never taught him lewdness, nor the love 
 of wine, nor the wish to reap where he had not sowed. 
 His art is less for every deduction from his holiness, 
 and less for every defect of common sense. On him 
 who scorned the world, as he said, the scorned world 
 wreaks its revenge. He that despiseth small things, 
 will perish by little and little. Goethe's Tasso is very 
 likely to be a pretty fair historical portrait, and that is 
 true tragedy. It does not seem to me so genuine 
 grief when some tyrannous Richard III. oppresses 
 and slays a score of innocent persons, as when An 
 tonio and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong each 
 other. One living after the maxims of this world, 
 and consistent and true to them, the other fired with 
 all divine sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleas 
 ures of sense, without submitting to their law. That 
 is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's 
 is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man 
 of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of phys 
 ical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortu 
 nate, querulous, a " discomfortable cousin," a thorn 
 to himself and to others. 
 
 The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst 
 something higher than prudence is active, he is admi 
 rable ; when common sense is wanted, he is an in- 
 cumbrance. Yesterday, Csesar was not so great ; 
 to-day, Job not so miserable. Yesterday, radiant 
 
PRUDENCE. 193 
 
 with the light of an ideal world, in which he lives, 
 the first of men, and now oppressed by wants, and by 
 sickness, for which he must thank himself, none is so 
 poor to do him reverence. He resembles the opium 
 eaters, whom travellers describe as frequenting the 
 bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk about all day, 
 the most pitiful drivellers, yellow, emaciated, ragged, 
 and sneaking ; then, at evening, when the bazaars are 
 open, they slink to the opium shop, swallow their 
 morsel, and become tranquil, glorious, and great. 
 And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent ge 
 nius, struggling for years with paltry pecuniary diffi 
 culties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted, and fruitless, 
 like a giant slaughtered by pins ? 
 
 Is it not better that a man should accept the first 
 pains and mortifications of this sort, which nature is 
 not slack in sending him, as hints that he must expect 
 no other good than the just fruit of his own labor and 
 self-denial ? Health, bread, climate, social position, 
 have their importance, and he will give them their 
 due. Let him esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, 
 and her perfections the exact measure of our devia 
 tions. Let him make the night, night, and the day, 
 day. Let him control the habit of expense. Let 
 him see that as much wisdom may be expended 
 on a private economy, as on an empire, and as 
 much wisdom may be drawn from it. The laws 
 of the world are written out for him on every piece 
 of money in his hand. There is nothing he will not 
 be the better for knowing, were it only the wisdom of 
 Poor Richard ; or the State-street prudence of buying 
 9 
 
194 ESSAY VII. 
 
 by the acre, to sell by the foot ; or the thrift of the 
 agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, because 
 it will grow whilst he sleeps ; or the prudence which 
 consists in husbanding little strokes of the tool, little 
 portions of time, particles of stock, and small gains. 
 The eye of prudence may never shut. Iron, if kept 
 at the ironmonger's, will rust. Beer, if not brewed 
 in the right state of the atmosphere, will sour. Tim 
 ber of ships will rot at sea, or, if laid up high and 
 dry, will strain, warp, and dry-rot. Money, if kept 
 by us, yields no rent, and is liable to loss ; if invested, 
 is liable to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. 
 Strike, says the smith, the iron is white. Keep the 
 rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you 
 can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee 
 trade is reputed to be very much on the extreme of 
 this prudence. It saves itself by its activity. It 
 takes bank notes good, bad, clean, ragged, and 
 saves itself by the speed with which it passes them 
 off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, 
 nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor money stocks de 
 preciate, in the few swift moments which the Yankee 
 suffers any one of them to remain in his possession. 
 In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed. 
 
 Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let 
 him learn that every thing in nature, even- motes and 
 feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what 
 he sows, he reaps. By diligence and self-command, 
 let him put the bread he eats at his own disposal, and 
 not at that of others, that he may not stand in bitter 
 and false relations to other men ; for the best good of 
 
PRUDENCE. 195 
 
 wealth is freedom. Let him practise the minor vir 
 tues. How much of human life is lost in waiting ! 
 Let him not make his fellow creatures wait. How 
 many words and promises are promises of conversa 
 tion ! Let his be words of fate. When he sees a 
 folded and sealed scrap of paper float round the 
 globe in a pine ship, and come safe to the eye for 
 which it was written, amidst a swarming population ; 
 let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his 
 being across all these distracting forces, and keep a 
 slender human word among the storms, distances, 
 and accidents, that drive us hither and thither, and, 
 by persistency, make the paltry force of one man 
 reappear to redeem its pledge, after months and years, 
 in the most distant climates. 
 
 We must not try to write the laws of any one vir 
 tue, looking at that only. Human nature loves no 
 contradictions, but is symmetrical. The prudence 
 which secures an outward well-being, is not to be 
 studied by one set of men, whilst heroism and holi 
 ness are studied by another, but they are reconcilable. 
 Prudence concerns the present time, persons, property, 
 and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots 
 in the soul, and if the soul were changed, would 
 cease to be, or would become some other thing, there 
 fore, the proper administration of outward things will 
 always rest on a just apprehension of their cause 
 and origin, that is, the good man will be the wise 
 man, and the single-hearted, the politic man. Every 
 violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the 
 liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. 
 
196 ESSAY VII. 
 
 On the most profitable lie, the course of events pre 
 sently lays a destructive tax ; whilst frankness proves 
 to be the best tactics, for it invites frankness, puts the 
 parties on a convenient footing, and makes their busi 
 ness a friendship. Trust men, and they will be true 
 to you ; treat them greatly, and they will show them 
 selves great, though they make an exception in your 
 favor to all their rules of trade. 
 
 So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, 
 prudence does not consist in evasion, or in flight, but 
 in courage. He who wishes to walk in the most 
 peaceful parts of life with any serenity, must screw 
 himself up to resolution. Let him front the object of 
 his worst apprehension, and his stoutness will com 
 monly make his fear groundless. The Latin proverb 
 says, that " in battles, the eye is first overcome." 
 The eye is daunted, and greatly exaggerates the perils 
 of the hour. Entire self-possession may make a 
 battle very little more dangerous to life than a match 
 at foils or at foot-ball. Examples are cited by sol 
 diers, of men who have seen the cannon pointed, and 
 the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from 
 the path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are 
 chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The 
 drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health 
 renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet, 
 as under the sun of June. 
 
 In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neigh 
 bors, fear comes readily to heart, and magnifies the 
 consequence of the other party ; but it is a bad coun 
 sellor. Every man is actually weak, and apparently 
 
PRUDENCE. 197 
 
 strong. To himself, he seems weak ; to others, for 
 midable. You are afraid of Grim ; but Grim also is 
 afraid of you. You are solicitous of the good will of 
 the meanest person, uneasy at his ill will. But the 
 sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighbor 
 hood, if you rip up his claims, is as thin and timid as 
 any ; and the peace of society is often kept, because, 
 as children say, one is afraid, and the other dares not. 
 Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten : bring them 
 hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. 
 
 It is a proverb, that ' courtesy costs nothing ;' but 
 calculation might come to value love for its profit. 
 Love is fabled to be blind ; but kindness is necessary 
 to perception ; love is not a hood, but an eye- water. 
 If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never 
 recognise the dividing lines ; but meet on what com 
 mon ground remains, if only that the sun shines, 
 and the rain rains for both, the area will widen 
 very fast, and ere you know it, the boundary moun 
 tains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted 
 into air. If he set out to contend, almost St. Paul 
 will lie, almost St. John will hate. What low, poor, 
 paltry, hypocritical people, an argument on religion 
 will make of the pure and chosen souls. Shuffle 
 they will, and crow, crook, and hide, feign to confess 
 here, only that they may brag and conquer there, 
 and not a thought has enriched either party, and not 
 an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither 
 should you put yourself in a false position to your 
 contemporaries, by indulging a vein of hostility and 
 bitterness. Though your views are in straight antag- 
 
198 ESSAY- vn. 
 
 onism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, as 
 sume that you are saying precisely that which all 
 think, and in the flow of wit and love, roll out your 
 paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of 
 a doubt. So at least shall you get an adequate deliv 
 erance. The natural motions of the soul are so much 
 better than the voluntary ones, that you will never do 
 yourself justice in dispute. The thought is not then 
 taken hold of by the right handle, does not show itself 
 proportioned, and in its true bearings, but bears extorted, 
 hoarse, and half witness. But assume a consent, and 
 it shall presently be granted, since, really, and under 
 neath all their external diversities, all men are of one 
 heart and mind. 
 
 Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or 
 men, on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy 
 and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some 
 better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence 
 and when? To-morrow will be like to-day. Life 
 wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. Our 
 friends and fellow-workers die off from us. Scarcely 
 can we say, we see new men, new women approach 
 ing us. We are too old to regard fashion, too old to 
 expect patronage of any greater, or more powerful. 
 Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and 
 consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are 
 easy to the feet. Undoubtedly, we can easily pick 
 faults in our company, can easily whisper names 
 prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every 
 man's imagination hath its friends ; and pleasant 
 would life be with such companions. But, if you 
 
PRUDENCE. 199 
 
 cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot 
 have them. If not the Deity, but our ambition hews 
 and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as 
 strawberries lose their flavor in garden beds. 
 
 Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and 
 all the virtues range themselves on the side of pru 
 dence, or the art of securing a present well-being. 
 I do not know if all matter will be found to be made 
 of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but 
 the world of manners and actions is wrought of one 
 stuff, and begin where we will, we are pretty sure in 
 a short space, to be mumbling our ten command 
 ments. 
 
HEROISM. 
 
 " Paradise is under the shadow of swords." 
 
 Mahomet. 
 
 9* 
 
ESSAY VIII. 
 HEROISM. 
 
 IN the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the 
 plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant 
 recognition of gentility, as if a noble behavior were 
 as easily marked in the society of their age, as color 
 is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, 
 Pedro, or Valerio enters, though he be a stranger, the 
 duke or governor exclaims, This is a gentleman, and 
 proffers civilities without end ; but all the rest are 
 slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight in per 
 sonal advantages, there is in their plays a certain he 
 roic cast of character and dialogue, as in Bonduca, 
 Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double Marriage, 
 wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, and on 
 such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on 
 the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises natu 
 rally into poetry. Among many texts, take the follow 
 ing. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens, 
 
204 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of 
 Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the 
 latter inflames Martius, and he seeks to save her hus 
 band ; but Sophocles will not ask his life, although 
 assured that a word will save him, and the execution 
 of both proceeds. 
 
 Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 
 
 Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 
 Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown, 
 My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 
 
 Dor. Stay, Sophocles, with this, tie up my sight ; 
 Let not soft nature so transformed be, 
 And lose her gentler sexed humanity, 
 To make me see my lord bleed. So, 't is well ; 
 Never one object underneath the sun 
 Will I behold before my Sophocles : 
 Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die. 
 
 Mar. Dost know what 'tis to die ? 
 
 Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, 
 And therefore, not what 't is to live ; to die 
 Is to begin to live. It is to end 
 An old, stale, weary work, and to commence 
 A newer, and a better. 'T is to leave 
 Deceitful knaves for the society 
 Of gods and goodness. Thou, thyself, must part 
 At last, from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, 
 And prove thy fortitude what then 't will do. 
 
 Vol. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus ? 
 
 Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent 
 To them I ever loved best ? Now I '11 kneel, 
 But with my back toward thee ; ' tis the last duty 
 This trunk can do the gods. 
 
 Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 
 Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth : 
 This is a man, a woman ! Kiss thy lord, 
 And live with all the freedom you were wont. 
 
HEROISM. 205 
 
 love ! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
 
 With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, 
 My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, 
 Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 
 
 Val. What ails my brother ? 
 
 Soph. Martius, oh Martius, 
 Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 
 
 Dor. O star of Rome ! what gratitude can speak 
 Fit words to follow such a deed as this ? 
 
 Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 
 With his disdain of fortune and of death, 
 Captived himself, has captivated me, 
 And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, 
 His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul. 
 By Romulus, he is all soul, I think ; 
 He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved ; 
 Then we have vanquished nothing ; he is free, 
 And Martius walks now in captivity. 
 
 1 do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, 
 novel, or oration, that our press vents in the last few 
 years, which goes to the same tune. We have a great 
 many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of 
 any fife. Yet, Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the ode 
 of " Dion," and some sonnets, have a certain noble 
 music ; and Scott will sometimes draw a stroke like 
 the portrait of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour of 
 Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for 
 what is manly and daring in character, has suffered 
 no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his bio 
 graphical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert 
 Burns has given us a song or two. In the Harleian 
 Miscellanies, there is an account of the battle of 
 Lutzen, which deserves to be read. And Simon 
 Ockley's History of the Saracens, recounts the 
 
206 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 prodigies of individual valor with admiration, all 
 the more evident on the part of the narrator, that he 
 seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford 
 requires of him some proper protestations of abhor 
 rence. But if we explore the literature of Heroism, 
 we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor 
 and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the 
 Dion, the Epaminondas, the Scipio of old, and I must 
 think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all 
 the ancient writers. Each of his " Lives " is a refu 
 tation to the despondency and cowardice of our reli 
 gious and political theorists. A wild courage, a sto 
 icism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in 
 every anecdote, and has given that book its immense 
 fame. 
 
 We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more 
 than books of political science, or of private economy. 
 Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the 
 nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a rag 
 ged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws 
 of nature by our predecessors and our contempora 
 ries, are punished in us also. The disease and de 
 formity around us, certify the infraction of natural, 
 intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on 
 violation to breed such compound misery. A lock 
 jaw, that bends a man's head back to his heels, hydro 
 phobia, that makes him bark at his w'ife and babes, 
 insanity, that makes him eat grass ; war, plague, 
 cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, 
 which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have 
 its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily, almost no 
 
HEROISM. 207 
 
 man exists, who has not in his own person, become to 
 some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made 
 himself liable to a share in the expiation. 
 
 Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming 
 of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born 
 into the state of war, and that the commonwealth 
 and his own well-being, require that he should not go 
 dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-col 
 lected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, 
 let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and 
 with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by 
 the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of 
 his behavior. 
 
