DNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 <Cmcnjom 
 
 In doing homage to that sweet nature, we do it to the highest type 
 of our common humanity. Emerson was a splendid manifestation 
 of reason in its most comprehensive form, and -with all its most 
 godlike aspirations. JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 WORKS. Riverside Edition. With two Portraits. In eleven 
 
 volumes. 
 
 This new library edition of the works of Mr. Emerson includes two 
 new volumes of essays, lectures, and speeches. The order of the vol- 
 umes is as follows : 
 
 1. NATURE, ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES. 
 
 [This book has heretofore borne the name " Miscellanies."] 
 
 2. ESSAYS. First Series. 
 
 3. ESSAYS. Second Series. 
 
 4. REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 5. ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 6. THE CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 7. SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 
 
 8. LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS. 
 
 9. POEMS. 
 
 10. LECTURES AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. A New Volume, 
 n. MISCELLANIES. A New Volume. 
 
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 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BOSTON.
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 1860. 
 BY R. W. EMERSON. 
 
 Copyright, 1888. 
 BY EDWARD W. EMERSON. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, MOM., V. S. A. 
 Printed by II. O. Houghton & Company.
 
 Al 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 FATE 
 
 PACK 
 
 7 
 
 II. 
 
 POWER 
 
 45 
 
 III. 
 
 WEALTH 
 
 . 69 
 
 IV. 
 
 CULTUEE 
 
 103 
 
 V. 
 
 BEHAVIOR .... 
 
 . 133 
 
 VI. 
 
 WORSHIP 
 
 157 
 
 VII. 
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 
 
 . 191 
 
 VIII. 
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 219 
 
 IX. 
 
 ILLUSIONS .... 
 
 . 241
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE.
 
 1. 
 
 FATE. 
 
 DELICATE omens traced in air 
 To the lone bard true witness bare; 
 Birds with auguries on their wings 
 Chanted undeceiving things 
 Him to beckon, him to warn; 
 Well might then the poet scorn 
 To learn of scribe or courier 
 Hints writ in vaster character ; 
 And on his mind, at dawn of day, 
 Soft shadows of the evening lay. 
 For the prevision is allied 
 Unto the thing so signified; 
 Or say, the foresight that awaits 
 Is the same Genius that creates.
 
 FATE. 
 
 IT chanced during one winter, a few years ago, that our 
 cities were bent on discussing the theory of the Age. By 
 an odd coincidence, four or five noted men were each 
 reading a discourse to the citizens of Boston or New 
 York, on the Spirit of the Times. It so happened that 
 the subject had the same prominence in some remarkable 
 pamphlets and journals issued in London in the same 
 season. To me, however, the question of the times re- 
 solved itself into a practical question of the conduct of 
 life. How shall I live ? We are incompetent to solve 
 the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits 
 of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and recon- 
 cile their opposition. We can only obey our own polar- 
 ity. 'T is fine for us to speculate and elect our course, 
 if we must accept an irresistible dictation. 
 
 In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon 
 immovable limitations. We are fired with the hope to 
 reform men. After many experiments, we find that we 
 must begin earlier, at school. But the boys and girls 
 are not docile ; we can make nothing of them. We de- 
 cide that they are not of good stock. We must- begin 
 our reform earlier still, at generation : that is to say, 
 there is Fate, or laws of the' world. 
 1*
 
 10 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 But if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation 
 understands itself. If we must accept Pate, we are not 
 less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the 
 individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. 
 This is true, and that other is true. But our geometry 
 cannot span these extreme points, and reconcile them. 
 What to do? By obeying each thought frankly, by 
 harping, or, if you will, pounding on each string, we 
 learn at last its power. By the same obedience to 
 other thoughts, we learn theirs, and -then comes some 
 reasonable hope of harmonizing them. We are sure, 
 that, though we know not how, necessity does comport 
 with liberty, the individual with the world, my polar- 
 ity with the spirit of the times. The riddle of the age 
 has for each a private solution. If one would study 
 his own time, it must be by this method of taking up 
 in turn each of the leading topics which belong to our 
 scheme of human life, and, by firmly stating all that is 
 agreeable to experience on one, and doing the same 
 justice to the opposing facts in the others, the true lim- 
 itations will appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one 
 part, would be corrected, and a just balance would be 
 made. 
 
 But let us honestly state the facts. Our America has 
 a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great na- 
 tions, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers 
 of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face 
 it. The Spartan, embodying his religion in his country, 
 dies before its majesty without a question. The Turk, 
 who believes his doom is written on the iron leaf in the 
 moment when he entered the world, rushes on the en-
 
 FATE. 11 
 
 emy's sabre with undivided will. The Turk, the Arab, 
 the Persian, accepts the foreordained fate. 
 
 " On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave, 
 
 The appointed, and the unappointed day ; 
 On the first, neither balm nor physician can save, 
 Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay." 
 
 The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our Calvin- 
 ists, in the last generation, had something of the same 
 dignity. They felt that the weight of the Universe held 
 them down to their place. What could they do ? Wise 
 men feel that there is something which cannot be talked 
 or voted away, a strap or belt which girds the world. 
 
 " The Destiny, minister general, 
 That executeth in the world o'er all, 
 The purveyance which God hath seen beforne, 
 So strong it is, that though the world had sworn 
 The contrary of a thing by yea or nay, 
 Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day 
 That falleth not oft in a thousand year ; 
 For, certainly, our appetites here, 
 Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, 
 All this is ruled by the sight above." 
 
 CfliUCER : The Knlghte's Tale. 
 
 The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense : 
 "Whatever is fated, that will take place. The great 
 immense mind of Jove is not to be transgressed." 
 
 Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. 
 The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to 
 village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.
 
 12 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 And, now and then, an amiable parson, like Jung Stil- 
 ling, or Robert Huntington, believes in a pistareen- 
 Providence, which, whenever the good man wants a 
 dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at his door, 
 and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no sentimentalist, 
 does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the 
 world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a 
 man or a woman ; but swallows your ship like a grain of 
 dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your 
 blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. 
 The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, 
 respect no persons. The way of Providence is a little 
 rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the 
 tiger, and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle 
 of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda, 
 these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. 
 You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the 
 slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of 
 miles, there is complicity, expensive races, race 
 living at the expense of race. The planet is liable to 
 shocks from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings 
 from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, pre- 
 cessions of equinoxes. Pavers dry up by opening of the 
 forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns and counties 
 fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake killed men like 
 flies. At Naples, three years ago, ten thousand persons 
 were crushed in a few minutes. The scurvy at sea ; the 
 sword of the climate in the west of Africa, at Cayenne, at 
 Panama, at New Orleans, cut off men like a massacre. 
 Our Western prairie shakes with fever and ague. The 
 cholera, the small-pox, have proved as mortal to some
 
 FATE. 13 
 
 tribes, as a frost to the crickets, which, having filled the 
 summer with noise, are silenced by a fall of the tempera- 
 ture of one night. Without uncovering what does not 
 concern us, or counting how many species of parasites 
 hang on a bombyx ; or groping after intestinal parasites, 
 or infusory biters, or the obscurities of alternate genera- 
 tion ; the forms of the shark, the labrus, the jaw of 
 the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons of 
 the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea, are 
 hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature. Let us not 
 deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, 
 incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to 
 whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress 
 up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white 
 neckcloth of a student in divinity. 
 
 Will you say, the disasters which threaten mankind 
 are exceptional, and one need not lay his account for 
 cataclysms every day ? Ay, but what happens once may 
 happen again, and so long as these strokes are not to be 
 parried by us, they must be feared. 
 
 But these shocks and ruins are less destructive to us, 
 than the stealthy power of other laws which act on us 
 daily. An expense of ends to means is fate ; organi- 
 zation tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or 
 forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate : the 
 bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyran- 
 nically its limits. So is the scale of races, of tempera- 
 ments ; so is sex ; so is climate ; so is the reaction of 
 talents imprisoning the vital power in certain directions. 
 Every spirit makes its house ; but afterwards the house 
 confines the spirit.
 
 14 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 The gross lines are legible to the dull : the cabman is 
 phrenologist so far : he looks in your face to see if his 
 shilling is sure. A dome of brow denotes one thing ; a 
 pot-belly another; a squint, a pug-nose, mats of hair, 
 the pigment of the epidermis, betray character. People 
 seem sheathed in their tough organization. Ask Spurz- 
 heim, ask the doctors, ask Quetelet, if temperaments 
 decide nothing ? or if there be anything they do not 
 decide ? Read the description in medical books of the 
 four temperaments, and you will think you are reading 
 your own thoughts which you had not yet told. Find 
 the part which black eyes, and which blue eyes, play 
 severally in the company. How shall a man escape from 
 his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop 
 which he drew from his father's or his mother's life ? It 
 often appears in a family, as if all the qualities of the 
 progenitors were potted in several jars, some ruling 
 quality in each son or daughter of the house, and 
 sometimes the unmixed temperament, the rank unmiti- 
 gated elixir, the family vice, is drawn off in a separate 
 individual, and the others are proportionally relieved. 
 We sometimes see a change of expression in our com- 
 panion, and say, his father, or his mother, comes to the 
 windows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote relative. 
 In different hours, a man represents each of several of 
 his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled 
 up in each man's skin, seven or eight ancestors at least, 
 and they constitute the variety of notes for that new 
 piece of music which his life is. At the corner of the 
 street, you read the possibility of each passenger, in 
 the facial angle, in the complexion, in the depth of his
 
 FATE. 15 
 
 eye. His parentage determines it. Men are what their 
 mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which 
 weaves huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as 
 expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery 
 from that jobber. Ask the digger in the ditch to explain 
 Newton's laws ; the fine organs of his brain have been 
 pinched by overwork and squalid poverty from father to 
 son, for a hundred years. When each comes forth from 
 his mother's womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him. 
 Let him value his hands and feet, he has but one pair. 
 So he has but one future", and that is already predeter- 
 mined in his lobes, and described in that little fatty face, 
 pig-eye, and squat form. All the privilege and all the 
 legislation of the world cannot meddle or help to make a 
 poet or a prince of him. 
 
 Jesus said, "When he looketh on her, he hath com- 
 mitted adultery." But he is an adulterer before he has 
 yet looked on the woman, by the superfluity of animal, 
 and the defect of thought in his constitution. Who 
 meets him, or who meets her, in the street, sees that they 
 are ripe to be each other's victim. 
 
 In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital 
 force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so 
 much weaker. The more of these drones perish, the 
 better for the hive. If, later, they give birth to some 
 superior individual, with force enough to add to this ani- 
 mal a new aim, and a complete apparatus to work it out, 
 all the ancestors are gladly forgotten. Most men and 
 most women are merely one couple more. Now and 
 then, one has a new cell or camarilla opened in his brain, 
 an architectural, a musical, or a philological knack,
 
 16 CONDUCT OF LJFE. 
 
 some stray taste or talent for flowers, or chemistry, or 
 pigments, or story-telling, a good hand for drawing, a 
 good foot for dancing, an athletic frame for wide jour- 
 neying, etc., which skill nowise alters rank in the scale 
 of nature, but serves to pass the time, the life of sensa- 
 tion going on as before. At last, these hints and tenden- 
 cies are fixed in one, or in a succession. Each absorbs 
 so much food and force as to become itself a new centre. 
 The new talent draws off so rapidly the vital force, that 
 not enough remains for the animal functions, hardly 
 enough for health ; so that, in the second generation, if 
 the like genius appear, the health is visibly deteriorated, 
 and the generative force impaired. 
 
 People are born with the moral or with the material 
 bias ; uterine brol hers with this diverging destination : 
 and I suppose, with high magnifiers, Mr. Frauenhofer 
 or Dr. Carpenter might come to distinguish in the em- 
 bryo at the fourth day, this is a Whig, and that a Free- 
 Soiler. 
 
 It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of Fate, 
 to reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, which led 
 the Hindoos to say, " Fate is nothing but the deeds com- 
 mitted in a prior state of existence." I find the coin- 
 cidence of the extremes of Eastern and Western specu- 
 lation in the daring statement of Schelliug, " There is in 
 every man a certain feeling, that he has been what he 
 is from all eternity, and by no means became such in 
 time." To say it less sublimely, in the history of 
 the individual is always an account of his condition, 
 and he knows himself to be a party to his present es- 
 tate.
 
 FATE. 17 
 
 A good deal of our politics is physiological. Now and 
 then, a man of wealth in the heyday of youth adopts the 
 tenet of broadest freedom. In England, there is always 
 some man of wealth and large connection planting him- 
 self, during all his years of health, on the side of prog- 
 ress, who, as soon as he begins to die, checks his for- 
 ward play, calls in his troops, and becomes conservative. 
 All conservatives are such from personal defects. They 
 have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt 
 and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can 
 only, like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong 
 natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, Napo- 
 leons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are in- 
 evitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their defects 
 and gout, palsy and money, warp them. 
 
 The strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities and 
 nations, in the healthiest and strongest. Probably, the 
 election goes by avoirdupois weight, and, if you could 
 weigh bodily the tonnage of any hundred of the Whig 
 and the Democratic party in a town on the Dearborn 
 balance, as they passed the hayscales, you could predict 
 with certainty which party would carry it. On the 
 whole, it would be rather the speediest way of deciding 
 the vote, to put the selectmen or the mayor and alder- 
 men at the hayscales. 
 
 In science, we have to consider two things : power and 
 circumstance. All we know of the egg, from each suc- 
 cessive discovery, is, another vesicle ; and if, after five 
 hundred years, you get a better observer, or a better 
 glass, he finds within the last observed another. In vege- 
 table and animal tissue, it is just alike, and all that the 
 
 B
 
 18 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 primary power or spasm operates, is, still, vesicles, vesi- 
 cles. Yes, but the tyrannical Circumstance ! A vesi- 
 cle in new circumstances, a vesicle lodged in darkness, 
 Oken thought, became animal; in light, a plant. Lodged 
 in the parent animal, it suffers changes, which end in 
 unsheathing miraculous capability in the unaltered vesi- 
 cle, and it unlocks itself to fish, bird, or quadruped, head 
 and foot, eye and claw. The Circumstance is Nature. 
 Nature is what you may do. There is much you may 
 not. We have two things, the circumstance and the 
 life. Once we thought, positive power was all. Now 
 we learn that negative power, or circumstance, is half. 
 Nature is the tyrannous circumstance, the thick skull, 
 the sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock-like jaw ; neces- 
 sitated activity; violent direction; the conditions of a 
 tool, like the locomotive, strong enough on its track, but 
 which can do nothing but mischief off of it ; or skates, 
 which are wings on the ice, but fetters on the ground. 
 
 The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She turns 
 the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf, never re-turning 
 one. One leaf she lays down, a floor of granite; then a 
 thousand ages, and a bed of slate ; a thousand ages, and 
 a measure of coal ; a thousand ages, and a layer of marl 
 and mud : vegetable forms appear : her first misshapen 
 animals, zoophyte, trilobium, fish ; then, saurians, 
 rude forms, in which she has only blocked her future 
 statue, concealing under these unwieldy monsters the fine 
 type of her coming king. The face of the planet cools 
 and dries, the races meliorate, and man is born. But 
 when a race has lived its term, it comes no more
 
 FATE. 19 
 
 The population of the world is a conditional popula- 
 tion ; not the best, but the best that could live now ; and 
 the scale of tribes, and the steadiness with which victory 
 adheres to one tribe, and defeat to another, is as uniform 
 as the superposition of strata. We know in history 
 what weight belongs to race. We see the English, 
 Trench, and Germans planting themselves on every shore 
 and market of America and Australia, and monopolizing 
 the commerce of these countries. We like the nervous 
 and victorious habit of our own branch of the family. 
 We follow the step of the Jew, of the Indian, of the 
 Negro. We see how much will has been expended to 
 extinguish the Jew, in vain. Look at the unpalatable 
 conclusions of Knox, in his " Fragment of Races," a 
 rash and unsatisfactory writer, but charged with pungent 
 and unforgetable truths. "Nature respects race, and 
 not hybrids." " Every race has its own habitat" " De- 
 tach a colony from the race, and it deteriorates to 
 the crab." See the shades of the picture. The Ger- 
 man and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a great 
 deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried over 
 the Atlantic, and carted over America, to ditch and to 
 drudge, to make corn cheap, and then to lie down 
 prematurely to make a spot of green grass on the 
 prairie. 
 
 One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is, the 
 new science of Statistics. It is a rule, that the most 
 casual and extraordinary events if the basis of popula- 
 tion is broad enough become matter of fixed calcula- 
 tion. It would not be safe to say when a captain like 
 Bonaparte, a singer like Jenny Lind, or a navigator like
 
 20 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Bowditch, would be born in Boston : but, on a popula- 
 tion of twenty or two hundred millions, something like 
 accuracy may be had.* 
 
 'T is frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular 
 inventions. They have all been invented over and over 
 fifty times. Man is the arch machine, of which all these 
 shifts drawn from himself are toy models. He helps 
 himself on each emergency by copying or duplicating his 
 own structure, just so far as the need is. 'T is hard to 
 find the right Homer, Zoroaster, or Menu ; harder still 
 to find the Tubal Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or Coper- 
 nicus, or Fust, or Fulton, the indisputable inventor. 
 There are scores and centuries of them. "The air is 
 full of men." This kind of talent so abounds, this con- 
 structive tool-making efficiency, as if it adhered to the 
 chemic atoms, as if the air lie breathes were made of 
 Vaucansons, Franklins, and Watts. 
 
 Doubtless, in every million there will be an astronomer, 
 a mathematician, a comic poet, a mystic. No one can 
 read the history of astronomy, without perceiving that 
 Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new 
 kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, 
 Empedocles, Aristarchus, Pythagoras, (Enipodes, had an- 
 ticipated them : each had the same tense geometrical brain, 
 apt for the same vigorous computation and logic, a mind 
 
 * " Everything which pertains to the human species, consid- 
 ered as a whole, belongs to the order of physical facts. The 
 greater the number of individuals, the more does the influence 
 of the individual will disappear, leaving predominance to a series 
 of general facts dependent on causes by which society exists, and 
 \s preserved." QUETELF.T.
 
 FATE. 21 
 
 parallel to the movement of the world. The Roman 
 mile probably rested on a measure of a degree of the me- 
 ridian. Mahometan and Chinese know what we know 
 of leap-year, of the Gregorian calendar, and of the preces- 
 sion of the equinoxes. As, in every barrel of cowries, 
 brought to New Bedford, there shall be one orangia, so 
 there will, in a dozen millions of Malays and Mahome- 
 tans, be one or two astronomical skulls. In a large city, 
 the most casual things, and things whose beauty lies IL 
 their casualty, are produced as punctually and to order 
 as the baker's muffin for breakfast. Punch makes ex- 
 actly one capital joke a week ; and the journals contrive 
 to furnish one good piece of news every day. 
 
 And not less work the laws of repression, the penalties 
 of violated functions. Famine, typhus, frost, war, sui- 
 cide, and effete races must be reckoned calculable parts 
 of the system of the world. 
 
 These are pebbles from the mountain, hints of the terms 
 by which our life is walled up, and which show a kind of 
 mechanical exactness, as of a loom or mill, in what we call 
 casual or fortuitous events. 
 
 The force with which we resist these torrents of ten- 
 dency looks so ridiculously inadequate, that it amounts 
 to little more than a criticism or a protest made by a mi- 
 nority of one, under compulsion of millions. I seemed, 
 in the height of a tempest, to see men overboard strug- 
 gling in the waves, and driven about here and there. 
 They glanced intelligently at each other, but 't was little 
 they could do for one another ; 't was much if each could 
 keep afloat alone. Well, they had a right to their eye- 
 beams, and all the rest was Fate.
 
 22 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping-out in 
 our planted gardens of the core of the world. No pic- 
 ture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the 
 odious facts. A man's power is hooped in by a necessity 
 which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, 
 until he learns its arc. 
 
 The element running through entire nature, which we 
 popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. What- 
 ever limits us, we call Fate. If we are brute and bar- 
 barous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. As 
 we refine, our cheeks become finer. If we rise to spirit- 
 ual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form. In 
 the Hindoo fables, Vishnu follows Maya through all her 
 ascending changes, from insect and craw-fish up to ele- 
 phant ; whatever form she took, he took the male form of 
 that kind, until she became at last woman and goddess, 
 and he a man and a god. The limitations refine as the 
 soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched 
 at the top. 
 
 When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable to 
 bind the Fenris Wolf with steel or with weight of moun- 
 tains, the one he snapped and the other he spurned 
 with his heel, they put round his foot a limp band 
 softer than silk or cobweb, and this held him : the more 
 he spurned it, the stiffer it drew. So soft and so stanch 
 is the ring of Fate. Neither brandy, nor nectar, nor 
 sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor 
 genius, can get rid of this limp band. For if we give it 
 the high sense in which the poets use it, even thought 
 itself is not above Fate : that too must act according to 
 eternal laws, and all that is wilful and fantastic in it is in 
 o;n>osi'ioi) *o its rnndnni"n*nl rss-nre
 
 FATE. 23 
 
 And last of all, high over thought, in the world of mor- 
 als, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting 
 the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking 
 soon or late, when justice is not done. What is useful 
 will last ; what is hurtful will sink. " The doer must suf- 
 fer," said the Greeks : " you would soothe a Deity not to 
 be soothed." " God himself cannot procure good for the 
 wicked," said the Welsh triad. " God may consent, hut 
 only for a time," said the bard of Spain. The limitation 
 is impassable by any insight of man. In its last and lofti- 
 est ascensions, insight itself, and the freedom of the will, 
 is one of its obedient members. But we must not run into 
 generalizations too large, but show the natural bounds or 
 essential distinctions, and seek to do justice to the other 
 elements as well. 
 
 Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and morals, in 
 race, in retardations of strata, and in thought and charac- 
 ter as well. It is everywhere bound or limitation. But 
 Fate has its lord ; limitation its limits ; is different seen 
 from above and from below ; from within and from with- 
 out. For, though fate is immense, so is power, which 
 is the other fact in the dual world, immense. If Fate 
 follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes 
 Fate. We must respect Fate as natural history, but 
 there is more than natural history. For who and what 
 is this criticism that pries into the matter ? Man is not 
 order of nature, sack and sack, belly and members, link 
 in a chain, nor any ignominious baggage, but a stupen- 
 dous antagonism, a dragging together of the poles of the 
 Universe. He betrays his relation to what is below him,
 
 24 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 thick-skulled, small-brained, fishy, quadrumanous, 
 quadruped ill-disguised, hardly escaped into biped, and 
 has paid for the new powers by loss of some of the old 
 ones. But the lightning which explodes and fashions 
 planets, maker of planet and suns, is in him. On one 
 side, elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, 
 peat-bog, forest, sea and shore ; and, on the other part, 
 thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes na- 
 ture, here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind 
 and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding 
 peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man. 
 
 Nor can he blink the free-will. To hazard the contra- 
 diction, freedom is necessary. If you please to plant 
 yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Pate is all ; then 
 we say, a pail of Fate is the freedom of man. Forever 
 wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. 
 Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free. 
 And though nothing is more disgusting than the crowing 
 about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant 
 mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a 
 " Declaration of Independence," or the statute right to 
 vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act, 
 yet it is wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the 
 other way : the practical view is the other. His sound 
 relation to these facts is to use and command, not to 
 cringe to them. " Look not on Nature, for her name is 
 fatal," said the oracle. The too much contemplation of 
 these limits induces meanness. They who talk much of 
 destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous 
 plane, and invite the evils they frar. 
 
 1 cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud belie v-
 
 FATE. 25 
 
 ers in Destiny. They conspire with it ; a loving resigna- 
 tion is with the event. But the dogma makes a different 
 impression, when it is held by the weak and lazy. 'T is 
 weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. 
 The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the 
 loftiness of nature. Rude and invincible except by them- 
 selves are the elements. So let man be. Let him empty 
 his breast of his windy conceits, and show his lordship by 
 manners and deeds on the scale of nature. Let him hold 
 his purpose as with the tug of gravitation. No power, 
 no persuasion, no bribe, shall make him give up his point. 
 A. man ought to compare advantageously with a river, an 
 oak, or a mountain. He shall have not less the flow, the 
 expansion, and the resistance of these. 
 
 'T is the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. Go 
 face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, 
 or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the 
 way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the cherubim 
 of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe 
 it, at least, for your good. 
 
 For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and 
 can confront fate with fate. If the Universe have these 
 savage accidents, our atoms are as savage in resistance. 
 We should be crushed by the atmosphere, but for the 
 reaction of the air within the body. A tube made of a 
 film of glass can resist the shock of the ocean, if filled 
 with the same water. If there be omnipotence in the 
 stroke, there is omnipotence of recoil. 
 
 1. But Fate against Fate is only parrying and defence: 
 there are, also, the noble creative forces. The revelation 
 of Thought takes man out of servitude into freedom. We
 
 26 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 rightly say of ourselves, we were born, and afterward we 
 were born again, and many times. We have successive 
 experiences so important, that the new forgets the old, 
 and hence the mythology of the seven or the nine heav- 
 ens. The day of days, the great day of the feast of life, 
 is that in which the inward eye opens to the Unity in 
 things, to the omnipresence of law ; sees that what is 
 must be, and ought to be, or is the best. This beatitude 
 dips from on high down on us, and we see. It is not in 
 us so much as we are in it. If the air come to our lungs, 
 we breathe and live ; if not, we die. If the light come 
 to our eyes, we see ; else not. And if truth come to our 
 mind, we suddenly expand to its dimensions, as if we grew 
 to worlds. We are as lawgivers ; we speak for Nature ; 
 we prophesy and divine. 
 
 This insight throws us on the party and interest of the 
 Universe, against all and sundry ; against ourselves, as 
 much as others. A man speaking from insight affirms of 
 himself what is true of the mind : seeing its immortality, 
 he says, I am immortal ; seeing its invincibility, he says, 
 I am strong. It is not in us, but we are in it. It is of 
 the maker, not of what is made. All things are touched 
 and changed by it. This uses, and is not used. It dis- 
 tances those who share it, from those who share it not. 
 Those who share it not are flocks and herds. It dates 
 from itself; not from former men or better men, 
 gospel, or constitution, or college, or custom. Where it 
 shines, Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things make 
 a musical or pictorial impression. The world of men 
 show like a comedy without laughter: populations, in- 
 terests, government, history ; 't is all toy figures in a toy
 
 FATE. 27 
 
 house. It does not overvalue particular truths. We 
 hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an in- 
 tellectual man. But, in his presence, our own mind is 
 roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says, 
 much more interested in the new play of our own thought, 
 than in any thought of his. 'T is the majesty into which 
 we have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the scorn 
 of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage us. Once 
 we were stepping a little this way, and a little that way ; 
 now, we are as men in a balloon, and do not think so 
 much of the point we have left, or the point we would 
 make, as of the liberty and glory of the way. 
 
 Just as much intellect as you add, so much organic 
 power. He who sees through the design, presides over 
 it, and must will that which must be. We sit and rule, 
 and, though we sleep, our dream will come to pass. Our 
 thought, though it were only an hour old, affirms an old- 
 est necessity, not to be separated from thought, and not 
 to be separated from will. They must always have co- 
 existed. It apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead, 
 which refuse to be severed from it. It is not mine or 
 thine, but the will of all mind. It is poured into the 
 souls of all men, as the soul itself which constitutes them 
 men. I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in the 
 upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly 
 current, which carries with it all atoms which rise to that 
 height, but I see, that when souls reach a certain clear- 
 ness of perception, they accept a knowledge and motive 
 above selfishness. A breath of will blows eternally 
 through the universe of souls in the direction of the 
 Right and Necessary. It is the air which all intellects
 
 28 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the 
 worlds into order and orbit. 
 
 Thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying 
 the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. Of two 
 men, each obeying his own thought, he whose thought is 
 deepest will be the strongest character. Always one man 
 more than another represents the will of Divine Provi- 
 dence to the period. 
 
 2. If thought makes free, so does the moral senti- 
 ment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be 
 analyzed. Yet we can see that with the perception of 
 truth is joined the desire that it shall prevail. That af- 
 fection is essential to will. Moreover, when a strong will 
 appears, it usually results from a certain unity of organi- 
 zation, as if the whole energy of body and mind flowed 
 in one direction. All great force is real and elemental. 
 There is no manufacturing a strong will. There must 
 be a pound to balance a pound. Where power is shown 
 in will, it must rest on the universal force. Alaric and 
 Bonaparte must believe they rest on a truth, or their will 
 can be bought or bent. There is a bribe possible for any 
 finite will. But the pure sympathy with universal ends 
 is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. Who- 
 ever has had experience of the moral sentiment cannot 
 choose but believe in unlimited power. Each pulse from 
 that heart is an oath from the Most High. I know not 
 what the word sublime means, if it be not the intimations 
 in this infant of a terrific force. A text of heroism, a 
 name and anecdote of courage, are not arguments, but 
 sallies of freedom. One of these is the verse of the Per- 
 sian Hafiz, " 'T is written on the gate of heaven, ' Woe
 
 FATE. 29 
 
 unto him who suffers himself to be betrayed by Fate ! ' " 
 Does the reading of history make us fatalists ? What 
 courage does not the opposite opinion show ! A little 
 whim of will to be free gallantly contending against the 
 universe of chemistry. 
 
 But insight is not will, nor is affection will. Percep- 
 tion is cold, and goodness dies in wishes ; as Voltaire 
 said, 't is the misfortune of worthy people that they are 
 cowards ; " un des plus grands malheurs des honnetes ffens 
 c'est qu'ils sont des laches." There must be a fusion of 
 these two to generate the energy of will. There can be 
 no driving force, except through the conversion of the 
 man into his will, making him the will, and the will him. 
 And one may say boldly, that no man has a right percep- 
 tion of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so 
 as to be ready to be its martyr. 
 
 The one serious and formidable thing in nature is a 
 will. Society is servile from want of will, and therefore 
 the world wants saviours and religions. One way is 
 right to go : the hero sees it, and moves on that aim, and 
 has the world under him for root and support. He is to 
 others as the world. His approbation is honor ; his dis- 
 sent, infamy. The glance of his eye has the force of sun- 
 beams. A personal influence towers up in memory only 
 worthy, and we gladly forget numbers, money, climate, 
 gravitation, and the rest of Fate. 
 
 We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know it is 
 the meter of the growing man. We stand against Fate, 
 as children stand up against the wall in their father's 
 house, and notch their height from year to year. But
 
 30 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 when the boy grows to man, and is master of the house, 
 he pulls down that wall, and builds a new and bigger. 
 'T is only a question of time. Every brave youth is in 
 training to ride and rule this dragon. His science is to 
 make weapons and wings of these passions and retarding 
 forces. Now whether, seeing these two things, fate and 
 power, we are permitted to believe in unity ? The bulk 
 of mankind believe in two gods. They are under one do- 
 minion here in the house, as friend and parent, in social 
 circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion : but in me- 
 chanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in 
 politics, they think they come under another ; and that 
 it would be a practical blunder to transfer the method 
 and way of working of one sphere, into the other. What 
 good, honest, generous men at home will be wolves and 
 foxes on change ! > What pious men in the parlor will 
 vote for what reprobates at the polls ! To a certain point, 
 they believe themselves the care of a Providence. But, 
 in a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe a 
 malignant energy rules. 
 
 But relation and connection are not somewhere and 
 sometimes, but everywhere and always. The divine or- 
 der does not stop where their sight stops. The friendly 
 power works on the same rules, in the next farm, and 
 the next planet. But, where they have not experience, 
 they run against it, and hurt themselves. Fate, then, is 
 a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought ; 
 for causes which are unpenetrated. 
 
 But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate 
 us is convertible by intellect into wholesome force. 
 Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water drowns ship and
 
 FATE. 31 
 
 sailor, like a grain of dust. But learn to swim, trim 
 your bark, and the wave which drowned it will be cloven 
 by it, and carry it, like its own foam, a pluine and a 
 power. The cold is inconsiderate of persons, tingles 
 your blood, freezes a man like a dewdrop. But learn to 
 skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and 
 poetic motion. The cold will brace your limbs and brain 
 to genius, and make you foremost men of time. Cold 
 and sea will train an imperial Saxon race, which nature 
 cannot bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thou- 
 sand years in yonder England, gives a hundred Englands, 
 a hundred Mexicos. All the bloods it shall absorb and 
 domineer : and more than Mexicos, the secrets of water 
 and steam, the spasms of electricity, the ductility of 
 metals, the chariot of the air, the ruddered balloon, are 
 awaiting you. 
 
 The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that of 
 war ; but right drainage destroys typhus. The plague in 
 the sea-service from scurvy is healed by lemon-juice and 
 other diets portable or procurable : the depopulation by 
 cholera and small-pox is ended by drainage and vaccina- 
 tion; and every other pest is not less in the chain of 
 cause and effect, and may be fought off. And, whilst art 
 draws out the venom, it commonly extorts some benefit 
 from the vanquished enemy. The mischievous torrent is 
 taught to drudge for man : the wild beasts he makes use- 
 ful for food, or dress, or labor ; the chemic explosions 
 are controlled like his watch. These are now the steeds 
 on which he rides. Man moves in all modes, by legs of 
 horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by 
 electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the
 
 32 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 eagle in his own element. There 's nothing he will not 
 make his carrier. 
 
 Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we 
 dreaded. Every pot made by any human potter or bra- 
 zier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy, lest he 
 should lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. But 
 the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton bethought 
 themselves, that, where was power, was not devil, but 
 was God ; that it must be availed of, and not by any 
 means let off and wasted. Could he lift pots and roofs 
 and houses so handily ? he was the workman they were 
 in search of. He could be used .to lift away, chain, and 
 compel other devils far more reluctant and dangerous, 
 namely, cubic miles of earth, mountains, weight or resist- 
 ance of water, machinery, and the labors of all men in 
 the world ; and time he shall lengthen, and shorten space. 
 
 It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of 
 steam. The opinion of the million was the terror of tha 
 world, and it was attempted, either to dissipate it, by 
 amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of society, 
 a layer of soldiers ; over that, a layer of lords ; and a 
 king on the top ; with clamps and hoops of castles, garri- 
 sons, and police. But, sometimes, the religious principle 
 would get in, and burst the hoops, and ride every moun- 
 tain laid on top of it. The Fultons and Watts of poli- 
 tics, believing in unity, saw that it was a power, and, by 
 satisfying it (as justice satisfies everybody), through a 
 different disposition of society, grouping it on a level, 
 instead of piling it into a mountain, they have contrived 
 to make of this terror the most harmless and energetic 
 form of a State.
 
 FATE. 33 
 
 Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. Who 
 likes to have a dapper phrenologist pronouncing on his 
 fortunes ? Who likes to believe that he has hidden in 
 his skull, spine, and pelvis all the vices of a Saxon or 
 Celtic race, which will be sure to pull him down with 
 what grandeur of hope and resolve he is fired into a 
 selfish, huckstering, servile, dodging animal ? A learned 
 physician tells us, the fact is invariable with the Neapoli- 
 tan, that, when mature, he assumes the forms of the un- 
 mistakable scoundrel. That is a little overstated, but 
 may pass. 
 
 But these are magazines and arsenals. A man must 
 thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. 
 A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces, as 
 to lame him ; a defect pays him revenues on the other 
 side. The sufferance, which is the badge of the Jew, has 
 made him, in these days, the ruler of the rulers of the 
 earth. If Pate is ore and quarry, if evil is good in the 
 making, if limitation is power that shall be, if calamities, 
 oppositions, and weights are wings and means, we are 
 reconciled. 
 
 Eate involves the melioration. No statement of the 
 Universe can have any soundness, which does not admit 
 its ascending effort. The direction of the whole, and of 
 the parts, is toward benefit, and in proportion to the 
 health. Behind every individual closes organization ; be- 
 fore him opens liberty, the Better, the Best. The first 
 and worst races are dead. The second and imperfect 
 races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of higher. 
 In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new 
 perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fel- 
 2* c
 
 34 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 lows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. 
 Liberation of the will from the sheaths and clogs of 
 organization which he has outgrown, is the end and aim 
 of this world. Every calamity is a spur and valuable 
 hint; and where his endeavors do not yet fully avail, 
 they tell as tendency. The whole circle of animal life, 
 tooth against tooth, devouring war, war for food, a 
 yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the 
 whole menagerie, the whole chemical mass is mellowed 
 and refined for higher use, pleases at a sufficient per- 
 spective. 
 
 But to see how fate slides into freedom, and freedom 
 into fate, observe how far the roots of every creature run, 
 or find, if you can, a point where there is no thread of 
 connection. Our life is consentaneous and far-related. 
 This knot of nature is so well tied, that nobody was ever 
 cunning enough to find the two ends. Nature is intri- 
 cate, overlapped, interweaved, and endless. Christopher 
 Wren said of the beautiful King's College chapel, " that, 
 if anybody would tell him where to lay the first stone, 
 he would build such another." But where shall we find 
 the first atom in this house of man, which is all consent, 
 inosculation, and balance of parts ? 
 
 The web of relation is shown in habitat, shown in 
 hibernation. When hibernation was observed, it was 
 found, that, whilst some animals became torpid in win- 
 ter, others were torpid in summer : hibernation then was 
 a false name. The long sleep is not an effect of cold, but 
 is regulated by the supply of food proper to the animal. 
 It becomes torpid when the fruit or prey it lives on is not 
 in season, and regains its activity when its food is ready.
 
 FATE. 35 
 
 Eyes are found in light ; ears in auricular air ; feet on 
 land; fins in water; wings in air; and each creature 
 where it was meant to be, with a mutual fitness. Every 
 zone has its own Fauna. There is adjustment between 
 the animal and its food, its parasite, its enemy. Balances 
 are kept. It is not allowed to diminish in numbers, nor 
 to exceed. The like adjustments exist for man. His 
 food is cooked, when lie arrives ; his coal in the pit ; his 
 house ventilated ; the mud of the deluge dried ; his com- 
 panions arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him with 
 love, concert, laughter, and tears. These are coarse 
 adjustments, but the invisible are not less. There are 
 more belongings to every creature than his air and his 
 food. His instincts must be met, and he has predispos- 
 ing power that bends and fits what is near him to his use. 
 He is not possible until the invisible things are right for 
 him, as well as the visible. Of what changes, then, iu 
 sky and earth, and in finer skies and earths, does the 
 appearance of some Dante or Columbus apprise us ! 
 
 How is this effected ? Nature is no spendthrift, but 
 takes the shortest way to her ends. As the general says 
 to his soldiers, " If you want a fort, build a fort," so 
 nature makes every creature do its own work and get its 
 living, is it planet, animal, or tree. The planet makes 
 itself. The animal cell makes itself; then, what it 
 wants. Every creature wren or dragon shall make 
 its own lair. As soon as there is life, there is self-direc- 
 tion, and absorbing and using of material. Life is free- 
 dom, life in the direct ratio of its amount. You may 
 be sure the new-born man is not inert. Life works both 
 voluntarily and supernaturally in its neighborhood Do
 
 36 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 you suppose he can be estimated by his weight in pounds, 
 or that he is contained in his skin, this reaching, radi- 
 ating, jaculating fellow ? The smallest candle fills a mile 
 with its rays, and the papilla; of a man run out to every 
 star. 
 
 When there is something to be done, the world knows 
 how to get it done. The vegetable eye makes leaf, peri- 
 carp, root, bark, or thorn, as the need is; the first cell 
 converts itself into stomach, mouth, nose, or nail, accord- 
 ing to the want : the world throws its life into a hero or 
 a shepherd ; and puts him where he is wanted. Dante 
 and Columbus were Italians, in their time : they would 
 be Russians or Americans to-day. Things ripen, new 
 men come. The adaptation is not capricious. The 
 ulterior aim, the purpose beyond itself, the correlation 
 by which planets subside and crystallize, then animate 
 beasts and men, will not stop, but will work into finer 
 particulars, and from finer to finest. 
 
 The secret of the world is, the tie between person and 
 event. Person makes event, and event person. The 
 "times," "the age," M'hat is that, but a few profound 
 persons and a few active persons who epitomize the 
 times? Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, Calhoun, 
 Guizot, Peel, Cobden, Kossuth, Rothschild, Astor, Bru- 
 nei, and the rest. The same fitness must be presumed 
 between a man and the time and event, as between the 
 sexes, or between a race of animals and the food it eats, 
 or the inferior races it uses. He thinks his fate alien, 
 because the copula is hidden. But the soul contains the 
 sveut that shall befall it, for the event is only the actual- 
 ization of its thoughts ; and what we pray to ourselves
 
 FATE. 37 
 
 for is always granted. The event is the print of your 
 form. It fits you like your skin. What each does is 
 proper to him. Events are the children of his body and 
 mind. "We learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, 
 as Hafiz sings, 
 
 Alas ! till now I had not known, 
 My guide and fortune's guide are one. 
 
