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 ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 &be ttitetfibe prc Cambridge 
 
 56239
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1865 AND 1876 
 
 BY TICKNOR & FIELDS AND RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1883 AND 1903, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 2146
 
 co-jo. 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. HISTORY 
 
 
 
 yi. SELF-RELIANCE ' 
 
 *JII. COMPENSATION . 
 
 IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 ^~V. LOVE 
 $VL FRIENDSHIP 
 VII. PRUDENCE 
 VIII. HEROISM 
 
 IX. THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 " X. CIRCLES - 
 \/ XL INTELLECT 
 XII. ART 
 NOTES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 43 
 9 1 
 129 
 167 
 189 
 219 
 
 243 
 265 
 299 
 3 2 3 
 349
 
 HISTORY 
 
 THERE is no great and no small 
 To the Soul that maketh all : 
 And where it cometh, all things are ; 
 And it cometh everywnerc.
 
 I am owner of the sphere, 
 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
 
 Of Czesar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
 
 Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain. 1
 
 HISTORY 
 
 THERE is one mind common to all in- 
 dividual men. Every man is an inlet to 
 the same and to all of the same. He that is 
 once admitted to the right of reason is made a 
 freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has 
 thought, he may think ; what a saint has felt, 
 he may feel; what at any time has befallen any 
 man, he can understand. Who hath access to 
 this universal mind is a party to all that is or 
 can be done, for this is the only and sovereign 
 agent. 
 
 Of the works of this mind history is the 
 record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire 
 series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less s 
 than all his history. Without hurry, without 
 rest, the human spirit goes forth from the be- 
 ginning to embody every faculty, every thought, 
 every emotion which belongs to it, in appro- 
 priate events. But the thought is always prior 
 to the fact ; all the facts of history preexist in 
 the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by 
 circumstances predominant, and the limits of 
 nature give power to but one at a time. A man 
 is -hp whnlp EnryplnapiHia flf fartfl, The creation
 
 4 HISTORY 
 
 of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, 
 Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded 
 already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, 
 camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, 
 are merely the application of his manifold spirit 
 to the manifold world. 
 
 This human mind wrote history, and this 
 must read it. The Sphinx must solve her own 
 riddle. If the whole of history is in one_man, 
 it is all to be explained from individual expe- 
 
 IrienceZ^ There is a relation between the hours 
 of our life and the centuries of time. As the 
 air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories 
 of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by 
 a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the 
 poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of 
 centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours 
 should be instructed by the ages and the ages 
 explained by the hours. Of the universal mind 
 each individual man is one more incarnation. 
 All its properties consist in him. Each new 
 fact in his private experience flashes a light on 
 what great bodies of men have done, and the 
 crises of his life refer to national crises. Every 
 revolution was first a thought in one. man's 
 mind, and when the same thought occurs to 
 another man, it is the key to that era. Every
 
 HISTORY 5 
 
 reform was once a private opinion, and when it 
 shall be a private opinion again it will solve the 
 problem of the age. 1 The fact narrated must 
 correspond to something in me to be credible 
 or intelligible. We, as we read, must become 
 Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, mar- 
 tyr and executioner ; must fasten these images 
 to some reality in our secret experience, or we 
 shall learn nothing rightly. What befell As- 
 drubal or Caesar Borgia is as much an illus- 
 tration of the mind's powers and depravations 
 as what has befallen us. Each new law and 
 political movement has a meaning for you. 
 Stand before each of its tablets and say, * Under 
 this mask did my Proteus nature hide itself.' 
 This remedies the defect of our too great near-' 
 ness to ourselves. This throws our actions into 
 perspective, and as crabs, goats, scorpions, 
 the balance and the waterpot lose their mean- 
 ness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I 
 can see my own vices without heat in the dis- 
 tant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Cati- 
 line. 
 
 It is the universal nature which gives worth 
 to particular men and things. Human life, as 
 containing this, is mysterious and inviolable, and 
 we hedge it round with penalties and laws. All
 
 6 HISTORY 
 
 laws derive hence their ultimate reason ; all 
 express more or less distinctly some command 
 of this supreme, illimitable essence. Property 
 also holds of the soul, covers great spiritual 
 facts, and instinctively we at first hold to it with 
 swords and laws and wide and complex com- 
 binations. The obscure consciousness of this 
 fact is the light of all our day, the claim of 
 claims ; the plea for education, for justice, for 
 charity ; the foundation of friendship and love 
 and of the heroism and grandeur which belong 
 to acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that 
 involuntarily we always read as superior beings. 
 Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do 
 not in their stateliest pictures, in the sacer- 
 dotal, the imperial palaces, in the triumphs of 
 will or of genius, anywhere lose our ear, any- 
 where make us feel that we intrude, that this 
 is for better men ; but rather is it true that in 
 their grandest strokes we feel most at home. 
 All that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder 
 slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to 
 be true of himself. 1 We sympathize in the great 
 moments of history, in the great discoveries, 
 the great resistances, the great prosperities of 
 men ; because there law was enacted, the sea 
 was searched, the land was found, or the blow
 
 HISTORY 7 
 
 was struck, for us, as we ourselves in that place 
 would have done or applauded. 
 
 We have the same interest in condition and 
 character. We honor the rich because they have 
 externally the freedom, power, and grace which 
 we feel to be proper to man, proper to us. So 
 all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Ori- 
 ental or modern essayist, describes to each reader 
 his own idea, describes his unattained but attain- 
 able self. All literature writes the character of 
 the wise jnan. Books, monuments, pictures, 
 conversation, are portraits in which he finds the 
 lineaments he is forming. The silent and^ the 
 eloquent_praise him and accost him,. _&&d he Js 
 stimulated wherever_.h__niQyes, as by personal 
 allusions. A true aspirant therefore never needs 
 look for allusions personal and laudatory in dis- 
 course. He hears the commendation, not of 
 himself, but, more sweet, of that character he 
 seeks, in every word that is said concerning 
 character, yea further in every fact and circum- 
 stance, in the running river and the rustling 
 corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, love 
 flows, from mute nature, from the mountains 
 and the lights of the firmament. 1 
 
 These hints, dropped as it were from sleep 
 and night, let us use in broad day. The stu-
 
 8 HISTORY 
 
 Jdent is to read history actively and not pas- 
 sively ; to esteem his own life the text, and 
 books the commentary. Thus compelled, the 
 Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to 
 those who do not respect themselves. I have 
 no expectation that any man will read history 
 aright who thinks that what was done in a re- 
 mote age, by men whose names have resounded 
 far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing 
 to-day. 1 
 
 The world exists for the education of each 
 man. There is no age or state of society or 
 mode of action in history to which there is not 
 somewhat corresponding in his life, Jivery 
 thing tends in a wonderful manner to abbre- 
 viate itself and yield its own virtue tqJrim^JHe 
 t ^should see that he can live all history in his 
 own person,. He must sit solidly at home, and 
 not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or em- 
 pires, but know that he is greater than all the 
 geography and all the government of the world ; 
 he must transfer the point of view from which 
 history is commonly read, from Rome and Ath- 
 ens and London, to himself, and not deny his 
 conviction that he is the court, and if Eng- 
 land or Egypt have anything to say to him he 
 will try the case ; if not, let them forever be
 
 HISTORY 9 
 
 silent. He must attain and maintain that lofty 
 sight where facts yield their secret sense, and 
 poetry and annals are alike^ The instinct of the 
 mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the 
 use we make of the signal narrations of history. 
 Time dissipates to shining ether the solid an- 
 gularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences 
 avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, 
 Palestine, and even early Rome are passing al- 
 r^yty into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun 
 standing still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward 
 to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, 
 when we have made a constellation of it to hang 
 in heaven an immortal sign ? London and Paris 
 and New York must go the same way. "What 
 is history," said Napoleon, " but a fable agreed 
 upon ? " This life of ours is stuck round with 
 Egypt, 'Greece, Gaul, England, War, Coloni- 
 zation, Church, Court and Commerce, as with 
 so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and 
 gay. I will not make more account of them. I 
 believe in Eternity. 1 I can find Greece, Asia,^ 
 Italy, Spain and the Islands, the genius and I 
 creative principle of each and of all eras^in my J 
 own mind. 
 
 We are always coming up with the emphatic 
 facts of history in our private experience and
 
 io HISTORY 
 
 verifying them here. All history becomes sub- 
 jective ; jn other words there is properly no </ 
 history, only biography. Every mind must 
 know the whole lesson for itself, must go 
 over the whole ground. What it does not see, 
 what it does not live, it will not know. What 
 the former age has epitomized into a formula 
 or rule for manipular convenience, it will lose 
 all the good of verifying for itself, by means of 
 the wall of that rule. Somewhere, sometime, 
 it will demand and find compensation for that 
 loss, by doing the work itself. Ferguson dis- 
 covered many things in astronomy which had 
 long been known. The better for him. 
 
 History must be this or it is nothing. Every 
 law which the state enacts indicates a fact in 
 human nature ; that is all. We must in our- 
 selves see the necessary reason of every fact, 
 see how it could and must be. So stand be- 
 fore every public and private work ; before an 
 oration of Burke, before a victory of Napo- 
 leon, before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, 
 of Sidney, of Marmaduke Robinson; 1 before a 
 French Reign of Terror, and a Salem hanging 
 of witches ; before a fanatic Revival and the 
 Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. 
 We assume that we under like influence should
 
 HISTORY ii 
 
 be alike affected, and should achieve the like ; 
 -and we aim to master intellectually the steps 
 and reach the same height or the same degrada- 
 tion that our fellow, our proxy has done. 
 
 All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity re- 
 specting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, 
 Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Mem- 
 phis, is the desire to do away this wild, 
 savage, and preposterous There or Then, and 
 introduce in its place the Here and the Now. 
 Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy-pits 
 and pyramids of Thebes until he can see the 
 end of the difference between the monstrous 
 work and himself. When he has satisfied him- 
 self, in general and in detail, that it was made 
 by such a person as he, so armed and so mo- 
 tived, and to ends to which he himself should 
 also have worked, the problem is solved ; his 
 thought lives along the whole line of temples 
 and sphinxes and catacombs, passes through 
 them all with satisfaction, and they live again 
 to the mind, or are now. 
 
 AJjothic cathedral affirms that it was_jdojie 
 by us and not done by us. Surely it was by 
 man, but we find it not in our man. But we 
 apply ourselves to the history of its production. 
 We put ourselves into the place and state of
 
 12 HISTORY 
 
 the builder. We remember the forest-dwellers, 
 the first temples, the adherence to the first type, 
 and the decoration of it as the wealth of the 
 nation increased ; the value which is given to 
 wood by carving led to the carving over the 
 whole mountain of stone of a cathedral. When 
 we have gone through this process, and added 
 thereto the Catholic Church, its cross, its music, 
 its processions, its Saints' days and image-wor- 
 ship, we have as it were been the man that made 
 the minster; we have seen how it could and 
 must be. We have the sufficient reason. 1 
 
 The difference between men is in their prin- 
 ciple of association. Some men classify objects 
 by color and size and other accidents of appear- 
 ance ; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the re- 
 lation of cause and effect. The progress of the 
 intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which 
 neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the 
 philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly 
 and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, 
 all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the 
 life, and slights the circumstance. Every chem- 
 ical substance, every plant, every animal in its 
 growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety 
 of appearance. 
 
 Upborne and surrounded as we are by this
 
 HISTORY 13 
 
 all-creating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or 
 the air, why should we be such hard pedants, 
 and magnify a few forms ? Why should we make 
 account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure ? 
 The soul knows them not, and genius, obeying 
 its law, knows how to play with them as a young 
 child plays with graybeards and in churches. 
 Genius studies the causal thought, and far back 
 in the womb of things sees the rays parting from 
 one orb, that diverge, ere they fall, by infinite 
 diameters. Genius watches the monad through $*> 
 all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis 
 of nature. Genius detects through the fly, through 
 the caterpillar, through the grub, through the 
 egg, the constant individual ; through count- 
 less individuals the fixed species ; through many 
 species the genus ; through all genera the stead- 
 fast type ; through all the kingdoms of organ- 
 ized life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable 
 cloud which is always and never the same. She 
 casts the same thought into troops of forms, as 
 a poet makes twenty fables with one moraO 
 Through the bruteness and toughness of mat 
 ter, a subtle spirit bends all things to its ownljy 
 will. The adamant streams into soft but precise '. ' 
 form before it, and whilst I look at it its outline 
 and texture are changed again. Nothing is so/
 
 I 4 HISTORY 
 
 fleeting as form ; yet never does it quite deny 
 itself. In man we still trace the remains or hints 
 of all that we esteem badges of servitude in the 
 lower races ; yet in him they enhance his noble- 
 ness and grace ; as lo, in TEschylus, transformed 
 to a cow, offends the imagination ; but how 
 changed when as Isis in Egypt she meets Osi- 
 ris-Jove, a beautiful woman with nothing of the 
 metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the 
 splendid ornament of her brows ! 
 
 The identity of history is equally intrinsic, 
 the diversity equally obvious. There is, at the 
 surface, infinite variety of things ; at the centre 
 there is simplicity of cause. How many are 
 the acts of one man in which we recognize the 
 same character ! Observe the sources of our in- 
 formation in respect to the Greek genius. We 
 have the civil history of that people, as Herodo- 
 tus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have 
 given it ; a very sufficient account of what man- 
 ner of persons they were and what they did. 
 We have the same national mind expressed for 
 us again in their literature, in epic and lyric 
 poems, drama, and philosophy ; a very complete 
 form. Then we have it once more in their 
 architecture, a beauty as of temperance itself, 
 limited to the straight line and the square, a
 
 HISTORY 15 
 
 huilded geometry. Then we have it once again 
 in sculpture, the " tongue on the balance of ex- 
 pression," a multitude of forms in the utmost 
 freedom of action and never transgressing the 
 .deal serenity ; like votaries performing some 
 religious dance before the gods, and, though in 
 convulsive pain or mortal combat, never daring 
 to break the figure and decorum of their dance. 
 Thus of the genius of one remarkable people 
 we have a fourfold representation : and to the 
 senses what more unlike than an ode of Pindar, 
 a marble centaur, the peristyle of the Parthenon, 
 and the last actions of Phocion ? ' 
 
 Every one must have observed faces and 
 forms which, without any resembling feature, 
 make a like impression on the beholder. A par- 
 ticular picture or copy of verses, if it do not 
 awaken the same train of images, will yet super- 
 induce the same sentiment as some wild moun- 
 tain walk, although the resemblance is nowise 
 obvious to the senses, but is occult and out of 
 the reach of the understanding. Nature is an 
 endless combination and repetition of a very few 
 laws. She hums the old well-known air through 
 innumerable variations.* 
 
 Nature is full of a sublime family likeness 
 throughout her works, and delights in startling
 
 16 HISTORY 
 
 us with resemblances in the most unexpected 
 quarters. I have seen the head of an old sachem 
 of the forest which at once reminded the eye of 
 a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the 
 brow suggested the strata of the rock. There 
 are men whose manners have the same essential 
 splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on 
 the friezes of the Parthenon and the remains of 
 the earliest Greek art. And there are composi- 
 tions of the same strain to be found in the books 
 of all ages. What is Guide's Rospigliosi Au- 
 rora but a morning thought, as the horses in it 
 are only a morning cloud? ' If any one will but 
 take pains to observe the variety of actions to 
 which he is equally inclined in certain moods 
 
 Cf mind, and those to which he is averse, he 
 ill see how deep is the chain of affinity. 
 A painter told me that nobody could draw a 
 tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or 
 draw a child by studying the outlines of its form 
 merely, but by watching for a time his mo- 
 tions and plays, the painter enters into his na- 
 ture and can then draw him at will in every 
 attitude. So Roos " entered into the inmost 
 nature of a sheep." I knew a draughtsman em- 
 ployed in a public survey who found that he 
 could not sketch the rocks until their geological
 
 HISTORY 17 
 
 structure was first explained to him. In a cer- 
 tain state of thought is the common origin of 
 very diverse works. It is the spirit and not the 
 fact that is identical. By a deeper apprehension, 
 and not primarily by a painful acquisition of 
 many manual skills, the artist attains the power 
 of awakening other souls to a given activity. 
 
 It has been said that " common souls pay with 
 what they do, nobler souls with that which they 
 are." And why? Because a profound nature 
 awakens in us by its actions and words, by its 
 very looks and manners, the same power and 
 beauty that a gallery of sculpture or of pictures 
 addresses. 
 
 Civil and natural history, the history of art 
 and of literature, must be explained from indi- 
 vidual history, or must remain words. There 
 is nothing but is related to us, nothing that 
 does not interest us, kingdom, college, tree, 
 horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all things 
 are in man. Santa Croce and the Dome of St. 
 Peter's are lame copies after a divine model. 1 
 Strasburg Cathedral is a material counterpart 
 of the soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true 
 poem is the poet's mind ; the true ship is the 
 ship-builder. In the man, could we lay him 
 open, we should see the reason for the last 
 u
 
 1 8 HISTORY 
 
 flourish and tendril of his work ; as every spine 
 and tint in the sea-shell preexists in the secreting 
 organs of the fish. The whole of heraldry and 1 
 of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine man- / 
 pers shall pronounce your name with all the 
 ornament that titles of nobility could ever add. 
 The trivial experience of every day is always 
 verifying some old prediction to us and con- 
 verting into things the words and signs which 
 we had heard and seen without heed. A lady 
 with whom I was riding in the forest said to me 
 that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as 
 if the genii who inhabit them suspended their 
 deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward ; 
 a thought which poetry has celebrated in the 
 dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the ap- 
 proach of human feet. The man who has seen 
 the rising moon break out of the clouds at mid- 
 night, has been present like an archangel at the 
 creation of light and of the world. I remember 
 one summer day in the fields my companion 
 pointed out to me a broad cloud, which might 
 extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the hori- 
 zon, quite accurately in the form of a cherub as 
 painted over churches, a round block in the 
 centre, which it was easy to animate with eyes 
 and mouth, supported on either side by wide*
 
 HISTORY ig 
 
 stretched symmetrical wings. What appears 
 once in the atmosphere may appear often, and 
 it was undoubtedly the archetype of that famil- 
 iar ornament. I have seen in the sky a chain 
 of summer lightning which at once showed to 
 me that the Greeks drew from nature when 
 they painted the thunderbolt in the hand of 
 Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along the sides 
 of the stone wall which obviously gave the idea 
 of the common architectural scroll to abut a 
 tower. 1 
 
 By surrounding ourselves with the original 
 circumstances we invent anew the orders and 
 the ornaments of architecture, as we see how 
 each people merely decorated its primitive 
 abodes. The Doric temple preserves the sem- 
 blance of the wooden cabin in which the Dorian 
 dwelt. The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar 
 tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples still 
 betray the mounds and subterranean houses 
 of their forefathers. " The custom of making 
 houses and tombs in the living rock," says 
 Heeren in his Researches on the Ethiopians, 
 " determined very naturally the principal char- 
 acter of the Nubian Egyptian architecture to 
 the colossal form which it assumed. In these 
 caverns, already prepared by nature, the eye
 
 20 HISTORY 
 
 was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and 
 masses, so that when art came to the assistance 
 of nature it could not move on a small scale 
 without degrading itself. What would statues 
 of the usual size, or neat porches and wings 
 have been, associated with those gigantic halls 
 before which only Colossi could sit as watchmen 
 or lean on the pillars of the interior ? " 
 
 The Gothic church plainly originated in a 
 rude adaptation of the forest trees, with all their 
 boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade ; as the 
 bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the 
 green withes that tied them. No one can walk 
 in a road cut through pine woods, without being 
 struck with the architectural appearance of the 
 grove, especially in winter, when the barren- 
 ness of all other trees shows the low arch of the 
 Saxons. In the woods in a winter afternoon 
 one will see as readily the origin of the stained 
 glass window, with which the Gothic cathedrals 
 are adorned, in the colors of the western sky 
 seen through the bare and crossing branches of 
 the forest. Nor can any lover of nature enter 
 the old piles of Oxford and the English cathe- 
 drals, without feeling that the forest overpow- 
 ered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, 
 his saw and plane still reproduced its ferns, its
 
 HISTORY 7.1 
 
 spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir 
 and spruce. 1 
 
 The Gothic cathedral is a blojsomingjmjatone 
 subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony 
 in man. The mountain of granite blooms into 
 an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate 
 finish as well as the aerial proportions and per- 
 spective of vegetable beauty. 
 
 In like manner all public facts are to be indi- 
 vidualized, all private facts are to be general- 
 ized. Then at once History becomes fluid and 
 true, and Biography deep and sublime. As the 
 Persian imitated in the slender shafts and capi- 
 tals of his architecture the stem and flower of 
 the lotus and palm, so the Persian court in its 
 magnificent era never gave over the nomadism 
 of its barbarous tribes, but travelled from Ec- 
 batana, where the spring was spent, to Susa in 
 summer and to Babylon for the winter. 
 
 In the early history of Asia and Africa, No- 
 madism and Agriculture are the two antago- 
 nist facts. The geography of Asia and of Africa 
 necessitated a nomadic life. But the nomads 
 were the terror of all those whom the soil or the 
 advantages of a market had induced to build 
 towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious 
 injunction, because of the perils of the state
 
 22 HISTORY 
 
 from nomadism. And in these late and civil 
 countries of England and America these pro- 
 pensities still fight out the old battle, in the 
 nation and in the individual. The nomads of 
 Africa were constrained to wander, by the at- 
 tacks of the gad-fly, which drives the cattle mad, 
 and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the 
 rainy season and to drive off the cattle to the 
 higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia fol- 
 low the pasturage from month to month. In 
 America and Europe the nomadism is of trade 
 and curiosity ; a progress, certainly, from the 
 gad-fly of Astaboras 1 to the Anglo and Italo- 
 mania of Boston Bay. 2 Sacred cities, to which 
 a periodical religious pilgrimage was enjoined, 
 or stringent laws and customs tending to invig- 
 orate the national bond, were the check on the 
 old rovers ; and the cumulative values of long 
 residence are the restraints on the itinerancy of 
 the present day. The antagonism of the two 
 tendencies is not less active in individuals, as 
 the love of adventure or the love of repose hap- 
 pens to predominate. A man of rude health and 
 flowing spirits has the faculty of rapid domestica 
 tion, lives in his wagon and roams through all lat- 
 itudes as easily as a Calmuc. 3 At sea, or in the 
 forest, or in the snow, he sleeps as warm, dines
 
 HISTORY 23 
 
 with as good appetite, and associates as happihf 
 as beside his own chimneys. Or perhaps his 
 facility is deeper seated, in the increased range 
 of his faculties of observation, which yield him 
 points of interest wherever fresh objects meet 
 his eyes. The pastoral nations were needy and 
 hungry to desperation; and this intellectual 
 nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind 
 through the dissipation of power on a miscellany 
 of objects. The home-keeping wit, on the other 
 hand, is that continence or content which finds 
 all the elements . of life in its own soil ; and 
 which has its own perils of^mdiro"fony and de- 
 terioration, if not stimulated by foreign infu- 
 sions. 1 
 
 Every thing the individual sees without him 
 corresponds to his states of mind, and every 
 thing is in turn intelligible to him, as his onward 
 thinking leads him into the truth to which that 
 fact or series belongs. 
 
 The primeval world, the Fore- World, as 
 the Germans say, I can dive to it in myself 
 as well as grope for it with researching fingers 
 5n catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs 
 and torsos of ruined villas. 
 
 What is the foundation of that interest all 
 men feel in Greek history, letters, art and poetry,
 
 24 HISTORY 
 
 in all its periods from the Heroic or Homeric 
 age down to the domestic life of the Atheni- 
 ans and Spartans, four or five centuries later ? 
 What but this, that every man passes personally 
 through a Grecian period. The Grecian state is 
 the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of 
 the senses, of the spiritual nature unfolded 
 in strict unity with the body. In it existed those 
 human forms which supplied the sculptor with 
 his models of Hercules, Phosbus, and Jove; 
 not like the forms abounding in the streets of 
 modern cities, wherein the face is a confused 
 blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, 
 sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose 
 eye-sockets are so formed that it would be im- 
 possible for such eyes to squint and take fur- 
 tive glances on this side and on that, but they 
 must turn the whole head. The manners of 
 that period are plain and fierce. The reverence 
 exhibited is for personal qualities ; courage, ad- 
 dress, self-command, justice, strength, swiftness, 
 a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and ele- 
 gance are not known. A sparse population and 
 want make every man his own valet, cook, 
 butcher and soldier, and the habit of supplying 
 his own needs educates the body to wonderful 
 performances. Such are the Agamemnon and
 
 HISTORY 25 
 
 Diomed of Homer, and not far different is the 
 picture Xenophon gives of himself and his com- 
 patriots in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. 
 " After the army had crossed the river Teleboas 
 in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops 
 lay miserably on the ground covered with it. 
 But Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, 
 began to split wood ; whereupon others rose 
 and did the like." ' Throughout his army exists 
 a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel for 
 plunder, they wrangle with the generals on each 
 new order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued 
 as any and sharper-tongued than most, and so 
 gives as good as he gets. Who does not see 
 that this is a gang of great boys, with such a 
 code of honor and such lax discipline as great 
 boys have ? 
 
 The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and 
 indeed of all the old literature, is that the per- 
 sons speak simply, speak as persons who 
 have great good sense without knowing it, be- 
 fore yet the reflective habit has become the pre- 
 dominant habit of the mind. Our admiration 
 of the antique is not admiration of the old, but 
 of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective, 
 but perfect in their senses and in their health, 
 with the finest physical organization in the
 
 2& HISTORY 
 
 world. Adults acted with the simplicity and 
 grace of children. They made vases, tragedies 
 and statues, such as healthy senses should, 
 that is, in good taste. Such things have con- 
 tinued to be made in all ages, and are now, 
 wherever a healthy physique exists ; but, as a 
 class, from their superior organization, they have 
 surpassed all. They combine the energy of 
 manhood with the engaging unconsciousness of 
 childhood. The attraction of these manners is 
 that they belong to man, and are known to 
 every man in virtue of his being once a child ; 
 besides that there are always individuals who 
 retain these characteristics. A person of child- 
 like genius and inborn energy is still a Greek, 
 and revives our love of the Muse of Hellas. I 
 admire the love of nature in the Philoctetes. In 
 reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the 
 stars, rocks, mountains and waves, I feel time 
 passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the eter- 
 nity of man, the identity of his thought. The 
 Greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as I. 
 The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart 
 precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted 
 distinction between Greek and English, between 
 Classic and Romantic schools, seems superficial 
 and pedantic. When a thought of Plato be-
 
 HISTORY 27 
 
 comes a thought to me, when a truth that fired 
 the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. 
 When I feel that we two meet in a perception, 
 that our two souls are tinged with the same 
 hue, and do as it were run into one, why should 
 I measure degrees of latitude, why should I 
 count Egyptian years ? 
 
 The student interprets the age of chivalry by 
 his own age of chivalry, and the days of mari- 
 time adventure and circumnavigation by quite 
 parallel miniature experiences of his own. To 
 the sacred history of the world he has the same 
 key. When the voice of a prophet out of the 
 deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sen- 
 timent of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he 
 then pierces to the truth through all the confu- 
 sion of tradition and the caricature of institu- 
 tions. 
 
 Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at inter- 
 vals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. I 
 see that men of God have from time to time 
 walked among men and made their commission 
 felt in the heart and soul of the commonest 
 hearer. Hence evidently the tripod, the priest, 
 the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. 
 
 Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual peo- 
 ple. They cannot unite him to history, or re*
 
 28 HISTORY 
 
 concile him with themselves. As they come to 
 revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily, 
 their own piety explains every fact, every word. 
 
 How easily these old worships of Moses, of 
 Zoroaster, of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate 
 themselves in the mind. I cannot find any an- 
 tiquity in them. They are mine as much as 
 theirs. 
 
 I have seen the first monks and anchorets, 
 without crossing seas or centuries. More than 
 once some individual has appeared to me with 
 such negligence of labor and such commanding 
 contemplation, a haughty beneficiary begging in 
 the name of God, as made good to the nine- 
 teenth century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, 
 and the first Capuchins. 1 
 
 The priestcraft of the East and West, of the 
 Magian, Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, is expounded 
 in the individual's private life. The cramping 
 influence of a 'lard formalist on a young child, 
 in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing 
 the understanding, and that without producing 
 indignation, but only fear and obedience, and 
 even much sympathy with the tyranny, is a 
 familiar fact, explained to the child when he be- 
 comes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor 
 of his youth is himself a child tyrannized over
 
 HISTORY 29 
 
 by those names and words and forms of whose 
 influence he was merely the organ to the youth. 
 The fact teaches him how Belus was worshipped 
 and how the Pyramids were built, better than 
 the discovery by Champollion of the names of 
 all the workmen and the cost of every tile. He 
 finds Assyria and the Mounds of Cholula at 
 his door, and himself has laid the courses. 
 
 Again, in that protest which each considerate 
 person makes against the superstition of his 
 times, he repeats step for step the part of old 
 reformers, and in the search after truth finds, 
 like them, new perils to virtue. He learns again 
 what moral vigor is needed to supply the girdle 
 of a superstition. A great licentiousness treads 
 on the heels of a reformation. How many times 
 in the history of the world has the Luther of 
 the day had to lament the decay of piety in his 
 own household ! " Doctor," said his wife to 
 Martin Luther, one day, " how is it that whilst 
 subject to papacy we prayed so often and with 
 such fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost 
 coldness and very seldom ?"* 
 
 The advancing man discovers how deep a 
 property he has in literature, in all fable as 
 well as in all history. He finds that the poet 
 was no odd fellow who described strange and
 
 30 HISTORY 
 
 impossible situations, but that universal man 
 wrote by his pen a confession true for one and 
 true for all. His own secret biography he finds 
 in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted 
 down before he was born. One after another he 
 comes up in his private adventures with every 
 fable of ./Esop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, 
 of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with his 
 own head and hands. 
 
 The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being 
 proper creations of the imagination and not of 
 the fancy, are universal verities. What a range 
 of meanings and what perpetual pertinence has 
 the story of Prometheus ! Beside its primary 
 value as the first chapter of the history of 
 Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling authentic 
 facts, the invention of the mechanic arts and 
 the migration of colonies,) it gives the history 
 of religion, with some closeness to the faith of 
 later ages. Prometheus is the Jesus of the old 
 mythology. He is the friend of man; stands 
 between the unjust "justice" of the Eternal 
 Father and the race of mortals, and readily suf- 
 fers all things on their account. 1 But where it 
 departs from the Calvinistic Christianity and 
 exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it represents 
 a state of mind which readily appears wherever
 
 HISTORY 31 
 
 the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, 
 objective form, and which seems the self-defence 
 of man against this untruth, namely a discon- 
 tent with the believed fact that a God exists, 
 and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is 
 onerous. It would steal if it could the fire of 
 the Creator, and live apart from him and inde- 
 pendent of him. The Prometheus Vinctus is 
 the romance of skepticism. Not less true to all 
 time are the details of that stately apologue. 
 Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the 
 poets. When the gods come among men, they 
 are not known. Jesus was not ; Socrates and 
 Shakspeare were not. Antceus was suffocated 
 by the gripe of Hercules, but every time he 
 touched his mother-earth his strength was re- 
 newed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his 
 weakness both his body and his mind are invig- 
 orated by habits of conversation with nature. 
 The power of music, the power of poetry, to 
 unfix and as it were clap wings to solid nature^ 
 interprets the riddle of Orpheus. 1 The philo- 
 sophical perception of identity through endless 
 mutations of form makes him know the Pro- 
 teus. What else am I who laughed or wept yes- 
 terday, who slept last night like a corpse, and 
 this morning stood and ran ? And what see I
 
 3 a HISTORY 
 
 on any side but the transmigrations of Pro- 
 teus? I can symbolize my thought by using 
 the name of any creature, of any fact, because 
 every creature is man agent or patient. Tanta- 
 lus is but a name for you and me. Tantalus 
 means the impossibility of drinking the waters 
 of thought which are always gleaming and wav- 
 ing within sight of the soul. 1 The transmigra- 
 tion of souls is no fable. I would it were ; but 
 men and women are only half human. Every 
 animal of the barn-yard, the field and the for- 
 est, of the earth and of the waters that are 
 under the earth, has contrived to get a footing 
 and to leave the print of its features and form 
 in some one or other of these upright, heaven- 
 facing speakers. Ah ! brother, stop the ebb of 
 thy soul, ebbing downward into the forms 
 into whose habits thou hast now for many years 
 slid. 2 As near and proper to us is also that old 
 fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the 
 road-side and put riddles to every passenger. 
 If the man could not answer, she swallowed him 
 alive. If he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx 
 was slain. What is our life but an endless flight 
 of winged facts or events? In splendid variety 
 these changes come, all putting questions to the 
 human spirit. Those men who cannot answer
 
 HISTORY 33 
 
 by a superior wisdom these facts or questions 
 of time, serve them. Facts encumber them, 
 tyrannize over them, and make the men of 
 routine, the men of sense, in whom a literal obe- 
 dience to facts has extinguished every spark of 
 that light by which man is truly man. But if 
 the man is true to his better instincts or senti- 
 ments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one 
 that comes of a higher race; remains fast by the 
 soul and sees the principle, then the facts fall 
 aptly and supple into their places ; they know 
 their master, and the meanest of them glorifies 
 him. 1 
 
 See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that 
 every word should be a thing. These figures, 
 he would say, these Chirons, Griffins, Phorkyas, 
 Helen and Leda, are somewhat, and do exert a 
 specific influence on the mind. So far then are 
 they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the 
 first Olympiad. Much revolving them he writes 
 out freely his humor, and gives them body to 
 his own imagination. And although that poem 
 be as vague and fantastic as a dream, yet is it 
 much more attractive than the more regular 
 dramatic pieces of the same author, for the rea- 
 son that it operates a wonderful relief to the 
 mind from the routine of customary images,
 
 34 HISTORY 
 
 awakens the reader's invention and fancy by 
 the wild freedom of the design, and by the un- 
 ceasing succession of brisk shocks of surprise. 
 
 The universal nature, too strong for the petty 
 nature of the bard, sits on his neck and writes 
 through his hand ; so that when he seems to 
 vent a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue 
 is an exact allegory. Hence Plato said that 
 " poets utter great and wise things which they 
 do not themselves understand." * All the fic- 
 tions of the Middle Age explain themselves as 
 a masked or frolic expression of that which in 
 grave earnest the mind of that period toiled to 
 achieve. Magic and all that is ascribed to it is 
 a deep presentiment of the powers of science. 
 The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, 
 the power of subduing the elements, of using 
 the secret virtues of minerals, of understand 1 - 
 ing the voices of birds, are the obscure efforts 
 of the mind in a right direction. The preternat- 
 ural prowess of the hero, the gift of perpetual 
 youth, and the like, are alike the endeavor of 
 the human spirit " to bend the shows of things 
 to the desires of the mind." 
 
 In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul a garland 
 and a rose bloom on the head of her who is 
 faithful, and fade on the brow of the inconstant
 
 HISTORY 35 
 
 In the story of the Boy and the Mantle f even 
 a mature reader may be surprised with a glow 
 of virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the gen- 
 tle Venelas ; and indeed all the postulates of 
 elfin annals, that the fairies do not like to 
 be named; that their gifts are capricious and 
 not to be trusted ; that who seeks a treasure 
 must not speak; and the like, I find true in 
 Concord, however they might be in Cornwall 
 or Bretagne. 
 
 Is it otherwise in the newest romance ? I read 
 the Bride of Lammermoor. Sir William Ash- 
 ton is a mask for a vulgar temptation, Ravens- 
 wood Castle a fine name for proud poverty, and 
 the foreign mission of state only a Bunyan dis- 
 guise for honest industry. We may all shoot a 
 wild bull that would toss the good and beauti- 
 ful, by fighting down the unjust and sensual. 
 Lucy Ashton is another name for fidelity, which 
 is always beautiful and always liable to calamity 
 in this world. 
 
 But along with the civil and metaphysical 
 history of man, another history goes daily for- 
 ward, that of the external world, in which 
 he is not less strictly implicated. He is the 
 compend of time ; he is also the correlative of
 
 36 HISTORY 
 
 nature. His power consists in the multitude 
 of his affinities, in the fact that his life is inter- 
 twined with the whole chain of organic and in- 
 organic being. In old Rome the public roads 
 beginning at the Forum proceeded north, south, 
 east, west, to the centre of every province of the 
 empire, making each market -town of Persia, 
 Spain and Britain pervious to the soldiers of 
 the capital : so out of the human heart go as it 
 were highways to the heart of every object in 
 nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. 
 /A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, 
 / whose flower and fruitage is the world. His 
 faculties refer to natures out of him and pre- 
 dict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of 
 the fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings 
 of an eagle in the egg presuppose air. He can- 
 not live without a world. 1 Put Napoleon in 
 an island prison, let his faculties find no men 
 to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to play 
 for, and he would beat the air, and appear stu- 
 pid. Transport him to large countries, dense 
 population, complex interests and antagonist 
 power, and you shall see that the man Napo- 
 leon, bounded that is by such a profile and out- 
 line, is not the virtual Napoleon. This is but 
 Talbot's shadow ;
 
 HISTORY 37 
 
 " His substance is not here. 
 For what you see is but the smallest part 
 And least proportion of humanity; 
 But were the whole frame here, 
 It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, 
 Your roof were not sufficient to contain it." 1 
 
 Columbus needs a planet to shape his course 
 upon. Newton and Laplace need myriads of 
 age and thick-strewn celestial areas. One may 
 say a gravitating solar system is already pro- 
 phesied in the nature of Newton's mind. Not 
 less does the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, 
 from childhood exploring the affinities and 
 repulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of 
 organization. Does not the eye of the human 
 embryo predict the light? the ear of Handel 
 predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound ? Do 
 not the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, 
 Whittemore, Arkwright, predict the fusible, 
 hard, and temperable texture of metals, the 
 properties of stone, water, and wood ? Do not 
 the lovely attributes of the maiden child predict 
 the refinements and decorations of civil soci- 
 ety? Here also we are reminded of the action 
 of man on man. A mind might ponder its 
 thoughts for ages and not gain so much self- 
 knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it 
 
 56299
 
 38 HISTORY 
 
 in a day. Who knows himself before he has 
 been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or 
 has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the 
 throb of thousands in a national exultation or 
 alarm ? No man can antedate his experience, or 
 guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall 
 unlock, any more than he can draw to-day the 
 face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow 
 for the first time. 
 