 Towards all this external evil, the man within the 
 breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his 
 ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army of 
 enemies. To this military attitude of the soul, we 
 give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the 
 contempt for safety and ease, which makes the at 
 tractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which slights 
 the restraints of prudence in the plenitude of its 
 energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. 
 The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturb 
 ances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it 
 were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in 
 frightful alarms, and in the tipsy mirth of universal 
 dissoluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical 
 in heroism ; there is somewhat not holy in it : it 
 seems not to know that other souls are of one texture 
 with it ; it hath pride ; it is the extreme of individual 
 nature. Nevertheless, we must profoundly revere it. 
 
208 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 There is somewhat in great actions, which does not 
 allow us to go behind them. Heroism feels and never 
 reasons, and therefore is always right, and, although 
 a different breeding, different religion, and greater 
 intellectual activity, would have modified, or even re 
 versed the particular action, yet for the hero, that 
 thing he does, is the highest deed, and is not open to 
 the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the 
 avowal of the unschooled man, that he finds a quality 
 in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, 
 of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and that he knows 
 that his will is higher and more excellent than all 
 actual and all possible antagonists. 
 
 Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of 
 mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the 
 voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedi 
 ence to a secret impulse of an individual's character. 
 Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it 
 does to him, for every man must be supposed to see 
 a little farther on his own proper path, than any one 
 else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at 
 his act, until after some little time be past : then, they 
 see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent 
 men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual 
 prosperity ; for every heroic act measures itself by 
 its contempt of some external good. But it finds its 
 own success at last, and then the prudent also extol. 
 
 Self- trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state 
 of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last 
 defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to 
 bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks 
 
HEROISM. 209 
 
 the truth, and it is just. It is generous, hospitable, 
 temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful 
 of being scorned. It persists ; it is of an undaunted 
 boldness, and of a fortitude not to be wearied out. 
 Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false 
 prudence which dotes on health and wealth, is the foil, 
 the butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like 
 Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall 
 it say, then, to the sugar-plums, and cats'-cradles, 
 to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and cus 
 tard, which rack the wit of all human society. What 
 joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures ! 
 There seems to be no interval between greatness and 
 meanness. When the spirit is not master of the 
 world, then is it its dupe. Yet the little man takes 
 the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong 
 and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging 
 his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps 
 for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on 
 a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip, or 
 a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but 
 laugh at such earnest nonsense. " Indeed, these 
 humble considerations make me out of love with 
 greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note 
 how many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, 
 these and those that were the peach-colored ones, or 
 to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for super 
 fluity, and one other for use." 
 
 Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, con 
 sider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their 
 fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time and the 
 
210 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 unusual display : the soul of a better quality thrusts 
 back the unseasonable economy into the vaults of 
 life, and says, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice 
 and the fire he will provide. Ibn Hankal, the 
 Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in 
 the 'hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. " When I 
 was in Sogd, I saw a great building, like a palace, 
 the gates of which were open and fixed back to the 
 wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was 
 told that the house had not been shut night or day, 
 for a hundred years. Strangers may present them 
 selves at any hour, and in whatever number ; the 
 master has amply provided for the reception of the 
 men and their animals, and is never happier than 
 when they tarry for some time. Nothing of the kind 
 have I seen in any other country." The magnani 
 mous know very well that they who give time, or 
 money, or shelter, to the stranger so it be done for 
 love, and not for ostentation do, as it were, put God 
 under obligation to them, so perfect are the compen 
 sations of the universe. In some way, the time they 
 seem to lose, is redeemed, and the pains they seem 
 to take, remunerate themselves. These men fan 
 the flame of human love and raise the standard of 
 civil virtue among mankind. But hospitality must be 
 for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the 
 host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value 
 itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It 
 gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty 
 can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water, 
 than belong to city feasts. 
 
HEROISM, 211 
 
 The temperance of the hero, proceeds from the 
 same wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. 
 But he loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. 
 It seems not worth his while to be solemn, and de 
 nounce with bitterness flesh-eating, or wine-drinking, 
 the use of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A 
 great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses, 
 but without railing or precision, his living is natural and 
 poetic. John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank water, 
 and said of wine, u It is a noble, generous liquor, and 
 we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remem 
 ber, water was made before it." Better still, is the 
 temperance of king David, who poured out on the 
 ground unto the Lord, the water which three of his 
 warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of their 
 lives. 
 
 It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword, 
 after the battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of Eurip 
 ides, " O virtue, I have followed thee through life, 
 and I find thee at last but a shade." I doubt not the 
 hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul 
 does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not 
 ask to dine nicely, and to sleep warm. The essence 
 of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. 
 Poverty is its ornament. Plenty, it does not need, 
 and can very well abide its loss. 
 
 But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic 
 class, is the good humor and hilarity they exhibit. It 
 is a height to which common duty can very well at 
 tain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these 
 rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a 
 
212 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 rate, that they will not soothe their enemies by peti 
 tions, or the show of sorrow, but wear their own 
 habitual greatness. Scipio, charged with peculation, 
 refuses to do himself so great a disgrace, as to wait 
 for justification, though he had the scroll of his ac 
 counts in his hands, but tears it to pieces before the 
 tribunes. Socrates' condemnation of himself to be 
 maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during his 
 life, and Sir Thomas More's playfulness at the scaffold, 
 are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 " Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his 
 company, 
 
 Jul. Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye. 
 Master. Very likely, 
 
 'T is in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. 
 
 These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the 
 bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great 
 will not condescend to take any thing seriously ; 
 all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though 
 it were the building of cities or the eradication of 
 old and foolish churches and nations, which have 
 cumbered the earth long thousands of years. Sim 
 ple hearts put all the history and customs of this 
 world behind them, and play their own play in inno 
 cent defiance of the Blue -Laws of the world ; and 
 such would appear, could we see the human race assem 
 bled in vision, like little children frolicking together, 
 though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a 
 stately and solemn garb of works and influences. 
 The interest these fine stories have for us, the 
 
HEROISM. 213 
 
 power of a romance over the boy who grasps the 
 forbidden book under his bench at school, our delight 
 in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All these 
 great and transcendent properties are ours. If we 
 dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the Roman 
 pride, it is that we are already domesticating the same 
 sentiment. Let us find room for this great guest in 
 our small houses. The first step of worthiness will 
 be to disabuse us of our superstitious associations 
 with places and times, with number and size. Why 
 should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia, and 
 England, so tingle in the ear. Let us feel that where 
 the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, 
 and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, 
 Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry 
 places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic 
 topography. But here we are ; that is a great fact, 
 and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn 
 that here is best. See to it, only that thyself is 
 here ; and art and nature, hope and dread, friends, 
 angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not be absent 
 from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas, 
 brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need 
 Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He 
 lies very well where he is. The Jerseys were hand 
 some ground enough for Washington to tread, and 
 London streets for the feet of Milton. A great man 
 illustrates his place, makes his climate genial in the 
 imagination of men, and its air the beloved element 
 of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest, 
 which is inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures 
 
214 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 which fill the imagination in reading the actions of 
 Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, 
 Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life is, 
 that we, by the depth of our living, should deck it 
 with more than regal or national splendor, and act on 
 principles that should interest man and nature in the 
 length of our days. 
 
 We have seen or heard of many extraordinary 
 young men, who never ripened, or whose perform 
 ance in actual life, was not extraordinary. When we 
 see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of 
 society, of books, of religion, we admire their supe* 
 riority, they seem to throw contempt on the whole 
 state of the world ; theirs is the tone of a youthful 
 giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they en 
 ter an active profession, and the forming Colossus 
 shrinks to the common size of man. The magic they 
 used, was the ideal tendencies, which always make the 
 Actual ridiculous ; but the tough world had its revenge 
 the moment they put their horses of the sun to plough 
 in its furrow. They found no example and no com 
 panion, and their heart fainted. What then ? The 
 lesson they gave in their first aspirations, is yet true, 
 and a better valor, and a purer truth, shall one day 
 execute their will, and put the world to shame. Or 
 why should a woman liken herself to any historical 
 woman, and think, because Sappho, or Sevigne, or 
 De Stael, or the cloistered souls who have had genius 
 and cultivation, do not satisfy the imagination, and the 
 serene Themis, none can, certainly not she. Why 
 not ? She has a new and unattempted problem to 
 
HEROISM. 215 
 
 solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that ever 
 bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk se 
 renely on her way, accept the hint of each new ex 
 perience, try, in turn, all the gifts God offers her, 
 that she may learn the power and the charm, that 
 like a new dawn radiating out of the deep of space, 
 her new-born being is. The fair girl, who repels in 
 terference by a decided and proud choice of influ 
 ences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, 
 inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own 
 nobleness. The silent heart encourages her ; O friend, 
 never strike sail to a fear. Come into port greatly, 
 or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you live, for 
 every passing eye is cheered and refined by the 
 vision. 
 
 The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its per 
 sistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and 
 starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to 
 be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to 
 reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic can 
 not be the common, nor the common the heroic. Yet 
 we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of peo 
 ple in those actions whose excellence is that they out 
 run sympathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. If you 
 would serve your brother, because it is fit for you to 
 serve him, do not take back your Words when you 
 find that prudent people do not commend you. Be 
 true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you 
 have done something strange and extravagant, and 
 broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a 
 high counsel that I once heard given to a young per- 
 
ESSAY VIII. 
 
 son, " Always do what you are afraid to do." A 
 simple manly character need never make an apology, 
 but should regard its past action with the calmness of 
 Phocion, when he admitted that the event of the battle 
 was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from the 
 battle. 
 
 There is no weakness or exposure for which we 
 cannot find consolation in the thought, this is a part 
 of my constitution, part of my relation and office to 
 my fellow creature. Has nature covenanted with me 
 that I should never appear to disadvantage, never 
 make a ridiculous figure ? Let us be generous of 
 our dignity, as well as of our money. Greatness 
 once and forever has done with opinion. We tell our 
 charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, 
 not because we think they have great merit, but for 
 our justification. It is a capital blunder ; as you dis 
 cover, when another man recites his charities. 
 
 To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to 
 live with some rigor of temperance, or some extremes 
 of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which com 
 mon good nature would appoint to those who are at 
 ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brother 
 hood with the great multitude of suffering men. And 
 not only need we breathe and exercise the soul by 
 assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of sol 
 itude, of unpopularity, but it behoves the wise man 
 to look with a bold eye into those rarer dangers which 
 sometimes invade men, and to familiarize himself with 
 disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execra 
 tion, and the vision of violent death. 
 
HEROISM. 217 
 
 Times of heroism are generally times of terror, 
 but the day never shines, in which this element may 
 not work. The circumstances of man, we say, are 
 historically somewhat better in this country, and at 
 this hour, than perhaps ever before. More freedom 
 exists for culture. It will not now run against an axe, 
 at the first step out of the beaten track of opinion. 
 But whoso is heroic, will always find crises to try his 
 edge. Human virtue demands her champions and 
 martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds. 
 It is but the other day, that the brave Lovejoy gave 
 his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of 
 free speech and opinion, and died when it was better 
 not to live. 
 
 I see not any road of perfect peace, which a man 
 can walk but to take counsel of his own bosom. Let 
 him quit too much association, let him go home much, 
 and stablish himself in those courses he approves. 
 The unremitting retention of simple and high senti 
 ments in obscure duties, is hardening the character to 
 that temper which will work with honor, if need be, 
 in the tumult, or on the scaffold . Whatever outrages 
 have happened to men, may befall a man again : and 
 very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs 
 of a decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar and 
 feathers, and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring 
 home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper 
 he can, and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of 
 duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may please 
 the next newspaper, and a sufficient number of his 
 neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary. 
 10 
 
218 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the 
 most susceptible heart, to see how quick a bound na 
 ture has set to the utmost infliction of malice. We 
 rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can 
 follow us. 
 
 " Let them rave : 
 Thou art quiet in thy grave." 
 
 In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in 
 the hour when we are deaf to the higher voices, who 
 does not envy them who have seen safely to an end 
 their manful endeavor ? Who that sees the mean 
 ness of our politics, but inly congratulates Washing 
 ton, that he is long already wrapped in his shroud, 
 and forever safe ; that he was laid sweet in his grave, 
 the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him ? 
 Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave, 
 who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the 
 natural world, and await with curious complacency 
 the speedy term of his own conversation with finite 
 nature ? And yet the love that will be annihilated 
 sooner than treacherous, has already made death im 
 possible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of 
 the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being. 
 
THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 " But souls that of his own good life partake, 
 He loves as his own self; dear as his eye 
 They are to Him : He '11 never them forsake : 
 When they shall die, then God himself shall die : 
 They live, they live in blest eternity." 
 
 Henry More. 
 
ESSAY IX. 
 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 THERE is a difference between one and another hour 
 of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our 
 faith comes in moments ; our vice is habitual. Yet 
 is there a depth in those brief moments, which con 
 strains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all 
 other experiences. For this reason, the argument, 
 which is always forthcoming to silence those who 
 conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely, the 
 appeal to experience, is forever invalid and vain. A 
 mightier hope abolishes despair. We give up the 
 past to the objector, and yet we hope. He must ex 
 plain this hope. We grant that human life is mean ; 
 but how did we find out that it was mean ? What is 
 the ground of this uneasiness of ours ; of this old 
 discontent ? What is the universal sense of want and 
 ignorance, but the fine inuendo by which the great 
 soul makes its enormous claim ? Why do men feel 
 
222 ESSAY IX. 
 
 that the natural history of man has never been writ 
 ten, but always he is leaving behind what you have 
 said of him, and it becomes old, and books of meta 
 physics worthless ? The philosophy of six thousand 
 years has not searched the chambers and magazines 
 of the soul. In its experiments there has always re 
 mained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not 
 resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. 
 Always our being is descending into us from we know 
 not whence. The most exact calculator has no pre 
 science that somewhat incalculable may not baulk the 
 very next moment. I am constrained every moment 
 to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the 
 will I call mine. 
 
 As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I 
 watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see 
 not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see 
 that I am a pensioner, not a cause, but a surprised 
 spectator of this ethereal water ; that I desire and look 
 up, and put myself in the attitude of reception, but 
 from some alien energy the visions come. 
 