 All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for, 
 houses, land, money, luxury, power, fame, are the 
 selfsame thing, witli a new gauze or two of illusion over- 
 laid. And of all the drums and rattles by which men are 
 made willing to have their heads broke, and are led out 
 solemnly every morning to parade, the most admirable is 
 this by which we are brought to believe that events are 
 
 ' arbitrary, and independent of actions. At the conjurer's, 
 we detect the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we 
 have not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that 
 ties cause and effect. 
 
 Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by 
 making these the fruit of his character. Ducks take to 
 the water, eagles to the sky, waders to the sea margin, 
 hunters to the forest, clerks to counting-rooms, soldiers 
 to the frontier. Thus events grow on the same stem 
 
 1 with persons ; are sub-persons. The pleasure of life is 
 according to the man that lives it, and not according to 
 the work or the place. Life is an ecstasy. We know 
 what madness belongs to love, what power to paint 
 a vile object in hues of heaven. As insane persons are 
 indifferent to their dress, diet, and other accommodations, 
 and, as we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most ab-
 
 38 CONDUCT OF LIKE. 
 
 surd acts, so, a drop more of wine in our cup of life will 
 reconcile us to strange company and work. Each crea- 
 ture puts forth from itself its own condition and sphere, 
 as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the pear- 
 leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire their 
 own bed, and the fish its shell. In youth, we clothe 
 ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac. 
 In age, we put out another sort of perspiration, gout, 
 fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and avarice. 
 
 A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A 
 man's friends are his magnetisms. We go to Herodotus 
 and Plutarch for examples of Fate ; but we are examples. 
 " Qaisque suos patimur manes." The tendency of every 
 man to enact all that is in his constitution is expressed in 
 the old belief, that the efforts which we make to escape 
 from our destiny only serve to lead us into it : and I have 
 noticed, a man likes better to be complimented on his 
 position, as the proof of the last or total excellence, than 
 on his merits. 
 
 A man will see his character emitted in the events that 
 seem to meet, but which exude from and accompany him. 
 Events expand with the character. As once he found 
 himself among toys, so now he plays a part in colossiil 
 systems, and his growth is declared in his ambition, his 
 companions, and his performance. He looks like a piece 
 of luck, but is a piece of causation; the mosaic, angu- 
 lated and ground to fit into the gap he fills. Hence in 
 each town there is some man who is, in his brain and 
 performance, an explanation of the tillage, production, 
 factories, banks, churches, ways of living, and society, of 
 that town. If you Jo not chance to meet him, all that you
 
 FATE. 39 
 
 see will leave you a little puzzled : if you see him, it will 
 become plain. We know in Massachusetts who built New 
 Bedford, who built Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Clinton, 
 Fitchburg, Holyoke, Portland, and many another noisy 
 mart. Each of these men, if they were transparent, would 
 
 ' seem to you not so much men, as walking cities, and, 
 wherever you put them, they would build one. 
 
 History is the action and reaction of these two, Na- 
 
 ' ture and Thought ; two boys pushing each other on the 
 curbstone of the pavement. Everything is pusher or 
 pushed : and matter and mind are in perpetual tilt and 
 balance, so. Whilst the man is weak, the earth takes up 
 to him. He plants his brain and affections. By and 
 by he will take up the earth, and have his gardens and 
 vineyards in the beautiful order and productiveness of 
 his thought. Every solid in the universe is ready to be- 
 come fluid on the approach of the mind, and the power to 
 flux it is the measure of the mind. If the wall remain 
 adamant, it accuses the want of thought. To a subtler 
 force, it will stream into new forms, expressive of the 
 character of the mind. What is the city in which we sit 
 here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which 
 have obeyed the will of some man? The granite was 
 reluctant, but*his hands were stronger, and it came. 
 Iron was deep in the ground, and well combined witli 
 stone, but could not hide from his fires. Wood, lime, 
 stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth and sea, 
 in vain. Here they are, within reach of every man's day- 
 labor, what he wants of them. The whole world is 
 
 i the flux of matter over the wires of thought to the poles 
 or points where it would build. The races of men rise
 
 40 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 out of the ground preoccupied with a thought which 
 rules them, and divided into parties ready armed and 
 angry to fight for this metaphysical abstraction. The 
 quality of the thought differences the Egyptian and the 
 Roman, the Austrian and the American. The men who 
 come on the stage at one period are all found to be re- 
 lated to each other. Certain ideas are in the air. We 
 are all impressionable, for we are made of them ; all im- 
 pressionable, but some more than others, and these first 
 express them. This explains the curious contempora- 
 neousness of inventions and discoveries. The truth is in 
 the air, and the most impressionable brain will announce 
 it first, but all will announce it a few minutes later. So 
 women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the 
 coming hour. So the great man, that is, the man most 
 imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable 
 man, of a fibre irritable and delicate, like iodine to 
 light. He feels the infinitesimal attractions. His mind 
 is righter than others, because he yields to a current so 
 feeble as can be felt only by a needle delicately poised. 
 
 The correlation is shown in defects. Moller, in his 
 Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which 
 was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out 
 to be beautiful, though beauty had not bean intended. I 
 find the like unity in human structures rather virulent 
 and pervasive ; that a crudity in the blood will appear in 
 the argument ; a hump in the shoulder will appear in the 
 speech and handiwork. If his mind could be seen, the 
 hump would be seen. If a man has a seesaw in his 
 voice, it will run into his sentences, into his poem, into 
 the structure of his fable, into his speculation, into his
 
 FATE. 41 
 
 charity. And, as every man is hunted by his own demon, 
 vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity. 
 
 So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A 
 strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent ene- 
 mies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such 
 an one has curculios, borers, knife-worms : a swindler 
 ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, 
 plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch. 
 
 This correlation really existing can be divined. If the 
 threads are there, thought can follow and show them. 
 Especially when a soul is quick and docile ; as Chaucer 
 sings : 
 
 " Or if the soul of proper kind 
 
 Be so perfect as men find, 
 
 That it wot what is to come, 
 
 And that he warneth all and some 
 
 Of every of their aventures, 
 
 By previsions or figures ; 
 
 But that our flesh hath not might 
 
 It to understand aright 
 
 For it is warned too darkly." 
 
 Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, 
 periodicity, and presage : they meet the person they 
 seek ; what their companion prepares to say to them, 
 they first say to him ; and a hundred signs apprise them 
 of what is about to befall. 
 
 Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful constancy 
 in the design, this vagabond life admits. We wonder 
 how the fly finds its mate, and yet year after year we find 
 two men, two women, without legal or carnal tie, spend 
 a great part of their best time within a few feet of each
 
 42 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 other. And the moral is, that what we seek we shall 
 find ; what we flee from flees from us ; as Goethe said, 
 " what we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in old 
 age/' too often cursed with the granting of our prayer : 
 and hence the high caution, that, since we are sure of 
 having what we wish, we beware to ask only for high 
 things. 
 
 One key, one solution to the mysteries of human con- 
 dition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom and 
 foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the 
 double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the 
 horses of his private and his public nature, as the eques- 
 trians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse 
 to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the 
 other foot on the back of the other. So when a man is 
 the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins, and cramp 
 in his mind ; a club-foot and a club in his wit ; a sour 
 face, and a selfish temper ; a strut in his gait, and a con- 
 ceit in his affection ; or is ground to powder by the vice 
 of his race ; he is to rally on his relation to the Uni- 
 verse, which his ruin benefits. Leaving the demon who 
 suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures 
 universal benefit by his pain. 
 
 To offset the drag of temperament and race, which pulls 
 down, learn this lesson, namely, that by the cunning co- 
 . presence of two elements, which is throughout nature, 
 whatever lames or paralyzes you draws in with it the di- 
 vinity, in some form, to repay. A good intention clothes 
 uself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, 
 any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, 
 and serve him for a horse.
 
 FATE. 43 
 
 Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds 
 nature and souls in perfect solution, and compels every 
 atom to serve an universal end. I do not wonder at a 
 snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of 
 the stars ; but at the necessity of beauty under which the 
 universe lies ; that all is and must be pictorial ; that the 
 rainbow, and the curve of the horizon, and the arcli of 
 the blue vault, are only results from the organism of the 
 eye. There is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me 
 to admire a garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a 
 waterfall, when I cannot look without seeing splendor 
 and grace. How idle to choose a random sparkle here or 
 there, when the indwelling necessity plants the rose of 
 beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central in- 
 tention of Nature to be harmony and joy. 
 
 Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If we 
 thought men were free in the sense, that, in a single ex- 
 ception one fantastical will could prevail over the law of 
 things, it were all one as if a child's hand could pull down 
 the sun. If, in the least particular, one could derange the 
 order of nature, Mio would accept the gift of life ? J 
 
 Let us build altav^ to the Beautiful Necessity, which 
 secures that all is made of one piece; that plaintiff and 
 defendant, friend and enemy, animal and planet, food and \ 
 eater, are of one kind. In astronomy is vast space, but 
 no foreign system ; in geology, vast time, but the same 
 laws as to-day. Why should we be afraid of Nature, 
 which is no other than "philosophy and theology em- 
 bodied " ? Why should we fear to be crushed by savage / 
 elements, we who are made up of the same elements ? 
 Let us build to the Beautiful Necessity, which makes
 
 44 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger that 
 is appointed, nor incur one that is not ; to the Neces- 
 sity which rudely or softly educates him to the perception 
 that there are no contingencies ; that Law rules through- 
 out existence, a Law which is not intelligent but intel- 
 ligence, not personal nor impersonal, it disdains 
 words and passes understanding ; it dissolves persons ; 
 it vivifies nature ; yet solicits the pure in heart to draw 
 on all its omnipotence.
 
 II. 
 
 POWEE. 
 
 His tongue was framed to music, 
 And his hand was armed with skill, 
 His face was the mould of beauty, 
 And his heart the throne of will.
 
 POWER. 
 
 THERE is not yet any inventory of a man's faculties, 
 any more than a bible of his opinions. Who shall set a 
 limit to the influence of a human being? There are 
 men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry na- 
 tions with them, and lead the activity of the human race. 
 And if there be such a tie, that, wherever the mind of 
 man goes, nature will accompany him, perhaps there are 
 men whose magnetisms are of that force to draw material 
 and elemental powers, and, where they appear, immense 
 instrumentalities organize around them. Life is a search 
 after power ; and this is an element with which the world 
 is so saturated, there is no chink or crevice in which 
 it is not lodged, that no honest seeking goes unre- 
 warded. A man should prize events and possessions, as 
 the ore in which this fine mineral is found ; and he can 
 well afford to let events and possessions, and the breath 
 of the body go, if their value has been added to him in 
 the shape of power. If he have secured the elixir, he 
 can spare the wide gardens from which it was distilled. 
 A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is 
 the end to which nature works, and the education of the 
 will is the flowering and result of all this geology and 
 astronomy.
 
 48 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 All successful men have agreed in one thing, they were 
 causationists. They believed that tilings went not by 
 luck, but by law ; that there was not a weak or a cracked 
 link in the chain that joins the first and last of things. 
 A belief in causality, or strict connection between every 
 pulse-beat and the principle of being, and, in conse- 
 quence, belief in compensation, or, that nothing is got 
 for nothing, characterizes all valuable minds, and must 
 control every effort that is made by an industrious one. 
 The most valiant men are the best believers in the tension 
 of the laws. "All the great captains," said Bonaparte, 
 " have performed vast achievements by conforming with 
 the rules of the art, by adjusting efforts to obstacles." 
 
 The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, 
 as the young orators describe ; the key to all ages is 
 Imbecility ; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at 
 all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent 
 moments ; victims of gravity, custom, and fear. This 
 gives force to the strong, that the multitude have no 
 habit of self-reliance or original action. 
 
 We must reckon success a constitutional trait. Cour- 
 age, the old physicians taught (and their meaning 
 holds, if their physiology is a little mythical), courage, 
 or the degree of life, is as the degree of circulation of 
 the blood in the arteries. " During passion, anger, fury, 
 trials of strength, wrestling, fighting, a large amount of 
 blood is collected in the arteries, the maintenance of 
 bodily strength requiring it, and but little is sent into 
 the veins. This condition is constant with intrepid per- 
 sons." Where the arteries hold their blood, is courage 
 and adventure possible. Where they pour it unrestrained
 
 POWER. 49 
 
 into the veins, the spirit is low aiid feeble. For per- 
 formance of great mark, it needs extraordinary health. 
 If Eric is in robust health, aiid has slept well, aud is at 
 the top of his condition, and thirty years old, at his de- 
 parture from Greenland, he will steer west, and his ships 
 will reach Newfoundland. But take out Eric, and put 
 in a stronger and bolder man, Biorn, or Thorfin, 
 and the ships will, with just as much ease, sail six hun- 
 dred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles farther, and 
 reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance 
 in results. With adults, as with children, one class enter 
 cordially into the game, and whirl with the whirling 
 world; the others have cold hands, and remain by- 
 standers ; or are only dragged in by the humor and 
 vivacity of those who can carry a dead- weight. The first 
 wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot 
 serve any one : it must husband its resources to live. 
 But health or fulness answers its own ends, and has to 
 spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and 
 creeks of other men's necessities. 
 
 All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature 
 of the world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of 
 nature will be in the current of events, aud strong with 
 their strength. One man is made of the same stuff of 
 which events are made ; is in sympathy with the course 
 of things ; can predict it. .Whatever befalls, befalls him 
 first ; so that he is equal to whatever shall happen. A 
 man who knows men, can talk well on politics, trade, 
 law, war, religion. For, everywhere, men are led in the 
 same manners. 
 
 The advantage of a strong pulse is not to be supplied 
 
 3 D
 
 50 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 by any labor, art, or concert. It is like the climate, 
 which easily rears a crop, which no glass, or irrigation, 
 or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere rival. It is like the 
 opportunity of a city like New York, or Constantinople, 
 which needs no diplomacy to force capital or genius or 
 labor to it. They come of themselves, as the waters flow 
 to it. So a broad, healthy, massive understanding seems 
 to lie on the shore of unseen rivers, of unseen oceans, 
 which are covered with barks, that, night and day, are 
 drifted to this point. That is poured into its lap, which 
 other men lie plotting for. It is in everybody's secret ; 
 anticipates everybody's discovery ; and if it do not com- 
 mand every fact of the genius and the scholar, it is be- 
 cause it is large and sluggish, and does not think them 
 worth the exertion which you do. 
 
 This affirmative force is in one, and is not in another, 
 as one horse has the spring in him, and another in the 
 whip. "On the neck of the young man," said Hafiz, 
 "sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise." Import 
 into any stationary district, as into an old Dutch popula- 
 tion in New York or Pennsylvania, or among the planters 
 of Virginia, a colony of hardy Yankees, with seething 
 brains, heads full of steam-hammer, pulley, crank, and 
 
 f toothed wheel, and everything begins to shine with 
 values. What enhancement to all the water and land in 
 England, is the arrival of James Watt or Brunei ! In 
 every company, there is not only the active and passive 
 sex, but in both men and women, a deeper and more im- 
 
 i portant sex of mind, namely, the inventive or creative 
 class of both men and women, and the uninventive or ac- 
 cepting cla Each plus man represents his set, and, if
 
 POWER. 51 
 
 he hare the accidental advantage of personal ascendency, 
 which implies neither more nor less of talent, but 
 merely the temperamental or taming eye of a soldier or a 
 schoolmaster (which one has, and one has not, as one has 
 a black mustache and one a blond), then quite easily, and 
 without envy or resistance, all his coadjutors and feeders 
 will admit his right to absorb them. The merchant works 
 by book-keeper and cashier ; the lawyer's authorities are 
 hunted up by clerks ; the geologist reports the surveys 
 of his subalterns ; Commander Wilkes appropriates the 
 results of all the naturalists attached to the Expedi- 
 tion ; Thorwaldsen's statue is finished by stone-cutters ; 
 Dumas has journeymen ; and Shakespeare was theatre- 
 manager, and used the labor of many young men, as well 
 as the playbooks. 
 
 There is always room for a man of force, and he makes 
 room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers, and the best 
 heads among them take the best places. A feeble man 
 can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses 
 that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses 
 and farms. His eye makes estates, as fast as the sun 
 breeds clouds. 
 
 When a new boy comes into school, when a man 
 travels, and encounters strangers every day, or, when 
 into an old club a new-comer is domesticated, that hap- 
 pens which befalls, when a strange ox is driven into a pen 
 or pasture where cattle are kept ; there is at once a trial 
 of strength between the best pair of horns and the new- 
 comer, and it is settled thenceforth which is the leader. 
 So now, there is a measuring of strength, very courteous, 
 but decisive, and an acquiescence thenceforward whet
 
 52 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 these two meet. Each reads his fate in the other's eyes. 
 The weaker party finds, that none of his information or 
 wit quite fits the occasion. He thought he knew this or 
 that: lie finds that he omitted to learn the end of it. 
 Nothing that he knows will quite hit the mark, whilst all 
 the rival's arrows are good, and well thrown. But if he 
 knew all the facts in the encyclopaedia, it would not help 
 him : for this is an affair of presence of mind, of attitude, 
 of aplomb : the opponent has the sun and wind, and, in 
 every cast, the choice of weapon and mark ; and, when 
 he himself is matched with some other antagonist, his 
 own shafts fly well and hit. 'T is a question of stomach 
 and constitution. The second man is as good as the first, 
 perhaps better ; but has not stoutness or stomach, as 
 the first has, and so his wit seems ovef-fine or under-fine. 
 Health is good, power, life, that resists disease, poi- 
 son, and all enemies, and is conservative, as well as crea- 
 tive. Here is question, every spring, whether to graft 
 with wax, or whether with clay ; whether to whitewash, 
 or to potash, or to prune ; but the one point is the thrifty 
 tree. A good tree, that agrees with the soil, will grow 
 in spite of blight, or bug, or pruning, or neglect, by night 
 and by day, in all weathers and all treatments. Vivacity, 
 leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be 
 nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty 
 water,-if clean cannot be had. If we will make bread, 
 we must have contagion, yeast, emptyings, or what not, 
 to induce fermentation into the dough : as the torpid 
 artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, 
 by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. And we 
 have a certain instinct, that where is great amount of life,
 
 POWEK. 53 
 
 though gross and peccant, it has its own checks and puri- 
 fications, and will be found at last in harmony with moral 
 laws. 
 
 We watch in children, with pathetic interest, the degree 
 in which they possess recuperative force. When they 
 are hurt by us, or by each other, or go to the bottom of 
 the class, or miss the annual prizes, or are beaten in the 
 game, if they lose heart, and remember the mischance 
 in their chamber at home, they have a serious check. 
 But if they have the buoyancy and resistance that preoc- 
 cupies them with new interest in the new moment, the 
 wounds cicatrize, and the fibre is the tougher for the hurt. 
 
 One comes to value this plus health, when he sees that 
 all difficulties vanish before it. A timid man listening to 
 the alarmists in Congress, and in the newspapers, and 
 observing the profligacy of party, sectional interests 
 urged with a fury which shuts its eyes to consequences, 
 with a mind made up to desperate extremities, ballot in 
 one hand, and rifle in the other, might easily believe 
 that he and his country have seen their best days, and he 
 hardens himself the best he can against the coming ruin. 
 But, after this has been foretold with equal confidence 
 fifty times, and government six per cents have not de- 
 clined a quarter of a mill, he discovers that the enor- 
 mous elements of strength which are here in play make 
 our politics unimportant. Personal power, freedom, and 
 the resources of nature strain every faculty of every citi- 
 zen. We prosper with such vigor, that, like thrifty 
 trees, which grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, and borers, 
 so we do not suffer from the profligate swarms that fatten 
 on the national treasury. The huge animals nourish
 
 54 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 huge parasites, and the rancor of the disease attests the 
 strength of the constitution. The same energy in the 
 Greek Demos drew the remark, that the evils of popular 
 government appear greater than they are ; there is com- 
 pensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens. 
 The rough-and-ready style which belongs to a people of 
 sailors, foresters, farmers, and mechanics, has its advan- 
 tages. Power educates the potentate. As long as our 
 people quote English standards they dwarf their own 
 proportions. A Western lawyer of eminence said to me 
 lie wished it were a penal offence to bring an English 
 law-book into a court in this country, so pernicious had 
 he found in his experience our deference to English pre- 
 cedent. The very word " commerce " has only an Eng- 
 lish meaning, and is pinched to the cramp exigencies of 
 English experience. The commerce of rivers, the com- 
 merce of railroads, and who knows but the commerce of 
 air-balloons, must add an American extension to the 
 pond-hole of admiralty. As long as our people quote 
 English standards, they will miss the sovereignty of 
 power ; but let these rough riders, legislators in shirt- 
 sleeves, Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger, or 
 whatever hard head Arkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, 
 half orator, half assassin, to represent its wrath and 
 cupidity at Washington, let these drive as they may ; 
 and the disposition of territories and public lands, the 
 necessity of balancing and keeping at bay the snarling 
 majorities of German, Irish, and of native millions, will 
 bestow promptness, address, and reason, at last, on our 
 buifalo-hunter, and authority and majesty of manners. 
 The instinct of the people is right. Men expect from
 
 POWER. 55 
 
 good whigs, put into office by the respectability of the 
 country, much less skill to deal with Mexico, Spain, 
 Britain, or with our own malcontent members, thar> from 
 some strong transgressor, like Jefferson, or Jackson, who 
 first conquers his own government, and then uses the 
 same genius to conquer the foreigner. The senators who 
 dissented from Mr. Folk's Mexican war were not those 
 who knew better, but those who, from political position, 
 could afford it ; not Webster, but Benton and Calhoun. 
 
 This power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. 'T is 
 the power of Lynch law, of soldiers and pirates ; and it 
 bullies the peaceable and loyal. But it brings its own 
 antidote ; and here is my point, that all kinds of power 
 usually emerge at the same time ; good energy and bad 5 - 
 power of mind, with physical health ; the ecstasies of 
 devotion, with the exasperations of debauchery. The 
 same elements are always present, only sometimes these 
 conspicuous, and sometimes those; what was yesterday, 
 foreground, being to-day background, what was sur- 
 face, playing now a not less effective part as basis. The 
 longer the drought lasts, the more is the atmosphere sur- 
 charged with water. The faster the ball falls to the sun, 
 the force to fly off is by so much augmented. And, in 
 morals, wild liberty breeds iron conscience ; natures with 
 great impulses have great resources, and return from 
 far. Iii politics, the sous of democrats will be whigs ; 
 whilst red republicanism, in the father, is a spasm of na- 
 ture to engender an intolerable tyrant in the next age. 
 On the other hand, conservatism, ever more timorous and 
 narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a 
 mouthful of fresh air into radicalism.
 
 56 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Those who Lave most of this coarse energy, the 
 " bruisers," who have run the gauntlet of caucus and tav- 
 ern trough the county or the state, have their own 
 vices, but they have the good-nature of strength and cour- 
 age. Tierce and unscrupulous, they are usually frank and 
 direct, and above falsehood. Our politics fall into bad 
 hands, and churchmen and men of refinement, it seems 
 agreed, are not fit persons to send to Congress. Politics 
 is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handi- 
 crafts. Men in power have no opinions, but may be had 
 cheap for any opinion, for any purpose, and if it be only 
 a question between the most civil and the most forcible, I 
 lean to the last. These Hoosiers and Suckers are really 
 better than the snivelling opposition. Their wrath is at 
 least of a bold and manly cast. They see, against the 
 unanimous declarations of the people, how much crime 
 the people will bear ; they proceed from step to step, and 
 they have calculated but too justly upon their Excel- 
 lencies, the New England governors, and upon their 
 Honors, the New England legislators. The messages of 
 the governors and the resolutions of the legislatures are 
 a proverb for expressing a sham virtuous indignation, 
 which, in the course of events, is sure to be belied. 
 
 In trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace of 
 ferocity. Philanthropic and religious bodies do not com- 
 monly make their executive officers out of saints. The 
 communities hitherto founded by Socialists the Jes- 
 uits, the Port-Royalists, the American communities at 
 New Harmony, at Brook Farm, at Zoar are only pos- 
 sible, by installing Judas as steward. The rest of the 
 offices may be filled by good burgesses. The pious and
 
 POWER. 57 
 
 charitable proprietor lias a foreman not quite so pious 
 and charitable. The most amiable of country gentlemen 
 has a certain pleasure in the teeth of the bulldog which 
 guards his orchard. Of the Shaker society, it was for- 
 merly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always 
 sent the devil to market. And in representations of the 
 Deity, painting, poetry, and popular religion have ever 
 drawn the wrath from hell. It is an esoteric doctrine of 
 society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle ; 
 as if conscience were not good for hands and legs, as if 
 poor decayed formalists of law and order cannot run like 
 wild goats, wolves, and conies ; that, as there is a use in 
 medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without 
 rogues ; that public spirit and the ready hand are as well 
 found among the malignants. 'T is not very rare, the 
 coincidence of sharp private and political practice, with 
 public spirit, and good neighborhood. 
 
 I knew a burly Boniface who for many years kept a 
 public house in one of our rural capitals. He was a 
 knave whom the town could ill spare. He was a social, 
 vascular creature, grasping and selfish. There was no 
 crime which he did not or could not commit. But he 
 made good friends of the selectmen, served them with 
 his best chop, when they supped at his house, and also 
 with his honor the Judge, he was very cordial, grasping 
 his hand. He introduced all the fiends, male and female, 
 into the town, and united in his person the functions of 
 bully, incendiary, swindler, bar-keeper, and burglar. He 
 girdled the trees, and cut off the horses' tails of the tem- 
 perance people, in the night. He led the " rummies " 
 and radicals in town-meeting with a speech. Meanthix. 
 3*
 
 58 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 he was civil, fat, and easy, in his house, and precisely the 
 most public-spirited citizen. He was active in getting 
 the roads repaired and planted with shade-trees ; he sub- 
 scribed for the fountains, the gas, and the telegraph ; 
 he introduced the new horse-rake, the new scraper, the 
 baby -jumper, and what not, that Connecticut sends to 
 the admiring citizens. He did this the easier, that the 
 pedler stopped at his house, and paid his keeping, by 
 setting up his new trap on the landlord's premises. 
 
 Whilst thus the energy for originating and executing 
 work deforms itself by excess, and so our axe chops off 
 our own fingers, this evil is not without remedy. All 
 the elements whose aid man calls in will sometimes be- 
 come his masters, especially those of most subtle force. 
 Shall he, then, renounce steam, fire, and electricity, or 
 shall he learn to deal with them ? The rule for this 
 whole class of agencies is, all plus is good ; only put 
 it in the right place. 
 
 Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live 
 on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies ; cannot read novels, and 
 play whist ; cannot satisfy all their wants at the Thurs- 
 day Lecture, or the Boston Athenaeum. They pine for 
 adventure, and must go to Pike's Peak ; had rather die 
 by the hatchet of a Pawnee, than sit all day and every 
 day at a counting-room desk. They are made for war, 
 for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing ; for hair- 
 breadth adventures, huge risks, and the joy of eventful 
 living. Some men cannot endure an hour of calm at 
 sea. I remember a poor Malay cook, on board a Liver- 
 pool packet, who, when the wind blew a gale, could not 
 contain his joy. " Blow ! " he cried, " me do tell you,
 
 POWER. 59 
 
 blow ! " Their friends and governors must see that 
 some vent for their explosive complexion is provided. 
 The roisters who are destined for infamy at home, if sent 
 to Mexico, will " cover you with glory," and come back 
 heroes and generals. There are Oregons, Californias, and 
 Exploring Expeditions enough appertaining to America, to 
 find them in files to gnaw, and in crocodiles to eat. The 
 young English are fine animals, full of blood, and when 
 they have no wars to breathe their riotous valors in, they 
 seek for travels as dangerous as war, diving into Mael- 
 stroms ; swimming Hellesponts ; wading up the snowy 
 Himmaleh ; hunting lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in South 
 Africa ; gypsyiug with Borrow in Spain and Algiers ; 
 riding alligators in South America with Waterton ; util- 
 izing Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with Layard ; yachting 
 among the icebergs of Lancaster Sound; peeping into 
 craters on the. equator ; or running on the creases of 
 Malays in Borneo. 
 
 The excess of virility has the same importance in gen- 
 eral history, as in private and industrial life. Strong 
 race or strong individual rests at last on natural forces, 
 which are best in the savage, who, like the beasts around 
 him, is still in reception of the milk from the teats of 
 Nature. Cut off the connection between any of our 
 works and this aboriginal source, and the work is shal- 
 low. The people lean on this, and the mob is not quite 
 so bad an argument as we sometimes say, for it has this 
 good side. "March without the people," said a French 
 deputy from the tribune, " and you march into night : 
 their instincts are a finger-pointing of Providence, always 
 turned toward real benefit. But when you espouse an
 
 60 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Orleans party, or a Bourbon, or a Montalembert party, 
 or any other but an organic party, though you mean 
 well, you have a personality instead of a principle, which 
 will inevitably drag you into a corner." 
 
 The best anecdotes of this force are to be had from 
 savage life, in explorers, soldiers, and buccaneers. But 
 who cares for fallings-out of assassins, and fights of bears, 
 or grindings of icebergs ? Physical force has no value, 
 where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in 
 volcanoes and solfataras, is cheap. The luxury of ice is in 
 tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of 
 fire is, to have a little on our hearth ; and of electricity, 
 not volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable 
 stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy ; the 
 i rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man are 
 worth all the cannibals in the Pacific. 
 
 In history, the great moment is, when the savage is 
 just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic 
 strength directed on his opening sense of beauty : and 
 you have Pericles and Phidias, not yet passed over into 
 the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and the 
 world is in that moment of transition, when (he swarthy 
 juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrin- 
 gency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity. 
 
 The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to 
 war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword- 
 hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the 
 port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual 
 power culminated ; the compression and tension of these 
 stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest 
 arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times,
 
 POWER. 61 
 
 except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations 
 as hardy as war. 
 
 We say that success is constitutional; depends on a 
 plus condition of mind and body, on power of work, on 
 courage ; that it is of main efficacy in carrying on the 
 world, and, though rarely found in the right state for au 
 article of commerce, but ofteuer in the supersaturate or 
 excess, which makes it dangerous and destructive, yet it 
 cannot be spared, and must be had in that form, and ab- 
 sorbents provided to take off its edge. 
 
 The affirmative class monopolize the homage of man- 
 kind. They originate and execute all the great feats. 
 What a force was coiled up in the skull of Napoleon ! 
 Of the sixty thousand men making his army at Eylau, it 
 seems some thirty thousand were thieves and burglars. 
 The men whom, in peaceful communities, we hold if we 
 can, with iron at their legs, in prisons, under the mus- 
 kets of sentinels, this man dealt with, hand to hand, 
 dragged them to their duty, and won his victories by 
 their bayonets. 
 
 This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure when 
 it appears under conditions of supreme refinement, as in 
 the proficients in high art. When Michel Angelo was 
 forced to paint the Sistine Chapel in fresco, of which art 
 he knew nothing, he went down into the Pope's gardens 
 behind the Vatican, and with a shovel dug out ochres, 
 red and yellow, mixed them with glue and water with his 
 own hands, and having, after many trials, at last suited 
 himself, climbed his ladders, and painted away, week 
 after week, month after month, the sibyls and prophets. 
 He surpassed his successors in rough vigor, as much
 
 62 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 as in purity of intellect and refinement. He was not 
 crushed by his oue picture left unfinished at last. Michel 
 was wont to draw his figures first in skeleton, then to 
 clothe them with flesh, and lastly to drape them. " Ah ! " 
 said a brave painter to me, thinking on these things, " if 
 a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed instead of 
 working. There is no way to success in our art, but to 
 take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on 
 the railroad, all day and every day." 
 
 Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or pos- 
 itive power : an ounce of power must balance an ounce 
 of weight. And, though a man cannot return into his 
 mother's womb, and be born with new amounts of vi- 
 vacity, yet there are two economies, which are the best 
 succedanea which the case admits. Tlie first is, the 
 stopping off decisively our miscellaneous activity, and 
 concentrating our force on one or a few points ; as the 
 gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree 
 into one or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to 
 spindle into a sheaf of twigs. 
 
 " Enlarge not thy destiny," said the oracle : " en- 
 deavor not, to do more than is given thee in charge." 
 The one prudence in life is concentration ; the one evil 
 is dissipation : and it makes no difference whether our 
 dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, 
 friends, and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feast- 
 ing. Everything is good which takes away one play- 
 thing and delusion more, and drives us home to add one 
 stroke of faithful work. Friends, books, pictures, lower 
 duties, talents, flatteries, hopes, all are distractions 
 which cause oscillations in our giddy balloon, and make
 
 POWER. G;3 
 
 a good poise and a straight course impossible. You 
 must elect your work ; you shall take what your brain 
 can, and drop all the rest. Only so, can that amount of 
 vital force accumulate, which can make the step from 
 knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty of idle 
 seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is 
 rarely taken. J T is a step out of a chalk circle of im- 
 becility into fruitfulness. Many an artist, lacking this, 
 lacks all : he sees the masculine Angelo or Cellini with 
 despair. He, too, is up to Nature and the First Cause 
 in his thought. But the spasm to collect and swing 
 his whole being into one act, he has not. The poet 
 Campbell said, that "a man accustomed to work was 
 equal to any achievement he resolved on, and that, for 
 himself, necessity, not inspiration, was the prompter of 
 his muse." 
 
 Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in 
 war, in trade, in short, in all management of human 
 affairs. One of the high anecdotes of the world is the 
 reply of Newton to the inquiry, " how he had been able 
 to achieve his discoveries." " By always intending my 
 mind." Or if you will have a text from politics, take 
 this from Plutarch : " There was, in the whole city, but 
 one street in which Pericles was ever seen, the street 
 which led to the market-place and the council-house. 
 He declined all invitations to banquets, and all gay as- 
 semblies and company. During the whole period of his 
 administration, he never dined at the table of a friend." 
 Or if we seek an example from trade, "I hope," said a 
 good man to Rothschild, " your children are not too fond 
 of money and business : I am sure you would not wish
 
 64 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 
 
 that." " I am sure I should wish that : I wish them to 
 give mind, soul, heart, and body to business, that is the 
 way to be happy. It requires a great deal of boldness 
 and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and 
 when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to 
 keep it. If I were to listen to all the projects proposed 
 to me, I should ruin myself very soon. Stick to one busi- 
 ness, young man. Stick to your brewery (he said this 
 to young Buxton), and you will be the great brewer of 
 London. Be brewer, and banker, and merchant, and 
 manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette." 
 
 Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive and 
 tenacious, but they do not rush to a decision. But in 
 our flowing affairs a decision must be made, the best, 
 if you can ; but any is better than none. There are 
 twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest ; 
 but set out at once on one. A man who has that pres- 
 ence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all 
 he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as 
 much, but can only bring it to light slowly. The good 
 Speaker in the House is not the man who knows the tl^ 
 ory of parliamentary tactics, but the man who decides off- 
 hand. The good judge is not he who does hair-splitting 
 justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at substan- 
 tial justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance 
 of suitors. The good lawyer is not the man who has 
 an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qual- 
 ifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your 
 part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape. 
 Dr. Johnson said, in one of his flowing sentences : " Mis- 
 erable beyond all names of wretchedness is that unhappy
 
 POWER. 65 
 
 pair, who are doomed to reduce beforehand to the prin- 
 ciples of abstract reason all the details of each domestic 
 day. There are cases where little can be said, and much 
 must be done." 
 
 The second substitute for temperament is drill, the 
 power of use and routine. The hack is a better roadster 
 than the Arab barb. In chemistry, the galvanic stream, 
 slow, but continuous, is equal in power to the electric 
 spark, and is, in our arts, a better agent. So in human 
 action, against the spasm of energy, we offset the continu- 
 ity of drill. We spread the same amount of force over 
 much time, instead of condensing it into a moment. 
 'T is the same ounce of gold here in a ball, and there in a 
 leaf. At West Point, Colonel Buford, the chief engineer, 
 pounded with a hammer on the trunnions of a cannon, 
 until he broke them off. He fired a piece of ordnance 
 some hundred times in swift succession, until it burst. 
 Now which stroke broke the trunnion ? Every stroke. 
 Which blast burst the piece ? Every blast. " Diligence 
 passe sens" Henry VIII. was wont to say, or, great is 
 drill. John Kemble said, that the worst provincial com- 
 pany of actors would go through a play better than the 
 best amateur company. Basil Hall likes to show that the 
 worst regular troops will beat the best volunteers. Prac- 
 tice is nine tenths. A course of mobs is good practice 
 for orators. All the great speakers were bad speakers at 
 first. Stumping it through England for seven years made 
 Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through 
 New England for twice seven trained Wendell Phillips. 
 The way to learn German is, to read the same dozen 
 pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every
 
 66 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 word and particle in them and can pronounce and repeat 
 them by heart. No genius can recite a ballad at first 
 reading, so well as mediocrity can at the fifteenth or 
 twentieth reading. The rule for hospitality and Irish 
 " help," is, to have the same dinner every day throughout 
 the year. At last, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it 
 to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are 
 well served. A humorous friend of mine thinks, that the 
 reason why Nature is so perfect in her art, and gets up 
 such inconceivably fine sunsets, is, that she has learned 
 how, at last, by dint of doing the same thing so very often. 
 Cannot one converse better on a topic on which he has 
 experience, than on one which is new ? Men whose opin- 
 ion is valued on 'Change, are only such as have a special 
 experience, and off that ground their opinion is not valu- 
 able. "More are made good by exercitation, than by 
 nature," said Democritus. The friction in nature is so 
 enormous that we cannot spare any power. It is not 
 question to express our thought, to elect our way, but to 
 overcome resistances of the medium and material in every- 
 thing we do. Hence the use of drill, and the worthless- 
 ness of amateurs to cope with practitioners. Six hours 
 every day at the piano, only to give facility of touch ; six 
 hours a day at painting, only to give command of the odi- 
 ous materials, oil, ochres, and brushes. The masters say 
 that they know a master in music, only by seeing the pose 
 of the hands on the keys ; so difficult and vital an act 
 is the command of the instrument. To have learned the 
 use of the tools, by thousands of manipulations ; to have 
 learned the arts of reckoning, by endless adding and di- 
 viding, is the power of the mechanic and the clerk.
 
 POWER. 67 
 
 I remarked in England, in confirmation of a frequent 
 experience at home, that, in literary circles, the men of 
 trust and consideration, book-makers, editors, university 
 deans and professors, bishops, too, were by no means men 
 of the largest literary talent, but usually of a low and ordi- 
 nary intellectuality, with a sort of mercantile activity and 
 working talent. Indifferent hacks and mediocrities tower, 
 by pushing their forces to a lucrative point, or by work- 
 ing power, over multitudes of superior men, in Old as in 
 New England. 
 
 I have not forgotten that there are sublime considera- 
 tions which limit the value of talent and superficial suc- 
 cess. We can easily overpraise the vulgar hero. There 
 are sources on which we have not drawn. I know what 
 I abstain from. I adjourn what I have to say on this 
 topic to the chapters on Culture and Worship. But 
 this force or spirit, being the means relied on by Nature 
 for bringing the work of the day about, as far as we 
 attach importance to household life, and the prizes of the 
 world, we must respect that. And I hold, that an econ- 
 omy may be applied to it ; it is as much a subject of exact 
 law and arithmetic as fluids and gases are ; it may be 
 husbanded, or wasted ; every man is efficient only as lie 
 is a container or vessel of this force, and never was any 
 signal act or achievement in history, but by this expendi- 
 ture. This is not gold, but the gold-maker; not the 
 fame, but the exploit. 
 
 If these forces and this husbandry are within reach of 
 our will, and the laws of them can be read, we infer that 
 all success, and all conceivable benefit for man, is also, 
 first or last, within his reach, and has its own sublime
 
 68 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 economies by which it may be attained. The world is 
 mathematical, and has no casualty, in all its vast and flow- 
 ing curve. Success has no more eccentricity, than the 
 gingham and muslin we weave in our mills. I know no 
 more affecting lesson to our busy, plotting New England 
 brains, than to go into one of the factories with which we 
 have lined all the water-courses in the States. A man 
 hardly knows how much he is a machine, until he begins 
 to make telegraph, loom, press, and locomotive, in his 
 own image. But in these, he is forced to leave out his 
 follies and hindrances, so that when we go to the mill, the 
 machine is more moral than we. Let a man dare go to a 
 loom, and see if he be equal to it. Let machine confront 
 machine, and see how they come out. The world-mill is 
 more complex than the calico-mill, and the architect 
 stooped less. In the gingham-mill, a broken thread or a 
 shred spoils the web through a piece of a hundred yaris, 
 and is traced back to the girl that wove it, and lessens 
 her wages. The stockholder, on being shown this, rubs 
 his hands with delight. Are you so cunning, Mr. Profit- 
 loss, and do you expect to swindle your master and em- 
 ployer, in the web you weave ? A day is a more mag- 
 nificent cloth than any muslin, the mechanism that makes 
 it is infinitely cunninger, and you shall not conceal the 
 sleazy, fraudulent, rotten hours you have slipped into the 
 piece, nor fear that any honest thread, or straighter steel, 
 or more inflexible shaft, will not testify iu the web.
 
 ni 
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 WHO shall tell what did befall, 
 Far away in time, when once, 
 Over the lifeless ball, 
 Hung idle stars and suns? 
 What god the element obeyed? 
 Wings of what wind the lichen bore, 
 Wafting the puny seeds of power, 
 Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade? 
 And well the primal pioneer 
 Knew the strong task to it assigned, 
 Patient through Heaven's enormous year 
 To build in matter home for mind. 
 From air the creeping centuries drew 
 The matted thicket low and wide, 
 This must the leaves of ages strew 
 The granite slab to clothe and hide, 
 Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. 
 What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled 
 (Tn dizzy seons dim and mute 
 The reeling brain can ill compute) 
 Copper and iron, lead, and gold? 
 What oldest star the fame can save
 
 70 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Of races perishing to pave 
 
 The planet with a floor of lime ? 
 