 I will not now go behind the general statex 
 ment to explore the reason of this correspon- 
 dency. Let it suffice that in the light of these 
 two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and 
 that nature is its correlative, history is to be 
 read and written. 
 
 Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate 
 and reproduce its treasures for each pupil. He 
 too shall pass through the whole cycle of expe- 
 rience. He shall collect into a focus the rays 
 of nature. History no longer shall be a dull 
 book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and 
 wise man. You shall not tell me by languages 
 and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have 
 read. You shall make me feel what periods you 
 have lived. A man shall be the Temple of 
 Fame. He shall walk, as the poets have de- 
 scribed that goddess, in a robe painted all over
 
 HISTORY 39 
 
 with wonderful events and experiences; his 
 own form and features by their exalted intelli- 
 gence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find 
 in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the 
 Age of Gold, the Apples of Knowledge, the 
 Argonautic Expedition, the calling of Abra- 
 ham, the building of the Temple, the Advent 
 of Christ, Dark Ages, the Revival of Letters, 
 the Reformation, the discovery of new lands, 
 the opening of new sciences and new regions in 
 man. He shall be the priest of Pan, and bring 
 with him into humble cottages the blessing of 
 the morning stars, and all the recorded benefits 
 of heaven and earth. 
 
 Is there somewhat overweening in this claim ? 
 Then I reject all I have written, for what is the 
 use of pretending to know what we know not ? 
 But it is the fault of our rhetoric that we can- 
 not strongly state one fact without seeming to 
 belie some other. I hold our actual knowledge 
 very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the 
 lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the 
 lichen on the log. What do I know sympa- 
 thetically, morally, of either of these worlds of 
 life ? As old as the Cauca-sian man, perhaps 
 older, these creatures have kept their counsel 
 beside him, and there is no record of any word
 
 40 HISTORY 
 
 or sign that has passed from one to the other.* 
 What connection do the books show between 
 the fifty or sixty chemical elements and the his- 
 torical eras? Nay, what does history yet re- 
 cord of the metaphysical annals of man ? What 
 light does it shed on those mysteries which we 
 hide under the names Death and Immortality? 
 Yet every history should be written in a wis- 
 dom which divined the range of our affinities 
 and looked at facts as symbols. I am ashamed 
 to see what a shallow village tale our so-called 
 History is. How many times we must say 
 Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople ! What 
 does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are 
 Olympiads and Consulates to these neighbor- 
 ing systems of being? Nay, what food or expe- 
 rience or succor have they for the Esquimaux 
 seal-hunter, for the Kanaka in his canoe, for 
 the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter ? 
 
 Broader and deeper we must write our annals, 
 from an ethical reformation, from an influx 
 of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if 
 we would trulier express our central and wide- 
 related nature, instead of this old chronology 
 of selfishness and pride to which we have too 
 long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for 
 us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of
 
 HISTORY 41 
 
 science and of letters is not the way into nature. 
 The idiot, the Indian, the child and unschooled 
 farmer's boy stand nearer to the light by which 
 nature is to be read, than the dissector or the 
 antiquary. 1
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 "Ne te quasi veris extra." 
 
 MAN is his own star; and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man, 
 Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
 
 Epilogut to Btaumont and Fletcher' t Honest Man's Fortut
 
 Cast ihe bantling on the rocks, 
 Suckle him with the she- wolf's teat, 
 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
 Power and speed be hands and feet.
 
 yu/v\ 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 .-W--' V , V 6 ** 
 
 I READ the other day some verses written 
 by an eminent painter which were original 
 and not conventional. 1 The soul always hears 
 an admonition in such lines, let the subject be 
 what it may. The sentiment they instil is of 
 more value than any thought they may contain. 
 To believe your own thought, to believe that 
 what is true for you in your private heart is true 
 for all men, that is genius. Speak your latent 
 conviction, and it shall be the universal sense ; 
 for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, 
 and our first thought is rendered back to us by 
 the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar 
 as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest 
 merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is 
 that they set at naught books and traditions, and 
 spoke not what men, but what they thought. 
 A man should learn to detect and watch that 
 gleam of light which flashes across his mind from 
 within, more than the lustre of the firmament 
 of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without 
 notice his thought, because it is his. In every 
 work of genius we recognize our own rejected 
 Jioughts ; they come back to us with a certain
 
 4b SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 alienated majesty. 1 Great works of art have no 
 more affecting lesson for us than this. They 
 teach us to abide by our spontaneous impres- 
 sion with good-humored inflexibility then most 
 when the whole cry of voices is on the other 
 side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with 
 masterly good sense precisely what we have 
 thought and felt all the time, and we shall be 
 forced to take with shame our own opinion from 
 another. 
 
 There is a time in every man's education when 
 he arrives at the conviction that envy is igno- 
 rance ; that imitation is suicide ; that he must 
 take himself for better for worse as his portion ; 
 that though the wide universe is full of good, 
 no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him 
 but through his toil bestowed on that plot of 
 ground which is given to him to till. The power 
 which resides in him is new in nature, and none 
 but he knows what that is which he can do, nor 
 does he know until he has tried. Not for no- 
 thing one face, one character, one fact, makes 
 much impression on him, and another none. 
 This sculpture in the memory is not without 
 preestablished harmony. The eye was placed 
 where one ray should fall, that it might testify 
 of that particular ray. We but half express our-
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 47 
 
 selves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which 
 each of us represents. 1 It may be safely trusted 
 as proportionate and of good issues, so it be 
 faithfully imparted, but God will not have his 
 work made manifest by cowards. (A man is re- 
 lieved and gay when he has put his heart into 
 1 his work and done his best ; but what he has 
 laid or done otherwise shall give him no peaceT) 
 It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In 
 the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse 
 befriends ; no invention, no hope. 
 
 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that 
 iron string. Accept the place the divine provi- 
 dence has found for you, the society of your 
 contemporaries, the connection of events. Great 
 men have always done so, and confided them- 
 selves childlike to the genius of their age, betray- 
 ing their perception that the absolutely trustwor- 
 thy was seated at their heart, working through 
 their hands, predominating in all their being. 
 And we are now men, and must accept in the 
 highest mind the same transcendent destiny ; 
 and not minors and invalids in a protected cor- 
 ner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but 
 guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the 
 Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the 
 Dark.
 
 f8 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 What pretty oracles nature yields us on this 
 text in the face and behavior of children, babes, 
 and even brutes ! That divided and rebel mind, 
 that distrust of a sentiment because our arith- 
 metic has computed the strength and means 
 opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their 
 mind being whole, their eye is as yet uncon- 
 quered, and when we look in their faces we are 
 disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody ; all 
 conform to it ; so that one babe commonly 
 makes four or five out of the adults who prattle 
 and play to it. So God has armed youth and 
 prberty and manhood no less with its own pi- 
 quancy and charm, and made it enviable and 
 gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it 
 will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has 
 no force, because he cannot speak to you and 
 me. Hark ! in the next room his voice is suffi- 
 ciently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows 
 how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or 
 bold then, he will know how to make us seniors 
 very unnecessary.* 
 
 The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a 
 dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to 
 do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy 
 attitude of human nature. A boy is in the par- 
 lor what the p!t~is in the playhouse; indepen-
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 49 
 
 dent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner 
 on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and 
 sentences them on their merits, in the swift, 
 summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, 
 silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers him- 
 self never about consequences, about interests ; 
 he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You 
 must court him ; he does not court you. But 
 the man is as it were clapped into jail by his 
 consciousness. As soon as he has once acted 
 or spoken with 'eclat he is a committed person, 
 watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hun- 
 dreds, whose affections must now enter into his 
 account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he 
 could pass again into his neutrality ! Who can 
 thus avoid all pledges and, having observed, ob- 
 serve again from the same unaffected, unbiased, 
 unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must al- 
 ways be formidable. He would utter opinions 
 on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not 
 private but necessary, would sink like darts into 
 the ear of men and put them in fear. 1 
 
 These are the voices which we hear in soli- 
 tude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we 
 enter into the world. Society everywhere is in 
 conspiracy against the manhood of every one 
 of its members. Society is a joint-stock com-
 
 50 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 pany, in which the members agree, for the bet- 
 ter securing of his bread to each shareholder, to 
 surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. 
 The virtue in most request is conformity. Self- 
 reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities 
 and creators, but names and customs. 
 
 Whoso would be a man, must be a noncon- 
 formist. He who would gather immortal palms 
 must not be hindered by the name of goodness, 
 but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing 
 is at last sacred but the integrity of your own 
 mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall 
 have the suffrage of the world. I remember an 
 answer which when quite young I was prompted 
 to make to a valued adviser who was wont to 
 importune me with the dear old doctrines of the 
 church. On my saying, " What have I to do 
 with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly 
 from within ? " my friend suggested, " But 
 these impulses may be from below, not from 
 above." I replied, " They do not seem to me 
 to be such ; but if I am the Devil's child, I will 
 live then from the Devil." No law can be sa- 
 cred to me but that of my nature. Good and 
 bad are but names very readily transferable to 
 that or this ; the only right is what is after my ' 
 constitution ; the only wrong what is against it.
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 51 
 
 A man is to carry himself in the presence of all 
 opposition as if every thing were titular and 
 ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how 
 easily we capitulate to badges and names, to 
 large societies and dead institutions. Every 
 decent and well-spoken individual affects and 
 sways me more than is right. I ought to go 
 upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in 
 all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of 
 philanthropy, shall that pass ? If an angry bigot 
 assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and 
 comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, 
 why should I not say to him, c Go love thy 
 infant ; love thy wood-chopper ; be good-na- 
 tured and modest ; have that grace ; and never 
 varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with 
 this incredible tenderness for black folk a thou- 
 sand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' 
 Rough and graceless would be such greeting, 
 but truth is handsomer than the affectation of 
 love. Your goodness must have some edge to 
 it, else it is none. The doctrine of hatred 
 must be preached, as the counteraction of the 
 doctrine of love, when that pules and whines. 
 I shun father and mother and wife and brother 
 when my genius calls me. I would write on the 
 lintels of the door - post, Whim. I hope it is
 
 52 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 somewhat better than whim at last, but we can- 
 not spend the day in explanation. 1 Expect me 
 not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude 
 company. Then again, do not tell me, as a 
 good man did to-day, of my obligation to put 
 all poor men in good situations. Are they my 
 poor ? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, 
 that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I 
 give to such men as do not belong to me and 
 to whom I do not belong. There is a class of 
 persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am 
 bought and sold ; for them I will go to prison 
 if need be ; but your miscellaneous popular 
 charities ; the education at college of fools ; 
 the building of meeting-houses to the vain end 
 to which many now stand ; alms to sots, and 
 the thousand-fold Relief Societies ; though 
 I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and 
 give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by 
 and by I shall have the manhood to with- 
 hold.' 
 
 Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather 
 the exception than the rule. There is the man 
 and his virtues. Men do what is called a good 
 action, as some piece of courage or charity, much 
 as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily 
 non-appearance on parade. Their works are
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 53 
 
 done as an apology or extenuation of their liv- 
 ing in the world, as invalids and the insane 
 pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. 
 
 T fjn jmj- wisJLfn evpiafpj buf JgMiye. My life 
 
 is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much 
 prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it 
 be genuine and equal, than that it should be 
 glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound 
 and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. 
 I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and 
 refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. 
 I know that for myself it makes no difference 
 whether I do or forbear those actions which are 
 reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for 
 a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few 
 and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, 
 and do not need for my own assurance or the 
 assurance of my fellows any secondary testi- 
 mony. 
 
 - What I must do is all that concerns me, not 
 what the people think. This rule, equally ardu- 
 ous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve 
 for the whole distinction between greatness and 
 meanness. It is the harder because you will al- 
 ways find those who think they know what is 
 your duty better than you know it. It is easy 
 in the world to live after the world's opinion ;
 
 54 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but 
 the'great man is he who in the midst of the 
 crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the inde- 
 pendence of solitude. 
 
 The objection to conforming to usages that 
 have become dead to you is that it scatters your 
 force. It loses your time and blurs the impres- 
 sion of your character. If you maintain a dead 
 church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote 
 with a great party either for the government or 
 against it, 1 spread your table like base house- 
 keepers, under all these screens I have diffi- 
 culty to detect the precise man you are : and of 
 course so much force is withdrawn from your 
 proper life. But do your work, and I shall know 
 you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce 
 yourself. A man must consider what a blind- 
 man's-buff is this game of conformity. I f I know 
 your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a 
 preacher announce for his text and topic the ex- 
 pediency of one of the institutions of his church. 
 Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can 
 he say a new and spontaneous word ? Do I not 
 know that with all this ostentation of examin- 
 ing the grounds of the institution he will do no 
 such thing ? Do I not know that he is pledged 
 to himself not to look but at one side, the
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 55 
 
 permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish 
 minister ? He is a retained attorney, and these 
 airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. 
 Well, most men have bound their eyes with one 
 or another handkerchief, and attached them- 
 selves to some one of these communities of 
 opinion. This conformity makes them not false 
 in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but 
 false in all particulars. Their every truth is 
 not quite true. Their two is not the real two, 
 their four not the real four ; so that every word 
 they say chagrins us and we know not where to 
 begin to set them right. Meantime nature is 
 not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of 
 the party to which we adhere. We come to wear 
 one cut of face and figure, and acquire by de- 
 grees the gentlest asinine expression. There is 
 a mortifying experience in particular, which does 
 not fail to wreak itself also in the general his- 
 tory ; I mean " the foolish face of praise," the 
 forced smile which we put on in company where 
 we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation 
 which does not interest us. The muscles, not 
 spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurp- 
 ing wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of 
 the face, with the most disagreeable sensation. 
 For nonconformity the world whips you with 
 
 V
 
 5 6 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 its displeasure. And therefore a man must know 
 how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers 
 look askance on him in the public street or in 
 the friend's parlor. If this aversion had its ori- 
 gin in contempt and resistance like his own he 
 might well go home with a sad countenance ; but 
 the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet 
 faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and 
 off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. 
 Yet is the discontent of the multitude more for- 
 midable than that of the senate and the college. 
 It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the 
 world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. 
 Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are 
 timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But 
 when to their feminine rage the indignation of 
 the people is added, when the ignorant and the 
 poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute 
 force that lies at the bottom of society is made 
 to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magna- 
 nimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle 
 of no concernment. 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self-trust 
 is our consistency ; a reverence for our past act 
 or word because the eyes of others have no other 
 data for computing our orbit than our past acts, 
 and we are loth to disappoint them.
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 57 
 
 But why should you keep your head over 
 your shoulder ? Why drag about this corpse of 
 your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you 
 have stated in this or that public place ? Sup- 
 pose you should contradict yourself; what then ? 
 It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely 
 on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of 
 pure memory, but to bring the past for judg- 
 ment into the thousand-eyed present, and live 
 ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you 
 have denied personality to the Deity, yet when 
 the devout motions of the soul come, yield to 
 them heart and life, though they should clothe 
 God with shape and color. 1 Leave your theory, 
 as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and 
 flee. 
 
 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of lit- 
 tle minds, adored by little statesmen and philo- 
 sophers and divines. With consistency a great 
 soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well 
 concern himself with his shadow on the wall. 
 Speak what you think now in hard words and 
 to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard 
 words again, though it contradict every thing you 
 said to-day. { Ah, so you shall be sure to be 
 misunderstood.' Is it so bad then to be mis- 
 understood ? Pythagoras was misunderstood,
 
 58 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Coper* 
 nicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure 
 and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great 
 is to be misunderstood. 1 
 
 I suppose no man can violate his nature. All 
 the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law 
 of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and 
 Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the 
 sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and 
 try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alex- 
 andrian stanza ; read it forward, backward, or 
 across, it still spells the same thing. In this 
 pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, 
 let me record day by day my honest thought 
 without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot 
 doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I 
 mean it not and see it not. My book should 
 smell of pines and resound with the hum of 
 insects. 8 The swallow over my window should 
 interweave that thread or straw he carries in his 
 bill into my web also. We pass for what we 
 are. Character teaches above our wills. Men 
 imagine that they communicate their virtue or 
 vice only by overt actions, and do not see that 
 virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. 
 
 There will be an agreement in whatever vari- 
 ety of actions, sq they be each honest and natu-
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 59 
 
 ral in their hour. For of one will, the actions 
 will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. 
 These varieties are lost sight of at a little dis- 
 tance, at a little height of thought. One ten- 
 dency unites them all. The voyage of the best 
 ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the 
 line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens 
 itself to the average tendency. Your genuine 
 action will explain itself and will explain your 
 other genuine actions. Your conformity explains 
 nothing. Act singly, and what you have already 
 done singly will justify you now. Greatness 
 appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough 
 to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must have 
 done so much right before as to defend me 
 now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always 
 scorn appearances and you always may. The 
 force of character is cumulative. All the fore- 
 gone days of virtue work their health into this. 
 What makes the majesty of the heroes of the 
 senate and the field, which so fills the imagi- 
 nation ? The consciousness of a train of great 
 days and victories behind. They shed a united 
 light on the advancing actor. He is attended 
 as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which 
 throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dig- 
 nity into Washington's port, and America into
 
 60 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because 
 it is no ephemera. It is always 'ancient virtue. 
 We worship it to-day because it is not of to- 
 day. We love it and pay it homage because it 
 is not a trap for our love and homage, but is 
 self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of 
 an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a 
 young person. 
 
 I hope in these days we have heard the last 
 of conformity and consistency. Let the words 
 be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. In- 
 stead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whis- 
 tle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow 
 and apologize more. A great man is coming to 
 eat at my house. I do not wish to please him ; 
 I wish that he should wish to please me. I 
 will stand here for humanity, and though I 
 would make it kind, I would make it true. 
 Let us affront and reprimand the smooth me- 
 diocrity and squalid contentment of the times, 
 and hurl in the face of custom and trade and 
 office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, 
 that there is a great responsible Thinker and 
 Actor working wherever a man works ; that a 
 true man belongs to no other time or place, 
 but is the centre of things. Where he is, there 
 is nature. He measures you and all men and
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 61 
 
 all events. Ordinarily, every body- in society 
 reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other 
 person. Character, reality, reminds you of no- 
 thing else ; it takes place of the whole creation. 
 The man must be so much that he must make 
 all circumstances indifferent. Every true man 
 is a cause, a country, and an age ; requires infi- 
 nite spaces and numbers and time fully to ac- 
 complish his design ; and posterity seem to 
 follow his steps as a train of clients. A man 
 Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a 
 Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions 
 of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that 
 he is confounded with virtue and the possible of 
 man. An institution is the lengthened shadow 
 of one man ; as, Monachrsm, of the Hermit 
 Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quaker- 
 ism, of Fox ; Methodism, of Wesley ; Aboli- 
 tion, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the 
 height of Rome ; " and all history resolves itself 
 very easily into the biography of a few stout 
 and earnest persons. 1 
 
 Let a man then know his worth, and keep 
 things under his feet. Let him not peep or 
 steal, or skulk up. and down with the air of a 
 charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the 
 world which exists for him. But the man in the
 
 62 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 street, finding no worth in himself which corre- 
 sponds to the force which built a tower or sculp- 
 tured a marble god, feels poor when he looks 
 on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly 
 book have an alien and forbidding air, much 
 like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 
 u Who are you, Sir ? " Yet they all are his, suit- 
 ors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that 
 they will come out and take possession. The 
 picture waits for my verdict; it is not to com- 
 mand me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. 
 That popular fable of the sot who was picked 
 up dead -drunk in the street, carried to the 
 duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in 
 the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with 
 all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and as- 
 sift-ed that he had been insane, owes its popu- 
 larity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the 
 state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, 
 but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason 
 and finds himself a true prince. 1 
 
 Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. 
 In history our imagination plays us false. King- 
 dom and lordship, power and estate, are a gau- 
 dier vocabulary than private John and Edward 
 in a small house and common day's work ; but 
 the things of life are the same to both ; the sum
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 63 
 
 total of both is the same. Why all this defer- 
 ence to Alfred and Scanderbeg and Gustavus ? 
 Suppose they were virtuous ; did they wear out 
 virtue ? As great a stake depends on your pri- 
 vate act to-day as followed their public and 
 renowned steps. When private men shall act 
 with original views, the lustre will be transferred 
 from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. 
 
 The world has been instructed by its kings, 
 who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. 
 It has been taught by this colossal symbol the 
 mutual reverence that is due from man to man. 
 The joyful loyalty with which men have every- 
 where suffered the king, the noble, or the great 
 proprietor to walk among them by a law of his 
 own, make his own scale of men and things and 
 reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money 
 but with honor, and represent the law in his 
 person, was the hieroglyphic by which they ob- 
 scurely signified their consciousness of their own 
 right and comeliness, the right of every man. 
 
 The magnetism which all original action ex- 
 erts is explained when we inquire the reason of 
 self-trust. Who is the Trustee ? What is the 
 aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance 
 may be grounded ? What is the nature and 
 power of that science-baffling star, without par-
 
 64 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 allax, without calculable elements, which shoots 
 a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure 
 actions, if the least mark of independence ap- 
 pear ? The inquiry leads us to that source, at 
 once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of 
 life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We 
 denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst 
 all later teachings are tuitions. 1 In that deep 
 it>rce, the last fact behind which analysis cannot 
 go, all things find their common origin. For 
 the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we 
 know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from 
 things, from space, from light, from time, from 
 man, but one with them and proceeds obviously 
 from the same source whence their life and being 
 also proceed. We first share the life by which 
 things exist and afterwards see them as appear- 
 ances in nature and forget that we have shared 
 their cause. Here is the fountain of action and 
 of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspi- 
 ration which giveth man wisdom and which 
 cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. 
 We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which 
 makes us receivers of its truth and organs of 
 its activity. When we discern justice, when we 
 discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but 
 allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 65 
 
 this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul 
 that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its pre- 
 sence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every 
 man discriminates between the voluntary acts 
 of his mind and his involuntary perceptions, 
 and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a 
 perfect faith is due. He may err in the expres- 
 sion of them, but he knows that these things 
 are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. 
 My wilful actions and acquisitions are but rov- 
 ing ; the idlest reverie, the faintest native 
 emotion, command my curiosity and respect. 
 Thoughtless people contradict as readily the 
 statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather 
 much more readily; for they do not distinguish 
 between perception and notion. They fancy 
 that I choose to see this or that thing. But 
 perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see 
 a trait, my children will see it after me, and in 
 course of time all mankind, although it may 
 chance that no one has seen it before me. For 
 my perception of it is as much a fact as the 
 sun. 1 
 
 The relations of the soul to the divine spirit 
 are so pure that it is profane to seek to inter- 
 pose helps. It must be that when God speak- 
 eth he should communicate, not one thing, but
 
 56 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 all things; should fill the world with his voice; 
 should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, 
 from the centre of the present thought; and 
 new date and new create the whole. Whenever 
 a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, 
 old things pass away, means, teachers, texts, 
 temples fall ; it lives now, and absorbs past and 
 future into the present hour. All things are 
 made sacred by relation to it, one as much as 
 another. All things are dissolved to their centre 
 by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty 
 and particular miracles disappear. If therefore 
 a man claims to know and speak of God and 
 carries you backward to the phraseology of some 
 old mouldered nation in another country, in 
 another world, believe him not. Is the acorn 
 better than the oak which is its fulness and com- 
 pletion ? Is the parent better than the child into 
 whom he has cast his ripened being ? Whence 
 then this worship of the past ? The centuries 
 are conspirators against the sanity and authority 
 of the soul. Time and space are but physiolo- 
 gical colors which the eye makes, but the soul is 
 light : where it is, is day ; where it was, is night ; 
 and history is an impertinence and an injury if 
 it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue 
 or parable of my being and becoming.
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 67 
 
 Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer 
 upright ; he dares not say * I think,' * I am/ but 
 quotes some saint or sage. 1 He is ashamed be- 
 fore the blade of grass or the blowing rose. 
 These roses under my window make no refer- 
 ence to former roses or to better ones ; they are 
 for what they are ; they exist with God to-day. 
 There is no time to them. There is simply the 
 rose ; it is perfect in every moment of its exist- 
 ence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life 
 acts ; in the full-blown flower there is no more ; 
 in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature 
 is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments 
 alike. But man postpones or remembers ; he 
 does not live in the present, but with reverted 
 eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches 
 that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee 
 the future. He cannot be happy and strong 
 until he too lives with nature in the present, 
 above time. 
 
 This should be plain enough. Yet see what 
 strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself 
 unless he speak the phraseology of I know not 
 what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not 
 always set so great a price on a few texts, on a 
 few lives. We are like children who repeat bv 
 rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and.
 
 68 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 as they grow older, of the men of talents and 
 character they chance to see, painfully recol- 
 lecting the exact words they spoke ; afterwards, 
 when they come into the point of view which 
 those had who uttered these sayings, they un- 
 derstand them and are willing to let the words 
 go ; for at any time they can use words as good 
 when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall 
 see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be 
 strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When 
 we have new perception, we shall gladly disbur- 
 den the memory of its hoarded treasures as old 
 rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice 
 shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook 
 and the rustle of the corn. 
 
 And now at last the highest truth on this sub- 
 ject remains unsaid ; probably cannot be said ; 
 for all that we say is the far-off remembering of 
 the intuition. That thought by what I can now 
 nearest approach to say it, is this. When good 
 is near you, when you have life in yourself, it 
 is not by any known or accustomed way ; you 
 shall not discern the footprints of any other ; 
 you shall not see the face of man ; you shall not 
 hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, 
 shall be wholly strange and new. It shall ex- 
 clude example and experience. You take the
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 69 
 
 way from man, not to man. All persons that 
 ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear 
 and hope are alike beneath it. There is some- 
 what low even in hope. In the hour of vision 
 there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor 
 properly joy. The soul raised over passion be- 
 holds identity and eternal causation, perceives 
 the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms 
 itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast 
 spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South 
 Sea ; long intervals of time, years, centuries, are 
 of no account. This which I think and feel un- 
 derlay every former state of life and circum- 
 stances, as it does underlie my present, and what 
 is called life and what is called death. 
 
 Life only avails, not the having lived. Power 
 ceases in the instant of repose ; it resides in the 
 moment of transition from a past to a new state, 
 in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an 
 aim. This one fact the world hates ; that the 
 soul becomes ; for that forever degrades the past, 
 turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a 
 shame,confounds the saint with the rogue,shoves 
 Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why then do we 
 prate of self-reliance ? Inasmuch as the soul is 
 present there will be power not confident but 
 agent." To talk of reliance is a poor external
 
 7 o SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 *vay of speaking. Speak rather of that which 
 relies because it works and is. Who has more 
 obedience than I masters me, though he should 
 not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve 
 by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhe- 
 toric when we speak of eminent virtue. We do 
 not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man 
 or a company of men, plastic and permeable to 
 principles, by the law of nature must overpower 
 and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, 
 who are not. 
 
 This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly 
 reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution 
 of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence 
 is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it 
 constitutes the measure of good by the degree in 
 which it enters into all lower forms. All things 
 real are so by so much virtue as they contain. 
 Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, wa^ 
 eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and 
 engage my respect as examples of its presence 
 and impure action. I see the same law working 
 in nature for conservation and growth. Power 
 is, in nature, the essential measure of right. Na- 
 ture suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms 
 which cannot help itself. The genesis and matu- 
 ration of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 71 
 
 tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the 
 vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are 
 demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore 
 self-relying soul. 
 
 Thus all concentrates: let us not rove ; let us 
 sit at home with the cause. 1 Let us stun and as- 
 tonish the intruding rabble of men and books 
 and institutions by a simple declaration of the 
 divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from 
 off their feet, for God is here within. Let our 
 simplicity judge them, and our docility to our 
 own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and 
 fortune beside our native riches. 
 
 But now we are a mob. Man does not stand 
 in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to 
 stay at home, to put itself in communication 
 with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to 
 beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. 
 We must go alone. I like the silent church be- 
 fore the service begins, better than any preach- 
 ing. How far off, how cool, how chaste the 
 persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or 
 sanctuary ! So let us always sit. Why should 
 we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or 
 father, or child, because they sit around our 
 hearth, or are said to have the same blood ? All 
 men have my blood and I all men's. Not for
 
 72 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even 
 to the extent of being ashamed of it. 1 But your 
 isolation must not be mechanical, but spirit- 
 ual, that is, must be elevation. At times the 
 whole world seems to be in conspiracy to im- 
 portune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, cli- 
 ent, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock 
 at once at thy closet door and say, ' Come 
 out unto us.' But keep thy state ; come not 
 into their confusion. The power men possess 
 to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. 
 No man can come near me but through my act. 
 " What we love that we have, but by desire we 
 bereave ourselves of the love." 
 
 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of 
 obedience and faith, let us at least resist our 
 temptations ; let us enter into the state of war 
 and wake Thor and Woden, courage and con- 
 stancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done 
 in our smooth times by speaking the truth. 
 Check this lying hospitality and lying affec- 
 tion. Live no longer to the expectation of these 
 deceived and deceiving people with whom we 
 converse. Say to them, ' O father, O mother, 
 
 wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with 
 you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward 
 
 1 am the truth's. Be it known unto you that
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 73 
 
 henceforward I obey no law less than vhe eter- 
 nal law. I will have no covenants but proximi- 
 ties. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, 
 to support my family, to be the chaste husband 
 of one wife, but these relations I must fill 
 after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal 
 from your customs. I must be myself. 1 can- 
 not break myself any longer for you, or you. 
 If you can love me for what I am, we shall be 
 the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to 
 deserve that you should. I will not hide my 
 tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is 
 deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the 
 sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and 
 the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love 
 you ; if you are not, I will not hurt you and 
 myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are 
 true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave 
 to your companions ; I will seek my own. I 
 do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It 
 is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, 
 however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in 
 truth. Does this sound harsh to-day ? You 
 will soon love what is dictated by your nature 
 as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it 
 will bring us out safe at last.' But so may 
 you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot
 
 74 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 sell my liberty and my power, to save their 
 sensibility. Besides, all persons have their mo- 
 ments of reason, when they look out into the 
 region of absolute truth ; then will they justify 
 me and do the same thing. 
 
 The populace think that your rejection of 
 popular standards is a rejection of all standard, 
 and mere antinomianism ; and the bold sensu- 
 alist will use the name of philosophy to gild 
 his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. 
 There are two confessionals, in one or the other 
 of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil 
 your round of duties by clearing yourself in the 
 direct, or in the reflex way. Consider whether 
 you have satisfied your relations to father, mo- 
 ther, cousin, neighbor, town, cat and dog 
 whether any of these can upbraid you. But I 
 may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve 
 me to myself. I have my own stern claims and 
 perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to 
 many offices that are called duties. But if I can 
 discharge its debts it enables me to dispense 
 with the popular code. If any one imagines 
 that this law is lax, let him keep its command- 
 ment one day. 1 
 
 And truly it demands something godlike in 
 him who has cast off the common motives of
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 75 
 
 humanity and has ventured to trust himself for 
 a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his 
 will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest 
 be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple 
 purpose may be to him as strong as iron neces- 
 sity is to others ! 
 
 If any man consider the present aspects of 
 what is called by distinction society^ he will see 
 the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart 
 of man seem to be drawn out, and we are be- 
 come timorous, desponding whimperers. We 
 are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of 
 death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields 
 no great and perfect persons. We want men and 
 women who shall renovate life and our social 
 state, but we see that most natures are insol- 
 vent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an 
 ambition out of all proportion to their practical 
 force and do lean and beg day and night con- 
 tinually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our 
 arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion 
 we have not chosen, but society has chosen for 
 us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged 
 battle of fate, where strength is born. 
 
 If our young men miscarry in their first en- 
 terprises they lose all heart. If the young mer- 
 chant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest
 
 76 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 genius studies at one of our colleges and is not 
 installed in an office within one year afterwards 
 in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, 
 it seems to his friends and to himself that he is 
 right in being disheartened and in complaining 
 the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New 
 Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all 
 the professions, who teams it , farms //, peddles, 
 keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, 
 goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, 
 in successive years, and always like a cat falls on 
 his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. 1 
 He walks abreast with his days and feels no 
 shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he 
 does not postpone his life, but lives already. 
 He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. 
 Let a Stoic open the resources of man and tell 
 men they are not leaning willows, but can and 
 must detach themselves ; that with the exercise 
 of self-trust, new powers shall appear ; that a 
 man is the word made flesh, born to shed heal- 
 ing to the nations ; that he should be ashamed 
 of our compassion, and that the moment he 
 acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, 
 idolatries and customs out of the window, we 
 pity him no more but thank and revere him; 
 and that teacher shall restore the life of man
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 77 
 
 to splendor and make his name dear to all 
 history. 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance 
 must work a revolution in all the offices and 
 relations of men ; in their religion ; in their 
 education ; in their pursuits ; their modes of 
 living ; their association ; in their property ; in 
 their speculative views. 
 
 i. In what prayers do men allow themselves ! 
 That which they call a holy office is not so 
 much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad 
 and asks for some foreign addition to come 
 through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in 
 endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and 
 mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves 
 a particular commodity, anything less than all 
 good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of 
 the facts of life from the highest point of view. 
 It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant 
 soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his 
 works good. But prayer as a means to effect a 
 private end is meanness and theft. It supposes 
 dualism and not unity in nature and conscious- 
 ness. As soon as the man is at one with God, 
 he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all 
 action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in 
 his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower
 
 78 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true 
 prayers heard throughout nature, though for 
 cheap ends. 1 Caratach, in Fletcher's "Bon- 
 duca," when admonished to inquire the mind 
 of the god Audate, replies, 
 
 His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors ; 
 Our valors are our best gods. 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. 
 Discontent is the want of self-reliance : it is in- 
 firmity of will. Regret calamities if you can 
 thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your 
 own work and already the evil begins to be re- 
 paired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come 
 to them who weep foolishly and sit down and 
 cry for company, instead of imparting to them 
 truth and health in rough electric shocks, put- 
 ting them once more in communication with 
 their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy 
 in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and 
 men is the self-helping man. For him all doors 
 are flung wide ; him all tongues greet, all honors 
 crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love 
 goes out to him and embraces him because he 
 did not need it. We solicitously and apologeti- 
 cally caress and celebrate him because he held 
 on his way and scorned our disapprobation. 
 The gods love him because men hated him.
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 79 
 
 " To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, 
 " the blessed Immortals are swift." 
 
 As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so 
 are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They 
 say with those foolish Israelites, ' Let not God 
 speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any 
 man with us, and we will obey.' Everywhere 
 I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, 
 because he has shut his own temple doors and 
 recites fables merely of his brother's, or his 
 brother's brother's God. Every new mind is a 
 new classification. If it prove a mind of uncom- 
 mon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, 
 a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its 
 classification on other men, and lo ! a new sys- 
 tem. In proportion to the depth of the thought, 
 and so to the number of the objects it touches 
 and brings within reach of the pupil, is his 
 complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in 
 creeds and churches, which are also classifications 
 of some powerful mind acting on the elemen- 
 tal thought of duty and man's relation to the 
 Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swe- 
 denborgism. The pupil takes the same delight 
 in subordinating every thing to the new termi- 
 nology as a girl who has just learned botany in 
 seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby.
 
 8o SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 It will happen for a time that the pupil will 
 find his intellectual power has grown by the 
 study of his master's mind. But in all unbal- 
 anced minds the classification is idolized, passes 
 for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible 
 means, so that the walls of the system blend to 
 their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of 
 the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to 
 them hung on the arch their master built. They 
 cannot imagine how you aliens have any right 
 to see, how you can see; c It must be some- 
 how that you stole the light from us.' They 
 do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, in- 
 domitable, will break into any cabin, even into 
 theirs. 1 Let them chirp awhile and call it their 
 own. If they are honest and do well, presently 
 their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, 
 will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and 
 the immortal light, all young and joyful, million- 
 orbed, million-colored, will beam over the uni- 
 verse as on the first morning. 
 
 2. It is for want of self-culture that the su- 
 perstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, 
 England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all 
 educated Americans. They who made Eng- 
 land, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagina- 
 tion, did so by sticking fast where they were,
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 81 
 
 like an axis of the earth. In manly hours we 
 feel that duty is our place. The soul is no trav- 
 eller; the wise man stays at home, and when his 
 necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him 
 from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at 
 home still and shall make men sensible by the 
 expression of his countenance that he goes, the 
 missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities 
 and men like a sovereign and not like an inter- 
 loper or a valet. 
 
 I have no churlish objection to the circum- 
 navigation of the globe for the purposes of art, 
 of study, and "benevolence, so that the man is 
 first domesticated, or does not go abroad with 
 the hope of finding somewhat greater than he 
 knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get 
 somewhat which he does not carry, travels away 
 from himself, and grows old even in youth 
 among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his 
 will and mind have become old and dilapidated 
 as they. He carries ruins to ruins. 
 
 Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first jour- 
 neys discover to us the indifference of places. 
 At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I 
 can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sad- 
 ness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, em- 
 bark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples,
 
 82 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad 
 self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I 
 seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be 
 intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I 
 am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me 
 wherever I go. 1 
 
 3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom 
 of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole 
 intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, 
 and 'our system of education fosters restlessness. 
 Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to 
 stay at home. We imitate ; and what is imita- 
 tion but the travelling of the mind? Our houses 
 are built with foreign taste; our shelves are gar- 
 nished with foreign ornaments ; our opinions, 
 our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the 
 Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts 
 wherever they have flourished. It was in his 
 own mind that the artist sought his model. It 
 was an application of his own thought to the 
 thing to be done and, the conditions to be ob- 
 served. And why need we copy the Doric or the 
 Gothic model ? Beauty, convenience, grandeur 
 of thought and quaint expression are as near to 
 us as to any, and if the American artist will 
 study with hope and love the precise thing to 
 be done by him, considering the climate, the soil,
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 83 
 
 the length of the day, the wants of the people, 
 the habit and form of the government, he will 
 create a house in which all these will find them- 
 selves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be 
 satisfied also. 
 
 Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own 
 gift you can present every moment with the 
 cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation ; 
 but of the adopted talent of another you have 
 only an extemporaneous half possession. That 
 which each can do best, none but his Maker can 
 teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor 
 can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is 
 the master who could have taught Shakspeare ? 
 Where is the master who could have instructed 
 Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or New- 
 ton ? Every great man is a unique. The Scip- 
 ionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could 
 not borrow. 1 Shakspeare will never be made by 
 the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is as- 
 signed you, and you cannot hope too much or 
 dare too much. There is at this moment for 
 you an utterance brave and grand as that of the 
 colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyp- 
 tians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but differ- 
 ent from all these. Not possibly will the soul, 
 all rich, all eloquent, with thousand - cloven
 
 84 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can 
 hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can 
 reply to them in the same pitch of voice ; for 
 the ear and the tongue are two organs of one 
 nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions 
 of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt repro- 
 duce the Foreworld again. 
 
 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art 
 look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All 
 men plume themselves on the improvement of 
 society, and no man improves. 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on 
 one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes 
 continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, 
 it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific ; but 
 this change is not amelioration. For every thing 
 that is given something is taken. Society ac- 
 quires new arts and loses old instincts. What a 
 contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, 
 thinking American, with a watch, a pencil and a 
 bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked 
 New Zealander, whose property is a club, a 
 spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a 
 shed to sleep under ! But compare the health 
 of the two men and you shall see that the white 
 man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the 
 traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a 

 
 SELF-RELIANCE 85 
 
 broad-axe and in a day or two the flesh shall 
 unite and heal as if you struck the blow into 
 soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the 
 white to his grave. 
 
 The civilized man has built a coach, but has 
 lost the use of his feet. He is supported on 
 crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. 
 He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the 
 skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich 
 nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of 
 the information when he wants it, the man in 
 the street does not know a star in the sky. The 
 solstice he does not observe ; the equinox he 
 knows as little ; and the whole bright calendar 
 of the year is without a dial in his mind. His 
 note-books impair his memory ; his libraries 
 overload his wit ; the insurance-office increases 
 the number of accidents ; and it may be a ques- 
 tion whether machinery does not encumber; 
 whether we have not lost by refinement some 
 energy, by a Christianity, entrenched in estab- 
 lishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue." 1 
 For every Stoic was a Stoic ; but in Christen- 
 dom where is the Christian ? 
 
 There is no more deviation in the moral 
 standard than in the standard of height or bulk. 
 No greater men are now than ever were. A
 
 86 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 singular equality may be observed between the 
 great men of the first and of the last ages ; nor 
 can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy 
 of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater 
 men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and 
 twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race pro- 
 gressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Dioge- 
 nes, are great men, but they leave no class. He 
 who is really of their class will not be called by 
 their name, but will be his own man, and in his 
 turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inven- 
 tions of each period are only its costume and do 
 not invigorate men. The harm of the improved 
 machinery may compensate its good. Hudson 
 and Behring accomplished so much in their 
 fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and Frank- 
 lin, whose equipment exhausted the resources 
 of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, 
 discovered a more splendid series of celestial 
 phenomena than any one since. Columbus 
 found the New World in an undecked boat. 
 It is curious to see the periodical disuse and 
 perishing of means and machinery which were 
 introduced with loud laudation a few years or 
 centuries before. The great genius returns to 
 essential man. We reckoned the improvements 
 of the art of war among the triumphs of science, 

 
 SELF-RELIANCE 87 
 
 and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the 
 bivouac, which consisted of falling back on 
 naked valor and disencumbering it of all aids. 
 The Emperor held it impossible to make a 
 perfect army, says Las Cases, " without abolish- 
 ing our arms, magazines, commissaries and car- 
 riages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, 
 the soldier should receive his supply of corn, 
 grind it in his hand-mill and bake his bread 
 himself." 
 
 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, 
 but the water of which it is composed does not. 
 The same particle does not rise from the valley 
 to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. 
 The persons who make up a nation to-day, 
 next year die, and their experience dies with 
 them. 
 
 And so the reliance on Property, including 
 the reliance on governments which protect it, 
 is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked 
 away from themselves and at things so long 
 that they have come to esteem the religious, 
 learned and civil institutions as guards of pro- 
 perty, and they deprecate assaults on these, be- 
 cause they feel them to be assaults on property. 
 They measure their esteem of each other by 
 what each has, and not by what each is. But a
 
 88 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 cultivated man becomes ashamed of his pro* 
 perty, out of new respect for his nature. Espe- 
 cially he hates what he has if he see that it is 
 accidental, came to him by inheritance, or 
 gift, or crime ; then he feels that it is not hav- 
 ing; it does not belong to him, has no root in 
 him and merely lies there because no revolution 
 or no robber takes it away. But that which a 
 man is, does always by necessity acquire ; and 
 what the man acquires, is living property, which 
 does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or 
 revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, 
 but perpetually renews itself wherever the man 
 breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the 
 Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; therefore 
 be at rest from seeking after it." 1 Our depen- 
 dence on these foreign goods leads us to our 
 slavish respect for numbers. The political par- 
 ties meet in numerous conventions ; the greater 
 the concourse and with each new uproar of an- 
 nouncement, The delegation from Essex ! The 
 Democrats from New Hampshire ! The Whigs 
 of Maine ! the young patriot feels himself 
 stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes 
 and arms. In like manner the reformers sum- 
 mon conventions and vote and resolve in mul- 
 titude. Not so, O friends ! will the God deign
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 89 
 
 to enter and inhabit you, but by a method pre^ 
 cisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off 
 all foreign support and stands alone that I see 
 him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker 
 by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man 
 better than a town ? Ask nothing of men, 
 and, in the endless mutation, thou only firm 
 column must presently appear the upholder of 
 all that surrounds thee. He who knows that 
 power is inborn, that he is weak because he has 
 looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and, 
 so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on 
 his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in 
 the erect position, commands his limbs, works 
 miracles ; just as a man who stands on his 
 feet is stronger than a man who stands on 
 his head. 
 
 So use all that is called Fortune. Most men 
 gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as 
 her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful 
 these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, 
 the chancellors of God. In the Will work and 
 acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of 
 Chance, and shall sit hereafter out of fear from 
 her rotations. ^A. political victory, a rise of 
 rents, the recoveryof your sick or the return 
 oFyour absentfriend7~or some other favorable
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 event raises your spirits, and you think good 
 
 Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph
 
 ill 
 COMPENSATION 
 
 THE wings of Time are black and white, 
 Pied with morning and with night. 
 Mountain tall and ocean deep 
 Trembling balance duly keep. 
 In changing moon, in tidal wave, 
 Glows the feud of Want and Have. 
 Gauge of more and less through space 
 Electric star and pencil plays. 
 The lonely Earth amid the balls 
 That hurry through the eternal halls, 
 A makeweight flying to the void, 
 Supplemental asteroid, 
 Or compensatory spark, 
 Shoots across the neutral Dark.
 
 Man 's the elm, and Wealth the vine, 
 Stanch and strong the tendrils twine : 
 Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, 
 None from its stock that vine can reave 
 Fear not, then, thou child infirm, 
 There 's no god dare wrong a worm. 
 Laurel crowns cleave to deserts 
 And power to him who power exerts ; 
 Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
 Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ; 
 And all that Nature made thy own, 
 Floating in air or pent in stone, 
 Will rive the hills and swim the sea 
 And, like thy shadow, follow thee.
 
 COMPENSATION 
 
 IT^VER since I was a boy I have wished to 
 S-J write a discourse on Compensation ; for it 
 seemed to me when very young that on this 
 subject life was ahead of theology and the peo- 
 ple knew more than the preachers taught. The 
 documents too from which the doctrine is to be 
 drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless vari- 
 ety, and lay always before me, even in sleep; for 
 they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our 
 basket, the transactions of the street, the farm 
 and the dwelling-house; greetings, relations, 
 debts and credits, the influence of character, the 
 nature and endowment of all men. It seemed 
 to me also that in it might be shown men a ray 
 of divinity, the present action of the soul of this 
 world, clean from all vestige of tradition ;' and 
 so the heart of man might be bathed by an in- 
 undation of eternal love, conversing with that 
 which he knows was always and always must be, 
 because it really is now. It appeared moreover 
 that if this doctrine could be stated in terms 
 with any resemblance to those bright intuitions 
 in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it 
 would be a star in many dark hours and crooked
 
 94 COMPENSATION 
 
 passages in our journey, that would not suffer 
 us to lose our way. 
 
 {I was lately confirmed in these desires by 
 hearing a sermon at church. The preacher, a 
 man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the 
 ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judg- 
 ment. He assumed that judgment is not ex- 
 ecuted in this world ; that the wicked are suc- 
 cessful ; that the good are miserable ; ' and then 
 urged from reason and from Scripture a com- 
 pensation to be made to both parties in the next 
 life. No offence appeared to be taken by the 
 congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could 
 observe when the meeting broke up they sepa- 
 rated without remark on the sermon. 
 
 Yet what was the import of this teaching ? 
 What did the preacher mean by saying that the 
 good are miserable in the present life ? Was it 
 that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, 
 luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the 
 saints are poor and despised ; and that a com- 
 pensation is to be made to these last hereafter, 
 by giving them the like gratifications another 
 day, bank-stock and doubloons, venison and 
 champagne? This must be the compensation 
 intended ; for what else ? Is it that they are to 
 have leave to pray and praise ? to love and serve
 
 COMPENSATION 95 
 
 men ? Why, that they can do now. The legiti- 
 mate inference the disciple would draw was, 
 1 We are to have such a good time as the sinners 
 have now ; ' or, to push it to its extreme im- 
 port, ' You sin now, we shall sin by and by ; 
 we would sin now, if we could; not being suc- 
 cessful we expect our revenge to-morrow.' 
 
 The fallacy lay in the immense concession 
 that the bad are successful ; that justice is not 
 done now. The blindness of the preacher con- 
 sisted in deferring to the base estimate of the 
 market of what constitutes a manly success, in- 
 stead of confronting and convicting the world 
 from the truth ; announcing the presence of the 
 soul ; the omnipotence of the will ; and so estab- 
 lishing the standard of good and ill, of success 
 and falsehood. 
 
 1 find a similar base tone in the popular reli- 
 gious works of the day and the same doctrines 
 assumed by the literary men when occasionally 
 they treat the related topics. I think that our 
 popular theology has gained in decorum, and 
 not in principle, over the superstitions it has dis- 
 placed. But men are better than their theology. 
 Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenu- 
 ous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind 
 him in his own experience, and all men feel
 
 96 COMPENSATION 
 
 sometimes the falsehood which they cannot de- 
 monstrate. For men are wiser than they know. 1 
 That which they hear in schools and pulpits 
 without afterthought, if said in conversation 
 would probably be questioned in silence. If a 
 man dogmatize in a mixed company on Pro- 
 vidence and the divine laws, he is answered by 
 a silence which conveys well enough to an ob- 
 server the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his 
 incapacity to make his own statement. 
 
 I shall attempt in this and the following chap- 
 ter 8 to record some facts that indicate the path 
 of the law of Compensation ; happy beyond my 
 expectation if I shall truly draw the smallest arc 
 of this circle. ^ 
 
 Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in 
 every part of nature ; in darkness and light ; in 
 heat and cold ; in the ebb and flow of waters ; 
 in male and female ; in the inspiration and expi- 
 ration of plants and animals ; in the equation of 
 quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal 
 body ; in the systole and diastole of the heart ; 
 in the undulations of fluids and of sound ; in 
 the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in elec- 
 tricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Super- 
 induce magnetism at one end of a needle, the
 
 COMPENSATION 97 
 
 opposite magnetism takes place at the other 
 end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To 
 empty here, you must condense there. .An in- 
 evitable dualism bisects nature, so that each 
 thing is a half, and suggests another thing to 
 make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; 
 odd, even ; subjective, objective; in, out ; upper, 
 under; motion, rest; yea, nay.' 
 
 Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one 
 of its parts. The entire system of things gets 
 represented in every particle. There is some- 
 what that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, 
 day and night, man and woman, in a single 
 needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each 
 individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, 
 so grand in the elements, is repeated within 
 these small boundaries. For example, in the 
 animal kingdom the physiologist has observed 
 that no creatures are favorites, but a certain 
 compensation balances every gift and every de- 
 fect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out 
 of a reduction from another part of the same 
 creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, 
 the trunk and extremities are cut short. 
 
 The theory of the mechanic forces is another 
 example. What we gain in power is lost in 
 time, and the converse. The periodic or com-
 
 98 COMPENSATION 
 
 pensating errors of the planets is another in- 
 stance. The influences of climate and soil in 
 political history is another. The cold climate 
 invigorates. The barren soil does not breed 
 fevers, crocodiles, tigers or scorpions. 
 L.The same dualism underlies the nature /and 
 condition of man. Every excess causes a defect ; 
 every defect an- excess. Every sweet" hath its 
 sour ; every evil its good. Every faculty which 
 is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put 
 on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation 
 with its life. For every grain of wit there is a 
 grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, 
 you have gained something else ; and for every 
 thing you gain, you lose something. If riches 
 increase, they are increased that use them. If 
 the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out 
 of the man|what she puts into his chest ; swells 
 the estate, but kills the owner] Nature hates 
 monopolies and exceptions. 1C he waves of the 
 sea do not more speedily seek a level from their 
 loftiest tossing than the varieties of condition 
 tend to equalize themselves. There is always 
 some levelling circumstance that puts down the. 
 overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, 
 substantially on the same ground with all others. 
 Is a man too strong and fierce for society and
 
 COMPENSATION 99 
 
 by temper and position a bad citizen, a mo- 
 rose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him ? 
 Nature sends him a /troop of pretty sons and 
 daughters who are getting along in the dame's 
 classes at the village school, and love and feai 
 for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. 
 Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and 
 felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in 
 
 and/lceeps her balance true. 1 
 r 
 
 L.The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
 things. But the President has paid dear for his 
 White House. It has commonly cost him all 
 his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. 
 To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an 
 appearance before the worldJhe is content to eat 
 dust before the real masters who stand erect 
 behind the throne. Or do men desire the more 
 substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? 
 Neither has this an immunity. He who by force 
 of will or of thought is great and overlooks 
 thousands, has the charges of that eminence. 
 With every influx of light comes new danger. 
 Hasjie light ? he must bear witness to the light, 
 and always outrun that sympathy which gives 
 him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new 
 revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate 
 father and mother, wife and/child. Has he ail
 
 ioo COMPENSATION 
 
 that the world loves and admires and covets?- 
 he must cast behind him their admiration and 
 afflict them by faithfulness to his truth and be- 
 come a byword and a hissing. 
 
 This law^wl-TteTtheTawTof cities and nations. 
 It is in vain to build or plot or combine against 
 it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res 
 nolunt diu male administrari. Though no checks 
 to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will 
 appear. If the government is cruel, the gov- 
 ernor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the 
 revenue will yield [nothing. If you make the 
 criminal code sanguinary,juries will not convict. 
 If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes 
 in. If the government is a terrific democracy> 
 the pressure is resisted by an over-charge of en- 
 ergy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer 
 flame. The true life and satisfactions of man 
 seem to elude the utmost rigors or^ felicities of 
 condition and to establish themselves with great 
 indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. 
 Under all governments the influence of charac- 
 ter remains the same, in Turkey and in New 
 England about alike. Under the primeval des- 
 pots [of Egypt, history honestly confesses that 
 man must have been as free as culture could 
 ttiake him.
 
 COMPENSATION 10* 
 
 These appearances indicate the fact that the 
 universe is represented in every one of ks par- 
 ticles. Every thing in nature contains all the 
 powers of nature. Every thing is made of one 
 hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type 
 under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse 
 as a running man, a fish- as. a swimming man, a 
 bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. 
 Each new form repeats not only the main char- 
 acter of the type, but paro for part all the details, 
 all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies 
 and whole system of every other. Every occu- 
 pation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of 
 the world and a correlative of every other. Each 
 one is an entire emblem of human life ; of its 
 good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and 
 its end. And each one must somehow accom- 
 modate the whole man and recite all his destiny. 
 
 The world globes itself in a drop of dew. x 
 The microscope carrnot find the animalcule which 
 is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, 
 smell, motion, resistance, appetite,/and organs 
 of reproduction that take hold on eternity, 
 all find room to consist in the small creature. 
 So do we put our life into every act. The true 
 doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears 
 with all his parts in every moss and cobweh
 
 102 COMPENSATION 
 
 The value of the universe contrives to throw 
 itself into every point. If the good is there, so 
 is the evil ; if the affinity, so the repulsion ; if 
 the force, so the limitation. 
 
 Thus is the universe alive. All things are 
 moral. That soul which within us is, a senti- 
 ment, outside of us is a law. / We feel its inspi- 
 ration ; but there in history' we can see its fatal 
 strength. " It is in the world, and the world was 
 made by it." Justice is not postponed. A per- 
 fect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. 
 'Ael yap eu TTLTTTOVO-LV ol AIDS /cv/Sot, 1 The 
 dice of God are always loaded. The world looks 
 like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical 
 equation, which, turn it how you will, balances 
 itself. Take what figure you will, its exact 
 value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. 
 Every secret is told, every crime is punished, 
 every virtue /rewarded, every wrong redressed, 
 in silence and certainty. What we call retribu- 
 tion is the universal necessity by which the 
 whole appears wherever a part appears. If you 
 see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand 
 or a limb, you know that the trunk to which it 
 belongs is there behind. 
 
 Every act rewards itself, or in other words 
 integrates itself, in a twofold manner; first in
 
 COMPENSATION 103 
 
 the thing, or in real nature ; and secondly in the 
 circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call 
 the circumstance the retribution. The causal 
 retribution is in the thing and Is seen/by the 
 soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen 
 by the understanding ; it is inseparable from the 
 thing, but is often spread over a long time and 
 so does not become distinct until after many 
 years. The specific stripes may follow late after 
 the offence, but they follow because they accom- 
 pany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one 
 stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected 
 ripens within the flower of the pleasure which 
 concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, 
 seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the effect 
 already blooms in the cause, the ; end preexists/in 
 the means, the fruit in the seed.*" 
 ^Whilst thus the world will be whole and re- 
 fuses to be disparted, we seek to act partially, 
 to sunder, to appropriate; for example, to 
 gratify the senses we sever the pleasure of the 
 senses from the needs of the character. The in- 
 genuity of man has always been dedicated to the 
 solution of one problem, how to detach the 
 sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual 
 bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral 
 deep, the moral fair ; that is, again, to contrive
 
 io 4 COMPENSATION 
 
 to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to / 
 leave it bottomless ; to get a one end, without an 
 other end. The soul says, ' Eat ; ' the body would 
 feast. The soul says, * The man and woman 
 shall be one flesh and one soul ; ' the body would 
 join the flesh only. The soul says, * Have do- 
 minion over all things to the ends of virtue;' 
 the body would have the power over things to 
 its own ends. 
 
 The soul strives amain to live and work 
 through all things. It would be the only fact. 
 All things shall be added unto it, power, plea- 
 sure, knowledge, beauty. The particular man 
 aims to be/s'omebody ; to set up for himself; to 
 truck and higgle for a private good; and, in 
 particulars, to ride that he may ride ; to dress 
 that he may be dressed ; to eat that he may eat ; 
 and to govern, that he may be seen. Men seek 
 to be great ; they would have offices, wealth, 
 power, and fame. They think that to be great 
 is to possess one side of nature, the sweet, 
 without the other side, the bitter. 
 
 This dividing and detaching is steadily coun- 
 teracted. Up to this day it must be owned no 
 projector has had the smallest success./ The 
 parted water reunites behind our hand. Plea- 
 sure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out
 
 COMPENSATION 105 
 
 of profitable things, power out of strong things, 
 as soon as we seek to separate them from the 
 whole. We can no more halve things and get 
 the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an 
 inside that shall have no outside, or a light 
 without a shadow. " Drive out Nature with a 
 fork, she comes running back." ' 
 
 Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, 
 which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and 
 another brags that he does not know, that/they 
 do not touch him ; but the brag is on his lips, 
 the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes 
 them in one part they attack him in another 
 more vital part. If he has escaped them in 
 form and in the appearance, it is because he has 
 resisted his life and fled from himself, and the 
 retribution is so much death. So signal is the 
 failure of all attempts to make this separation 
 of the good from the tax, that the experiment 
 would not be tried, since to try it is to be 
 mad, but for the) circumstance that when the 
 disease began in the will, of rebellion and sepa- 
 ration, the intellect is at once infected, so that 
 the man ceases to see God whole in each object, 
 but is able to see the sensual allurement of an 
 object and not see the sensual hurt ; he sees the 
 mermaid's head but not the dragon's tail, and
 
 io6 COMPENSATION 
 
 thinks he can cut off that which he would hare 
 from that which he would not have. " How se- 
 cret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens 
 in silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling 
 with an unwearied providence Certain penal blind- 
 nesses upon such as have unbridled desires!" 1 
 The human soul is true to these facts in the 
 painting of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, 
 of conversation. It finds a tongue in literature 
 unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Su- 
 preme Mind ; but having traditionally ascribed 
 to him many base actions, they involuntarily 
 made amends to reason by tying up the hands 
 of so bad a god. He is made as helpless as a 
 king of England. Prometheus knows one secret 
 which Jove must bargain for ; Minerva, another. 
 He cannot get his own thunders ; Minerva 
 keeps the key 'of them: 
 
 " Of all the gods, I only know the keys 
 
 That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
 His thunders sleep." a 
 
 A plain confession of the in-working of the All 
 and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology 
 ends in the same ethics ; and it would seem im- 
 possible for any fable to be invented and get 
 any currency which was not moral. Aurora for- 
 got to ask youth for her lover, and though Ti-
 
 COMPENSATION 107 
 
 thonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not 
 quite invulnerable; the sacred waters did not 
 wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Sieg- 
 fried, in the ( Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, 
 for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing 
 in the dragon's blood, and that spot which it 
 covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is 
 a crack in every thing God has made. It would 
 seem there is always this vindictive circumstance 
 stealing in at unawares even into the wild poesy 
 in which the human fancy attempted to make 
 bold holiday and to shake itself free of the old 
 laws, this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, 
 certifying that the law is fatal ; that in nature 
 nothing can^be given, all things are sold. 
 
 This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who 
 keeps watch in the universe and lets no offence 
 go unchastised. The Furies, they said, are at- 
 tendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven 
 should transgress his path they would punish 
 him. The poets related that stone walls and iron 
 swords and leathern thongs had an occult sym- 
 pathy with the wrongs of their owners ; that the 
 belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the Tro- 
 jan hero over the field at the wheels of the car 
 of Achilles, and the sword which /Hector gave 
 Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. They
 
 108 COMPENSATION 
 
 recorded that when the Thasians erected a 
 statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one 
 of his rivals went to it by night and endeavored 
 to throw it down by repeated blows, until at last 
 he moved it from its pedestal and was crushed 
 to death beneath its fall. 
 
 This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. 
 It came from thought above the will of the 
 writer. That is the best part of each writer which 
 has nothing private in it ; that which he does 
 not know ;'that which flowed out of his consti- 
 tution and not from his too active invention ; 
 that which in the study of a single artist you 
 might not easily find, but in the study of many 
 you would abstract as the spirit of them all. 
 Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that 
 early Hellenic world that I would know. The 
 name and circumstance of Phidias, however con- 
 venient for history, embarrass when we come to 
 the highest criticism. We are to see that which 
 man was tending to do in a given period, and was 
 hindered, or, if you/^vill, modified in doing, by 
 the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, 
 of Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at the 
 moment wrought. 1 
 
 Still more striking is the expression of this 
 fact in the proverbs of all nations, which are al-
 
 COMPENSATION 109 
 
 ways the literature of reason, or the statements 
 of an absolute truth without qualification. Pro- 
 verbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are 
 the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the 
 droning world, chained to appearances, will not 
 allow the realist to say in his own words, it will 
 suffer him to say in proverbs without contradic- 
 tion. And this law of laws,^vhich the pulpit, the 
 senate and the college deny, is hourly preached 
 in all markets and workshops by flights of pro- 
 verbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipre- 
 sent as that of birds and flies. 
 
 All things are double, one against another. 
 Tit for tat ; an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a 
 tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure; 
 love for love. Give, and it shall be given 
 you. He that watereth shall be watered him- 
 self. What will you have ? quoth God ; pay for 
 it and take it. Nothing venture, nothing have. 
 Thou shalt be paid exactly foiywhat thou hast 
 done, no more, no less. Who doth not work 
 shall not eat. Harm watch, harm catch. 
 Curses always recoil on the head of him who 
 imprecates them. If you put a chain around 
 the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself 
 around your own. Bad counsel confounds the 
 adviser. The Devil is an ass.
 
 no COMPENSATION 
 
 It is thus written, because it is thus in life 
 Our action is overmastered and characterized 
 above our will by the law of nature. We aim at 
 a petty end quite aside from the public good 
 but our act arranges itself/fey irresistible mag 
 netism in a line with the poles of the world. 
 
 A man cannot speak but he judges himself 
 With his will or against his will he draws his 
 portrait to the eye of his companions by every 
 word. Every opinion reacts on him who ut- 
 ters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but 
 the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or 
 rather it is a harpoon hurled at the whale, un- 
 winding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, 
 and, if the harpoon is not good, or not well 
 thrown, it wilj/go nigh to cut the steersman in 
 twain or to sink the boat. 1 
 
 You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. 
 " No man had ever a point of pride that was not 
 injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive 
 in fashionable life does not see that he excludes 
 himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to ap- 
 propriate it. The exclusionist in religion doe. 
 not see that he shuts the door of heaven on 
 himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat 
 men as pawns and ninepins and you shall suf- 
 fer as well as they. If you leave out their hearty
 
 COMPENSATION in' 
 
 you 'shall lose your own. The senses would 
 make things of all persons ; of women, of chil- 
 dren, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, " I will 
 get it from his purse or get it from his skin," is 
 sound philosophy. 
 
 _ All infractions of love and equity in our social 
 relations are speedily punished. They are pun- 
 ished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations 
 to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meet- 
 ing him. We meet as water meets water, or as 
 two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion 
 and interpenej;ration of nature. J3ut as soon as 
 there is anyraeparture from simplicity and at- 
 tempt at halfness, or good for me that is not 
 good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong ; he 
 shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from 
 him ; his eyes no longer seek mine ; there is war 
 between us ; there is hate in him and fear in me. 
 All the old abuses in society, universal and 
 particular, all unjust accumulations of property 
 and power, are avenged in the same manner, 
 Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the 
 herald of all revolutions. One thing he teachef 
 that there is rottenness where he appears./Ht 
 is a carrion crow, and though you see not well 
 what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. 
 Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our
 
 in COMPENSATION 
 
 cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has 
 boded and mowed and gibbered over govern- 
 ment and property. That obscene bird is not 
 there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs 
 which must be revised. 
 
 Of the like nature is that expectation of change 
 which instantly follows the suspension of our 
 voluntary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, 
 the emerald of Polycrates, 1 the awe of prosperity, 
 the instinct which leads every generous soul to/ 
 impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and 
 vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the balance 
 of justice through the heart and mind of man. 
 
 Experienced men of the world know very well 
 that it is best to pay Scotland lot as they go 
 along, and that a man often pays dear for a small 
 frugality. ( The borrower runs in his own debO 
 Has a man gained any thing who has received 
 a hundred favors and rendered none ? Has he 
 gained by borrowing, through indolence or cun- 
 ning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money? 
 There arises on the/tieed the instant acknow- 
 ledgment of benefit on the one part and of debt 
 on the other ; that is, of superiority and inferi- 
 ority. The transaction remains in the memory 
 of himself and his neighbor ; and every new 
 transaction alters according to its nature then
 
 COMPENSATION 113 
 
 relation to each other. He may soon come to 
 see that he had better have broken his own bones 
 than to have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and 
 that " the highest price he can pay for a thing is 
 to ask for it." ' 
 
 A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts 
 of life, and know/that it is the part of prudence 
 to face every claimant and pay every just' de- 
 mand on your time, your talents, or your heart. 
 Always pay ; for first or last you must pay your 
 entire debt. Persons and events may stand for 
 a time between you and justice, but it is only a 
 postponement. You must pay at last your own 
 debt. If you are wise you will dread a prosper- 
 ity which only loads you with more. Benefit is 
 the end of nature. But for every benefit which 
 you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who 
 confers the/most benefits. He is base, and 
 that is the one base thing in the universe, to 
 receive favors and render none. In the order of 
 nature we cannot render benefits to those from 
 whom we receive them, or only seldom. But 
 the benefit we receive must be rendered again, 
 line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to 
 somebody. Beware of too much good staying in 
 your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. 
 Pay it away quickly in some sort.
 
 ii 4 COMPENSATION 
 
 Labor is watched over by the same pitiless 
 laws. Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest 
 labor./ What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, 
 a knife, is some application of good sense to a 
 common want. It is best to pay in your land 
 a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied 
 to gardening ; in your sailor, good sense applied 
 to navigation; in the house, good sense ap- 
 plied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, 
 good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So 
 do you multiply your presence, or spread your- 
 self throughout your estate. But because of the 
 dual constitution of things, in labor as in life 
 there can be no cheating. The/thief steals from 
 himself. The swindler swindles himself. For 
 the real price of labor is knowledge and vir- 
 tue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These 
 signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited 
 or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, 
 knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited 
 or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be an- 
 swered but by real exertions of the mind, and in 
 obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the de- 
 faulter, the gambler, cannot extort the know- 
 ledge of material and moral nature which his 
 honest care and pains yield to the operative. 
 The law of nature is, Do thefthing, and you
 
 COMPENSATION 115 
 
 shall have the power ; but they who do not the 
 thing have not the power. 
 
 Human labor, through all its forms, from 
 the sharpening of a stake to the construction 
 of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration 
 of the perfect compensation of the universe. 
 The absolute balance of Give and Take, the 
 doctrine that every thing has its price, and 
 if that price is not paid, not that thing but 
 something else is obtained, and that it is im- 
 possible to get anything without its price, is 
 not less sublime in the columns of a/leger than 
 in the budgets of states, in the laws of light and 
 darkness, in all the action and reaction of na- 
 ture. ; I cannot doubt that the high laws which 
 each man sees implicated in those processes with 
 which he is conversant, the stern ethics which 
 sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured 
 out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as 
 manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the 
 history of a state, do recommend to him his 
 trade, and though seldom named, exalt his busi- 
 ness to his imagination. 1 
 
 The league between virtue ano/nature engages 
 all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The 
 beautiful laws and substances of the world per- 
 secute and whip the traitor. He finds that
 
 Ii6 COMPENSATION 
 
 things are arranged for truth and benefit, but 
 there is no den in the wide world to hide a 
 rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made 
 of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if 
 a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as re- 
 veals in the woods the track of every partridge 
 and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot re- 
 call the spoken word, you cannot wipe ou^ the 
 foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so 
 as to leave no inlet or clew. Some damning 
 circumstance always transpires. The laws and 
 substances of nature, water, snow, wind, grav- 
 itation, become penalties to the thief. 
 
 On the other hand the law holds with equal 
 sureness for all right action. Love, and you 
 shall be loved, ^iovis 
 
 as much as the two sides of an algebraic equa- 
 tion. The good man has absolute good, which 
 like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so 
 that you cannot do him any harm ; but as the 
 royal' armies sent against Napoleon, when he 
 approached cast down their colors and from 
 enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, 
 as sickness, offence, poverty, prove benefac- 
 tors : 
 
 " Winds blow and waters roll 
 Strength to the brave and power and deity, 
 Yet in themselves are nothing." *
 
 COMPENSATION 117 
 
 The good are befriended even by weakness 
 and defect. As no man had ever a point of 
 pride that was not injurious to him, so no man 
 had ever a defect that was not somewhere made 
 useful to him. The stag in the fable admired 
 his horns and blamed his feet, but when the 
 hunter/came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, 
 caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. 
 Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his 
 faults. 1 As no man thoroughly understands a 
 truth until he has contended against it, so no 
 man has a thorough acquaintance with the hin- 
 drances or talents of men until he has suffered 
 from the one and seen the triumph of the other 
 over his own want of the same. Has he a de- 
 fect of temper that unfits him to live in society ? 
 Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone 
 and acquire habits of self-help ;/and thus, like 
 the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with 
 pearl. 
 
 Our strength grows out of our weakness. 
 The indignation which arms itself with secret 
 forces does not awaken until we are pricked and 
 stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always 
 willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cush- 
 ion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he 
 is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance
 
 ri8 COMPENSATION 
 
 to learn something; he has been put on his 
 wits, on his manhood ; he has gained facts ; 
 learns his ignorance ; is cured of the insanity 
 of conceit; has got moderation/and real skill. 
 The wise man throws himself 'on the side of 
 his assailants. It is more his interest than it 
 is theirs to find his weak point. The wound 
 cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead 
 skin, and when they would triumph, lo ! he has 
 passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than 
 praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. 1 
 As long as all that is said is said against me, I 
 feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon 
 as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me 
 I feel as one that lies /unprotected before his 
 enemies. In general, every evil to which we do 
 not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich 
 Islander believes that the strength and valor of 
 the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we 
 gain the strength of the temptation we resist. 
 
 The same guards which protect us from dis- 
 aster, defect and enmity, defend us, if we willj 
 from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars arc 
 not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewd- 
 ness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer al! 
 their life long under the foolish superstition 
 that they can be cheated. But) it is as impossi-
 
 COMPENSATION 119 
 
 ble for a man to be cheated by any one but 
 himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at 
 the same time. There is a third silent party to 
 all our bargains. The nature and soul of thingf 
 takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment oi 
 every contract, so that honest service cannot 
 come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful mas- 
 ter, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. 1 
 Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the 
 payment is withholden, the better for you ; for 
 compound interest on compound interest is the 
 rate and usage of this exchequer. 
 
 The history of persecution is a history of en- 
 deavors to cheat nature, to make water run up 
 hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no dif- 
 ference whether the actors be many or one, a 
 tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies 
 voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and 
 traversing its work. The mob is man volunta- 
 rily descending to the nature of the beast. Its 
 fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are in- 
 sane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes 
 a principle ; it would ; 'whip a right ; it would 
 tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and out- 
 rage upon the houses and persons of those who 
 have these. It resembles the prank of boys, 
 who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy
 
 120 COMPENSATION 
 
 aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate 
 spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. 
 The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash 
 inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every prison a 
 more illustrious abode ; every burned book or 
 house enlightens the world ; every suppressed 
 or expunged word reverberates through the 
 earth from side to side. 1 Hours of sanity and 
 consideration! are always arriving to communi- 
 ties, as to individuals, when the tVuth is seen 
 and the martyrs are justified. 
 
 Thus do all things preach the indifferency 
 of circumstances. The man is all. Every thing 
 has two sides, a good and an evil. Every ad- 
 vantage has its tax. I learn to be content. But 
 the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine 
 of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hear- 
 ing these representations, What boots it to 
 do well ? there is one event to good and evil ; 
 if I gain any good I must pay for it ; if I lose 
 any good I gain/ some other ; all actions are 
 indifferent. 
 
 There is a deeper fact in the soul than com- 
 pensation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is 
 not a compensation, but a life. The soul is. 
 Under all this running sea of circumstance, 
 whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance,
 
 COMPENSATION 121 
 
 lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, 
 or God, is not a relation or a part, but the 
 whole. 1 Being is the vast affirmative, excluding 
 negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all 
 relations, parts and times within itself. Nature, 
 truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. Vice 
 is the absence or/departure of the same. No- 
 thing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the grea't^ 
 Night or shade on which as a background the 
 living universe paints itself forth, but no fact 
 is begotten by it ; it cannot work, for it is not. 
 It cannot work any good ; it cannot work any 
 harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not 
 to be than to be. 
 
 We feel defrauded of the retribution due to 
 evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his 
 vice and contumacy and does not come to a 
 crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. 
 There is no stunning/confutation of his non- 
 sense before men and angels. Has he therefore 
 outwitted the law ? Inasmuch as he carries the 
 malignity and the lie with him he so far de- 
 ceases from nature. In some manner there will 
 be a demonstration of the wrong to the under- 
 standing also ; but, should we not see it, this 
 deadly deduction makes square the eternal ac- 
 count.
 