 The Supreme Critic on all the errors of the past 
 and the present, and the only prophet of that which 
 must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the 
 earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere ; that 
 Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man's par 
 ticular being is contained and made one with all other ; 
 that common heart, of which all sincere conversation 
 is the worship, to which all right action is submission ; 
 that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks 
 and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 223 
 
 he is, and to speak from his character and not from 
 his tongue ; and which evermore tends and aims to 
 pass into our thought and hand, and become wisdom, 
 and virtue, and power, and beauty. We live in suc 
 cession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime 
 within man is the soul of the whole ; the wise si 
 lence ; the universal beauty, to which every part and 
 particle is equally related ; the eternal ONE. And 
 this deep power in which we exist, and whose beati 
 tude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing 
 and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing, and 
 the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject 
 and the object, are one. We see the world piece by 
 piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree ; 
 but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, 
 is the soul. It is only by the vision of that Wisdom, 
 that the horoscope of the ages can be read, and it is 
 only by falling back on our better thoughts, by yield 
 ing to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every 
 man, that we can know what it saith. Every man's 
 words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to 
 those who do not dwell in the same thought on their 
 own part. I dare not speak for it, My words do not 
 carry its august sense ; they fall short and cold. Only 
 itself can inspire whom it will, and behold ! their 
 speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as 
 the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by pro 
 fane words, if sacred I may not use, to indicate the 
 heaven of this deity, and to report what hints I have 
 collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of 
 the Highest Law. 
 
224 ESSAY IX. 
 
 If we consider what happens in conversation, in 
 reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, 
 in the instructions of dreams wherein often we see 
 ourselves in masquerade, the droll disguises only 
 magnifying and enhancing a real element, and forcing 
 it on our distinct notice, we shall catch many hints 
 that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the 
 secret of nature. All goes to show that the soul in 
 man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all 
 the organs ; is not a function, like the power of mem 
 ory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these 
 as hands and feet ; is not a faculty, but a light ; is not 
 the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect 
 and the will ; is the vast back-ground of our being, 
 in which they lie, an immensity not possessed and 
 that cannot be possessed. From within or from be 
 hind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes 
 us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A 
 man is the fafade of a temple wherein all wisdom and 
 all good abide. What we commonly call man, the 
 eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as 
 we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents 
 himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose 
 organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, 
 would make our knees bend. When it breathes 
 through his intellect, it is genius ; when it breathes 
 through his will, it is virtue ; when it flows through 
 his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the 
 intellect begins, when it would be something of 
 itself. The weakness of the will begins when the 
 individual would be something of himself. All re- 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 225 
 
 form aims, in some one particular, to let the great soul 
 have its way through us ; in other words, to engage 
 us to obey. 
 
 Of this pure nature every man is at some time 
 sensible. Language cannot paint it with his colors. 
 It is too subtle. It is undefinable, unmeasureable, but 
 we know that it pervades and contains us. We know 
 that all spiritual being is in man. A wise old pro 
 verb says, " God comes to see us without bell : " 
 that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our 
 heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or 
 wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and 
 God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. 
 We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual na 
 ture, to all the attributes of God. Justice we see and 
 know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no 
 man ever got above, but always they tower over us, 
 and most in the moment when our interests tempt us 
 to wound them. 
 
 The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak, 
 is made known by its independency of those limita 
 tions which circumscribe us on every hand. The 
 soul circumscribeth all things. As I have said, it con 
 tradicts all experience. In like manner it abolishes 
 time and space. The influence of the senses has, in 
 most men, overpowered the mind to that degree, that 
 the walls of time and space have come to look solid, 
 real and insurmountable ; and to speak with levity 
 of these limits, is, in the world, the sign of insanity. 
 Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the 
 10* 
 
226 ESSAY IX. 
 
 force of the soul. A man is capable of abolishing 
 them both. The spirit sports with time 
 
 " Can crowd eternity into an hour, 
 Or stretch an hour to eternity." 
 
 We are often made to feel that there is another 
 youth and age than that which is measured from the 
 year of our natural birth. Some thoughts always 
 find us young and keep us so. Such a thought is the 
 love of the universal and eternal beauty. Every man 
 parts from that contemplation with the feeling that it 
 rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. The least 
 activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a de 
 gree from the influences of time. In sickness, in lan 
 guor, give us a strain of poetry or a profound sen 
 tence, and we are refreshed ; or produce a volume of 
 Plato, or Shakspeare, or remind us of their names, 
 and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. 
 See how the deep, divine thought demolishes centu 
 ries, and millenniums, and makes itself present through 
 all ages. Is the teaching of Christ less effective now 
 than it was when first his mouth was opened ? The 
 emphasis of facts and persons to my soul has nothing to 
 do with time. And so, always, the soul's scale is one ; 
 the scale of the senses and the understanding is an 
 other. Before the great revelations of the soul, Time, 
 Space and Nature shrink away. In common speech, 
 we refer all things to time, as we habitually refer the 
 immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere. 
 And so we say that the Judgment is distant or near, 
 that the Millennium approaches, that a day of certain 
 political, moral, social reforms is at hand, and the like, 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 227 
 
 when we mean, that in the nature of things, one of 
 the facts we contemplate is external and fugitive, and 
 the other is permanent and connate with the soul. The 
 things we now esteem fixed, shall, one by one, detach 
 themselves, like ripe fruit, from our experience, and 
 fall. The wind shall blow them none knows whither. 
 The landscape, the figures, Boston, London, are facts 
 as fugitive as any institution past, or any whifF of mist 
 or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world. The 
 soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world alway 
 before her, and leaving worlds alway behind her. She 
 has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, 
 nor men. The soul knows only the soul. All else is 
 idle weeds for her wearing. 
 
 After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate 
 of its progress to be computed. The soul's advances 
 are not made by gradation, such as can be repre 
 sented by motion in a straight line ; but rather by as 
 cension of state, such as can be represented by meta 
 morphosis, from the egg to the worm, from the 
 worm to the fly. The growths of genius are of a 
 certain total character, that does not advance the 
 elect individual first over John, then Adam, then 
 Richard, and give to each the pain of discovered infe 
 riority, but by every throe of growth, the man ex 
 pands there where he works, passing, at each pulsa 
 tion, classes, populations of men. With each divine 
 impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible 
 and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires 
 and expires its air. It converses with truths that have 
 always been spoken in the world, and becomes con- 
 
228 ESSAY IX. 
 
 scious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, 
 than with persons in the house. 
 
 This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The 
 simple rise as by specific levity, not into a particular 
 virtue, but into the region of all the virtues. They 
 are in the spirit which contains them all. The soul is 
 superior to all the particulars of merit. The soul re 
 quires purity, but purity is not it ; requires justice, but 
 justice is not that ; requires beneficence, but is some 
 what better : so that there is a kind of descent and 
 accommodation felt when we leave speaking of moral 
 nature, to urge a virtue which it enjoins. For, to the 
 soul in her pure action, all the virtues are natural, and 
 not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and the 
 man becomes suddenly virtuous. 
 
 Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellect 
 ual growth, which obeys the same law. Those who 
 are capable of humility, of justice, of love, of aspi 
 ration, are already on a platform that commands the 
 sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. 
 For whoso dwells in this moral beatitude, does already 
 anticipate those special powers which men prize so 
 highly ; just as love does justice to all the gifts of the 
 object beloved. The lover has no talent, no skill, 
 which passes for quite nothing with his enamored 
 maiden, however little she may possess of related fac 
 ulty. And the heart, which abandons itself to the Su 
 preme Mind, finds itself related to all its works and 
 will travel a royal road to particular knowledges and 
 powers. For, in ascending to this primary and abo 
 riginal sentiment, we have come from our remote sta- 
 
THE OVEK-SOUL. 229 
 
 tion on the circumference instantaneously to the cen 
 tre of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we 
 see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but 
 a slow effect. 
 
 One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation 
 of the spirit in a form, in forms, like my own. 1 
 live in society ; with persons who answer to thoughts 
 in my own mind, or outwardly express to me a certain 
 obedience to the great instincts to which I live. I see 
 its presence to them. I am certified of a common 
 nature ; and so these other souls, these separated 
 selves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir in 
 me the new emotions we call passion ; of love, hatred, 
 fear, admiration, pity ; thence comes conversation, 
 competition, persuasion, cities, and war. Persons are 
 supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. 
 In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and 
 youth see all the world in them. But the larger ex 
 perience of man discovers the identical nature ap 
 pearing through them all. Persons themselves ac 
 quaint us with the impersonal. In all conversation be 
 tween two persons, tacit reference is made as to a 
 third party, to a common nature. That third party 
 or common nature is not social ; it is impersonal ; is 
 God. And so in groups where debate is earnest, and 
 especially on great questions of thought, the company 
 become aware of their unity ; aware that the thought 
 rises to an equal height in all bosoms, that all have a 
 spiritual property in what was said, as well as the 
 sayer. They all wax wiser than they were. It 
 arches over them like a temple, this unity of thought, 
 
230 ESSAY IX. 
 
 In which every heart beats with nobler sense of power 
 and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. 
 All are conscious of attaining to a higher self-posses 
 sion. It shines for all. There is a certain wisdom of 
 humanity which is common to the greatest men with 
 the lowest, and which our ordinary education often 
 labors to silence and obstruct. The mind is one, and 
 the best minds who love truth for its own sake, think 
 much less of property in truth. Thankfully they ac 
 cept it everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with 
 any man's name, for it is theirs long beforehand. It 
 is theirs from eternity. The learned and the studious 
 of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their vio 
 lence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to 
 think truly. We owe many valuable observations to 
 people who are not very acute or profound, and who 
 say the thing without effort, which we want and have 
 long been hunting in vain. The action of the soul is 
 oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid, than in 
 that which is said in any conversation. It broods over 
 every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in 
 each other. We know better than we do. We do 
 not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same 
 time that we are much more. I feel the same truth 
 how often in my trivial conversation with my neigh 
 bors, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this 
 by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us. 
 Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean 
 service to the world, for which they forsake their na 
 tive nobleness, they resemble those Arabian Sheikhs, 
 who dwell in mean houses and affect an external po- 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 231 
 
 verty, to escape the rapacity of the Pacha, and re 
 serve all their display of wealth for their interior and 
 guarded retirements. 
 
 As it is present in all persons, so it is in every pe 
 riod of life. It is adult already in the infant man. 
 In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, 
 my accomplishments and my money, stead me no 
 thing. They are all lost on him : but as much soul 
 as I have, avails. If I am merely wilful, he gives me 
 a Rowland for an Oliver, sets his will against mine, 
 one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degrada 
 tion of beating him by my superiority of strength. 
 But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting 
 that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes 
 looks the same soul ; he reveres and loves with me. 
 
 The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. 
 We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scof 
 fer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, 
 when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 
 1 How do you know it is truth, and not an error of 
 your own? ' We know truth when we see it, from 
 opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are 
 awake. It was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swe- 
 denborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of 
 that man's perception, u It is no proof of a man's 
 understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases^ 
 but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and 
 that what is false is false, this is the mark and char 
 acter of intelligence." In the book I read, the good 
 thought returns to me, as every truth will, the image 
 of the whole soul. To the bad thought which I findi 
 
232 ESSAY IX. 
 
 in it, the same soul becomes a discerning, separating 
 sword and lops it away. We are wiser than we know. 
 If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act 
 entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know 
 the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. 
 For, the Maker of all things and all persons, stands 
 behind us, and casts his dread omniscience through us 
 over things. 
 
 But beyond this recognition of its own in particular 
 passages of the individual's experience, it also reveals 
 truth. And here we should seek to reinforce ourselves 
 by its very presence, and to speak with a worthier, 
 loftier strain of that advent. For the soul's commu 
 nication of truth is the highest event in nature, for it 
 then does not give somewhat from itself, but it gives 
 itself, or passes into and becomes that man whom it 
 enlightens ; or in proportion to that truth he receives, 
 it takes him to itself. 
 
 We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its 
 manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revela 
 tion. These are always attended by the emotion of 
 the sublime. For this communication is an influx 
 of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the 
 individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea 
 of life. Every distinct apprehension of this central 
 commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A 
 thrill passes through all men at the reception of new 
 truth, or at the performance of a great action, which 
 comes out of the heart of nature. In these com 
 munications, the power to see, is not separated from 
 the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedi- 
 
THE OVER- SOUL. 233 
 
 ence, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful per 
 ception. Every moment when the individual feels 
 himself invaded by it, is memorable. Always, I be 
 lieve, by the necessity of our constitution, a certain 
 enthusiasm attends the individual's consciousness of 
 that divine presence. The character and duration 
 of this enthusiasm varies with the state of the indivi 
 dual, from an extasy and trance and prophetic inspi 
 ration, which is its rarer appearance, to the faintest 
 glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, 
 like our household fires, all the families and associa 
 tions of men, and makes society possible. A certain 
 tendency to insanity has always attended the opening 
 of the religious sense in men, as if " blasted with ex 
 cess of light." The trances of Socrates ; the " union " 
 of Plotinus ; the vision of Porphyry ; the conversion 
 of Paul ; the aurora of Behmen ; the convulsions of 
 George Fox and his Quakers ; the illumination of Swe- 
 denborg ; are of this kind. What was in the case of 
 these remarkable persons a ravishment, has, in innu 
 merable instances in common life, been exhibited in less 
 striking manner. Everywhere the history of religion 
 betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the 
 Moravian and Quietist ; the opening of the internal 
 sense of the Word, in the language of the New Jerusa 
 lem Church ; the revival of the Calvinistic Churches ; 
 the experiences of the Methodists, are varying forms of 
 that shudder of awe and delight with which the indi 
 vidual soul always mingles with the universal soul. 
 
 The nature of these revelations is always the same : 
 they are perceptions of the absolute law. They are 
 
234 ESSAY IX. 
 
 solutions of the soul's own questions. They do not 
 answer the questions which the understanding asks.. 
 The soul answers never by words, but by the thing 
 itself that is inquired after. 
 
 Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The 
 popular notion of a revelation, is, that it is a telling of 
 fortunes. In past oracles of the soul, the understand 
 ing seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and 
 undertakes to tell from God how long men shall exist, 
 what their hands shall do, and who shall be their com 
 pany, adding even names, and dates and places. But 
 we must pick no locks. We must check this low cu 
 riosity. An answer in words is delusive ; it is really 
 no answer to the questions you ask. Do not ask a 
 description of the countries towards which you sail. 
 The description does not describe them to you, and 
 to-morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhab 
 iting them. Men ask of the immortality of the soul, 
 and the employments of heaven, and the state of the 
 sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus 
 has left replies to precisely these interrogatories. 
 Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak in their 
 patois. To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the 
 soul, the idea of immutableness is essentially associa 
 ted. Jesus, living in these moral sentiments, heedless 
 of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations of 
 these, never made the separation of the idea of du 
 ration from the essence of these attributes ; never ut 
 tered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. 
 It was left to his disciples to sever duration from the 
 moral elements, and to teach the immortality of the 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 235 
 
 soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. The 
 moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately 
 taught, man is already fallen. In the flowing of love, 
 in the adoration of humility, there is no question of 
 continuance. No inspired man ever asks this ques 
 tion, or condescends to these evidences. For the soul 
 is true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed abroad, 
 cannot wander from the present, which is infinite, to 
 a future, which would be finite. 
 
 These questions which we lust to ask about the fu 
 ture, are a confession of sin. God has no answer for 
 them. No answer in words can reply to a question 
 of things. It is not in an arbitrary " decree of God," 
 but in the nature of man that a veil shuts down on 
 the facts of to-morrow : for the soul will not have us 
 read any other cipher but that of cause and effect. By 
 this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the child- 
 ren of men to live in to-day. The only mode of 
 obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses, 
 is, to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide 
 of being which floats us into the secret of nature, 
 work and live, work and live, and all unawares, the 
 advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new 
 condition, and the question and the answer are one. 
 
 Thus is the soul the perceiver and revealer of 
 truth. By the same fire, serene, impersonal, perfect, 
 which burns until it shall dissolve all things into the 
 waves and surges of an ocean of light, we see and 
 know each other, and what spirit each is of. Who 
 can tell the grounds of his knowledge of the charac 
 ter of the several individuals in his circle of friends ? 
 
236 ESSAY IX. 
 
 No man. Yet their acts and words do not disappoint 
 him. In that man, though he knew no ill of him, he 
 put no trust. In that other, though they had seldom 
 met, authentic signs had yet passed, to signify that he 
 might be trusted as one who had an interest in his own 
 character. We know each other very well, which 
 of us has been just to himself, and whether that which 
 we teach or behold, is only an aspiration, or is our 
 honest effort also. 
 
 We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis 
 lies aloft in our life or unconscious power, not in the 
 understanding. The whole intercourse of society, its 
 trade, its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one 
 wide, judicial investigation of character. In full 
 court, or in small committee, or confronted face to 
 face, accuser and accused, men offer themselves to 
 be judged. Against their will they exhibit those 
 decisive trifles by which character is read. But who 
 judges ? and what ? Not our understanding. We 
 do not read them by learning or craft. No ; the wis 
 dom of the wise man consists herein, that he does not 
 judge them ; he lets them judge themselves, and 
 merely reads and records their own verdict. 
 
 By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is 
 overpowered, and, maugre our efforts, or our imper 
 fections, your genius will speak from you, and mine 
 from me. That which we are, we shall teach, not 
 voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts come into 
 our minds by avenues which we never left open, and 
 thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which 
 we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 237 
 
 over our head. The infallible index of true progress 
 is found in the tone the man takes. Neither his age, 
 nor his breeding, nor company, nor books, nor ac 
 tions, nor talents, nor all together, can hinder him 
 from being deferential to a higher spirit than his own. 
 If he have not found his home in God, his manners, 
 his forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the 
 build, shall I say, of all his opinions will involuntarily 
 confess it, let him brave it out how he will. If he 
 have found his centre, the Deity will shine through 
 him, through all the disguises of ignorance, of unge- 
 nial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. The 
 tone of seeking, is one, and the tone of having is 
 another. 
 
 The great distinction between teachers sacred or 
 literary ; between poets like Herbert, and poets like 
 Pope ; between philosophers like Spinoza, Kant, and 
 Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, 
 Mackintosh, and Stewart ; between men of the world 
 who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and 
 there a fervent mystic, prophesying half-insane under 
 the infinitude of his thought, is, that one class speak 
 from within, or from experience, as parties and pos 
 sessors of the fact ; and the other class, from with" 
 out, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted 
 with the fact, on the evidence of third persons. It is 
 of no use to preach to me from without. I can do 
 that too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from 
 within, and in a degree that transcends all others. In 
 that, is the miracle. That includes the miracle. My 
 soul believes beforehand that it ought so to be, A1J 
 
238 ESSAY IX. 
 
 men stand continually in the expectation of the ap 
 pearance of such a teacher. But if a man do not 
 speak from within the veil, where the word is one with 
 that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. 
 
 The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and 
 makes what we call genius. Much of the wisdom of 
 the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated 
 class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, 
 and are not writers. Among the multitude of scholars 
 and authors, we feel no hallowing presence ; we are 
 sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration ; 
 they have a light, and know not whence it comes, 
 and call it their own : their talent is some exaggerated 
 faculty, some overgrown member, so that their 
 strength is a disease. In these instances, the intel 
 lectual gifts do not make the impression of virtue, but 
 almost of vice ; and we feel that a man's talents stand 
 in the way of his advancement in truth. But genius 
 is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common 
 heart. It is not anomalous, but more like, and not 
 less like other men. There is in all great poets, a 
 wisdom of humanity, which is superior to any talents 
 they exercise. The author, the wit, the partisan, the 
 fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. Hu 
 manity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in 
 Shakspeare, in Milton. They are content with truth. 
 They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and 
 phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the 
 frantic passion and violent coloring of inferior, but 
 popular writers. For, they are poets by the free 
 course which they allow to the informing soul, which, 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 239 
 
 though their eyes beholdeth again, and blesseth the 
 things which it hath made. The soul is superior to 
 its knowledge ; wiser than any of its works. The 
 great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then 
 we think less of his compositions. His greatest com 
 munication to our mind, is, to teach us to despise all 
 he has done. Shakspeare carries us to such a lofty 
 strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth 
 which beggars his own ; and we then feel that the 
 splendid works which he has created, and which in 
 other hours, we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, 
 take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow 
 of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration 
 which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear, could utter 
 things as good from day to day, forever. Why then 
 should I make account of Hamlet and Lear, as if we 
 had not the soul from which they fell as syllables 
 from the tongue ? 
 
 This energy does not descend into individual life, 
 on any other condition than entire possession. It 
 comes to the lowly and simple ; it comes to whomso 
 ever will put off what is foreign and proud ; it comes 
 as insight ; it comes as serenity and grandeur. When 
 we see those whom it inhabits, we are apprised of 
 new degrees of greatness. From that inspiration 
 the man comes back with a changed tone. He does 
 not talk with men, with an eye to their opinion. He 
 tries them. It requires of us to be plain and true. 
 The vain traveller attempts to embellish his life by 
 quoting my Lord, and the Prince, and the Countess, 
 who thus said or did to him. The ambitious vulgar, 
 
240 ESSAY IX. 
 
 show you their spoons, and brooches, and rings, and 
 preserve their cards and compliments. The more 
 cultivated, in their account of their own experience, 
 cull out the pleasing poetic circumstance ; the visit to 
 Rome ; the man of genius they saw ; the brilliant 
 friend they know ; still further on, perhaps, the gor 
 geous landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain 
 thoughts, they enjoyed yesterday, and so seek to 
 throw a romantic color over their life. But the soul 
 that ascendeth to worship the great God, is plain and 
 true ; has no rose color ; no fine friends ; no chivalry ; 
 no adventures ; does not want admiration ; dwells in 
 the hour that now is, in the earnest experience of the 
 common day, by reason of the present moment, 
 and the mere trifle having become porous to thought, 
 and bibulous of the sea of light. 
 
 Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and 
 literature looks like word-catching. The simplest 
 utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so 
 cheap, and so things of course, that in the infinite 
 riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles 
 off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when 
 the whole earth, and the whole atmosphere are ours. 
 The mere author, in such society, is like a pickpocket 
 among gentlemen, who has come in to steal a gold 
 button or a pin. Nothing can pass there, or make 
 you one of the circle, but the casting aside your 
 trappings, and dealing man to man in naked truth, 
 plain confession and omniscient affirmation. 
 
 Souls, such as these, treat you as gods would ; 
 walk as gods in the earth, accepting without any ad- 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 241 
 
 miration, your wit, your bounty, your virtue, even, 
 say rather your act of duty, for your virtue they own 
 as their proper blood, royal as themselves, and over- 
 royal, and the father of the gods. But what rebuke 
 their plain fraternal bearing casts on the mutual flat 
 tery with which authors solace each other, and wound 
 themselves ! These flatter not. I do not wonder that 
 these men go to see Cromwell, and Christina, and 
 Charles II., and James I., and the Grand Turk. For 
 they are in their own elevation, the fellows of kings, 
 and must feel the servile tone of conversation in the 
 world. They must always be a godsend to princes, 
 for they confront them, a king to a king, without 
 ducking or concession, and give a high nature the re 
 freshment and satisfaction of resistance, of plain hu 
 manity, of even companionship, and of new ideas. 
 They leave them wiser and superior men. Souls like 
 these make us feel that sincerity is more excellent 
 than flattery. Deal so plainly with man and woman, 
 as to constrain the utmost sincerity, and destroy all 
 hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compli 
 ment you can pay. Their " highest praising," said 
 Milton, " is not flattery, and their plainest advice is a 
 kind of praising." 
 
 Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act 
 of the soul. The simplest person, who in his integ 
 rity worships God, becomes God ; yet forever and 
 ever the influx of this better and universal self is new 
 and unsearchable. Ever it inspires awe and aston 
 ishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the 
 idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the 
 11 
 
242 ESSAY IX. 
 
 scars of our mistakes and disappointments ! When 
 we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from 
 our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with 
 his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, 
 the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of 
 growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man 
 an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the 
 sight that the best is the true, and may in that thought 
 easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, 
 and adjourn to the sure revelation of time, the solu 
 tion of his private riddles. He is sure that his wel 
 fare is dear to the heart of being. In the presence 
 of law to his mind, he is overflowed with a reliance 
 so universal, that it sweeps away all cherished hopes 
 and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its 
 flood. He believes that he cannot escape from his 
 good. The things that are really for thee, gravitate 
 to thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let 
 your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do 
 not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you 
 should not find him ? for there is a power, which, as 
 it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very 
 well bring you together, if it were for the best. You 
 are preparing with eagerness to go and render a ser 
 vice to which your talent and your taste invite you, 
 the love of men, and the hope of fame. Has it not 
 occurred to you, that you have no right to go, unless 
 you are equally willing to be prevented from going ? 
 O believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spo 
 ken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, 
 will vibrate on thine ear. Every proverb, every book, 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 243 
 
 every by-word that belongs to thee for aid or com 
 fort, shall surely come home through open or winding 
 passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, 
 but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall 
 lock thee in his embrace. And this, because the 
 heart in thee is the heart of all ; not a valve, not a 
 wall, not an intersection is there any where in nature, 
 but one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an endless circu 
 lation through all men, as the water of the globe is 
 all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. 
 
 Let man then learn the revelation of all nature, 
 and all thought to his heart ; this, namely ; that the 
 Highest dwells with him ; that the sources of nature 
 are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. 
 But if he would know what the great God speaketh, 
 he must 'go into his closet and shut the door,' as 
 Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to 
 cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, with 
 drawing himself from all the accents of other men's 
 devotion. Their prayers even are hurtful to him, 
 until he have made his own. The soul makes no ap 
 peal from itself. Our religion vulgarly stands on 
 numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is 
 made, no matter how indirectly, to numbers, 
 proclamation is then and there made, that religion is 
 not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping thought 
 to him, never counts his company. When I sit in that 
 presence, who shall dare to come in ? When I rest 
 in perfect humility, when I burn with pure love, 
 what can Calvin or Swedenborg say ? 
 
 It makes no difference whether the appeal is to 
 
244 ESSAY IX. 
 
 numbers or to one. The faith that stands on authority 
 is not faith. The reliance on authority, measures the 
 decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The 
 position men have given to Jesus, now for many cen 
 turies of history, is a position of authority. It char 
 acterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal 
 facts. Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, 
 it is no follower ; it never appeals from itself. It al 
 ways believes in itself. Before the immense possi 
 bilities of man, all mere experience, all past biogra 
 phy, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. 
 Before that holy heaven which our presentiments 
 foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any form of life 
 we have seen or read of. We not only affirm that 
 we have few great men, but absolutely speaking, that 
 we have none ; that we have no history, no record of 
 any character or mode of living, that entirely contents 
 us. The saints and demigods whom history worships, 
 we are constrained to accept with a grain of allow 
 ance. Though in our lonely hours, we draw a new 
 strength out of their memory, yet pressed on our at 
 tention, as they are by the thoughtless and customary, 
 they fatigue and invade. The soul gives itself alone, 
 original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original and Pure, 
 who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and 
 speaks through it. Then is it glad, young, and nim 
 ble. It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It 
 is not called religious, but it is innocent- It calls the 
 light its own, and feels that the grass grows, and the 
 stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on its 
 nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the 
 
THE OVER-SOUL. 245 
 
 universal mind. I the imperfect, adore my own Per 
 fect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and 
 thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel 
 them to be but the fair accidents and effects which 
 change and pass. More and more the surges of ever 
 lasting nature enter into me, and I become public 
 and human in my regards and actions. So come I 
 to live in thoughts, and act with energies which are 
 immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as 
 the ancient said, that " its beauty is immense," man 
 will come to see that the world is the perennial mira 
 cle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at 
 particular wonders ; he will learn that there is no 
 profane history ; that all history is sacred ; that the 
 universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of 
 time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds 
 and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He 
 will cease from what is base and frivolous in his own 
 life, and be content with all places and any service 
 he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in 
 the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, 
 and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of 
 the heart. 
 
CIRCLES 
 
ESSAY X. 
 CIRCLES 
 
 THE eye is the first circle ; the horizon which it 
 forms is the second ; and throughout nature this pri 
 mary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest 
 emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine 
 described the nature of God as a circle whose centre 
 was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. 
 We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of 
 this first of forms. One moral we have already de 
 duced in considering the circular or compensatory 
 character of every human action. Another analogy 
 we shall now trace ; that every action admits of being 
 outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, 
 that around every circle another can be drawn ; that 
 there is no end in nature, but every end is a begin 
 ning ; that there is always another dawn risen on 
 mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. 
 This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of 
 11* 
 
250 ESSAY X. 
 
 the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the 
 hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer 
 and the condemner of every success, may conven 
 iently serve us to connect many illustrations of hu 
 man power in every department. 
 