 Dust is their pyramid and mole : 
 
 Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed 
 
 Under the tumbling mountain's breast, 
 
 In the safe herbal of the coal? 
 
 But when the quarried means were piled, 
 
 All is waste and worthless, till 
 
 Arrives the wise selecting will, 
 
 And, out of slime and chaos, Wit 
 
 Draws the threads of fair and fit. 
 
 Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, 
 
 The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; 
 
 Then flew the sail across the seas 
 
 To feed the North from tropic trees ; 
 
 The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, 
 
 Where they were bid the rivers ran; 
 
 New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, 
 
 Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 
 
 Then docks were built, and crops were stored, 
 
 And ingots added to the hoard. 
 
 But, though light-headed man forget, 
 
 ' Remembering Matter pays her debt: 
 Still, through her motes and masses, draw 
 Electric thrills and ties of Law, 
 Which bind the strengths of Nature wild 
 
 i To the conscience of a child.
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 As soon as a stranger is introduced into any com- 
 pany, one of the first questions which all wish to have 
 answered, is, How does that man get his living ? And 
 with reason. He is no whole man until he knows how 
 to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is barbarous, 
 until every industrious man can get his living without 
 dishonest customs. 
 
 Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. 
 He fails to make his place good in the world, unless he 
 not only pays his debt, but also adds something to the 
 common wealth. Nor can he do justice to his genius, 
 without making some larger demand on the world than a 
 bare subsistence. He is by consiitutiou expensive, and 
 needs to be rich. 
 
 Wealth has its source in applications of the mind to 
 nature, from the rudest strokes of spade and axe, up to 
 the last secrets of art. Intimate ties subsist between 
 thought and all production ; because a better order is 
 equivalent to vast amounts of brute labor. The forces 
 and the resistances are Nature's, but the mind acts in 
 bringing things from where they abound to where they 
 are wanted; in wise combining; in directing the practice 
 of the useful arts, and in the creation of finer values, by
 
 72 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 fine art, by eloquence, by song or the reproductions of 
 memory. Wealth is in applications of mind to nature ; 
 and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much 
 less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in 
 being at the right spot. One man has stronger arms, 
 or longer legs ; another sees by the course of streams, 
 and growth of markets, where land will be wanted, 
 makes a clearing to the river, goes to sleep, and wakes 
 up rich. Steam is no stronger now, than it was a hun- 
 dred years ago ; but is put to better use. A clever fel- 
 low was acquainted with the expansive force of steam ; 
 he also saw the wealth of wheat and grass rotting in 
 Michigan. Then he cunningly screws on the steam-pipe 
 to the wheat-crop. Puff now, Steam ! The steam 
 puffs and expands as before, but this time it is dragging 
 all Michigan at its back to hungry New York and hungry 
 England. Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the 
 Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it 
 to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. 
 Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a 
 portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to 
 Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of 
 transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt 
 and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their 
 secret, that a half -ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, 
 and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Can- 
 ada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its 
 industrial power. 
 
 When the farmer's peaches are taken from under the 
 tree, and carried into town, they have a new look, and a 
 hundred-fold value over the fruit which grew on the same
 
 WEALTH. 73 
 
 bough, and lies fulsomely on the ground. The craft 
 of the merchant is this bringing a thing from where it 
 abounds, to where it is costly. 
 
 Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and 
 wind out ; in a good pump that yields you plenty of 
 sweet water ; in two suits of clothes, so to change your 
 dress when you are wet ; in dry sticks to burn ; in a 
 good double-wick lamp ; and three meals ; in a horse, or 
 a locomotive, to cross the land ; in a boat to cross the 
 sea ; in tools to work with ; in books to read ; and so, 
 in giving, on all sides, by tolls and auxiliaries, the great- 
 est possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, 
 and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and 
 knowledge, and good-will. 
 
 "Wealth begins with these articles of necessity. And 
 here we must recite the iron law which Nature thunders 
 in these northern climates. First, she requires that each 
 man should feed himself. If, happily, his fathers have 
 left him no inheritance, he must go to work, and by 
 making his wants less, or his gains more, he must draw 
 himself out of that state of pain and insult in which she 
 forces the beggar to lie. She gives him no rest until 
 this is done ; she starves, taunts, and torments him, 
 takes away warmth, laughter, sleep, friends, and day- 
 light, until he has fought his way to his own loaf. Then, 
 less peremptorily, but still with sting enough, she urges 
 him to the acquisition of such things as belong to him. 
 Every warehouse and shop-window, every fruit-tree, 
 every thought of every hour, opens a new want to him, 
 which it concerns his power and dignity to gratify. It is 
 of no use to argue the wants down : the philosophers 
 4
 
 74 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 have laid the greatness of man in making his wants few ; 
 ' but will a man content himself with a hut and a handful 
 of dried pease ? He is born to be rich. He is thor- 
 oughly related ; and is tempted out by his appetites 
 and fancies to the conquest of this and that piece of 
 nature, until he finds his well-being in the use of his 
 planet, and of more planets than his own. Wealth re- 
 quires besides the crust of bread and the roof the 
 freedom of the city, the freedom of the earth, travelling, 
 machinery, the benefits of science, music, and fine arts, 
 the best culture, and the best company. He is the rich 
 man who can avail himself of all men's faculties. He is 
 the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from 
 the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in dis- 
 tant countries, and in past times. The same correspond- 
 ence that is between thirst in the stomach and water in 
 the spring, exists between the whole of man and the 
 whole of nature. The elements offer their service to 
 him. The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers 
 its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it, 
 day by day to his craft and audacity. " Beware of 
 me," it says, " but if you can hold me, I am the key to 
 all the lauds." Fire offers, on its side, an equal power. 
 Fire, steam, lightning, gravity, ledges of rock, mines of 
 iron, lead, quicksilver, tin, and gold; forests of all 
 woods ; fruits of all climates ; animals of all habits ; the 
 powers of tillage; the fabrics of his chemic laboratory; 
 the webs of his loom ; the masculine draught of his loco- 
 motive, the talismans of the machine-shop ; all grand 
 and subtile things, minerals, gases, ethers, passions, war, 
 trade, government, are his natural playmates, and, ac-
 
 WEALTH. 75 
 
 cording to the excellence of the machinery in each human 
 being, is his attraction for the instruments he is to 
 employ. The world is his tool-chest, and he is success- 
 ful, or his education is carried on just so far, as is the 
 marriage of his faculties with nature, or, the degree in 
 which he takes up things into himself. 
 
 The strong race is strong on these terms. The Saxons 
 are the merchants of the world; now, for a thousand 
 years, the leading race, and by nothing more than their 
 quality of personal independence, and, in its special mod- 
 ification, pecuniary independence. No reliance for bread 
 and games on the government, no clanship, no patriarchal 
 style of living by the revenues of a chief, no marrying-on, 
 no system of clientship suits them ; but every man 
 must pay his scot. The English are prosperous and 
 peaceful, with their habit of considering that every man 
 must take care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he 
 do not maintain and improve his position in society. 
 
 The subject of economy mixes itself with morals, inas- 
 much as it is a peremptory point of virtue that a man's 
 independence is secured. Poverty demoralizes. A man 
 in debt is so far a slave ; and Wall Street thinks it easy 
 for a millionnaire to be a man of his word, a man of hon- 
 or, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be re- 
 lied on to keep his integrity. And when one observes in 
 the hotels and palaces of our Atlantic capitals the habit 
 of expense, the riot of the senses, the absence of bonds, 
 clanship, fellow-feeling ef any kind, he feels, that, when 
 a man or a woman is driven to the wall, the chances of 
 integrity are frightfully diminished, as if virtue were 
 coining to be a luxury which few could afford, or, as
 
 76 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Burke said, " at a market almost too high for humanity." 
 He may fix his inventory of necessities and of enjoyments 
 on what scale he pleases, but if he wishes the power and 
 privilege of thought, the chalking out his own career, and 
 having society on his own terms, he must bring his wants 
 within his proper power to satisfy. 
 
 The manly part is to do with might and main what 
 you can do. The world is full of fops who never did 
 anything, and who have persuaded beauties and men of 
 genius to wear their fop livery, and these will deliver the 
 fop opinion, that it is not respectable to be seen earning 
 a living ; that it is much more respectable to spend with- 
 out earning ; and this doctrine of the snake will come 
 also from the elect sons of light ; for wise men are not 
 wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their 
 taste or their humor, to once from their reason. The 
 brave workman, who might betray his feeling of it in his 
 manners, if he do not succumb in his practice, must re- 
 place the grace or elegance forfeited, by the merit of the 
 
 ' work done. No matter whether he make shoes, or stat- 
 ues, or laws. It is the privilege of any human work 
 which is well done to invest the doer with a certain 
 haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose 
 faithful work will answer for him. The mechanic at his 
 
 ' bench carries a quiet heart and assured manners, and 
 deals on even terms with men of any condition. The 
 artist has made his picture so true, that it disconcerts 
 criticism. The statue is so beautiful that it contracts no 
 stain from the market, but makes the market a silent gal- 
 lery for itself. The case of the young lawyer was pitiful 
 to disgust, a paltry matter of buttons or tweezer-cases ;
 
 WEALTH. 77 
 
 but the determined youth saw in it an aperture to insert 
 his dangerous wedges, made the insignificance of the 
 thing forgotten, and gave fame by his sense and energy 
 to the name and affairs of the Tittleton snuff-box factory. 
 Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is made 
 a toy. The life of pleasure is so ostentatious, that a 
 shallow observer must believe that this is the agreed best 
 use of wealth, and, whatever is pretended, it ends in 
 
 . cosseting. But, if this were the main use of surplus 
 capital, it would bring us to barricades, burned towns, 
 and tomahawks, presently. Men of sense esteem wealth 
 to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the con- 
 verting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incar- 
 nation and nutriment of their design. Power is what 
 they want, not candy, power to execute their de- 
 
 i sign, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality, to 
 their thought, which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the 
 end for which the Universe exists, and all its resources 
 might be well applied. Columbus thinks that the sphere 
 is a problem for practical navigation, as well as for closet 
 geometry, and looks on all kings and peoples as cowardly 
 landsmen, until they dare fit him out. Tew men on the 
 planet have more truly belonged to it. But he was 
 forced to leave much of his map blank. His successors 
 inherited his map, and inherited his fury to complete it. 
 So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, and sur- 
 vey, the monomaniacs, who talk up their project in 
 marts, and offices, and entreat men to subscribe : how 
 
 ( did our factories get built ? How did North America 
 get netted with iron rails, except by the importunity of 
 these orators, who dragged all the prudent men in ? Is
 
 78 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 party the madness of many for the gain of a few ? This 
 . speculative genius is the madness of few for the gain of 
 the world. The projectors are sacrificed, but the public 
 is the gainer. Each of these idealists, working after his 
 thought, would make it tyrannical, if he could. He is 
 met and antagonized by other speculators, as hot as he. 
 The equilibrium is preserved by these counteractions, as 
 one tree keeps down another in the forest, that it may 
 not absorb all the sap in the ground. And the supply in 
 nature of railroad presidents, copper-miners, graud-junc- 
 tioners, smoke-burners, fire-annihilators, etc., is limited 
 by the same law which keeps the proportion in the sup- 
 ply of carbon, of alum, and of hydrogen. 
 
 To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the mas- 
 ter-works and chief men of each race. It is to have the 
 sea, by voyaging ; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the 
 Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople; to see 
 galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufactories. The reader 
 of Humboldt's " Cosmos " follows the marches of a man 
 whose eyes, ears, and mind are armed by all the science, 
 arts, and implements which mankind have anywhere 
 accumulated, and who is using these to add to the stock. 
 So is it with Denon, Beckford, Belzoni, Wilkinson, Lay- 
 ard, Kane, Lepsius, and Livingstone. "The rich man," 
 says Saadi, " is everywhere expected and at home." The 
 rich take up something more of the world into man's 
 life. They include the country as well as the town, the 
 ocean-side, the White Hills, the Far West, and the old 
 European homesteads of man, in their notion of availa- 
 ble material. The world is his who has money to go over 
 it. He arrives at the sea-shore, and a sumptuous ship
 
 WEALTH. 79 
 
 lias floored and carpeted for him the stormy Atlantic, and 
 made it a luxurious hotel, amid the horrors of tempests. 
 The Persians say, " 'T is the same to him who wears a 
 shoe, as if the whole earth were covered with leather." 
 
 Kings are said to have long arms, but every man 
 should have long arms, and should pluck his living, his 
 instruments, his power, and his knowing, from the sun, 
 moon, and stars. Is not then the demand to be rich 
 legitimate ? Yet, I have never seen a rich man. I have 
 never seen a man as rich as all men ought to be, or, with 
 an adequate command of nature. The pulpit and the 
 press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for 
 wealth ; but if men should take these moralists at their 
 word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would 
 rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the 
 people, lest civilization should be undone. Men are 
 urged by their ideas to acquire the command over nature. 
 Ages derive a culture from the wealth of "Roman Caesars, 
 Leo Tenths, magnificent Kings of France, Grand Dukes 
 of Tuscany, Dukes of Devonshire, Townleys, Vernons, 
 and Peels, in England ; or whatever great proprietors. ' 
 It is the interest of all men, that there should be Vati- 
 cans and Louvres full of noble works of art; British 
 museums, and French Gardens of Plants, Philadelphia 
 Academies of Natural History, Bodleian, Ambrosian, 
 Royal, Congressional Libraries. It is the interest of all 
 that there should be Exploring Expeditions; Captain 
 Cooks to voyage round the world, Rosses, Franklins, 
 Richardsons, and Kanes, to find the magnetic and the 
 geographic poles. We are all richer for the measurement 
 of a degree of latitude oa. the earth's surface. Our navi-
 
 80 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 gallon is safer for the chart. How intimately our knowl- 
 edge of the system of the Universe rests on that ! and 
 a true economy in a state or an individual will forget its 
 frugality in behalf of claims like these. 
 
 Whilst it is each man's interest, that, not only ease 
 and convenience of living, but also wealth or surplus 
 product should exist somewhere, it need not be in his 
 hands. Often it is very undesirable to him. Goethe 
 said well, " Nobody should be rich but those who under- 
 stand it." Some men are born to own, and can animate 
 all their possessions. Others cannot : their owning is 
 not graceful ; seems to be a compromise of their char- 
 acter: they seem to steal their own dividends. They 
 should own who can administer ; not they who hoard and 
 conceal ; not they who, the greater proprietors they are, 
 are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves 
 out work for more, opens a path for all. Tor he is the 
 rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor 
 man in whom the people are poor ; and how to give all 
 access to the masterpieces of art and nature, is the prob- 
 lem of civilization. The socialism of our day has done 
 good service in setting men on thinking how certain civ- 
 ilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be 
 enjoyed by all. For example, the providing to each man 
 the means and apparatus of science, and of the arts. 
 There are many articles good for occasional use, which 
 tew men are able to own. Every man wishes to see the 
 ring of Saturn, the satellites and belts of Jupiter and 
 Mars ; the mountains and craters in the moon : yet how 
 few can buy a telescope ! and of those, scarcely one would 
 like the trouble of keeping it in order, and exhibiting it.
 
 WEALTH. 81 
 
 So of electrical and chemical apparatus, and many the 
 like things. Every man may have occasion to consult 
 books which he does not care to possess, such as cyclo- 
 paedias, dictionaries, tables, charts, maps, and public doc- 
 uments : pictures also of birds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, 
 flowers, whose names he desires to know. 
 
 There is a refining influence from the arts of Design 
 on a prepared mind, which is as positive as that of music, 
 and not to be supplied from any other source. But pic- 
 tures, engravings, statues, and casts, beside their first 
 cost, entail expenses, as of galleries and keepers for the 
 exhibition ; and the use which any man can make of 
 them is rare, and their value, too, is much enhanced by 
 the numbers of men who can share their enjoyment. In 
 the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person 
 should pretend a property in a work of art, which be- 
 longed to all who could behold it. I think sometimes, 
 could I only have music on my own terms ; could I live 
 in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I 
 wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, 
 that were a bath and a medicine. 
 
 If properties of this kind were owned by states, towns, 
 and lyceums, they would draw the bonds of neighbor- 
 hood closer. A town would exist to an intellectual pur- 
 pose. In Europe, where the feudal forms secure the 
 permanence of wealth in certain families, those families 
 buy and preserve these things, and lay them open to the 
 public. But in America, where democratic institutions 
 divide every estate into small portions, after a few years, 
 the public should step into the place of these proprietors, 
 and provide this culture and inspiration for the citizen. . 
 4* P
 
 82 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows rich by 
 the use of his faculties; by the union of thought with 
 nature. Property is an intellectual production. The 
 game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and 
 patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out 
 brute labor. An infinite number of shrewd men, in in- 
 finite years, have arrived at certain best and shortest 
 ways of doing, and this accumulated skill in arts, cul- 
 tures, harvestings, curings, manufactures, navigations, 
 exchanges, constitutes the worth of our world to-day. 
 
 Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot 
 play, which few men can play well. The right merchant 
 is one who has the just average of faculties we call com- 
 mon-sense ; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes 
 up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly 
 persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a 
 reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune, and so, 
 in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic 
 about this, and believe in magic, in all parts of life. He 
 knows, that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, 
 cent for cent, for every effect a perfect cause, and 
 that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose. 
 He insures himself in every transaction, and likes small 
 and sure gains. Probity and closeness to the facts are 
 the basis, but the masters of the art add a certain long 
 arithmetic. The problem is, to combine many and remote 
 operations, with the accuracy and adherence to the facts, 
 which is easy in near and small transactions ; so to arrive 
 at gigantic results, without any compromise of safety. 
 Napoleon was fond of telling the story of the Marseilles 
 banker, who said to his visitor, surprised at the contrast
 
 WEALTH. 83 
 
 between tlie splendor of the banker's chateau and hospi- 
 tality, and the meanness of the counting-room in which 
 he had seen him : " Young man, you are too young to 
 understand how masses are formed, the true and only 
 power, whether composed of money, water, or men, 
 it is all alike, a mass is an immense centre of motion, 
 but it must be begun, it must be kept up " : and he 
 might have added, that the way in which it must be be- 
 gun and kept up is, by obedience to the law of particles. 
 
 Success consists in close appliance to the laws of the 
 world, and, since those laws are intellectual and moral, 
 an intellectual and moral obedience. Political Economy 
 is as good a book wherein to read the life of man, and 
 the ascendency of laws over all private and hostile influ- 
 ences, as any Bible which has come down to us. 
 
 Money is representative, and follows the nature and 
 fortunes of the owner. The coin is a delicate meter of 
 civil, social, and moral changes. The farmer is covetous 
 of his dollar, and with reason. It is no waif to him. 
 He knows how many strokes of labor it represents. His 
 bones ache with the day's work that earned it. He 
 knows how much land it represents ; how much rain, 
 frost, and sunshine. He knows that, in the dollar, he 
 gives you so much discretion and patience, so much hoe- 
 ing and threshing. Try to lift his dollar ; you must lift 
 all that weight. In the city, where money follows the 
 skit of a pen, or a lucky rise in exchange, it conies to be 
 looked on as light. I wish the farmer held it dearer, and 
 ; would spend it only for real bread ; force for force. 
 
 The farmer's dollar is heavy, and the clerk's is light 
 and nimble ; leaps out of his pocket; jumps on to cards
 
 84 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 and faro-tables : but still more curious is its susceptibility 
 to metaphysical changes. It is the finest barometer of 
 social storms, and announces revolutions. 
 
 Every step of civil advancement makes every man's 
 dollar worth more. In California, the country where it 
 grew, what would it buy ? A few years since, it would 
 buy a shanty, dysentery, hunger, bad company, and crime. 
 There are wide countries, like Siberia, where it would 
 buy little else to-day, than some petty mitigation of suf- 
 fering. In Rome, it will buy beauty and magnificence. 
 Forty years ago, a dollar would not buy much in Boston. 
 Now it will buy a great deal more in our old town, 
 thanks to railroads, telegraphs, steamers, and the con- 
 temporaneous .growth of New York, and the whole coun- 
 try. Yet there are many goods appertaining to a capital 
 city, which are not yet purchasable here, no, not with a 
 mountain of dollars. A dollar in Florida is not worth a 
 dollar in Massachusetts. A dollar is not value, but rep- 
 resentative of value, and, at last, of moral values. A dol- 
 lar is rated for the corn it will buy, or to speak strictly, 
 not for the corn or house-room, but for Athenian corn, 
 and Roman house-room, for the wit, probity, and 
 power, which we eat bread and dwell in houses to share 
 and exert. Wealth is mental ; wealth is moral. The 
 value of a dollar is, to buy just things : a dollar goes on 
 increasing in value with all the genius, and all the virtue 
 of the world. A dollar in a university is worth more 
 than a dollar in a jail ; in a temperate, schooled, law- 
 abiding community, than in some sink of crime, where 
 dice, knives, and arsenic are in constant play. 
 
 The "Bank -Note Detector" is a useful publication.
 
 WEALTH. 85 
 
 But the current dollar, silver or paper, is itself the detector 
 1 of the right and wrong where it circulates. Is it not in- 
 stantly enhanced by the increase of equity ? If a trader 
 refuses to sell his vote, or adheres to some odious right, 
 he makes so much more equity in Massachusetts; and 
 every acre in the State is more worth, in the hour of his 
 action. If you take out of State Street the ten honestest 
 merchants, and put in ten roguish persons, controlling 
 the same amount of capital, the rates of insurance will 
 indicate it ; the soundness of banks will show it : the 
 highways will be less secure : the schools will feel it ; 
 the children will bring home their little dose of the poi- 
 son : the judge will sit less firmly on the bench, and his 
 decisions be less upright; he has lost so much support 
 and constraint, which all need ; and the pulpit will be- 
 tray it, in a laxer rule of life. An apple-tree, if you take 
 out every day, for a number of days, a load of loam, and 
 put in a load of sand about its roots, will find it out. An 
 apple-tree is a stupid kind of creature, but if this treat- 
 ment be pursued for a short time, I think it would begin 
 to mistrust mething. And if you should take out of 
 the powerful class engaged in trade a hundred good men, 
 and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just the same 
 thing, introduce a demoralizing institution, would not the 
 dollar, which is not much stupider than an apple-tree, 
 presently find it out ? The value of a dollar is social, as 
 it is created by society. Every man who removes into 
 this city, witli any purchasable talent or skill in him, gives 
 to every man's labor in the city a new worth. If a talent 
 is anywhere born into the world, the community of na- 
 tions is enriched ; and, much more, with a new degree of
 
 86 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 probity. The expense of crime, one of the principal 
 charges of every nation, is so far stopped. In Europe, 
 crime is observed to increase or abate with the price of 
 bread. If the Rothschilds at Paris do not accept bills, 
 the people at Manchester, at Paisley, at Birmingham, are 
 forced into the highway, and landlords are shot down 
 in Ireland. The police records attest it. The vibra- 
 tions are presently felt in New York, New Orleans, and 
 Chicago. Not much otherwise, the economical power 
 touches the masses through the political lords. Roths- 
 child refuses the Russian loan, and there is peace, and 
 the harvests are saved. He takes it, and there is war, 
 and an agitation through a large portion of mankind, 
 with every hideous result, ending in revolution, and a 
 new order. 
 
 Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. 
 The basis of political economy is non-interference. The 
 only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of de- 
 mand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you 
 snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. Give no 
 bounties : make equal laws : secure life and .property, and 
 you need not give alms. Open the doors of opportunity 
 to talent and virtue, and they will do themselves justice, 
 and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and 
 just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and 
 imbecile, to the industrious, brave, and persevering. 
 
 The laws of nature play through trade, as a toy-bat- 
 tery exhibits the effects of electricity. The level of the 
 sea is not more surely kept, than is the equilibrium of 
 value in society, by the demand and supply ; and artifice 
 or legislation punishes itself by reactions, gluts, and bank-
 
 WEALTH. 87 
 
 ruptcies. The sublime laws play indifferently through 
 atoms and galaxies. Whoever knows what happens in 
 the getting and spending of a loaf of bread and a pint of 
 beer ; that no wishing will change the rigorous limits of 
 pints and penny loaves ; that, for all that is consumed, 
 so much less remains in the basket and pot ; but what is 
 gone out of these is not wasted, but well spent, if it 
 nourish his body, and enable him to finish his task ; 
 knows all of political economy that the budgets of em- 
 pires can teach him. The interest of petty economy is 
 this symbolization of the great economy; the way in 
 which a house and a private man's methods tally with 
 the solar system, and the laws of give and take, through- 
 out nature ; and however wary we are of the falsehoods 
 and petty tricks which we suicidally play off on each 
 other, every man has a certain satisfaction, whenever his 
 dealing touches on the inevitable facts ; when he sees 
 that tilings themselves dictate the price, as they always 
 tend to do, and, in large manufactures, are seen to do. 
 Your paper is not fine or coarse enough, is too heavy, 
 or too thin. The manufacturer says, he will furnish you 
 with just that thickness or thinness you want ; the pattern 
 is quite indifferent to him ; here is his schedule ; any 
 variety of paper, as cheaper or dearer, with the prices 
 annexed. A pound of paper costs so much, and you 
 may have it made up in any pattern you fancy. 
 
 There is in all our dealings a self-regulation that su- 
 persedes chaffering. You will rent a house, but must 
 have it cheap. The owner can reduce the rent, but so 
 he incapacitates himself from making proper repairs, and 
 the tenant gets not the house he would have, but a worse
 
 88 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 one ; besides, that a relation a little injurious is established 
 between landlord and tenant. You dismiss your laborer, 
 saying, " Patrick, I shall send for you as soon as I can- 
 not do without you. " Patrick goes off contented, for 
 he knows that the weeds will grow with the potatoes, the 
 vines must be planted, next week, and, however unwill- 
 ing you may be, the cantelopes, crook-necks, and cucum- 
 bers will send for him. Who but must wish that all labor 
 and value should stand on the same simple and surly 
 market ? If it is the best of its kind, it will. We must 
 have joiner, locksmith, planter, priest, poet, doctor, cook, 
 weaver, ostler ; each in turn, through the year. 
 
 If a St. Michael's pear sells for a shilling, it costs a 
 shilling to raise it. If, in Boston, the best securities 
 offer twelve per cent for money, they have just six per 
 cent of insecurity. You may not see that the fine pear 
 costs you a shilling, but it costs the community so much. 
 The shilling represents the number of enemies the pear 
 has, and the amount of risk in ripening it. The price of 
 coal shows the narrowness of the coal-field, and a compul- 
 sory confinement of the miners to a certain district. 
 All salaries are reckoned on contingent, as well as on 
 actual services. " If the wind were always southwest by 
 west," said the skipper, "women might take ships to 
 sea." One might say, that all things are of one price ; that 
 nothing is cheap or dear ; and that the apparent dispari- 
 ties that strike us are only a shopman's trick of conceal- 
 ing the damage in your bargain. A youth coming into 
 the city from his native New Hampshire farm, with its 
 hard fare still fresh in his remembrance, boards at a first- 
 class hotel, and believes he must somehow have outwitted
 
 WEALTH. 89 
 
 Dr. Franklin and Malthus, for luxuries are cheap. But 
 he pays for the one convenience of a better dinner, by the 
 loss of some of the richest social and educational advan- 
 tages. He has lost what guards ! what incentives ! He 
 will perhaps find by and by, that he left the Muses at the 
 door of the hotel, and found the Furies inside. Money 
 often costs too much, and power and pleasure are not 
 cheap. The ancient poet said, " The gods sell all things 
 at a fair price." 
 
 There is an example of the compensations in the com- 
 mercial history of this country. When the European 
 wars threw the carrying-trade of the world, from 1800 
 to 1812, into American bottoms, a seizure was now and 
 then made of an American ship. Of course, the loss was 
 serious to the owner, but the country was indemnified ; 
 for we charged threepence a pound 1'or currying cotton, 
 sixpence for tobacco, and so on ; which paid for the risk 
 and loss, and brought into the country an immense pros- 
 perity, early marriages, private wealth, the building of 
 cities, and of states ; and, after the war was over, we 
 received compensation over and above, by treaty, for all 
 the seizures. Well, the Americans grew rich and great. 
 But the pay-day comes round. Britain, France, and 
 Germany, which our extraordinary profits had impov- 
 erished, send out, attracted by the fame of our advan- 
 tages, first their thousands, then their millions, of poor 
 people, to share the crop. At first, we employ them, 
 and increase our prosperity ; but, in the artificial system 
 of society and of protected labor, which we also have 
 adopted and enlarged, there come presently checks and 
 stoppages. Then we refuse to employ these poor men.
 
 90 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 But they will not so be answered. They go into the 
 poor-rates, and, though we refuse wages, we must now 
 pay the same amount in the form of taxes. Again, it 
 turns out that the largest proportion of crimes are com- 
 mitted by foreigners. The cost of the crime, and the 
 expense of courts, and of prisons, we must bear, and 
 the standing army of preventive police we must pay. 
 The cost of education of the posterity of this great col- 
 ony, I will not compute. But the gross amount of these 
 costs will begin to pay back what we thought was a net 
 gain from our Transatlantic customers of 1800. It is 
 vain to refuse this payment. We cannot get rid of these 
 people, and we cannot get rid of their will to be sup- 
 ported. That has become an inevitable element in our 
 politics ; and, for their votes, each of the dominant par- 
 ties courts and assists them to get it executed. More- 
 over, we have to pay, not what would have contented 
 them at home, but what they have learned to think neces- 
 sary here ; so that opinion, fancy, and all manner of 
 moral considerations complicate the problem. 
 
 These were the prevalent opinions in 1850. Yet this 
 result is no more final than the last. We have hardly 
 time to study this adjustment and deplore these disad- 
 vantages, before the scale rights itself again, this time 
 disclosing new and immense benefits. For this countless 
 host of immigrants are now seen to be adding by their 
 labor to the wealth of the country. They plant the wil- 
 derness with wheat and corn, work the mines for coal 
 and lead and copper and gold, build roads and towns and 
 states, create a market for the manufactures and com- 
 merce of either sea-coast, and swell by their taxes the 
 national treasury.
 
 WEALTH. 91 
 
 There are a few measures of economy which will bear 
 to be named without disgust; for the subject is tender, 
 and we may easily have too much of it ; and therein re- 
 sembles the hideous animalcules of which our bodies are 
 built up, which, offensive in the particular, yet com- 
 pose valuable and effective masses. Our nature and 
 genius force us to respect ends, whilst we use means. 
 We must use the means, and yet, in our most accurate 
 using, somehow screen and cloak them, as we can only 
 give them any beauty, by a reflection of the glory of the 
 end. That is the good head, which serves the end, and 
 commands the means. The rabble are corrupted by their 
 means : the means are too strong for them, and they 
 desert their end. 
 
 1. The first of these measures is that each man's ex- 
 pense must proceed from his character. As long as your 
 genius buys, the investment is safe, though you spend 
 like a monarch. Nature arms each man with some fac- 
 ulty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible 
 to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society. 
 This native determination guides his labor and his spend- 
 ing. He wants an equipment of means and tools proper 
 to his talent. And to save on this point were to neu- 
 tralize the special strength and helpfulness of each mind. 
 Do your work, respecting the excellence of the work, 
 and not its acceptableuess. This is so much economy, 
 that, rightly read, it is the sum of economy. Profligacy 
 consists not in spending years of time or chests of mon- 
 ey, but in spending them off the line of your career. 
 The crime which bankrupts men and states is, job-work , 
 declining from your main design, to serve a turn here
 
 92 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 or there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direc- 
 tion of your life : nothing is great or desirable, if it is 
 off from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a 
 straight line, and say, that society can never prosper, 
 but must always be bankrupt, until every man does that 
 which he was created to do. 
 
 Spend for your expense, and retrench the expense 
 which is not yours. Allston, the painter, was wont to 
 say, that he built a plain house, and filled it with plain 
 furniture, because he would hold out no bribe to any to 
 visit him, who had not similar tastes to his own. We 
 are sympathetic, and, like children, want everything we 
 see. But it is a large stride to independence, when 
 a man, in the discovery of his proper talent, has sunk 
 the necessity for false expenses. As the betrothed 
 maiden, by one secure affection, is relieved from a sys- 
 tem of slaveries, the daily inculcated necessity of 
 pleasing all, so the man who has found what he can do, 
 can spend on that, and leave all other spending. Mon- 
 taigne said : " When he was a younger brother, he went 
 brave in dress and equipage, but afterward his chateau 
 and farms might answer for him." Let a man who 
 belongs to the class of nobles, those, namely, who have 
 found out that they can do something, relieve himself of 
 all vague squandering on objects not his. Let the realist 
 not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the 
 costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The vir- 
 tues are economists, but some of the vices are also. 
 Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a 
 pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, 
 worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year. Pride
 
 WEALTH. 93 
 
 is handsome, economical : pride eradicates so many vices, 
 letting none svibsist but itself, that it seems as if it were 
 a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. Pride can 
 go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a 
 house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, 
 lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk 
 with poor men, or sit silent well-contented in fine saloons. 
 But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, 
 health, and peace, and is still nothing at last, a long way 
 leading nowhere. Only one drawback ; proud people are 
 intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving. 
 
 Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius 
 for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, 
 he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should 
 be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties 
 which will embitter his days, and spoil him for his proper 
 work. We had in this region, twenty years ago, among 
 our educated men, a sort of Arcadian fanaticism, a pas- 
 sionate desire to go upon the land, and unite farming to 
 intellectual pursuits. Many effected their purpose, and 
 made the experiment, and some became downright plough- 
 men ; but all were cured of their faith that scholarship 
 and practical farming (I mean, with one's own hands) 
 could be united. 
 
 With brow bent, with firm intent, the pale scholar 
 leaves his desk to draw a freer breath, and get a juster 
 statement of his thought, in the garden-walk. He stoops 
 to pull up a purslain, or a dock, that is choking the young 
 corn, and finds there are two : close behind the last is a 
 third ; he reaches out his hand to a fourth ; behind that 
 are four thousand and one. He is heated and untuned,
 
 94 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 and, by and by, wakes up from his idiot dream of chick- 
 weed and red-root, to remember his morning thought, 
 and to find, that, with his adamantine purposes, he has 
 been duped by a dandelion. A garden is like those per- 
 nicious machineries we read of, every month, in the news- 
 papers, which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and 
 draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irresist- 
 ible destruction. In an evil hour he pulled down his 
 wall, and added a field to his homestead. No land is 
 bad, but laud is worse. If a man own land, the land 
 owns him. Now let him leave home, if he dare. Every 
 tree and graft, every hill of melons, row of corn, or quick- 
 set hedge, all lie has done, and all he means to do, stand 
 in his way, like duns, when he would go out of his gate. 
 The devotion to these vines and trees he finds poisonous. 
 Long free walks, a circuit of miles, free his brain, and 
 serve his body. Long marches are no hardship to him. 
 He believes he composes easily on the hills. But this 
 pottering in a few square yards of garden is dispiriting 
 and drivelling. The smell of the plants has drugged him, 
 and robbed him of energy. He finds a catalepsy in his 
 bones. He grows peevisli and poor-spirited. The gen- 
 ius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like 
 resinous and vitreous electricity. One is' concentrative 
 in sparks and shocks : the other is diffuse strength ; so 
 that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties. 
 
 An engraver whose hands must be of an exquisite deli- 
 cacy of stroke should not lay stone-walls. Sir David 
 Brewster gives exact instructions for microscopic obser- 
 vation : " Lie down on your back, and hold the single 
 lens and object over your eye," etc., etc. How much
 
 WEALTH. 95 
 
 more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of 
 isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going 
 out of the body to think ! 
 
 2. Spend after your genius, and by system. Nature 
 goes by rule, not by sallies and saltations. There must 
 be system in the economies. Saving and unexpensive- 
 ness will not keep the most pathetic family from ruin, 
 nor will bigger incomes make free spending safe. The 
 secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but 
 in the relation of income to outgo ; as if, after expense 
 has been fixed at a certain point, then new and steady 
 rills of income, though never so small, being added, 
 wealth begins. But in ordinary, as means increase, 
 spending increases faster, so that, large incomes, in Eng- 
 land and elsewhere, are found not to help matters ; the 
 eating quality of debt does not relax its voracity. When 
 the cholera is in the potato, what is the use of planting 
 larger crops ? In England, the richest country in the 
 universe, I was assured by shrewd observers, that great 
 lords and ladies had no more guineas to give away than 
 other people ; that liberality with money is as rare, and 
 as immediately famous a virtue as if is here. Want is a 
 growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large 
 enough to cov. I remember in Warwickshire, to have 
 been shown a fair manor, still in the same name as in 
 Shakespeare's time. The rent-roll, I was told, is some 
 fourteen thousand pounds a year : but, when the second 
 son of the late proprietor was born, the father was per- 
 plexed how to provide for him. The eldest son must in- 
 herit the manor ; what to do with this supernumerary ? 
 He was advised to breed him for the Church, and to set-
 
 96 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 tie him in the rectorship, which was in the gift of the 
 family; which was done. It is a general rule in that 
 country, that bigger incomes do not help anybody. It is 
 commonly observed, that z. sudden wealth, like a prize 
 drawn in a lottery, or a large bequest to a poor family, 
 does not permanently enrich. They have served no 
 apprenticeship to wealth, and, with the rapid wealth, 
 come rapid claims : which they do not know how to 
 deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated. 
 
 A system must be in every economy, or the best single 
 expedients are of no avail. A farm is a good thing when 
 it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, 
 or a shop, to eke it out. Thus, the cattle are a main link 
 in the chain-ring. If the non-conformist or aesthetic 
 farmer leaves out the cattle, and does not also leave out 
 the want which the cattle must supply, he must fill the 
 gap by begging or stealing. When men now alive were 
 born, the farm yielded everything that was consumed on 
 it. The farm yielded no money, and the farmer got on 
 without. If he fell sick, his neighbors came in to his 
 aid : each gave a day's work ; or a half-day ; or lent his 
 yoke of oxen, or his horse, and kept his work even : hoed 
 his potatoes, mowed his hay, reaped his rye ; well know- 
 ing that no man could afford to hire labr, without sell- 
 ing his land. In autumn, a farmer could sell an ox or a 
 hog, and get a little money to pay taxes withal. Now, 
 the farmer buys almost all he consumes, tin-ware, 
 cloth, sugar, tea, coffee, fish, coal, railroad tickets, and 
 newspapers. % 
 
 A master in each art is required, because the practice 
 is never with still or dead subjects, but they change in
 
 WEALTH. 97 
 
 your bands. You think farm buildings and broad acres 
 a solid property : but its value is flowing like water. It 
 requires as much watching as if you were decanting wine 
 from a cask. The farmer knows what to do with it, stops 
 every leak, turns all the streamlets to one reservoir, and 
 decants wine ; but a blunderhead comes out of Cornhill, 
 tries his hand, and it all leaks away. So is it with gran- 
 ite streets, or timber townships, as with fruit or flowers. 
 Nor is any investment so permanent, that it can be al- 
 lowed to remain without incessant watching, as the his- 
 tory of each attempt to lock up an inheritance through 
 two generations for an unborn inheritor may show. 
 
 When Mr. Cockayne takes a cottage in the country, 
 and will keep his cow, he thinks a cow is a creature that 
 is fed on hay, and gives a pail of milk twice a day. But 
 the cow that he buys gives milk for three months ; then 
 her bag dries up. What to do with a dry cow ? who will 
 buy her ? Perhaps he bought also a yoke of oxen to do 
 his work; but they get blown and lame. What to do 
 with blown and lame oxen ? The farmer fats his after 
 the spring work is done, and kills them in the fall. But 
 how can Cockayne, who has" no pastures, and leaves his 
 cottage daily in the cars, at business hours, be pothered 
 with fatting and killing oxen ? He plants trees ; but 
 there must be crops, to keep the trees in ploughed land. 
 What shall be the crops ? He will have nothing to do 
 with trees, but will have grass. After a year or two, the 
 grass must be turned up and ploughed : now what crops ? 
 Credulous Cockayne ! 
 