 122 COMPENSATION 
 
 Neither can it be said, on the other hand, 
 that the gain of rectitude must be bought by 
 any loss. There is no penalty to virtue ; no 
 penalty to wisdom ; they are proper additions 
 of being. In a /virtuous action I properly am ; 
 in a virtuous act I add to the world; I plant 
 into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing 
 and see the darkness receding on the limits of 
 the horizon. There can be no excess to love, 
 none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these 
 attributes are considered in the purest sense. 
 The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an 
 Optimism, never a Pessimism. 
 
 His life is a progress, and not a station. His 
 instinct is trust. Our instinct uses " more " and 
 " less " in application to man, of the presence of 
 the soul, and notfof its absence; the brave man 
 is greater than the coward ; the true, the bene- 
 volent, the wise, is more a man and not less, 
 than the fool and knave. There is no tax on 
 the good of virtue, for that is the incoming of 
 God himself, or absolute existence, without any 
 comparative. Material good has its tax, and if 
 it came without desert or sweat, has no root in 
 me, and the next wind will blow it away. But 
 all the good of nature is the soul's, and may be 
 had if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, 1
 
 COMPENSATION 123 
 
 by labor which the heart and the head allow. I 
 no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, 
 rbr example to find a pot of buried gold, know- 
 ing that it brings with it new burdens. I do not 
 wish more external goods, neither posses- 
 sions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. 
 The gain is apparent ; the tax is certain. But 
 there is no tax on the knowledge that-the com- 
 pensation existsjmd that. ,it_is_ not desirable to 
 dig up treasure. 1 Herein I rejoice with a serene 
 eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of pos- 
 sible mischief. I learn/ the wisdom of St. Ber- 
 nard, " Nothing can work me damage except 
 myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about 
 with me, and never am a real sufferer but by 
 my own fault." 
 
 In the nature of the soul is the compensation 
 for the inequalities of condition. The radical 
 tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of 
 More and Less. How can Less not feel the 
 pain ; how not feel indignation or malevolence 
 towards More ? Look at those who have less 
 faculty, and one feels sad and knows not well 
 what to make of it. He almost shuns their/ 
 eye ; he fears they will upbraid God. What 
 should they do ? It seems a great injustice. 
 But see the facts nearly and these mountainous
 
 124 COMPENSATION 
 
 inequalities vanish. Love reduces them as the 
 sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart 
 and soul of all men being one, this bitterness 
 of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my 
 brother and my brother is me. If I feel over- 
 shadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I 
 can yet love ; I can still receive ; and he that 
 loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. 
 Thereby I make the discovery that/my brother 
 is my guardian, acting for me with the friend' 
 liest designs, and the estate I so admired and 
 envied is my own. It is the nature of the soul 
 to appropriate all things. Jesus and Shakspeare 
 are fragments of the soul, and by love I con- 
 quer and incorporate them in my own conscious 
 domain. His virtue, is not that mine? His 
 wit, if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. 
 Such also is the natural history of calamity. 
 The changes which break up at short intervals 
 the prosperity of men are advertisements of a 
 nature whose law/is growth. Every soul is by 
 this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system 
 of things, its friends and home and laws and 
 faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful 
 but stony case, because it no longer admits of 
 its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In 
 proportion to the vigor of the individual these
 
 COMPENSATION 125 
 
 revolutions are frequent, until in some happier 
 mind they are incessant and all worldly rela- 
 tions hang very loosely about him, becoming as 
 it were a transparent fluid membrane through 
 which the living form is seen, and not, as in 
 most/men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of 
 many dates and of no settled character, in which 
 the man is imprisoned. Then there can be en- 
 largement, and the man of to-day scarcely recog- 
 nizes the man of yesterday. And such should 
 be the outward biography of man in time, a put- 
 ting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he 
 renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in 
 our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resist- 
 ing, not cooperating with the divine expansion, 
 this growth comes by shocks. 
 
 We cannot part with our friends. We cannot 
 let our angels go. We do/not see that they only 
 go out that archangels may come in. 1 We are 
 idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the 
 riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and om- 
 nipresence. We do not believe there is any force 
 in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yes- 
 terday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent 
 where once we had bread and shelter and organs, 
 nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and 
 nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so
 
 126 COMPENSATION 
 
 dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep 
 in vain. The/voice of the Almighty saith, f Up 
 and onward for evermore ! ' We cannot stay 
 amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the 
 new ; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, 
 like those monsters who look backwards. 
 
 And yet the compensations of calamity are 
 made apparent to the understanding also, after 
 long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a 
 cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss 
 of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, 
 and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the 
 deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The 
 death of a dear friend, wife, brotherylover, which 
 seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later 
 assumes the aspect of a guide or genius ; for it 
 commonly operates revolutions in our way of 
 life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth 
 which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a 
 wonted occupation, or a household, or style of 
 living, and allows the formation of new ones 
 more friendly to the growth of character. It per- 
 mits or constrains the formation of new acquaint- 
 ances and the reception of new influences that 
 prove of the first importance to the next years' ; 
 and the man or woman who would have/re- 
 mained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for
 
 COMPENSATION 127 
 
 its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by 
 the falling of the walls and the neglect of the 
 gardener is made the banian of the forest, yield- 
 ing shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of 
 men.
 
 IV 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 1 
 
 THE living Heaven thy prayers respect, 
 House at once and architect, 
 Quarrying man's rejected hours, 
 Builds there with eternal towers ; 
 Sole and self-commanded works, 
 Fears not undermining days, 
 Grows by decays, 
 
 And, by the famous might that lurks 
 In reaction and recoil, 
 Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil; 
 Forging, through swart arms of Offence 
 The silver seat of Innocence.
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 WHEN the act of reflection takes place in 
 the mind, when we look at ourselves in 
 the light of thought, we discover that our life is 
 embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all 
 things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far 
 off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even 
 the tragic and terrible are comely as they take 
 their place in the pictures of memory. The 
 river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old 
 house, the foolish person, however neglected in 
 the passing, have a grace in the past. Even the 
 corpse that has lain in the chambers has added 
 a solemn ornament to the house. 1 The soul will 
 not know either deformity or pain. If in the 
 hours of clear reason we should speak the sever- 
 est truth, we should say that we had never made 
 a sacrifice. In these hours the mind seems so 
 great that nothing can be taken from us that 
 seems much. All loss, all pain, is particular ; the 
 universe remains to the heart unhurt. 2 Neither 
 vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No 
 man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. 
 Allow for exaggeration in the most patient and 
 sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it
 
 132 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 is only the finite that has wrought and suffered j 
 the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose. 
 
 The intellectual life may be kept clean and 
 healthful if man will live the life of nature and 
 not import into his mind difficulties which are 
 none of his. No man need be perplexed in his 
 speculations. Let him do and say what strictly 
 belongs to him, and though very ignorant of 
 books, his nature shall not yield him any intel- 
 lectual obstructions and doubts. Our young peo- 
 ple are diseased with the theological problems 
 of original sin, origin of evil, predestination and 
 the like. These never presented a practical dif- 
 ficulty to any man, never darkened across any 
 man's road who did not go out of his way to 
 seek them. These are the soul's mumps and 
 measles and whooping-coughs, and those who 
 have not caught them cannot describe their 
 health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will 
 not know these enemies. 1 It is quite another 
 thing that he should be able to give account of 
 his faith and expound to another the theory of 
 his self-union and freedom. This requires rare 
 gifts. Yet without this self-knowledge there 
 may be a sylvan strength and integrity in that 
 which he is. " A few strong instincts and a few 
 plain rules " suffice us. a
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 133 
 
 My will never gave the images in my mind 
 the rank they now take. The regular course of 
 studies, the years of academical and professional 
 education have not yielded me better facts than 
 some idle books under the bench at the Latin 
 School. What we do not call education is more 
 precious than that which we call so. We form 
 no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, 
 of its comparative value. And education often 
 wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk 
 ;his natural magnetism, which is sure to select 
 what belongs to it. 1 
 
 In like manner our moral nature is vitiated 
 by any interference of our will. People repre- 
 sent virtue as a struggle, and take to themselves 
 great airs upon their attainments, and the ques- 
 tion is everywhere vexed when a noble nature is 
 commended, whether the man is not better who 
 strives with temptation. But there is no merit 
 in the matter. Either God is there or he is not 
 there. We love characters in proportion as they 
 are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man 
 thinks or knows about his virtues the better we 
 like him. Timoleon's victories are the best 
 victories, which ran and flowed like Homer's 
 verses, Plutarch said. When we see a soul 
 whose acts are all regal, graceful and pleasant as
 
 I 3 4 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 roses, we must thank God that such things can 
 be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel and 
 
 y^ say ' Crump is a better man with his grunting 
 resistance to all his native devils.' 
 
 Not less conspicuous is the preponderance 
 of nature over will in all practical life. There is 
 less intention in history than we ascribe to it. 
 We impute deep-laid far-sighted plans to Caesar 
 and Napoleon ; but the best of their power was 
 in nature, not in them. Men of an extraordi- 
 nary success, in their honest moments, have 
 
 i*Ji always sung * Not unto us, not unto us.' Ac- 
 cording to the faith of their times they have 
 built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. 
 Julian. Their success lay in their parallelism to 
 the course of thought, which found in them an 
 unobstructed channel ; and the wonders of which 
 they were the visible conductors seemed to the 
 eye their deed. Did the wires generate the gal- 
 vanism ? It is even true that there was less in 
 them on which they could reflect than in an- 
 other ; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth 
 and hollow. 1 That which externally seemed will 
 and immovableness was willingness and self-an- 
 nihilation. Could Shakspeare give a theory of 
 Shakspeare ? Could ever a man of prodigious 
 mathematical genius convey to others any in-
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 135 
 
 sight into his methods ? If he could communi- 
 cate that secret it would instantly lose its exag- 
 gerated value, blending with the daylight and the 
 vital energy the power to stand and to go. 
 
 The lesson is forcibly taught by these obser- 
 vations that our life might be much easier and 
 simpler than we make it ; that the world might 
 be a happier place than it is ; that there is no 
 need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of 
 the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of 
 the teeth ; that we miscreate our own evils. We 
 interfere with the optimism of nature ; for when- 
 ever we get this vantage-ground of the past, or 
 of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to 
 discern that we are begirt with laws which exe- 
 cute themselves. 
 
 The face of external nature teaches the same 
 lesson. Nature will not have us fret and fume. 
 She does not like our benevolence or our learn- 
 ing much better than she likes our frauds and 
 wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the 
 bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the Tem- 
 perance-meeting, or the Transcendental club 
 into the fields and woods, she says to us, * So 
 hot ? my little Sir.' * 
 
 We are full of mechanical actions. We must 
 needs intermeddle and have things in our own
 
 136 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society 
 are odious. Love should make joy ; but our 
 benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools 
 and churches and pauper-societies are yokes 
 to the neck. We pain ourselves to please no- 
 body. There are natural ways of arriving at the 
 same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. 
 Why should all virtue work in one and the 
 same way ? Why should all give dollars ? It is 
 very inconvenient to us country folk, and we 
 do not think any good will come of it. We 
 have not dollars, merchants have ; let them 
 give them. Farmers will give corn ; poets will 
 sing ; women will sew ; laborers will lend a 
 hand ; the children will bring flowers. And why 
 drag this dead weight of a Sunday-school over" 
 the whole Christendom ? It is natural and beau- 
 tiful that childhood should inquire and maturity 
 should teach ; but it is time enough to answer 
 questions when they are asked. Do not shut 
 up the young people against their will in a pew 
 and force the children to ask them questions 
 for an hour against their will. 
 
 If we look wider, things are all alike; laws 
 and letters and creeds and modes of living seem 
 a travesty of truth. Our society is encumbered 
 by ponderous machinery, which resembles the
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 137 
 
 endless aqueducts which the Romans built over 
 hill and dale and which are superseded by the 
 discovery of the law that water rises to the level 
 of its source. It is a Chinese wall which any- 
 nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing 
 army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, 
 titled, richly appointed empire, quite superflu- 
 ous when town-meetings are found to answer 
 just as well. 
 
 Let us draw a lesson from nature, which al- 
 ways works by short ways. When the fruit is 
 ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the 
 leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere fall- 
 ing. The walking of man and all animals is a 
 falling forward. All our manual labor and works 
 of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing 
 and so forth, are done by dint of continual fall- 
 ing, and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, 
 star, fall for ever and ever. 
 
 The simplicity of the universe is very differ- 
 ent from the simplicity of a machine. He who 
 sees moral nature out and out and thoroughly 
 knows how knowledge is acquired and charac- 
 ter formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of na- 
 ture is not that which may easily be read, but 
 is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise 
 be made. We judge of a man's wisdom by his
 
 I3& SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 hope, knowing that the perception of the inex- 
 haustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. 
 The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing 
 our rigid names and reputations with our fluid 
 consciousness. We pass in the world for sects 
 and schools, for erudition and piety, and we 
 are all the time jejune babes. One sees very 
 well how Pyrrhonism grew up. 1 Every man 
 sees that he is that middle point whereof every 
 thing may be affirmed and denied with equal 
 reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, 
 he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels 
 what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin- 
 peddler. There is no permanent wise man ex- 
 cept in the figment of the Stoics. We side with 
 the hero, as we read or paint, against the cow- 
 ard and the robber ; but we have been ourselves 
 that coward and robber, and shall be again, 
 not in the low circumstance, but in comparison 
 with the grandeurs possible to the soul. 
 
 A little consideration of what takes place 
 around us every day would show us that a 
 higher law than that of our will regulates events ; 
 that our painful labors are unnecessary and 
 fruitless ; that only in our easy, simple, spon- 
 taneous action are we strong, and by contenting 
 ourselves with obedience we become divine.
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 139 
 
 Belief and love, a believing love will relieve 
 us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God 
 exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature 
 and over the will of every man, so that none 
 of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused 
 its strong enchantment into nature that we pros- 
 per when we accept its advice, and when we 
 struggle to wound its creatures our hands are 
 glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. 
 The whole course of things goes to teach us 
 faith. We need only obey. There is guidance 
 for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall 
 hear the right word. Why need you choose so 
 painfully your place and occupation and associ- 
 ates and modes of action and of entertainment? 
 Certainly there is a possible right for you that 
 precludes the need of balance and wilful elec- 
 tion. For you there is a reality, a fit place and 
 congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle 
 of the stream of power and wisdom which ani- 
 mates all whom it floats, and you are without 
 effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect 
 Contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in 
 the wrong. Then you are the world, the mea- 
 sure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we would 
 not be mar-plots with our miserable interfer- 
 ences, the work, the society, letters, arts, sci-
 
 140 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 ence, religion of men would go on far better 
 than now, and the heaven predicted from the 
 beginning of the world, and still predicted from 
 the bottom_ of the_ heart, would organize itself, 
 as do now the rose and the air and the sun. 
 
 I say, do not choose ; but that is a figure of 
 speech by which I would distinguish what is 
 commonly called choice among men, and which 
 is a partial act, the choice of the hands, of the 
 eyes, of the appetites, and not a whole act of 
 the man. 1 But that which I call right or good- 
 ness, is the choice of my constitution ; and that 
 which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is 
 the state or circumstance desirable to my consti- 
 tution ; and the action which I in all my years 
 tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We 
 must hold a man amenable to reason for the 
 choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not 
 an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are 
 the custom of his trade. What business has he 
 with an evil trade? Has he not a calling in 
 his character ? 
 
 Each man has his own vocation. The talent 
 is the call. There is one direction in which all 
 space is open to him. He has faculties silently 
 inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is 
 iike a ship in a river ; he runs against obstruc-
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 141 
 
 tions on every side but one, on that side all ob- 
 struction is taken away and he sweeps serenely 
 over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. 
 This talent and this call depend on his organiza- 
 tion, or the mode in which the general soul in- 
 carnates itself in him. He inclines to do some- 
 thing which is easy to him and good when it is 
 done, but which no other man can do. He has 
 no rival. For the more truly he consults his 
 own powers, the more difference will his work 
 exhibit from the work of any other. His ambi- 
 tion is exactly proportioned to his powers. The 
 height of the pinnacle is determined by the 
 breadth of the base. Every man has this call 
 of the power to do somewhat unique, and no 
 man has any other call. The pretence that he 
 has another call, a summons by name and per- 
 sonal election and outward " signs that mark , 
 him extraordinary and not in the roll of com- 
 mon men," ' is fanaticism, and betrays obtuse- 
 ness to perceive that there is one mind in all the 
 individuals, and no respect of persons therein. 
 
 By doing his work he makes the need felt 
 which he can supply, and creates the taste by 
 which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work 
 he unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public 
 speaking that it has not abandonment. Some-
 
 I 4 2 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 where, not only every orator but every man 
 should let out all the length of all the reins ; 
 should find or make a frank and hearty expres- 
 sion of what force and meaning is in him. The 
 common experience is that the man fits himself 
 as well as he can to the customary details of that 
 work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog 
 turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine 
 he moves ; the man is lost. Until he can man- 
 age to communicate himself to others in his full 
 stature and proportion, he does not yet find his 
 vocation. He must find in that an outlet for 
 his character, so that he may justify his work to 
 their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his 
 thinking and character make it liberal. 1 What- 
 ever he knows and thinks, whatever in his 
 apprehension is worth doing, that let him com- 
 municate, or men will never know and honor 
 him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the 
 meanness and formality of that thing you do, 
 instead of converting it into the obedient spira- 
 cle of your character and aims. 
 
 We like only such actions as have already 
 long had the praise of men, and do not perceive 
 that any thing man can do may be divinely 
 done. We think greatness entailed or organ- 
 ized in some places or duties, in certain offices
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 143 
 
 Or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can 
 extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein 
 from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out 
 of shreds of paper with his scissors, and Land- 
 seer out of swine, and the hero out of the piti- 
 ful habitation and company in which he was 
 hidden. What we call obscure condition or vul- 
 gar society is that condition and society whose 
 poetry is not yet written, but which you shall 
 presently make as enviable and renowned as 
 any. In our estimates let us take a lesson from 
 kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection 
 of families, the impressiveness of death, and a 
 thousand other things, royalty makes its own 
 estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make 
 habitually a new estimate, that is elevation. 
 
 What a man does, that he has. What has he 
 to do with hope or fear? In himself is his 
 might. Let him regard no good as solid but 
 that which is in his nature and which must grow 
 out of him as long as he exists. The goods of 
 fortune may come and go like summer leaves ; f 
 let him scatter them on every wind as the mo- 
 mentary signs of his infinite productiveness. 
 
 He may have his own. A man's genius, the 
 quality that differences him from every other, 
 the susceptibility to one class of influences, the
 
 144 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of 
 what is unfit, determines for him the character 
 of the universe. A man is a method, a progres- 
 sive arrangement ; a selecting principle, gather- 
 ing his like to him wherever he goes. He takes 
 only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps 
 and circles round him. He is like one of those 
 booms which are set out from the shore on 
 rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone 
 amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, 
 persons, which dwell in his memory without his 
 being able to say why, remain because they have 
 a relation to him not less real for being as yet 
 unapprehended. They are symbols of value to 
 him as they can interpret parts of his conscious- 
 ness which he would vainly seek words for in 
 the conventional images of books and other 
 minds. What attracts my attention shall have 
 it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my 
 door, whilst a thousand persons as worthy go 
 by it, to whom I give no regard. It is enough 
 that these particulars speak to me. A few anec- 
 dotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a 
 few incidents, have an emphasis in your mem- 
 ory out of all proportion to their apparent sig- 
 nificance if you measure them by the ordinary 
 standards. They relate to your gift. Let them
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 145 
 
 have their weight, and do not reject them and 
 cast about for illustration and facts more usual 
 in literature. What your heart thinks great, is 
 great. The soul's emphasis is always right. 
 
 Over all things that are agreeable to his na- 
 ture and genius the man has the highest right. 
 Everywhere he may take what belongs to his 
 spiritual estate, nor can he take anything else 
 though all doors were open, nor can all the force 
 of men hinder him from taking so much. It is 
 vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who 
 has a right to know it. It will tell itself. That 
 mood into which a friend can bring us is his do- 
 minion over us. To the thoughts of that state 
 of mind he has a right. All the secrets of that 
 state of mind he can compel. This is a law which 
 statesmen use in practice. All the terrors of the 
 French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were 
 unable to command her diplomacy. But Napo- 
 leon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of 
 the old noblesse, with the morals, manners and 
 name of that interest, saying that it was indis- 
 pensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe 
 men of the same connection, which in fact con- 
 stitutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de Narbonne 
 in less than a fortnight penetrated all the secrets 
 of the imperial cabinet.
 
 146 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be 
 understood. Yet a man may come to find that 
 the strongest of defences and of ties, that he 
 has been understood ; and he who has received 
 an opinion may come to find it the most incon- 
 venient of bonds. 
 
 If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes 
 to conceal, his pupils will become as fully in- 
 doctrinated into that as into any which he pub- 
 lishes. If you pour water into a vessel twisted 
 into coils and angles, it is vain to say, I will 
 pour it only into this or that ; it will find its 
 level in all. Men feel and act the consequences 
 of your doctrine without being able to show how 
 they follow. Show us an arc of the curve, and 
 a good mathematician will find out the whole 
 figure. We are always reasoning from the seen 
 to the unseen. Hence the perfect intelligence 
 that subsists between wise men of remote ages. 
 A man cannot bury his meanings so deep in 
 his book but time and like-minded men will 
 find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he r 
 What secret can he conceal from the eyes of 
 Bacon ? of Montaigne ? of Kant ? Therefore 
 Aristotle said of his works, "They are published 
 and not published." 
 
 No man can learn what he has not prepara-
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 147 
 
 tion for learning, however near to his eyes is the 
 object. A chemist may tell his most precious 
 secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the 
 wiser, the secrets he would not utter to a 
 chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore 
 from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that 
 we cannot see things that stare us in the face, 
 until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened ; 
 then we behold them, and the time when we saw 
 them not is like a dream. 
 
 Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and 
 worth he sees. The world is very empty, and 
 is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all 
 its pride. " Earth fills her lap with splendors " 
 not her own. 1 The vale of Tempe, Tivoli and 
 Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There 
 are as good earth and water in a thousand places, 
 yet how unaffecting ! 
 
 People are not the better for the sun and 
 moon, the horizon and the trees ; as it is not 
 observed that the keepers of Roman galleries 
 or the valets of painters have any elevation of 
 thought, or that librarians are wiser men than 
 others. There are graces in the demeanor of a 
 polished and noble person which are lost upon 
 the eye of a churl. These are like the stars 
 whose light has not yet reached us.
 
 '148 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 He may see what he maketh. Our dreams 
 are the sequel of our waking knowledge. 1 The 
 visions of the night bear some proportion to 
 the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are ex- 
 aggerations of the sins of the day. We see our 
 evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. 
 On the Alps the traveller sometimes beholds his 
 own shadow magnified to a giant, so that every 
 gesture of his hand is terrific. " My children,'* 
 said an old man to his boys scared by a figure 
 in the dark entry, " my children, you will never 
 see anything worse than yourselves." As in 
 dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid events of the 
 world every man sees himself in colossal, with- 
 out knowing that it is himself. The good, com- 
 pared to the evil which he sees, is as his own 
 good to his own evil. Every quality of his mind 
 is magnified in some one acquaintance, and every 
 emotion of his heart in some one. He is like 
 a quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, 
 west, north, or south ; or an initial, medial, and 
 terminal acrostic. And why not? He cleaves 
 to one person and avoids another, according to 
 their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly 
 seeking himself in his associates and moreover 
 in his trade and habits and gestures and meats 
 and drinks, and conies at last to be faithfully
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 149 
 
 represented by every view you take of his cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 He may read what he writes. What can we 
 see or acquire but what we are ? You have ob- 
 served a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, that 
 author is a thousand books to a thousand per- 
 sons. Take the book into your two hands and 
 read your eyes out, you will never find what I 
 find. If any ingenious reader would have a mo- 
 nopoly of the wisdom or delight he gets, he is 
 as secure now the book is Englished, as if it 
 were imprisoned in the Pelews' tongue. It is 
 with a good book as it is with good company. 
 Introduce a base person among gentlemen, it is 
 all to no purpose ; he is not their fellow. Every 
 society protects itself. The company is perfectly 
 safe, and he is not one of them, though his body 
 is in the room. 
 
 What avails it to fight with the eternal laws 
 of mind, which adjust the relation of all persons 
 to each other by the mathematical measure of 
 their havings and beings ? Gertrude is enamored 
 of Guy ; how high, how aristocratic, how Ro- 
 man his mien and manners ! to live with him 
 were life indeed, and no purchase is too great ; 
 and heaven and earth are moved to that end. 
 Well, Gertrude has Guv ; but what now avails
 
 ISO SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his mien 
 and manners, if his heart and aims are in the 
 senate, in the theatre and in the billiard-room, 
 and she has no aims, no conversation that can 
 enchant her graceful lord ? 
 
 He shali have his own society. We can love 
 nothing but nature. The most wonderful tal- 
 ents, the most meritorious exertions really avail 
 very little with us ; but nearness or likeness of 
 nature, how beautiful is the ease of its vic- 
 tory! Persons approach us, famous for their 
 beauty, for their accomplishments, worthy of all 
 wonder for their charms and gifts; they dedicate 
 their whole skill to the hour and the company, 
 with very imperfect result. To be sure it 
 would be ungrateful in us not to praise them 
 loudly. Then, when all is done, a person of re- 
 lated mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes 
 to us so softly and easily, so nearly and inti- 
 mately, as if it were the blood in our proper 
 veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, in- 
 stead of another having come ; we are utterly 
 relieved and refreshed ; it is a sort of joyful soli- 
 tude. We foolishly think in our days of sin thaf 
 we must court friends by compliance to the cus- 
 toms of society, to its dress, its breeding, and 
 its estimates. But only that soul can be my
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 151 
 
 friend which I encounter on the line of my own 
 march, that soul to which I do not decline and 
 which does not decline to me, but, native of 
 the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all 
 my experience. The scholar forgets himself and 
 apes the customs and costumes of the man of 
 the world to deserve the smile of beauty, and 
 follows some giddy girl, not yet taught by reli- 
 gious passion to know the noble woman with 
 all that is serene, oracular and beautiful in her 
 soul. Let him be great, and love shall follow 
 him. Nothing is more deeply punished than tne 
 neglect of the affinities by which alone soci- 
 ety should be formed, and the insane levity of 
 choosing associates by others' eyes. 1 
 
 He may set his own rate. It is a maxim wor- 
 thy of all acceptation that a man may have that 
 allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude 
 which belong to you, and all men acquiesce. 
 The world must be just. It leaves every man, 
 with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. 
 Hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. 
 It will certainly accept your own measure of your 
 doing and being, whether you sneak about and 
 deny your own name, or whether you see your 
 work produced to the concave sphere of the 
 heavens, one with the revolution of the stars.
 
 \ 
 
 151 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 The same reality pervades all teaching. The 
 man may teach by doing, and not otherwise 
 If he can communicate himself he can teach, 
 but not by words. He teaches who gives, and 
 he learns who receives. There is no teaching 
 until the pupil is brought into the same state 
 or principle in which you are ; a transfusion 
 takes place ; he is you and you are he ; then is 
 a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad 
 company can he ever quite lose the benefit 
 But your propositions run out of one ear as 
 they ran in at the other. We see it advertised 
 that Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the 
 Fourth of July, and Mr. Hand before the Me- 
 chanics' Association, and we do not go thither, 
 because we know that these gentlemen will not 
 communicate their own character and experience 
 to the company. If we had reason to expect 
 such a confidence we should go through all in- 
 convenience and opposition. The sick would 
 be carried in litters. But a public oration is an 
 escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, 
 and not a communication, not a speech, not a 
 man. 
 
 A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual 
 works. We have yet to learn that the thing 
 Uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 153 
 
 must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of 
 oath can give it evidence. The sjentence _ must ; 
 also contain its own apology for being spoken. 1 
 The effect of any writing on the public mind 
 is mathematically measurable by its depth of 
 thought. How much water does it draw ? If 
 it awaken you to think, if it lift you from your 
 feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the 
 effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the 
 minds of men ; if the pages instruct you not, 
 they will die like flies in the hour. The way to 
 speak and write what shall not go out of fashion 
 is to speak and write sincerely. The argument 
 which has not power to reach my own practice, 
 I may well doubt will fail to reach yours. But 
 take Sidney's maxim : " Look in thy heart, 
 and write." He that writes to himself writes to 
 an eternal public. That statement only is fit 
 to be made public which you have come at in 
 attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. The 
 writer who takes his subject from his ear and 
 not from his heart, should know that he has 
 lost as much as he seems to have gained, and 
 when the empty book has gathered all its praise, 
 and half the people say, * What poetry ! what 
 genius ! ' it still needs fuel to make fire. That 
 c-aly profits which is profitable. Life alone can /
 
 I 5 4 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 impart life; and though we shjuld burst we 
 can only be valued as we make ourselves valu- 
 able. There is no luck in literary reputation. 
 They who make up the final verdict upon every 
 book are not the partial and noisy readers of 
 the hour when it appears, but a court as of an- 
 gels, a public not to be bribed, not to be en- 
 treated and not to be overawed, decides upon 
 every man's title to fame. Only those books 
 come down which deserve to last. Gilt edges, 
 vellum and morocco, and presentation - copies 
 to all the libraries will not preserve a book in 
 circulation beyond its intrinsic date. It must go 
 with all Walpole's Noble and Royal Authors 
 to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue or Pollok 
 may endure for a night, but Moses and Homer 
 stand for ever. There are not in the world at 
 any one time more than a dozen persons who 
 read and understand Plato, never enough to 
 pay for an edition of his works ; yet to every 
 generation these come duly down, for the sake 
 of those few persons, as if God brought them in 
 his hand. "No book," said Bentley, "was ever 
 written down by any but itself." The perma- 
 nence of all books is fixed by no effort, friendly 
 or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or 
 the intrinsic importance of their contents to the
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 155 
 
 constant mind of man. " Do not trouble your- j 
 self too much about the light on your statue," | 
 said Michel Angelo to the young sculptor; "the 
 light of the public square will test its value." 
 
 In like manner the effect of every action is 
 measured by the depth of the sentiment from 
 which it proceeds. The great man knew not 
 that he was great. It took a century or two for 
 that fact to appear. What he did, he did be- 
 cause he must ; it was the most natural thing in 
 the world, and grew out of the circumstances of 
 the moment. But now, every thing he did, even 
 to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, 
 looks large, all-related, and is called an institu- 
 tion. 
 
 These are the demonstrations in a few par- 
 ticulars of the genius of nature ; they show the 
 direction of the stream. But the stream is blood ; 
 every drop is alive. Truth has not single victo- 
 ries ; all things are its organs, not only dust 
 and stones, but errors and lies. The laws of dis- 
 ease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws 
 of health. Our philosophy is affirmative and 
 readily accepts the testimony of negative facts, 
 as^ev^y_sHadowpoints to the sun. By a divine 
 necessity every fact in nature is constrained to 
 offer its testimony.
 
 156 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 Human character evermore publishes itself. 
 The most fugitive deed and word, the mere air 
 of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, ex- 
 presses character. If you act you show charac- 
 ter ; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it. 
 You think because you have spoken nothing 
 when others spoke, and have given no opinion 
 on the times, on the church, on slavery, on mar- 
 riage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the 
 college, on parties and persons, that your ver- 
 dict is still expected with curiosity as a reserved 
 wisdom. Far otherwise ; your silence answers 
 very loud. You have no oracle to utter, and 
 your fellow-men have learned that you cannot 
 help them ; for oracles speak. Doth not Wis- 
 dom cry and Understanding put forth her 
 voice ? 
 
 Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers 
 of dissimulation. Truth tyrannizes over the un- 
 willing members of the body. Faces never lie, 
 it is said. No man need be deceived who will 
 study the changes of expression. When a man 
 speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is 
 as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends 
 and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy and some- 
 times asquint. 
 
 I have heard an experienced counsellor ' say
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 157 
 
 that he never feared the effect upon a jury of a 
 lawyer who does not believe in his heart that his 
 client ought to have a verdict. If he does not 
 believe it his unbelief will appear to the jury, 
 despite all his protestations, and will become 
 their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work 
 of art, of whatever kind, sets us in the same 
 state of mind wherein the artist was when he 
 made it. That which we do not believe we j 
 cannot adequately say, though we may repeat 
 the words never so often. It was this con- ', 
 viction which Swedenborg expressed when he 
 described a group of persons in the spiritual 
 world endeavoring in vain to articulate a pro- 
 position which they did not believe ; but they 
 could not, though they twisted and folded their 
 lips even to indignation. 
 
 A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle 
 is all curiosity concerning other people's esti- 
 mate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is 
 not less so. If a man know that he can do any 
 thing, that he can do it better than any one 
 else, he has a pledge of the acknowledgment 
 of that fact by all persons. The world is full of 
 judgment-days, and into every assembly that 
 a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is 
 gauged and stamped. In every troop of boys
 
 158 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 that whoop and run in each yard and square, a 
 new-comer is as well and accurately weighed in 
 the course of a few days and stamped with his 
 right number, as if he had undergone a for- 
 mal trial of his strength, speed and temper. A 
 stranger comes from a distant school, with better 
 dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and 
 pretensions ; an older boy says to himself, * It 's 
 of no use ; we shall find him out to-morrow/ 
 ' What has he done ? ' is the divine question 
 which searches men and transpierces every false 
 reputation. A fop may sit in any chair of the 
 world nor be distinguished for his hour from 
 Homer and Washington ; but there need never 
 be any doubt concerning the respective ability 
 of human beings. Pretension may sit still, but 
 cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of 
 real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, 
 nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the 
 world, nor abolished slavery. 
 
 As much virtue as there is, so much appears ; 
 as much goodness as there is, so much rever- 
 ence it commands. All the devils respect vir- 
 tue. The high, the generous, the self-devoted 
 sect will always instruct and command mankind. 
 / Never was a sincere word utterly lost. Never 
 1 a magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 159 
 
 some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. ; 
 A man passes for that he is worth. What he is 
 engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his 
 fortunes, in letters of light. Concealment avails 
 him nothing, boasting nothing. There is con- 
 fession in the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, 
 in salutations, and the grasp of hands. His sin 
 bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. 
 Men know not why they do not trust him, but 
 they do not trust him. His vice glasses his eye, 
 cuts lines of mean expression in his cheek, 
 pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on 
 the back of the head, and writes O fool ! fool ! 
 on the forehead of a king. 
 
 If you would not be known to do any thing, 
 never do it. A man may play the fool in the 
 drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall 
 seem to see. He may be a solitary eater, but 
 he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken 
 complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts 
 and the want of due knowledge, all blab. 
 Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an lachimo be mistaken 
 for Zeno or Paul? Confucius exclaimed, 
 " How can a man be concealed ? How can a 
 man be concealed ? " 
 
 On the other hand, the hero fears not that 
 if he withhold the avowal of a just and brave
 
 160 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 act it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One 
 knows it, himself, and is pledged by it 
 to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim 
 which will prove in the end a better proclama- 
 tion of it than the relating of the incident. Vir- 
 tue is the adherence in action to the nature of 
 things and the nature of things makes it pre- 
 valent. It consists in a perpetual substitution 
 of being for seeming, and with sublime pro- 
 priety God is described as saying, I AM. 
 
 The lesson which these observations convey 
 is, Be, and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us 
 take our bloated nothingness out of the path 
 of the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wis- 
 dom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's 
 power and learn that truth alone makes rich and 
 great. 
 
 If you visit your friend, why need you apolo- 
 gize for not having visited him, and waste his 
 time and deface your own act ? Visit him now. 
 Let him feel that the highest love has come to 
 see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need 
 you torment yourself and friend by secret self- 
 reproaches that you have not assisted him or 
 complimented him with gifts and salutations 
 heretofore ? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine 
 with real light and not with the borrowed re*
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 161 
 
 flection of gifts. Common men are apologies 
 for men ; they bow the head, excuse themselves 
 with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances 
 because the substance is not. 
 
 We are full of these superstitions of sense, 
 the worship of magnitude. We call the poet 
 inactive, because he is not a president, a mer- 
 chant, or a porter. We adore an institution, 
 and do not see that it is founded on a thought 
 which we have. But real action is in silent mo- 
 ments. The epochs of our life are not in the 
 visible facts of our choice of a calling, our mar- 
 riage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, 
 but in a silent thought by the wayside as we 
 walk ; in a thought which revises our entire 
 manner of life and says, * Thus hast thou 
 done, but it were better thus.' And all our after 
 years, like menials, serve and wait on this, and 
 according to their ability execute its will. This 
 revisal or correction is a constant force, which, 
 as a tendency, reaches through our lifetime. 
 The object of the man, the aim of these mo- 
 ments, is to make daylight shine through him, 
 to suffer the law to traverse his whole being 
 without obstruction, so that on what point so- 
 ever of his doing your eye falls it shall report 
 truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his
 
 162 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, 
 his vote, his opposition. Now he is not homo- 
 geneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray does 
 not traverse ; there are no thorough lights, but 
 the eye of the beholder is puzzled, detecting 
 many unlike tendencies and a life not yet at 
 one. 
 