 There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is 
 fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of de 
 grees. Our globe seen by God, is a transparent law, 
 not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and 
 holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an 
 idea which draws after it all this train of cities and 
 institutions. Let us rise into another idea : they will 
 disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, 
 as if it had been statues of ice : here and there a 
 solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see 
 flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and moun 
 tain clefts, in June and July. For, the genius that 
 created it, creates now somewhat else. The Greek 
 letters last a little longer, but are already passing un 
 der the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevita 
 ble pit which the creation of new thought opens for 
 all that is old. The new continents are built out of 
 the ruins of an old planet : the new races fed out of 
 the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts de 
 stroy the old. See the investment of capital in aque 
 ducts, made useless by hydraulics ; fortifications, by 
 gunpowder ; roads and canals, by railways ; sails, by 
 steam ; steam by electricity. 
 
 You admire this tower of granite, weathering the 
 hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built 
 this huge wall, and that which builds, is better than 
 
CIRCLES. 251 
 
 that which is built. The hand that built, can topple 
 it down much faster. Better than the hand, and nim 
 bler, was the invisible thought which wrought through 
 it, and thus ever behind the coarse effect, is a fine 
 cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect 
 of a finer cause. Every thing looks permanent until 
 its secret is known. A rich estate appears to women 
 and children, a firm and lasting fact ; to a merchant, 
 one easily created out of any materials, and easily 
 lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem 
 a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen, but 
 to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state 
 of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and 
 secular, but it has a cause like all the rest ; and when 
 once I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so 
 immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually 
 considerable ? Permanence is a word of degrees. 
 Every thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds 
 to spiritual power than bat-balls. 
 
 The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and 
 defying though he look, he has a helm which he 
 obeys, which is, the idea after which all his facts are 
 classified. He can only be reformed by showing him 
 a new idea which commands his own. The life of 
 man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring im 
 perceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new 
 and larger circles, and that without end. The extent 
 to which this generation of circles, wheel without 
 wheel will go, depends on the force or truth of the in 
 dividual soul. For, it is the inert effort of each thought 
 having formed itself into a circular wave of circum- 
 
252 ESSAY X. 
 
 stance, as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, 
 a local usage, a religious rite, to heap itself on that 
 ridge, and to solidify, and hem in the life. But if the 
 soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary 
 on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great 
 deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with 
 attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart re 
 fuses to be imprisoned ; in its first and narrowest 
 pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and 
 to immense and innumerable expansions. 
 
 Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new 
 series. Every general law only a particular fact of 
 some more general law presently to disclose itself. 
 There is no outside, no enclosing wall, no cir 
 cumference to us. The man finishes his story, how 
 good ! how final ! how it puts a new face on all 
 things ! He fills the sky. Lo, on the other side, rises 
 also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we 
 had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then 
 already is our first speaker, not man, but only a first 
 speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a cir 
 cle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by 
 themselves. The result of to-day which haunts the 
 mind and, cannot be escaped, will presently be 
 abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to 
 explain nature, will itself be included as one exam 
 ple of a bolder generalization. In the thought of to 
 morrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all 
 the creeds, all the literatures of the nations, and mar 
 shal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet 
 depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in 
 
CIRCLES. 253 
 
 the world, as he is a suggestion of that he should be. 
 Men walk as prophecies of the next age. 
 
 Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder : the 
 steps are actions ; the new prospect is power. Every 
 several result is threatened and judged by that which 
 follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the 
 new ; it is only limited by the new. The new state 
 ment is always hated by the old, and, to those dwell 
 ing in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism. 
 But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it 
 are effects of one cause ; then its innocency and benefit 
 appear, and, presently, all its energy spent, it pales 
 and dwindles before the revelation of the new hour. 
 
 Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look 
 crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory 
 of spirit ? Resist it not ; it goes to refine and raise 
 thy theory of matter just as much. 
 
 There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to con 
 sciousness. Every man supposes himself not to be 
 fully understood ; and if there is any truth in him, if 
 he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it 
 can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, 
 he must feel, was never opened ; there is always a 
 residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every 
 man believes that he has a greater possibility. 
 
 Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day, 
 I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I 
 see no reason why I should not have the same thought, 
 the same power of expression to-morrow. What I 
 write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in 
 the world : but, yesterday, I saw a dreary vacuity in 
 
254 ESSAY X. 
 
 this direction in which now I see so much ; and a month 
 hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that 
 wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm 
 faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast 
 flow ! I am God in nature ; I am a weed by the 
 wall. 
 
 The continual effort to raise himself above himself, 
 to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in 
 a man's relations. We thirst for approbation, yet can 
 not forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is 
 love ; yet if I have a friend, I am tormented by my 
 imperfections. The love of me accuses the other 
 party. If he were high enough to slight me, then 
 could I love him, and rise by my affection to new 
 heights. A man's growth is seen in the successive 
 choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he 
 loses for truth, he gains a better. I thought, as I 
 walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why 
 should I play with them this game of idolatry ? I 
 know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, 
 the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. 
 Rich, noble, and great they are by the liberality of 
 our speech, but truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom 
 I forsake for these, they are not thee ! Every per 
 sonal consideration that we allow, costs us heavenly 
 state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and 
 turbulent pleasure. 
 
 How often must we learn this lesson ? Men cease 
 to interest us when we find their limitations. The 
 only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up 
 with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has 
 
CIRCLES. 255 
 
 he talents ? has he enterprises ? has he knowledge ? 
 it boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he 
 to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in ; 
 now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and 
 you care not if you never see it again. 
 
 Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty 
 seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law. 
 Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads 
 of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle 
 Platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought, 
 discordant opinions are reconciled, by being seen to 
 be two extremes of one principle, and we can never 
 go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision. 
 
 Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on 
 this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as 
 when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, 
 and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. 
 There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be 
 turned to-morrow ; there is not any literary reputa 
 tion, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that 
 may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes 
 of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of na 
 tions, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at 
 the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization 
 is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. 
 Hence the thrill that attends it. 
 
 Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that 
 a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out 
 generaled, but put him where you will, he stands,. 
 This can only be by his preferring truth to his past 
 apprehension of truth ; and his alert acceptance of it 
 
256 ESSAY X. 
 
 from whatever quarter ; the intrepid conviction that 
 his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his 
 world, may at any time be superseded and decease. 
 
 There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to 
 play with it academically, as the magnet was once a 
 toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry 
 that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and frag 
 ments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, 
 and we see that it must be true. It now shows itself 
 ethical and practical. We learn that God is ; that he 
 is in me ; and that all things are shadows of him. 
 The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of 
 the idealism of Jesus, and that, again, is a crude state 
 ment of the fact that all nature is the rapid efflux of 
 goodness executing and organizing itself. Much more 
 obviously is history and the state of the world at any 
 one time, directly dependent on the intellectual clas 
 sification then existing in the minds of men. The 
 things which are dear to men at this hour, are so on 
 account of the ideas which have emerged on their 
 mental horizon, and which cause the present order of 
 things as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of 
 culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system 
 of human pursuits. 
 
 Conversation is a game of circles. In conversa 
 tion we pluck up the termini which bound the com 
 mon of silence on every side. The parties are not to 
 be judged by the spirit they partake and even express 
 under this Pentecost. To-rnorrow they will have re 
 ceded from this high-water mark. To-morrow you 
 shall find them stooping under the old packsaddles. 
 
CIRCLES. 257 
 
 Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on 
 our walls. When each new speaker strikes a new 
 light, emancipates us from the oppression of the last 
 speaker, to oppress us with the greatness and exclu- 
 siveness of his own thought, then yields us to ano 
 ther redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to be 
 come men. O what truths profound and executable 
 only in ages and orbs, are supposed in the announce 
 ment of every truth ! In common hours, society sits 
 cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, empty, 
 knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded 
 by mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but 
 prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the god, and 
 converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of 
 his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, 
 and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and 
 saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. 
 The facts which loomed so large in the fogs of 
 yesterday, property, climate, breeding, personal 
 beauty, and the like, have strangely changed their 
 proportions. All that we reckoned settled, shakes 
 now and rattles ; and literatures, cities, climates, reli 
 gions, leave their foundations, and dance before our 
 eyes. And yet here again see the swift circumscrip 
 tion. Good as is discourse, silence is better, and 
 shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the 
 distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. 
 If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, 
 no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in 
 all parts, no words would be suffered. 
 
 Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, 
 
258 ESSAY X. 
 
 through which a new one may be described. The 
 use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we 
 may command a view of our present life, a purchase 
 by which we may move it. We fill ourselves with 
 ancient learning; install ourselves the best we can in 
 Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, only that we may 
 wiselier see French, English, and American houses 
 and modes of living. In like manner, we see litera 
 ture best from the midst of wild nature, or from the 
 din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field can 
 not be well seen from within the field. The astrono 
 mer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as 
 a base to find the parallax of any star. 
 
 Therefore, we value the poet. All the argument, 
 and all the wisdom, is not in the encyclopedia, or the 
 treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but 
 in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline 
 to repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial 
 force, in the power of change and reform. But some 
 Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new wine of his 
 imagination, writes me an ode, or a brisk romance, full 
 of daring thought and action. He smites and arouses 
 me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of 
 habits, and I open my eye on my own possibilities. 
 He claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lum 
 ber of the world, and I am capable once more of 
 choosing a straight path in theory and practice. 
 
 We have the same need to command a view of the 
 religion of the world. We can never see Christianity 
 from the catechism : from the pastures, from a boat 
 in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds, we 
 
CIRCLES. 259 
 
 possibly may. Cleansed by the elemental light and 
 wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the 
 field offers us, we may chance to cast a right glance 
 back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear to 
 the best of mankind ; yet was there never a young 
 philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the christ- 
 ian church, by whom that brave text of Paul's, was 
 not specially prized, " Then shall also the Son be 
 subject unto Him who put all things under him, that 
 God may be all in all." Let the claims and virtues 
 of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct 
 of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and 
 illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmat 
 ism of bigots with this generous word, out of the book 
 itself. 
 
 The natural world may be conceived of as a sys 
 tem of concentric circles, and we now and then de 
 tect in nature slight dislocations, which apprize us that 
 this surface on which we now stand, is not fixed, but 
 sliding. These manifold tenacious qualities, this chem 
 istry and vegetation, these metals and animals, which 
 seem to stand there for their own sake, are means 
 and methods only, are words of God, and as fugitive 
 as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned 
 his craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and 
 the elective affinities, who has not yet discerned the 
 deeper law whereof this is only a partial or approx 
 imate statement, namely, that like draws to like ; and 
 that the goods which belong to you, gravitate to you, 
 and need not be pursued with pains and cost ? Yet 
 is that statement approximate also, and not final. 
 
260 ESSAY X. 
 
 Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle, 
 subterranean channels, need friend and fact be drawn 
 to their counterpart, but, rightly considered, these 
 things proceed from the eternal generation of the soul. 
 Cause and effect are two sides of one fact. 
 
 The same law of eternal procession ranges all that 
 we call the virtues, and extinguishes each in the light 
 of a better. The great man will not be prudent in 
 the popular sense ; all his prudence will be so much 
 deduction from his grandeur. But it behoves each to 
 see when he sacrifices prudence, to what god he de 
 votes it ; if to ease and pleasure, he had better be 
 prudent still : if to a great trust, he can well spare 
 his mule and panniers, who has a winged chariot in 
 stead. Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the 
 woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite of 
 snakes ; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In 
 many years, neither is harmed by such an accident. 
 Yet it seerns to me that with every precaution you 
 take against such an evil, you put yourself into the 
 power of the evil. I suppose that the highest pru 
 dence is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a 
 rushing from the centre to the verge of our orbit ? 
 Think how many times we shall fall back into pitiful 
 calculations, before we take up our rest in the great 
 sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new cen 
 tre. Besides, your bravest sentiment is familiar to 
 the humblest men. The poor and the low have their 
 way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well 
 as you. " Blessed be nothing," and " the worse 
 things are, the better they are," are proverbs which 
 express the transcendentalism of common life. 
 
CIRCLES. 261 
 
 One man's justice is another's injustice ; one man's 
 beauty, another's ugliness ; one man's wisdom, an 
 other's folly, as one beholds the same objects from a 
 higher point of view. One man thinks justice con 
 sists in paying debts, and has no measure in his ab 
 horrence of another who is very remiss in this duty, 
 and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that se 
 cond man has his own way of looking at things ; asks 
 himself, which debt must I pay first, the debt to the 
 rich, or the debt to the poor ? the debt of money, or 
 the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature ? 
 For you, O broker, there is no other principle but 
 arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import ; 
 love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, 
 these are sacred : nor can I detach one duty, like you, 
 from all other duties, and concentrate my forces me 
 chanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live 
 onward : you shall find that, though slower, the pro 
 gress of rny character will liquidate all these debts 
 without injustice to higher claims. If a man should 
 dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not 
 this be injustice ? Owes he no debt but money ? 
 And are all claims on him to be postponed to a land 
 lord's or a banker's ? 
 
 There is no virtue which is final ; all are initial. 
 The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The 
 terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast 
 away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed 
 such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser 
 vices. 
 
 " Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, 
 Those smaller faults, half converts to the right." 
 
262 ESSAY X. 
 
 It is the highest power of divine moments that they 
 abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth 
 and unprofitableness, day by day ; but when these 
 waves of God flow into me, I no longer reckon lost 
 time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achieve 
 ment by what remains to me of the month or the 
 year ; for these moments confer a sort of omnipres 
 ence and omnipotence, which asks nothing of dura 
 tion, but sees that the energy of the mind is commen 
 surate with the work to be done, without time. 
 
 And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some 
 reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine pyrrhon- 
 ism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, 
 and would fain teach us, that, if we are true, forsooth, 
 our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall 
 construct the temple of the true God. 
 
 I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am 
 gladdened by seeing the predominance of the saccha 
 rine principle throughout vegetable nature, and not 
 less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inunda 
 tion of the principle of good into every chink and 
 hole that selfishness has left open, yea, into selfish 
 ness and sin itself ; so that no evil is pure ; nor hell 
 itself without its extreme satisfactions. But lest I 
 should mislead any when I have my own head, and 
 obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am 
 only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on 
 what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as 
 if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I 
 unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred ; none 
 are profane ; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, 
 with no Past at my back. 
 