 3. Help comes in the custom of the country, and the 
 rule of Impera parendo. The rule is not to dictate, nor 
 5 o
 
 98 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 to iusist on carrying out each of your schemes by igno- 
 rant wilfulness, but to learn practically the secret spoken 
 from all nature, that things themselves refuse to be mis- 
 managed, and will show to the watchful their own law. 
 Nobody need stir hand or foot. The custom of the coun- 
 try will do it all. I know not how to build or to plant ; 
 neither how to buy wood, nor what to do with the house- 
 lot, the field, or the wood-lot, when bought. Never fear ; 
 it is all settled how it shall be, long beforehand, in the 
 custom of the country, whether to sand, or whether to 
 clay it, when to plough, and how to dress, whether to 
 grass, or to corn ; and you cannot help or hinder it. 
 Nature has her own best mode of doing each thing, and 
 she has somewhere told it plainly, if we will keep our 
 eyes and ears^opeu. If not, she will not be slow in un- 
 deceiving us, when we prefer our own way to hers. How 
 often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in 
 replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing 
 the parts from false position ; they fly into place by the 
 action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts 
 rely. 
 
 Of the two eminent engineers in the recent construc- 
 tion of railways in England, Mr. Brunei went straight 
 from terminus to terminus, through mountains, over 
 streams, crossing highways, cutting ducal estates in. two, 
 and shooting througli this man's cellar, and that man's 
 attic window, and so arriving at his end, at great pleas- 
 ure to geometers, but with cost to his company. Mr. 
 Stephenson, on the contrary, believing that the river 
 knows the way, followed his valley, as implicitly as our 
 Western Railroad follows the Westfield River, and turned
 
 WEALTH. 99 
 
 out to be the safest and cheapest engineer. We say the 
 cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors. 
 Every pedestrian in our pastures has frequent occasion 
 to thank the cows for cutting the best path through the 
 thicket, and over the hills; and travellers and Indians 
 know the value of a buffalo-trail, which is sure to be the 
 easiest possible pass through the ridge. 
 
 When a citizen, fresh from Dock Square, or Milk 
 Street, comes out and buys land in the country, his first 
 thought is to a fine outlook from his windows ; his 
 library must command a western view : a sunset every 
 day bathing the shoulder of Blue Hills, Wachusett, and 
 the peaks of Monaduoc and Uncanoonuc. What, thirty 
 acres, and all this magnificence for fifteen hundred dol- 
 lars ! It would be cheap at fifty thousand. He proceeds 
 at once, his eyes dim with tears of joy, to fix the spot 
 for his corner-stone. But the man who is to level the 
 ground thinks it will take many hundred loads of gravel to 
 fill the hollow to the road. The stone-mason who should 
 build the well thinks he shall have to dig forty feet : the 
 baker doubts he shall never like to drive up to the door : 
 the practical neighbor cavils at the position of the barn ; 
 and the citizen comes to know that his predecessor the 
 farmer built the house in the right spot for the sun and 
 wind, the spring, and water-drainage, and the conven- 
 ience to the pasture, the garden, the field, and the road. 
 So Dock Square yields the point, and things have their 
 own way. Use has made the farmer wise, and the fool- 
 ish citizen learns to take his counsel. From step to step 
 he comes at last to surrender at discretion. The farmer 
 affects to take his orders ; but the citizen says, You may
 
 100 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ask me as often as you will, and in what ingenious forms, 
 for an opinion concerning the mode of building my wall, 
 or sinking my well, or laying out my acre, but the ball 
 will rebound to you. These are matters on which I 
 neither know, nor need to know anything. These are 
 questions which you and not I shall answer. 
 
 Not less, within doors, a system settles itself para- 
 mount and tyrannical over master and mistress, servant 
 and child, cousin and acquaintance. 'T is in vain that 
 genius or virtue or energy of character strive and cry 
 against it. This is fate. And 't is very well that the 
 poor husband reads in a book of a new way of living, and 
 resolves to adopt it at home : let him go home and try it, 
 if he dare. 
 
 4. Another point of economy is to look for seed of the 
 same kind as you sow : and not to hope to buy one kind 
 with another kind. Friendship buys friendship ; justice, 
 justice; military merit, military success. Good hus- 
 bandry finds wife, children, and household. The good 
 merchant, large gains, ships, stocks, and money. The 
 good poet, fame, and literary credit ; but not either, the 
 other. Yet there is commonly a confusion of expecta- 
 tions on these points. Hotspur lives for the moment ; 
 praises himself for it ; and despises Furlong, that he does 
 not. Hotspur, of course, is poor ; and Furlong, a good 
 provider. The old circumstance is, that Hotspur thinks 
 it a superiority in himself, this improvidence, which ought 
 to be rewarded with Furlong's lands. 
 
 I have not at all completed my design. But we must 
 not leave the topic, without casting one glance into the 
 interior recesses. It is a doctrine of philosophy, that
 
 WEALTH. 101 
 
 man is a being of degrees ; that there is nothing in the 
 world, which is not repeated in his body ; his body being 
 a sort of miniature or summary of the world : then that 
 there is nothing in his body, which is not repeated as in 
 a celestial sphere in his mind : then, there is nothing in 
 his brain, which is not repeated in a higher sphere, in his 
 moral system. 
 
 5. Now these things are so in nature. All things 
 ascend, and the royal rule of economy is, that it should 
 ascend also, or, whatever we do must have a higher aim. 
 Thus it is a maxim, that money is another kind of blood, 
 Pecunid alter sanguis : or, the estate of a man is only a 
 larger kind of body, and admits of regimen analogous 
 to his bodily circulations. So there is no maxim of the 
 merchant, which does not admit of an extended sense, 
 e. g. " The best use of money is to pay debts " ; " Every 
 business by itself " ; " Best time is present time " ; 
 " The right investment is in tools of your trade " ; and 
 the like. The counting-room maxims liberally ex- 
 pounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's 
 economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It 
 is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure. It is to 
 invest income ; that is to say, to take up particulars into 
 generals ; days into integral eras, literary, emotive, 
 practical, of its life, and still to ascend in its investment. 
 The merchant has but one rule, absorb and invest : he is 
 to be capitalist : the scraps and filings must be gathered 
 back into the crucible ; the gas and smoke must be 
 burned, and earnings must not go to increase expense, 
 ' but to capital again. Well, the man must be capitalist. 
 Will he spend his income, or will he invest ? His body
 
 102 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 
 
 and every organ is under the same law. His body is a 
 jar, in which the liquor of life is stored. Will he spend 
 for pleasure ? The way to ruin is short and facile. 
 Will he not spend, hut hoard for power? It passes 
 through the sacred fermentations, by that law of Nature 
 whereby everything climbs to higher platforms, and 
 bodily vigor becomes mental and moral vigor. The 
 bread he eats is first strength and animal spirits; it be- 
 comes, in higher laboratories, imagery and thought; and 
 iu still higher results, courage and endurance. This is 
 the right compound interest; this is capital doubled, 
 quadrupled, centupled ; man raised to his highest power. 
 The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane ; 
 to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may 
 spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal 
 existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old 
 experiments of animal sensation, nor unless, through new 
 powers and ascending pleasures, he knows himself, by 
 the actual experience of higher good, to be already ou 
 the way to the highest.
 
 IV. 
 
 CULTURE. 
 
 CAN rules or tutors educate 
 
 The semigod whom we await? 
 
 He must be musical, 
 
 Tremulous, impressional, 
 
 Alive to gentle influence 
 
 Of landscape and of sky, 
 
 And tender to the spirit-touch 
 
 Of man's or maiden's eye : 
 
 But, to his native centre fast, 
 
 Shall into Future fuse the Past, 
 
 And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast.
 
 CULTURE. 
 
 THE word of ambitit n at the present day is Culture. 
 Whilst all the world is in Mirsuit of power, and of wealth 
 as a means of power, cult ire corrects the theory of suc- 
 cess. A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical 
 memory makes him an alma ac; a talent for debate, a 
 disputant ; skill to get money r&akes him a miser, that is, a 
 beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking 
 the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and 
 by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success. 
 For performance, Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the 
 performer to get it done ; makes a dropsy or a tympany 
 of him. If she wants a thumb, she makes one at the cost 
 of arms and legs, and any excess of power in one part is 
 usually paid for at once by some defect in a contiguous 
 part. 
 
 Our efficiency depends so much on our concentration, 
 that Nature usually in the instances where a marked man 
 is sent into the world, overloads him with bias, sacrificing 
 his symmetry to his working power. It is said a man 
 can write but one book ; and if a man have a defect, it is 
 apt to leave its impression on all his performances. If 
 she creates a policeman like Fouche, lie is made up of 
 suspicions and of plots to circumvent them. " The air,"
 
 106 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 said Fouche, " is full of poniards." The physician Sanc- 
 torius spent his life in a pair of scales, weighing his food. 
 Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, because the Canon 
 Yeman's Tale illustrates the statute fifth Hen. IF. Chap. 
 4, against alchemy. I saw a man wlo believed the prin- 
 cipal mischiefs in the English state were derived from the 
 devotion to musical concerts. A freemason, not long 
 since, set out to explain to this country, that the princi- 
 pal cause of the success of Gene-al Washington was, the 
 aid he derived from the freema? jns. 
 
 But worse than the harpirg on one string, Nature 
 has secured individualism, by,, giving the private person a 
 high conceit of his weigh', in the system. The pest of 
 society is egotists. There are dull and bright, sacred and 
 profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease that, 
 like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distem- 
 per known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes 
 turns round, and continues to spin slowly on one spot. 
 Is egotism a metaphysical variety of this malady ? The 
 man runs round a ring formed by his own talent, falls 
 into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world. 
 It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying forms 
 is a craving for sympathy. The sufferers parade their 
 miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, reveal their 
 indictable crimes, that you may pity them. They like 
 sickness, because physical pain will extort some show of 
 interest from the bystanders, as we have seen children, 
 who, finding themselves of no account when grown people 
 come in, will cough till they choke, to draw attention. 
 
 This distemper is the scourge of talent, of artists, 
 inventors, and philosophers. Eminent spiritualists shall
 
 CULTURE. 107 
 
 Lave an incapacity of putting their act or word aloof from 
 them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing it is. Beware 
 of the man who says, " I am on the eve of a revelation." 
 It is speedily punished, inasmuch as this habit invites 
 men to humor it, and by treating the patient tenderly, to 
 shut him up in a narrower selfism, and exclude him from 
 the great world of God's cheerful fallible men and women. 
 Let us rather be insulted, whilst we are iusultable. 
 Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run 
 over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists, and 
 philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy 
 and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped. 
 
 This goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable 
 persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in na- 
 ture which it subserves ; such as we see in the sexual 
 attraction. The preservation of the species was a point 
 of such necessity, that Nature has secured it at all haz- 
 ards by immensely overloading the passion, at the risk of 
 perpetual crime and disorder. So egotism has its root in 
 the cardinal necessity by which each individual persists to 
 be what he is. 
 
 This individuality is not only not inconsistent with cul- 
 ture, but is the basis of it. Every valuable nature is 
 there in its own right, and the student we speak to must 
 have a mother- wit invincible by his culture, which uses all 
 books, arts, facilities, and elegances of intercourse, but 
 is never subdued and lost in them. He only is a well- 
 made man who has a good determination. And the end 
 of culture is not to destroy this, God forbid ! but to train 
 away all impediment and mixture, and leave nothing but 
 pure power. Our student must have a style and determi-
 
 108 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 nation, and be a master in his own specialty. But, having 
 this, he must put it behind him. He must have a cath- 
 olicity, a power to see with a free and disengaged look 
 every object. Yet is this private interest and self so 
 overcharged, that, if a man seeks a companion who can 
 look at objects for their own sake, and without affection 
 or self-reference, he will find the fewest who will give him 
 that satisfaction; whilst most men are afflicted with a 
 coldness, an incuriosity, as soon as any object does not 
 connect with their self-love. Though they talk of the 
 object before them, they are thinking of themselves, and 
 their vanity is laying little traps for your admiration. 
 
 But after a man has discovered that there are limits to 
 the interest which his private history has for mankind, 
 he still converses with his family, or a few companions, 
 perhaps with half a dozen personalities that are famous 
 in his neighborhood. In Boston, the question of life is 
 the names of some eight or ten men. Have you seen 
 Mr. Allston, Doctor Channing, Mr. Adams, Mr. Webster, 
 Mr. Greenough ? Have you heard Everett, Garrison, 
 Father Taylor, Theodore Parker ? Have you talked with 
 Messieurs Turbinewheel, Summitlevel, and Lacofrupees ? 
 Then you may as well die. In New York, the question 
 is of some other eight, or ten, or twenty. Have you seen 
 a few lawyers, merchants, and brokers, two or three 
 scholars, two or three capitalists, two or three editors of 
 newspapers ? New York is a sucked orange. All con- 
 versation is at an end, when we have discharged our- 
 selves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, 
 which make up our American existence. Nor do we ex- 
 pect anybody to be other than a faint copy of these 
 heroes.
 
 CULTURE. 109 
 
 Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of 
 intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the 
 presence of some penetrating and calming genius could 
 dispose them to frankness, what a confession of insani- 
 ties would come up ! The " causes " to which we have 
 sacrificed, Tariff or Democracy, Whigism or Abolition, 
 Temperance or Socialism, would show like roots of bit- 
 terness and dragons of wrath ; and our talents are as 
 mischievous as if each had been seized upon by some 
 bird of prey, which had whisked him away from fortune, 
 from truth, from the dear society of the poets, some zeal, 
 some bias, and only when he was now gray and nerve- 
 less, was it relaxing its claws, and he awaking to sober 
 perceptions. 
 
 Culture is the suggestion from certain best thoughts, 
 that a man has a range of affinities, through which he 
 can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have 
 a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him 
 against himself. Culture redresses his balance, puts him 
 among his equals and superiors, revives the delicious 
 sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of soli- 
 tude and repulsion. 
 
 'T is not a compliment but a disparagement to consult 
 a man only on horses, or on steam, or on theatres, or on 
 eating, or on books, and, whenever he appears, consider- 
 ately to turn the conversation to the bantling he is known 
 to fondle. In the Norse heaven of our forefathers, 
 Thor's house had fivehundred and forty floors; and 
 man's house has five hundred and forty floors. His ex- 
 ceRence is facility of adaptation and of transition through 
 many related points, to wide contrasts and extremes.
 
 110 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Culture kills his exaggeration, his conceit of his village 
 or his city. We must leave our pets at home, when we 
 go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds of 
 good meaning and good sense. No performance is worth 
 loss of geniality. 'T is a cruel price we pay for certain 
 fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy. In the 
 Norse legend, Allfadir did not get a drink of Mimir's 
 spring (the fountain of wisdom), until he left his eye in 
 pledge. And here is a pedant that cannot unfold his 
 wrinkles, nor conceal his wrath at interruption by the 
 best, if their conversation do not fit his impertinency, 
 here is he to afflict us with his personalities. 'T is 
 incident to scholars, that each of them fancies he is 
 pointedly odious in his community. Draw him out of 
 this limbo of irritability. Cleanse with healthy blood his 
 parchment skin. You restore to him his eyes which he 
 left in pledge at Mimir's spring. If you are the victim 
 of your doing, who cares what you do ? We can spare 
 your opera, your gazetteer, your chemic analysis, your 
 history, your syllogisms. Your man of genius pays 
 dearly for his distinction. His head runs up into a spire, 
 and instead of a healthy man, merry and wise, he is some 
 mad dominie. Nature is reckless of the individual. 
 When she has points to carry, she carries them. To 
 wade in marshes and sea-margins is the destiny of certain 
 birds, and they are so accurately made for this, that they 
 are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its 
 habitat would starve. To the ]Hiysician, each man, each 
 woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a 
 locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange 
 functions. And Uins we are victims of adaptation.
 
 CULTURE. Ill 
 
 The antidotes against this organic egotism are, the 
 range and variety of attractions, as gained by acquaint- 
 ance with the world, with men of merit, with classes of 
 society, with travel, with eminent persons, and with the 
 high resources of philosophy, art, and religion: books, 
 travel, society, solitude. 
 
 The hardiest sceptic who has seen a horse broken, a 
 pointer trained, or who has visited a menagerie, or the 
 exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the 
 validity of education. " A boy," says Plato, " is the 
 most vicious of all wild beasts " ; and, in the same spirit, 
 the old English poet Gascoigne says, " A boy is better 
 unborn than untaught." The city breeds one kind of 
 speech and manners ; the back country, a different style ; 
 the sea, another ; the army, a fourth. We know that an 
 army which can be confided in may be formed by disci- 
 pline ; that by systematic discipline all men may be made 
 heroes : Marshal Lannes said to a French officer, " Know, 
 Colonel, that none but a poltroon will boast that he never 
 was afraid." A great part of courage is the courage of 
 having done the thing before. And, in all human action, 
 those faculties will be strong which are used. Robert 
 Owen said, " Give me a tiger and I will educate him." 
 'T is inhuman to want faith in the power of education, 
 since to meliorate, is the law of nature ; and men are 
 valued precisely as they exert onward or meliorating 
 force. On the other hand, poltroonery is the acknowl- 
 edging a fault to be incurable. 
 
 Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal distemper. 
 There are people who can never understand a trope, r>* 
 any second or expanded sense given to your words, of
 
 112 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 any humor; but remain literalists, after hearing the 
 music, and poetry, and rhetoric, and wit, of seventy or 
 eighty years. They are past the help of surgeon or 
 clergy. But even these can understand pitchforks and 
 the cry of Eire ! and I have noticed in some of this class 
 a marked dislike of earthquakes. 
 
 Let us make our education brave and preventive. Poli- 
 tics is an after-work, a poor patching. We are always a 
 little late. The evil is done, the law is passed, and we 
 begin the uphill agitation for repeal of that of which we 
 ought to have prevented the enacting. "We shall one day 
 learn to supersede politics by education. What we call 
 our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, 
 intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We 
 must begin higher up, namely, in Education. 
 
 Our arts and tools give to him who can handle them 
 much the same advantage over the novice, as if you 
 extended his life ten, fifty, or a hundred years. And I 
 think it the part of good sense to provide every fine soul 
 with such culture, that it shall not, at thirty or forty 
 years, have to say, " This which I might do is made 
 hopeless through my want of weapons." 
 
 But it is conceded that much of our training fails of ef- 
 fect ; that all success is hazardous and rare ; that a large 
 part of our cost and pains is thrown away. Nature takes 
 the matter into her own hands, and, though we must not 
 omit any jot of our system, we can seldom be sure that 
 it has availed much, or that as much good would not 
 have accrued from a different system. 
 
 Books, as containing the finest records of human wit, 
 must always enter into our notion of culture. The best
 
 CULTURE. 113 
 
 that ever existed, Pericles, Plato, Julius Caesar, 
 Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton, were well-read, universally 
 educated men, and quite too wise to undervalue letters. 
 Their opinion has weight, because they had means of 
 knowing the opposite opinion. We look that a great 
 man should be a good reader, or, in proportion to the 
 spontaneous power, should be the assimilating power. 
 Good criticism is very rare, and always precious. I am 
 always happy to meet persons who perceive the transcend- 
 ent superiority of Shakespeare over all other writers. I 
 like people who like Plato. Because this love does not 
 consist with self-conceit. 
 
 But books are good only as far as a boy is ready for 
 them. He sometimes gets ready very slowly. You send 
 your child to the schoolmaster, but 't is the school-boys 
 who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but 
 much of his tuition comes, on his way to school, from the 
 shop-windows. You like the strict rules and the long 
 terms ; and he finds his best leading in a by-way of his 
 own, and refuses any companions but of his choosing. 
 He hates the grammar and Gradus, and loves guns, fish- 
 ing-rods, horses, and boats. Well, the boy is right ; and 
 you are not fit to direct his bringing up, if your theory 
 leaves out his gymnastic training. Archery, cricket, gun 
 and fishing-rod, horse and boat, are all educators, liberal- 
 izers ; and so are dancing, dress, and the street talk ; and 
 provided only the boy has resources, and is of a noble 
 and ingenuous strain these will not serve him less than 
 the books. He learns chess, whist, dancing, and theatri- 
 cals. The father observes that another boy has learned 
 algebra and geometry in the same time. But the first
 
 114 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 boy has acquired much more than these poor games along 
 with them. He is infatuated for weeks with wliist and 
 chess ; but presently will find out, as you did, that when 
 he rises from the game too long played, he is vacant and 
 forlorn, and despises himself. Thenceforward it takes 
 place with other things, and has its due weight in his ex- 
 perience. These minor skills and accomplishments, for 
 example, dancing, are tickets of admission to the dress- 
 circle of mankind, and the being master of them enables 
 the youth to judge intelligently of much, on which, other- 
 wise, he would give a pedantic squint. Landor said, " I 
 have suffered more from my bad dancing, than from all 
 the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together." 
 Provided always the boy is teachable (for w r e are not pro- 
 posing to make a statue out of punk), foot-ball, cricket, 
 archery, swimming, skating, climbing, fencing, riding, are 
 lessons in the art of power, which it is his main business 
 to learn ; riding, specially, of which Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury said, "A good rider on a good horse is as much 
 above himself and others as the world can make him." 
 Besides, the gun, fishing rod, boat, and horse constitute, 
 among all who use them, secret freemasonries. They are 
 as if they belonged to one club. 
 
 There is also a negative value in these arts. Their 
 chief use to the youth is, not amusement, but to be 
 known for what they are, and not to remain to him occa- 
 sions of heartburn. We are full of superstitions. Each 
 class fixes its eyes on the advantages it has not ; the 
 refined, on rude strength, the democrat, on birth and 
 breeding. One of the benefits of a college education is, 
 to show the boy its little avail. 1 knew a leading man
 
 CULTURE. 115 
 
 in a leading city, who, having set his heart on an educa- 
 tion at the university, and missed it, could never quite 
 feel himself the equal of his own brothers who had gone 
 thither. His easy superiority to multitudes of profes- 
 sional men could never quite countervail to him this 
 imaginary defect. Balls, riding, wine-parties, and bill- 
 iards pass to a poor boy for something fine and romantic, 
 which they are not ; and a free admission to them on an 
 equal footing, if it were possible, only once or twice, 
 would be worth ten times its cost, by undeceiving them. 
 I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I ob- 
 serve that men run away to other countries, because 
 they are not good in their own, and run back to their 
 own, because they pass for nothing in the new places. 
 Tor the most part, only the light characters travel. Who 
 are you that have no task to keep you at home ? 1 have 
 been quoted as saying captious things about travel ; but 
 I mean to do justice. I think there is a restlessness in 
 our people, which argues w^nt of character. All edu- 
 cated Americans, first or last, go to Europe ; perhaps be- 
 cause it is their mental home, as the invalid habits of 
 this country might suggest. An eminent teacher of girls 
 said, " The idea of a girl's education is, whatever qualifies 
 her for going to Europe." Can we never extract this 
 tapeworm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen ? 
 One sees very well what their fate must be. He that 
 does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only 
 goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. 
 You do not think you will find anything there which 
 you have not seen at home ? The stuff of all countries 
 is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country
 
 116 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the in- 
 fants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish ? What 
 is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go 
 where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth 
 as he carries. 
 
 Of course, for some men, travel may be useful. Nat- 
 uralists, discoverers, and sailors are born. Some men 
 are made for couriers, exchangers, envoys, missionaries, 
 bearers of despatches, as others are for farmers and 
 workingmen. And if the man is of a light and social 
 turn, and Nature has aimed to make a legged and winged 
 creature, framed for locomotion, we must follow her 
 hint, and furnish him with that breeding which gives 
 currency, as sedulously as with that which gives worth. 
 But let us not be pedantic, but allow to travel its full 
 effect. The boy grown up on the farm, which he lias 
 never left, is said in the country to have had no chance, 
 and boys and men of that condition look upon work on 
 a railroad, or drudgery in a city, as opportunity. Poor 
 country boys of Vermont and Connecticut formerly owed 
 what knowledge they had to their peddling trips to the 
 Southern States. California and the Pacific Coast is now 
 the university of this class, as Virginia was in old times. 
 " To have some chance " is their word. And the phrase 
 "to know the world," or to travel, is synonymous with 
 all men's ideas of advantage and superiority. No doubt, 
 to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many 
 languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and 
 trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a 
 point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own. One use 
 of travel is, to recommend the books and works of home,
 
 CULTURE. 117 
 
 for we go to Europe to be Americanized ; and an- 
 other, to find men. For, as Nature has put fruits apart 
 in latitudes, a new fruit in every degree, so knowledge 
 and fine moral quality she lodges in distant men. And 
 thus, of the six or seven teachers whom each man wants 
 among his contemporaries, it often happens that one or 
 two of them live on the other side of the world. 
 
 Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain sol- 
 stice, when the stars stand still in our inward firmament, 
 and when there is required some foreign force, some 
 diversion or alterative to prevent stagnation. And, as a 
 medical remedy, travel seems one of the best. Just as a 
 man witnessing the admirable effect of ether to lull pain, 
 and meditating on the contingencies of wounds, cancers, 
 lockjaws, rejoices in Dr. Jackson's benign discovery, so 
 a man who looks at Paris, at Naples, or at London, 
 says : " If I should be driven from my own home, here, 
 at least, my thoughts can be consoled by the most prodi- 
 gal amusement and occupation which the human race in 
 ages could contrive and accumulate." 
 
 Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the aesthetic 
 value of railroads is to unite the advantages of town and 
 country life, neither of which we can spare. A man 
 should live in or near a large town, because, let his own 
 genius be what it may, it will repel quite as much of 
 agreeable and valuable talent as it draws, and, in a city, 
 the total attraction of all the citizens is sure to conquer, 
 first or last, every repulsion, and drag the most improba- 
 ble hermit within its walls some day in the year. In 
 town, he can find the swimming-school, the gymnasium, 
 the dancing-master, the shooting-gallery, opera, theatre,
 
 118 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 and panorama; the chemist's shop, the museum of natu- 
 ral history ; the gallery of fine arts ; the national orators, 
 in their turn ; foreign travellers, the libraries, and his 
 club. In the country, he can find solitude and reading, 
 manly labor, cheap living, and his old shoes ; moors for 
 game, hills for geology, and groves for devotion. Au- 
 brey writes : " I have heard Thomas Hobbes say, that, 
 in the Earl of Devon's house, in Derbyshire, there was a 
 good library and books enough for him, and his lordship 
 stored the library with what books he thought fit to be 
 bought. But the want of good conversation was a very 
 great inconvenience, and, though he conceived he could 
 order his thinking as well as another, yet he found a 
 great defect. In the country, in long time, for want of 
 good conversation, one's understanding and invention 
 contract a moss on them, like an old paling in an 
 orchard." 
 
 Cities give us collision. 'T is said, London and New 
 York take the nonsense out of a man. A great part 
 of our education is sympathetic and social. Boys and 
 girls who have been brought up with well-informed and 
 superior people show in their manners an inestimable 
 grace. Fuller says, that " William, Earl of Nassau, won 
 a subject from the King of Spain, every time he put 
 off his hat." You cannot have one well-bred man, with- 
 out a whole society of such. They keep each other up 
 to any high point. Especially women ; it requires a 
 great many cultivated women, saloons of bright, ele- 
 gant, reading women, accustomed to ease and refine- 
 ment, to spectacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to 
 elegant society, in order that you should have one
 
 CULTURE. 119 
 
 Madame de Stae'l. The head of a commercial house, or 
 a leading lawyer or politician, is brought into daily con- 
 tact with troops of men from all parts of the country, 
 and those too the driving-wheels, the business men of 
 each section, and one can hardly suggest for an appre- 
 hensive man a more searching culture. Besides, we 
 must remember the high social possibilities of a million 
 of men. The best bribe which London offers to-day to 
 the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people 
 and conditions, one can believe there is room for per- 
 sons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, 
 the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their 
 counterparts. 
 
 I wish cities could teach their best lesson, of quiet 
 manners. It is the foible especially of American youth, 
 pretension. The mark of the man of the world is 
 absence of pretension. He does not make a speech ; he 
 takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, 
 dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, 
 speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. lie calls his 
 employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil 
 tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings 
 to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be 
 surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learn- 
 ing and philosophy. How the imagination is piqued by 
 anecdotes of some great man passing incognito, as a king 
 in gray clothes, of Napoleon affecting a plain suit at 
 his glittering levee ; of Burns, or Scott, or Beethoven, 
 or Wellington, or Goethe, or any container of transcen- 
 dent power, passing for nobody ; of Epaminondas, "v-bo 
 never says anything, but will listen eternally " ; of
 
 120 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Goethe, who preferred trifling subjects and common ex- 
 pressions in intercourse with strangers, worse rather 
 than better clothes, and to appear a little more ca- 
 pricious than he was. There are advantages in the old 
 hat and box-coat. I have heard, that, throughout this 
 country, a certain respect is paid to good broadcloth ; 
 but dress makes a little restraint : men will not commit 
 themselves. But the box-coat is like wine ; it unlocks 
 the tongue and men say what they think. An old poet 
 says, 
 
 " Go far and go sparing, 
 For you '11 find it certain, 
 The poorer and the baser you appear, 
 The more you '11 look through still." * 
 
 Not much otherwise Milnes writes, in the " Lay of the 
 Humble," 
 
 " To me men are for what they are, 
 They wear no masks with me." 
 
 'T is odd that our people should have, not water on 
 the brain, but a little gas there. A shrewd foreigner 
 said of the Americans, that, " whatever they say has a 
 little the air of a speech." Yet one of the traits down in 
 the books as distinguishing the Anglo-Saxon is, a trick 
 of self-disparagement. To be sure, in old, dense coun- 
 tries, among a million of good coats, a fine coat comes 
 to be no distinction, and you find humorists. In an 
 English party, a man with no marked manners or fea- 
 tures, with a face like red dough, unexpectedly discloses 
 
 * Beaumont and Fletcher, The Tamer Tamed.
 
 CULTURE. 121 
 
 wit, learning, a wide range of topics, and personal famil- 
 iarity with good men in all parts of the world, until you 
 think you have fallen upon some illustrious personage. 
 Can it be that the American forest has refreshed some 
 weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out, 
 the love of the scarlet feather, of beads, and tinsel ? The 
 Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and em- 
 broidery ; and I remember one rainy morning in the city 
 of Palermo, the street was in a blaze with scarlet umbrel- 
 las. The English have a plain taste. The equipages 
 of the grandees are plain. A gorgeous livery indicates 
 new and awkward city wealth. Mr. Pitt, like Mr. Pym, 
 thought the title of Mister good against any king in 
 Europe. They have piqued themselves on governing 
 the whole world in the poor, plain, dark Committee- 
 room which the House of Commons sat in, before the 
 fire. 
 
 Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best 
 things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. 
 The countryman finds the town a chop-house, a barber's 
 shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, 
 hills and plains, and with them sobriety and elevation. 
 He has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who 
 live for show, servile to public opinion. Life is dragged 
 down to a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say 
 the gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their 
 own ; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud of 
 insignificant annoyances : 
 
 " Mirmidons, race feconde, 
 Mirmidons, 
 Enfin nous commandons ;
 
 122 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 Jupiter livre le monde 
 
 Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons." * 
 
 'T is heavy odds 
 
 Against the gods, 
 
 "When they will match with myrmidons. 
 
 We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 
 
 Our turn to-day ! we take command, 
 
 Jove gives the globe into the hand 
 
 Of myrmidons, of myrmidons. 
 
 What is odious but noise, and people who scream and 
 bewail ? people whose vane points always east, who live 
 to dine, who send for the doctor, who coddle themselves, 
 who toast their feet on the register, who intrigue to 
 secure a padded chair, and a corner out of the draught. 
 Suffer them once to begin the enumeration of their in- 
 firmities, and the sun will go down on the unfinished tale. 
 Let these trifles put us out of conceit with petty comforts. 
 To a man at work, the frost is but a color : the ram, the 
 wind, he forgot them when he came in. Let us learn to 
 live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The least habit 
 of dominion over the palate has certain good effects not 
 easily estimated. Neither will we be driven into a quid- 
 dling abstemiousness. 'T is a superstition to insist on a 
 special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical 
 atoms. 
 
 A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. 
 How can you mind diet, bed, dress, or salutes or compli- 
 ments, or the figure you make in company, or wealth, or 
 even the bringing things to pass, when you think how 
 paltry are the machinery and the workers ? Wordsworth 
 
 * Berangcr.
 
 CULTURE. 123 
 
 was praised to me, in Westmoreland, for having afforded 
 to his country neighbors ail example of a modest house- 
 hold where comfort and culture were secured, without 
 display. And a tender boy who wears his rusty cap and 
 outgrown coat, that he may secure the coveted place in 
 college, and the right in the library, is educated to some 
 purpose. There is a great deal of self-denial and manli- 
 ness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and coun- 
 try, that has not got into literature, and never will, but 
 that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, 
 and spends on essentials ; that goes rusty, and educates 
 the boy ; that sells the horse, but builds the school ; 
 works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three 
 looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the pater- 
 nal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again. 
 
 We can ill spare the commanding social benefits of 
 cities ; they must be used ; yet cautiously, and haughtily, 
 and will yield their best values to him who best can do 
 without them. Keep the town for occasions, but the hab- 
 its should be formed to retirement. Solitude, the safe- 
 guard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the 
 cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will 
 bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should 
 inspire and lead his race must be defended from trav- 
 elling with the souls of other men, from living, breath- 
 ing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke 
 of their opinions. " In the morning, solitude," said 
 Pythagoras ; that Nature may speak to the imagination, 
 as she does never in company, and that her favorite 
 may make acquaintance with those divine strengths 
 which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted
 
 124 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 thought. 'T is very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Ar- 
 chimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did 
 not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to 
 time as benefactors ; and the wise instructor will press 
 this point of securing to the young soul, in the disposi- 
 tion of time and the arrangements of living, periods and 
 habits of solitude. The high advantage of university life 
 is often the mere mechanical one, I may call it, of a sep- 
 arate chamber and fire, which parents will allow the 
 boy without hesitation at Cambridge, but do not think 
 needful at home. We say solitude, to mark the character 
 of the tone of thought ; but if it can be shared between 
 two or more than two, it is happier, and not less noble. 
 " We four," wrote Neander to his sacred friends, " will 
 enjoy at Halle the inward blessedness of a cioitas Dei, 
 whose foundations are forever friendship. The more I 
 know you, the more I dissatisfy and must dissatisfy all 
 my wonted companions. Their very presence stupefies 
 me. The common understanding withdraws itself from 
 the one centre of all existence." 
 
 Solitude takes off the pressure of present importunities 
 that more catholic and humane relations may appear. 
 The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public 
 and universal ; and it is the secret of culture, to interest 
 the man more in his public than in his private quality. 
 Here is a new poem, which elicits a good many com- 
 ments in the journals, and in conversation. From these 
 it is easy, at last, to eliminate the verdict which readers 
 passed upon it; and that is, in the main, unfavorable. 
 The poet, as a craftsman, is only interested in the praise 
 accorded to him, and not in the censure, though it be
 
 CULTURE. 125 
 
 just. And the poor little poet hearkens only to that, 
 and rejects the censure, as proving incapacity in the 
 critic. But the poet cultivated becomes a stockholder 
 in both companies, say Mr. Curfew, in the Curfew 
 stock, and in the humanity stock ; and, in the last, exults 
 as much in the demonstration of the unsoundness of Cur- 
 few, as his interest in the former gives him pleasure in 
 the currency of Curfew. For, the depreciation of his 
 Curfew stock only shows the immense values of the hu- 
 manity stock. As soon as he sides with his critic against 
 himself, with joy, he is a cultivated man. 
 
 We must have an intellectual quality in all property 
 and in all action, or they are naught. I must have chil- 
 dren, I must have events, I must have a social state and 
 history, or my thinking and speaking want body or basis. 
 But to give these accessories any value, I must know 
 them as contingent and rather showy possessions, which 
 pass for more to the people than to me. We see this ab- 
 straction in scholars, as a matter of course ; but what a 
 charm it adds when observed in practical men. Bona- 
 parte, like Caesar, was intellectual, and could look at 
 every object for itself, without affection. Though an 
 egotist a V entrance, he could criticise a play, a building, 
 a character, on universal grounds, and give a just opin- 
 ion. A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics 
 or in trade gains largely in our esteem if we discover that 
 he has some intellectual taste or skill ; as when we learn 
 of Lord Fairfax, the Long Parliament's general, his pas- 
 sion for antiquarian studies ; or of the French regicide 
 Carnot, his sublime genius in mathematics ; or of a liv- 
 ing banker, his success in poetry ; or of a partisan jour-
 
 126 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 nalist, his devotion to ornithology. So, if, in travelling 
 in the dreary wildernesses of Arkansas or Texas, we 
 should observe on the next seat a man reading Horace, 
 or Martial, or Calderon, we should wish to hug him. 
 In callings that require roughest energy, soldiers, sea- 
 captains, and civil engineers sometimes betray a fine in- 
 sight, if only through a certain gentleness when off duty ; 
 a good-natured admission that there are illusions, and 
 who shall say that he is not their sport ? We only vary 
 the phrase, not the doctrine, when we say that culture 
 opens the sense of beauty. A man is a beggar who only 
 lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin 
 or rivet in the social machine, cannot be said to have 
 arrived at self-possession. I suffer every day from the 
 want of perception of beauty in people. They do not 
 know the charm with which all moments and objects can 
 be embellished, the charm of manners, of self-command, 
 of benevolence. Repose and cheerfulness are the badge 
 of the gentleman, repose in energy. The Greek bat- 
 tle-pieces are calm ; the heroes, in whatever violent ac- 
 tions engaged, retain a serene aspect ; as we say of Ni- 
 agara, that it falls without speed. A cheerful, intelligent 
 face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it 
 indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained. 
 
 When our higher faculties are in activity, we are do- 
 mesticated, and awkwardness and discomfort give place 
 to natural and agreeable movements. It is noticed, that 
 the consideration of the great periods and spaces of as- 
 tronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifference 
 to death. The influence of fine scenery, the presence 
 of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our
 
 CULTURE. 17 
 
 friendships. Even a high dome, and the expansive inte- 
 rior of a cathedral, have a sensible effect on manners. 
 I have heard that stiff people lose something of their 
 awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. 
 I think sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us 
 manners, and abolish hurry. 
 
 But, over all, culture must reinforce from higher influx 
 the empirical skills of eloquence, or of politics, or of 
 trade, and the useful arts. There is a certain loftiness 
 of thought and power to marshal and adjust particulars, 
 which can only come from an insight of their whole con- 
 nection. The orator who has once seen tilings in their 
 divine order, will never quite lose sight of this, and will 
 come to affairs as from a higher ground, and, though he 
 will say nothing of philosophy, he will have a certain 
 mastery in dealing with them, and an incapableness of 
 being dazzled or frighted, which will distinguish his hand- 
 ling from that of attorneys and factors. A man who 
 stands on a good footing with the heads of parties at 
 Washington, reads the rumors of the newspapers, and 
 the guesses of provincial politicians, with a key to the 
 right and wrong in each statement, and sees well enough 
 where all this will end. Archimedes will look through 
 your Connecticut machine, at a glance, and judge of its 
 fitness. And much more, a wise man who knows not 
 only what Plato, but what Saint John can show him, can 
 easily raise the affair he deals with to a certain majesty. 
 Plato says Pericles owed this elevation to the lessons ot 
 Anaxagoras. Burke descended from a higher sphere 
 when he would influence human affairs. Franklin, Ad> 
 ains, Jefferson, Washington, stood on a fine humanity,
 
 128 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 before which the brawls of modern senates are but pot- 
 house politics. 
 
 But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not 
 for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are les- 
 sons only for the brave. We must know our friends 
 under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends. Ben 
 Jouson specifies in his address to the Muse : 
 
 " Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will, 
 And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 
 Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse, 
 Almost all ways to any better course ; 
 "With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee, 
 And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty." 
 
 We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at hero- 
 ism. But the wiser God says, Take the shame, the 
 poverty, and the penal solitude, that belong to truth- 
 speaking. Try the rough water as well as the smooth. 
 Kough water can teach lessons worth knowing. When 
 the state is unquiet, personal qualities are more than ever 
 decisive. Tear not a revolution which will constrain 
 you to live five years in one. Don't be so tender at mak- 
 ing an enemy now and then. "Be willing to go to Cov- 
 entry sometimes, and let the populace bestow on you 
 their coldest contempts. The finished man of the world 
 must eat of every apple once. He must hold his hatreds 
 also at arm's length, and not remember spite. He has 
 neither friends nor enemies, but values men only as 
 channels of power. 
 