 Why should we make it a point with our 
 false modesty to disparage that man we are and 
 that form of being assigned to us ? A good 
 man is contented. I love and honor Epami- 
 nondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. 
 I hold it more just to love the world of this 
 hour than the world of his hour. Nor can you, 
 if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness 
 
 (by saying, * He acted and thou sittest still.' I 
 see action to be good, when the need is, and 
 sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if 
 he was the man I take him for, would have sat 
 still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. 
 Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes 
 of love and fortitude. Why should we be busy- 
 bodies and superserviceable ? Action and inac- 
 tion are alike to the true. One piece of the tree 
 is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper 
 of a bridge ; the virtue of the wood is apparent 
 in both.
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 163 
 
 I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact 
 that I am here certainly shows me that the soul 
 had need of an organ here. Shall I not assume 
 the post ? Shall I skulk and dodge and duck 
 with my unseasonable apologies and vain mod- 
 esty and imagine my being here impertinent ? 
 less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer be- 
 ing there ? and that the soul did not know its 
 own needs ? Besides, without any reasoning on 
 the matter, I have no discontent. The good 
 soul nourishes me and unlocks new magazines 
 of power and enjoyment to me every day. I 
 will not meanly decline the immensity of good, 
 because I have heard that it has come to others 
 in another shape. 
 
 Besides, why should we be cowed by the 
 name of Action? 'T is a trick of the senses, 
 no more. We know that the ancestor of every 
 action is a thought. The poor mind does not 
 seem to itself to be any thing unless it have an 
 outside badge, some Gentoo diet, or Quaker 
 coat, or Calvinistic prayer-meeting, or philan- 
 thropic society, or a great donation, or a high 
 office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action 
 to testify that it is somewhat. The rich mind 
 lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To 
 think is to act.
 
 164 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 Let us, if we must have great actions, make 
 our own so. All action is of an infinite elasti- 
 city, and the least admits of being inflated with 
 the celestial air until it eclipses the sun and 
 moon. Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let 
 me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding 
 into the scenes and philosophy of Greek and 
 Italian history before I have justified myself to 
 my benefactors? How dare I read Washing- 
 ton's campaigns when I have not answered the 
 letters of my own correspondents ? Is not that 
 a just objection to much of our reading ? It is 
 a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze 
 after our neighbors. It is peeping. Byron says 
 of Jack Bunting, 
 
 He knew not what to say, and so he swore. ' 
 
 I may say it of our preposterous use of books, 
 He knew not what to do, and so he read. I 
 can think of nothing to fill my time with, and 
 I find the Life of Brant. It is a very extrava- 
 gant compliment to pay to Brant, or to General 
 Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time 
 should be as good as their time, my facts, my 
 net of relations, as good as theirs, or either of 
 theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that 
 other idlers if they choose may compare my tex-
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 165 
 
 ture with the texture of these and find it identi- 
 cal with the best. 
 
 This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul 
 and Pericles, this under-estimate of our own, 
 comes from a neglect of the fact of an identical 
 nature. Bonaparte knew but one merit, and re- 
 warded in one and the same way the good sol- 
 dier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the 
 good player. The poet uses the names of Caesar, 
 of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, 1 of Belisarius ; the 
 painter uses the conventional story of the Vir- 
 gin Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not there- 
 fore defer to the nature of these accidental men, 
 of these stock heroes. If the poet write a true 
 drama, then he is Caesar, and not the player of 
 Caesar : then the selfsame strain of thought, 
 emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, 
 mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self- 
 sufficing, dauntless, which on the waves of its 
 love and hope can uplift all that is reckoned solid 
 and precious in the world, palaces, gardens, 
 money, navies, kingdoms, marking its own 
 incomparable worth by the slight it casts on 
 these gauas of men ; these all are his, and by 
 the power of these he rouses the nations. Let 
 a man believe in God, and not in names and 
 places and persons. Let the great soul incar*
 
 166 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 nated in some woman's form, poor and sad and 
 single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service 
 and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its 
 effulgent daybeams cannot be muffled or hid, 
 but to sweep and scour will instantly appear 
 supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radi- 
 ance of human life, and all people will get mops 
 and brooms; until, lo ! suddenly the great soul 
 has enshrined itself in some other form and done 
 some other deed, and that is now the flower and 
 head of all living nature. 1 
 
 We are the photometers, we the irritable gold- 
 leaf and tinfoil that measure the accumulations 
 of the subtle element. We know the authentic 
 effects of the true fire through every one of its 
 million disguises.
 
 V 
 LOVE 
 
 e I WAS as a gem concealed; 
 Me my burning ray revealed." 
 
 Koran.'
 
 LOVE 
 
 EVERY promise of the soul has innumer- 
 able fulfilments ; each of its joys ripens 
 into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flow- 
 ing, forelooking, in the first sentiment of kind- 
 ness anticipates already a benevolence which 
 shall lose all particular regards in its general 
 light. The introduction to this felicity is in a 
 private and tender relation of one to one, which 
 is the enchantment of human life; which, like 
 a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on 
 man at one period and works a revolution in his 
 mind and body ; unites him to his race, pledges 
 him to the domestic and civic relations, carries 
 him with new sympathy into nature, enhances 
 the power of the senses, opens the imagination, 
 adds to his character heroic and sacred attri- 
 butes, establishes marriage and gives perma- 
 nence to human society. 
 
 The natural association of the sentiment of 
 love with the heyday of the blood seems to re- 
 quire that in order to portray it in vivid tints, 
 which every youth and maid should confess to 
 be true to their throbbing experience, one must 
 not be too old. The delicious fancies of youth
 
 170 LOVE 
 
 reject the least ''avor of a mature philosophy, 
 as chilling with age and pedantry their purple 
 bloom. And therefore I know I incur the im- 
 putation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism 
 from those who compose the Court and Par- 
 liament of Love. But from these formidable 
 censors I shall appeal to my seniors. For it is 
 to be considered that this passion of which we 
 speak, though it begin with the young, yet for- 
 sakes not the old, or rather suffers no one who 
 is its servant to grow old, but makes the aged 
 participators of it not less than the tender maiden, 
 though in a different and nobler sort. For it is 
 a fire that kindling its first embers in the narrow 
 nook of a private bosom, caught from a wander- 
 ing spark out of another private heart, glows 
 and enlarges until it warms and beams upon 
 multitudes of men and women, upon the univer- 
 sal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world 
 and all nature with its generous flames. It mat- 
 ters not therefore whether we attempt to de- 
 scribe the passion at twenty, thirty, or at eighty 
 years. He who paints it at the first period will 
 lose some of its later, he who paints it at the 
 last, some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be 
 hoped that by patience and the Muses' aid we 
 may attain to that inward view of the law which
 
 LOVE 171 
 
 shall describe a truth ever young and beautiful, 
 so central that it shall commend itself to the eye 
 at whatever angle beholden. 
 
 And the first condition is that we must leave 
 a too close and lingering adherence to facts, and 
 study the sentiment as it appeared in hope, and 
 not in history. For each man sees his own life 
 defaced and disfigured, as the life of man is not 
 to his imagination. Each man sees over his own 
 experience a certain stain of error, whilst that 
 of other men looks fair and ideal. Let any 
 man go back to those delicious relations which 
 make the beauty of his life, which have given 
 him sincerest instruction and nourishment, he 
 will shrink and moan. Alas ! I know not why, 
 but infinite compunctions embitter in mature 
 life the remembrances of budding joy, and cover 
 every beloved name. 1 Every thing is beautiful 
 seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. 
 But all is sour if seen as experience. Details 
 are melancholy ; the plan is seemly and noble. 
 In the actual world the painful kingdom of 
 time and place dwell care and canker and fear. 
 With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilar- 
 ity, the rose of joy. Round it all the Muses 
 sing. But grief cleaves to names and persons and 
 the partial interests of to-day and yesterday.
 
 172 LOVE 
 
 The strong bent of nature is seen in the pro* 
 portion which this topic of personal relations 
 usurps in the conversation of society. What do 
 we wish to know of any worthy person so much 
 as how he has sped in the history of this senti- 
 ment ? What books in the circulating library 
 circulate ? How we glow over these novels of 
 passion, when the story is told with any spark 
 of truth and nature ! And what fastens atten- 
 tion, in the intercourse of life, like any passage 
 betraying affection between two parties ? Per- 
 haps we never saw them before and never shall 
 meet them again. But we see them exchange a 
 glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no 
 longer strangers. We understand them and take 
 the warmest interest in the development of the 
 romance. All mankind love a lover. The ear- 
 liest demonstrations of complacency and kind- 
 ness are nature's most winning pictures. 1 It is 
 the dawn of civility and grace in the coarse and 
 rustic. The rude village boy teases the girls 
 about the school-house door ; but to-day he 
 comes running into the entry and meets one 
 fair child disposing her satchel ; he holds her 
 books to help her, and instantly it seems to 
 him as if she removed herself from him infi- 
 nitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the
 
 LOVE 173 
 
 throng of girls he runs rudely enough, but one 
 alone distances him ; and these two little neigh- 
 bors, that were so close just now, have learned 
 to respect each other's personality. Or who can 
 avert his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, 
 half-artless ways of school-girls who go into the 
 country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet 
 of paper, and talk half an hour about nothing 
 with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. 
 In the village they are on a perfect equality, 
 which love delights in, and without any coquetry 
 the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows 
 out in this pretty gossip. The girls may have 
 little beauty, yet plainly do they establish be- 
 tween them and the good boy the most agree- 
 able, confiding relations ; what with their fun 
 and their earnest, about Edgar and Jonas and 
 Almira, and who was invited to the party, and 
 who danced at the dancing-school, and when 
 the singing-school would begin, and other no- 
 things concerning which the parties cooed. By 
 and by that boy wants a wife, and very truly 
 and heartily will he know where to find a sin- 
 cere and sweet mate, without any risk such as 
 Milton deplores as incident to scholars and 
 great men. 
 
 I have been told that in some public dis-
 
 174 LOVE 
 
 courses of mine my reverence for the intellect 
 has made me unjustly cold to the personal rela- 
 tions. But now I almost shrink at the remem- 
 brance of such disparaging words. For persons 
 are love's world, and the coldest philosopher 
 cannot recount the debt of the young soul wan- 
 dering here in nature to the power of love, with- 
 out being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to 
 nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. 
 For though the celestial rapture falling out of 
 heaven seizes only upon those of tender age, 
 and although a beauty overpowering all analysis 
 or comparison and putting us quite beside our- 
 selves we can seldom see after thirty years, yet 
 the remembrance of these visions outlasts all 
 other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers 
 on the oldest brows. But here is a strange fact ; 
 it may seem to many men, in revising their ex- 
 perience, that they have no fairer page in their 
 life's book than the delicious memory of some 
 passages wherein affection contrived to give a 
 witchcraft, surpassing the deep attraction of its 
 own truth, to a parcel of accidental and trivial 
 circumstances. In looking backward they may 
 find that several things which were not the 
 charm have more reality to this groping mem- 
 ory than the charm itself which embalmed them.
 
 LOVE 175 
 
 But be our experience in particulars what it 
 may, no man ever forgot the visitations of that 
 pow^r to his heart and brain, which created 
 all things anew ; which was the dawn in him 
 of music, poetry and art ; which made the face 
 of nature radiant with purple light, the morn- 
 ing and the night varied enchantments ; when a 
 single tone of one voice could make the heart 
 bound, and the most trivial circumstance asso- 
 ciated with one form is put in the amber of 
 memory ; when he became all eye when one was 
 present, and all memory when one was gone ; 
 when the youth becomes a watcher of win- 
 dows and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, 
 or the wheels of a carriage ; when no place is 
 too solitary and none too silent for him who 
 has richer company and sweeter conversation in 
 his new thoughts than any old friends, though 
 best and purest, can give him ; for the figures, 
 the motions, the words of the beloved object 
 are not, like other images, written in water, but, 
 as Plutarch said, " enamelled in fire," and make 
 the study of midnight : 
 
 "Thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art, 
 Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving 
 heart." ' 
 
 In the noon and the afternoon of life we still
 
 176 LOVE 
 
 throb at the recollection of days when happiness 
 was not happy enough, but must be drugged 
 with the relish of pain and fear ; for he touched 
 the secret of the matter who said of love, 
 
 " All other pleasures are not worth its pains : " * 
 
 and when the day was not long enough, but the 
 night too must be consumed in keen recollec- 
 tions; when the head boiled all night on the pil- 
 low with the generous deed it resolved on ; when 
 the moonlight was a pleasing fever and the stars 
 were letters and the flowers ciphers and the air 
 was coined into song ; when all business seemed 
 an impertinence, and all the men and women 
 running to and fro in the streets, mere pictures. 
 The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. 
 It makes all things alive and significant. Nature 
 grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of 
 the tree sings now to his heart and soul. The 
 notes are almost articulate. The clouds have 
 faces as he looks on them. The trees of the 
 forest, the waving grass and the peeping flow- 
 ers have grown intelligent ; and he almost fears 
 to trust them with the secret which they seem 
 to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. 
 In the green solitude he finds a dearer home 
 than with men :
 
 LOVE 177 
 
 Sf Fountain-heads and pathless groves, 
 Places which pale passion loves, 
 Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
 Are safely housed, save bats and owls, 
 A midnight bell, a passing groan, 
 These are the sounds we feed upon." * 
 
 Behold there in the wood the fine madman ! 
 He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights ; he 
 dilates ; he is twice a man ; he walks with arms 
 akimbo ; he soliloquizes ; he accosts the grass 
 and the trees ; he feels the blood of the violet, 
 the clover and the lily in his veins ; and he 
 talks with the brook that wets his foot.* 
 
 The heats that have opened his perceptions 
 of natural beauty have made him love music 
 and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men 
 have written good verses under the inspiration 
 of passion who cannot write well under any 
 other circumstances. 
 
 The like force has the passion over all his 
 nature. It expands the sentiment; it makes 
 the clown gentle and gives the coward heart. 
 Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a 
 heart and courage to defy the world, so only it 
 have the countenance of the beloved object. In 
 giving him to another it still more gives him to 
 himself. He is a new man, with new percep-
 
 1 78 LOVE 
 
 tions, new and keener purposes, and a religious 
 solemnity of character and aims. He does not 
 longer appertain to his family and society ; he 
 is somewhat ; he is a person ; he is a soul. 
 
 And here let us examine a little nearer the 
 nature of that influence which is thus potent 
 over the human youth. Beauty, whose revela- 
 tion to man we now celebrate, welcome as the 
 sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases 
 everybody with it and with themselves, seems 
 sufficient to itself. The lover cannot paint his 
 maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. Like a 
 tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing 
 loveliness is society for itself; and she teaches 
 his eye why Beauty was pictured with Loves 
 and Graces attending her steps. Her existence 
 makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all 
 other persons from his attention as cheap and 
 unworthy, she indemnifies him by carrying out 
 her own being into somewhat impersonal, large, 
 mundane, so that the maiden stands to him for 
 a representative of all select things and virtues. 
 For that reason the lover never sees personal 
 resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or 
 to others. His friends find in her a likeness to 
 her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not 
 of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance
 
 LOVE 179 
 
 except to summer evenings and diamond morn- 
 ings, to rainbows and the song of birds. 
 
 The ancients called beauty the flowering of 
 virtue. 1 Who can analyze the nameless charm 
 which glances from one and another face and 
 form ? We are touched with emotions of ten- 
 derness and complacency, but we cannot find 
 whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering 
 gleam, points. It is destroyed for the imagina- 
 tion by any attempt to refer it to organization. 
 Nor does it point to any relations of friendship 
 or love known and described in society, but, as 
 it seems to me, to a quite other and unattaina- 
 ble sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy 
 and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint 
 and foreshow. We cannot approach beauty. Its 
 nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hov- 
 ering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the 
 most excellent things, which all have this rain- 
 bow character, defying all attempts at appropri- 
 ation and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter 
 signify, when he said to music, " Away ! away ! 
 thou speakest to me of things which in all my 
 endless life I have not found and shall not find." 
 The same fluency may be observed in every 
 work of the plastic arts. The statue is then 
 beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible,
 
 i8o LOVE 
 
 when it is passing out of criticism and can no 
 longer be defined by compass and measuring- 
 wand, but demands an active imagination to go 
 with it and to say what it is in the act of do- 
 ing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always 
 represented in a transition from that which is 
 representable to the senses, to that which is not. 
 Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same 
 remark holds of painting. And of poetry the 
 success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, 
 but when it astonishes and fires us with new 
 endeavors after the unattainable. Concerning 
 it Landor inquires " whether it is not to be 
 referred to some purer state of sensation and 
 existence." 
 
 In like manner, personal beauty is then first 
 charming and itself when it dissatisfies us with 
 any end ; when it becomes a story without an 
 end ; when it suggests gleams and visions and 
 not earthly satisfactions ; when it makes the be- 
 holder feel his unworthiness ; when he cannot 
 feel his right to it, though he were Csesar ; he 
 cannot feel more right to it than to the firma- 
 ment and the splendors of a sunset. 
 
 Hence arose the saying, " If I love you, what 
 is that to you ? " We say so because we feel that 
 what we love is not in your will, but above it. It
 
 LOVE 181 
 
 is not you, but your radiance. It is that which 
 you know not in yourself and can never know. 
 
 This agrees well with that high philosophy of 
 Beauty which the ancient writers delighted in ; 
 for they said that the soul of man, embodied 
 here on earth, went roaming up and down in 
 quest of that other world of its own out of which 
 it came into this, but was soon stupefied by the 
 light of the natural sun, and unable to see any 
 other objects than those of this world, which are 
 but shadows of real things. 1 Therefore the Deity 
 sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it 
 may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its 
 recollection of the celestial good and fair ; and 
 the man beholding such a person in the female 
 sex runs to her and finds the highest joy in 
 contemplating the form, movement and intelli- 
 gence of this person, because it suggests to him 
 the presence of that which indeed is within the 
 beauty, and the cause of the beauty. 
 
 If however, from too much conversing with 
 material objects, the soul was gross, and mis- 
 placed its satisfaction in the body, it reaped 
 nothing but sorrow ; body being unable to ful- 
 fil the promise which beauty holds out ; but if. 
 accepting the hint of these visions and sugges- 
 tions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul
 
 182 LOVE 
 
 passes through the body and falls to admire 
 strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate 
 one another in their discourses and their actions, 
 then they pass to the true palace of beauty, 
 more and more inflame their love of it, and by 
 this love extinguishing the base ' affection, as 
 the sun puts out fire by shining on the hearth, 
 Chey become pure and hallowed. By conversa- 
 tion with that which is in itself excellent, mag- 
 nanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to a 
 warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker 
 apprehension of them. Then he passes from 
 loving them in one to loving them in all, and so 
 is the one beautiful soul only the door through 
 which he enters to the society of all true and 
 pure souls. In the particular society of his mate 
 he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint 
 which her beauty has contracted from this world, 
 and is able to point it out, and this with mutual 
 joy that they are now able, without offence, to 
 indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, 
 and give to each all help and comfort in curing 
 the same. And beholding in many souls the 
 traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each 
 soul that which is divine from the taint which it 
 has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to 
 the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge
 
 LOVE 183 
 
 of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of cre^ 
 ated souls. 
 
 Somewhat like this have the truly wise told 
 us of love in all ages. The doctrine is not old, 
 nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius 
 taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. 
 It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and 
 rebuke to that subterranean prudence which pre- 
 sides at marriages with words that take hold of 
 the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the 
 cellar; so that its gravest discourse has a savor 
 of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this 
 sensualism intrudes into the education of young 
 women, and withers the hope and affection of 
 human nature by teaching that marriage signi- 
 fies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that 
 woman's life has no other aim. 
 
 But this dream of love, though beautiful, is 
 only one scene in our play. In the procession 
 of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its 
 circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the 
 pond, or the light proceeding from an orb. The 
 rayToftfie soul alight first on things nearest, on 
 every utensil and toy, on nurses and domestics, 
 on the house and yard and passengers, on the 
 circle of household acquaintance, on politics and 
 g-ography and history. But things are ever
 
 1 84 LOVE 
 
 grouping themselves according to higher or 
 more interior laws. Neighborhood, size, num~ 
 bers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power 
 over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, the 
 longing for harmony between the soul and the 
 circumstance, the progressive, idealizing instinct, 
 predominate later, and the step backward from 
 the higher to the lower relations is impossible. 
 Thus even love, which is the deification of per- 
 sons, must become more impersonal every day. 
 Of this at first it gives no hint. Little think 
 the youth and maiden who are glancing at each 
 other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of 
 mutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long 
 hereafter to proceed from this new, quite exter- 
 nal stimulus. The work of vegetation iegins 
 first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. 
 From exchanging glances, they advance to acts 
 of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to 
 plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds 
 its object as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly 
 embodied, and the body is wholly ensouled:- ^ 
 
 " Her pure and eloquent blood 
 Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 
 That one might almost say her body thought." * 
 
 Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars 
 to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair,
 
 LOVE 185 
 
 has no other aim, asks no more, than Juliet, 
 than Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, king- 
 doms, religion, are all contained in this form full 
 of soul, in this soul which is all form. The lov- 
 ers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, 
 in comparisons of their regards. When alone, 
 they solace themselves with the remembered im- 
 age of the other. Does that other see the same 
 star, the same melting cloud, read the same 
 book, feel the same emotion, that now delights 
 me ? x They try and weigh their affection, and 
 adding up costly advantages, friends, opportuni- 
 ties, properties, exult in discovering that will- 
 ingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom 
 tor the beautiful, the beloved head, not one 
 hair of which shall be harmed. But the lot of 
 humanity is on these children. Danger, sorrow 
 and pain arrive to them as to all. Love prays. 
 It makes covenants with Eternal Power in be- 
 half of this dear mate. The union which is thus 
 effected and which adds a new value to every 
 atom in nature for it transmutes every thread 
 throughout the whole web of relation into a 
 golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new anc^ 
 sweeter element is yet a temporary state. Not 
 always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, 
 Qor even home in another heart, content the
 
 186 LOVE 
 
 awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself 
 at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts 
 on the harness and aspires to vast and universal 
 aims. The soul which is in the soul of each, 
 craving a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, 
 defects and disproportion in the behavior of the 
 other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation and 
 pain. Yet that which drew them to each other 
 was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue ; and these 
 virtues are there, however eclipsed. They ap- 
 pear and reappear and continue to attract ; but 
 the regard changes, quits the sign and attaches 
 to the substance. This repairs the wounded 
 affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves 
 a game of permutation and combination of all 
 possible positions of the parties, to employ all 
 the resources of each and acquaint each with the 
 strength and weakness of the other. For it is 
 the nature and end of this relation, that they 
 should represent the human race to each other. 
 All that is in the world, which is or ought to be 
 known, is cunningly wrought into the texture 
 of man, of woman : 
 
 " The person love does to us fit, 
 
 Like manna, has the taste of all in it." x 
 
 The world rolls ; the circumstances vary every 
 hour. The angels that inhabit this temple of
 
 LOVE 187 
 
 the body appear at the windows, and the gnomes 
 and vices also. By all the virtues they are united. 
 If there be virtue, all the vices are known as 
 such ; they confess and flee. Their once flam- 
 ing regard is sobered by time in either breast, 
 and losing in violence what it gains in extent, it 
 becomes a thorough good understanding. They 
 resign each other without complaint to the good 
 offices which man and woman are severally ap- 
 pointed to discharge in time, and exchange the 
 passion which once could not lose sight of its 
 object, for a cheerful disengaged furtherance, 
 whether present or absent, of each other's de- 
 signs. At last they discover that all which at 
 first drew them together, those once sacred 
 features, that magical play of charms, wjis 
 deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaf- 
 folding by which the house was built ; and the 
 purification of the intellect and the heart from 
 year to year is the real marriage, foreseen and 
 prepared from the first, and wholly above their 
 consciousness. Looking at these aims with which 
 two persons, a man and a woman, so variously 
 and correlatively gifted, are shut up in one house 
 to spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty 
 years, I do not wonder at the emphasis with 
 which the heart prophesies this crisis from early
 
 i88 LOVE 
 
 infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the 
 instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature and 
 intellect and art emulate each other in the gifts 
 and the melody they bring to the epithalamium. 
 Thus are we put in training for a love which 
 knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but 
 which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to 
 the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We 
 are by nature observers, and thereby learners. 
 That is our permanent state. But we are often 
 made to feel that our affections are but tents of 
 a night. Though slowly and with pain, the ob- 
 jects of the affections change, as the objects of 
 thought do. There are moments when the affec- 
 tions rule and absorb the man and make his 
 happiness dependent on a person or persons. But 
 in health the mind is presently seen again, its 
 overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immu- 
 table lights, and the warm loves and fears, that 
 swept over us as clouds, must lose their finite 
 character and blend with God, to attain their 
 own perfection. But we need not fear that we can 
 lose any thing by the progress of the soul. The 
 soul may be trusted to the end. That which is 
 so beautiful and attractive as these relations, 
 must be succeeded and supplanted only by 
 what is more beautiful, and so on for ever.
 
 VI 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 A RUDDY drop of manly blood 
 
 The surging sea outweighs; 
 
 The world uncertain comes and goes, 
 
 The lover rooted stays. 
 
 I fancied he was fled, 
 
 And, after many a year, 
 
 Glowed unexhausted kindliness 
 
 Like daily sunrise there. 
 
 My careful heart was free again, 
 
 O friend, my bosom said, 
 
 Through thee alone the sky is arched, 
 
 Through thee the rose is red, 
 
 All things through thee take nobler form 
 
 And look beyond the earth, 
 
 The mill-round of our fate appears 
 
 A sun- path in thy worth. 
 
 Me too thy nobleness has taught 
 
 To master my despair ; 
 
 The fountains of my hidden life 
 
 Are through thy friendship fair.
 

 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 WE Jhav&jLgreat deal more kindness than 
 is ever spoken. Maugre all the selfish- 
 ness that chills like east winds the world, the 
 whole human family is bathed with an element 
 of love like a fine ether. How many persons 
 we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, 
 whom yet we honor, and who honor us ! How 
 many we see in the street, or sit with in church, 
 whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be 
 with ! ' Re.ad the language of these wandering 
 eye-beams. The heart knoweth. 
 
 The effect of the indulgence of this human 
 affection is a certain cordial exhilaration. In 
 poetry and in common speech the emotions of 
 benevolence and complacency which are felt 
 towards others are likened to the material effects 
 of fire ; so swift, or much more swift, more ac- 
 tive, more cheering, are these fine inward irradi- 
 ations. From the highest degree of passionate 
 love to the lowest degree of good-will, they 
 make the sweetness of life. 
 
 Our intellectual and active powers increase 
 with our affection. The scholar sits down to 
 write, and all his years of meditation do not
 
 I 9 2 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 furnish him with one good thought or happy 
 expression ; but it is necessary to write a letter 
 to a friend, and forthwith troops of gentle 
 thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with 
 chosen words. 1 See, in any house where virtue 
 and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the 
 approach of a stranger causes. A commended 
 stranger is expected and announced, and an un- 
 easiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all 
 the hearts of a household. His arrival almost 
 brings fear to the good hearts that would wel- 
 come him. The house is dusted, all things fly 
 into their places, the old coat is exchanged for 
 the new, and they must get up a dinner if they 
 can. Of a commended stranger, only the good 
 report is told by others, only the good and new 
 is heard by us. He stands to us for humanity/ 
 He is what we wish. Having imagined and 
 invested him, we ask how we should stand re- 
 lated in conversation and action with such a 
 man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea 
 exalts conversation with him. We talk better 
 than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, 
 a richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken 
 leave for the time. For long hours we can con- 
 tinue a series of sincere, graceful, rich com- 
 munications, drawn from the oldest, secretest
 
 FRIENDSHIP 193 
 
 experience, so that they who sit by, of our own 
 kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively sur- 
 prise at our unusual powers. But as soon as the 
 stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his 
 definitions, his defects into the conversation, it 
 is all over. He has heard the first, the last 
 and best he will ever hear from us. He is no 
 stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misappre- 
 hension are old acquaintances. Now, when he 
 comes, he may get the order, the dress and the 
 dinner, but the throbbing of the heart and 
 the communications of the soul, no more. 
 
 What is so pleasant as these jets of affection 
 which make a young world for me again? What 
 so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, 
 in a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on 
 their approach to this beating heart, the steps 
 and forms of the gifted and the true ! The 
 moment we indulge our affections, the earth 
 is metamorphosed; there is no winter and no 
 night; all tragedies, all ennuis vanish, all du- 
 ties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity 
 but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. 
 Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the 
 universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would 
 be content and cheerful alone for a thousand 
 years.
 
 194 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiv- 
 ing for my friends, the old and the new. Shall 
 I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth 
 himself so to me in his gifts ? I chide society, 
 I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so un- 
 grateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and 
 the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass 
 my gate. 1 Who hears me, who understands me, 
 becomes mine, a possession for all time. Nor 
 is Nature so poor but she gives me this joy sev- 
 eral times, and thus we weave social threads of 
 our own, a new web of relations ; and, as many 
 thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, 
 we shall by and by stand in a new world of our 
 own creation, and no longer strangers and pil- 
 grims in a traditionary globe. My friends have 
 come to me unsought. The great God gave 
 them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affin- 
 ity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather 
 not I, but the Deity in me and in them derides 
 and cancels the thick walls of individual char- 
 acter, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which 
 he usually connives, and now makes many one. 
 High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who 
 carry out the world for me to new and noble 
 depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my 
 thoughts. These are new poetry of the first
 
 FRIENDSHIP 195 
 
 Bard, poetry without stop, hymn, ode and 
 epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses 
 chanting still. Will these too separate them- 
 selves from me again, or some of them ? I know 
 not, but I fear it not ; for my relation to them 
 is so pure that we hold by simple affinity, and 
 the Genius of my life being thus social, the same 
 affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is 
 as noble as these men and women, wherever I 
 may be. 
 
 I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature 
 on this point. It is almost dangerous to me to 
 " crush the sweet poison of misused wine " ' of 
 the affections. A new person is to me a great 
 event and hinders me from sleep. I have often 
 had fine fancies about persons which have given 
 me delicious hours ; but the joy ends in the day ; 
 it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it ; 
 my action is very little modified. I must feel 
 pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they 
 were mine, and a property in his virtues. I feel 
 as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when 
 he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We 
 over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His 
 goodness seems better than our goodness, his 
 nature finer, his temptations less. Every thing 
 that is his, his name, his form, his dress, books
 
 196 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 and instruments, fancy enhances. Our own 
 thought sounds new and larger from his mouth. 1 
 Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are 
 not without their analogy in the ebb and flow 
 of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the 
 soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, be- 
 holding his maiden, half knows that she is not 
 verily that which he worships ; and in the golden 
 hour of friendship we are surprised with shades 
 of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we 
 bestow on our hero the virtues in which he 
 shines, and afterwards worship the form to which 
 we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In 
 strictness, the soul does not respect men as it 
 respects itself. In strict science all persons un- 
 derlie the same condition of an infinite remote- ' 
 ness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining 
 for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian 
 temple ? Shall I not be as real as the things I 
 see ? If I am, I shall not fear to know them 
 for what they are. Their essence is not less 
 beautiful than their appearance, though it needs 
 finer organs for its apprehension. The_root_of 
 the plant is not unsightly to science, though for 
 chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. 
 And I must hazard the production of the bald 
 fact amidst these pleasing -reveries, though it
 
 FRIENDSHIP 197 
 
 should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. 
 A man who stands united with his thought con- 
 ceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious 
 of a universal success, even though bought by 
 uniform particular failures. 1 No advantages, no 
 powers, no gold or force, can be any match for 
 him. I cannot choose but rely on my own pov- 
 erty more than on your wealth. I cannot make 
 your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only 
 the star dazzles ; the planet has a faint, moon- 
 like ray. I hear what you say of the admirable 
 parts and tried temper of the party you praise, 
 but I see well that, for all his purple cloaks, I 
 shall not like him, unless he is at least a poor 
 Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that 
 the vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes 
 thee also in its pied and painted immensity, 
 thee also,compared with whom all else is shadow. 
 Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is, 
 thou art not my soul, but a picture and effigy 
 of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and al- 
 ready thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it 
 not that the soul puts forth friends as the tree j 
 
 puts forth leaves, ajTdpresejTdvjJ]y_lJie__germ- 
 ination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf?* 
 
 The law^ of nafufe is^aTternation for evermore. 
 Each electrical state superinduces the opposite.
 
 i 9 8 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 The soul environs itself with friends that it may 
 enter into a grander self-acquaintance or soli- 
 tude ; and it goes alone for a season that it may 
 exalt its conversation or society. This method 
 betrays itself along the whole history of our per- 
 sonal relations. The instinct of affection revives 
 the hope of union with our mates, and the re- 
 turning sense of insulation recalls us from the 
 chase. Thus every man passes his life in the 
 search after friendship, and if he should record 
 his true sentiment, he might write a letter like 
 this to each new candidate for his love : 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure 
 to match my mood with thine, I should never 
 think again of trifles in relation to thy comings 
 and goings. I am not very wise ; my moods are 
 quite attainable, and I respect thy genius ; it is 
 to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not pre- 
 sume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and 
 so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine 
 ever, or never. 
 
 Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are 
 for curiosity and not for life. They are not to 
 be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not 
 cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poof
 
 FRIENDSHIP 199 
 
 conclusions, because we have made them a tex- 
 ture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough 
 fibre of the human heart. The laws of friend- 
 ship are austere and eternal, of one web with 
 the laws of nature and of morals. But we have 
 aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a 
 sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest 
 fruit in the whole garden of God, which many 
 summers and many winters must ripen. We seek 
 our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate 
 passion which would appropriate him to our- 
 selves. In vain. We are armed all over with 
 subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, 
 begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale 
 prose. 1 Almost all people descend to meet. All 
 association must be a compromise, and, what is 
 worst, (the very\jlower and aroma of the flower 
 of each of the beautiful natures disappears as 
 they approach each other^ What a perpetual 
 disappointment is actual society, even of the 
 virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been 
 compassed with long foresight we must be tor- 
 mented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, 
 unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and 
 of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship 
 and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, 
 and both parties are relieved by solitude.
 
 200 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 I ought to be equal to every relation. It 
 makes no difference how many friends I have 
 and what content I can find in conversing with 
 each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. 
 If I have shrunk unequal from one contest, the 
 joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and 
 cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made 
 my other friends my asylum : 
 
 * The valiant warrior famoused for fight, 
 After a hundred victories, once foiled, 
 Is from the book of honor razed quite 
 And all the rest forgot for which he toiled." 1 
 
 Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked* 
 Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk in 
 which a delicate organization is protected from 
 premature rjgening. It would be lost if it knew 
 itself before any of the best souls were yet rirje 
 enough to know and own it. Respect the natur- 
 langsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million 
 years, and works in duration in which Alps and 
 Andes come and go as rainbows. The good spirit 
 of our life has no heaven which is the price of 
 rashness. Love, which is the essence of God, is 
 not for levItyTbut for the total worth of man. 
 Let us not have this childish luxury in our re- 
 gards, but the austerest worth ; let us approach' 
 our friend with an audacious trust in the truth
 
 FRIENDSHIP 201 
 
 of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be 
 overturned, of his foundations. 
 
 The attractions of this subject are not to be 
 resisted, and I leave, for the time, all account of 
 subordinate social benefit, to speak of that select 
 and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, 
 and which even leaves the language of love sus- 
 picious and^common, so TnHdrijTthis purer, and 
 nothing is so much divine. 
 
 I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but 
 with roughest courage. When they are real, 
 they are not glass threads or frostwork, but 
 the solidest thing we know. For now, after so 
 many ages of experience, what do we know of 
 nature or of ourselves ? Not one step has man 
 taken toward the solution of the problem of his 
 destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand 
 the whole universe of men. But the sweet sin- 
 cerity of joy and peace which I draw from this 
 alliance with my brother's soul is the nut itself 
 whereof all nature and all thought is but the 
 husk and shell. Happy is the house that shel- X. 
 ters a friend ! It might well be built, like a fes- 
 tal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. 
 Happier, if he know the solemnity of that rela- 
 tion and honor its law ! He who offers himself 
 a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an
 
 202 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Olympian, to the great games where the first- 
 born of the world are the competitors. He pro- 
 poses himself for contests where Time, Want, 
 Danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor 
 who has truth enough in his constitution to pre- 
 serve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear 
 and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may 
 be present or absent, but all the speed in that 
 contest depends on intrinsic nobleness and the 
 contempt of trifles. There are two elements that 
 go to the composition of friendship, each so 
 
 ' .sovereign that I can detect no superiority in 
 either, no reason why either should be first 
 
 i named. One is truth. A friend is a person with 
 whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think 
 aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a 
 man so real and equal that I may drop even those 
 undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, 
 
 .-. and second thought, which men never put off, 
 and may deal with him with the simplicity and 
 wholeness with which one chemical atom meets 
 another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like 
 diadems and authority, only to the highest rank ; 
 that being permitted to speak truth, as having 
 none above it to court or conform unto. 1 Every 
 man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a sec- 
 ond person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and
 
 FRIENDSHIP 203 
 
 fend the approach of our fellow-man by com~ 
 pliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. 
 We cover up our thought from him under 
 a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a 
 certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, 
 and omitting all compliment and commonplace, 
 
 jx spoke to the conscience of every person he en- 
 countered, and that with great insight and beauty. 
 At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he 
 was mad. But persisting as indeed he could 
 not help doing for some time in this course, 
 he attained to the advantage of bringing every 
 man of his acquaintance into true relations with 
 him. No man would think of speaking falsely 
 with him, or of putting him off with any chat 
 of markets or reading-rooms. But every man 
 
 *X/ wa s constrained, by so much sincerity to the 
 like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what 
 ' poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did 
 certainly show him/ But to_most of us society 
 shows not its face and eye, but its side and its 
 back. To stand in true relations with men in a 
 false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We 
 can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet 
 requires some civility requires to be humored; 
 he has some fame, some talent, some whim of 
 religion or philanthropy in his head that is not
 
 204 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 to be questioned, and which spoils all conversa- 
 tion with him. But a friend is a sane man who 
 exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend 
 gives me entertainment without requiring any 
 stipulation on my part. A friend therefore is a 
 sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I 
 who see nothing in nature whose existence I can 
 affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold 
 now the semblance of my being, in all its height, 
 variety and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; 
 so that a friend may well be reckoned the master- 
 piece of nature. 
 