CIRCLES. 263 
 
 Yet this incessant movement and progression, which 
 all things partake, could never become sensible to us, 
 but by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability 
 in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles 
 proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central 
 life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to 
 knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles, 
 Forever it labors to create a life and thought as large 
 and excellent as itself ; but in vain ; for that which is 
 made, instructs how to make a better. 
 
 Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, 
 but all things renew, germinate, and spring. Why 
 should we import rags and relics into the new hour ? 
 Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only 
 disease : all others run into this one. We call it by 
 many names, fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity, 
 and crime : they are all forms of old age : they are 
 rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia, not new 
 ness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day, 
 I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what 
 is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young, 
 Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious 
 eye looking upward, counts itself nothing, and aban 
 dons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. 
 But the man and woman of seventy, assume to know 
 all ; throw up their hope ; renounce aspiration ; ac 
 cept the actual for the necessary ; and talk down to 
 the young. Let them then become organs of the 
 Holy Ghost ; let them be lovers ; let them behold 
 truth ; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles 
 smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and 
 
264 ESSAY X. 
 
 power. This old age ought not to creep on a human 
 mind. In nature, every moment is new ; the past is 
 always swallowed and forgotten ; the coming only is 
 sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the en 
 ergizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or 
 covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth 
 so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow in the light 
 of new thoughts. People wish to be settled : only as 
 far as they are unsettled, is there any hope for them. 
 
 Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to 
 day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, 
 when we are building up our being. Of lower states, 
 of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat, 
 but the masterpieces of God, the total growths, and 
 universal movements of the soul, he hideth ; they are 
 incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and 
 helpful, but how it shall help me, I can have no guess, 
 for, so to be is the sole inlet of so to know. The new 
 position of the advancing man has all the powers of 
 the old, yet has them all new. It carries in its bosom 
 all the energies of the past, yet is itself an exhalation 
 of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all 
 my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. 
 Now, for the first time, seem I to know any thing 
 rightly. The simplest words, we do not know 
 what they mean, except when we love and aspire. 
 
 The difference between talents and character is 
 adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and 
 power and courage to make a new road to new and 
 better goals. Character makes an overpowering pres 
 ent, a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all 
 
CIRCLES. 265 
 
 the company, by making them see that much is pos 
 sible and excellent, that was not thought of. Charac 
 ter dulls the impression of particular events. When 
 we see the conqueror, we do not think much of any 
 one battle or success. We see that we had exagger 
 ated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The great 
 man is not convulsible or torrnentable. He is so 
 much, that events pass over him without much im 
 pression. People say sometimes, l See what I have 
 overcome ; see how cheerful I am ; see how com 
 pletely I have triumphed over these black events.' 
 Not if they still remind me of the black event, 
 they have not yet conquered. Is it conquest to be a 
 gay and decorated sepulchre, or a half-crazed widow 
 hysterically laughing ? True conquest is the causing 
 the black event to fade and disappear as an early 
 cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and 
 advancing. 
 
 The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire, 
 is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our pro 
 priety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do 
 something without knowing how or why ; in short, to 
 draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved 
 without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful. 
 It is by abandonment. The great moments of his 
 tory are the facilities of performance through the 
 strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. 
 " A man," said Oliver Cromwell, " never rises so high 
 as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams 
 and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are 
 12 
 
266 ESSAY X. 
 
 & 
 
 the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, 
 and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the 
 like reason, they ask the aid of wild passions, as in 
 gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames 
 and generosities of. the heart. 
 
INTELLECT 
 
ESSAY XI. 
 
 INTELLECT 
 
 EVERY substance is negatively electric to that which 
 stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to 
 that which stands below it. Water dissolves wood 
 and stone, and salt ; air dissolves water ; electric fire 
 dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, 
 laws, method, and the subtlest unnamed relations of 
 nature in its resistless menstruum. Intellect lies be 
 hind genius, which is intellect constructive. Intellect 
 is the simple power anterior to all action or construc 
 tion. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a nat 
 ural history of the intellect, but what man has yet 
 been able to mark the steps and boundaries of that 
 transparent essence ? The first questions are always 
 to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the 
 inquisitiveness of a child. How can we speak of the 
 action of the mind under any divisions, as, of its 
 knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, 
 
270 ESSAY XI. 
 
 since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? 
 Each becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision 
 is not like the vision of the eye, but is union with the 
 things known. 
 
 Intellect and intellection signify, to the common ear 
 consideration of abstract truth. The consideration of 
 time and place, of you and me, of profit and hurt, 
 tyrannize over most men's minds. Intellect separates 
 the fact considered from you, from all local and per 
 sonal reference, and discerns it as if it existed for its 
 own sake. Heraclitus looked upon the affections as 
 dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and 
 evil affections, it is hard for man to walk forward in 
 a straight lino. Intellect is void of affection, and 
 sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool 
 and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the indi 
 vidual, floats over its own personality, and regards it 
 as a fact, and not as I and mine. He who is immersed 
 in what concerns person or place, cannot see the prob 
 lem of existence. This the intellect always ponders. 
 Nature shows all things formed and bound. The in 
 tellect pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects 
 intrinsic likeness between remote things, and reduces 
 all things into a few principles. 
 
 The making a fact the subject of thought, raises it. 
 All that mass of mental and moral phenomena which 
 we do not make objects of voluntary thought, come 
 within the power of fortune ; they constitute the cir 
 cumstance of daily life ; they are subject to change, 
 to fear, and hope. Every man beholds his human 
 condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship 
 
INTELLECT. 271 
 
 aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned 
 in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. 
 But a truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a 
 subject of destiny. We behold it as a god upraised 
 above care and fear. And so any fact in our life, or 
 any record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled 
 from the web of our unconsciousness, becomes an 
 object impersonal and immortal. It is the past re 
 stored, but embalmed. A better art than that of Egypt 
 has taken fear and corruption out of it. It is evisce 
 rated of care. It is offered for science. What is 
 addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten 
 us, but makes us intellectual beings. 
 
 The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every 
 step. The mind that grows could not predict the 
 times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God 
 enters by a private door into every individual. Long 
 prior to the age of reflection, is the thinking of the 
 mind. Out of darkness, it came insensibly into the 
 marvellous light of to-day. Over it always reigned a 
 firm law. In the period of infancy it accepted and 
 disposed of all impressions from the surrounding 
 creation after its own way. Whatever any mind doth 
 or saith, is after a law. It has no random act or 
 word. And this native law remains over it after it 
 has come to reflection or conscious thought. In the 
 most worn, pedantic, introverted, self-tormentor's life, 
 the greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, 
 unimaginable, and must be, until he can take himself 
 up by his own ears. What am I ? What has my 
 will done to make me that I am ? Nothing. I have 
 
272 ESSAY XI. 
 
 been floated into this thought, this hour, this connection 
 of events, by might and mind sublime, and my inge 
 nuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided 
 to an appreciable degree. 
 
 Our spontaneous action is always the best. You 
 cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come 
 so close to any question as your spontaneous glance 
 shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or 
 walk abroad in the morning after meditating the mat 
 ter before sleep, on the previous night. Always our 
 thinking is a pious reception. Our truth of thought 
 is therefore vitiated as much by too violent direction 
 given by our will, as by too great negligence. We 
 do not determine what we will think. We only open 
 our senses, clear away, as we can, all obstruction 
 from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We 
 have little control over our thoughts. We are the 
 prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments 
 into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take 
 no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, with 
 out an effort to make them our own. By-and-by we 
 fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have 
 been, what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as we 
 can, what we have beheld. As far as we can recall 
 these extasies, we carry away in the ineffaceable mem 
 ory, the result, and all men and all the ages confirm it. 
 It is called Truth. But the moment we cease to report, 
 and attempt to correct and contrive, it is not truth. 
 
 If we consider what persons have stimulated and 
 profited us, we shall perceive the superiority of the 
 spontaneous or intuitive principle over the arithmeti- 
 
INTELLECT. 273 
 
 cal or logical. The first always contains the second, 
 but virtual and latent. We want, in every man, a long 
 logic ; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must 
 not be spoken. Logic is the procession or propor 
 tionate unfolding of the intuition ; but its virtue is as 
 silent method ; the moment it would appear as propo 
 sitions, and have a separate value, it is worthless. 
 
 In every man's mind, some images, words, and 
 facts remain, without effort on his part to imprint 
 them, which others forget, and afterwards these illus 
 trate to him important laws. All our progress is an 
 unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an 
 instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the 
 plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to 
 the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain 
 to hurry it. By trusting it to the end, it shall ripen 
 into truth, and you shall know why you believe. 
 
 Each mind has its own method. A true man never 
 acquires after college rules. What you have aggre 
 gated in a natural manner, surprizes and delights 
 when it is produced. For we cannot oversee each 
 other's secret. And hence the differences between 
 men in natural endowment are insignificant in com 
 parison with their common wealth. Do you think the 
 porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experi 
 ences, no wonders for you? Every body knows as 
 much as the savant. The walls of rude minds are 
 scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They 
 shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscrip 
 tions. Every man, in the degree in which he has wit 
 and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning 
 12* 
 
274 ESSAY XI. 
 
 the modes of living and thinking of other men, and 
 especially of those classes whose minds have not been 
 subdued by the drill of school education. 
 
 This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy 
 mind, but becomes richer and more frequent in its 
 informations through all states of culture. At last 
 comes the era of reflection, when we not only observe, 
 but take pains to observe ; when we of set purpose, 
 sit down to consider an abstract truth ; when we keep 
 the mind's eye open, whilst we converse, whilst we 
 read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret law of 
 some class of facts. 
 
 What is the hardest task in the world ? To think. 
 I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye 
 an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and with 
 draw on this side and on that. I seem to know what 
 he meant, who said, No man can see God face to 
 face and live. For example, a man explores the 
 basis of civil government. Let him intend his 
 mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. 
 His best heed long time avails him nothing. Yet 
 thoughts are flitting before him. We all but appre 
 hend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say, I will 
 walk abroad, and the truth will take form and 
 clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot find it. 
 It seems as if we needed only the stillness and com 
 posed attitude of the library, to seize the thought. 
 But we come in, and are as far from it as at first. 
 Then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth ap 
 pears. A certain, wandering light appears, and is the 
 distinction, the principle we wanted. But the oracle 
 
INTELLECT. 275 
 
 comes, because we had previously laid siege to the 
 shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled 
 that law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire 
 the breath ; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls 
 out the blood, the law of undulation. So now you 
 must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear 
 your activity, and see what the great Soul showeth. 
 
 Our intellections are mainly prospective. The im 
 mortality of man is as legitimately preached from the 
 intellections as from the moral volitions. Every in 
 tellection is mainly prospective. Its present value is 
 its least. It is a little seed. Inspect what delights 
 you in Plutarch, in Shakspeare, in Cervantes. Each 
 truth that a writer acquires, is a lantern which he in 
 stantly turns full on what facts and thoughts lay 
 already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rub 
 bish which had littered his garret, become precious. 
 Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an 
 illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and 
 delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. 
 Men say, where did he get this ? and think there was 
 something divine in his life. But no ; they have 
 myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a 
 lamp to ransack their attics withal. 
 
 We are all wise. The difference between persons 
 is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academi 
 cal club, a person who always deferred to me, who, 
 seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experi 
 ences had somewhat superior ; whilst I saw that his 
 experiences were as good as mine. Give them to 
 me, and I would make the same use of them. He 
 
276 ESSAY XI. 
 
 held the old ; he holds the new ; I had the habit of 
 tacking together the old and the new, which he did 
 not use to exercise. This may hold in the great ex 
 amples. Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare, we 
 should not be conscious of any steep inferiority ; no : 
 but of a great equality, only that he possessed a 
 strange skill of using, of classifying his facts, which we 
 lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter incapacity to 
 produce anything like Hamlet and Othello, see the per 
 fect reception this wit, and immense knowledge of life, 
 and liquid eloquence find in us all. 
 
 If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, 
 or hoe corn, and then retire within doors, and shut 
 your eyes, and press them with your hand, you shall 
 still see apples hanging in the bright light, with boughs 
 and leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn- 
 flags, and this for five or six hours afterwards. There 
 lie the impressions on the retentive organ, though you 
 knew it not. So lies the whole series of natural im 
 ages with which your life has made you acquainted, 
 in your memory, though you know it not, and a thrill 
 of passion flashes light on their dark chamber, and 
 the active power seizes instantly the fit image, as the 
 word of its momentary thought. 
 
 It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our 
 history, we are sure, is quite tame. We have nothing 
 to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still 
 run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and 
 always we are fishing up some wonderful article out 
 of that pond ; until, by-and-by, we begin to suspect 
 that the biography of the one foolish person we know, 
 
INTELLECT. 277 
 
 is, in reality, nothing less "than the miniature para 
 phrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal 
 History. 
 