 He who aims high must dread an easy home and popu- 
 lar manners. Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character
 
 CULTURE. 129 
 
 about with ungainliuess and odium, as the burr that pro- 
 tects the fruit. If t Jere is any great and good thing in 
 store for you, it will not come at the first or the second 
 call, nor in the shape of fashion, ease, and city drawing- 
 rooms. Popularity is for dolls. " Steep and craggy," said 
 Porphyry, " is the path of the gods." Open your Marcus 
 Antoninus. In the opinion of the ancients, he was the 
 great man who scorned to shine, and who contested the 
 frowns of fortune. They preferred the noble vessel too 
 late for the tide, contending with winds and waves, dis- 
 mantled and unrigged, to her companion borne into har- 
 bor with colors flying and guns firing. There is none of 
 the social goods that may not be purchased too dear, and 
 mere amiableness must not take rank with high aims and 
 self-subsistency. 
 
 Bettine replies to Goethe's mother, who chides her dis- 
 regard of dress, " If I cannot do as I have a mind, in our 
 poor Frankfort, I shall not carry things far." And the 
 youth must rate at its true mark the inconceivable levity 
 of local opinion. The longer we live, the more we must 
 endure the elementary existence of men and women ; and 
 every brave heart must treat society as a child, and never 
 allow it to dictate. 
 
 " All that class of the severe and restrictive virtues," 
 said Burke, " are almost too costly for humanity." Who 
 wishes to be severe ? Who wishes to resist the eminent 
 and polite, in behalf of the poor, and low, and impolite ? 
 and who that dares do it, can keep his temper sweet, his 
 frolic spirits? The high virtues are not debonair, but 
 have their redress in being illustrious at last. What 
 forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind,
 
 130 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 to those who stood firm against the opinion of their 
 contemporaries! The measure of a master is his suc- 
 cess in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty 
 years later. 
 
 Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too early. 
 In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder 
 companions those years of boyhood which alone could give 
 imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in 
 their esteem. I find, too, that the chance for apprecia- 
 tion is much increased by being the son of an apprecia- 
 tor, and that these boys who now grow up are caught not 
 only years too late, but two or three births too late, to 
 make the best scholars of. And I think it a presentable 
 motive to a scholar, that, as, in an old community, a well- 
 born proprietor is usually found, after the first heats of 
 youth, to be a careful husband, and to feel a habitual de- 
 sire that the estate shall suffer no harm by his administra- 
 tion, but shall be delivered down to the next heir in as 
 good condition as he received it ; so, a considerate man 
 will reckon himself a subject of that secular melioration 
 by which mankind is mollified, cured, and refined, and 
 will shun every expenditure of his forces on pleasure or 
 gain, which will jeopard this social and secular accumu- 
 lation. 
 
 The fossil strata show us that Nature began with rudi- 
 mental forms, and rose to the more complex, as fast as 
 the earth was fit for their dwelling-place ; and that the 
 lower perish, as the higher appear. Very few of our race 
 can be said to be yet finished men. We still carry stick- 
 ing to us some remains of the preceding inferior quadru- 
 ped organization. We call these millions men ; but they
 
 CULTURE. 131 
 
 are not yet men. Half engaged in the soil, pawing to 
 get free, man needs all the music that can be brought to 
 disengage him. If Love, red Love, with tears and joy ; 
 if Want with his scourge ; if War with his cannonade ; if 
 Christianity with his charity ; if Trade with its money ; 
 if Art with its portfolios ; if Science with her telegraphs 
 tli rough the deeps of space and time; can set his dull 
 nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the tough chrysa- 
 lis, can break its walls, and let the new creature emerge 
 erect and free, make way, and, sing paean ! The age 
 of the quadruped is to go out, the age of the brain and 
 of the heart is to come in. The time will come when the 
 evil forms we have known can no more be organized. 
 Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all the material. 
 He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all 
 enemies into power. The formidable mischief will only 
 make the more useful slave. And if one shall read the 
 future of the race hinted in the organic effort of Nature 
 to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse 
 to the Better in the human being, we shall dare affirm 
 that there is nothing he will not overcome and convert, 
 until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. 
 He will convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells into 
 benefit.
 
 V, 
 
 BEHAVIOR. 
 
 GRACE, Beauty, and Caprice 
 
 Build this golden portal; 
 
 Graceful women, chosen men, 
 
 Dazzle every mortal: 
 
 Their sweet and lofty countenance 
 
 His enchanting food; 
 
 He need not go to them, their form 
 
 Beset his solitude. 
 
 He looketh seldom in their face, 
 
 His eyes explore the ground, 
 
 The green grass is a looking-glass 
 
 "Whereon their traits are found. 
 
 Little he says to them, 
 
 So dances his heart in his breast, 
 
 Their tranquil mien bereaveth him 
 
 Of wit, of words, of rest. 
 
 Too weak to win, too fond to shun 
 
 The tyrants of his doom, 
 
 The much-deceived Endymion 
 
 Slips behind a tomb.
 
 BEHAVIOR. 
 
 THE soul which animates Nature is not less signifi- 
 cantly published in the figure, movement, and gesture of 
 animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of articulate 
 speech. This silent and subtile language is Manners; 
 not what, but how. Life expresses. A statue has no 
 tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux do not need 
 declamation. Nature tells every secret once. Yes, but 
 in man she tells it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, 
 mien, face, and parts of the face, and by the whole action 
 of the machine. The visible carriage or action of the 
 individual, as resulting from his organization and his will 
 combined, we call manners. What are they but thought 
 entering the hands and feet, controlling the movements 
 of the body, the speech and behavior ? 
 
 There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be 
 to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing 
 things ; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now 
 repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a 
 rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, 
 and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are 
 the dewdrops which give such a depth to the morning 
 meadows. Banners are very communicable ; men catch 
 them from each other. Consuelo, in the romance, boasts
 
 136 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 of the lessons she had given the nobles in manners, on 
 the stage ; and, in real life, Talma taught Napoleon the 
 arts of behavior. Genius invents fine manners, which 
 the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by 
 the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They 
 stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode. 
 
 The power of manners is incessant, an element as 
 unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any coun- 
 try be disguised, and no more in a republic or a democ- 
 racy, than in a kingdom. No man can resist their influ- 
 ence. There are certain manners which are learned in 
 good society, of that force, that, if a person have them, 
 he or she must be considered, and is everywhere welcome, 
 though without beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a 
 boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the 
 mastery of palaces and fortunes where lie goes. He has 
 not the trouble of earning or owning them ; they solicit 
 him to enter and possess. We send girls of a timid, re- 
 treating disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding- 
 school, to the ball-room, or wheresoever they can come 
 into acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their 
 own sex ; where they might learn address, and see it near 
 at hand. The power of a woman of fashion to lead, and 
 also to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that she 
 knows resources and behaviors not known to them ; but 
 when these have mastered her secret, they learn to con- 
 front her, and recover their self-possession. 
 
 Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. People 
 who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The mediocre 
 circle learns to demand that which belongs to a high state 
 of nature or of culture. Your manners are always under
 
 BEHAVIOR. 137 
 
 examination, and by committees little suspected, a po- 
 lice in citizens' clothes, but are awarding or denying 
 you very high prizes when you least think of it. 
 
 We talk much of utilities, but 't is our manners that 
 associate us. In hours of business, we go to him who 
 knows, or has, or does this or that which we want, and 
 we do not let our taste or feeling stand in the way. But 
 this activity over, we return to the indolent state, and 
 wish for those we can be at ease with ; those who will 
 go where we go, whose manners do not offend us, whose 
 social tone chimes with ours. When we reflect on their 
 persuasive and cheering force ; how they recommend, pre- 
 pare, and draw people together ; how, in all clubs, man- 
 ners make the members ; how manners make the fortune of 
 the ambitious youth ; that, for the most part, his manners 
 marry him, and, for the most part, he marries manners; 
 when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets ; 
 what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they 
 convey ; and what divination is required in us, for the read- 
 ing of this fine telegraph, we see what range the subject 
 has, and what relations to convenience, power, and beauty. 
 
 Their first service is very low, when they are the 
 minor morals : but 't is the beginning of civility, to 
 make us, I mean, endurable to each other. We prize 
 them fo*r their rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get 
 people out of the quadruped state ; to get them washed, 
 clothed, and set up on end ; to slough their animal husks 
 and habits ; compel them to be clean ; overawe their 
 spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base, and 
 choose the generous expression, and make them know 
 bow much happier the generous behaviors are.
 
 138 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is in- 
 fested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons 
 who prey upon the rest, and whom a public opinion con- 
 centrated into good manners forms accepted by the 
 sense of all can reach : the contradictors and railers 
 at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who 
 conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any 
 passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him 
 out of sight : I have seen men who neigh like a horse 
 when you contradict them, or say something which they 
 do not understand : then the overbold, who make their 
 own invitation to your hearth; the persevering talker, 
 who gives you his society in large, saturating doses ; the 
 pitiers of themselves, a perilous class ; the frivolous 
 Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of 
 sand to twist ; the monotones ; in short, every stripe of 
 absurdity ; these are social inflictions which the magis- 
 trate cannot cure or defend you from, and which must be 
 intrusted to the restraining force of custom, and prov- 
 erbs, and familiar rules of behavior impressed on young 
 people in their school-days. 
 
 In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they 
 print, or used to print, among the rules of the house, 
 that "no gentleman can be permitted to come to the 
 public table without his coat " ; and in the same country, 
 in the pews of the churches, little placards plead with the 
 worshipper against the fury of expectoration. Charles 
 Dickens self-sacrificingly undertook the reformation of 
 our American manners in unspeakable particulars. I 
 think the lesson was not quite lost; that it held bad 
 manners up, so that the churls could see the deformity.
 
 BEHAVIOE. 139 
 
 Unhappily, the book had its own deformities. It ought 
 not to need to print in a reading-room a caution to stran- 
 gers not to speak loud ; nor to persons who look over 
 fine engravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs 
 and butterflies' wings ; nor to persons who look at marble 
 statues, that they shall not smite them with canes. But, 
 even in the perfect civilization of this city, such cautions 
 are not quite needless in the Athenaeum and City Li- 
 brary. 
 
 Manners are factitious, and grow out of circumstance 
 as well as out of character. If you look at the pictures 
 of patricians and of peasants, of different periods and 
 countries, you will see how well they match the same 
 classes in our towns. The modern aristocrat not only is 
 well drawn in Titian's Venetian doges, and in Roman 
 coins and statues, but also in the pictures which Commo- 
 dore Perry brought home of dignitaries in Japan. Broad 
 lands and great interests not only arrive to such heads as 
 can manage them, but form manners of power. A keen 
 eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank, or see in the 
 manners the degree of homage the party is wont to re- 
 ceive. A prince who is accustomed every day to be 
 courted and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires 
 a corresponding expectation, and a becoming mode of 
 receiving and replying to this homage. 
 
 There are always exceptional people and modes. Eng- 
 lish grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, 
 and, under the finish of dress, and levity of behavior, 
 hides the terror of his war. But nature and Destiny are 
 honest, and never fail to leave their mark, to hang out a 
 sign for each and for every quality. It is much to con-
 
 140 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 quer one's face, and perhaps the ambitious youth thinks 
 he has got the whole secret when he has learned that 
 disengaged manners are commanding. Don't be de- 
 ceived by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have 
 strong wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old states- 
 man, who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of 
 state, without overcoming an extreme irritability of face, 
 voice, and bearing : when he spoke, his voice would not 
 serve him ; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped ; 
 little cared he ; he knew that it had got to pipe, or 
 wheeze, or screech his argument and his indignation. 
 When he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort 
 of fit, and held on to his chair with both hands : but 
 underneath all this irritability was a puissant will, firm, 
 and advancing, and a memory in which lay in order and 
 method like geologic strata every fact of his history, and 
 under the control of his will. 
 
 Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must 
 be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all culture is 
 vain. The obstinate prejudice in favor of blood, which 
 lies at the base of the feudal and monarchical fabrics of 
 the Old World, has some reason in common experience. 
 Every man mathematician, artist, soldier, or merchant 
 looks with confidence for some traits and talents in his 
 own child, which he would not dare to presume in the 
 child of a stranger. The Orientalists are very orthodox 
 on this point. "Take a thorn-bush," said the emir 
 Abdel-Kader, "and sprinkle it for a whole year with 
 water; it will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date- 
 tree, leave it without culture, and it will always produce 
 dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab populace is 
 a bush ot thorns."
 
 BEHAVIOR. 14L 
 
 A main fact in the history of manners is the wonder- 
 ful expressiveness of the human body. If it were made 
 of glass, or of air, and the thoughts were written on 
 steel tablets within, it could not publish more truly its 
 meaning than now. Wise men read very sharply all 
 your private history in your look and gait and behavior. 
 The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. 
 The telltale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva 
 watches with crystal faces which expose the whole move- 
 ment. They carry the liquor of life flowing up and 
 down in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the 
 curious how it is with them. The face and eyes reveal 
 what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. 
 The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or, through 
 how many forms it has already ascended. It almost vio- 
 lates the proprieties, if we say above the breath here, 
 what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter to every 
 street passenger. 
 
 Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems 
 imperfect. In Siberia, a late traveller found men who 
 could see the satellites of Jupiter with their unarmed eye. 
 In some respects the animals excel us. The birds have 
 a longer sight, beside the advantage by their wings of a 
 higher observatory. A cow can bid her calf, by secret 
 signal, probably of the eye, to run away, or to lie down 
 and hide itself. The jockeys say of certain horses, that 
 " they look over the whole ground." The outdoor life, 
 and hunting, and labor, give equal vigor to the human 
 eye. A farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse ; 
 his eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff. An eye can 
 threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult like
 
 142 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 hissing or kicking ; or, in its altered mood, by beams of 
 kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy. 
 
 The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. When 
 a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain gazing at 
 a distance ; in enumerating the names of persons or of 
 countries, as France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes 
 wink at each new name. There is no nicety of learning 
 sought by the mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquir- 
 ing. " An artist," said Michel Angelo, " must have his 
 measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye " ; and 
 there is no end to the catalogue of its performances, 
 whether in indolent vision (that of health and beauty), 
 or in strained vision (that of art and labor). 
 
 Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, 
 here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. 
 They wait for no introduction ; they are no Englishmen ; 
 ask no leave of age or rank ; they respect neither pov- 
 erty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, 
 nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through 
 and through you, in a moment of time. What inunda- 
 tion of life and thought is discharged from one soul into 
 another, through them ! The glance is natural magic. 
 The mysterious communication established across a house 
 between two entire strangers, moves all the springs of 
 wonder. The communication by the glance is in the 
 greatest part not subject to the control of the will. 
 It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look 
 into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, 
 and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession 
 what inhabitant is there. The revelations are sometimes 
 terrific. The confession of a low, usurping devil is (here
 
 BEHAVIOR. 143 
 
 made, and the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of 
 owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for 
 innocence and simplicity. 'T is remarkable, too, that the 
 spirit that appears at the windows of the house does at 
 once invest himself in a new form of his own, to the 
 mind of the beholder. 
 
 The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, 
 with the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no dic- 
 tionary, but is understood all the world over. When the 
 eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practised 
 man relies on the language of the first. If the man is 
 off his centre, the eyes show it. You can read in the 
 eyes of your companion, whether your argument hits 
 him, though his tongue will not confess it. There is a 
 look by which a man shows he is going to say a good 
 thing, and a look when he has said it. Vain and for- 
 gotten are all the fine offers and offices of hospitality, if 
 there is no holiday in the eye. How many furtive incli- 
 nations avowed by the eye, though dissembled by the 
 lips ! One comes away from a company, in which, it may 
 easily happen, he has said nothing, and no important 
 remark has been addressed to him, and yet, if in sympa- 
 thy with the society, he shall not have a sense of this 
 fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into him, and 
 out from him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be 
 sure, that give no more admission into the man than blue- 
 berries. Others are liquid and deep, wells that a man 
 might fall into ; others are aggressive and devouring, 
 seem to call out the police, take all too much notice, and 
 require crowded Broadways, and the security of millions, 
 to protect individuals against them. The military eye I
 
 144 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 meet, now darkly sparkling under clerical, now undei 
 rustic brows. 'T is the city of Lacedsemon ; 't is a stack 
 of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting eyes, 
 prowling eyes ; and eyes full of fate, some of good, 
 and some of sinister omen. The alleged power to charm 
 down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind 
 the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the will, before 
 it can be signified in the eye. 'T is very certain that each 
 man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in 
 the immense scale of men, and we are always learning 
 to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to 
 his personal presence. Whoever looked on him would 
 consent to his will, being certified that his aims were gen- 
 erous and universal. The reason why men do not obey 
 us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our 
 eye. 
 
 If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the 
 other features have their own. A man finds room in 
 the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his 
 ancestors ; for the expression of all his history, and his 
 wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, 
 will tell you how significant a feature is the nose ; how 
 its forms express strength or weakness of will, and good 
 or bad temper. The nose of Julius Caesar, of Dante, 
 and of Pitt suggest " the terrors of the beak." What 
 refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray ! 
 " Beware you don't laugh," said the wise mother, " for 
 then you show all your faults." 
 
 Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called 
 " Theorie de la demarche" in which he says : " The look, 
 the voice, the respiration, and the attitude or walk are
 
 BEHAVIOR. 145 
 
 identical. But, as it has not been given to man, the 
 power to stand guard, at once, over these four different 
 simultaneous expressions of his thought, watch that one 
 which speaks out the truth, aud you will know the whole 
 man." 
 
 Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners, 
 which in the idle and expensive society dwelling in them 
 are raised to a high art. The maxim of courts is that 
 manner is power. A calm and resolute bearing, a pol- 
 ished speech, an embellishment of trifles, and the art of 
 hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the 
 courtier ; and Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and 
 Rrederer, and an encyclopaedia of Memoires, will in- 
 struct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets. Thus, 
 it is a point of pride with kings, to remember faces 
 and names. It is reported of one prince, that his 
 head had the air of leaning downwards, in order not 
 to humble the crowd. There are people who come in 
 ever like a child with a piece of good news. It was 
 said of the late Lord Holland, that he always came down 
 to breakfast with the air of a man who had just met with 
 some signal good fortune. In " Notre Dame" the gran- 
 dee took his place on the dais, with the look of one 
 who is thinking of something else. But we must not 
 peep and eavesdrop at palace-doors. 
 
 Tine manners need the support of fine manners in 
 others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he may 
 not. The enthusiast is introduced to polished scholars 
 in society, and is chilled and silenced by finding himself 
 not ia their element. They all have somewhat which he 
 has not, aud, it seems, ought to have. But if he finds 
 7 J
 
 146 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 the scholar apart from his companions, it is then the en- 
 thusiast's turn, and the scholar has no defence, but must 
 deal on his terms. Now they must fight the battle out 
 on their private strength. What is the talent of that 
 character so common, the successful man of the world, 
 in all marts, senates, and drawing-rooms ? Manners : 
 manners of power ; sense to see his advantage, and man- 
 ners up to it. See him approach his man. He knows 
 that troops behave as they are handled at first ; that is 
 his cheap secret; just what happens to every two persons 
 who meet on any affair, one instantly perceives that he 
 has the key of the situation, that his will comprehends 
 the other's will, as the cat does the mouse ; and he has 
 only to use courtesy, and furnish good-natured reasons to 
 his victim to cover up the chain, lest he be shamed into 
 resistance. 
 
 The theatre in which this science of manners has a for- 
 mal importance is not with us a court, but dress-circles, 
 wherein, after the close of the day's business, men and 
 women meet at leisure, for mutual entertainment, in 
 ornamented drawing-rooms. Of course, it has every 
 variety of attraction and merit ; but, to earnest persons, 
 to youths or maidens who have great objects at heart, 
 we cannot extol it highly. A well-dressed, talkative 
 company, where each is bent to amuse the other, yet 
 the high-born Turk who came hither fancied that every 
 woman seemed to be suffering for a chair ; that all the 
 talkers were brained and exhausted by the deoxygenated 
 air ; it spoiled the best persons : it put all on stilts. Yet 
 here are the secret biographies written and read. The 
 aspect of that man is repulsive ; I do not wish to deal
 
 BEHAVIOR. 147 
 
 with him. The of her is irritable, shy, and on his guard. 
 The youth looks humble and manly : I choose him. 
 Look on this woman. There is not beauty, nor brilliant 
 sayings, nor distinguished power to serve you ; but all 
 see her gladly ; her whole air and impression are health- 
 ful. Here come the sentimentalists, and the invalids. 
 Here is Elise, who caught cold in coming into the world, 
 and has always increased it since. Here are creep- 
 mouse manners ; and thievish manners. " Look at 
 Northcote," said Fuseli ; " he looks like a rat that has 
 seen a cat." In the shallow company, easily excited, 
 easily tired, here is the columnar Bernard : the Alle- 
 ghanies do not express more repose than his behavior. 
 Here are the sweet following eyes of Cecile : it seemed 
 always that she demanded the heart. Nothing can 
 be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace 
 of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has no 
 manners, has better manners than she ; for the move- 
 ments of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which is suf- 
 ficient for the moment, and she can afford to express 
 every thought by instant action. 
 
 Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be 
 a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. 
 Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to 
 her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is 
 very swift in its instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, 
 resists and sneers at you; or quietly drops you. The 
 first weapon enrages the party attacked ; the second i? 
 still more effective, but is not to be resisted, as the date 
 of the transaction is not easily found. People grow up 
 and grow old under this infliction, and never suspect the
 
 148 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 truth, ascribing the solitude which acts on them very in- 
 juriously to any cause but the right one. 
 
 The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity 
 is the law of all who are not self-possessed. Those who 
 are not self-possessed obtrude and pain us. Some men 
 appear to feel that they belong to a Pariah caste. They 
 fear to offend, they bend and apologize, and walk through 
 life with a timid step. As we sometimes dream that we 
 aie in a well-dressed company without any coat, so God- 
 frey acts ever as if he suffered from some mortifying cir- 
 cumstance. The hero should find himself at home, wher- 
 ever he is ; should impart comfort by his own security 
 and good-nature to all beholders. The hero is suffered 
 to be himself. A person of strong mind comes to per- 
 ceive that for him an immunity is secured so long as he 
 renders to society that service which is native and proper 
 to him, an immunity from all the observances, yea, and 
 duties, which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank 
 and file of its members. " Euripides," says Aspasia, 
 " has not the fine manners of Sophocles : but," she adds, 
 good-humoredly, " the movers and masters of our souls 
 have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly 
 as they please, on the world that belongs to them, and 
 before the creatures they have animated." * 
 
 Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than 
 haste. Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies 
 and respects, and not crushed into comers. Friendship 
 requires more time than poor busy men can usually com- 
 mand. Here comes to me Eoland, with a delicacy of 
 sentiment leading and inwrapping him like a divine cloud 
 
 * Laiidor, Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 BEHAVIOR. 149 
 
 or holy ghost. 'T is a great destitution to both that this 
 should not be entertained with large leisures, but contra- 
 riwise should be balked by importunate affairs. 
 
 But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is ever 
 shining. 'T is hard to keep the what from breaking 
 through this pretty painting of the how. The core will 
 come to the surface. Strong will and keen perception 
 overpower old manners, and create new ; and the thought 
 of the present moment has a greater value than all the 
 past. In persons of character, we do not remark man- 
 ners, because of their instantaneousness. We are sur- 
 prised by the thing done, out of all power to watch the 
 way of it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recog- 
 nize the great style which runs through the actions of 
 such. People masquerade before us in their fortunes, 
 titles, offices, and connections, as academic or civil presi- 
 dents, or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, and 
 impose on the frivolous, and a good deal on each other, 
 by these fames. At least, it is a point of prudent good 
 manners to treat these reputations tenderly, as if they 
 were merited. But the sad realist knows these fellows 
 at a glance, and they know him ; as when in Paris the 
 chief of the police enters a ball-room, so many diamonded 
 pretenders shrink and make themselves as inconspicuous 
 as they can, or give him a supplicating look as they pass. 
 "I had received," said a sibyl, "I had received at 
 birth the fatal gift of penetration " ; and these Cassan- 
 dras are always born. 
 
 Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man 
 who is sure of his point, carries a broad and contented 
 expression, which everybody reads. And you cannot
 
 150 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making 
 him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural 
 expression. Nature forever puts a premium on reality. 
 What is done for effect, is seen to be done for effect ; 
 what is done for love, is felt to be done for love. A man 
 inspires affection and honor, because he was not lying in 
 wait for these. The things of a man for which we visit 
 him, were done in the dark and the cold. A little integ- 
 rity is better than any career. So deep are the sources 
 of this surface-action, that even the size of your compan- 
 ion seems to vary with his freedom of thought. Not 
 only is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts gener- 
 ous, but everything around him becomes variable with 
 expression. No carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, will 
 measure the dimensions of any house or house-lot : go 
 into the house : if the proprietor is constrained and de- 
 ferring, 't is of no importance how large his house, How 
 beautiful his grounds, you quickly come to the end of 
 all ; but if the man is self-possessed, happy, and at home, 
 his house is deep-founded, indefinitely large and interesting, 
 the roof and dome buoyant as the sky. Under the hum- 
 blest roof, the commonest person in plain clothes sits 
 there massive, cheerful, yet formidable like the Egyptian 
 colossi. 
 
 Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor Cham- 
 pollion has set down the grammar-rules of this dialect, 
 older than Sanscrit ; but they who cannot yet read Eng- 
 lish, can read this. Men take each other's measure, 
 when they meet for the first time, and every time they 
 meet. How do they get this rapid knowledge, even 
 before they speak, of each other's power and disposi-
 
 BEHAVIOR. 151 
 
 tions? One would say that the persuasion of their 
 speech is not in what they say, or, that men do not 
 convince by their argument, but by their personality, 
 by who they are, and what they said aud did heretofore. 
 A man already strong is listened to, and everything he 
 says is applauded. Another opposes him with sound 
 argument, but the argument is scouted, until by and by 
 it gets into the mind of some weighty person; then it 
 begins to tell on the community. 
 
 Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guar- 
 anty that the powers are not squandered in too much 
 demonstration. In this country, where school education 
 is universal, we have a superficial culture, and a profu- 
 sion of reading and writing and expression. We parade 
 our nobilities in poems and orations, instead of working 
 them up into happiness. There is a whisper out of the ages 
 to him who can understand it, " Whatever is known 
 to thyself alone has always very great value." There is 
 some reason to believe that, when a man does not write 
 his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, instead 
 of the one vent of writing ; clings to his form and man- 
 ners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them 
 except their verses. Jacobi said, that " when a man has 
 fully expressed his* thought, he has somewhat less pos- 
 session of it." One would say, the rule is, What 
 a man is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. 
 In explaining his thought to others, he explains it to 
 himself: but when he opens it for show, it corrupts 
 him. 
 
 Society is the stage on which manners are shown; 
 novels are their literature. Novels are the journal or
 
 152 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 record of manners ; and the new importance of these 
 books derives from the fact that the novelist begins to 
 penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more 
 worthily. The novels used to be all alike, and had a quite 
 vulgar tone. The novels used to lead us on to a foolish 
 interest in the fortunes of the boy and girl they described. 
 The boy was to be raised from a humble to a high posi- 
 tion. He was in want of a wife and a castle, and the 
 object of the story was to supply him with one or both. 
 We watched sympathetically, step by step, his climb- 
 ing, until, at last, the point is gained, the wedding-day 
 is fixed, and we follow the gala procession home to 
 the bannered portal, when the doors are slammed in our 
 face, and the poor reader is left outside in the cold, 
 not enriched by so much as an idea, or a virtuous im- 
 pulse. 
 
 But the victories of character are instant, and victories 
 for all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are fortified 
 by every heroic anecdote. The novels are as useful as 
 Bibles, if they teach you the secret, that the best of life 
 is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or 
 perfect understanding between sincere people. 'Tis a 
 French definition of friendship, rien que s' 'entendre, good 
 understanding. The highest compact we can make with 
 our fellow is, " Let there be truth between us two 
 forevermore." That is the charm in all good novels, as 
 it is the charm in all good histories, that the heroes mu- 
 tually understand, from the first, and deal loyally, and 
 with a profound trust in each other. It is sublime (o 
 feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, 
 or write to him : we need not reinforce ourselves, or
 
 BEHAVIOR. 153 
 
 send tokens of remembrance : I rely on him as on my- 
 self: if he did thus or thus, I know it was right. 
 
 In all the superior people I have met, I notice direct- 
 ness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything of obstruc- 
 tion, of malformation, had been trained away. What 
 have they to conceal ? What have they to exhibit ? 
 Between simple and noble persons there is always a 
 quick intelligence : they recognize at sight, and meet on 
 a better ground than the talents and skills they may 
 chance to possess, namely, on sincerity and uprightness. 
 For, it is not what talents or genius a man has, but how 
 he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and char- 
 acter. The man that stands by himself, the universe stands 
 by him also. It is related of the monk Basle, that, being 
 excommunicated by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent 
 in charge of an angel to find a fit place of sutl'ering in 
 hell ; but, such was the eloquence and good-humor of the 
 monk, that wherever he went he was received gladly, and 
 civilly treated, even by the most uncivil angels : and, 
 when he came to discourse with them, instead of contra- 
 dicting or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted 
 his manners : and even good angels came from far, to 
 see him, and take up their abode with him. The angel 
 that was sent to find a place of torment for him attempted 
 to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better success ; 
 for such was the contented spirit of the monk, that he 
 found something to praise in every place and company, 
 though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. At last 
 the escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them 
 that sent him, saying that no phlegethon could be found 
 that would burn him ; for that, in whatever condition,
 
 154 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says, his 
 sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into 
 heaven, and was canonized as a saint. 
 
 There is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspond- 
 ence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, when the lat- 
 ter was King of Spain, and complained that he missed 
 in Napoleon's letters the affectionate tone which had 
 marked their childish correspondence. " I am sorry," 
 replies Napoleon, " you think you shall find your brother 
 again only in the Elysian Fields. It is natural, that at 
 forty, he should not feel towards you as he did at twelve. 
 But his feelings towards you have greater truth and 
 strength. His friendship has the features of his mind." 
 
 How much we forgive in those who yield us the rare 
 spectacle of heroic manners ! We will pardon them the 
 want of books, of arts, and even of the gentler virtues. 
 How tenaciously we remember them ! Here is a lesson 
 which I brought along with me in boyhood from the 
 Latin School, and which ranks with the best of Roman 
 anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus was accused by Quiutus 
 Varius Hispanus, that he had excited the allies to take 
 arms against the Republic. But he, full of firmness and 
 gravity, defended himself in this manner : " Quintus 
 Varius Hispanus alleges that Marcus Scaurus, President 
 of the Senate, excited the allies to arms : Marcus Scau- 
 rus, President of the Senate, denies it. There is no 
 witness. Which do you believe, Romans ? " " Utri 
 creditis, Quirites ? " When he had said these words, 
 he was absolved by the assembly of the people. 
 
 I have seen manners that make a similar impression 
 with personal beauty ; that give the like exhilaration,
 
 BEHAVIOR. 155 
 
 and refine us like that ; and, in memorable experiences, 
 they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that 
 superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine 
 perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They 
 must always show self-control : you shall not be facile, 
 apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word ; and 
 every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. 
 Then they must be inspired by the good heart. There 
 is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like 
 the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'T is 
 good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 
 'T is better to be hospitable to his good meaning and 
 thought, and give courage to a companion. We must 
 be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which 
 we are willing to give the advantage of a good light. 
 Special precepts are not to be thought of : the talent of 
 well-doing contains them all. Every hour will show a 
 duty as paramount as that of my whim just now ; and 
 yet I will write it, that there is one topic perempto- 
 rily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, 
 namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if 
 you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or 
 leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, 
 to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which 
 all the housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, 
 by corruption and groans. Come out of the azure. 
 Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your land- 
 scape. The oldest and the most deserving person should 
 come very modestly into any newly awaked company, 
 respecting the divine communications, out of which all 
 must be presumed to have newly come. An old man
 
 156 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 who added an elevating culture to a large experience of 
 life, said to me : " When you come into the room, I 
 think I will study how to make humanity beautiful to 
 you." 
 
 As respects the delicate question of culture, I do not 
 think that any other than negative rules can be laid down. 
 For positive rules, for suggestion, Nature alone inspires 
 it. Who dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to per- 
 fect manners ? the golden mean is so delicate, difficult, 
 say frankly, unattainable. What finest hands would 
 not be clumsy to sketch the genial precepts of the young 
 girl's demeanor ? The chances seem infinite against 
 success ; and yet success is continually attained. There 
 must not be secondariness, and 't is a thousand to one 
 that her air and manner will at once betray that she is 
 not primary, but that there is some other one or many 
 of her class, to whom she habitually postpones herself. 
 But Nature lifts her easily, and without knowing it, 
 over these impossibilities, and we are continually sur- 
 prised with graces and felicities not only unteachable, 
 but undescribable.
 
 YL 
 
 WORSHIP. 
 
 THIS is he, who, felled by foes, 
 
 Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows : 
 
 He to captivity was sold, 
 
 But him no prison-bars would hold : 
 
 Though they sealed him in a rock, 
 
 Mountain chains he can unlock : 
 
 Thrown to lions for their meat, 
 
 The crouching lion kissed his feet: 
 
 Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, 
 
 But arched o'er him an honoring vault. 
 
 This is he men miscall Fate, 
 
 Threading dark ways, arriving late, 
 
 But ever coming in time to crown 
 
 The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down. 
 
 He is the oldest, and best known, 
 
 More near than aught thou call'st thy own, 
 
 Yet, greeted in another's eyes, 
 
 Disconcerts with glad surprise. 
 
 This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, 
 
 Floods with blessings unawares. 
 
 Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, 
 
 Severing rightly his from thine, 
 
 Which is human, which divine.
 
 WORSHIP. 
 
 SOME of my friends have complained, when the pre- 
 ceding papers were read, that we discussed Fate, Power, 
 and Wealth on too low a platform ; gave too much line 
 to the evil spirit of the times ; too many cakes to Cerbe- 
 rus; that we ran Cudworth's risk of making, by excess 
 of candor, the argument of atheism so strong, that he 
 could not answer it. I have no fears of being forced in 
 my own despite to play, as we say, the devil's attorney. 
 I have no infirmity of faith ; no belief that it is of much 
 importance what I or any man may say : I am sure that a 
 certain truth will be said through me, though I should be 
 dumb, or though I should try to say the reverse. Nor 
 do I fear scepticism for any good soul. A just thinker 
 will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in 
 the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into 
 my inkpot. I have no sympathy with a poor man I 
 knew, who, when suicides abounded, told me he dared 
 not look at his razor. We are of different opinions at 
 different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart 
 on the side of truth. 
 
 I see not why we should give ourselves such sanctified 
 airs. If the Divine Providence has hid from men neither 
 disease, nor deformity, nor corrupt society, but has stated
 
 160 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 itself out in passions, in war, in trade, in the love of 
 power and pleasure, in hunger and need, in tyrannies, 
 literatures, and arts, let us not be so nice that we 
 cannot write these facts down coarsely as they stand, 
 or doubt but there is a counter-statement as ponderous, 
 which we can arrive at, and which, being put, will make 
 all square. The solar system has no anxiety about its 
 reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe ; 
 nor have I any fear that a sceptical bias can be given by 
 leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or 
 of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh. 
 The strength of that principle is not measured in ounces 
 and pounds ; it tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. We 
 may well give scepticism as much line as we can. The 
 spirit will return and fill us. It drives the drivers. It 
 counterbalances any accumulations of power. 
 
 " Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." 
 
 We are born loyal. The whole creation is made of hooks 
 and eyes, of bitumen, of sticking-plaster, and whether 
 your community is made in Jerusalem or in California, 
 of saints or of wreckers, it coheres in a perfect ball. 
 Men as naturally make a state, or a church, as caterpil- 
 lars a web. If they were more refined, it would be less 
 formal, it would be nervous like that of the Shakers, 
 who, from long habit of thinking and feeling together, it 
 is said, are affected in the same way, at the same time, 
 to work and to play ; and as they go with perfect sympa- 
 thy to their tasks in the field or shop, so are they inclined 
 for a ride or a journey at the same instant, and the horses 
 come up with the family carriage unbespoken to the door.
 
 WORSHIP. 161 
 
 We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree 
 bears apples. A self-poise belongs to every particle ; and 
 a rectitude to every mind, and is the Nemesis and pro- 
 tector of every society. I and my neighbors have been 
 bred in the notion, that, unless we came soon to some 
 good church, Calvinism, or Behmenism, or Romanism, 
 or Mormonism, there would be a universal thaw and 
 dissolution. No Isaiah or Jeremy has arrived. Nothing 
 can exceed the anarchy that has followed in our skies. 
 The stern old taiths have all pulverized. 'T is a whole 
 population ot gentlemen and ladies out in search of re- 
 ligions. 'T is as flat anarchy in our ecclesiastic realms, 
 as that which existed in Massachusetts, in the Revolu- 
 tion, or which prevails now on the slope of the Rocky 
 Mountains or Pike's Peak. Yet we make shift to live. 
 Men are loyal. Nature has self-poise in all her works ; 
 certain proportions in which oxygen and azote combine, 
 and, not less a harmony in faculties, a fitness in the spring 
 and the regulator. 
 
 The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fenelon, or 
 Wesley, or Channiiig, need give us no uneasiness. The 
 builder of heaven has not so ill constructed his creature 
 as that the religion, that is, the public nature, should fall 
 out : the public and the private element, like north and 
 south, like inside and outside, like centrifugal and cen- 
 tripetal, adhere to every soul, and cannot be subdued, ex- 
 cept the soul is dissipated. God builds his temple in the 
 heart on the ruins of churches and religions. 
 
 In the last chapters, we treated some particulars of the 
 question of culture. But the whole state of man is a 
 state of culture ; and its flowering and completion may
 
 162 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 be described as Religion, or Worship. There is always 
 some religion, some hope and fear extended into the in- 
 visible, from the blind boding which nails a horseshoe 
 to the mast or the threshold, up to the song of the Elders 
 in the Apocalypse. But the religion cannot rise above 
 the state of the votary. Heaven always bears some pro- 
 portion to earth. The god of the cannibals will be a 
 cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the mer- 
 chants a merchant. In all ages, souls out of time, extraor- 
 dinary, prophetic, are born, who are rather related to 
 the system of the world, than to their particular age and 
 locality. These announce absolute truths, which, with 
 whatever reverence received, are speedily dragged down 
 into a savage interpretation. The interior tribes of our 
 Indians, and some of the Pacific-Islanders, flog their 
 gods, when things take an unfavorable turn. The Greek , 
 poets did not hesitate to let loose their petulant wit on 
 their deities also. Laomedon, in his anger at Neptune 
 and Apollo, who had built Troy for him, and demanded 
 their price, does not hesitate to menace them that he will 
 cut their ears off.* Among our Norse forefathers, King 
 Olaf s mode of converting Eyvind to Christianity was 
 to put a pan of glowing coals on his belly, which burst 
 asunder. " Wilt thou now, Eyvind, believe in Christ ? " 
 asks Olaf, in excellent faith. Another argument was an 
 adder put into the mouth of the reluctant disciple Rand, 
 who refused to believe. 
 
 Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified European 
 culture, the grafted or meliorated tree in a crab forest. 
 And to marry a pagan wife or husband was to marry 
 
 * Iliad, Uook xxi. 1. 455.
 
 WORSHIP. 163 
 
 Beast, and voluntarily to take a step backwards towards 
 the baboon. 
 
 " Hengist had verament, 
 A daughter both fair and gent, 
 But she was heathen Sarazine, 
 And Vortigern for love fine 
 Her took to fere and to wife, 
 And was cursed in all his life ; 
 For he let Christian wed heathen, 
 And mixed our blood as flesh and mathen." * 
 
 What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed drew from the 
 pagan sources, Richard of Devizes's chronicle of Richard 
 I.'s crusade, in the twelfth century, may show. King 
 Richard taunts God with forsaking him : " O fie ! O, 
 how unwilling should I be to forsake tliee, in so for- 
 lorn and dreadful a position, were I thy lord and advo- 
 cate, as thou art mine. In sooth, my standards will in 
 future be despised, not through my fault, but through 
 thine ; in sooth, not through any cowardice of my war- 
 fare, art thou thyself, my king and my God, conquered 
 this day, and not Richard thy vassal." The religion of 
 the early English poets is anomalous, so devout and so 
 blasphemous, in the same breath. Such is Chaucer's ex- 
 traordinary confusion of heaven and earth in the picture 
 
 of Dido. 
 
 " She was so fair, 
 
 So young, so lusty, with her eyen glad, 
 That if that God that heaven and earthe made 
 Would have a love for beauty and goodness, 
 And womanhede, truth, and seemliness, 
 
 * Moths or worms.
 