 The other element of friendship is tender- 
 ness. We are holden to men by every sort of 
 tie',' by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by 
 lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every 
 circumstance and badge and trifle, but we can 
 scarce believe that so much character can sub- 
 sist in another as to draw us by love. Can 
 another be so blessed and we so pure that we 
 can offer him tenderness? When a man be- 
 comes dear to me I have touched the goal of 
 fortune. I find very little written directly to 
 the heart of this matter in books. And yet I 
 have one text which I cannot choose but remem- 
 ber. Myauthor 'says, "I offer myself faintly 
 and bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and
 
 FRIENDSHIP 205 
 
 tender myself least to him to whom I am the 
 most devoted." I wish that friendship should 
 have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It 
 must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults 
 pver the moon. I wish it to be a little of a cit- 
 izen, before it is quite a cherub. We chide the 
 citizen because he makes love a commodity. It 
 is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans ; it is 
 good neighborhood ; it watches with the sick ; 
 if holds the pall at the funeral ; and quite loses 
 sight of the delicacies and nobility of the rela- 
 tion. /But though we cannot find the god under 
 *-.his disguise of a sutler, yet on the other hand 
 we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread 
 too fine and does not substantiate his romance 
 by the mjyjmjyjDal virtues of justice, punctual- 
 ity, fidelity and pity^Kj hate the prostitution of , 
 the name of friendship to signify modish and 
 worldly alliances. I much prefer the company 
 of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the silken and 
 perfumed amity which celebrates its days of 
 encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a 
 curricle and dinners at the best taverns. The 
 end of friendship is a commerce the most strict 
 and homely that can be joined ; more strict than 
 any of which we "have experience. It is for aid 
 and comfort through all the relations and passages
 
 206 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 of life and death./ It is fit for: serene days and 
 
 graceful gifts and country rambles, but also for 
 
 , rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty 
 
 and persecution. It keeps company with the 
 
 sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. We 
 
 are to dignify to each other the daily needs and 
 
 offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, 
 
 wisdom and unity. It should never fall into 
 
 something usual and settled, but should be alert 
 
 I and inventive and add rhyme and reason to what 
 
 - was drudgery. 
 
 Friendship may be said to require natures so 
 rare and costly, each so well tempered and so 
 happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced 
 (for even in that particular, a poet says, love 
 demands that the parties be altogether paired), 
 that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. 
 It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of 
 those who are learned in this warm lore of the 
 heart, betwixt more than two. I am not quite 
 so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have 
 never known so high a fellowship as others. I 
 please my imagination more with a circle of god- 
 like men and women variously related to each 
 other and between whom subsists a lofty intelli- 
 gence. But I find this law of one to one peremp- 
 tory for conversation, which is the practice and
 
 FRIENDSHIP 207 
 
 consummation of friendship. 1 Do not mix wa- 
 ters too much. The best mix as ill as good and 
 bad. You shall have very useful and cheering 
 -discourse at several times with two several men, 
 but let all three of you come together and you 
 shall not have one new and hearty word. Two 
 may talk and one may hear, but three cannot 
 take part in a conversation of the most sincere 
 and searching sort. In good company there is 
 never such discourse between two, across the 
 table, as takes place when you leave them alone. 
 In good company the individuals merge their 
 egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive 
 with the several consciousnesses there present. 
 No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses 
 of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there 
 pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may 
 then speak who can sail on the common thought 
 of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. 
 Now this convention, which good sense de- 
 mands, destroys theljiigh freedom of great con- 
 versation, which requires an absolute running 
 of two souls into one. ) 
 
 No two men but being left alone with each 
 ofher enter into simpler relations. Yet it is af- 
 finity that determines which two shall converse. 
 Unrelated men give little joy to each other, wilJ
 
 2o8 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 never suspect the latent powers of each. We 
 talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, 
 as if it were a permanent property in some indi- 
 viduals. Conversation is an evanescent relation, 
 no more. A man is reputed to have thought 
 and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a 
 word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his 
 silence with as much reason as they would blame 
 the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the 
 sun it will mark the hour. Among those who 
 enjoy his thought he will regain his tongue. 
 
 Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt 
 likeness 'and unlikeness that piques each with the 
 presence of power and of consent in the other 
 party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, 
 rather than that my friend should overstep, by a 
 word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally 
 balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let 
 him not cease an instant to be himself. The 
 only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not 
 mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly 
 J furtherance or at least a manly resistante, to find 
 / a mush of concession. 3ettex_be_jjiettleJiij:he 
 side of yxmr friend than hisjscho. The condition 
 which high friendship demands is ability to do 
 without it./ That high office requires great and 
 sublime parts. 1 There must be very two, before
 
 FRIENDSHIP 209 
 
 there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of 
 two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, 
 mutually feared, before yet they recognize the 
 deep identity which, beneath these disparities, 
 unites them. 
 
 He only is fit for this society who is magnani- 
 mous ; who is sure that greatness and goodness 
 are always economy ; who is not swift to inter- 
 meddle with his fortunes. Let him not inter- 
 meddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ages 
 to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of 
 the eternal. Friendship demands a religious 
 treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but 
 friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great 
 part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of 
 course he has merits that are not yours, and that 
 you cannot honor if you must needs hold him 
 close to your person. Stand aside ; give those 
 merits room ; let them mount and expand. Are 
 you the friend of your friend's buttons, or of his 
 thought? To a great heart he will still be a 
 stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may 
 come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to 
 girls and boys to regard a friend as property, 
 and to suck a short and all-confounding plea- 
 sure, instead of the noblest benefit. 1 
 
 Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a
 
 210 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Jong probation. Why should we desecrate no- 
 ble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? 
 Why insist on rash personal relations with your 
 friend? Why go to his house, or know his mo- 
 ther and brother and sisters ? Why be visited 
 by him at your own ? Are these things mate- 
 rial to our covenant ? Leave this touching and 
 clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A mes- 
 sage, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I 
 want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get poli- 
 tics and chat and neighborly conveniences from 
 cheaper companions. Should not the society of 
 my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal and 
 great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our 
 tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of 
 cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump 
 of waving grass that divides the brook ? Let us 
 not vilify, but raise it to that standard. That 
 great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his 
 mien and action, do not pique yourself on re- 
 ducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship 
 his superiorities ; wish him not less by a thought, 
 but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy 
 counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever a sort 
 of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, 
 and not a trivial conveniency to be soon out- 
 grown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the
 
 FRIENDSHIP 211 
 
 light of the diamond, arc not to be seen if the 
 eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter and 
 from him I receive a letter. That seems to you 
 a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift, wor- 
 thy of him to give and of me to receive. It pro- 
 fanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will 
 trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour 
 out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all 
 the annals of heroism have yet made good. 
 
 Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship 
 as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your im- 
 patience for its opening. ^Ve must be our own 
 before we can be another's. There is at least 
 this satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin 
 proverb; you can speak to your accomplice 
 on even terms. Crimen guos inguinat* *guat^ To 
 those whom we admire and love, at first we 
 cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession 
 vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. 
 There can never be deep peace between two 
 spirits, never mutual respect, until in their dia- 
 logue each stands for the whole world. 
 
 What is so great as friendship, let us carry 
 with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be 
 silent, so we may hear the whisper of the gods. 
 Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about 
 what you should say to the select souls, or how
 
 212 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 to say any thing to such ? No matter how in 
 genious, no matter how graceful and bland. 
 There are innumerable degrees of folly and wis- 
 dom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. 
 Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the 
 necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until 
 day and night avail themselves of your lips. 1 
 The only reward of virtue is virtue ; the only 
 way to have a friend is to be oner You shall not 
 come nearer a man by getting into his house. 
 If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, 
 ', and you shall never catch a true glance of his 
 eye. We see the noble afar off and they repel 
 us ; why should we intrude ? Late, very late, 
 we perceive that no arrangements, no intro- 
 ductions, no consuetudes or habits of society 
 would be of any avail to establish us in such 
 relations with them as we desire, but solely 
 the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it 
 is in them ; then shall we meet as water with 
 water ; and if we should not meet them then, we 
 shall not want them, for we are already they. In 
 the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a 
 man's own worthiness from other men. ( Men 
 have sometimes exchanged names with their 
 friends, as if they would signify that in their 
 friend each loved his own soul.
 
 FRIENDSHIP 213 
 
 The higher the style we demand of friendship, 
 of course the less easy to establish it with flesh 
 and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends 
 such as we desire are dreams and fables. But 
 a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, 
 that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal 
 power, souls are now acting, enduring and dar- 
 ing, which can love us and which we can love.' 
 We may congratulate ourselves that the period 
 of nonage, of follies, of blunders and of shame, 
 is passed in solitude, and when we are finished 
 men we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. 
 Only be admonished by what you already see, 
 not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap 
 persons, where no friendship can be. Our im- 
 patience betrays us into rash and foolish alli- 
 ances which no god attends. By persisting in 
 your path, though you forfeit the little you gain 
 the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to 
 put yourself out of the reach of false relations, 
 and you draw to you the first-born of the world, 
 those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two 
 wander in nature at once, and before whom 
 the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows 
 merely. 
 
 It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties 
 too spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine
 
 3i 4 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 love. Whatever correction of our popular views 
 we make from insight, nature will be sure to 
 bear us out in, and though it seem to rob us 
 of some joy, will repay us with a greater. Let us 
 feel if we will the absolute insulation of man. 
 We are sure that we have all in us. We go to 
 Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, 
 in the instinctive faith that these will call it out 
 and reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The 
 persons are such as we ; the Europe, an old 
 faded garment of dead persons ; the books, their 
 ghosts. Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give 
 over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our 
 dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying 
 'Who are you? Unhand me: I will be depen- 
 dent no more.' Ah ! seest thou not, O bro- 
 ther, that thus we part only to meet again on a 
 higher platform, and only be more each other's 
 because we are more our own? A friend is 
 Janus-faced; he looks to the past and the future. 
 Heis the chilcTof all my foregoing hours, the" 
 prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of 
 a greater friend. 1 
 
 I do then with my friends as I do with" my 
 books. I would have them where I can find 
 them, but I seldom use them./' We must have 
 society on our own terms, and admit or exclude
 
 FRIENDSHIP 215 
 
 it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to 
 speak much with my friend. If he is great he 
 makes me so great that I cannot descend to 
 converse. In the great days, presentiments 
 hover before me in the firmament. I ought 
 then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that 
 I may seize them, I go out that I may seize 
 them. I fear only that I may lose them reced- 
 ing into the sky in which now they are only a 
 patch of brighter light. Then, though I prize 
 my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them 
 and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It 
 would indeed give me a certain household joy 
 to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astro- 
 nomy or search of stars, and come down to warm 
 sympathies with you ; but then I know well I 
 shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty 
 gods. It is true, next week I shall have languid 
 moods, when I can well afford to occupy my- 
 self with foreign objects ; then I shall regret the 
 lost literature of your mind, and wish you were 
 by my side again. But if you come, perhaps 
 you will fill my mind only with new visions ; 
 notwith yourselfjmt with your lustres, 1 and I 
 shall not be able any more than now to converse 
 with you. So I will owe to my friends this 
 
 evanescent intercourse. \ I will receive from them 
 \
 
 216 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 not what they have but what they are. They 
 shall give me that which properly they cannot 
 give, but which emanates from them. But they 
 shall not hold me by any relations less subtik 
 and pure. 1 We will meet as though we met not, 
 and part as though we parted not. 
 
 It has seemed to me lately more possible than 
 I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one 
 side, without due correspondence on the other. 
 Why should I cumber myself with regrets that 
 the receiver is not capacious ? It never troubles 
 the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain 
 into ungrateful space, and only a small part on 
 the reflecting planet. Let your greatness edu- 
 cate the crude and cold companion. If he is 
 unequal, he will presently pass away ; but thou 
 art enlarged by thy own shining, and no longer 
 a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn 
 with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought 
 a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great 
 will see that true love cannot be unrequited. 
 True love transcends the unworthy object and 
 dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the 
 poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, 
 but feels rid of so much earth and feels its in- 
 dependency the surer. Yet these things may
 
 FRIENDSHIP 217 
 
 hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the 
 relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, 
 a total magnanimity and trust. It must not sur- 
 mise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object 
 as a god, that it may deify both. 1
 
 VII 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 THEME no poet gladly sung, 
 Fair to old and foul to young ; 
 Scorn not thou the love of parts, 
 And the articles of arts. 
 Grandeur of the perfect sphere 
 Thanks the atoms that cohere.
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 WHAT right have I to write on Prudence, 
 whereof I have little, and that of the 
 negative sort ? My prudence consists in avoid- 
 ing and going without, not in the inventing of 
 means and methods, not in adroit steering, not 
 in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make 
 money spend well, no genius in my economy, 
 and whoever sees my garden discovers that I 
 must have some other garden. 1 Yet I love facts, 
 and hate lubricity and people without percep- 
 tion. Then I have the same title to write on 
 prudence that I have to write on poetry or holi- 
 ness. We write from aspiration and antagonism, 
 as well as from experience. We paint those 
 qualities which we do not possess. The poet 
 admires the man of energy and tactics ; the mer- 
 chant breeds his son for the church or the bar ; 
 and where a man is not vain and egotistic you 
 shall find what he has not by his praise. More- 
 over it would be hardly honest in me not to 
 balance these fine lyric words of Love and 
 Friendship with words of coarser sound, and 
 whilst my debt to my senses is real and constant, 
 not to own it in passing.*
 
 222 PRUDENCE 
 
 Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the 
 science of appearances. It is the outmost action 
 of the inward life. It is God taking thought for 
 oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. 
 It is content to seek health of body by comply- 
 ing with physical conditions, and health of mind 
 by the laws of the intellect. 
 
 The world of the senses is a world of shows ; 
 it does not exist for itself, but has a symbolic 
 character ; and a true prudence or law of shows 
 recognizes the co-presence of other laws and 
 knows that its own office is subaltern ; knows 
 that it is surface and not centre where it works. 
 Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate 
 when it is the Natural History of the soul incar- 
 nate, when it unfolds the beauty of laws within 
 the narrow scope of the senses. 1 
 
 There are all degrees of proficiency in know- 
 ledge of the world. It is sufficient to our present 
 purpose to indicate three. One class live to 
 the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and 
 wealth a final good. Another class live above 
 this mark to the beauty of the symbol, as the 
 poet and artist and the naturalist and man of 
 science. A third class live above the beauty of 
 the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified; 
 these are wise men. The first class have com-
 
 PRUDENCE 223 
 
 mon sense ; the second, taste ; and the third, 
 spiritual perception. Once in a long time, a 
 v man traverses the whole scale, and sees and en- 
 joys the symbol solidly, then also has a clear 
 eye for its beauty, and lastly, whilst he pitches 
 his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, 
 does not offer to build houses and barns thereon, 
 reverencing the splendor of the God which he 
 sees bursting through each chink and cranny. 1 
 
 The world is filled with the proverbs and acts 
 and winkings of a base prudence, which is a de- 
 votion to matter, as if we possessed no other 
 faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the 
 eye and ear ; a prudence which adores the Rule 
 of Three, which never subscribes, which never 
 gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one 
 question of any project, Will it bake bread?* 
 This is a disease like a thickening of the skin 
 until the vital organs are destroyed. But cul- 
 ture, revealing the high origin of the apparent 
 world and aiming at the perfection of the man 
 as the end, degrades every thing else, as health 
 and bodily life, into means. It sees prudence 
 not to be a several faculty, but a name for wis- 
 dom and virtue conversing with the body and its 
 wants. Cultivated men always feel and speak 
 so, as if a great fortune, the achievement of a
 
 224 PRUDENCE 
 
 civil or social measure, great personal influence, 
 a graceful and commanding .address, had their 
 value as proofs of the energy of the spirit. If a 
 man lose his balance and immerse himself in 
 any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he 
 may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a 
 cultivated man. 
 
 The spuriousprudence, making the senses 
 final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the 
 subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and 
 therefore literature's. The true prudence limits 
 this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of 
 an internal and real world. This recognition 
 once made, the order of the world and the dis- 
 tribution of affairs and times, being studied with 
 the co-perception of their subordinate place, will 
 reward any degree of attention. < For our exist- 
 ence, thus apparently attached in nature to the 
 sun and the returning moon and the periods 
 which they mark, so susceptible to climate 
 and to country, so alive to social good and evil, 
 so fond of splendor and so tender to hunger 
 and cold and debt, reads all its primary les- 
 sons out of these books. 
 
 Prudence does not go behind nature and ask 
 whence it is. It takes the laws of the world 
 whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are,
 
 PRUDENCE 225 
 
 and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their 
 proper good. It_respects space and time, cli- 
 mate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth 
 and death. There revolve, to give bound and 
 period to his being on all sides, the sun and 
 moon, the great formalists in the sky: here 
 lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from 
 its chemical routine. Here is a planted globe, 
 pierced and belted with natural laws and fenced 
 and distributed externally with civil partitions 
 and properties which impose new restraints on 
 the young inhabitant. 
 
 We eat of the bread which grows in the field. 
 We live by the air which blows around us and 
 we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or 
 too - hot, too dry or too wet. Time, which 
 shows so vacant, indivisible and divine in its 
 coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tat- 
 ters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be re- 
 paired. I want wood or oil, or meal or salt ; the 
 house smokes, or I have a headache ; then the 
 tax, and an affair to be transacted with a man 
 without heart or brains, and the stinging recol- 
 lection of an injurious or very awkward word, 
 these eat up the hours. Do what we can, summer 
 will have its flies ; if we walk in the woods we 
 must feed mosquitos ; if we go a-fishing we must
 
 226 PRUDENCE 
 
 expect a wet coat. Then climate is a great im- 
 pediment to idle persons; we often resolve to 
 give up the care of the weather, but still we re- 
 gard the clouds and the rain^ 
 
 We are instructed by these petty experiences 
 which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil 
 and four months of snow make the inhabitant 
 of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler 
 than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of 
 the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at 
 will. At night he may sleep on a mat under the 
 moon, and wherever a wild date-tree grows, na- 
 ture has, without a prayer even, spread a table for 
 his morning meal. The northerner is perforce 
 a householder. He must brew, bake, salt and 
 preserve his food, and pile wood and coal. But 
 as it happens that not one stroke can labor 
 lay to without some new acquaintance with na- 
 ture, and as nature is inexhaustibly significant, 
 the inhabitants of these climates have always 
 excelled the southerner in force. 2 Such is the 
 value of these matters that a man who knows 
 other things can never know too much of 
 these. Let him have accurate perceptions. Let 
 him, if he have hands, handle ; if eyes, mea- 
 sure and discriminate ; let him accept and hive 
 every fact of chemistry, natural history and eco-
 
 PRUDENCE 227 
 
 nomics ; the more he has, the less is he will- 
 ing to spare any one. (/Time is always bringing 
 the occasions that disclose their value. Some 
 wisdom comes out of every natural and inno- 
 cent action. 'The domestic man, who loves no 
 music so well as his kitchen clock and the airs 
 which the logs sing to him as they burn on the 
 hearth, has solaces which others never dream 
 of. The application of means to ends insures 
 victory and the songs of victory not less in a 
 farm or a shop than in the tactics of party or 
 of war. The good husband finds method as 
 efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed 
 or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in 
 Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Depart- 
 ment of State. In the rainy day he builds a 
 work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the cor- 
 ner of the barn-chamber, and stored with nails, 
 gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. Herein 
 he tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the 
 cat-like love of garrets, presses and corn-cham- 
 bers, and of the conveniences of long house- 
 keeping. His garden or his poultry-yard tells 
 him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find 
 argument for optimism in the abundant flow 
 of this saccharine element of pleasure in every 
 suburb and extremity of the good world. Let
 
 228 PRUDENCE 
 
 a man keep the law, any law, and his way 
 will be strown with satisfactions. There is more 
 difference in the quality of our pleasures than in 
 the amount. 
 
 On the other hand, nature punishes any neg- 
 lect of prudence. If* you think the senses final, 
 obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do 
 not clutch at sensual sweetness before itjsjnrj 
 oqthe slow tree of cause and effect. It is vine- 
 gar to the eyes to deal with men of loose and im- 
 perfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to 
 have said, "If the child says he looked out 
 of this window, when he looked out of that, 
 whip him." Our American character is marked 
 by a more than average delight in accurate per- 
 ception, which is shown by the currency of the 
 byword, " No mistake." (But the discomfort 
 of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about 
 facts, inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is 
 of no nation. The beautiful laws of time and 
 space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are 
 holes and dens.) If the hive be disturbed by 
 rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will 
 yield us bees. ( Our words and actions to be fair 
 must be timely.) (A gay and pleasant sound is 
 the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of 
 June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than
 
 PRUDENCE 229 
 
 the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when 
 it is too late in the season to make hay ? Scat- 
 ter-brained and " afternoon " men spoil much 
 more than their own affair in spoiling the tem- 
 per of those who deal with them.V I have seen 
 a criticism on some paintings, of which I am re- 
 minded when I see the shiftless and unhappy 
 men who are not true to their senses. The last 
 Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of superior 
 understanding, said, "I have sometimes re- 
 marked in the presence of great works of art, 
 and just now especially in Dresden, how much 
 a certain property contributes to the effect which 
 gives life to the figures, and to the life an irre- 
 sistible truth. This property is the hitting, in 
 all the figures we draw, the right centre of grav- 
 ity. I mean the placing the figures firm upon 
 their feet, making the hands grasp, and fastening 
 the eyes on the spot where they should look. 
 Even lifeless figures, as vessels and stools let 
 them be drawn ever so correctly lose all effect 
 so soon as they lack the resting upon their centre 
 of gravity,and have a certain swimming and oscil- 
 lating appearance. The Raphael in the Dresden 
 gallery (the only great affecting picture which 
 I have seen) is the quietest and most passionless 
 piece you can imagine ; a couple of saints who
 
 230 PRUDENCE 
 
 worship the Virgin and Child. Nevertheless it 
 awakens a deeper impression than the contor- 
 tions of ten crucified martyrs, For beside all 
 the resistless beauty of form, it possesses in the 
 highest degree the property of the perpendicu- 
 larity of all the figures." This perpendicularity 
 we demand of all the figures in this picture of 
 life. Let them stand on their feet, and not float 
 and swing. Let us know where to find them. 
 Let them discriminate between what they re- 
 member and what they dreamed, call a spade a 
 spade, give us facts, and honor their own senses 
 with trust. 1 
 
 But what man shali dare task another with 
 imprudence ? Who is prudent ? The men we 
 call greatest are least in this kingdom. There 
 is a certain fatal dislocation in our relation to 
 nature, distorting our modes of living and mak- 
 ing every law our enemy, which seems at last to 
 have aroused all the wit and virtue in the world 
 to ponder the question of Reform. We must 
 call the highest prudence to counsel, and ask 
 why health and beauty and genius should now 
 be the exception rather than the rule of hu- 
 man nature ? We do not know the properties 
 of plants and animals and the laws of nature, 
 through our sympathy with the same ; but this
 
 PRUDENCE 231 
 
 remains the dream of poets. 1 Poetry and pru- 
 dence should be coincident. Poets should be 
 lawgivers ; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration 
 should not chide and insult, but should announce 
 and lead the civil code and the day's work. But 
 now the two things seem irreconcilably parted. 
 We have violated law upon law until we stand 
 amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a 
 coincidence between reason and the phenomena, 
 we are surprised. Beauty should be the dowry 
 of every man and woman, as invariably as sensa- 
 tion; but it is rare. Health or sound organiza- 
 tion should be universal. Genius should be the 
 child of genius and every child should be inspired ; 
 but now it is not to be predicted of any child, 
 and nowhere is it pure. We call partial half- 
 lights, by courtesy, genius ; talent which con- 
 verts itself to money ; talent which glitters to- 
 day that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow ; 
 and society is officered by men of parts, as they 
 are properly called, and not by divine men. 
 These use their gift to refine luxury, not to 
 abolish it. Genius is always ascetic, and piety, 
 and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as 
 a disease, and they find beauty in rites and 
 bounds that resist it. 
 
 We have found out fine names to cover our
 
 232 PRUDENCE 
 
 sensuality withal, but no gifts can raise intem- 
 perance. The man of talent affects to call his 
 transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial 
 and to count them nothing considered with his 
 devotion to his art. His art never taught him 
 lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to 
 reap where he had not sowed. His art is less 
 for every deduction from his holiness, and less 
 for every defect of common sense. On him 
 who scorned the world, as he said, the scorned 
 world wreaks its revenge. He that despiseth 
 small things will perish by little and little. 1 
 Goethe's Tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair 
 historic portrait, and that is true tragedy. It 
 does not seem to me so genuine grief when 
 some tyrannous Richard the Third oppresses 
 and slays a score of innocent persons, as when 
 Antonio and Tasso, both apparently right, 
 wrong each other. One living after the maxims 
 of this world and consistent and true to them, 
 tmTotKer fired with all divine sentiments, yet 
 grasping also at the pleasures of sense, with- 
 out submitting to their law. That is a grief we 
 all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is 
 no unfrequent case in modern biography. A 
 man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reck- 
 less of physical laws, self- indulgent, becomes
 
 PRUDENCE 233 
 
 presently unfortunate, querulous, a " discomfort- 
 able cousin," a thorn to himself and to others. 
 
 The scholar shames us by his bifold life. 
 Whilst something higher than prudence is ac- 
 tive, he is admirable ; when common sense is 
 wanted, he is an encumbrance. Yesterday, Cae- 
 sar was not so great ; to-day, the felon at the 
 gallows' foot is not more miserable. Yester- 
 day, radianL_wjlh_the light of an ideal world 
 in which he lives, the first of men ; and now 
 oppressed by wants and by sickness, for which 
 he must thank himself. 1 He resembles the pit- 
 iful drivellers whom travellers describe as fre- 
 quenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who 
 skulk about all day, yellow, emaciated, ragged, 
 sneaking; and at evening, when the bazaars 
 are open, slink to the opium-shop, swallow their 
 morsel and become tranquil and glorified seers. 
 And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent 
 genius struggling for years with paltry pecun- 
 iary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted 
 and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins ? 
 
 Is it not better that a man should accept the 
 first pains and mortifications of this sort, which 
 nature is not slack in sending him, as hints that 
 he must expect no other good than the just 
 fruit of his own labor and self-denial? Health,
 
 234 PRUDENCE 
 
 bread, climate, social position, have their im- 
 portance, and he will give them their due. Let 
 him esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, and 
 her perfections the exact measure of our devia- 
 , tions. Let him make the night night, and the 
 * day day. Let hinrcontrol the habit of expense. 
 Let him see that as much wisdom may be ex- 
 pended on a private economy as on an empire, 
 and as much wisdom may be drawn from it. 
 The laws of the world are written out for him 
 on every piece of money in his hand. There is 
 nothing he will not be the better for knowing, 
 were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard, or 
 the State-Street prudence of buying by the acre 
 to sell by the foot ; or the thrift of the agri- 
 culturist, to stick a tree between whiles, because 
 it will grow whilst he sleeps ; or the prudence 
 which consists in husbanding little strokes of 
 the tool, little portions of time, particles of 
 stock and small gains. The eye of prudence 
 may never shut. Iron, if kept at the ironmon- 
 ger's, will rust ; beer, if not brewed in the right 
 state of the atmosphere, will sour ; timber of 
 ships will rot at sea, or if laid up high and dry, 
 will strain, warp and dry-rot ; money, if kept 
 by us, yields no rent and is liable to loss ; if 
 invested, is liable to depreciation of the particu-
 
 PRUDENCE 235 
 
 Jar kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the 
 iron is white ; keep the rake, says the haymaker, 
 as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart as 
 nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed to 
 be very much on the extreme of this prudence. 
 It takes bank-notes, good, bad, clean, ragged, 
 and saves itself by the speed with which it passes 
 them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor 
 timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor 
 money stocks depreciate, in the few swift mo- 
 ments in which the Yankee suffers any one of 
 them to remain in his possession. In skating 
 over thin ice our safety is in our speed. 1 
 
 Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. 
 Let him learn that every thing in nature, even 
 motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, 
 and that^th^tJie^QW-sJhLe reaps. By diligence 
 and self-command let him put the bread he eats 
 at his own disposal, that he may not stand in 
 bitter and false relations to other men ; for the 
 best good of wealth is freedom. Let him prac- 
 tise the minor virtues. How much of human 
 life is lost in waiting ! let him not make his 
 fellow-creatures wait. How many words and 
 promises are promises of conversation ! Let his 
 be words of fate. When he sees a folded and 
 sealed scrap of paper float round the globe in
 
 236 PRUDENCE 
 
 a pine ship and come safe to the eye for which 
 it was written, amidst a swarming population, 
 let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate 
 his being across all these distracting forces, and 
 keep a slender human word among the storms, 
 distances and accidents that drive us hither and 
 thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry 
 force of one man reappear to redeem its pledge 
 after months and years in the most distant cli- 
 mates. 
 
 We must not try to write the laws of any one 
 virtue, looking at that only. Human_jiature 
 loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. 
 The prudence which secures an outward well- 
 being is not to be studied by one set of men, 
 whilst heroism and holiness are studied by an- 
 other, but they are reconcilable. Prudence con- 
 cerns the present time, persons, property and 
 existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots 
 in the soul, and if the soul were changed would 
 cease to~t>e, or would become some other thing, 
 the proper administration of outward things 
 will always rest on a just apprehension of their 
 cause and origin ; that is, the good man will be 
 the wise man, and the single-hearted the politic 
 man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort 
 of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health
 
 PRUDENCE 237 
 
 of human society. On the most profitable lie 
 the course of events presently lays a destructive 
 tax ; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the 
 parties on a convenient footing and makes their 
 business a friendship. Trust men and they will 
 be true to you ; treat them greatly and they will 
 show themselves great, though they make an ex- 
 ception in your favor to all their rules of trade. 
 So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable 
 things, prudence does not consist in evasion or 
 in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to 
 walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any 
 serenity must screw himself up to resolution. 
 Let him front the object of his worst apprehen- 
 sion, and his stoutness will commonly make his 
 fear groundless. The Latin proverb says, "In 
 battles the eye is first overcome." z Entire self- 
 possession may make a battle very little more 
 dangerous to life than a match at foils or at foot- 
 ball. Examples are cited by soldiers of men 
 who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire 
 given to it, and who have stepped aside from the 
 path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are 
 chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. 
 The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his 
 health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under 
 the sleet as under the sun of June.
 
 238 PRUDENCE 
 
 In the occurrence of unpleasant things among 
 neighbors, fear comes readily to heart and mag- 
 nifies the consequence of the other party ; but 
 it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually 
 weak and apparently strong. To himself he 
 seems weak ; to others, formidable. You are 
 afraid of Grim ; but Grim also is afraid of you. 
 You are solicitous of the good-will of the mean- 
 est person, uneasy at his ill-will. But the stur- 
 diest offender of your peace and of the neigh- 
 borhood, if you rip up his claims, is as thin and 
 timid as any, and the peace of society is often 
 kept, because, as children say, one is afraid and 
 the other dares not. Far off, men swell, bully 
 and threaten ; bring them hand to hand, and 
 they are a feeble folk. 
 
 Itjsagroverb that 'courtesy costs nothing ; * 
 but calculation might come to value love for its 
 profit. Love_j_fkbled_tQ_heJblind, but kindness 
 is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, 
 but an eye-water. If you meet a sectary or a hos- 
 tile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines, 
 but meet on what common ground remains, 
 if only that the sun shines and the rain rains for 
 both ; the area will widen very fast, and ere you 
 know it, the boundary mountains on which the 
 eye had fastened have melted into air. If they
 
 PRUDENCE 239 
 
 set out to contend, Saint Paul will lie and Saint 
 John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypo- 
 critical people an argument on religion will 
 make of the pure and chosen souls ! They will 
 shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign to con- 
 fess here, only that they may brag and conquer 
 there, and not a thought has enriched either 
 party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, 
 or hope. 1 So neither should you put yourself 
 in a false position with your contemporaries 
 by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. 
 Though your views are in straight antagonism 
 to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, as- 
 sume that you are saying precisely that which 
 all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out 
 yourparadoxes^ir^ solid column, with not trie 
 infirmity of a doubt. So at least shall you get 
 an adequate deliverance. The natural motions 
 of the soul are so much better than the volun- 
 tary ones that you will never do yourself jus- 
 tice in dispute. The thought is not then taken 
 
 hnM^f Ky 1-hp rigjif JvinrUpj does not SHOW it- 
 
 self proportioned and in its true bearings, but 
 bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness. But as- 
 sume a consent and it shall presently be granted, 
 since really and underneath their external diver- 
 sities, all men are of one heart and mind.*
 
 240 PRUDENCE 
 
 Wisdom will never let us stand with any man 
 or men on an unfriendly footing. We refuse 
 sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we 
 waited for some better sympathy and intimacy 
 to come. But whence and when ? To-morrow 
 will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we 
 are preparing to live. Our friends and fellow- 
 workers die off from us. Scarcely can we say we 
 see new men, new women, approaching us. We 
 are too old to regard fashion, too old to expect 
 patronage of any greater or more powerful. Let 
 us suck the sweetness of those affections and 
 consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes 
 are easy to the feet. Undoubtedly we can easily 
 pick faults in our company, can easily whisper 
 names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. 
 Every man's imagination hath its friends ; and 
 life would be dearer with such companions. But 
 if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, 
 you cannot have them. If not the Deity but 
 our ambition hews and shapes the nev rela- 
 tions, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose 
 their flavor in garden-beds. 
 
 Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humil- 
 ity and all the virtues range themselves on the 
 side of prudence, or the art of securing a pre- 
 sent well-being. I do not know if all matter
 
 PRUDENCE 241 
 
 will be found to be made of one element, as 
 oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of 
 manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and 
 begin where we will, we are pretty sure in a 
 short space to be mumbling our ten command- 
 ments.
 
 VIII 
 HEROISM 
 
 '* Paradise is under the shadow of swords. ' 
 
 Mahomtt. 
 
 RUBY wine is drunk by knaves, 
 Sugar spends to fatten slaves, 
 Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons ; 
 Thunderclouds are Jove's festoons, 
 Drooping oft in wreaths of dread 
 Lightning-knotted round his head: 
 The hero is not fed on sweets, 
 Daily his own heart he eats ; 
 Chambers of the great are jails, 
 And head-winds right for royal sails.
 
 HEROISM 
 
 IN the elder English dramatists, and mainly 
 in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if 
 a noble behavior were as easily marked in the 
 society of their age as color is in our American 
 population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro or Va- 
 lerio enters, though he be a stranger, the duke 
 or governor exclaims, ' This is a gentleman,' 
 and proffers civilities without end ; but all the 
 rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this 
 delight in personal advantages there is in their 
 plays a certain heroic cast of character and dia- 
 logue, as in Bonduca, Sophocles, 1 the Mad 
 Lover, the Double Marriage, wherein the 
 speaker is so earnest and cordial and on such 
 deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on 
 the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises 
 naturally into poetry. Among many texts take 
 the following. The Roman Martius has con- 
 quered Athens, all but the invincible spirits 
 of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and Dorigen, 
 his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Mar- 
 tius, and he seeks to save her husband; but 
 Sophocles will not ask his life, although assured
 
 246 HEROISM 
 
 that a word will save him, and the execution of 
 both proceeds : 
 
 Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 
 
 Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 
 Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown, 
 My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 
 
 Dor. Stay, Sophocles, with this tie up my sight} 
 Let not soft nature so transformed be, 
 And lose her gentler sexed humanity, 
 To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well; 
 Never one object underneath the sun 
 Will I behold before my Sophocles : 
 Farewell ; now teach the Romans how to die. 
 
 Mar. Dost know what 't is to die ? 
 
 Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, 
 
 And, therefore, not what ' t is to live ; to die 
 Is to begin to live. It is to end 
 An old, stale, weary work and to commence 
 A newer and a better. 'Tis to leave 
 Deceitful knaves for the society 
 Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part 
 At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, 
 And prove thy fortitude what then 't will do. 
 
 Vol. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus 
 
 Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent 
 To them I ever loved best ? Now I '11 kneel, 
 But with my back toward thee : 'tis the last duty 
 This trunk can do the gods. 
 
 Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 
 
 Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth. 
 This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord,
 
 HEROISM 247 
 
 And live with all the freedom you were wont. 
 O love ! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
 With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, 
 My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, 
 Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 
 
 Val. What ails my brother ? 
 
 Soph. Martius, O Martius, 
 
 Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 
 
 Dor. O star of Rome ! what gratitude can speak 
 Fit words to follow such a deed as this ? 
 
 Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 
 With his disdain of fortune and of death, 
 Captived himself, has captivated me, 
 And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, 
 His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul. 
 By Romulus, he is all soul, I think ; 
 He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved, 
 Then we have vanquished nothing ; he is free, 
 And Martius walks now in captivity." 
 