 In the intellect constructive, which we popularly 
 designate by the word Genius, we observe the same 
 balance of two elements, as in intellect receptive. 
 The constructive intellect produces thoughts, sen 
 tences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the gen 
 eration of the mind, the marriage of thought with 
 nature. To genius must always go two gifts, the 
 thought and the publication. The first is revelation, 
 always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence, 
 or incessant study can ever familiarize, but which 
 must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. 
 It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of 
 thought now, for the first time, bursting into the uni 
 verse, a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of gen 
 uine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the 
 time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and to dictate 
 to the unborn. It affects every thought of man, and 
 goes to fashion every institution. But to make it 
 available, it needs a vehicle or art by which it is con 
 veyed to men. To be communicable, it must become 
 picture or sensible object. We must learn the lan 
 guage of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die 
 with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to 
 the senses. The ray of light passes invisible through 
 space, and only when it falls on an object is it seen. 
 When the spiritual energy is directed on something 
 outward, then is it a thought. The relation between 
 it and you, first makes you, the value of you, apparent 
 
278 ESSAY XI. 
 
 # 
 
 to me. The rich, inventive genius of the painter 
 must be smothered and lost for want of the power of 
 drawing, and in our happy hours, we should be inex 
 haustible poets, if once we could break through the 
 silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some 
 access to primary truth, so all have some art or power 
 of communication in their head, but only in the artist 
 does it descend into the hand. There is an inequality 
 whose laws we do not yet know, between two men 
 and between two moments of the same man, in respect 
 to this faculty. In common hours, we have the same 
 facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit 
 for their portraits, they are not detached, but lie in a web. 
 The thought of genius is spontaneous ; but the power 
 of picture or expression, in the most enriched and 
 flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain 
 control over the spontaneous states, without which no 
 production is possible. It is a conversion of all na 
 ture into the rhetoric of thought, under the eye of 
 judgment, with a strenuous exercise of choice. And 
 yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontane 
 ous also. It does not flow from experience only or 
 mainly, but from a richer source. Not by any con 
 scious imitation of particular forms are the grand 
 strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing to 
 the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. Who is 
 the first drawing-master ? Without instruction we 
 know very well the ideal of the human form. A 
 child knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a pic 
 ture, if the attitude be natural, or grand, or mean, 
 though he has never received any instruction in draw- 
 
INTELLECT. 279 
 
 ing, or heard any conversation on the subject, nor can 
 himself draw with correctness a single feature. A 
 good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they 
 have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face 
 sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all conside 
 ration of the mechanical proportions of the features 
 and head. We may owe to dreams some light on 
 the fountain of this skill ; for, as soon as we let our 
 will go, and let the unconscious states ensue, see what 
 cunning draughtsmen we are ! We entertain our 
 selves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of 
 animals, of gardens, of woods, and of monsters, and 
 the mystic pencil wherewith we then draw, has no 
 awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or pov 
 erty ; it can design well, and group well ; its composi 
 tion is full of art, its colors are well laid on, and the 
 whole canvass which it paints, is life-like, and apt to 
 touch us with terror, with tenderness, with desire, and 
 with grief. Neither are the artist's copies from ex 
 perience, ever mere copies, but always touched and 
 softened by tints from this ideal domain. 
 
 The conditions essential to a constructive mind, do 
 not appear to be so often combined but that a good 
 sentence or verse remains fresh and memorable for a 
 long time. Yet when we write with ease, and come 
 out into the free air of thought, we seem to be assured 
 that nothing is easier than to continue this communi^ 
 cation at pleasure. Up, down, around, the kingdom 
 of thought has no enclosures, but the Muse makes us 
 free of her city. Well, the world has a million wri 
 ters. One would think, then, that good thought would 
 
280 ESSAY XI. 
 
 be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each 
 new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count 
 all our good books ; nay, I remember any beautiful 
 verse for twenty years. It is true that the discerning 
 intellect of the world is always greatly in advance of 
 the creative, so that always there are many compe 
 tent judges of the best book, and few writers of the 
 best books. But some of the conditions of intellectual 
 construction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is 
 a whole, and demands integrity in every work. This 
 is resisted equally by a man's devotion to a single 
 thought, and by his ambition to combine too many. 
 
 Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten 
 his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply 
 himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes 
 distorted and not itself, but falsehood ; herein resem 
 bling the air, which is our natural element, and the 
 breath of our nostrils, but if a stream of the same be 
 directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, 
 and even death. How wearisome the grammarian, 
 the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or 
 indeed any possessed mortal, whose balance is lost 
 by the exaggeration of a single topic. It is incipient 
 insanity. Every thought is a prison also. I cannot 
 see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong 
 wind and blown so far in one direction, that I am out 
 of the hoop of your horizon. 
 
 Is it any better, if the student, to avoid this offence, 
 and to liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical 
 whole, of history, or science, or philosophy, by a nu 
 merical addition of all the facts that fall within his 
 
INTELLECT. 281 
 
 vision ? The world refuses to be analyzed by addi 
 tion and subtraction. When we are young, we spend 
 much time and pains in filling our note-books with all 
 definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in 
 the hope that in the course of a few years, we shall 
 have condensed into our encyclopedia, the net value 
 of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. 
 But year after year our tables get no completeness, 
 and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, 
 whose arcs will never meet. 
 
 Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, is 
 the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, 
 but by a vigilance which brings the intellect in its 
 greatness and best state to operate every moment. 
 It must have the same wholeness which nature has. Al 
 though no diligence can rebuild the universe in a 
 model, by the best accumulation or disposition of de 
 tails, yet does the world reappear in miniature in 
 every event, so that all the laws of nature may be 
 read in the smallest fact. The intellect must have 
 the like perfection in its apprehension, and in its works. 
 For this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual 
 proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk 
 with accomplished persons who appear to be strangers 
 in nature. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are 
 not theirs, have nothing of them : the world is only 
 their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses 
 are to be spheral and complete, is one whom nature 
 cannot deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she 
 may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and de 
 tects more likeness than variety in all her changes. 
 
282 ESSAY XI. 
 
 We are stung by the desire for new thought, but when 
 we receive a new thought, it is only the old thought 
 with a new face, and though we make it our own, we 
 instantly crave another ; we are not really enriched. 
 For the truth was in us, before it was reflected to us 
 from natural objects ; and the profound genius will 
 cast the likeness of all creatures into every product 
 of his wit. 
 
 But if the constructive powers are rare, and it is 
 given to few men to be poets, yet every man is a re 
 ceiver of this descending holy ghost, and may well 
 study the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is the 
 whole rule of intellectual duty, to the rule of moral 
 duty. A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's, 
 is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, 
 and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, 
 so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented. 
 
 God offers to every mind its choice between truth 
 and repose. Take which you please, you can 
 never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, 
 man oscillates ever. He in whom the love of repose 
 predominates, will accept the first creed, the first 
 philosophy, the first political party he meets, most 
 likely, his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and 
 reputation ; but he shuts the door of truth. He in 
 whom the love of truth predominates, will keep him 
 self aloof from all moorings and afloat. He will ab 
 stain from dogmatism, and recognise all the opposite 
 negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. 
 He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and 
 imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as 
 
INTELLECT. 283 
 
 the other is not, and respects the highest law of his 
 being. 
 
 The circle of the green earth he must measure 
 with his shoes, to find the man who can yield him 
 truth. He shall then know that there is somewhat 
 more blessed and great in hearing than in speaking. 
 Happy is the hearing man : unhappy the speaking 
 man. As long as I hear truth, I am bathed by a 
 beautiful element, and am not conscious of any limits 
 to my nature. The suggestions are thousandfold that 
 I hear and see. The waters of the great deep have 
 ingress and egress to the soul. But if I speak, I de 
 fine, I confine, and am less. When Socrates speaks, 
 Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shame that 
 they do not speak. They also are good. He like 
 wise defers to them, loves them, whilst he speaks. 
 Because a true and natural man contains and is the 
 same truth which an eloquent man articulates : but in 
 the eloquent man, because he can articulate it, it 
 seems something the less to reside, and he turns to 
 these silent beautiful with the more inclination and 
 respect. The ancient sentence said, Let us be silent, 
 for so are the gods. Silence is a solvent that destroys 
 personality, and gives us leave to be great and uni 
 versal. Every man's progress is through a succes 
 sion of teachers, each of whom seems at the time to 
 have a superlative influence, but it at last gives place 
 to a new. Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, 
 Leave father, mother, house and lands, and follow me. 
 Who leaves all, receives more. This is as true intel 
 lectually, as morally. Each new mind we approach, 
 
284 ESSAY XI. 
 
 seems to require an abdication of all our past and 
 present possessions. A new doctrine seems, at first, 
 a subversion of all our opinions, tastes, and manner 
 of living. Sucb has Swedenborg, such has Kant, such 
 has Coleridge, such has Cousin seemed to many 
 young men in this country. Take thankfully and 
 heartily all they can give. Exhaust them, wrestle 
 with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, 
 and after a short season, the dismay will be overpast, 
 the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be 
 no longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright 
 star shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its 
 light with all your day. 
 
 But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that 
 which draws him, because that is his own, he is to 
 refuse himself to that which draws him not, whatso 
 ever fame and authority may attend it, because it is 
 not his own. Entire self-reliance belongs to the in 
 tellect. One soul is a counterpoise of all souls, as a 
 capillary column of water is a balance for the sea. 
 It must treat things, and books, and sovereign genius, 
 as itself also a sovereign. If ^Eschylus be that man 
 he is taken for, he has not yet done his office, when 
 he has educated the learned of Europe for a thousand 
 years. He is now to approve himself a master of 
 delight to me also. If he cannot do that, all his fame 
 shall avail him nothing with me. I were a fool not to 
 sacrifice a thousand ^Eschyluses to my intellectual 
 integrity. Especially take the same ground in regard 
 to abstract truth, the science of the mind. The Ba 
 con, the Spinoza, the Hume, Schelling, Kant, or who- 
 
INTELLECT. 285 
 
 soever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, is 
 only a more or less awkward translator of things in 
 your consciousness, which you have also your way of 
 seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say then, instead 
 of too timidly poring into his obscure sense, that he 
 has not succeeded in rendering back to you your con 
 sciousness. He has not succeeded ; now let another 
 try. If Plato cannot, perhaps Spinoza will. If 
 Spinoza cannot, then perhaps Kant. Any how, when at 
 last it is done, you will find it is no recondite, but a 
 simple, natural, common state, which the writer re 
 stores to you. 
 
 But" let us end these didactics. I will not, though 
 the subject might provoke it, speak to the open ques 
 tion between Truth and Love. I shall not presume 
 to interfere in the old politics of the skies ; " The 
 cherubim know most ; the seraphim love most." 
 The gods shall settle their own quarrels. But I can 
 not recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, 
 without remembering that lofty and sequestered class 
 of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the 
 high priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, 
 the expounders of the principles of thought from age 
 to age. When at long intervals, we turn over their 
 abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand 
 air of these few, these great spiritual lords, who have 
 walked in the world, these of the old religion, 
 dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of 
 Christianity look parvenues and popular ; for " persua 
 sion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect." This 
 band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, 
 
286 ESSAY XI. 
 
 '9 
 
 Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, 
 and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so 
 primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to 
 all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, 
 and to be at once poetry, and music, and dancing, 
 and astronomy, and mathematics. I am present at 
 the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geom 
 etry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of 
 nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought is 
 proved by its scope and applicability, for it commands 
 the entire schedule and inventory of things, for its 
 illustration. But what marks its elevation, and has 
 even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with 
 which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and 
 from age to age prattle to each other, and to no con 
 temporary. Well assured that their speech is intelli 
 gible, and the most natural thing in the world, they 
 add thesis to thesis, without a moment's heed of 
 the universal astonishment of the human race below, 
 who do not comprehend their plainest argument ; nor 
 do they ever relent so much as to insert a popular or 
 explaining sentence ; nor testify the least displeasure 
 or petulance at the dulness of their amazed auditory. 
 The angels are so enamored of the language that is 
 spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips 
 with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but 
 speak their own, whether there be any who understand 
 it or not. 
 
ART. 
 
ESSAY XII 
 ART. 
 
 BECAUSE the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats 
 itself, but in every act attempts the production of a 
 new and fairer whole. This appears in works both 
 of the useful and the fine arts, if we employ the popular 
 distinction of works according to their aim, either at 
 use or beauty. Thus in our fine arts, not imitation, 
 but creation is the aim. In landscapes, the painter 
 should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than 
 we know. The details, the prose of nature he should 
 omit, and give us only the spirit and splendor. He 
 should know that the landscape has beauty for his 
 eye, because it expresses a thought which is to him 
 good : and this, because the same power which sees 
 through his eyes, is seen in that spectacle ; and he 
 will come to value the expression of nature, and not 
 nature itself, and so exalt in his copy, the features 
 that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom, 
 13 
 
290 ESSAY XII. 
 
 and the sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait, he must 
 inscribe the character, and not the features, and must 
 esteem the man who sits to him as himself only an 
 imperfect picture or likeness of the aspiring original 
 within. 
 
 What is that abridgment and selection we observe 
 in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse ? 
 for it is the inlet of that higher illumination which 
 teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler symbols. 
 What is a man but nature's finer success in self-expli 
 cation ? What is a man but a finer and compacter 
 landscape, than the horizon figures ; nature's eclecti 
 cism ? and what is his speech, his love of painting, 
 love of nature, but a still finer success ? all the weary 
 miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the 
 spirit or moral of it contracted into a musical word, 
 or the most cunning stroke of the pencil ? 
 
 But the artist must employ the symbols in use in 
 his day and nation, to convey his enlarged sense to 
 his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is always 
 formed out of the old. The Genius of the Hour 
 always sets his ineffaceable seal on the work, and 
 gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagina 
 tion. As far as the spiritual character of the 
 period overpowers the artist, and finds expression in 
 his work, so far it will always retain a certain gran 
 deur, and will represent to future beholders the Un 
 known, the Inevitable, the Divine. No man can quite 
 exclude this element of Necessity from his labor. No 
 man can quite emancipate himself from his age and 
 country, or produce a model in which the education, 
 
ART. 291 
 
 the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times 
 shall have no share. Though he were never so ori 
 ginal, never so wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe 
 out of his work every trace of the thoughts amidst 
 which it grew. The very avoidance betrays the 
 usage he avoids. Above his will, and out of his sight, 
 he is necessitated, by the air he breathes, and the idea 
 on which he and his contemporaries live and toil, 
 to share the manner of his times, without knowing 
 what that manner is. Now that which is inevitable 
 in the work, has a higher charm than individual talent 
 can ever give, inasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel 
 seems to have been held and guided by a gigantic 
 hand to inscribe a line in the history of the human 
 race. This circumstance gives a value to the Egypt 
 ian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese, and Mexican 
 idols, however gross and shapeless. They denote the 
 height of the human soul in that hour, and were not 
 fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the 
 world. Shall I now add that the whole extant product 
 of the plastic arts has herein its highest value, as his 
 tory ; as a stroke drawn in the portrait of that fate, 
 perfect and beautiful, according to whose ordinations 
 all beings advance to their beatitude. 
 
 Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office 
 of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are 
 immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. 
 It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist and 
 lead the dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we 
 behold what is carved and painted, as students of the 
 mystery of Form. The virtue of art lies in detach- 
 
292 ESSAY xn. 
 
 f 
 
 ment, in sequestering one object from the embarrass 
 ing variety. Until one thing comes out from the 
 connection of things, there can be enjoyment, con 
 templation, but no thought. Our happiness and un- 
 happiness are unproductive. The infant lies in a 
 pleasing trance, but his individual character, and his 
 practical power depend on his daily progress in the 
 separation of things, and dealing with one at a time. 
 Love and all the passions concentrate all existence 
 around a single form. It is the habit of certain minds 
 to give an all-excluding fulness to the object, the thought, 
 the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the 
 time the deputy of the world. These are the artists, 
 the orators, the leaders of society. The power to 
 detach, and to magnify by detaching, is the essence 
 of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the poet. 
 This rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary emi- 
 nency of an object, so remarkable in Burke, in By 
 ron, in Carlyle, the painter and sculptor exhibit in 
 color and in stone. The power depends on the depth 
 of the artist's insight of that object he contemplates. 
 For every object has its roots in central nature, and 
 may of course be so exhibited to us as to represent 
 the world. Therefore, each work of genius is the 
 tyrant of the hour, and concentrates attention on 
 itself. For the time, it is the only thing worth naming, 
 to do that, be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a 
 statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a cam 
 paign, or of a voyage of discovery. Presently we 
 pass to some other object, which rounds itself into a 
 whole, as did the first ; for example, a well laid gar- 
 
ART. 
 
 den : and nothing seems worth doing but the laying 
 out of gardens. I should think fire the best thing in 
 the world, if 1 were not acquainted with air, and wa 
 ter, and earth. For it is the right and property of all 
 natural objects, of all genuine talents, of all native 
 properties whatsoever, to be for their moment the top 
 of the world. A squirrel leaping from bough to 
 bough, and making the wood but one wide tree for 
 his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion, is beau 
 tiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for na 
 ture. A good ballad draws my ear and heart whilst 
 I listen, as much as an epic has done before. A dog, 
 drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies, and 
 is a reality not less than the frescoes of Angelo. From 
 this succession of excellent objects, learn we at last 
 the immensity of the world, the opulence of human 
 nature, which can run out to infinitude in any direction. 
 But I also learn that what astonished and fascinated 
 me in the first work, astonished me in the second 
 work also, that excellence of all things is one. 
 
 The office of painting and sculpture seems to be 
 merely initial. The best pictures can easily tell us 
 their last secret. The best pictures are rude draughts 
 of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes 
 which make up the ever-changing " landscape with 
 figures " amidst which we dwell. Painting seems to 
 be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When 
 that has educated the frame to self-possession, to 
 nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master 
 are better forgotten ; so painting teaches me the 
 splendor of color and the expression of form, and, as 
 
294 ESSAY XII. 
 
 I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I 
 see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indiffer- 
 ency in which the artist stands free to choose out of 
 the possible forms. If he can draw every thing, why 
 draw any thing ? and then is my eye opened to the 
 eternal picture which nature paints in the street with 
 moving men and children, beggars, and fine ladies, 
 draped in red, and green, and blue, and gray ; long 
 haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, 
 giant, dwarf, expanded, elfish, capped and based 
 by heaven, earth, and sea. 
 
 A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the 
 same lesson. As picture teaches the coloring, so 
 sculpture the anatomy of form. When I have seen 
 fine statues, and afterwards enter a public assembly, 
 I understand well what he meant who said, " When 
 I have been reading Homer, all men look like giants." 
 I too see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics 
 of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities 
 of its function. There is no statue like this living 
 man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculp 
 ture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art 
 have I here ! No mannerist made these varied groups 
 and diverse original single figures. Here is the artist 
 himself improvising, grim and glad, at his block. 
 Now one thought strikes him, now another, and with 
 each moment he alters the whole air, attitude and 
 expression of his clay. Away with your nonsense of 
 oil and easels, of marble and chisels : except to open 
 your eyes to the witchcraft of eternal art, they are 
 hypocritical rubbish. 
 
ART. 295 
 
 The reference of all production at last to an Abo 
 riginal Power, explains the traits common to all works 
 of the highest art, that they are universally intelligi 
 ble ; that they restore to us the simplest states of 
 mind ; and are religious. Since what skill is therein 
 shown is the reappearance of the original soul, a jet 
 of pure light ; it should produce a similar impression 
 to that made by natural objects. In happy hours, 
 nature appears to us one with art ; art perfected, 
 the work of genius. And the individual in whom 
 simple tastes and susceptibility to all the great human 
 influences, overpowers the accidents of a local and 
 special culture, is the best critic of art. Though we 
 travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must 
 carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty 
 is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or 
 rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from 
 the work of art, of human character, a wonderful 
 expression through stone or canvass or musical sound 
 of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, 
 and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls 
 which have these attributes. In the sculptures of the 
 Greeks, in the masonry of the Romans, and in the 
 pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian masters, the 
 highest charm is the universal language they speak, 
 A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, 
 breathes from them all. That which we carry to them, 
 the same we bring back more fairly illustrated in the 
 memory. The traveller who visits the Vatican, and 
 passes from chamber to chamber through galleries of 
 statues, vases, sarcophagi, and candelabra, through all 
 
ESSAY XII. 
 
 ; & 
 
 forms of beauty, cut in the richest materials, is in dan 
 ger of forgetting the simplicity of the principles out of 
 which they all sprung, and that they had their origin 
 from thoughts and laws in his own breast. He studies 
 the technical rules on these wonderful remains, but for 
 gets that these works were not always thus constel 
 lated ; that they are the contributions of many ages, 
 and many countries ; that each came out of the soli 
 tary workshop of one artist, who toiled perhaps in 
 ignorance of the existence of other sculpture, created 
 his work without other model, save life, household 
 life, and the sweet and smart of personal relations, of 
 beating hearts, and meeting eyes, of poverty, and 
 necessity, and hope, and fear. These were his inspi 
 rations, and these are the effects he carries home to 
 your heart and mind. In proportion to his force, the 
 artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper 
 character. He must not be in any manner pinched 
 or hindered by his material, but through his necessity 
 of imparting himself, the adamant will be wax in his 
 hands, and will allow an adequate communication of 
 himself in his full stature and proportion. Not a 
 conventional nature and culture need he cumber him 
 self with, nor ask what is the mode in Rome or in 
 Paris, but that house, and weather, and manner of 
 living, which poverty and the fate of birth have made 
 at once so odious and so dear, in the gray, unpainted 
 wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, 
 or in the log hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow 
 lodging where he has endured the constraints and 
 seeming of a city poverty, will serve as well as 
 
ART. 297 
 
 any other condition, as the symbol of a thought which 
 pours itself indifferently through all. 
 
 I remember, when in my younger days, I had heard 
 of the wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great 
 pictures would be great strangers ; some surprising 
 combination of color and form ; a foreign wonder, 
 barbaric pearl and gold, like the spontoons and stand 
 ards of the militia, which play such pranks in the eyes 
 and imaginations of school-boys. I was to see and 
 acquire I knew not what. When I came at last to 
 Rome, and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that 
 genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and os 
 tentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple 
 and true ; that it was familiar and sincere ; that it 
 was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so many 
 forms ; unto which I lived ; that it was the plain you 
 and me I knew so well, had left at home in so 
 many conversations. I had the same experience 
 already in a church at Naples. There I saw that 
 nothing was changed with me but the place, and said 
 to myself, ' Thou foolish child, hast thou come 
 out hither, over four thousand miles of salt water, to 
 find that which was perfect to thee, there at home ? ' 
 that fact I saw again in the Academmia at Naples, 
 in the chambers of sculpture, and yet again when I 
 came to Rome, and to the paintings of Raphael, 
 Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. 
 " What old mole ! workest thou in the earth so fast? " 
 It had travelled by my side : that which I fancied I 
 had left in Boston, was here in the Vatican, and again 
 at Milan, and at Paris, and made all travelling ridicu- 
 
298 ESSAY XII. 
 
 lous as a treadmill. I now require this of all pictures, 
 that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. 
 Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing aston 
 ishes men so much as common sense and plain deal 
 ing. All great actions have been simple, and all 
 great pictures are. 
 
 The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent 
 example of this peculiar merit. A calm, benignant 
 beauty shines over all this picture, and goes directly 
 to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name. 
 The sweet and sublime face of Jesus is beyond praise, 
 yet how it disappoints all florid expectations ! This 
 familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance, is as if 
 one should meet a friend. The knowledge of picture- 
 dealers has its value, but listen not to their criticism 
 when your heart is touched by genius. It was not 
 painted for them, it was painted for you ; for such as 
 had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and 
 lofty emotions. 
 
 Yet when we have said all our fine things about 
 the arts, we must end with a frank confession, that 
 the arts, as we know them, are but initial. Our best 
 praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not 
 to the actual result. He has conceived meanly of 
 the resources of man, who believes that the best age 
 of production is past. The real value of the Iliad, 
 or the Transfiguration, is as signs of power ; billows 
 or ripples they are of the great stream of tendency ; 
 tokens of the everlasting effort to produce, which 
 even in its worst estate, the soul betrays. Art has 
 not yet come to its maturity, if it do not put itself 
 
ART. 299 
 
 abreast with the most potent influences of the world, 
 if it is not practical and moral, if it do not stand in 
 connection with the conscience, if it do not make the 
 poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with 
 a voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for 
 Art than the arts. They are abortive births of an 
 imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is the need to cre 
 ate ; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is 
 impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of 
 making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures 
 and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of 
 man and nature is its end. A man should find in it 
 an outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and 
 carve only as long as he can do that. Art should 
 exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance 
 on every side, awakening in the beholder the same 
 sense of universal relation and power which the work 
 evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make 
 new artists. 
 
 Already History is old enough to witness the old 
 age and disappearance of particular arts. The art of 
 sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect. It 
 was originally an useful art, a mode of writing, a 
 savage's record of gratitude or devotion, and among 
 a people possessed of a wonderful perception of form, 
 this childish carving was refined to the utmost splen 
 dor of effect. But it is the game of a rude and youth 
 ful people, and not the manly labor of a wise and 
 spiritual nation. Under an oak tree loaded with 
 leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, I 
 stand in a thoroughfare ; but in the works of our 
 
300 ESSAY XII. 
 
 plastic arts, and especially of sculpture, creation is 
 driven into a corner. I cannot hide from myself that 
 there is a certain appearance of paltriness, as of toys, 
 and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. Nature 
 transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret 
 we do not yet find. But the gallery stands at the 
 mercy of our moods, and there is a moment when it 
 becomes frivolous. I do not wonder that Newton, 
 with an attention habitually engaged on the path of 
 planets and suns, should have wondered what the Earl 
 of Pembroke found to admire in " stone dolls." 
 Sculpture may serve to teach the pupil how deep is 
 the secret of form, how purely the spirit can translate 
 its meanings into that eloquent dialect. But the statue 
 will look cold and false before that new activity which 
 needs to roll through all things, and is impatient of 
 counterfeits, and things not alive. Picture and sculp 
 ture are the celebrations and festivities of form. But 
 true art is never fixed, but always flowing. The 
 sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human 
 voice when it speaks from its instant life, tones of ten 
 derness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has already 
 lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the 
 earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these. 
 All works of art should not be detached, but extem 
 pore performances. A great man is a new statue in 
 every attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a 
 picture which drives all beholders nobly mad. Life 
 may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a ro 
 mance. 
 
 A true announcement of the law of creation, if a 
 

 ART. 301 
 
 man were found worthy to declare it, would carry 
 art up into the kingdom of nature, and destroy its 
 separate and contrasted existence. The fountains of 
 invention and beauty in modern society are all but 
 dried up. A popular novel, a theatre, or a ball-room 
 makes us feel that we are all paupers in the alms- 
 house of this world, without dignity, without skill, or 
 industry. Art is as poor and low. The old tragic 
 Necessity, which lowers on the brows even of the 
 Venuses and the Cupids of the antique, and furnishes 
 the sole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous 
 figures into nature, namely, that they were inev 
 itable ; that the artist was drank with a passion for form 
 which he could not resist, and which vented itself in these 
 fine extravagancies, no longer dignifies the chisel or 
 the pencil. But the artist, and the connoisseur, now seek 
 in art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from 
 the evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the fig 
 ure they make in their own imagination, and they flee 
 to art, and convey their better sense in an oratorio, a 
 statue, or a picture. Art makes the same effort 
 which a sensual prosperity makes, namely, to detach 
 the beautiful from the useful, to do up the work as 
 unavoidable, and hating it, pass on to enjoyment. 
 These solaces and compensations, this division of 
 beauty from use, the laws of nature do not permit. 
 As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and 
 love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High 
 beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvass or in 
 stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction ; an effemi 
 nate prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all 
 
ESSAY XII. 
 
 that can be formed ; for the hand can never execute 
 any thing higher than the character can inspire. 
 
 The art that thus separates, is itself first separated. 
 Art must not be a superficial talent, but must begin 
 farther back in man. Now men do not see nature to 
 be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall 
 be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and incon 
 vertible, and console themselves with color-bags, and 
 blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and 
 create a death which they call poetic. They despatch 
 the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. 
 They eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute 
 the ideal. Thus is art vilified ; the name conveys 
 to the mind its secondary and bad senses ; it stands 
 in the imagination, as somewhat contrary to nature, 
 and struck with death from the first. Would it not 
 be better to begin higher up, to serve the ideal be 
 fore they eat and drink ; to serve the ideal in eating 
 and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the func 
 tions of life ? Beauty must come back to the useful 
 arts, and the distinction between the fine and the use 
 ful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if 
 life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or 
 possible to distinguish the one from the other. In na 
 ture, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore 
 beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive ; 
 it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and 
 fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legisla 
 ture, nor will it repeat in England or America, its his 
 tory in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, 
 and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest 
 
ART. 303 
 
 men. It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate 
 its miracles in the old arts ; it is its instinct to find 
 beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in 
 the field and roadside, in the shop and mill. Pro 
 ceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a 
 divine use, the railroad, the insurance office, the 
 joint stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, 
 our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, 
 the prism, and the chemist's retort, in which we seek 
 now only an economical use. Is not the selfish, and 
 even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechan 
 ical works, to mills, railways, and machinery, the 
 effect of the mercenary impulses which these works 
 obey ? When its errands are noble and adequate, a 
 steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New 
 England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality 
 of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with 
 nature. The boat at St. Petersburgh, which plies 
 along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it 
 sublime. When science is learned in love, and its 
 powers are wielded by love, they will appear the 
 supplements and continuations of the material crea 
 tion. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Mf/ 
 Wo