 164 CONDUCT OF LITE. 
 
 Whom should he loven hut this lady sweet ? 
 There n' is no woman to him half so meet." 
 
 With these grossnesses, we complacently compare oui 
 own taste and decorum. We think and speak with more 
 temperance and gradation, -^- but is not indifferentism as 
 bad as superstition ? 
 
 We live in a transition period, when the old faiths 
 which comforted nations, and not only so, but made na- 
 tions, seem to have spent their force. I do not find the 
 religious of men at this moment very creditable to them, 
 but either childish and insignificant, or unmanly and ef- 
 feminating. The fatal trait is the divorce between relig- 
 ion and morality. Here are know-nothing religions, or 
 churches that prescribe intellect ; scortatory religious ; 
 slave-holding and slave-trading religions ; and, even in 
 the decent populations, idolatries wherein the whiteness 
 of the ritual covers scarlet indulgence. The lover of the 
 old religion complains that our contemporaries, scholars 
 as well as merchants, succumb to a great despair, have 
 corrupted into a timorous conservatism, and believe in 
 nothing. In our large cities, the population is godless, 
 materialized, no feond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. 
 These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and 
 appetites walking. How is it people manage to live 
 on, so aimless as they are ? After their peppercorn 
 aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones 
 alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose. 
 There is no faith in the intellectual, none in the moral 
 universe. There is faith in chemistry, in meat, and wine, 
 in wealth, in machinery, in the steam-engine, galvanic 
 battery, turbine-wheels, sewing-machines, and in public
 
 WORSHIP. 165 
 
 opinion, but not in divine causes. A silent revolution 
 has loosed the tension of the old religious sects, and, in 
 place of the gravity and permanence of those societies 
 of opinion, they run into freak and extravagance. In 
 creeds never was such levity; witness the heathenisms 
 in Christianity, the periodic " revivals," the Millennium 
 mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression 
 to Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of 
 Mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, the rat and mouse 
 revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and black art. The 
 architecture, the music, the prayer, partake of the mad- 
 ness : the arts sink into shift and make-believe. Not 
 knowing what to do, we ape our ancestors ; the churches 
 stagger backward to the mummeries of the Dark Ages. 
 By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the 
 Christian traditions have lost their hold. The dogma of 
 the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he stand- 
 ing on his genius as a moral teacher, 't is impossible to 
 maintain the old emphasis of his personality ; and it re- 
 cedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the 
 moral laws. From this change, and in the momentary 
 absence of any religious genius that could offset the 
 immense material activity, there is a feeling that religion 
 is gone. When Paul Leroux offered his article " Dieu " 
 to the conductor of a leading Trench journal, he replied, 
 " La question de Dieu manque cTactualite." In Italy, 
 Mr. Gladstone said of the late King of Naples, " It has 
 been a proverb, that he has erected the negation of God 
 into a system of government." In this country the like 
 stupefaction was in the air, and the phrase " higher law " 
 became a political gibe. What proof of infidelity, like the
 
 166 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 toleration and prop:igandism of slavery ? What, like 
 the direction of education? What, like the facility of 
 conversion ? What, like the externality of churches that 
 once sucked the roots of right and wrong, and now have 
 perished away till they are a speck of whitewash on the 
 wall? What proof of scepticism like the base rate at 
 which the highest mental and moral gifts are held ? Let 
 a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any 
 American lias possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, 
 railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will 
 acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him ; 
 that, after the education has gone far, such is the expen- 
 siveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person 
 to is, to drown him to save his board. 
 
 Another scar of this scepticism is the distrust in hu- 
 man virtue. It is believed by well-dressed proprietors 
 that there is no more virtue than they possess ; that the 
 solid portion of society exist for the arts of comfort : 
 that life is an affair to put somewhat between the upper 
 and lower mandibles. How prompt the suggestion of 
 a low motive! Certain patriots in England devoted 
 themselves for years to creating a public opinion that 
 should break down the corn-laws and establish free trade. 
 " Well," says the man in the street, " Cobden got a sti- 
 pend out of it." Kossuth fled hither across the ocean 
 to try if he could rouse the New World to a sympathy 
 with European liberty. " Ay," says New York, " he 
 made a handsome thing of it, enough to make him com- 
 fortable for life." 
 
 See what allowance vice finds in the respectable and 
 well-conditioned class. If a pickpocket intrude into the
 
 WORSHIP. 167 
 
 society of gentlemen, they exert what moral force they 
 have, and he finds himself uncomfortable, and glad to 
 get away. But if an adventurer go through all the 
 forms, procure himself to be elected to a post of trust, 
 as of senator, or president, though by the same arts as 
 we detest in the house-thief, the same gentlemen, who 
 agree to discountenance the private rogue, will be for- 
 ward to show civilities and marks of respect to the public 
 one : and no amount of evidence of his crimes will pre- 
 vent them giving him ovations, complimentary dinners, 
 opening their own houses to him, and priding themselves 
 on his acquaintance. We were not deceived by the pro- 
 fessions of the private adventurer, the louder he talked 
 of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons ; but we 
 appeal to tLe sanctified preamble of the messages and 
 proclamations of the public sinner, as the proof of sin- 
 cerity. It must be that they who pay this homage have 
 said to themselves, On the whole, we don't know about 
 this that you call honesty ; a bird in the hand is better. 
 
 Even well-disposed, good sort of people are touched 
 with the same infidelity, and, for brave, straightforward 
 action, use half-measures and compromises. Forgetful 
 that a little measure is a great error, forgetful that a wise 
 mechanic uses a sharp tool, they go on choosing the dead 
 men of routine. But the official men can in no wise help 
 you in any question of to-day, they deriving entirely from 
 the old dead things. Only those can help in counsel or 
 conduct who did not make a party pledge to defend this 
 or that, but who were appointed by God Almighty, be- 
 fore they came into the world, to stand for this which 
 they uphold.
 
 168 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 It lias been charged that a want of sincerity in the 
 leading men is a vice general throughout American so- 
 ciety. But the multitude of the sick shall not make us 
 deny the existence of health. In spite of our imbecility 
 and terrors, and " universal decay of religion," etc., etc., 
 the moral sense reappears to-day with the same morning 
 newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty 
 and strength.' You say, there is no religion now. T is 
 like saying in rainy weather, there is no sun, when at 
 that moment we are witnessing one of his superlative 
 effects. The religion of the cultivated class now, to be 
 sure, consists in an avoidance of acts and engagements 
 which it was once their religion to assume. But this 
 avoidance will yield spontaneous forms in their due hour. 
 There is a principle which is the basis of things, which 
 all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, 
 quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very 
 peacefully in us, our rightful lord ; we are not to do, 
 but to let do ; not to work, but to be worked upon ; and 
 to this homage there is a consent of all thoughtful and 
 just men in all ages and conditions. To this sentiment 
 belong vast and sudden enlargements of power. 'T is 
 remarkable that our faith in ecstasy consists with total 
 inexperience of it. It is the order of the world to edu- 
 cate with accuracy the senses and the understanding; 
 and the enginery at work to draw out these powers in 
 priority, no doubt, has its office. But we are never 
 without a hint that these powers are mediate and servile, 
 and that we are one day to deal with real being, es- 
 sences with essences. Even the fury of material activity 
 has some results friendly to moral health. The energetic
 
 WORSHIP. 169 
 
 , action of the times develops individualism, and the re- 
 ligious appear isolated. I esteem this a step in the right 
 direction. Heaven deals with us on no representative 
 system. Souls are not saved in bundles. The Spirit 
 saith to the man, " How is it with thee ? thee personally ? 
 is it well ? is it ill ? " For a great nature, it is a happi- 
 ness to escape a religious training, religion of charac- 
 ter is so apt to be invaded. Religion must always be 
 a crab fruit: it cannot be grafted and keep its wild 
 beauty. " I have seen," said a traveller who had known 
 the extremes of society, "I have seen human nature 
 in all its forms, it is everywhere the same, but the wilder 
 it is, the more virtuous." 
 
 We say, the old forms of religion decay, and that a 
 scepticism devastates the community. I do not think it 
 can be cured or stayed by any modification of theologic 
 creeds, much less by theologic discipline. The cure for 
 false theology is mother-wit. Forget your books and tra- 
 ditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour. 
 That which is signified by the words " moral " and 
 "spiritual" is a lasting essence, and, with whatever 
 illusions we have loaded them, will certainly bring back 
 the words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. I 
 know no words that mean so much. In our definitions, 
 we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. 
 The true meaning of spiritual is real ; that law which 
 executes itself, which works without, means, and which 
 cannot be conceived as not existing. Men talk of " mere 
 morality," which is much as if one should say, " Poor 
 God, with nobody to help him." I find the omnipresence 
 and the almiglitiness in I he reaction of every atom in
 
 170 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 nature. I can best indicate by examples those reactions 
 by which every part of nature replies to the purpose of 
 the actor, beneficently to the good, penally to the bad. 
 Let us replace seutimentalism by realism, and dare to un- 
 cover those simple and terrible laws, which, be they seen 
 or unseen, pervade and govern. 
 
 Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat 
 him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he 
 do not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has 
 changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun. What 
 a day dawns, when we have taken to heart the doctrine 
 of faith ! to prefer, as a better investment, being to do- 
 ing ; being to seeming ; logic to rhythm and to display ; 
 the year to the day ; the life to the year ; character to 
 performance ; and have come to know that justice will 
 be done us ; and, if our genius is slow, the term will be 
 long. 
 
 'T is certain that worship stands in some commanding 
 relation to the health of man, and to his highest powers, 
 so as to be, in some manner, the source of intellect. All 
 the great ages have been ages of belief. I mean, when 
 there was any extraordinary power of performance, when 
 great national movements began, when arts appeared, 
 when heroes existed, when poems were made, the human 
 soul was in earnest, and had fixed its thoughts on spirit- 
 ual verities, with as strict a grasp as that of the hands on 
 the sword, or the pencil, or the trowel. It is true that 
 genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude ; 
 that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow 
 born out of that Alpine district ; that any extraordinary 
 degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral
 
 WORSHIP. 171 
 
 charm. Thus, I think, we very slowly admit in another 
 mau a higher degree of moral sentiment than our own, 
 a finer conscience, more impressionable, or, which marks 
 minuter degrees ; an ear to hear acuter notes of right and 
 wrong, than we can. I think we listen suspiciously and 
 very slowly to any evidence to that poiut. But, once 
 satisfied of such superiority, we set no limit to our ex- 
 pectation of his genius. For such persons are nearer to 
 the secret of God than others ; are bathed by sweeter 
 waters ; they hear notices, they see visions, where others 
 are vacant. We believe that holiness confers a certain 
 insight, because not by our private, but by our public 
 force can we share and know the nature of things. 
 
 There is an ultimate interdependence of intellect and 
 morals. Given the equality of two intellects, which 
 will form the most reliable judgments, the good, or the 
 bad hearted ? " The heart has its arguments, with 
 which the understanding is not acquainted." Tor the 
 heart is at once aware of the state of health or disease, 
 which is the controlling state, that is, of sanity or of in- 
 sanity, prior, of course, to all question of the ingenuity 
 of arguments, the amount of facts, or the elegance of 
 rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance of mind and heart, 
 that talent uniformly sinks with character. The bias of 
 errors of principle carries away men into perilous courses, 
 as soon as their will does not .control their passion or tal- 
 ent. Hence the extraordinary blunders, and final wrong 
 head, into which men spoiled by ambition usually fall. 
 Hence the remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, 
 the cure of crime, is love. "As much love, so much 
 mind," said the Latin proverb. The superiority that has
 
 172 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 no superior ; the redeemer and instructor of souls, as 
 it is their primal essence, is love. 
 
 The moral must be the measure of health. If your eye 
 / is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, and your opin- 
 ions and actions will have a beauty which no learning or 
 combined advantages of other men can rival. The mo- 
 ment of your loss of faith, and acceptance of the lucrative 
 standard, will be marked in the pause, or solstice of gen- 
 ius, the sequent retrogression, and the inevitable loss of 
 attraction to other minds. The vulgar are sensible of the 
 change in you, and of your descent, though they clap you 
 on the back, and congratulate you on your increased 
 common-sense. 
 
 Our recent culture has been in natural science. We 
 have learned the manners of the sun and of the moon, of 
 the rivers and the rains, of the mineral and elemental 
 kingdoms, of plants and animals. Man has learned to 
 weigh the sun, and its weight neither loses nor gains. 
 The path of a star, the moment of an eclipse, can be de- 
 termined to the fraction of a second. Well, to him the 
 book of history, the book of love, the lures of passion, 
 and the commandments of duty are opened; and the 
 next lesson taught is, the continuation of the inflexible 
 law of matter into the subtile kingdom of will, and of 
 thought ; that, if, in sidereal ages, gravity and projection 
 keep their craft, and the ball never loses its way in its 
 wild path through space, a secreter gravitation, a 
 secreter projection, rule not less tyrannically in human 
 history, and keep the balance of power from age to age 
 unbroken. For, though the new element of freedom and 
 an individual has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms
 
 WORSHIP. 173 
 
 are prefigured and predetermined to moral issues, are in 
 search of justice, and ultimate right is done. Religion 
 or worship is the attitude of those who see this unity, 
 intimacy, and sincerity; who see that, against all appear- 
 ances, the nature of things works for truth and right 
 forever. 
 
 'T is a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of 
 gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those 
 laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the 
 , same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane 
 of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in 
 a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, 
 a perpetual judgment, keeps watch and ward. And this 
 appears in a class of facts which concerns all men, within 
 and above their creeds. 
 
 Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances : 
 It was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at 
 the time, or, it was so then, and another day it would 
 have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and 
 effect. The man was born to do it, and his father was 
 born to be the father of him and of this deed, and, by 
 looking narrowly, you shall see there was no luck in the 
 matter, but it was all a problem in arithmetic, or an ex- 
 periment in chemistry. The curve of the flight of the 
 moth is preordained, and all things go by number, rule, 
 and weight. 
 
 Scepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man 
 does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks : as he deals, 
 so he is, and so he appears ; he does not see, that his son 
 is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that for- 
 tunes are not exceptions, but fruits ; that relation and
 
 174 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but every- 
 where and always ; no miscellany, no exemption, no anom- 
 aly, but method, and an even web ; and what comes 
 out, that was put in. As we are, so we do ; and as we 
 do, so is it done to us ; we are the builders of our for- 
 tunes ; cant and lying and the attempt to secure a good 
 which does not belong to us, are, once for all, balked and 
 vain. But, in the human mind this tie of faith is made 
 alive. The law is the basis of the human mind. In us, 
 it is inspiration; out there in Nature, we see its fatal 
 strength. We call it the moral sentiment. 
 
 We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of Law, 
 which compares well with any in our Western books. 
 "Law it is, which is without name, or color, or hands, 
 or feet ; which is smallest of the least, and largest of the 
 large : all, and knowing all things ; which hears without 
 ears, sees without eyes, moves without feet, and seizes 
 without hands." 
 
 If any reader tax me with using vague and traditional 
 phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few examples, what 
 kind of a trust this is, and how real. Let me show him 
 that the dice are loaded ; that the colors are fast, because 
 they are the native colors of the fleece ; that the globe is 
 a battery, because every atom is a magnet ; and that the 
 police and sincerity of the Universe are secured by God's 
 delegating his divinity to every particle ; that there is no 
 room for hypocrisy, no margin for choice. 
 
 The countryman leaving his native village, for the first 
 time, and going abroad, finds all his habits broken up. 
 In a new nation and language, his sect, as Quaker, or 
 Lulheran, is lost. What! it is not then necessary to the
 
 WORSHIP. 175 
 
 order and existence of society ? He misses this, and the 
 commanding eye of his neighborhood, which held him to 
 decorum. This is the peril of New York, of New Or- 
 leans, of London, of Paris, to young men. But after a 
 little experience, he makes the discovery that there are 
 no large cities, none large enough to hide in ; that the 
 censors of action are as numerous and as near in Paris, 
 as in Littleton or Portland ; that the gossip is as prompt 
 and vengeful. There is no concealment, and, for each 
 offence, a several vengeance ; that, reaction, or nothing 
 for nothing, or, things are as broad as they are long, is 
 not a rule for Littleton or Portland, but for the Uni- 
 verse. 
 
 We cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. 
 We are disgusted by gossip ; yet it is of importance to 
 keep the angels in their proprieties. The smallest fly 
 will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon impossible to 
 exclude from the privatest, highest, selectest. Nature 
 created a police of many ranks. God has delegated him- 
 self to a million deputies. From these low external pen- 
 alties, the scale ascends. Next come the resentments, 
 the fears, which injustice calls out; then, the false rela- 
 tions in which the offender is put to other men ; and the 
 reaction of his fault on himself, in the solitude and dev- 
 astation of his mind. 
 
 You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his 
 flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will charac- 
 terize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make 
 a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of 
 mind you had, when you made it. If you spend for* 
 show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on
 
 176 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists 
 and penetrators of character, and things themselves are 
 detective. If you follow the suburban fashion in build- 
 ing a sumptuous-looking house for a little money, it will 
 appear to all eyes as a cheap dear house. There is no 
 privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be 
 kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball, 
 where every one hides his real character, and reveals it 
 by hiding. If a man wish to conceal anything he car- 
 ries, those whom he meets know that he conceals some- 
 what, and usually know what he conceals. Is it other- 
 wise if there be some belief or some purpose he would 
 bury in his breast ? 'T is as hard to hide as fire. He 
 is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man 
 cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing 
 to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and 
 thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the sense! 
 and the understanding, or, in that of ideas and imaging 
 tion, in the realm of intuitions and duty. People seem 
 not to see that their opinion of the world is also a con- 
 fession of character. We can only see what we are, and 
 if we misbehave we suspect others. The fame of Shake- 
 speare or of Voltaire, of Thomas a Kempis, or of Bona- 
 parte, characterizes those who give it. As gaslight is 
 found to be the best nocturnal police, so the universe 
 protects itself by pitiless publicity. 
 
 Each must be armed, not necessarily with musket 
 and pike. Happy, if, seeing these, he can feel that he 
 has better muskets and pikes in his energy and con- 
 stancy. To every creature is his own weapon, however 
 skilfully concealed from himself, a good while. His
 
 WORSHIP. 177 
 
 work is sword and shield. Let him accuse none, let him 
 injure none. The way to mend the bad world is to cre- 
 1 ate the right world. Here is a low political economy 
 plotting to cut the throat of foreign competition, and es- 
 tablish our own ; excluding others by force, or making 
 war on them ; or, by cunning tariffs, giving preference to 
 worse wares of ours. But the real and lasting victories 
 are those of peace, and not of war. The way to conquer 
 the foreign artisan is, not to kill him, but to beat his 
 work. And the Crystal Palaces and World Fairs, with 
 their committees and prizes on all kinds of industry, are 
 the result of this feeling. The American workman who 
 strikes ten blows with his hammer, whilst the foreign 
 workman only strikes one, is as really vanquishing that 
 foreigner, as if the blows were aimed at and told on his 
 person. I look on that man as happy, who, when there 
 is question of success, looks into his work for a reply, 
 not into the market, not into opinion, not into patron- 
 age. In every variety of human employment, in the me- 
 chanical and in the fine arts, in navigation, in farming, in 
 legislating, there are among the numbers who do their 
 task perfunctorily, as we say, or just to pass, and as badly 
 as they dare, there are the workingmen, on whom the 
 burden of the business falls, those who love work, and 
 love to see it rightly done, who finish their task for its 
 own sake; and the state and the world is happy, that 
 has the most of such finishers. The world will always 
 do justice at last to such finishers : it cannot otherwise. 
 He who has acquired the ability may wait securely the 
 occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know 
 that it will not loiter. Men talk as if victory were some- 
 8* L
 
 178 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 thing fortunate. Work is victory. Wherever work is 
 done, victory is obtained. There is no chance, and no 
 blanks. You want but one verdict : if you have your 
 own, you are secure of the rest. And yet, if witnesses 
 are wanted, witnesses are near. There was never a man 
 born so wise or good, but one or more companions came 
 into the world with him, who delight in his faculty and 
 report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks 
 alone, and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors 
 who came up with him into life, now under one dis- 
 guise, now under another, like a police in citizens' 
 clothes, walk with him, step for step, through the king- 
 dom of time. 
 
 This reaction, this sincerity, is the property of all 
 things. To make our word or act sublime, we must 
 make it real. It is our system that counts, not the 
 single word or unsupported action. Use what language 
 you will, you can never say anything but what you are. 
 What I am, and what I think, is conveyed to you, in 
 spite of my efforts to hold it back. What I am, has 
 been secretly conveyed from me to another, whilst I was 
 vainly making up my mind to tell him it. He has heard 
 from me what I never spoke. 
 
 As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, 
 and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In 
 the progress of the character, there is an increasing 
 faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in 
 propositions. Young people admire talents and particular 
 excellences. As we grow older, we value total powers 
 and effects, as the spirit or quality of the man. We have 
 another sight, and a new standard ; an insight which dis-
 
 WORSHIP. 179 
 
 regards what 1 5 done for the eye, and pierces to the doer ; 
 an ear which hears not what men say, but hears what 
 they do not say. 
 
 There was a wise, devout man who is called, in the 
 Catholic Church, St. Philip Neri, of whom many anec- 
 dotes touching his discernment and benevolence are told 
 at Naples and Rome. Among the nuns in a convent not 
 far from Rome, one had appeared, who laid claim to 
 certain rare gifts of inspiration and prophecy, and the 
 abbess advised the Holy Father, at Rome, of the wonder- 
 ful powers shown by her novice. The Pope did not well 
 know what*fco make of these new claims, and Philip com- 
 ing in from a journey, one day, he consulted him. Philip 
 undertook to visit the nun, and ascertain her character. 
 He threw himself on his mule, all travel-soiled as he was, 
 and hastened through the mud and mire to the distant 
 convent. He told the abbess the wishes of his Holiness, 
 and begged her to summon the nun without delay. The 
 nun was sent for, and, as soon as she came into the 
 apartment, Philip stretched out his leg all bespattered 
 with mud, and desired her to draw off his boots. The 
 young nun, who had become the object of much attention 
 and respect, drew back with anger, and refused the office : 
 Philip ran out of doors, mounted his mule, and returned, 
 instantly to the Pope : " Give yourself no uneasiness, 
 Holy Father, any longer : here is no miracle, for here is 
 no humility." 
 
 We need not much mind what people please to say, 
 but what they must say ; what their natures say though 
 their busy, artful, Yankee understandings try to hold 
 back, and choke that word, and to articulate something
 
 180 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 different. If we will sit quietly, what they ought to 
 say is said, with their will, or against their will. We do 
 not care for you, let us pretend what we will ; we are 
 always looking through you to the dim dictator behind 
 you. Whilst your habit or whim chatters, we civilly and 
 impatiently wait until that wise superior shall speak 
 again. Even children are not deceived by the false 
 reasons which their parents give in answer to their 
 questions, whether touching natural facts, or religion, or 
 persons. When the parent, instead of thinking how it 
 really is, puts them off with a traditional or a hypocriti- 
 cal answer, the children perceive that it is traditional or 
 hypocritical. To a sound constitution the defect of an- 
 other is at once manifest ; and the marks of it are only 
 concealed from us by our own dislocation. An anatomical 
 observer remarks that the sympathies of the chest, abdo- 
 men, and pelvis tell at last on the face, and on all its fea- 
 tures. Not only does our beauty waste, but it leaves 
 word how it went to waste. Physiognomy and phre- 
 nology are not new sciences, but declarations of the soul 
 that it is aware of certain new sources of information. 
 And now sciences of broader scope are starting up be- 
 hind these. And so for ourselves, it is really of little 
 importance what blunders in statement we make, so only 
 we make no wilful departures from the truth. How a 
 man's truth comes to mind, long after we have forgotten 
 all his words ! How il. comes to us in silent hours, that 
 truth is our only armor in all passages of life and death ! 
 Wit is cheap, and anger is cheap ; but if you cannot 
 argue or explain yourself to the other party, cleave to 
 the truth against me, against tliee, and you gain a station
 
 WORSHIP. 181 
 
 from which you cannot be dislodged. The other party 
 will forget the words that you spoke, but the part you 
 took continues to plead for you. 
 
 Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which life 
 offers me ? I am well assured that the Questioner, who 
 brings me so many problems, will bring the answers also 
 in due time. Very rich, very potent, very cheerful 
 Giver that he is, he shall have it all his own way for 
 me. Why should I give up my thought, because I 
 cannot answer an objection to it ? Consider only whether 
 it remains in my life the same it was. That only which 
 we have within, can we see without. If we meet no 
 gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is gran- 
 deur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and 
 sweeps. He only is rightly immortal, to whom all 
 things are immortal. I have read somewhere that none 
 is accomplished, so long as any are incomplete ; that the 
 happiness of one cannot consist with the misery of any 
 other. 
 
 The Buddhists say, " No seed will die " ; every seed 
 will grow. Where is the service which can escape its 
 remuneration ? What is vulgar, and the essence of all 
 vulgarity, but the avarice of reward ? 'T is the differ- 
 ence of artisan and artist, of talent and genius, of sinner 
 and saint. The man whose eyes are nailed, not on the 
 nature of his act, but on the wages, whether it be money, 
 or office, or fame, is almost equally low. He is great, 
 whose eyes are opened to see that the reward of actions 
 cannot be escaped, because he is transformed into his 
 action, and taketh its nature, which bears its own fruit, 
 like every other tree. A great man cannot be hindered
 
 182 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 of the effect of his act, because it is immediate. The 
 genius of life is friendly to the noble, and in the dark 
 brings them friends from far. Tear God, and where 
 you go, men shall think they walk iu hallowed cathe- 
 drals. 
 
 And so I look on those sentiments which make the 
 glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, as being 
 also the intimacy of Divinity in the atoms ; and, that, 
 as soon as the man is right, assurances and previsions 
 emanate from the interior of his body and his mind ; as, 
 when flowers reach their ripeness, incense exhales from 
 them, and, as a beautiful atmosphere is generated from 
 the planet by the averaged emanations from all its rocks 
 and soils. 
 
 Thus man is made equal to every event. He can face 
 danger for the right. A poor, tender, painful body, he 
 can run into flame or bullets or pestilence, with duty for 
 his guide. He feels the insurance of a just employment. 
 I arn not afraid of accident, as long as I am in my place. 
 It is strange that superior persons should not feel that 
 they have some better resistance against cholera, than 
 avoiding green peas and salads. Life is hardly respect- 
 able, is it ? if it has no generous, guaranteeing task, 
 no duties or affections, that constitute a necessity of 
 existing. Every man's task is his life-preserver. The 
 conviction that his work is dear to God and cannot be 
 spared, defends Him. The lightning-rod that disarms the 
 cloud of its threat is his body in its duty. A high aim 
 reacts on the means, on the days, on the organs of the 
 body. A high aim is curative, as well as arnica. " Na- 
 poleon," says Goethe, " visited those sick of the plague,
 
 WORSHIP. 183 
 
 in order to prove that the man who could vanquish fear, 
 could vanquish the plague also ; and he was right. 'T is 
 incredible what force the will has in such cases: it 
 penetrates the body, and puts it in a state of activity, 
 which repels all hurtful influences ; whilst fear invites 
 them." 
 
 It is related of William of Orange, that, whilst he was 
 besieging a town on the continent, a gentleman sent to 
 him on public business came to his camp, and, learning 
 that the King was before the walls, he ventured to go 
 where he was. He found him directing the operation 
 of his gunners, and, having explained his errand, and 
 received his answer, the King said : " Do you not know, 
 sir, that every moment you spend here is at the risk of 
 your life ? " "I run no more risk," replied the gentleman, 
 " than your Majesty." " Yes," said the King, " but my 
 duty brings me here, and yours does not." In a few 
 minutes, a cannon-ball fell on the spot, and the gentle- 
 man was killed. 
 
 Thus can the faithful student reverse all the warnings 
 of his early instinct, under the guidance of a deeper 
 instinct. He learns to welcome misfortune, learns that 
 adversity is the prosperity of the great. He learns the 
 greatness of humility. He shall work in the dark, work 
 against failure, pain, and ill-will. If he is insulted, he 
 can be insulted; all his affair is not to insult. Hafiz 
 writes : 
 
 At the last day, men shall wear 
 
 On their heads the dust, 
 
 As ensign and as ornament 
 
 Of their lowly trust.
 
 181 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 The moral equalizes all ; enriches, empowers all. It 
 is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their 
 pocket. Under the whip of the driver, the slave shall 
 feel his equality with saints and heroes. In the greatest 
 destitution and calamity, it surprises man with a feeling 
 of elasticity which makes nothing of loss. 
 
 I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose life 
 and discourse betrayed many inspirations of this senti- 
 ment. Benedict was always great in the present time. 
 He had hoarded nothing from the past, neither in his 
 cabinets, neither in his memory. He had no designs on 
 the future, neither for what he should do to men, nor for 
 what men should do for him. He said : " I am never 
 beaten until I know that I am beaten. I meet powerful 
 brutal people to whom I have no skill to reply. They 
 think they have defeated me. It is so published in 
 society, in the journals ; I am defeated in this fashion, 
 in all men's sight, perhaps on a dozen different lines. 
 My ledger may show that I am in debt, cannot yet make 
 my ends meet, and vanquish the enemy so. My race may 
 not be prospering : we are sick, ugly, obscure, unpopu- 
 lar. My children may be worsted. I seem to fail in 
 my friends and clients, too. That is to say, in all the en- 
 counters that have yet chanced, I have not been weap- 
 oned for that particular occasion, and have been his- 
 torically beaten ; and yet, I know, all the time, that I 
 have never been beaten ; have never yet fought, shall cer- 
 tainly fight, when my hour comes, and shall beat." c A 
 man,' says the Vishnu Sarma, ' who having well com- 
 pared his own strength or weakness with that of others, 
 after all doth not know the difference, is easily overcome 
 by his enemies.'
 
 WORSHIP. 185 
 
 " I spent," he said, " ten months in the country. 
 Thick-starred Orion was my only companion. Wherever 
 a squirrel or a bee can go with security, I can go. I ate 
 whatever was set before me ; I touched ivy and dogwood. 
 When I went abroad, I kept company with every man on 
 the road, for I knew that my evil and my good did not 
 come from these, but from the Spirit, whose servant I 
 was. For I could not stoop to be a circumstance, as 
 they did, who put their life into their fortune and their 
 company. I would not degrade myself by casting about 
 in my memory for a thought, nor by waiting for one. 
 If the thought come, I would give it entertainment. 
 It should, as it ought, go into my hands and feet ; but if 
 it come not spontaneously, it comes not rightly at all. If 
 it can spare me, I am sure I can spare it. It shall be 
 the same with my friends. I will never woo the loveliest. 
 I will not ask any friendship or favor. When I come 
 to my own, we shall both know it. Nothing will be to 
 be asked or to be granted." Benedict went out *o seek 
 his friend, and met him on the way ; but he expressed 
 no surprise at any coincidences. On the other hand, if 
 he called at the door of his friend, and he was not at 
 home, he did not go again ; concluding that he had mis- 
 interpreted the intimations. 
 
 He had the whim not to make an apology to the same 
 individual whom he had wronged. For this, he said, was 
 a piece of personal vanity; but he would correct his con- 
 duct in that respect in which he had faulted, to the next 
 person he should meet. Thus, he said, universal justice 
 was satisfied. 
 
 Mira came to ask what she should do with the poor
 
 186 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Geuesee woman who bad hired herself to work for her, 
 at a shilling a day, and, now sickening, was like to be 
 bedridden on her hands. Should she keep her, or should 
 she dismiss her ? But Benedict said, " Why ask ? One 
 thing will clear itself as the thing to be done, and not 
 another, when the hour comes. Is it a question, whether 
 to put her into the street. Just as much whether to 
 thrust the little Jenny on your arm into the street. The 
 milk and meal you give the beggar will fatten Jenny. 
 Thrust the woman out, and you thrust your babe out of 
 doors, whether it so seem to you or not." 
 
 In the Shakers, so called, I find one piece of belief, in 
 the doctrine which they faithfully hold, that encourages 
 them to open their doors to every wayfaring man who 
 proposes to come among them ; for, they say, the Spirit 
 will presently manifest to the man himself, and to the 
 society, what manner of person he is, and whether he 
 belongs among them. They do not receive him, they do 
 not reject him. And not in vain have they worn their 
 clay coat, and drudged in their fields, and shuffled in their 
 bruin dance, from year to year, if they have truly learned 
 thus much wisdom. 
 
 Honor him whose life is perpetual victory ; him, who, 
 by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds support in 
 labor, instead of praise : who does not shine, and would 
 rather not. With eyes open, he makes the choice of 
 virtue, which outrages the virtuous ; of religion, which 
 churches stop their discords to burn and exterminate : 
 for the highest virtue is always against the law. 
 
 Miracle cotnes to the miraculous, not to the arithme- 
 tician. Talent and success interest me but moderately.
 
 WORSHIP. 187 
 
 The great class, they who affect our imagination, the men 
 who could not make their hands meet around their ob- 
 jects, the rapt, the lost, the fools of ideas, they suggest 
 what they cannot execute. They speak to the ages, and 
 are heard from afar. The Spirit does not love cripples 
 and malformations. If there ever was a good man, be 
 certain there was another, and will be more. 
 
 And so in relation to that future hour, that spectre 
 clothed with beauty at our curtain by night, at our table 
 by day, the apprehension, the assurance of a coming 
 change. The race of mankind have always offered at 
 least this implied thanks for the gift of existence, 
 namely, the terror of its being taken away ; the insatiable 
 curiosity and appetite for its continuation. The whole 
 revelation that is vouchsafed us is, the gentle trust, 
 which, in our experience we find, will cover also with 
 flowers the slopes of this chasm. 
 
 Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is in- 
 curious. It is so well, that it is sure it will be well. It 
 asks no questions of the Supreme Power. The son of 
 Antiochus asked his father, when he would join battle. 
 " Dost thou fear," replied the King, " that thou only in 
 all the army wilt not hear the trumpet ? " 'T is a higher 
 thing to confide, that, if it is best we should live, we shall 
 live, 'tis higher to have this conviction than to have 
 the lease of indefinite centuries and millenniums and 
 aeons. Higher than the question of our duration is the 
 question of our deserving. Immortality will come to 
 such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul 
 in future, must be a great soul now. It is a doctrine too 
 great to rest on any legend, that is, on any man's experi-
 
 188 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ence but our own. It must be proved, if at all, from our 
 own activity and designs, which imply an interminable 
 future for their play. 
 
 I What is called religion effeminates and demoralizes. 
 Such as you are, the gods themselves could not help you. 
 Men are too often unfit to live, from their obvious ine- 
 quality to their own necessities, or, they suffer from poli- 
 tics, or bad neighbors, or from sickness, and they would 
 gladly know that they were to be dismissed from the du- 
 ties of life. But the wise instinct asks, " How will death 
 help them ? " These are not dismissed when they die. 
 You shall not wish for death out of pusillanimity. The 
 weight of the Universe is pressed down on the shoulders 
 of each moral agent to hold him to his task. The only 
 path of escape known in all the worlds of God is per- 
 formance. You must do your work, before you shall be 
 released. And as far as it is a question of fact respect- 
 ing the government of the Universe, Marcus Antoninus 
 summed the whole in a word : " It is pleasant to die, if 
 there be gods ; and sad to live, if there be none." 
 
 And so I think that the last lesson of life, the choral 
 song which rises from all elements and all angels, is, 
 a voluntary obedience, a necessitated freedom. Man is 
 made of the same atoms as the world is, he shares the 
 same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When 
 his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws 
 himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with 
 knowledge, what the stones do by structure. 
 
 The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present 
 
 ( and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. 
 The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.
 
 WORSHIP. 189 
 
 " There are two things," said Mahomet, " which I abhor, 
 the learned in his infidelities, and the fool in his devo- 
 tions." Our times are impatient of both, and specially 
 of the last. Let us have nothing now which is not its 
 own evidence. There is surely enough for the heart and 
 imagination in the religion itself. Let us not be pestered 
 with assertions and half-truths, with emotions and snuffle. 
 There will be a new church founded on moral science, 
 at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the al- 
 gebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men 
 to come, without shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut ; but it 
 will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters ; 
 science for symbol and illustration ; it will fast enough 
 gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was never stoi- 
 cism so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send 
 man home to his central solitude, shame these social, sup- 
 plicating manners, and make him know that much of the 
 time he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect 
 no co-operation, he shall walk with no companion. The 
 nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the super-personal 
 Heart, he shall repose alone on that. He needs only 
 his own verdict. No good fame can help, no bad fame 
 can hurt him. The Laws are his consolers, the good 
 Laws themselves are alive, they know if we have kept 
 them, they animate him with the leading of great duty, 
 and an endless horizon. Honor and fortune exist to him 
 who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, 
 always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
 
 vn. 
 
 CONSIDEKATIONS BY THE WAY. 
 
 HEAR what British Merlin sung, 
 
 Of keenest eye and truest tongue. 
 
 Say not, the chiefs who first arrive 
 
 Usurp the seats for which all strive ; 
 
 The forefathers this land who found 
 
 Failed to plant the vantage-ground ; 
 
 Ever from one who comes to-morrow 
 
 Men wait their good and truth to borrow. 
 
 But wilt thou measure all thy road, 
 
 See thou lift the lightest load. 
 
 Who has little, to him who has less, can spare, 
 
 And thou, Cyndyllan's son ! beware 
 
 Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear, 
 
 To falter ere thou thy task fulfil, 
 
 Only the light-armed climb the hill. 
 
 The richest of all lords is Use, 
 
 And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. 
 
 Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, 
 
 Drink the wild air's salubrity: 
 
 Where the star Canope shines in May, 
 
 Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. 
 
 The music that can deepest reach, 
 
 And cure all ill, is cordial speech :
 
 192 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Mask thy wisdom with delight, 
 Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 
 Of all wit's uses, the main one 
 Is to live well with who has none. 
 Cleave to thine acre ; the round year 
 Will fetch all fruits and virtues here: 
 Fool and foe may harmless roam, 
 Loved and lovers bide at home. 
 A day for toil, an hour for sport, 
 But for a friend is life too short.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 
 
 ALTHOUGH this garrulity of advising is born with us, I 
 confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of 
 didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation 
 from temperament and unknown inspiration enters into 
 it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own ex- 
 perience whereby to help each other. All the professions 
 are timid and expectant agencies. The priest is glad if 
 his prayers or his sermon meet the condition of any 
 soul ; if of two, if of ten, 't is a signal success. But he 
 walked to the church without any assurance that he 
 knew the distemper, or could heal it. The physician 
 prescribes hesitatingly out of his few resources, the same 
 tonic or sedative to this new and peculiar constitution, 
 which he has applied with various success to a hundred 
 men before. If the patient mends, he is glad and sur- 
 prised. The lawyer advises the client, and tells his story 
 to the jury, and leaves it with them, and is as gay and as 
 much relieved as the client, if it turns out that he has 
 a verdict. The judge weighs the arguments, and puts a 
 brave face on the matter, and, since there must be a de- 
 cision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice, 
 and given satisfaction to the community ; but is only an 
 advocate after all. And so is all life a timid and unskil-
 
 194 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ful spectator. We do what we must, and call it by the 
 best names. We like very well to be praised for our 
 action, but our conscience says, " Not unto us." 'T is 
 little we can do for each other. We accompany the 
 youth with sympathy, and manifold old sayings of the 
 wise, to the gate of the arena, but 't is certain that not 
 by strength of ours, or of the old sayings, but only on 
 strength of his own, unknown to us or to any, he must 
 stand or fall. That by which a man conquers in any 
 passage, is a profound secret to every other being in the 
 world, and it is only as he turns his back on us and all 
 men, and draws on this most private wisdom, that any 
 good can come to him. What we have, therefore, to 
 say of life, is rather description, or, if you please, celebra- 
 tion, than available rules. 
 