 I do not readily remember any poem, play, 
 sermon, novel or oration that our press vents 
 in the last few years, which goes to the same 
 tune. We have a great many flutes and flageo- 
 lets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet 
 Wordsworth's " Laodamia," and the ode of 
 " Dion," and some sonnets, have a certain noble 
 music ; and Scott will sometimes draw a stroke 
 like the portrait of Lord Evandale given by 
 Balfour of Burley. 1 Thomas Carlyle, with his
 
 248 HEROISM 
 
 natural taste for what is manly and daring in 
 character, has suffered no heroic trait in his 
 favorites to drop from his biographical and his- 
 torical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns has 
 given us a song or two. In the Harleian Mis- 
 cellanies there is an account of the battle of 
 Lutzen which deserves to be read. And Simon 
 Ockley's History of the Saracens recounts the 
 prodigies of individual valor, with admiration 
 all the more evident on the part of the narrator 
 that he seems to think that his place in Chris- 
 tian Oxford requires of him some proper pro- 
 testations of abhorrence. But if we explore the 
 literature of Heroism we shall quickly come to 
 Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To 
 him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epami- 
 nondas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we 
 are more deeply indebted to him than to all the 
 ancient writers. Each of his " Lives " is a refu- 
 tation to the despondency and cowardice of our 
 / religious and political theorists. A wild courage, 
 a Stoicism not of the schools but of the blood, 
 shines in every anecdote, and has given that 
 book its immense fame. 1 
 
 We need books of this tart cathartic virtue 
 more than books of political science or of pri- 
 vate economy. Life is a festival only to the
 
 HEROISM 249 
 
 wise. Seen from the nook and chimney -side 
 of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous 
 front. The violations of the laws of nature by 
 our predecessors and our contemporaries are 
 punished in us also. The disease and deformity 
 around us certify the infraction of natural, in- > 
 tellectual and moral laws, and often violation on 
 violation to breed such compound misery. A 
 lock-jaw that bends a man's head back to his 
 heels ; hydrophobia that makes him bark at his 
 wife and babes ; insanity that makes him eat 
 grass ; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a*** 
 certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its* 
 inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by 
 human suffering. Unhappily no man exists 
 who has not in his own person become to some 
 amount a stockholder in the sin, and so made 
 himself liable to a share in the expiation. 
 
 Our culture therefore must not omit the arm- 
 ing of the man. Let him hear in season that he 
 is born into the state of war, and that the com- 
 monwealth and his own well-being require that 
 he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, 
 but warned, self-collected and neither defying 
 nor dreading the thunder, ]et him take both 
 reputation and life in his hand, and with perfect 
 urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the
 
 250 HEROISM 
 
 \ jkbsolute truth of his speech and the rectitude 
 fof his behavior. 1 
 
 Towards all this external evil the man within 
 the breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms 
 his ability to cope single-handed with the infi- 
 nite army of enemies. To this military attitude 
 of the soul we give the name of Heroism. Its 
 rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, 
 which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a 
 self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, 
 in the plenitude of itsTenergy and power to re- 
 pair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a 
 mind of such balance that no disturbances can 
 shake his will, but pleasantly and as it were 
 merrily he advances to his own music, alike in 
 frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of uni- 
 versal dissoluteness. There is somewhat not^ 
 philosophical in heroism ; there is somewhat 
 \ not holy in it ; it seems not to know that other 
 souls are of one texture with it; it has pride ^ 
 it is the extreme of individual nature. Never-. 
 theless we mustprofdulTdly revere it. There 
 is somewhat in great actions which does not 
 allow us to go behind them. Heroism feels and 
 never reasons, and therefore is always right ; 
 and although a different breeding, different re- 
 ligion and greater intellectual activity would
 
 HEROISM 251 
 
 have modified or even reversed the particular 
 action, yet for the hero that thing he does is 
 the highest deed, and is not open to the censure 
 of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of 
 the unschooled man that he finds a quality in 
 him that is negligent of expense, of health, of 
 life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows 
 that his will is higher and more excellent than 
 all actual and all possible antagonists. 
 
 Heroism works in contradiction to the voice 
 of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to 
 the voice of the great and good. Heroism is 
 an obedience to a secret impulse of an individ- 
 ual's character. Now to no other man can its 
 wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man 
 must be supposed to see a little farther on his 
 own proper path than any one else. Therefore 
 just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until 
 after some little time be past ; then they see it 
 to be in unison with their acts. All pradgnt 
 men see that the action is clean contrary to a 
 sensual prosperity ; for every heroic act measures \ 
 itself by its contempt of some external good. ' 
 But it finds its own success at last, and then the 
 prudent also extol. 1 
 
 Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the 
 state of the soul_at_war, and its ultimate objects
 
 252 HEROISM 
 
 are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and 
 the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil 
 agents. It speaks the truth and it is just, gen- 
 erous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty 
 calculations and scornful of being scorned. It 
 persists ; it is of an undaunted boldness and of 
 a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is 
 the littleness of common life. That fa[se_pru- 
 dence which dotes on health and wealth is the 
 butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like 
 Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What 
 shall it say then to the sugar-plums and cats'- 
 cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards 
 and custard, which rack the wit of all society ? 
 What joys has kind nature provided for us dear 
 creatures ! There seems to be no interval be- 
 tween greatness and meanness. When the spirit 
 is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. 
 Yet the little man takes the great hoax so inno- 
 cently, works in it so headlong and believing, 
 is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, 
 attending on his own health, laying traps for 
 sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on 
 a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gos- 
 sip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot 
 choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. " In- 
 deed, these humble considerations make me out
 
 HEROISM 253 
 
 of love with greatness. What a disgrace is it to 
 me to take note how many pairs of silk stock- 
 ings thou hast, namely, these and those that 
 were the peach-colored ones; or to bear the 
 inventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity, 
 and one other for use ! " ' 
 
 Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, 
 consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers 
 at their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time 
 and the unusual display ; the soul of a better 
 quality thrusts back the unseasonable economy 
 into the vaults of life, and says, I will obey 
 the God, and the sacrifice and the fire he will 
 provide. Ibn Haukal, the Arabian geographer, 
 describes a heroic extreme in the hospitality 
 of Sogd, in Bukharia. " When I was in Sogd I 
 saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of 
 which were open and fixed back to the wall with 
 large nails. I asked the reason, and was told that 
 the house had not been shut, night or day, for 
 a hundred years. Strangers may present them- 
 selves at any hour and in whatever number; 
 the master has amply provided for the recep- 
 tion of the men and their animals, and is never 
 happier than when they tarry for some time. 
 Nothing of the kind have I seen in any other 
 country." 2 The magnanimous know very well
 
 254 HEROISM 
 
 that they who give time, or money, or shelter, 
 to the stranger, so it be done for love and 
 not for ostentation, do, as it were, put God 
 under obligation to them, so perfect are the 
 compensations ofthejuniverse. In some way 
 tlie time theylieem to lose is redeemed and the 
 pains they seem to take remunerate themselves. 
 These men fan the flame of human love and 
 raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. 
 But hospitality must be for service and not for 
 show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul 
 rates itself too high to value itself by the splen- 
 dor of its table and draperies. It gives what it 
 hath, a^ti all it hath, but its own majesty can 
 lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water 
 than belong to city feasts. 1 
 
 The temperance of the hero proceeds from 
 the same wish to do no dishonor to the worthi- 
 ness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy, not 
 for its austerity. It seems not worth his while 
 to be solemn and denounce with bitterness flesh- 
 eating or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or 
 opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man 
 scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but 
 without railing or precision his living is natural 
 and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, 
 drank water, and said of wine, "It is a noble,
 
 HEROISM 255 
 
 generous liquor and we should be humbly thank- 
 ful for it, but, as I remember, water was made 
 before it." Better still is the temperance of King 
 David, who poured out on the ground unto the 
 Lord the water which three of his warriors had 
 brought him to drink at the peril of their lives. 
 
 It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his 
 sword after the battle of Philippi, he quoted a 
 line of Euripides, " O Yirtue ! I have fol- ^ 
 lowed thee through life, and I find thee at last 
 but a shade." I doubt not the hero is slandered 
 by this report. The heroic soul does not sell 
 its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to 
 dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of 
 greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.yV 
 Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty,) '.< 
 and can very well abide its loss. 
 
 But that which takes my fancy most in the 
 heroic class, is the good-humor and hilarity they 
 exhibit. It is a height to which common duty 
 can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with 
 solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion, suc- 
 cess, and life at so cheap a rate that they will 
 not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the 
 show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual 
 greatness. Scipio, charged with peculation, re- , 
 fuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait
 
 
 256 HEROISM 
 
 for justification, though he had the scroll of his 
 accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces be- 
 fore the tribunes. 1 Socrates's condemnation of 
 himself to be maintained in all honor in the 
 Prytaneum, during his life, and Sir Thomas 
 More's playfulness at the scaffold, are of the 
 same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's " Sea 
 Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his 
 company, 
 
 Jul. Why, slaves, 't is in our power to hang ye. 
 
 Master. Very likely, 
 
 'T is in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. 
 
 These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the 
 bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great 
 will not condescend to take any thing seriously ; 
 all must be as gay as the song of a canary, 
 though it were the building of cities or the 
 eradication of old and foolish churches and na- 
 tions which have cumbered the earth long thou- 
 sands of years. Simple hearts put all the history 
 and customs of this world behind them, and play 
 their own game in innocent defiance of the Blue- 
 Laws of the world; and such would appear, 
 could we see the human race assembled in vision, 
 like little children frolicking together, though to 
 the eyes of mankind at large they wear a stately 
 and solemn garb of works and influences.
 
 HEROISM 257 
 
 The Interest these fine stories have for us, the 
 power of a romance over the boy who grasps 
 the forbidden book under his bench at school, 
 our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our 
 purpose. 1 All these great and transcendent pro- 
 perties are ours. If we dilate in beholding the 
 Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we 
 are already domesticating the same sentiment. 
 Let us find room for this great guest in our 
 small houses. The first step of worthiness will 
 be to disabuse us of our superstitious associa- 
 tions with places and times, with number and 
 size. Why should these words, Athenian, Ro- 
 man, Asia and England, so tingle in the ear ? 
 Where the heart is, there the muses, there the 
 gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. 
 Massachusetts, Connecticut River and Boston 
 Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves 
 names of foreign and classic topography. But 
 here we are ; and, if we will tarry a little, we 
 may come to learn that here is best. See to it 
 only that thyself is here, and art and nature, 
 hope and fate, friends, angels and the Supreme 
 Being shall not be absent from the chambei 
 where thou sittest. Epaminondas, brave and 
 affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olym- 
 pus to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He
 
 258 HEROISM 
 
 lies very well where he is. The Jerseys were 
 handsome ground enough for Washington to 
 tread, and London streets for the feet of Milton. 
 /"A great man makes his climate genial in the 
 I imagination of men, and its air the beloved 
 ^element of all delicate spirits. That country is 
 the fairest which is inhabited by the noblest 
 minds. The pictures which fill the imagination 
 in reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, 
 Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, teach us 
 how needlessly mean our life is ; that we, by 
 the depth of our living, should deck it with 
 more than regal or national splendor, and act 
 on principles that should interest man and na- 
 ture in the length of our days. 1 
 
 We have seen or heard of many extraordinary 
 young men who never ripened, or whose per- 
 formance in actual life was not extraordinary. 
 When we see their air and mien, when we hear 
 them speak of society, of books, of religion, we 
 admire their superiority ; they seem to throw 
 contempt on our entire polity and social state ; 
 theirs is the tone of a youthful giant who is sent 
 to work revolutions. But they enter an active 
 profession and the forming Colossus shrinks to 
 the common size of man. The magic they used 
 was the ideal tendencies, which always make the
 
 HEROISM 259 
 
 Actual ridiculous ; but the tough world had its 
 revenge the moment they put their horses of 
 the sun to plough in its furrow. They found 
 no example and no companion, and their heart 
 fainted. What then ? The lesson they gave in 
 their first aspirations is yet true ; and a better 
 valor and a purer truth shall one day organize 
 their belief. Or why should a woman liken her- 
 self to any historical woman, and think, because 
 Sappho, or Sevigne, or De Stae'l, or the clois- 
 tered souls who have had genius and cultivation 
 do not satisfy the imagination and the serene 
 Themis, none can, certainly not she? Why 
 not ? She has a new and unattempted problem 
 to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature 
 that ever bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect 
 oul, walk serenely on her way, accept the hint 
 of each new experience, search in turn all the 
 objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn 
 the power and the charm of her new-born being, 
 which is the kindling of a new dawn in the 
 recesses of space. The fair girl who repels in- 
 terference by a decided and proud choice of 
 influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and 
 lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of 
 her own nobleness. The silent heart encourages 
 her ; O friend, never strike sail to a fear ! Come
 
 260 HEROISM 
 
 into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. 
 Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is 
 cheered and refined by the vision. 
 
 The characteristic of heroism is its persist- 
 ency. All men have wandering impulses, fits 
 and starts of generosity. But when you have 
 chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly 
 try to reconcile yourself with the world. The 
 heroic cannot be the common, nor the common 
 the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect 
 the sympathy of people in those actions whose 
 excellence is that they outrun sympathy and 
 appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve 
 your brother, because it is fit for you to serve 
 him, do not take back your words when you 
 find that prudent people do not commend you. 
 Adhere to your own act, and congratulate your- 
 self if you have done something strange and 
 extravagant and broken the monotony of a 
 decorous age. It was a high counsel that I 
 once heard given to a young person, "Al- 
 ways do what you are afraid to do." ' A simple 
 manly character need never make an apology, 
 but should regard its past action with the calm- 
 ness of Phocion, when he admitted that the 
 event of the battle was happy, yet did not re- 
 gret his dissuasion from the battle.
 
 HEROISM 261 
 
 There is no weakness or exposure for which 
 we cannot find consolation in the thought 
 this is a part of my constitution, part of my 
 relation and office to my fellow-creature. Has 
 nature covenanted with me that I should never 
 appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous 
 figure ? Let us be generous of our dignity as 
 well as of our money. Greatness once and for 
 ever has done with opinion. We tell our char- 
 ities, not because we wish to be praised for them, 
 not because we think they have great merit, but 
 for our justification. It is a capital blunder; as 
 you discover when another man recites his char- 
 ities. 
 
 To speak the truth, even with some austerity, 
 to live with some rigor of temperance, or some 
 extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceti- 
 cism which common good-nature would appoint 
 to those who are at ease and in plenty, in sign 
 that they feel a brotherhood with the great mul- 
 titude of suffering men. And not only need we 
 breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the 
 penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of 
 unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man 
 to look with a bold eye into those rarer dangers 
 which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize 
 himself with disgusting forms of disease, with
 
 262 HEROISM 
 
 sounds of execration, and the vision of violent 
 death. 
 
 Times of heroism are generally times of ter- 
 ror, but the day never shines in which this ele- 
 ment may not work. The circumstances of man, 
 we say, are historically somewhat better in this 
 country and at this hour than perhaps ever be- 
 fore. More freedom exists for culture. It will 
 not now run against an axe at the first step out 
 of the beaten track of opinion. But whoso is 
 heroic will always find crises to try his edge. 
 Human virtue demands her champions and 
 martyrs, and the trial of persecution always pro- 
 ceeds. It is but the other day that the brave 
 Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, 
 for the rights of free speech and opinion, and 
 died when it was better not to live. 1 
 
 I see not any road of perfect peace which a 
 man can walk, but after the counsel of his own 
 bosom. Let him quit too much association, let 
 him go home much, and stablish himself in 
 those courses he approves. 3 The unremitting 
 retention of simple and high sentiments in ob- 
 scure duties is hardening the character to that 
 temper which will work with honor, if need be 
 in the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever 
 outrages have happened to men may befall a
 
 HEROISM 263 
 
 man again ; and very easily in a republic, if 
 there appear any signs of a decay of religion. 
 Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers and the 
 gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his 
 mind and with what sweetness of temper he can, 
 and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of 
 duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may 
 please the next newspaper and a sufficient num- 
 ber of his neighbors to pronounce his opinions 
 incendiary. 
 
 It may calm the apprehension of calamity in 
 the most susceptible heart to see how quick a 
 bound Nature has set to the utmost infliction 
 of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over 
 which no enemy can follow us : 
 
 Let them rave : * 
 
 Thou art quiet in thy grave." * 
 
 In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, 
 in the hour when we are deaf to the higher 
 voices, who does not envy those who have seen 
 safely to an end their manful endeavor? Who 
 that sees the meanness of our politics but inly 
 congratulates Washington that he is long already 
 wrapped in his shroud, and for ever safe ; that 
 he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of hu- 
 manity not yet subjugated in him ? Who does 
 not sometimes envy the good and brave who are
 
 264 HEROISM 
 
 no more to suffer from the tumults of the nat- 
 ural world, and await with curious complacency 
 the speedy term of his own conversation with 
 finite nature? And yet the love that will be 
 annihilated sooner than treacherous has already 
 made death impossible, and affirms itself no 
 mortal but a native of the deep^of absolute and 
 inextinguishable being.
 
 IX 
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 BUT souls that of his own good life partake, 
 He loves as his own self; dear as his eye 
 They are to Him: He '11 never them forsake: 
 When they shall die, then God himself shall die: 
 They live, they live in blest eternity." 
 
 Henry Mere* 
 
 Space is ample, east and west, 
 
 But two cannot go abreast, 
 
 Cannot travel in it two: 
 
 Yonder masterful cuckoo 
 
 Crowds every egg out of the nest, 
 
 Quick or dead, except its own; 
 
 A spell is laid on sod and stone, 
 
 Night and Day 've been tampered with, 
 
 Every quality and pith 
 
 Surcharged and sultry with a power 
 
 That works its will on age and hour.
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 is a difference between one and 
 JL another hour of life in their authority 
 and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in mo- 
 ments ; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth 
 in those brief moments which constrains us to 
 ascribe more reality to them than to all other 
 experiences. For this reason the argument which 
 is always forthcoming to silence those who con- 
 ceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely the 
 appeal to experience, is for ever invalid and vain. 
 We give up the past to the objector, and yet we 
 hope. He must explain this hope. We grant 
 that human life is mean, but how did we find out 
 that it was mean ? ' What is the ground of this 
 uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent? What 
 is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but 
 the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its 
 enormous claim ? Why do men feel that the 
 iatural history of man has never been written, 
 but he is always leaving behind what you have 
 said of him, and it becomes old, and books of 
 metaphysics worthless ? (The philosophy of six 
 thousand years has not searched the chambers 
 and magazines of the soul. ) In its experiments
 
 268 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 there has always remained, in the last analysis, a 
 residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream 
 whose source is hidden. 1 Our being is descend- 
 ing into us from we know not whence. The 
 most exact calculator has no prescience that 
 somewhat incalculable may not balk the very 
 next moment. I am constrained every moment 
 to acknowledge a higher origin for events than 
 the will I call mine. 
 
 As with events, so is it with thoughts. When 
 I watch that fljowingjiyer, which, out of regions I 
 see not, pours for a season its streams into me, 
 I see that I am a pensioner ; not a cause but a 
 surprised spectator of this ethereal water ; that 
 I desire and look up and put myself in the at- 
 titude of reception, but from some alien energy 
 the visions come. 2 
 
 The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past 
 and the present, and the only prophet of that 
 which must be, is that great nature in which we 
 rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmos- 
 phere; that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which 
 every man's particular being is contained and 
 made one with all other ; that common heart of 
 which all sincere conversation is the worship, to 
 which all right action is submission ; that over- 
 powering reality which confutes our tricks and
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 269 
 
 talents, and constrains every one to pass for what 
 he is, and to speak from his character and not 
 from his tongue, and which evermore tends to 
 pass into our thought and hand and become wis- 
 dom and virtue and power and beauty. We live 
 in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. 
 Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; 
 the~wlse silence ; the universal beauty, to which 
 every part and particle is equally related ; the 
 eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we 
 exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, 
 is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every 
 hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, 
 the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the 
 object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, 
 as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but 
 the whole, of which these are the shining parts, 
 is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom 
 can the horoscope of the ages be read, and by 
 falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding 
 to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every 
 man, we can know what it saith. Every man's 
 words who speaks from that life must sound 
 vain to those who do not dwell in the same 
 thought on their own part. I dare not speak 
 for it. My words do not carry its august sense ; 
 they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire
 
 270 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 whom it will, and behold ! their speech shall be 
 lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of 
 the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, 
 if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven 
 of this deity and to report what hints I have col- 
 lected of the transcendent simplicity and energy 
 of the Highest Law. 1 
 
 If we consider what happens in conversation, 
 in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in 
 surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein 
 often we see ourselves in masquerade, the droll 
 disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real 
 element and forcing it on our distant notice, 
 we shall catch many hints that will broaden and 
 lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. 8 
 All goes to show that the soul in man is not an 
 organ, but animates and exercises all the organs ; 
 is not a function, like the power of memory, 
 of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as 
 hands and feet ; is not a faculty, but a light ; is 
 not the intellect or the will, but the master of the 
 intellect and the will ; is the background of our 
 being, in which they lie, an immensity not 
 possessed and that cannot be possessed. 3 From 
 within or from behind, a light shines through us 
 upon things and makes us aware that we are 
 nothing, but the lightjs all. A man is the faclule
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 271 
 
 of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good 
 abide. What we commonly call man, the eat- 
 ing, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, 
 as we know him, represent himself, but misre- 
 presents himself. Him we do not respect, but 
 the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it ap- 
 pear through his action, would make our knees 
 bend. When it breathes through his intellect, 
 it is genius ; when it breathes through his will, 
 it is virtue ; when it flows through his affection, 
 it is love. And the blindness of the intellect 
 begins when it would be something of itself. 1 
 The weakness of the will begins when the indi- 
 vidual would be something of himself. All re- 
 form aims in some one particular to let the soul 
 have its way through us ; in other words, to en- 
 gage us to obey. 
 
 Of this pure nature every man is at some 
 time sensible. Language_cannot paint it with 
 hisjglors, It is. too subtile. Tt is undefinable, 
 urimeasurable ; but we know that it pervades 
 and contains us. We know that all spiritual be- 
 ing is in man. Ajwise old jproverb says, " God 
 comes to see us without bell ; " 2 that is, as there i/ 
 is no screen or ceiling between our heads and 
 tHe~mhmte heavens, so is there no bar or wall 
 in the soul, where man, the effect, ceases, and
 
 z;2 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken 
 away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of 
 spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Jus- 
 tice we see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. 
 These natures no man ever got above, but they 
 tower over us, and most in the moment when 
 our interests tempt us to wound them. 
 
 The sovereignty of this nature whereof we 
 speak is made known by its independency of 
 those limitations which circumscribe us on every 
 hand. The soul circumscribes all things. As I 
 
 I * ""' " *** 
 
 have said, it:^ contradicts jill experience. In like 
 manner it abolishes time and space. The influ- 
 ence of the senses has in most men overpowered 
 the mind to that degree that the walls of time 
 and space have come to look real and insur- 
 mountable ; and to speak with levity of these 
 limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. Yet 
 time and space are but inverse measures of the 
 force of the soul. The spirit sports with time, 
 
 ., " Can crowd eternity into an hour, 
 
 ^(^ Or stretch an hour to eternity." 
 
 We are often made to feel that there is another 
 youth and age than that which is measured from 
 the year of our natural birth. Some thoughts 
 always find us young, and keep us so. 1 Such a 
 thought is the love of the universal and eternal
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 273 
 
 beauty. Every man parts from that contempla- 
 tion with the feeling that it rather belongs to 
 ages than to mortal life. The least activity of 
 the intellectual powers redeems us in a degree 
 from the conditions of time. In sickness, in 
 languor, give us a strain of poetry or a profound 
 sentence, and we are refreshed ; or produce a 
 volume of Plato or Shakspeare, or remind us 
 of their names, and instantly we come into a 
 feeling of longevity. See how the deep divine 
 thought reduces centuries and millenniums, and 
 makes itself present through all ages. Is the 
 teaching of Christ less effective now than it was 
 when first his mouth was opened ? The em- 
 phasis of facts and persons in my thought has 
 nothing to do with time. And so always the 
 soul's scale is one, the scale of the senses and 
 the understanding is another. Before the revela- 
 tions of the soul, Time, Space and Nature shrink 
 away. In common speech we refer all things to 
 time, as we habitually refer the immensely sun- 
 dered stars to one concave sphere. And so we 
 say that the Judgment Is distant or near, that 
 the Millennium approaches, that a day of cer- 
 tain political, moral, social reforms is at hand, 
 and the like, when we mean that in the nature 
 of things one of the facts we contemplate is
 
 274 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 external and fugitive, and the other is permanent 
 and connate with the soul. The things we now 
 esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach them- 
 selves likejjpe fruit from our experience, and 
 fall. The wind shall blow them none knows 
 whither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, 
 London, are facts as fugitive as any institution 
 past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is 
 society, and so ; .s the world. The soul looketh 
 steadily forwards, creating a world before her, 
 leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates, 
 nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties nor men. 
 
 . The soul knows only the soul ; the web of 
 events is the flowing robe in which she is 
 
 clothed. 1 
 
 After its own law and not by arithmetic is the 
 rate of its progress to be computed. Thejsp.ul's 
 advances are not made by gradation, such as can 
 be^repfesented by motion in a straight line, but 
 rather by ascension of state, such as can be re- 
 presented by metamorphosis, from the egg to 
 the worm , frommeworm to the fly. Thejrrowths 
 of genius are of a certain total character, that 
 does not advance the elect individual first over 
 John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to 
 each the pain of discovered inferiority, but by 
 every throe of growth the man expands there
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 275 
 
 where he works, passing, at each pulsation, 
 classes, populations, of men. With each divine 
 impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the 
 visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, 
 and inspires and expires its air. It converses 
 with truths that have always been spoken in the 
 world, and becomes conscious of a closer sym- 
 pathy with Zeno and Arrian than with persons 
 in the house. 
 
 This is the law of moral and of mental gain. 
 The simple rise as by specific levity not into a 
 particular virtue, but into the region of all the 
 virtues. They are in the spirit which contains 
 them all. 1 The soul requires purity, but purity 
 is not it; requires justice, but justice is not that; 
 requires beneficence, but is somewhat better; so 
 that there is a kind of descent and accommo- 
 dation felt when we leave speaking of moral 
 nature to urge a virtue which it enjoins. To the 
 well-born child all the virtues are natural, and 
 not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and 
 the man becomes suddenly virtuous.* 
 
 Within the same sentiment is the germ of 
 intellectual growth, which obeys the same law. 
 Those who are capable of humility, of justice, 
 of love, of aspiration, stand already on a platform 
 that commands the sciences and arts, speech
 
 276 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 and poetry, action and grace. For whoso dwells 
 in this moral beatitude already anticipates those 
 special powers which men prize so highly. The 
 lover has no talent, no skill, which passes for 
 quite nothing with his enamored maiden, how- 
 ever little she may possess of related faculty ; 
 and the heart which abandons itself to the 
 Supreme Mind finds itself related to all it-- 
 works, and will travel a royal road to particular 
 knowledges and powers. In ascending to this 
 primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come 
 from ourremote station on_thejcircumference 
 instantaneously to the centre of the world, 
 where, as in the closet of God, we see causes, 
 and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow 
 effect. 1 
 
 One mode of the divine teaching is the incar- 
 nation of the spirit in a form, in forms, like 
 my own. I live in society; with persons who 
 answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express 
 a certain obedience to the great instincts to 
 which I live. I see its presence to them. I am 
 certified of a common nature ; and these other 
 souls, these separated selves, draw me as no- 
 thing else can. They stir in me the new emo- 
 tions we call passion ; of love, hatred, fear, 
 admiration, pity ; thence come conversation,
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 277 
 
 competition, persuasion, cities and war. Per- 
 sons are supplementary to the primary teaching 
 of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. 
 Childhood and youth see all the world in them. 
 But the larger experience of man discovers the 
 identical nature appearing through them all. 
 Persons themselves acquaint us with the imper-J 
 sonal. In all conversation between two persons 
 tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a 
 common nature. That third party or common 
 nature is not social ; it is impersonal ; is God- 
 And so in groups where debate is earnest, and 
 especially on high questions, the company be- 
 come aware that the thought rises to an equal 
 level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual pro- 
 perty in what was said, as well as the sayer. 
 They all become wiser than they were. It arches 
 over them like a temple, this unity of thought 
 in which every heart beats with nobler sense of 
 power and duty, and thinks and acts with un- 
 usual solemnity. All are conscious of attaining 
 to a higher self-possession. It shines for all. 
 There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is 
 common to the greatest men with the lowest, 
 and which our ordinary education often labors 
 to silence and obstruct. The mind is one, and 
 the best minds, who love truth for its own
 
 278 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 sake, think much less of property in truth. 
 They accept it thankfully everywhere, and do 
 not label or stamp it with any man's name, for 
 it is theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. 1 
 The learned and the studious of thought have 
 no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of 
 direction in some degree disqualifies them to 
 think truly. We owe many valuable observa- 
 tions to people who are not very acute or pro- 
 found, and who say the thing without effort 
 which we want and have long been hunting in 
 vain. The action of the soul is oftener in that 
 which is felt and left unsaid than in that which 
 is said in any conversation. It broody over 
 every society, and they unconsciously seek for 
 it in each other. We know better than we do.' 
 We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know 
 at the same time that we are much more. I feel 
 the same truth how often in my trivial conversa- 
 tion with my neighbors, that somewhat higher 
 in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove 
 nods to Jove from behind each of us. 3 
 
 Men descend to meet. In their habitual and 
 mean service to the world, for which they for- 
 sake their native nobleness, they resemble those 
 Arabian sheiks who dwell in mean houses and 
 affect an external poverty, to escape the rapa-
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 279 
 
 city of the Pacha, and reserve all their display 
 of wealth for their interior and guarded retire- 
 ments. 
 
 As it is present in all persons, so it is in 
 every period of life. It is adult already in the 
 infant man. In my dealing with my child, my 
 Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my 
 money stead me nothing; but as much soul as 
 I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will 
 against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I 
 please, the degradation of beating him by my 
 superiority of strength. But if I renounce my 
 will and act for the soul, setting that up as um- 
 pire between us two, out of his young eyes looks 
 the same soul ; he reveres and loves with me. 1 
 
 The soul is the perceiver and revealer of 
 truth. We know truth when we see it, let scep- 
 tic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish 
 people ask you, when you have spoken what 
 they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know 
 it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We 
 know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we 
 know when we are awake that we are awake. It 
 was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, 
 which would alone indicate the greatness of that 
 man's perception, "It is no proof of a man's 
 understanding to be able to affirm whatever ht
 
 28o THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 pleases ; but to be able to discern that what is 
 true is true, and that what is false is false, 
 this is the mark and character of intelligence." 
 In the book I read, the good thought returns 
 to me, as every truth will, the image of the 
 whole soul. To the bad thought which I find 
 in it, the same soul becomes a discerning, sep- 
 arating sword, and lops it away. We^ are wiser 
 than we know. If we will not interfere with our 
 thought, but will act entirely, or see how the 
 thing stands in God, we know the particular 
 thing, and every thing, and every man. For 
 the Maker of all things and all persons stands 
 behind us and casts his dread omniscience through 
 us over things. 
 
 But beyond this recognition of its own in 
 particular passages of the individual's experi- 
 ence, it also reveals truth. And here we should 
 seek to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, 
 and to speak with a worthier, loftier strain of 
 that advent. For the soul's communication of 
 truth is the highest event in nature, since it 
 then does not give somewhat from itself, but it 
 gives itself, or passes into and becomes that man 
 whom it enlightens; or in proportion to that 
 truth he receives, it takes him to itself. 
 
 We distinguish the announcements of the
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 281 
 
 soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the 
 term Revelation. These are always attended by 
 the emotion of the sublime. For this commu- 
 nication is an influx of the Divine mind into 
 our mind. 1 It is an ebb of the individual rivulet 
 before the flowing surges of the sea of life. 
 Every distinct apprehension of this central com- 
 mandment agitates men with awe and delight. 
 A thrill passes through all men at the reception 
 of new truth, or at the performance of a great 
 action, which comes out of the heart of nature. 
 In these communications the power to see is 
 not separated from the will to do, but the in- 
 sight proceeds from obedience, and the obedi- 
 ence proceeds from a joyful perception. 3 Every 
 moment when the individual feels himself in- 
 vaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of 
 our constitution a certain enthusiasm attends the 
 individual's consciousness of that divine pre- 
 sence. The character and duration of this enthu- 
 siasm vary with the state of the individual, from 
 an ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspiration, 
 which is its rarer appearance, to the faint- 
 est glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it 
 warms, like our household fires, all the families 
 and associations of men, and makes societ) 
 possible. A certain tendency to insanity has
 
 282 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 always attended the opening of the religious 
 sense in men, as if they had been " blasted with 
 /excess of light." " The trances of Socrates, the 
 "union" of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry, 
 the conversion of Paul, the aurora of Behmen, 
 the convulsions of George Fox and his Quakers, 
 the illumination of Swedenborg, are of this kind. 
 What was in the case of these remarkable per- 
 sons a ravishment, has, in innumerable instances 
 in common life, been exhibited in less striking 
 manner. Everywhere the history of religion be- 
 trays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture 
 of the Moravian and Quietist ; the opening of 
 ihe eternal sense of the Word, in the language 
 of the New Jerusalem Church ; the revival of 
 the Calvinistic churches ; the experiences of the 
 Methodists, are varying forms of that shudder 
 of awe and delight with which the individual 
 soul always mingles with the universal soul. 
 
 The nature of these revelations is the same ; 
 they are perceptions of the absolute law. They 
 are solutions of the soul's own questions. They 
 do not answer the questions which the under- 
 standing asks. The soul answers never by 
 words, but by the thing itself that is inquired 
 after. 2 
 
 Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 283 
 
 popular notion of a revelation is that it is a 
 telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul 
 the understanding seeks to find answers to sen- 
 sual questions, and undertakes to tell from God 
 how long men shall exist, what their hands shall 
 do and who shall be their company, adding 
 names and dates and places. But we must pick 
 no locks. We must check this low curiosity. 1 
 An answer in words_is_de_lusiye ; it is really 
 no answer to the questions you ask. Do not 
 require a description of the countries towards 
 which you sail. The description does not de- 
 scribe them to you, and to-morrow you arrive 
 there and know them by inhabiting them. Men 
 ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the 
 employments of heaven, the state of the sinner, 
 and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has 
 left replies to precisely these interrogatories. 
 Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak 
 in their patois. To truth, justice, love, the attri- 
 butes of the soul, the idea of immutableness 
 is essentially associated. Jesus, living in these 
 moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, 
 heeding only the manifestations of these, never 
 made the separation of the idea of duration from 
 the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a 
 syllable concerning the duration of the soul. It
 
 284 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 was left to his disciples to sever duration from 
 the moral elements, and to teach the immortality 
 of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by 
 evidences. The moment the Horfn'np nfLfhe 
 immortality is separately taught, man is already 
 fallen. In the flowing of love, in the adoration 
 of humility, there is no^ question of continuance. 
 No inspired man ever asks this question or con- 
 descends to these evidences. For the soul is 
 true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed 
 abroad cannot wander from the present, which 
 is infinite, to a future which would be finite. 1 
 
 These questions which we lust to ask about 
 the future are a confession of sin. God has no 
 answer for them. No answer in words can reply 
 to a question of things. It is not in an arbitrary 
 " decree of God," but in the nature of man, that 
 a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow ; 
 for the soul will not have us read any other 
 cipher than that of cause and effect. By this veil 
 which curtains events it instructs the children 
 of men to live in to-day. The only mode of 
 obtaining an answer to these questions of the 
 senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, accept- 
 ing the tide of being which floats us into the 
 secret of nature, work and live, work and live, 
 and all unawares the advancing soul has buiit
 
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 285 
 
 and forged for itself a new condition, and the 
 question and the answer are one. 1 
 
 E'y the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, 
 which burns until it shall dissolve all things 
 into the waves and surges of an ocean of light, 
 we see and know each other, and what spirit 
 each is of. Who can tell the grounds of his 
 knowledge of the character of the several in- 
 dividuals in his circle of friends ? No man. 
 Yet their acts and words do not disappoint 
 him. In that man, though he knew no ill of 
 him, he put no trust. In that other-, though 
 they had seldom met, authentic signs had yet 
 passed, to signify that he might be trusted as 
 one who had an interest in his own character. 
 We know each other very well, which of us 
 has been just to himself and whether that which 
 we teach or behold is only an aspiration or is 
 our honest effort also. 
 
 We are all discerners of spirits. That diag- 
 nosis lies aloft in our life or unconscious power. 
 The intercourse of society, its trade, its reli- 
 gion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one wide 
 judicial investigation of character. In full court, 
 or in small committee, or confronted face to 
 face, accuser and accused, men offer themselves 
 to be judged. Against their will they exhibit
 
 286 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 those decisive trifles by which character is read 
 But who judges ? and what ? Not our under- 
 standing. We do not read them by learning or 
 craft. No ; the wisdom of the wise man con- 
 sists herein, that he does not judge them ; he 
 lets them judge themselves and merely reads 
 and records their own verdict. 
 
 By virtue of this inevitable nature, private 
 will is overpowered, and, maugre our efforts or 
 our imperfections, your genius will speak from 
 you, and mine from me. That which we are, 
 we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily. 
 Thoughts come into our minds by avenues 
 which we never left open, and thoughts go out 
 of our minds through avenues which we never 
 voluntarily opened. 1 Character teacher -over our 
 head. The infallible index of true tprogress is 
 found in the tone the man takes. 2 Neither his 
 age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor books, 
 nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can 
 hinder him from being deferential to a higher 
 spirit than his own. If he have not found his 
 home in God, his^ manners, his fprmsjof-speech, 
 the turn of his sentences, the build, shall I say, 
 of all his opinions will involuntarily confess it, 
 let him brave it out how he will. If he have 
 found his centre, the Deity will shine through
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 287 
 
 him, through all the disguises of ignorance, of 
 ungenial temperament, of unfavorable circum- 
 stance. The tone of seeking is one, and the 
 tone of having is another. 
 