 Yet vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either 
 think or feel strongly, adds to our power and enlarges 
 our field of action. We have a debt to every great heart, 
 to every fine genius ; to those who have put life and for- 
 tune on the cast of an act of justice ; to those who have 
 added new sciences ; to those who have refined life by 
 elegant pursuits. 'T is the fiue souls who serve us, and 
 not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a 
 self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and 
 the tavern. Fine society, in the common acceptation, 
 has neither ideas nor aims. It renders the service of a 
 perfumery, or a laundry, not of a farm or factory. 'T is 
 an exclusion and a precinct. Sydney Smith said, " A few 
 yards in London cement or dissolve friendship." It is 
 an unprincipled decorum ; an affair of clean linen and 
 coaches, of gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. There
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 195 
 
 are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the 
 number of clean shirts he puts on every day. Society 
 wishes to be amused. I do not wish to be amused. I 
 wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish 
 the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we 
 reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be 
 paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are 
 to taste. Is ail we have to do to draw the breath in, 
 and blow it out again? Porphyry's definition is better: 
 " Life is that which holds matter together." The babe 
 in arms is a channel through which the energies we call 
 fate, love, and reason, visibly stream. See what a come- 
 tary train of auxiliaries man carries with him, of animals, 
 plants, stones, gases, and imponderable elements. Let 
 us infer his ends, from this pomp of means. Mirabeau 
 said : " Why should we feel ourselves to be men, unless 
 it be to succeed in everything, everywhere. You must 
 say of nothing, That is beneath me, nor feel that anything 
 can be out of your power. Nothing is impossible to the 
 man who can will. Is that necessary ? That shall be : 
 this is the only law of success." Whoever said it, 
 this is in the right key. But this is not the tone and 
 genius of the men in the street. In the streets, we 
 grow cynical. The men we meet are coarse and torpid. 
 The finest wits have their sediment. What quantities of 
 fribbles, paupers, invalids, epicures, antiquaries, poli- 
 ticians, thieves, and triflers of both sexes, might be ad- 
 vantageously spared ! Mankind divides itself into two 
 classes, benefactors and malefactors. The second class 
 is vast, the first a handful. A person seldom falls sick, 
 but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that
 
 196 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 be will die : quantities of poor lives ; of distressing 
 invalids ; of cases for a gun. Franklin said : " Mankind 
 are very superficial and dastardly : they begin upon a 
 thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it dis- 
 couraged : but they have capacities, if they would employ 
 them." Shall we then judge a country by the majority, 
 or by the minority ? By the minority, surely. 'T is 
 pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square 
 miles of land, or other than by their importance to the 
 mind of the time. 
 
 Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. 
 Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their de- 
 mands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to 
 be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, 
 but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw 
 individuals out of them. The worst of charity is, that the 
 lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserv- 
 ing. Masses ! the calamity is the masses. I do not wish 
 any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, ac- 
 complished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow- 
 brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at 
 all. If government knew how, I should like to see it 
 check, not multiply the population. When it reaches its 
 true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed 
 as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses, and let 
 us have the considerate vote of single men spoken on 
 their honor and their conscience. In old Egypt, it was 
 established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned 
 equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under- 
 estimated. " Clay and clay differ in dignity," as we 
 discover by our preferences every day. What a vicious
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 197 
 
 practice is this of our politicians at Washington pairing 
 off ! as if one man who votes wrong, going away, could 
 excuse you, who mean to vote right, for going away ; or, 
 as if your presence did not tell in more ways than in your 
 vote. Suppose the three hundred heroes at Thermopylae 
 had paired off with three hundred Persians : would it 
 have been all the same to Greece, and to history ? Na- 
 poleon was called by his men Cent Mille. Add honesty 
 to him, and they might have called him Hundred Million. 
 Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that is good, 
 and shakes down a tree full of gnarled, wormy, unripe 
 crabs, before you can find a dozen dessert apples ; and 
 she scatters nations of naked Indians, and nations of 
 clothed Christians, with two or three good heads among 
 them. Nature works very hard, and only hits the white 
 once in a million throws. In mankind, she is contented 
 if she yields one master in a century. The more diffi- 
 culty there is in creating good men, the more they are 
 used when they come. I once counted in a little neigh- 
 borhood, and found that every able-bodied man had, say 
 from twelve to fifteen persons dependent on him for ma- 
 terial aid, to whom he is to be for spoon and jug, for 
 backer and sponsor, for nursery and hospital, and many 
 functions beside : nor does it seem to make much differ- 
 ence whether he is bachelor or patriarch ; if he do not 
 violently decline the duties that fall to him, this amount 
 of helpfulness will in one way or another be brought 
 home to him. This is the tax which his abilities pay. 
 The good men are employed for private centres of use, 
 and for larger influence. All revelations, whether of 
 mechanical or intellectual or moral science, are made, not
 
 198 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 to communities, but to single persons. All the marked 
 events of our day, all the cities, all the colonizations, 
 may be traced back to their origin in a private brain. 
 All the feats which make our civility were the thoughts 
 of a few good heads. 
 
 Meantime, this spawning productivity is not noxious or 
 needless. You would say, this rabble of nations might be 
 spared. But no, they are all counted and depended on. 
 Fate keeps everything alive so long as the smallest thread 
 of public necessity holds it on to the tree. The coxcomb 
 and bully and thief class are allowed as proletaries, every 
 one of their vices being the excess or acridity of a virtue. 
 The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee. 
 But the units, whereof this mass is composed, are neuters, 
 every one of which may be grown to a queen-bee. The 
 rule- is, we are used as brute atoms, until we think : then, 
 we use all the rest. Nature turns all malfeasance to 
 good. Nature provided for real needs. No sane man 
 at last distrusts himself. His existence is a perfect an- 
 swer to all sentimental cavils. If he is, he is wanted, 
 and has the precise properties that are required. That 
 we are here, is proof we ought to be here. We have as 
 good right, and the same sort of right to be here, as Cape 
 Cod or Sandy Hook have to be there. 
 
 To say, then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, 
 no bad heart in the observer, but, simply, that the major- 
 ity are unripe, and have not yet come to themselves, do 
 not yet know their opinion. That, if they knew it, is an 
 oracle for them and for all. But in the passing moment, 
 the quadruped interest is very prone to prevail : and this 
 , beast-force, whilst it makes the discipline of the world,
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 199 
 
 the school of heroes, the glory of martyrs, has provoked 
 in every age the satire of wits, and the tears of good uieu. 
 They find the journals, the clubs, the governments, the 
 churches, to be in the interest and the pay of the Devil. 
 And wise men have met this obstruction in their times, 
 like Socrates, with Ids famous irony ; like Bacon, with 
 lifelong dissimulation ; like Erasmus, with his book 
 " The Praise of Folly " ; like Rabelais, with his satire 
 rending the nations. " They were the fools who cried 
 against me, you will say," wrote the Chevalier de Bouf- 
 flers to Grimm ; "ay, but the fools have the advantage of 
 numbers, and 't is that which decides. 'T is of no use for 
 us to make war with them : we shall not weaken them ; 
 they will always be the masters. There will not be a 
 practice or an usage introduced, of which they are not 
 the authors." 
 
 In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of his- 
 tory is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but 
 Bad is sometimes a better. 'T is the oppressions of 
 William the Norman, savage forest-laws, and crushing 
 despotism, that made possible the inspirations of Magna 
 Charta under John. Edward I. wanted money, armies, 
 castles, and as much as he could get. It was necessary 
 to call the people together by shorter, swifter ways, 
 and the House of Commons arose. To obtain subsidies, 
 he paid in privileges. In the twenty-fourth year of his 
 reign, he decreed, " that no tax should be levied without 
 consent of Lords and Commons " ; which is the basis of 
 the English Constitution. Plutarch affirms that the cruel 
 wars which followed the march of Alexander, introduced 
 the civility, language, and arts of Greece into the savage
 
 200 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 East ; introduced marriage ; built seventy cities : and 
 united hostile nations under one government. The bar- 
 barians who broke up the Roman empire did not arrive 
 a day too soon. Schiller says the Thirty Years' War 
 made Germany a nation. Rough, selfish despots serve 
 men immensely, as Henry VIII. in the contest with the 
 Pope ; as the infatuations no less than the wisdom of 
 Cromwell ; as the ferocity of the Russian czars ; as the 
 fanaticism of the French regicides of 1789. The frost 
 which kills the harvest of a year, saves the harvests of a 
 century, by destroying the weevil or the locust. Wars, 
 fires, plagues, break up immovable routine, clear the 
 ground of rotten races, and dens of distemper, and open 
 a fair field to new men. There is a tendency in things 
 to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bank- 
 ruptcy that shatters a rotten system, allows things to 
 take a new and natural order. The sharpest evils are 
 bent into that periodicity which makes the errors of 
 planets, and the fevers and distempers of men, self-limit- 
 ing. Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resist- 
 ance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength 
 we have overcome. Without war, no soldier; without 
 enemies, no hero. The sun were insipid, if the universe 
 were not opaque. And the glory of character is in 
 affronting the horrors of depravity, to draw thence new 
 nobilities of power : as Art lives and thrills in new use 
 and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark 
 evermore for blacker pits of night. What would painter 
 t do, or what would poet or saint, but for crucifixions and 
 hells? And evermore in the world is this marvellous 
 balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 201 
 
 Not Antoninus, but a poor washerwoman said : " The 
 more trouble, the more lion ; that 's my principle." 
 
 I do not think very respectfully of the designs or the 
 doings of the people who went to California, in 1849. 
 It was a rush and a scramble of needy adventurers, and, 
 in the Western country, a general jail-delivery of all the 
 rowdies of the rivers. Some of them went with honest 
 purposes, some with very bad ones, and all of them with 
 the very commonplace wish to find a short way to wealth. 
 But Nature watches over all, and turns this malfeasance 
 to good. California gets peopled and subdued, civil- 
 ized in this immoral way, and, on this fiction, a real 
 prosperity is rooted and grown. 5 T is a decoy-duck ; 't is 
 tubs thrown to amuse the whale : but real ducks, and 
 whales that yield oil, are caught. And out of Sabine 
 rapes, and out of robbers' forays, real Homes and their 
 heroisms come in fulness of time. 
 
 lu America, the geography is sublime, but the men are 
 not ; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one 
 is sometimes ashamed of. The agencies by which events 
 so grand as the opening of California, of Texas, of Ore- 
 gon, and the junction of the two oceans, are effected, are 
 paltry, coarse selfishness, fraud, and conspiracy : and 
 most of the great results of history are brought about 
 by discreditable means. 
 
 The benefaction derived in Illinois and the great West 
 from railroads is inestimable, and vastly exceeding any 
 intentional philanthropy on record. What is the benefit 
 done by a good King Alfred, or by a Howard, or Pesta- 
 lozzi, or Elizabeth Fry, or Florence Nightingale, or any 
 lover, less or larger, compared with the involuntary
 
 202 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 blessing wrought on nations by the selfish capitalists who 
 , built the Illinois, Michigan, and the network of the Mis- 
 sissippi valley roads, which have evoked not only all the 
 wealth of the soil, but the energy of millions of men. 
 'T is a sentence of ancient wisdom, " that God hangs the 
 greatest weights on the smallest wires." 
 
 What happens thus to nations, befalls every day in pri- 
 vate houses. When the friends of a gentleman brought 
 to his notice the follies of his sons, with many hints of 
 their danger, he replied, that he knew so much mischief 
 when he was a boy, and had turned out on the whole so 
 successfully, that he was not alarmed by the dissipation 
 of boys ; 't was dangerous water, but, he thought, they 
 would soon touch bottom, and then swim to the top. 
 This is bold practice, and there are many failures to a 
 good escape. Yet one would say, that a good under- 
 standing would suffice as well as moral sensibility to 
 keep one erect ; the gratifications of the passions are so 
 quickly seen to be damaging, and what men like least 
 seriously lowering them in social rank. Then all 
 talent sinks with character. 
 
 " Croyez moi, Verreur aussi a son merite," said Vol- 
 taire. We see those who surmount, by dint of some 
 egotism or infatuation, obstacles from which the prudent 
 recoil. The right partisan is a heady narrow man, who, 
 because he does not see many things, sees some one 
 thing with heat and exaggeration, and, if he falls among 
 other narrow men, or on objects which have a brief im- 
 portance, as some trade or politics of the hour, he prefers 
 it to the universe, and seems inspired, and a godsend to 
 those who wish to magnify the matter, and carry a point.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 203 
 
 Better, certainly, if we could secure the strength and fire 
 which rude, passionate men bring into society, quite 
 clear of their vices. But who dares draw out the linch- 
 pin from the wagon-wheel ? 'T is so manifest, that there 
 is no moral deformity but is a good passion out of place ; 
 that there is no man who is not indebted to his foibles ; 
 that, according to the old oracle, "the Furies are the 
 bonds of men " ; that the poisons are our principal medi- 
 cines, which kill the disease, and save the life. In the 
 high prophetic phrase, He causes the wrath of man, to 
 praise him, and twists and wrenches our evil to our 
 good. Shakspeare wrote, 
 
 " 'T is said, best men are moulded of their faults " ; 
 
 and great educators and lawgivers, and especially gener- 
 als, and leaders of colonies, mainly rely on this stuff, 
 and esteem men of irregular and passional force the best 
 timber. A man of sense and energy, the late head of the 
 Farm School in Boston Harbor, said to me, " I want 
 none of your good boys, give me the bad ones." And 
 this is the reason, I suppose, why, as soon as the chil- 
 dren are good, the mothers are scared, and think they 
 are going to die. Mirabeau said, " There are none but 
 men of strong passions capable of going to greatness ; 
 none but such capable of meriting the public gratitude." 
 Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. 
 Any absorbing passion has the effect to deliver from the 
 little coils and cares of every day : 't is the heat which 
 sets our human atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of 
 crossing thresholds, and first addresses in society, and 
 gives us a good start and speed, easy to continue, when
 
 204 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 once it is begun. In short, there is no man who is not 
 at some time indebted to his vices, as no plant that is 
 not fed from manures. We only insist that the man 
 meliorate, and that the plant grow upward, and convert 
 the base into the better nature. 
 
 The wise workman will not regret the poverty or the 
 solitude which brought out his working talents. The 
 youth is charmed with the fine air and accomplishments 
 of the children of fortune : but all great men come 
 out of the middle classes. ' T is better for the head ; 
 't is better for the heart. Marcus Antoninus says, that 
 Pronto told him " that the so-called high-horn are for 
 the most part heartless " ; whilst nothing is so indicative 
 of deepest culture as a tender consideration of the igno- 
 rant. Charles James Fox said of England : " The his- 
 tory of this country proves, that we are not to expect 
 from men in affluent circumstances the vigilance, energy, 
 and exertion without which the House of Commons 
 would lose its greatest force and weight. Human nature 
 is prone to indulgence, and the most meritorious public 
 services have always been performed by persons in a con- 
 dition of life removed from opulence." And yet what 
 
 | we ask daily, is to be conventional. Supply, most kind 
 gods ! this defect in my address, in my form, in my for- 
 tunes, which puts me a little out of the ring : supply it, 
 and let me be like the rest whom I admire, and on good 
 terms with them. But the wise gods say, No, we have 
 
 ! better things for thee. By humiliations, by defeats, by 
 loss of sympathy, by gulf's of disparity, learn a wider 
 truth and humanity than that of a fine gentleman. A 
 Fifth Avenue landlord, a West End householder, is not
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 205 
 
 the highest style of man ; and, though good hearts and 
 sound minds are of no condition, yet he who is to be 
 wise for many, must not be protected. He must know 
 the huts where poor men lie, and the chores which poor 
 men do. The first-class minds, Homer, JEsop, Socrates, 
 Alfred, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Franklin, had the poor 
 man's feeling and mortification. A rich man was never 
 insulted in his life ; but this man must be stnng. A 
 rich man was never in danger from cold, or hunger, or 
 war, or ruffians, and you can see he was not, from the 
 moderation of his ideas. 'T is a fatal disadvantage to 
 be cockered, and to eat too much cake. What tests of 
 manhood could he stand ? Take him out of his pro- 
 tections. He is a good book-keeper ; or he is a shrewd 
 adviser in the insurance office : perhaps he could pass a 
 college examination, and take his degrees: perhaps he 
 can give wise counsel in a court of law. Now plant 
 him down among farmers, firemen, Indians, and emi- 
 grants. Set a dog on him : set a highwayman on him : 
 try him with a course of mobs : send him to Kansas, to 
 Pike's Peak, to Oregon : and, if he have true faculty, 
 this may be the element he wants, and he will come out 
 of it with broader wisdom and manly power. ^Esop, 
 Saadi, Cervantes, Eegnard, have been taken by corsairs, 
 left for dead, sold for slaves, and know the realities of 
 human life. 
 
 Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions 
 a good learner would not miss. As we go gladly to Fau- 
 euil Hall, to be played upon by the stormy winds and 
 strong fingers of enraged patriotism, so is a fanatical per- 
 secution, civil war, national bankruptcy, or revolution
 
 206 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 more rich in the central tones than languid years of pros- 
 perity. What had been, ever since our memory, solid 
 continent, yawns apart, and discloses its composition and 
 genesis. We learn geology the morning after the earth- 
 quake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, up- 
 heaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea. 
 
 In our life and culture, everything is worked up and 
 comes in use, passion, war, revolt, bankruptcy, and 
 not less, folly and blunders, insult, ennui, and bad com- 
 pany. Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every 
 shred and ort and end into new creations ; like a good 
 chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, 
 converting his old shirts into pure white sugar. Life is 
 a boundless privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, 
 and get into the car, you have no guess what good com- 
 pany you shall find there. You buy much that is not 
 rendered in the bill. Men achieve a certain greatness 
 unawares, when working to another aim. 
 
 If now in this connection of discourse, we should ven- 
 ture on laying down the first obvious rules of life, I will 
 not here repeat the first rule of economy, already pro- 
 pounded once and again, that every man shall maintain 
 himself, but I will say, get health. No labor, pains, 
 temperance, poverty, nor exercise, that can gain it, must 
 be grudged. For sickness is a cannibal which eats up 
 all the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its 
 own sons and daughters. I figure it as a pale, wailing, 
 distracted phantom, 'absolutely selfish, heedless of what 
 is good and great, attentive to its sensations, losing its 
 soul, and afflicting other souls with meanness and mop- 
 ings, and with ministration to its voracity of trifles. Dr.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 207 
 
 Johnson said severely, " Every man is a rascal as soon as 
 he is sick." Drop the cant, and treat it sanely. In deal- 
 ing with the drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. We 
 must treat the sick with the same firmness, giving them, 
 of course, every aid, but withholding ourselves. I once 
 asked a clergyman in a retired town, who were his com- 
 panions? what men of ability he saw? He replied, that 
 he spent his time with the sick and the dying. I said, 
 he seemed to me to need quite other company, and all 
 the more that he had this : for if people were sick and 
 dying to any purpose, we would leave all and go to them, 
 but, as far as I had observed, they were as frivolous as 
 the rest, and sometimes much more frivolous. Let us 
 engage our companions not to spare us. I knew a wise 
 woman who said to her friends, " When I am old, rule 
 me." And the best part of health is fine disposition. It 
 is more essential than talent, even in the works of talent. 
 Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, 
 io make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheer- 
 fulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased, 
 you are nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates its 
 strength. All healthy things are sweet-tempered. Genius 
 works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last ; and, for 
 the reason, that whoever sees the law which distributes 
 things does not despond, but is animated to great desires 
 and endeavors. He who desponds betrays that he has 
 not seen it. 
 
 T is a Dutch proverb, that "paint costs nothing," 
 such are its preserving qualities in damp climates. Well, 
 sunshine costs less, yet is finer pigment. And so of 
 cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the
 
 208 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 more of it remains. The latent heat of an ounce of wood 
 or stone is inexhaustible. You may rub the same chip of 
 pine to the point of kiudliug, a hundred times ; and the 
 power of happiness of any soul is not to be computed 
 or drained. It is observed that a depression of spirits 
 develops the germs of a plague in individuals and nations. 
 It is an old commendation of right behavior, "Alii* 
 la-tus, sapiens sibi," which our English proverb trans- 
 lates, " Be merry and wise." I know how easy it is to 
 men of the world to look grave and sneer at your san- 
 guine youth, and its glittering dreams. But I find the 
 gayest castles in the air that were ever piled, far better 
 for comfort and for use, than the dungeons in the air that 
 are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discon- 
 tented people. I know those miserable fellows, and I 
 hate them, who see a black star always riding through 
 the light and colored clouds in the sky overhead : waves 
 of light pass over and hide it for a moment, but the black 
 star keeps fast in the zenith. But power dwells with 
 cheerfulness; hope puts us in a working mood, whilst 
 despair is no muse, and untunes the active powers. A 
 man should make life and Nature happier to us, or he 
 had better never been born. When the political econo- 
 mist reckons up the unproductive classes, he should put 
 at the head this class of pitiers of themselves, cravers of 
 sympathy, bewailing imaginary disasters. An old Trench 
 verse runs, in my translation : 
 
 Some of your griefs you have cured, 
 
 And the sharpest you still have survived ; 
 
 But what torments of pain you endured 
 From evils that never arrived 1
 
 CONSIDEEATIONS BY THE WAY. 209 
 
 There are three wants which never can be satisfied : 
 thaf~of"the rich, who wants something more ; that of 
 the sick, who wants something different ; and that of the 
 traveller, who says, " Anywhere but here." The Turkish 
 cadi said to Layard, "After the fashion of thy people, 
 thou hast wandered from one place to another, until thou 
 art happy and content in none." My countrymen are 
 not less infatuated with the rococo toy of Italy. All 
 America seems on the point of embarking for Europe. 
 But we shall not always traverse seas and lands with 
 light purposes, and for pleasure, as we say. One day 
 we shall cast out the passion for Europe, by the passion 
 for America. Culture will give gravity and domestic rest 
 to those who now travel only as not knowing how else to 
 spend money. Already, who provoke pity like that ex- 
 cellent family party just arriving in their well-appointed 
 carriage, as far from home and any honest end as ever ? 
 Each nation has asked successively, " What are they here 
 for ? " until at last the party are shamefaced, and antici- 
 pate the question at the gates of each town. 
 
 Genial manners are good, and power of accommoda- 
 tion to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the 
 crowning fortune of a man" is to be born with a bias to 
 some pursuit, which finds him in employment and hap- 
 piness, whether it be to make baskets, or broad- 
 swords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not 
 this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced 
 artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not appar- 
 ently so. 
 
 In childhood, we fancied ourselves walled in by the 
 horizon, as by a glass bell, and doubted not, by distant
 
 210 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 travel, we should reach the baths of the descending sun 
 and' stars. On experiment, the horizon flies before us, 
 and leaves us on an endless common, sheltered by no glass 
 bell. Yet 't is strange how tenaciously we cling to that 
 bell astronomy, of a protecting domestic horizon. I find 
 the same illusion in the search after happiness, which I 
 observe, every summer, recommenced in this neighbor- 
 hood, soon after the pairing of the birds. The young 
 people do not like the town, do not like the sea-shore, 
 they will go inland ; find a dear cottage deep in the 
 mountains, secret as their hearts. They set forth on 
 their travels in search of a home : they reach Berkshire ; 
 they reach Vermont ; they look at the farms, good 
 farms, high mountain-sides ; but where is the seclusion ? 
 The farm is near this ; 't is near that ; they have got far 
 from Boston, but 't is near Albany, or near Burlington, 
 or near Montreal. They explore a farm, but the house 
 is small, old, thin ; discontented people lived there, and 
 are gone : there 's too much sky, too much outdoors ; 
 too public. The youth aches for solitude. When he 
 comes to the house, he passes through the house. That 
 does not make the deep recess he sought. " All ! now, 
 I perceive," he says, "it must be deep with persons; 
 friends only can give depth." Yes, but there is a great 
 dearth, this year, of friends ; hard to find, and hard to 
 have when found : they are just going away : they too 
 are in the whirl of the flitting world, and have engage- 
 ments and necessities. They are just starting for Wis- 
 consin ; have letters from Bremen : see you again, 
 soon. Slow, slow to learn the lesson, that there is but 
 one depth, but one interior, and that is, his purpose-
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 211 
 
 When joy or calamity or genius shall show him it, 
 then woods, then farms, then city shopmen and cab- 
 drivers, indifferently with prophet or friend, will mirror 
 back to him its unfathomable heaven, its populous soli- 
 tude. 
 
 The uses of travel are occasional, and short ; but the 
 best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation ; and 
 this is a main function of life. What a difference in the 
 hospitality of minds ! Inestimable is he to whom we can 
 say what we cannot say to ourselves. Others are invol- 
 untarily hurtful to us, and bereave us of the power of 
 thought, impound and imprison us. As, when there is 
 sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company, 
 and all are wise, so a blockhead makes a blockhead of 
 his companion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses 
 this brother. When he conies into the office or public 
 room, the society dissolves ; one after another slips out, 
 and the apartment is at his disposal. What is incurable 
 but a frivolous habit ? A fly is as untamable as a hyena. 
 Yet folly in the sense of fun, fooling, or dawdling can 
 easily be borne; as Talleyrand said, "I find nonsense 
 singularly refreshing"; but a virulent, aggressive fool 
 taints the reason of a household. I have seen a whole 
 family of quiet, sensible people unhinged and beside 
 themselves, victims of such a rogue; for the steady 
 wrongheadedness of one perverse person irritates the 
 best -. since we must withstand absurdity. But resist- 
 ance only exasperates the acrid fool, who believes that 
 Nature and gravitation are quite wrong, and he only is 
 right. Hence all the dozen inmates are soon perverted, 
 with whatever virtues and industries they have, into con-
 
 212 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 tradictors, accusers, explainers, and repairers of this one 
 malefactor ; like a boat about to be overset, or a carriage 
 run away with, not only the foolish pilot or driver, but 
 everybody on board is forced to assume strange and ridic- 
 ulous attitudes, to balance the vehicle and prevent the 
 upsetting. For remedy, whilst the case is yet mild, I 
 recommend phlegm and truth : let all the truth that is 
 spoken or done be at the zero of indifferency, or truth 
 itself will be folly. But, when the case is seated and ma- 
 lignant, the only safety is in amputation ; as seamen say, 
 you shall cut and run. How to live with unfit compan- 
 ions ? for, with such, life is for the most part spent : 
 and experience teaches little better than our earliest in- 
 stinct of self-defence, namely, not to engage, not to mix 
 yourself in any manner with them ; but let their madness 
 spend itself unopposed. 
 
 Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind 
 for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising 
 every day while they live. Our habit of thought take 
 men as they rise is not satisfying ; in the common 
 experience, I fear, it is poor and squalid. The success 
 which will content them is a bargain, a lucrative employ- 
 ment, an advantage gained over a competitor, a marriage, 
 a patrimony, a legacy, and the like. With these objects, 
 their conversation deals with surfaces : politics, trade, 
 personal defects, exaggerated bad news, and the rain. 
 This is forlorn, and they feel sore and sensitive. Now, 
 if one comes who can illuminate this dark house with 
 thoughts, show them their native riches, what gifts they 
 have, how indispensable each is, what magical powers 
 over nature and men; what access to poetry, religion,
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 213 
 
 and the powers which constitute character ; he wakes in 
 them the feeling of worth, his suggestions require new 
 ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and 
 sciences, then we come out of our egg-shell existence 
 into the great dome, and see the zenith over and the 
 nadir under us. Instead of the tanks and buckets of 
 knowledge to which we are daily confined, we come down 
 to the shore of the sea, and dip our hands in its mirac- 
 ulous waves. 'T is wonderful the effect on the company. 
 They are not the men they were. They have all been to 
 California, and all have come back millionnaires. There 
 is no book and no pleasure in life comparable to it. Ask 
 what is best in our experience, and we shall say, a few 
 pieces of plain-dealing with wise people. Our conversa- 
 tion once and again has apprised us that we belong to 
 better circles than we have yet beheld ; that a mental 
 power invites us, whose generalizations are more worth 
 for joy and for effect than anything that is now called 
 philosophy or literature. In excited conversation, we 
 have glimpses of the Universe, hints of power native to 
 the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes 
 landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone medi- 
 tation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to 
 which the memory goes back in barren hours. 
 
 Add the consent of will and temperament, and there 
 exists the covenant of friendship. Our chief want in life 
 is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. This 
 is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great. 
 There is a sublimg attraction in him to whatever virtue 
 is in us. How he flings wide the doors of existence ! 
 What questions we ask of him ! what an understanding
 
 214 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 we have ! how few words are needed ! It is the only real 
 society. An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes 
 frith sad truth : 
 
 " He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 
 And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere." 
 
 But few writers have said anything better to this point 
 than Hafiz, who indicates this relation as the test of men- 
 tal health : " Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest 
 friendship, since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge 
 enters." Neither is life long enough for friendship. 
 That is a serious and majestic affair, like a royal presence, 
 or a religion, and not a postilion's dinner to be eaten on 
 the run. There is a pudency about friendship, as about 
 love, and though fine souls never lose sight of it, yet they 
 do not name it. With the first class of men our friend- 
 ship or good understanding goes quite behind all acci- 
 dents of estrangement, of condition, of reputation. And 
 yet we do not provide for the greatest good of life. We 
 take care of our health ; we lay up money ; we make our 
 roof tight, and our clothing sufficient ; but who provides 
 wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property 
 of all, friends ? We know that all our training is to 
 fit us for this, and we do not take the step towards it. 
 How long shall we sit and wait for these benefactors ? 
 
 It makes no difference, in looking back five years, how 
 you have been dieted or dressed ; whether you have been 
 lodged on the first floor or the attic ; whether you have 
 had gardens and baths, good cattle and horses, have been 
 carried in a neat equipage, or in a ridiculous truck : 
 these things are forgotten so quickly, and leave no effect.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 215 
 
 But it counts much whether we have had good compan- 
 ions, in that time, almost as much as what we have 
 been doing. And see the overpowering importance of 
 neighborhood in all association. As it is marriage, fit or 
 unfit, that makes our home, so it is who lives near us of 
 equal social degree, a few people at convenient dis- 
 tance, no matter how bad company, these, and these 
 only, shall be your life's companions : and all those who 
 are native, congenial, and by many an oath of the heart, 
 sacramented to you, are gradually and totally lost. You 
 cannot deal systematically with this fine element of soci- 
 ety, and one may take a good deal of pains to bring peo- 
 ple together, and to organize clubs and debating societies, 
 and yet no result come of it. But it is certain that there 
 is a great deal of good in us that does not know itself, 
 and that a habit of union and competition brings people 
 up and keeps them up to their highest point ; that life 
 would be twice or ten times life, if spent with wise and 
 fruitful companions. The obvious inference is, a little 
 useful deliberation and preconcert, when one goes to buy 
 house and land. 
 
 But we live with people on other platforms ; we live 
 with dependants, not only with the young whom we are 
 to teach all we know, and clothe with the advantages we 
 have earned, but also with those who serve us directly, 
 and for money. Yet the old rules hold good. Let not 
 the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured by 
 money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not 
 make life hard to any. This point is acquiring new im- 
 portance in American social life. Our domestic service 
 is usually a foolish fracas of unreasonable demand on one
 
 216 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 side, and shirking on the other. A man of wit was asked, 
 in the train, what was his errand in the city. He replied, 
 " I have been sent to procure an angel, to do cooking." 
 A lady complained to me, that, of her two maidens, one 
 was absent-minded, and the other was absent-bodied. 
 And the evil increases from the ignorance and hostility 
 of every ship-load of the immigrant population swarming 
 into houses and farms. Eew people discern that it rests 
 with the master or the mistress what service comes from 
 the man or the maid; that this identical hussy was a 
 tutelar spirit in one house, and a haridan in the other. 
 All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at 
 every contract to make the terms of it fair. If you are 
 proposing only your own, the other party must deal a 
 little hardly by you. If you deal generously, the other, 
 though selfish and unjust, will make au exception in your 
 favor, and deal truly with you. When I asked an iron- 
 master about the slag and cinder in railroad iron, 
 " O," he said, " there 's always good iron' to be had : if 
 there 's cinder in the iron, 't is because there was cinder 
 in the pay." 
 
 But why multiply these topics, and their illustrations, 
 which are endless ? Life brings to each his task, and, 
 whatever art you select, algebra, painting, architecture, 
 poems, commerce, politics, all are attainable, even to 
 the miraculous triumphs, on the same terms, of selecting 
 that for which you are apt ; begin at the beginning, pro- 
 ceed in order, step by step. 'T is as easy to twist iron 
 anchors, and braid cannons, as to braid straw, to boil 
 granite as to boil water, if you take all the steps in order. 
 Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 217 
 
 superstition about luck, some step omitted, which Nature 
 never pardons. The happy conditions of life may be had 
 on the same terms. Their attraction for you is the 
 pledge that they are within your reach. Our prayers are 
 prophets. There must be fidelity, and there must be 
 adherence. How respectable the life that clings to its 
 objects ! Youthful aspirations are fine things, your theo- 
 ries and plans of life are fair and commendable : but 
 will you stick ? Not one, I fear, in that Common full of 
 people, or, in a thousand, but one : and when you tax 
 them with treachery, and remind them of their high reso- 
 lutions, they have forgotten that they made a vow. The 
 individuals are fugitive, and in the act of becoming some- 
 thing else, and irresponsible. The race is great, the ideal 
 fair, but the men whiffling and unsure. The hero is he 
 who is immovably centred. The main difference between 
 people seems to be, that one man can come under obliga- 
 tions on which you can rely, is obligable ; and another 
 is not. As he has not a law within him, there 's nothing 
 to tie him to. 
 
 'T is inevitable to name particulars of virtue, and of 
 condition, and to exaggerate them. But all rests at last 
 on that integrity which dwarfs talent, and can spare it. 
 Sanity consists in not being subdued by your means. 
 Fancy prices are paid for position, and for the culture of 
 talent, but to the grand interests, superficial success is 
 of no account. The man, it is his attitude, not 
 feats, but forces, not on set days and public occasions, 
 but at all hours, and in repose alike as in energy, still 
 formidable, and not to be disposed of. The populace 
 says, with Home Tooke, " If you would be powerful, 
 10
 
 218 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 pretend to be powerful." I prefer to say, with the old 
 prophet, " Seekest thou great things ? seek them not " : 
 
 or, what was said of a Spanish prince, "The more 
 you took from him, the greater he looked." Plus on lui 
 6te, plus il est grand. 
 
 The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great 
 points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the 
 obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan 
 life, and that these few are alone to be regarded, 
 the escape from all false ties ; courage to be what we 
 are; and love of what is simple and beautiful; inde- 
 pendence, and cheerful relation, these are the essentials, 
 
 these, and the wish to serve, to add somewhat to 
 the well-being of men.
 
 vin. 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 WAS never form and never face 
 So sweet to SEYD as only grace 
 Which did not slumber like a stone, 
 But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
 Beauty chased he everywhere, 
 In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
 He smote the lake to feed his eye 
 
 With the beryl beam of the broken wave ; 
 He flung in pebbles well to hear 
 
 The moment's music which they gave. 
 Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
 From nodding pole and belting zone. 
 He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centred and from errant sphere. 
 The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
 Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
 In dens of passion, and pits of woe, 
 He saw strong Eros struggling through, 
 To sun the dark and solve the curse, 
 And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
 While thus to love lie gave his days 
 In loyal worship, scorning praise,
 
 220 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 How spread their lures for him, in vain, 
 Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain 1 
 He thought it happier to be dead, 
 To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 THE spiral tendency of vegetation infects education 
 also. Our books approach very slowly the things we 
 most wish to know. What a parade we make of our 
 science, and how far off, and at arm's length, it is from 
 its objects ! Our botany is all names, not powers : poets 
 and romancers talk of herbs of grace and healing ; but 
 what does the botanist know of the virtues of his weeds ? 
 The geologist lays bare the strata, and can tell them all 
 on his fingers : but does he know what effect passes into 
 the man who builds his house in them ? what effect on 
 the race that inhabits a granite shelf? what on the inhab- 
 itants of marl and of alluvium ? 
 
 We should go to the ornithologist with a new feeling, 
 if he could teach us what the social birds say, when 
 they sit in the autumn council, talking together in the 
 trees. The want of sympathy makes his record a dull 
 dictionary. His result is a dead bird. The bird is not 
 in its ounces and inches, but in its relations to Na- 
 ture ; and the skin or skeleton you show me is no 
 more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a bottle of gases 
 into which his body has been reduced, is Dante or Wash- 
 ington. The naturalist is led. from the road by the whole 
 distance of his fancied advance. The boy had juster
 
 222 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 views when lie gazed at the shells on the beach, or the 
 flowers in the meadow, unable to call them by their 
 names, than the man in the pride of his nomenclature. 
 Astrology interested us, for it tied man to the system. 
 Instead of an isolated beggar, the farthest star felt him, 
 and he felt the star. However rash and however falsi- 
 fied by pretenders and traders in it, the hint was true and 
 divine, the soul's avowal of its large relations, and that 
 climate, century, remote natures, as well as near, are 
 part of its biography. Chemistry takes to pieces, but it 
 does not construct. Alchemy which sought to transmute 
 one element into another, to prolong life, to arm with 
 power, that was in the right direction. All our science 
 lacks a human side. The tenant is more than the house. 
 Bugs and stamens and spores, on which we lavish so 
 many years, are not finalities, and man, when his powers 
 unfold in order, will take Nature along with him, and 
 admit light into all her recesses. The human heart con- 
 cerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is 
 larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of 
 the astronomer. 
 
 We are just so frivolous and sceptical. Men hold 
 themselves cheap and vile : and yet a man is a fagot of 
 thunder-bolts. All the elements pour through his sys- 
 tem : he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the fire ; he 
 feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of his blood : 
 they are the extension of his personality. His duties are 
 measured by that instrument lie is ; and a right and per- 
 fect man would be felt to the centre of the Copernican 
 system. 'T is curious that we only believe as deep as we 
 live. We do not think heroes can exert any more awful
 
 power than that surface-play which amuses us. A deep 
 man believes in miracles, waits for them, believes in 
 magic, believes that the orator will decompose his ad- 
 versary ; believes that the evil eye can wither, that the 
 heart's blessing can heal ; that love can exalt talent ; can 
 overcome all odds. From a great heart secret magnet- 
 isms flow incessantly to draw great events. But we 
 prize very humble utilities, a prudent husband, a good 
 son, a voter, a citizen, and deprecate any romance of 
 character ; and perhaps reckon only his money value, 
 his intellect, his affection, as a sort of bill of exchange, 
 easily convertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, and 
 wine. 
 
 The motive of science was the extension of man, on 
 all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the 
 stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand 
 the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the 
 wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth 
 should talk with him. But that is not our science. 
 These geologies, chemistries, astronomies, seem to make 
 wise, but they leave us where they found us. The in- 
 vention is of use to the inventor, of questionable help to 
 any other. The formulas of science are like the papers 
 in your pocket-book, of no value to any but the owner. 
 Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates 
 the name of love and moral purpose. There 's a revenge 
 for this inhumanity. What manner of man does science 
 make ? The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not 
 wish to be such a kind of man as my professor is. The 
 collector has dried all the plants in his herbal, but he has 
 lost weight and humor. He has got all snakes and lizards
 
 224 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 in his phials, but science has done for him also, and has 
 put the man into a bottle. Our reliance on the physi- 
 cian is a kind of despair of ourselves. The clergy have 
 bronchitis, which does not seem a certificate of spirit- 
 ual health. Macready thought it came of the falsetto of 
 their voicing. An Indian prince, Tisso, one day riding 
 in the forest, saw a herd of elk sporting. " See how 
 happy," he said, " these browsing elks are ! Why should 
 not priests, lodged and fed comfortably in the temples, 
 also amuse themselves ? " Returning home, he imparted 
 this reflection to the king. The king, 011 the next day, 
 conferred the sovereignty on him, saying, " Prince, admin- 
 ister this empire for seven days : at the termination of that 
 period, I shall put thee to death." At the end of the 
 seventh day, the king inquired, " From what cause hast 
 thou become so emaciated ? " He answered, " From the 
 horror of death." The monarch rejoined, "Live, my 
 child, and be wise. Thou hast ceased to take recreation, 
 saying to thyself, In seven days I shall be put to death. 
 These priests in the temple incessantly meditate on 
 death ; how can they enter into healthful diversions ? " 
 But the men of science or the doctors or the clergy are 
 not victims of their pursuits, more than others. The 
 miller, the lawyer, and the merchant dedicate themselves 
 to their own details, and do not come out men of more 
 force. Have they divination, grand aims, hospitality of 
 soul, and the equality to any event, which we demand in 
 man, or only the reactions of the mill, of the wares, of the 
 chicane ? 
 
 No object really interests us but man, and in man only 
 his superiorities ; and though we are aware of a perfect
 
 BEAUTY. 225 
 
 law in Nature, it has fascination for us only through its 
 relation to him, or, as it is rooted in the mind. At the 
 birth of Winckelmanu, more than a hundred years ago, 
 side by side with this arid, departmental, post-mortem sci- 
 ence, rose an enthusiasm in the study of Beauty ; and per- 
 haps some sparks from it may yet light a conflagration 
 in the other. Knowledge of men, knowledge of man- 
 ners, the power of form, and our sensibility to personal 
 influence, never go out of fashion. These are facts of 
 a science which we study without book, whose teachers 
 and subjects are always near us. 
 
 So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much of 
 our knowledge in this direction belongs to the chapter 
 of pathology. The crowd in the street oftener furnishes 
 degradations than angels or redeemers ; but they all prove 
 the transparency. Every spirit makes its house ; and we 
 can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant. 
 But not less does Nature furnish us with every sign of 
 grace and goodness. The delicious faces of children, the 
 beauty of school-girls, " the sweet seriousness of six- 
 teen," the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the pas- 
 sionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and 
 early manhood, and the varied power in all that well- 
 known company that escort us through life, we know 
 how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and 
 enlarge us. 
 
 Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers 
 to study the world. All privilege is that of beauty ; for 
 there are many beauties ; as, of general nature, of the 
 human face and form, of manners, of brain, or method, 
 moral beauty, or beauty of the soul.
 
 226 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 The ancients believed that a genius or demon look 
 possession at birth of each mortal, to guide him; that 
 these genii were sometimes seen as a flame of fire partly 
 immersed in the bodies which they governed : on an evil 
 man, resting on his head ; in a good man, mixed with his 
 substance. They thought the same genius, at the death 
 of its ward, entered a new-born child, and they pretended 
 to guess the pilot, by the sailing of the ship. We recog- 
 nize obscurely the same fact, though we give it our own 
 names. We say, that every man is entitled to be valued 
 by his best moment. We measure our friends so. We 
 know, they have intervals of folly, whereof we take no 
 heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius, which are 
 sure and beautiful. On the other side, everybody knows 
 people who appear bedridden, and who, with all degrees 
 of ability, never impress us with the air of free agency. 
 They know it too, and peep with their eyes to see if you 
 detect their sad plight. We fancy, could we pronounce 
 the solving word, and disenchant them, the cloud would 
 roll up, the little rider would be discovered and unseated, 
 and they would regain their freedom. The remedy seems 
 never to be far off, since the first step into thought lifts 
 this mountain of necessity. Thought is the pent air-ball 
 which can rive the planet, and the beauty which certain 
 objects have for him is the friendly fire which expands 
 the thought, and acquaints the prisoner that liberty and 
 power await him. 
 
 The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to 
 thinking of the foundations of things. Goethe said: 
 "The beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of Ka- 
 ture, which, but for this appearance, had been forever
 
 BEAUTY. 227 
 
 concealed from us." And the working of this deep in- 
 stinct makes all the excitement much of it superficial 
 and absurd enough about works of art, which leads 
 armies of vain travellers every year to Italy, Greece, and 
 Egypt. Every man values every acquisition he makes in 
 the science of beauty, above his possessions. The most 
 useful man in the most useful world, so long as only 
 commodity was served, would remain unsatisfied. But, 
 as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a very high 
 value. 
 
 I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers not to 
 attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather enumerate 
 a few of its qualities. We ascribe beauty to that which 
 is simple ; which has no superfluous parts ; which exactly 
 answers its end; which stands related to all things; 
 which is the mean of many extremes. It is the most en- 
 during quality, and the most ascending quality. We say 
 love is blind, and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a 
 bandage round his eyes. Blind : yes, because he does 
 not see what he does not like ; but the sharpest-sighted 
 hunter in the universe is Love, for finding what he seeks, 
 and only that ; and the mythologists tell us, that Vulcan 
 was painted lame, and Cupid blind, to call attention to 
 the fact, that one was all limbs, and the other all eyes. 
 In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, and 
 Beauty leads him as a guide : nor can we express a 
 deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is the pilot of 
 the young soul. 
 
 Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and colors of 
 Nature have a new charm for us in our perception, that 
 not one ornament was added for ornament, but each is a
 
 228 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 sign of some better health, or more excellent action. 
 Elegance of form in bird or beast, or in the human fig- 
 ure, marks some excellence of structure : or beauty is 
 only an invitation from what belongs to us. 'T is a law 
 of botany, that in. plants the same virl ucs follow the same 
 forms. It is a rule of largest application, true in a plant, 
 true in a loaf of bread, that in the construction of any 
 fabric or organism, any real increase of fitness to its end, 
 is an increase of beauty. 
 
 The lesson taught by the study of Greek and of Gothic 
 art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaelite painting, was worth 
 all the research, namely, that all beauty must be or- 
 ganic ; that outside embellishment is deformity. It is 
 the soundness of the bones that ultimates itself in a 
 peach-bloom complexion : health of constitution that 
 makes the sparkle and the power of the eye. 'T is the 
 adjustment of the size and of the joining of the sockets 
 of the skeleton, that gives grace of outline and the finer 
 grace of movement. The cat and the deer cannot move 
 or sit inelegantly. The dancing-master can never teach 
 a badly built man to walk well. The tint of the flower 
 proceeds from its root, and the lustres of the sea-shell 
 begin with its existence. Hence our taste in building 
 rejects paint, and all shifts, and shows the original grain 
 of the wood: refuses pilasters and columns that support 
 nothing, and allows the real supporters of the house hon- 
 estly to show themselves. Every necessary or organic 
 action pleases the beholder. A man leading a horse to 
 water, a farmer sowing seed, the labors of haymakers in 
 the field, the carpenter building a ship, the smith at his 
 forge, or, whatever useful labor, is becoming to the wise
 
 BEAUTY. 229 
 
 eye. But if it is done to be seen, it is mean. How 
 beautiful are ships on the sea ! but ships in the theatre, 
 or ships kept for picturesque effect on Virginia Water, 
 by George IV., and men hired to stand in fitting costumes 
 at a penny an hour ! What a difference in effect be- 
 tween a battalion of troops marching to action, and one 
 of our independent companies on a holiday ! In the 
 midst of a military show, and a festal procession gay with 
 banners, I saw a boy seize an old tin pan that lay resting 
 under a wall, and poising it on the top of a stick, he set 
 it turning, and made it describe the most elegant imagina- 
 ble curves, and drew away attention from the decorated 
 procession by this startling beauty. 
 
 Another text from the mythologists. The Greeks 
 fabled that Venus was born of the foam of the sea. 
 Nothing interests us which is stark or bounded, but 
 only what streams with life, what is in act or endeavor 
 to reach somewhat beyond. The pleasure a palace or a 
 temple gives the eye is, that an order and method has 
 been communicated to stones, so that they speak and 
 geometrize, become tender or sublime with expression. 
 Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were 
 just ready to flow into other forms. Any fixedness, 
 heaping, or concentration on one feature, a long nose, 
 a sharp chin, a hump-back, is the reverse of the flow- 
 ing, and therefore deformed. Beautiful as is the symme- 
 try of any form, if the form can move, we seek a more 
 excellent symmetry. The interruption of equilibrium 
 stimulates the eye to desire the restoration of symmetry, 
 and to watch the steps through which it is attained. 
 This is the charm of running water, sea-waves, the flight
 
 230 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 of birds, and the locomotion of animals. This is the the- 
 ory of dancing, to recover continually hi changes the lost 
 equilibrium, not by abrupt and angular, but by gradual 
 and curving movements. J have been told by persons of 
 experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a 
 law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode 
 is always only a step onward in the same direction as the 
 last mode ; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and pre- 
 dicts the new fashion. This fact suggests the reason of 
 all mistakes and offence in our own modes. It is neces- 
 sary in music, when you strike a discord, to let down the 
 ear by an intermediate note or two to the accord again : 
 and many a good experiment, born of good sense, and 
 destined to succeed, fails, only because it is offensively 
 sudden. I suppose, the Parisian milliner who dresses the 
 world from her imperious boudoir, will know how to rec- 
 oncile the Bloomer costume to the eye of mankind, and 
 make it triumphant over Punch himself, by interpos- 
 ing the just gradations. I need not say how wide the 
 same law ranges; and how much it can be hoped to 
 effect. All that is a little harshly claimed by progressive 
 parties may easily come to be conceded without question, 
 if this rule be observed. Thus the circumstances may be 
 easily imagined, in which woman may speak, vote, argue 
 causes, legislate, and drive a coach, and all the most nat- 
 urally in the world, if only it come by degrees. To this 
 streaming or flowing belongs the beauty that all circular 
 movement has ; as, the circulation of waters, the circula- 
 tion of the blood, the periodical motion of planets, the 
 annual wave of vegetation, the action and reaction of 
 Nature ; and, if we follow it out, this demand in ouj
 
 BEAUTY. 231 
 
 thought for an ever-onward action is the argument for 
 the immortality. 
 
 One more text from the mythologists is to the same 
 purpose, Beauty rides on a lion. Beauty rests on ne- 
 cessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect 
 economy. The cell of the bee is built at that angle which 
 gives the most strength with the least wax ; the bone or 
 the quill of the bird gives the most alar strength with 
 the least weight. " It is the purgation of superfluities," 
 said Michel Angelo. There is not a particle to spare in 
 natural structures. There is a compelling reason in the 
 uses of the plant, for every novelty of color or form : and 
 our art saves material, by more skilful arrangement, and 
 reaches beauty by taking every superfluous ounce that 
 can be spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength in 
 the poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this art of omission 
 is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is proof of 
 high culture, to say the greatest matters in the simplest 
 way. 
 
 Veracity first of all, and forever. Rien de beau que 
 le vrai. In all design, art lies in making your object 
 prominent, but there is a prior art in choosing objects 
 that are prominent. The fine arts have nothing casual, 
 but spring from the instincts of the nations that created 
 them. 
 
 Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. In a 
 house that I know, I have noticed a block of spermaceti 
 lying about closets and mantel-pieces, for twenty yeari 
 together, simply because the tallow-man gave it the form 
 of a rabbit ; and, I suppose, it may continue to be lugged 
 about unchanged for a century. Let an artist scrawl a
 
 232 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 few lines or figures on the back of a letter, and that scrap 
 of paper is rescued from danger, is put in portfolio, is 
 framed and glazed, and, in proportion to the beauty of 
 the lines drawn, will be kept for centuries. Burns writes 
 a copy of verses, and sends them to a newspaper, and 
 the human race take charge of them that they shall not 
 perish. 
 
 As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see how 
 surely a beautiful form strikes the fancy of men, and is 
 copied and reproduced without end. How many copies 
 are there of the Belvedere Apollo, the Venus, the Psyche, 
 the Warwick Vase, the Parthenon, and the Temple of 
 Vesta ? These are objects of tenderness to all. lu our 
 cities, an ugly building is soon removed, and is never 
 repeated, but any beautiful building is copied and im- 
 proved upon, so that all masons and carpenters work to 
 repeat and preserve the agreeable forms, whilst the ugly 
 ones die out. 
 
 The felicities of design in art, or in works of Nature, 
 are shadows or forerunners of that beauty which readies 
 its perfection in the human form. All men are its lovers. 
 "Wherever it goes, it creates joy and hilarity, and every- 
 thing is permitted to it. It reaches its height in woman. 
 " To Eve," say the Mahometans, " God gave two thirds 
 of all beauty." A beautiful woman is a practical poet, 
 taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope, and 
 eloquence in all whom she approaches. Some favors of 
 condition must go with it, since a certain serenity is es- 
 sential, but we love its reproofs and superiorities. Na- 
 ture wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often 
 cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which
 
 BEAUTY. 233 
 
 seems to say, " Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a 
 little better kind of man than any I yet behold." French 
 memoires of the fifteenth century celebrate the name of 
 Pauline de Viguiere, a virtuous and accomplished maid- 
 tn, who so fired the enthusiasm of her contemporaries, 
 by her enchanting form, that the citizens of her native 
 city of Toulouse obtained the aid of the civil authorities 
 to compel her to appear publicly on the balcony at least 
 twice a week, and, as often as she showed herself, the 
 crowd was dangerous to life. Not less, in England, in 
 the last century, was the fame of the Gunnings, of whom 
 Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton ; and Maria, 
 the Earl of Coventry. Walpole says : " The concourse 
 was so great, when the Duchess of Hamilton was pre- 
 sented at court, on Friday, that even the noble crowd in 
 the drawing-room clambered on chairs and tables to look 
 at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get 
 into their chairs, and people go early to get places at 
 the theatres, when it is known they will be there." 
 "Such crowds," he adds, elsewhere, "flock to see the 
 Duchess of Hamilton, that seven hundred people sat up 
 all night, in and about an inn, in Yorkshire, to see her 
 get into her post-chaise next morning." 
 
 But why need we console ourselves with the fames of 
 Helen of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of Toulouse, or 
 the Duchess of Hamilton ? We all know this magic 
 very well, or can divine it. It does not hurt weak eyes 
 to look into beautiful eyes never so long. Women stand 
 related to beautiful Nature around us, and the enamored 
 youth mixes their form with moon and stars, with woods 
 and waters, and the pomp of summer. They heal us of
 
 234 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 awkwardness by their words and looks. We observe 
 their intellectual influence on the most serious student. 
 They refine and clear his mind ; teach him to put a pleas- 
 ing method into what is dry and difficult. We talk to 
 them and wish to be listened to ; we fear to fatigue them, 
 and acquire a facility of expression which passes from 
 conversation into habit of style. 
 
 That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the per- 
 petual effort of Nature to attain it. Mirabeau had an 
 ugly face on a handsome ground ; and we see faces every 
 day which have a good type, but have been marred in 
 the casting : a proof that we are all entitled to beauty, 
 should have been beautiful, if our ancestors liad kept the 
 laws, as every lily and every rose is well. But our 
 bodies do not fit us, but caricature and satirize us. Thus, 
 short legs, which constrain to short, mincing steps, are 
 a kind of personal insult and contumely to the owner ; 
 and long stilts, again, put him at perpetual disadvantage, 
 and force him to stoop to the general level of mankind. 
 Martial ridicules a gentleman of his day Avhose counte- 
 nance resembled the face of a swimmer seen under water. 
 Saadi describes a schoolmaster " so ugly and crabbed, 
 that a sight of him would derange the ecstasies of the 
 orthodox." Faces are rarely true to any ideal type, but 
 are a record in sculpture of a thousand anecdotes of 
 whim and folly. Portrait-painters say that most faces 
 and forms are irregular and unsymmetrical ; have one 
 eye blue, and one gray ; the nose not straight ; and one 
 shoulder higher than another; the hair unequally dis- 
 tributed, etc. The man is physically as well as meta- 
 physically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed un-
 
 BEAUTY. 235 
 
 equally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from 
 the start. 
 
 A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was thought to 
 betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal 
 gods ; and we can pardon pride, when a woman possesses 
 such a figure, that wherever she stands, or moves, or 
 throws a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the 
 artist, she confers a favor on the world. And yet it 
 is not beauty that inspires the deepest passion. Beauty 
 without grace is the hook without the bait. Beauty, 
 without expression, tires. Abbe Menage said of the 
 President Le Bailleul, " that he was fit for nothing but 
 to sit for his portrait." A Greek epigram intimates that 
 the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, 
 but when the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill- 
 favored. And petulant old gentlemen, who have chanced 
 to suffer some intolerable weariness from pretty people, 
 or who have seen cut flowers to some profusion, or who 
 see, after a world of pains have been successfully taken 
 for the costume, how the least mistake in sentiment takes 
 all the beauty out of your clothes, affirm that the se- 
 cret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being 
 uninteresting. 
 
 We love any forms, however ugly, from which great 
 qualities shine. If command, eloquence, art, or inven- 
 tion exist in the most deformed person, all the accidents 
 that usually displease, please, and raise esteem and won- 
 der higher. The great orator was an emaciated, insig- 
 nificant person, but he was all brain. Cardinal De Retz 
 says of De Bouillon, "With the physiognomy of an 
 ox, he had the perspicacity of an eagle." It was said of
 
 236 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Hooke, the friend of Newton, "He is the most, and 
 promises the least, of any man in England." " Since I 
 am so ugly," said Du Guescliu, "it behooves that I be 
 bold." Sir Philip Sidney, the darling of mankind, Ben 
 Jonson tells us, " was no pleasant man in countenance, 
 his face being spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, 
 and long." Those who have ruled human destinies, like 
 planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men. 
 If a man can raise a small city to be a great kingdom, 
 can make bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join 
 oceans by canals, can subdue steam, can organize victory, 
 can lead the opinions of mankind, can enlarge knowledge, 
 't is no matter whether his nose is parallel to his spine, as 
 it ought to be, or whether he has a nose at all ; whether 
 his legs are straight, or whether his legs are amputated ; 
 his deformities will come to be reckoned ornamental and 
 advantageous on the whole. This is the triumph of ex- 
 pression, degrading beauty, charming us with a power so 
 fine and friendly and intoxicating, that it makes admired 
 persons insipid, and the thought of passing our lives with 
 them insupportable. There are faces so fluid with ex- 
 pression, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, 
 that we can hardly find what the mere features really are. 
 When the delicious beauty of lineaments loses its power, 
 it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared ; that 
 an interior and durable form has been disclosed. Still, 
 Beauty rides on her lion, as before. Still, "it was for 
 beauty that the world was made." The lives of the Ital- 
 ian artists, who established a despotism of genius amidst 
 the dukes and kings and mobs of their stormy epoch, 
 prove how loyal men in all times are to a finer brain, a
 
 BEAUTY. 237 
 
 finer method, than their own. If a man can cut such 
 a head on his stone gate-post as shall draw and keep a 
 crowd about it all day, by its grace, good-uature, and in- 
 scrutable meaning ; if a man can build a plain cottage 
 with such symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces look 
 cheap and vulgar; can take such advantage of Nature 
 that all her powers serve him ; making use of geometry, 
 instead of expense ; tapping a mountain for his water-jet ; 
 causing the sun and moon to seem only the decorations 
 of his estate ; this is still the legitimate dominion of 
 beauty. 
 
 The radiance of the human form, though sometimes 
 astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few years or 
 a few months, at the perfection of youth, and in most, 
 rapidly declines. But we remain lovers of it, only trans- 
 ferring our interest to interior excellence. And it is not 
 only admirable in singular and salient talents, but also in 
 the world of manners. 
 
 But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. 
 Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, 
 until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. 
 This is the reason why beauty is still escaping out of all 
 analysis. It is not yet possessed, it cannot be handled. 
 Proclus says, " It swims on the light of forms." It is 
 properly not in the form, but in the mind. It instantly 
 deserts possession, and flies to an object in the horizon. 
 If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as 
 beautiful ? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, 
 the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagi- 
 nation and senses cannot be gratified at the same time. 
 Wordsworth rightly speaks of " a light that never was
 
 238 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 on sea or land," meaning, that it was supplied by the 
 observer, and the Welsh bard warns his countrywomen, 
 
 that 
 
 " Half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 
 
 The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful is a 
 certain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest relation 
 to the whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful 
 individuality. Every natural feature sea, sky, rainbow, 
 flowers, musical tone has in it somewhat which is not 
 private, but universal, speaks of that central benefit 
 which is the soul of Nature, and thereby is beautiful. 
 And, in chosen men and women, I find somewhat in form, 
 speech, and manners, which is not of their person and 
 family, but of a humane, catholic, and spiritual character, 
 and we love them as the sky. They have a largeness of 
 suggestion, and their face and manners carry a certain 
 grandeur, like time and justice. 
 
 The feat of the imagination is in showing the converti- 
 bility of everything into every other thing. Facts which 
 had never before left their stark common-sense, suddenly 
 figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My boots and chair and 
 candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors and constella- 
 tions. All the facts in Nature are nouns of the intellect, 
 and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every 
 word has a double, treble, or centuple use and meaning. 
 What ! has my stove and pepper-pot a false bottom ! I 
 cry you mercy, good shoe-box ! I did not know you 
 were a jewel-case. Chaff 7 and dust begin to sparkle, and 
 are clothed about with immortality. And there is a joy 
 in perceiving the representative or symbolic character of 
 a fact, which no bare fact or event can ever give. There
 
 BEAUTY. 239 
 
 are no days in life so memorable as those wliich vibrated 
 to some stroke of the imagination. 
 
 The poets -are quite right in decking their mistresses 
 with the spoils of the landscape, flower-gardens, gems, 
 rainbows, flushes of morning, and stars of night, since 
 all beauty points at identity, and whatsoever thing does 
 not express to me the sea and sky, day and night, is 
 somewhat forbidden and wrong. Into every beautiful 
 object there enters somewhat immeasurable and divine, 
 and just as much into form bounded by outlines, like 
 mountains on the horizon, as into tones of music, or 
 depths of space. Polarized light showed the secret archi- 
 tecture of bodies ; and when the second-sight of the mind 
 is opened, now one color or form or gesture, and now 
 another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had 
 been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of 
 things. 
 
 The laws of this translation we do not know, or why 
 one feature or gesture enchants, why one word or syl- 
 lable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that the flue 
 touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a phrase of 
 poetry, plants wings at our shoulders ; as if the Divinity, 
 in his approaches, lifts away mountains of obstruction, 
 and deigus to draw a truer line, which the mind knows 
 and owns. This is that haughty force of beauty, " vis 
 super ba forma " which the poets praise, under calm 
 and precise outline, the immeasurable and diviue ; Beauty 
 hiding all wisdom aud power in its calm sky. 
 
 All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find 
 the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus : 
 and the beauty ever in proportion to the depth of
 
 240 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 thought. Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, 
 seem impure shambles ; but character gives splendor to 
 youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. An 
 adorer of truth we cannot choose but obey, and the wo- 
 man who has shared with us the moral sentiment, her 
 locks must appear to us sublime. Thus there is a climb- 
 ing scale of culture, from the first agreeable sensation 
 which a sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords the eye, 
 up through fair outlines and details of the landscape, 
 features of the human face and form, signs and tokens 
 of thought and character in manners, up to the ineffable 
 mysteries of the intellect. Wherever we begin, thither 
 our steps tend : an ascent from the joy of a horse in 
 his trappings, up to the perception of Newton, that the 
 globe on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from 
 a larger tree ; up to the perception of Plato, that globe 
 and universe are rude and early expressions of an all-dis- 
 solving Unity, the first stair on the scale to the temple 
 of the Mind.
 
 IX. 
 
 ILLUSIONS. 
 
 FLOW, flow the waves hated, 
 
 Accursed, adored, 
 
 The waves of mutation : 
 
 No anchorage is. 
 
 Sleep is not, death is not; 
 
 Who seem to die live. 
 
 House you were born in, 
 
 Friends of your spring-time, 
 
 Old man and young maid, 
 
 Day's toil and its guerdon, 
 
 They are all vanishing, 
 
 Fleeing to fables, 
 
 Cannot be moored. 
 
 See the stars through them, 
 
 Through treacherous marbles. 
 
 Know, the stars yonder, 
 
 The stars everlasting, 
 
 Are fugitive also, 
 
 And emulate, vaulted, 
 
 The lambent heat-lightning, 
 
 And fire-fly's flight. 
 
 When thou dost return. 
 On the wave's circulation, 
 11
 
 242 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Beholding the shimmer, 
 The wild dissipation, 
 And, out of endeavor 
 To change a'.d to flow, 
 The gas becomes solid, 
 And phantoms and nothings 
 / Return to be things, 
 C And endless imbroglio X 
 Is law and the world, 
 Then first shalt thou know, 
 That iu the wild turmoil, 
 Horsed on the Proteus, 
 . Thou ridest to power, 
 Aud to eudurauce.
 
 ILLUSIONS. 
 
 SOME years ago, in company with an agreeable party, 
 I spent a long summer day in exploring the Mammoth 
 Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious 
 galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the 
 town and county overhead, the six or eight black 
 miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost 
 recess which tourists visit, a niche or grotto made of 
 one seamless stalactite, and called, I believe, Serena's 
 Bower. I lost the light of one day.} I saw high domes, 
 and bottomless pits; taaVOhfTvoice of unseen water- 
 falls ; paddled three quarters of a mile in the deep Echo 
 River, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish ; 
 crossed the streams " Lethe " and " Styx " ; plied with 
 music and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries ; 
 saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculp- 
 tured and fretted chambers, icicle, orange-flower, acan- 
 thus, grapes, and snowball. We shot Bengal lights into 
 the vaults and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and exam- 
 ined all the masterpieces which the four combined en- 
 gineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and time, could 
 make in the dark. 
 
 The mysteries and scenery of the cave had the samp 
 dignity that belongs to all natural objects, and whicl/
 
 244 CONDUCT OF LIFE, g.^ 
 
 shames the fine things to which we foppishly compare 
 them. I remarked, especially, the mimetic habit, with 
 which Nature, on new instruments, hums her old tunes, ' 
 making night to mimic day, and chemistry to ape vegeta- 
 tion. But I then took notice, and still chiefly remem- 
 ber, that the best thing which the cave had to offer was 
 an illusion. On arriving at what is called the "Star- 
 Chamber," our lamps were taken from us by the guide, 
 and extinguished or put aside, and, on looking upwards, 
 I saw or seemed to see the night heaven thick with 
 stars glimmering more" or less brightly over our heads, 
 and even what seemed a comet flaming among them. 
 All the party were touched with astonishment and pleas- 
 ure. Our musical friends sung with much feeling a 
 pretty song, " The stars are in the quiet sky," etc., and 
 I sat down on the rocky floor to enjoy the serene pic- 
 ture. Some crystal specks in the black ceiling high 
 overhead, reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded 
 this magnificent effect. 
 
 I own, I did not like the cave so well for eking out 
 its sublimities with this theatrical trick. But I have 
 had many experiences like it, before and since ; and \ve 
 must be content to be pleased without too curiously 
 analyzing the occasions. Our conversation with Nature I 
 is not just what it seems. The cloud-rack, the sun- * 
 rise and sunset glories, rainbows and northern lights, 
 are not quite so spheral as our childhood thought them ; 
 and the part our organization plays in them is too large. 
 /The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own 
 structure with all they report of. Once, we fancied the 
 earth a plane, and stationary. In admiring the sunset,
 
 ILLUSIONS. 245 
 
 we do not yet deduct the rounding, co-ordinating, picto- 
 rial powers of the eye. 
 
 The same interference from our organization creates 
 the most of our pleasure and pain. Our first mistake is 
 the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which 
 we give to the circumstance. Life is an ecstasy. Life 
 is sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman drip- 
 ping all day over a cold pond, the switchman at the 
 railway intersection, the farmer in the field, the negro in 
 the rice-swamp, the fop in the street, the hunter in the 
 woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the ball, 
 all ascribe a certain pleasure to their employment, which 
 they themselves give it. Health and appetite impart the 
 sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat. We fancy that our 
 civilization has got on far, but we still come back to our 
 primers. -' M 
 
 We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, by 
 our sentiments. The child walks amid heaps of illu- 
 sions, which he does not like to have disturbed. The 
 boy, how sweet to him is his fancy ! how dear the story 
 of barons and battles ! What a hero he is, whilst he 
 feeds on his heroes ! What a debt is his to imaginative 
 books ! He has no better friend or influence, than Scott, 
 Shakspeare, Plutarch, and Homer. The man lives to 
 other objects, but who dare aflirm that they are more 
 real ? Even the prose of the streets is full of refrac- 
 tions. In the life of the dreariest alderman, fancy enters 
 into all details, and colors them with rosy hue. He imi- 
 tates the air and actions of people whom he admires, and 
 is raised in his own eyes. He pays a debt quicker to a 
 rich man than to a poor man. He wishes the bow and
 
 246 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 compliment of some leader in the state, or in society; 
 weighs what he says ; perhaps he never comes nearer to 
 him for that, but dies at last better contented for this 
 amusement of his eyes and his fancy. 
 
 The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. In 
 London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, the car- 
 nival, the masquerade, is at its height. Nobody drops 
 his domino. The unities, the fictions of the piece, it 
 would be an impertinence to break. The chapter of 
 fascinations is very long. Great is paint ; nay, God is 
 the painter ; and we rightly accuse the critic who de- 
 stroys too, many illusions. Society does not love its un- 
 maskers. It was wittily, if somewhat bitterly, said by 
 D'Alembert, " qu'un etat de vapcur etait un etat tres 
 fdcheux, parcequ'il nous faisait voir les choses comme 
 elles soyt." I find men mctuns) of illusion in all parts 
 of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are 
 led by one bawble or another. Yogauidra, the goddess 
 of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, 
 for the Power has many names, is stronger than the 
 Titans, stronger than Apollo. Few have overheard the 
 gods, or surprised their secret. Life is a succession of 
 lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is 
 riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle. There 
 are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. 
 ffle wake from one dream into another dream. The 
 toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in refine- 
 ment to the quality of the dupe. The intellectual man 
 requires a fine bait ; the sots are easily amused. But 
 everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the 
 pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner 
 and bad^e.
 
 ILLUSIONS. 247 
 
 Amid the joyous troop who give in to the charivari 
 comes now and then a sad-eyed boy^ whose eyes lack the 
 requisite refractions to clothe the show in due glory, and 
 who is afflicted with a tendency to trace home the glitter- 
 ing miscellany of fruits and flowers to one root. Science 
 is a search after identity, and the scientific whim is lurk- 
 ing in all corners. At the State Fair, a friend of mine 
 complained that all the varieties of fancy pears in our 
 orchards seem to have been selected by somebody who 
 had a whim for a particular kind of pear, and only cul- 
 tivated such as had that perfume; they were all alike. 
 And I remember the quarrel of another youth with the 
 confectioners, that, when he racked his wit to choose 
 the best comfits in the shops, in all the endless varieties 
 of sweetmeat he could only find three flavors, or two. 
 What then ? Pears and cakes are good for something ; 
 and because you, unluckily, have an eye or nose too 
 keen, why need you spoil the comfort which the rest of 
 us find in them ? I knew a humorist, who, in a good 
 deal of rattle, had a grain or two of sense. He shocked 
 the company by maintaining that the attributes of God 
 were two, power and risibility ; and that it was the 
 duty of every pious man to keep up the comedy. And I 
 1iave kuowu gentlemen of great stake in the community, 
 but whose sympathies were cold, presidents of col- 
 leges, and governors, and senators, who held them- 
 selves bound to sign every temperance pledge, and act 
 with Bible societies, and missions, and peacemakers, and 
 cry Hist-a-boy ! to every good dog. We must not carry 
 comity too far, but we all have kind impulses in this 
 direction. When the boys come into my yard for leave
 
 248 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into Nature's 
 game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, 
 fearing that any moment they will find out the impos- 
 ture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite 
 unnecessary ; the enchantments are laid on very thick. 
 Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim 
 to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw 
 yesterday; yet not the less they hung it round with 
 frippery romance, like the children of the happiest for- 
 tune, and talked of "the dear cottage where so many 
 joyful hours had flown." Well, this thatching of hovels 
 is the custom of the country. Women, more than all, 
 are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fasci- 
 nated, they fascinate. They see through Claude-Lor- 
 raines. And how dare any one, if he could, pluck 
 away the coulisses, stage effects, and ceremonies, by 
 which they live ? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the re- 
 gion of affection, and its atmosphere always liable to 
 mirage. 
 
 We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. 
 We live amid hallucinations ; andT this especial trap~Ts 
 laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up first 
 or last. But the mighty Mother who had been so sly 
 with us, as if she felt that she owed us some indemnity, 
 insinuates into the Pandora-box of marriage some deep 
 and serious benefits, and some great joys. We find a 
 delight in the beauty and happiness of children, that 
 makes the heart too big for the body. In the worst- 
 assorted connections there is ever some mixture of true 
 marriage. Teague and his jade get some just relations 
 of mutual respect, kindly observation, and fostering of
 
 ILLUSIONS. 249 
 
 each other, learn something, and would carry themselves 
 wiselier, if they were now to begin. 
 
 'T is fine for us to point at one or another fine mad- 
 man, as if there were any exempts. The scholar in his 
 library is none. I, who have all my life heard any num- 
 ber of orations and debates, read poems and miscellaneous 
 books, conversed with many geniuses, am still the victim 
 of any new page ; and, if Marmaduke, or Hugh, or 
 Moosehead, or any other, invent a new style or mythol- 
 ogy, I fancy that the world will be all brave and right, 
 if dressed in these colors, which I had not thought of. 
 Then at once I will daub with this new paint ; but it will 
 not stick. 'T is like the cement which the pedler sells 
 at the door ; he makes broken crockery hold with it, 
 but you can never buy of him a bit of the cement which 
 will make it hold when he is gone. 
 
 Men who make themselves felt in the world avail 
 themselves of a certain fate in their constitution, which 
 they know how to use. But they never deeply interest 
 us, unless they lift a corner of the curtain, or betray 
 never so slightly their penetration of what is behind it. 
 'T is the charm of practical men, that outside of their 
 practicality are a certain poetry and play, as if they 
 led the good horse Power by the bridle, and preferred 
 to walk, though they can ride so fiercely. Bonaparte 
 is intellectual, as well as Caesar; and the best sol- 
 diers, sea-captains, and railway-men have a gentleness, 
 when off duty ; a good-natured admission that there 
 are illusions, and who shall say that he is not their 
 sport? We stigmatize the cast-iron fellows, who can- 
 not so detach themselves, as "dragon-ridden," "thun- 
 11*
 
 
 250 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 der-stricken," and fools of fate, with .whatever powers 
 endowed. 
 
 Since our tuition is through emblems and indirections, 
 't is well to know that there is method in it, a fixed scale, 
 and rank above rank in tlie phantasms. We begin low 
 with coarse masks, and rise to the most subtle and beau- 
 tiful. The red men told Columbus, " they had an herb 
 which took away fatigue " ; but he found the illusion of 
 " arriving from the east at the Indies " more composing 
 to his lofty spirit than any tobacco. Is not our faith in" 
 the impenetrability of matter more sedative than narcot- 
 ics ? You play with jack-straws, balls, bowls, horse and 
 gun, estates and politics ; but there are finer games 
 before you. Is not time a pretty toy ? Life will show 
 you masks that are worth all your carnivals. Yonder 
 mountain must migrate into your mind. The fine star- 
 dust and nebulous blur in Orion, " the portentous year 
 of Mizar and Alcor," must come down and be dealt 
 with in your household thought. What if you shall come 
 to discern that the play and playground of all this pom- 
 pous history are radiations from yourself, and that the 
 sun borrows his beams ? What terrible questions we are 
 learning to ask ! The former men believed in magic, by 
 which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and 
 all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of 
 a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige 
 of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held 
 and were framed upon. 
 
 There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of the 
 .'ipassions, and the structural, beneficent illusions of scuti- 
 'Vneut and of the intellect. There is the illusion of love,
 
 ILLUSIONS. 251 
 
 which attributes to the beloved person all which that 
 person shares with his or her family, sex, age, or con- 
 dition, nay with the human mind itself. 'T is these 
 which the lover loves, and Anna Matilda gets the credit 
 of them. As if one shut up always in a tower, with 
 one window, through which the face of heaven and 
 earth could be seen, should fancy that all the mar- 
 vels he beheld belonged to that window. There is the 
 illusion of time, which is very deep ; who has dis- 
 posed of it ? or come to the conviction that what seems 
 the succession of thought is only the distribution of 
 wholes into causal series ? The intellect sees that 
 every atom carries the whole of Nature ; that the mind 
 opens to omnipotence; that, in the endless striving 
 and ascents, the metamorphosis is entire, so that the 
 soul doth not know itself in its own act, when that act 
 is perfected. There is illusion that shall deceive even 
 the elect. There is illusion that shall deceive even the 
 perfonner of the miracle. Though he make his body, he 
 denies that he makes it. Though the world exist from 
 thought, thought is daunted in presence of the world. 
 One after the other we accept the mental laws, still 
 resisting those which follow, which however must be 
 accepted. But all our concessions only compel us to 
 new profusion. And what avails it that science has come. 
 to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, 
 and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our 
 pretension of property and even of selfhood are fad- 
 ing with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are ( 
 not finalities; but the incessant flowing and ascension 
 reach these also, and each thought which yesterday
 
 252 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generaliza- 
 tion? 
 
 With such volatile elements to work in, 't is no won- 
 der if our estimates are loose and floating. We must 
 work and affirm, but we have no guess of the value of 
 what we say or do. The cloud is now as big as your 
 hand, and now it covers a county. That story of Thor, 
 who was set to drain the drinking-horn in Asgard, and 
 to wrestle with the old woman, and to run with the run- 
 ner Lok, and presently found that he had been drinking 
 up the sea, and wrestling with Time, and racing with 
 Thought, describes us who are contending, amid these 
 seeming trifles, with the supreme energies of Nature. 
 We fancy we have fallen into bad company and squalid 
 condition, low debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, 
 pots to buy, butcher's meat, sugar, milk, and coal. " Set 
 me some great task, ye gods ! and I will show my spirit." 
 " Not so," says the good Heaven ; " plod and plough, 
 vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; 
 great affairs and the best wine by and by/' Well, 't is 
 all phantasm ; and if we weave a yard of tape in all 
 humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall 
 see it was no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy which 
 we braided, and .that the threads were Time and Na- 
 ture. 
 
 We cannot write the order of the variable winds. 
 How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods 
 and susceptibility ? Yet they differ as all and nothing. 
 Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes 
 require, it is to-day an egg-shell which coops us in ; we 
 cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny are.
 
 ILLUSIONS. 253 
 
 From day to day, the capital facts of human life are hid- 
 den from our eyes. Suddenly the mist rolls up, and 
 reveals them, and we think how much good time is gone, 
 that might have been saved, had any hint of these things 
 been shown. A sudden rise in the road shows us the 
 system of mountains, and all the summits, which have 
 been just as near us all the year, but quite out of mind. 
 But these alternations are not without their order, and 
 we are parties to our various fortune. If life seem a suc- 
 cession of dreams, yet poetic justice is done in dreams 
 also. The visions of good men are good ; it is the un- 
 disciplined will that is whipped with bad thoughts and 
 bad fortunes. When we break the laws, we lose our 
 hold on the central reality. Like sick men in hospitals, 
 we change only from bed to bed, from one folly to an- 
 other; and it cannot signify much what becomes of 
 such castaways, wailing, stupid, comatose creatures, 
 lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of life to the 
 nothing of death. 
 
 In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for stays 
 and foundations. There is none but a strict and faithful 
 dealing at home, and a severe barring out of all duplicity 
 or illusion there. Whatever games are played with us, 
 fwe must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our 
 privacy with the last honesty and truth. I look upon 
 the simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty as 
 the root of all that is sublime in character. Speak as 
 you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. 
 I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word 
 as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, 
 or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the uni-
 
 254 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 verse. This reality is the foundation of friendship, re- 
 ligion, poetry, and art. At the top or at the bottom 
 of all illusions, I set the cheat which still leads us to 
 work and live for appearances, in spite of our convic- 
 tion, in all sane hours, that it is what we really are that 
 avails with friends, with strangers, and with fate or 
 fortune. 
 
 One would think from the talk of men, that riches 
 and poverty were a great matter ; and our civilization 
 mainly respects it. But the Indians say, that they do not 
 think the white man with his brow of care, always toil- 
 ing, afraid of heat and cold, and keeping within doors, 
 has any advantage of them. The permanent interest of 
 every man is, never to be in a false position, but to have 
 the weight of Nature to back him in all that he does. 
 Riches and poverty are a thick or thin costume ; and our 
 life the life of all of us identical. For we transcend 
 the circumstance continually, and taste the real quality of 
 existence ; as in our employments, which only differ in 
 the manipulations, but express the same laws ; or in our 
 thoughts, which wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams. 
 We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor 
 of Nature. 
 
 The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Xeno- 
 phanes measured their force on this problem of identity. 
 Diogenes of Apollonia said, that unless the atoms were 
 made of one stuff, they could never blend and act- with 
 one another. But the Hindoos, in their sacred writings, 
 express the liveliest feeling, both of the essential identity, 
 and of that illusion which they conceive variety to be. 
 "The notions, 'lam' and 'This is mine,' which influ-
 
 ILLUSIONS. 255 
 
 ence mankind, are but delusions of the mother of the 
 world. Dispel, O Lord of all creatures ! the conceit of 
 knowledge which proceeds from ignorance." And the 
 beatitude of man they hold to he in being freed from 
 fascination. 
 
 The intellect is stimulated by the statement of truth in 
 a trope, and the will by clothing the laws of life in illu- 
 sions. But the unities of Truth and of Right are not 
 broken by the disguise. There need never be any con- 
 fusion in these. In a crowded life of many parts and 
 performers, on a stage of nations, or in the obscur- 
 est hamlet in Maine or California, the same elements 
 offer the same choices to each new-comer, and, accord- 
 ing to his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute 
 Nature. It would be hard to put more mental and 
 moral philosophy than the Persians have thrown into 
 a sentence : 
 
 \ 
 
 " Fooled thou must he. thomrh. wisest of the wise : 
 Theu be._ theJdoi of virtue, net of vice." , 
 
 A, -M^ 
 
 There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. 
 All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting 
 in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the 
 firmament ; there is he_algne_with them alone, they pour- 
 ing on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up 
 to their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall 
 snow-storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast 
 crowd which sways this way and that, and whose move- 
 ment and doings he must obey : he fancies himself poor, 
 orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither 
 and thither, BOW furiously commanding this thing to be
 
 256 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 done, now that. What is he that he should resist their 
 will, and think or act for himself? Every moment, new 
 changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and 
 distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the 
 air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods 
 still sitting around him on their thrones, they alone 
 with him alone. 
 
 J 
 
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