 The great distinction between teachers sacred 
 or literary, between poets like Herbert, and 
 poets like Pope, between philosophers like 
 Spinoza, Kant and Coleridge, and philosophers 
 like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and Stewart, 
 between men of the world who are reckoned 
 accomplished talkers, and here and there a fer- 
 vent mystic, prophesying half insane under the 
 infinitude of his thought, is that one class 
 speak/row within, or from experience, as parties 
 and possessors of the fact ; and the other class 
 from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps 
 as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of 
 third persons. It is of no use to preach to me 
 from without. I can do that too easily myself. 
 Jesus speaks always from within, and in a de- 
 gree tEat transcends all others. In that is the 
 miracle. I believe beforehand that it ought so 
 to be. All men stand continually in the expec- 
 tation of the appearance of such a teacher. But 
 if a man do not speak from within the veil, 
 where the word is one with that it tells of, let 
 him lowly confess <t.
 
 288 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 The same Omniscience flows into the intel- 
 lect and makes what we call genius. Much of 
 the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and 
 the most illuminated class of men are no doubt 
 superior to literary fame, and are not writers. 
 Among the multitude of scholars and authors 
 we feel no hallowing presence ; we are sensi- 
 ble of a knack and skill rather than of inspira- 
 tion ; they have a light and know not whence it 
 comes and call it their own ; their talent is some 
 exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, 
 so that their strength is a disease. In these in- 
 stances the intellectual gifts do not make the 
 impression of virtue, but almost of vice ; and 
 we feel that a man's talents stand in the way of 
 his advancement in truth. But genius is reli- 
 gious. 1 It is a larger imbibing of the common 
 heart. It is not anomalous, but more like and 
 not less like other men. There is in all great 
 poets a wisdom of humanity which is superior 
 to any talents they exercise. The author, the 
 wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, does not 
 take place of the man. Humanity shines in 
 Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakspeare, 
 in Milton. They are content with truth. They 
 use the positive degree. They seem frigid and 
 phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 289 
 
 the frantic passion and violent coloring of in- 
 ferior but popular writers. For they are poets 
 by the free course which they allow to the in- 
 forming soul, which through their eyes beholds 
 again and blesses the things which it hath made. 
 The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than 
 any of its works. 1 The great poet makes us feel 
 our own wealth, and then we think less of his 
 compositions. His best communication to our 
 mind is to teach us to despise all he has done. 
 Shakspeare carries us to such a lofty strain of in- 
 telligent activity as to suggest a wealth which 
 beggars his own ; and we then feel that the splen- 
 did works which he has created, and which in 
 other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent 
 poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than 
 the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock.* 
 The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet 
 and Lear could utter things as good from day to 
 day for ever. Why then should I make account 
 of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not the soul 
 from which they fell as syllables from the tongue ? 
 This energy does not descend into individual 
 life on any other condition than entire posses- 
 sion. It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes 
 to whomsoever will put off what is foreign and 
 proud ; it comes as insight ; it comes as serenity
 
 290 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 and grandeur. When we see those whom it in- 
 habits, we are apprised of new degrees of great- 
 ness. From that inspiration the man comes back 
 with a changed tone. He does not talk with 
 men with an eye to their opinion. He tries them. 
 It requires of us to be plain and true. The vain 
 traveller attempts to embellish his life bv_c[uoj:- 
 ing my lord and the prince and the countess, 
 who thus said or did to him. The ambitious vul- 
 gar show you their spoons and brooches and 
 rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. 
 The more cultivated, in their account of their 
 own experience, cull out the pleasing, poetic cir- 
 cumstance, the visit to Rome, the man of 
 genius they saw, the brilliant friend they know ; 
 still further on perhaps the gorgeous landscape, 
 the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts they 
 enjoyed yesterday, and so seek to throw a 
 romantic color over their life. But the soul that 
 ascends to worship the great God is plain and 
 true ; has no rose-color, no fine friends, no chiv- 
 alry, no adventures ; does not want admiration ; 
 dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest 
 experience of the common day, by reason of 
 the present moment and the mere trifle having 
 become porous to thought and bibulous of the 
 sea of light.
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 291 
 
 Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, 
 and literature looks like word-catching. The 
 simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, 
 yet are they so cheap and so things of course, 
 that in the infinite riches of the soul it is like 
 gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bot- 
 tling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth 
 and the whole atmosphere are ours. Nothing 
 can pass there, or make you one of the circle, 
 but the casting aside your trappings and dealing 
 man to man in naked truth, plain confession 
 and omniscient affirmation. 
 
 Souls such as these treat you as gods would, 
 walk as gods in the earth, accepting without any 
 admiration your wit, your bounty, your virtue 
 even, say rather your act of duty, for your 
 virtue they own as their proper blood, royal as 
 themselves, and over-royal, and the father of 
 the gods. But what rebuke their plain fraternal 
 bearing casts on the mutual flattery with which 
 authors solace each other and wound them- 
 selves ! These flatter not. I do not wonder that 
 these men go to see Cromwell and Christina 
 and Charles the Second and James the First 
 and the Grand Turk. For they are, in their 
 own elevation, the fellows of kings, and must 
 feel the servile tone of conversation in the world
 
 * 9 2 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 They must always be a godsend to princes, for 
 they confront them, a king to a king, without 
 ducking or concession, and give a high nature 
 the refreshment and satisfaction of resistance, of 
 plain humanity, of even companionship and of 
 new ideas. They leave them wiser and superior 
 men. Souls like these make us feel ihat sincerity 
 is more excellent than flattery. Deal so plainly 
 with man and woman as to constrain the ut- 
 most sincerity and destroy all hope of trifling 
 with you. It is the highest compliment you can 
 pay. Their " highest praising," said Milton, " is 
 \f not flattery, and their plainest advice is a kind 
 of praising." 
 
 Ineffable is the union of man and God in 
 every act of the soul. The simplest person who 
 in his integrity worships God, becomes God ; 
 yet for ever and ever the influx of this better 
 and universal self is new and unsearchable. 1 
 It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, 
 how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, 
 peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of 
 our mistakes and disappointments ! When we 
 have broken our god of tradition jind ceased 
 from our god of rhetoric, then may jjod fire 
 the heart wTtR~His~jpresence.* It is the doubling 
 of theTTearTltseif, nay, the infinite enlargement
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 293 
 
 of the heart with a power of growth to a new 
 infinity on every side. It inspires in man an 
 infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but 
 the sight, that the best is the true, and may in 
 that thought easily dismiss all particular uncer- 
 tainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure reve- 
 lation of time the solution of his private riddles. 
 He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart 
 of being. In the presence of law to his mind he 
 is overflowed with a reliance so universal that 
 it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most 
 stable projects of mortal condition in its flood. 
 He believes that he cannot escape from his 
 good. The things that are really for thee grav- 
 itate to thee. 1 You are running to seek your 
 friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need 
 not. If you do not find him, will you not ac- 
 quiesce that it is best you should not find him ? 
 for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in 
 him also, and could therefore very well bring 
 you together, if it were for the best. You are 
 preparing with eagerness to go and render a 
 service to which your talent and your taste in- 
 vite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. 
 Has it not occurred to you that you have no right 
 to go, unless you are equally willing to be pre- 
 vented from going ? * O, believCj as thou livest,
 
 294 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 that every sound that is spoken over the round 
 world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate 
 on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every 
 byword that belongs f-n fhfp for ^ rr>mfr>rf j 
 shall surely come home_through oppn or wind- 
 ing passages. Every friend whom not thy fan- 
 tastic will but the great and tender heart in thee 
 craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And 
 this because the heart in thee is the heart of all ; 
 not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is 
 there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls 
 uninterruptedly an endless circulation through 
 all men, asjhe water of the globe is^all one sea, 
 and, truly seen, its tide is one. 
 
 TZHmanthelTTearn the revelation of all na- 
 ture and all thought to his heart; this, namely; 
 that the Highest dwells with him ; that the 
 sources of nature are in his own mind, if the 
 sentiment of duty is there. But if he would 
 know what the great God speaketh, he must 
 ' go into his closet and shut the door,' as Jesus 
 said. God will not make himself manifest to 
 cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, 
 withdrawing himself from all the accents of 
 other men's devotion. Even their prayers are 
 hurtful to him, until he have made his own. 
 Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 295 
 
 believers. Whenever the appeal is made, no 
 matter how indirectly, to numbers, proclama- 
 tion is then and there made that religion is not. 
 He that finds God a sweet enveloping thought 
 to him never counts his company. When I sit 
 in that presence, who shall dare to come in? 
 When I rest in perfect humility, when I burn 
 with pure love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg 
 say? 
 
 It makes no difference whether the appeal is 
 to numbers or to one. The faith that stands 
 on authority is not faith. The reliance on 
 authority measures the decline of religion^ the 
 withdrawal of the soul. The position men have 
 given to Jesus, now for many centuries of his- 
 tory, is a position of authority. It characterizes 
 themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts. 
 Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, 
 it is no follower ; it never appeals from itself. 
 It believes in itself. Before the immense possi- 
 bilities of man all mere experience, all past bio- 
 graphy, however spotless and sainted, shrinks 
 away. Before that heaven which our presenti- 
 ments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any 
 form of life we have seen or read of. We not 
 only affirm that we have few great men, but, 
 absolutely speaking, that we have none; that
 
 296 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 we have no history, no record of any character 
 or mode of living that entirely contents us. 
 The saints and demigods whom history wor- 
 ships we are constrained to accept with a grain 
 of allowance. Though in our lonely hours we 
 draw a new strength out of their memory, yet, 
 pressed on our attention, as they are by the 
 thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and in- 
 vade. The soul gives itself, alone, original and 
 pure, to the Lonely, Original and Pure, who, 
 on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads and 
 speaks through it. Then is it glad, young and 
 nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all 
 things. It is not called religious, but it is inno- 
 cent. It calls the light its own, and feels that 
 the grass grows and the stone falls by a law in- 
 ferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, 
 it saith, I am born into the great, the universal 
 mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. 
 I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and 
 thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars and 
 feel them to be the fair accidents and effects 
 which change and pass. More and more the 
 surges j^ everlasting nature enter into me, and 
 I become public and human in my regards and 
 actions. So come I to live in thoughts and act 
 with energies which are immortal. Thus rever-
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 297 
 
 ing the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, 
 that " its beauty is immense," man will come to 
 see that the world is the perennial miracle which 
 the soul worketh, and be less astonished at par- 
 ticular wonders ; he will learn that there is no 
 profane history ; that all history is sacred ; that 
 the universe is represented in an atom, in a 
 moment of time. 1 He will weave no longer a 
 spotted life<p^_shreds_jaiid patches, but he will ^" 
 live with a divine unity. He will cease from 
 what is base and frivolous in his life and be con- 
 tent with all places and with any service he can 
 render. He will calmly front the morrow in 
 the negligency of that trust which carries God 
 with it and so hath already the whole future in 
 the bottom of the heart.
 
 X 
 
 CIRCLES 
 
 NATURE centres into_balls, 
 And her proud ephemerals, 
 Fast to surface and outside, 
 Scan the profile of the sphere; 
 Knew they what that signified 
 A new genesis were here.
 
 CIRCLES 
 
 HE eye is the first circle; the horizon which 
 A it forms is the second; and throughout 
 nature this primary figure is repeated without 
 end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of 
 the world. St. Augustine described the nature 
 of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere 
 and its circumference nowhere. 1 We are all our 
 lifetime reading the copious sense of this first 
 of forms. One moral we have already deduced 
 in considering the circular or compensatory char- 
 acter of every human action. Another analogy 
 we shall now trace, that every action admits of 
 being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to 
 the truth that around every circle another can 
 be drawn ; that there is no end in nature, but 
 every end is a beginning ; that there is always 
 another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under 
 every deep a lower deep opens. 8 
 
 This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact 
 of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around 
 which the hands of man can never meet, at once 
 the inspirer and the condemner of every success, 
 may conveniently serve us to connect many illus- 
 trations of human power in every department.
 
 302 CIRCLES 
 
 There are no fixtures in nature. The universe 
 is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word 
 of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a trans- 
 parent law, not a mass of facts. The law dis- 
 solves the fact and holds it fluid.' Our culture 
 is the predominance of an idea which draws 
 after it this train of cities and institutions. Let 
 us rise into another idea ; they will disappear. 
 The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it 
 had been statues of ice ; here and there a soli- 
 tary figure or fragment remaining, as we see 
 flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and 
 mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius 
 that created it creates now somewhat else. The 
 Greek letters last a little longer, but are already 
 passing under the same sentence and tumbling 
 into the inevitable pit which the creation of new 
 thought opens for all that is old. The new con- 
 tinents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; 
 the new races fed out of the decomposition 
 of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See 
 the investment of capital in aqueducts, made 
 useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gun- 
 powder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, 
 by steam ; steam by electricity. 
 
 You admire this tower of granite, weathering 
 the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving
 
 CIRCLES 303 
 
 hand built this huge wall, and that which builds 
 is better than that which is built. The hand that 
 built can topple it down much faster. Better 
 than the hand and nimbler was the invisible 
 thought which wrought through it ; and thus 
 ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, 
 which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect 
 of a finer cause. Everything looks permanent 
 until its secret is known. A rich estate appears 
 to women a firm and lasting fact ; to a merchant, 
 one easily created out of any materials, and easily 
 lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, 
 seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a 
 citizen ; but to a large farmer, not much more 
 fixed than the state of the crop. Nature looks 
 provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause 
 like all the rest; and when once I comprehend 
 that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide, 
 these leaves hang so individually considerable ? 
 Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing 
 is medial. Moons are no more bounds to spir- A 
 itual power than bat-balls. 1 
 
 The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy 
 and defying though he look, he has a helm which 
 he obeys, which is the idea after which all his 
 facts are classified. He can only be reformed by 
 showing him a new idea which commands his
 
 304 CIRCLES 
 
 own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, 
 which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes 
 on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, 
 and that without end. 1 The extent to which this 
 generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, 
 depends on the force or truth of the individual 
 soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, 
 having formed itself into a circular wave of cir- 
 cumstance, as for instance an empire, rules of 
 an art, a local usage, a religious rite, to heap 
 itself on that ridge and to solidify and hem in 
 the life. But if the soul is quick and strong it 
 bursts over that boundary on all sides and ex- 
 pands another orbit on the great deep, which 
 also runs up into a high wave, with attempt 
 again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses 
 to be imprisoned ; in its first and narrowest 
 pulses it already tends outward with a vast force 
 and to immense and innumerable expansions.* 
 Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new 
 series. Every general law only a particular fact 
 of some more general law presently to disclose 
 itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no 
 circumference to us. The man finishes his story, 
 how good ! how final ! how it puts a new face 
 on all things ! He fills the sky. Lo ! on the other 
 side rises also a man and draws a circle around
 
 CIRCLES 305 
 
 the circle we had just pronounced the outline of 
 the sphere. Then already is our first speaker 
 not man, but only a first speaker. His only re- 
 dress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his 
 antagonist. And so men do by themselves. The 
 result of to-day, which haunts the mind and can- 
 not be escaped, will presently be abridged into 
 a word, and the principle that seemed to explain 
 nature will itself be included as one example of a 
 bolder generalization. In the thought of to-mor- 
 row there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all 
 the creeds, all the literatures of the nations, and 
 marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream 
 has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a 
 workman in the world as he is a suggestion of 
 that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of 
 the next age. 
 
 Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder ; 
 the steps are actions, the new prospect is power. 
 Every several result is threatened and judged by 
 that which follows. Every one seems to be con- 
 tradicted by the new ; it is only limited by the 
 new. The new statement is always hated by 
 the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes 
 like an abyss of scepticism. But the eye soon 
 gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects 
 of one cause ; then its innocency and benefit
 
 306 CIRCLES 
 
 appear, and presently, ail its energy spent, it 
 pales and dwindles before the revelation of the 
 new hour. 
 
 Fear not the new generalization. Does the 
 fact look crass and material, threatening to de- 
 grade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it 
 goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just 
 as much. 
 
 There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to 
 consciousness. Every man supposes himself not 
 to be fully understood ; and if there is any truth 
 in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I 
 see not how it can be otherwise. The last cham- 
 ber, the last closet, he must feel was never 
 opened ; there is always a residuum unknown, 
 unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that 
 he has a greater possibility. 
 
 Our moods do not believe in each other. 
 To-day I am full of thoughts and can write what 
 I please. I see no reason why I should not 
 have the same thought, the same power of ex- 
 pression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I 
 write it, seems the most natural thing in the 
 world ; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in 
 this direction in which now I see so much ; and 
 a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder 
 who he was that wrote so many continuous
 
 CIRCLES 307 
 
 pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not 
 strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow ! I am 
 God in nature ; I am a weed by the wall. 
 
 The continual effort to raise himself above 
 himself, to work a pitch above his last height, 
 betrays itself in a man's relations. 1 We thirst for 
 approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. 
 The sweet of nature is love; yet if I have a 
 friend I am tormented by my imperfections. 
 The love of me accuses the other party. If he 
 were high enough to slight me, then could I 
 love him, and rise by my affection to new 
 heights. A man's growth is seen in the succes- 
 sive choirs of his friends. For every friend 
 tyhom he loses for truth, he gains a better. I 
 thought as I walked in the woods and mused 
 on my friends, why should I play with them this 
 game of idolatry ? I know and see too well, 
 when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of 
 persons called high and worthy. Rich, noble 
 and great they are by the liberality of our speech, 
 but truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom I 
 forsake for these, they are not thou ! Every 
 personal consideration that we allow costs us 
 heavenly state. We sell the thrones of angels 
 for a short and turbulent pleasure. 2 
 
 How often must we learn this lesson ? Men
 
 308 CIRCLES 
 
 cease to interest us when we find their limita- 
 tions. The only sin is limitation. As soon as 
 you once come up with a man's limitations, it 
 is all over with him. Has he talents ? has he 
 enterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. 
 Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you 
 yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in ; now, 
 you have found his shores, found it a pond, and 
 you care not if you never see it again. 
 
 Each new step we take in thought reconciles 
 twenty seemingly discordant facts, as expressions 
 of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned 
 the respective heads of two schools. A wise man 
 will see that Aristotle platonizes. By going one 
 step farther back in thought, discordant opinions 
 are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes 
 of one principle, and we can never go so far 
 back as to preclude a still higher vision. 1 
 
 Beware when the great God lets loose a 
 thinker on this planet. Then all things are at 
 risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken 
 out in a great city, and no man knows what is 
 safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece 
 of science but its flank may be turned to-mor- 
 row; there is not any literary reputation, not 
 the so-called eternal names of fame, that may 
 not be revised and condemned. The very hopes
 
 CIRCLES 309 
 
 of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion 
 of nations, the manners and morals of mankind 
 are all at the mercy of a new generalization. 
 Generalization is always a new influx of the 
 divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that 
 attends it. 
 
 Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, 
 so that a man cannot have his flank turned, can- 
 not be out-generalled, but put him where you 
 will, he stands. This can only be by his pre- 
 ferring truth to his past apprehension of truth, 
 and his alert acceptance of it from whatever 
 quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws > 
 his relations to society, his Christianity, his 
 world, may at any time be superseded and de- 
 cease. 
 
 There are degrees in idealism. We learn first 
 to play with it academically, as the magnet was 
 once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth 
 and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in 
 gleams and fragments. Then its countenance 
 waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must 
 be true. It now shows itself ethical and prac- 
 tical. We learn that God is ; that he is in me ; 
 and that all things are shadows of him. The 
 idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement 
 of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a
 
 3io CIRCLES 
 
 crude statement of the fact that all nature is the 
 rapid efflux of goodness executing and organiz- 
 ing itself. Much more obviously is history and 
 the state of the world at any one time directly 
 dependent on the intellectual classification then 
 existing in the minds of men. The things which 
 are dear to men at this hour are so on account 
 of the ideas which have emerged on their men- 
 tal horizon, and which cause the present order 
 of things, as a tree bears its apples. A new de- 
 gree of culture would instantly revolutionize 
 the entire system of human pursuits. 
 
 Conversation is a game of circles. In conver- 
 sation we pluck up the termini which bound the 
 common of silence on every side. The parties 
 are not to be judged by the spirit they partake 
 aad even express under this Pentecost. To- 
 morrow they will have receded from this high- 
 water mark. To-morrow you shall find them 
 stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet let 
 us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on 
 our walls. When each new speaker strikes a 
 new light, emancipates us from the oppression 
 of the last speaker to oppress us with the great- 
 ness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then 
 yields us to another redeemer, we seem to re- 
 cover our rights, to become men. O, what
 
 CIRCLES 311 
 
 truths profound and executable only in ages 
 and orbs, are supposed in the announcement 
 of every truth ! In common hours, society 
 sits cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, 
 empty, knowing, possibly, that we can be 
 full, surrounded by mighty symbols which are 
 not symbols to us, but prose and trivial toys. 
 Then cometh the god and converts the statues 
 into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns 
 up the veil which shrouded all things, and the 
 meaning of the very furniture, of cup and sau- 
 cer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. The 
 facts which loomed so large in the fogs of yes- 
 terday, property, climate, breeding, personal 
 beauty and the like, have strangely changed 
 their proportions. All that we reckoned settled 
 shakes and rattles ; and literatures, cities, cli- 
 mates, religions, leave their foundations and dance 
 before our eyes. 1 And yet here again seethe swift 
 circumscription ! Good as is discourse, silence 
 is better, and shames it. The length of the dis- 
 course indicates the distance of thought betwixt 
 the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a 
 perfect understanding in any part, no words 
 would be necessary thereon. If at one in all 
 parts, no words would be suffered. 
 
 Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal
 
 312 CIRCLES 
 
 circle through which a new one may be de- 
 scribed. The use of literature is to afford us a 
 platform whe~nce we may~~command a view of 
 our present life, a purchase by which we may 
 move it. We fill ourselves with ancient learn- 
 ing, install ourselves the best we can in Greek, 
 in Punic, in Roman houses, only that we may 
 wiselier see French, English and American 
 houses and modes of living. In like manner 
 we see literature best from the midst of wild 
 nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high 
 religion. The field cannot be well seen from 
 within the field. The astronomer must have 
 his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to 
 find the parallax of any star. 1 
 
 Therefore we value the poet. All the ar- 
 gument and all the wisdom is not in the en- 
 cyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or 
 the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the 
 play. In my daily work I incline to repeat my 
 old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, 
 in the power of change and reform. But some 
 Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new wine 
 of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk 
 romance, full of daring thought and action. He 
 smites and arouses me with his shrill tones, 
 breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open
 
 CIRCLES 313 
 
 my eye on my own possibilities. He claps 
 wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber of 
 the world, and I am capable once more of choos- 
 ing a straight path in theory and practice. 
 
 We have the same need to command a view 
 of the religion of the world. We can never see 
 Christianity from the catechism : from the pas- 
 tures, from a boat in the pond, from amidst the 
 songs of wood-birds we possibly may. Cleansed 
 by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the 
 sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, 
 we may chance to cast a right glance back upon 
 biography. Christianity is rightly dear to the 
 best of mankind ; yet was there never a young 
 philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the 
 Christian church by whom that brave text of 
 Paul's was not specially prized : " Then shall 
 also the Son be subject unto Him who put all 
 things under him, that God may be all in all." 
 Let the claims and virtues of persons be never 
 so great and welcome, the instinct of man presses 
 eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimit- 
 able, and gladly arms itself against the dogma- 
 tism of bigots with this generous word out of 
 the book itself. 1 
 
 The natural world may be conceived of as a 
 system of concentric circles, and we now and
 
 3 i4 CIRCLES 
 
 then detect in nature slight dislocations which 
 apprise us that this surface on which we now 
 stand is not fixed, but sliding. These manifold 
 tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegeta- 
 tion, these metals and animals, which seem to 
 stand there for their own sake, are means and 
 methods only, are words of God, and as fu- 
 gitive as other words. 1 Has the naturalist or 
 chemist learned his craft, who has explored the 
 gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, who 
 has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof 
 this is only a partial or approximate statement, 
 namely that like draws _to like, and that the 
 -goods which belong to you gravitate to you and 
 need not be pursued with pains and cost ? 2 Yet 
 is that statement approximate also, and not 
 final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not 
 through subtle subterranean channels need 
 friend and fact be drawn to their counterpart, 
 but, rightly considered, these things proceed 
 from the eternal generation of the soul. Cause 
 and effect are two sides* of one fact. 
 
 The same law of eternal procession ranges all 
 that we call the virtues, and extinguishes each in 
 the light of a better. The great man will not be 
 prudent in the popular sense ; all his rjrudence 
 will be so much deduction from his grandeur.
 
 CIRCLES 315 
 
 But it behooves each to see, when he sacrifices 
 prudence, to what god he devotes it ; if to ease 
 and pleasure, he had better be prudent still ; if 
 to a great trust, he can well spare his mule and 
 panniers who has a winged chariot instead. 
 Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the 
 woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite 
 of snakes ; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. 
 In many years neither is harmed by such an 
 accident. Yet it seems to me that with every 
 precaution you take against such an evil you 
 put yourself into the power of the evil. I sup- 
 pose that the highest prudence is the lowest 
 prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from 
 the centre to the verge of our orbit ? Think 
 how many times we shall fall back into pitiful 
 calculations before we take up our rest in the 
 great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day 
 the new centre. Besides, your bravest sentiment 
 is familiar to the humblest men. The poor and 
 the low have_their way of expressing the Jast 
 facts of philosophy as well as you. " Blessed be 
 nothing and " The worse things are, fhe bet- 
 ter they are ' are proverbsjwhich express the 
 transcendentalism of comrnonJKfe. 
 , One man's justice is another's injustice ; one 
 I man's beauty another's ugliness ; one man's
 
 316 CIRCLES 
 
 dom another's folly ; as one beholds the same 
 objects from a higher point. One man thinks 
 justice consists in paying debts, and has no 
 measure in his abhorrence of another who is 
 very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor 
 wait tediously. But that second man has his 
 own way of looking at things ; asks himself 
 Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the 
 rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of 
 money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of 
 genius to nature ? For you, O broker, there is 
 no other principle but arithmetic. For me, com- 
 merce is of trivial import ; love, faith, truth of 
 character, the aspiration of man, these are sa- 
 cred ; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from 
 all other duties, and concentrate my forces me- 
 chanically on the payment of moneys. Let me 
 live onward ; you shall find that, though slower, 
 the progress of my character will liquidate all 
 these debts without injustice to higher claims. 
 If a man should dedicate himself to the pay- 
 ment of notes, would not this be injustice? 
 Does he owe no debt but money ? And are all 
 claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's 
 or a banker's ? 
 
 There is no virtue which is final ; all are 
 initial. The virtues of society are vices of the
 
 CIRCLES 319 
 
 saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that 
 we must cast away our virtues, or what we have 
 always esteemed such, into the same pit that 
 has consumed our grosser vices : 
 Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, 
 Those smaller faults, half converts to the right." * 
 
 It is the highest power of divine moments 
 that they abolish our contritions also. I ac- 
 cuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day 
 by day ; but when these wa.ves of Godjflow into 
 me I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer 
 poorly compute my possible achievement by 
 what remains to me of the month or the year ; 
 for these moments confer a sort of omnipre- 
 sence and omnipotence which asks nothing of 
 duration, but sees that the energy of the mind 
 is commensurate with the work to be done, with- 
 out time. 
 
 And thus, O circular philosopher. I hear 
 some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine 
 Pyrrhonism,* at an equivalence and indifferency 
 of all actions, and would fain teach us that if 
 we are Jrue> forsooth, our crimes may be lively 
 stones out of which we shall construct the tem- 
 ple of the true God ! 
 
 I am not careful to justify myself. I own I 
 am gladdened by seeing the predominance of
 
 3 i8 CIRCLES 
 
 the saccharine principle throughout vegetable 
 nature, and not less by beholding in morals that 
 unrestrained inundation of the principle of good 
 into every chink and hole that selfishness has 
 left open, yea into selfishness and sin itself; so 
 that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its 
 extreme satisfactions. 1 But lest I should mislead 
 any when I have my own head and obey my 
 whims, let me remind the reader that I am only 
 an experimenter. Do not set the least value on 
 what I do, or the least discredit on what I do 
 not, as if 1 pretended to settle any thing as true 
 or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to 
 me sacred ; none are profane ; I simply experi- 
 ment, an endless seeker with no Past at my 
 back. 1 
 
 Yet this incessant movement and progression 
 which all things partake could never become 
 sensible to us but by contrast to sjome principle 
 of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the 
 eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal 
 generator abides. That central life is somewhat 
 superior to creation, superior to knowledge and 
 thought, and contains all its circles. Forever it 
 labors to create iTnfeTarKPth ought as large and 
 excellent as itself, but in vain, for that which is 
 made instructs how to make a better.
 
 CIRCLES 319 
 
 Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preserva- 
 tion, but all things renew, germinate and spring. 
 Why should we import rags and relics into the 
 new hour ? Nature abhors the old, and old age 
 seems the only disease ; all others run into this 
 one. We call it by many names, fever, in- 
 temperance, insanity, stupidity and crime ; they 
 are all forms of old age ; they are rest, conser- 
 vatism, appropriation, inertia ; not newness, not 
 the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see 
 no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is 
 above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. 
 Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with reli- 
 gious eye looking upward, counts itself nothing 
 and abandons itself to the instruction flowing 
 from all sides. But the man and woman of sev- 
 enty assume to know all, they have outlived 
 their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the 
 actual for the necessary and talk down to the 
 young. Let them then become organs of the 
 Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them be- 
 hold truth ; and their eyes are uplifted, their 
 wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again 
 with hope and power. 1 This old age ought not 
 to creep on a human mind. In nature every 
 moment is new ; the past is always swallowed 
 and forgotten ; the coming only is sacred. No-
 
 320 CIRCLES 
 
 thing is secure but life, transition, the energizing 
 spirit. No love can be bound by oath or cove- 
 nant to secure it against a higher love. No truth 
 so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the 
 light of new thoughts. People wish to be set- 
 tled ; only as far as they are unsettled is there 
 any hope for them. 
 
 Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess 
 to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to- 
 morrow, when we are building up our being. Of 
 lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can 
 tell somewhat ; but the masterpieces of God, the 
 total growths and universal movements of the 
 soul, he hideth ; they are incalculable. I can 
 know that truth is divine and helpful ; but how 
 it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be 
 is the sole inlet of so to know. The new position 
 of the advancing man has all the powers of the 
 old, yet has them all new. It carries in its bosom 
 all the energies of the past, yet is itself an ex- 
 halation of the morning. I cast away in this new 
 moment all my once hoarded knowledge, as va- 
 cant and vain. Now for the first time seem I to 
 know any thing rightly. The simplest words, 
 we do not know what they mean except when we 
 love and aspire. 
 
 The difference between talents and character
 
 CIRCLES 321 
 
 is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, 
 and power and courage to make a new road to 
 new and better goals. Character makes an over- 
 powering present ; a cheerful, determined hour, 
 which fortifies all the company by making them 
 see that much is possible and excellent that was 
 not thought of. Character dulls the impression 
 of particular events. When we see the conqueror 
 we do not think much of any one battle or suc- 
 cess. We see that we had exaggerated the dif- 
 ficulty. It was easy to him. The great man is 
 not convulsible or tormentable ; events pass over 
 him without much impression. People say some- 
 times, t See what I have overcome ; see how 
 cheerful I am ; see how completely I have tri- 
 umphed over these black events.' Not if they 
 still remind me of the black event. True con- 
 quest is the causing the calamity to fade and dis- 
 appear as an early cloud of insignificant result in 
 a history so large and advancing. 
 
 The one thing which we seek with insatiable 
 desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out 
 of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory 
 and to do something without knowing how or 
 why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing 
 great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. 
 The way of life is wonderful ; it is by abandon-
 
 322 CIRCLES 
 
 ment. The great moments of history are the 
 facilities of performance through the strength 
 of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. 
 " A man," said Oliver Cromwell, " never rises 
 so high as when he knows not whither he is 
 going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of 
 opium and alcohol are the semblance and coun- 
 terfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their 
 dangerous attraction for men. For the like rea- 
 son they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gam- 
 ing and war, to ape in some manner these flames 
 and generosities of the heart.
 
 XI 
 
 INTELLECT 
 
 Go, speed the stars of Thought 
 On to their shining goals; 
 The sower scatters broad his seed; 
 The wheat thou strew' st be sods.
 
 INTELLECT 
 
 EVERY substance is nej2livelyjeleciric to 
 that which stands above it in the chemical 
 tables, positively to that which stands below it. 
 Water dissolves wood and iron and salt ; air dis- 
 solves water ; electric fire dissolves air, but the 
 intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and 
 the subtlest unnamed relations of nature in its 
 resistless menstruum. 1 Intellect lies behind gen- 
 ius, which is intellect constructive. Intellect is 
 the simple power anterior to all action or con- 
 struction. Gladly would I unfold in calm de- 
 grees a natural history of the intellect, but what 
 man has yet been able to mark the steps and 
 boundaries of that transparent essence ? The 
 first questions are always to be asked, and the 
 wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness 
 of a child. How can we speak of the action of 
 the mind under any divisions, as of its know- 
 ledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, 
 since it melts will into perception, knowledge 
 into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone 
 is. Its vision is not like the vision of the eye, 
 but is union with the things known. 
 
 Intellect and intellection signify to the com-
 
 326 INTELLECT 
 
 mon ear consideration of abstract truth. The 
 considerations of time and place, of you and me, 
 of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's 
 minds. Intellect separates the fact considered, 
 from^0#, from all local and personal reference, 
 and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. 
 Heraclitus looked upon the affections as dense 
 and colored mists. In the fog of good and evil 
 affections it is hard for man to walk forward in 
 a straight line. Intellect is void of affection and 
 sees an object as it stands in the light of science, 
 cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of 
 the individual, floats over its own personality, 
 and regards it as a fact, and not as / and mine. 
 He who is immersed in what concerns person 
 or place cannot see the problem of existence. 
 This the intellect always ponders. Nature shows 
 all things formed and bound. The intellect 
 pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects 
 intrinsic likeness between remote "tilings and 
 reduces all things into a few principles. 
 
 The making a fact the subject of thought 
 raises it. All that mass of mental and moral 
 phenomena which we do not make objects of 
 voluntary thought, come within the power of 
 fortune; they constitute the circumstance of daily 
 life; they are subject to change, to fear and
 
 INTELLECT 327 
 
 hope. Every man beholds his human condition 
 with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground 
 is battered by the waves, sqjn^i^imprisoned_in 
 mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming 
 eventsT~But a truth, separated by the intellect, 
 is no longer a subject of destiny. We behold it 
 as a god upraised above care and fear. And so 
 any fact in our life, or any record of our fancies or 
 reflections, disentangled from the web of our un- 
 consciousness, becomes an object impersonal and 
 immortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. 
 A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear 
 and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. 
 It is offered for science. What is addressed to 
 us for contemplation does not threaten us but 
 makes us intellectual beings. 1 
 
 The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in 
 every expansion. The mind that grows could 
 not predict the times, the means, the mode of 
 that spontaneity. God enters by a private door 
 into every individual. 2 Long prior to the age 
 of reflection is the thinking of the mind. Out of 
 .darkness it came insensibly into the marvellous 
 Ught_p^Jx>-clay_. In the period of infancy it ac- 
 cepted and disposed of all impressions from the 
 surrounding creation after its own way. What- 
 ever any mind doth or saith is after a law, and
 
 328 INTELLECT 
 
 this native law remains over it after it has come 
 to reflection or conscious thought. In the most 
 worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormentor's life, 
 the greatest part is incalculable by him, unfore- 
 seen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can 
 take himself up by his own ears. What am I ? 
 What has my will done to make me that I am ? 
 Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, 
 this hour, this connection of events, by secret 
 currents of might and mind, and my ingenuity 
 and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided 
 to an appreciable degree. 1 
 
 Our spontaneous action is always the best. 
 You cannot with your best deliberation and heed 
 come so close to any question as your spontane- 
 ous glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from 
 your bed, or walk abroad in the morning after 
 meditating the matter before sleep on the pre- 
 vious night. Our thinking is a pious reception. 
 Our truth of thought is therefore vitiated as 
 much by too violent direction given by our will, 
 as by too great negligence. We do not deter- 
 mine what we will think. We only open our 
 senses, clear away as we can all obstruction from 
 the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have 
 little control over our thoughts. We are_ the 
 prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for mo-
 
 INTELLECT 32*, 
 
 ments into their heaven and so fully engage us 
 that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze 
 like children, without an effort to make them our 
 own. By and by we fall out of that rapture, be- 
 think us where we have been, what we have seen, 
 and repeat as truly as we can what we have be- 
 held. As far as we can recall these ecstasies we 
 carry away in the ineffaceable memory the result, 
 and all men and all the ages confirm it. It is 
 called truth. But the moment we cease to report 
 and attempt to correct and contrive, it is not 
 truth. 
 
 If we consider what persons have stimulated 
 and profited us, we shall perceive the superior- 
 ity of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over 
 the arithmetical or logical. The first contains 
 the second, but virtual and latent. We want in 
 every man a long logic ; we cannot pardon the 
 absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic 
 is the procession or proportionate unfolding of 
 the intuition ; but its virtue is as silent method ; 
 the moment it would appear as propositions and 
 it is worthless. 1 
 
 In every man's mind, some images, words 
 and facts remain, without effort on his part to 
 imprint them, which others forget, and after- 
 wards these illustrate to him important laws.
 
 330 INTELLECT 
 
 AU_rmrj3rogress is an unfolding, like the vege- 
 tablejnid. You have first an instinct, then an 
 opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has 
 root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the 
 end, though you can render no reason. It is 
 vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end, it 
 shall ripen into truth and you shall know why 
 you believe. 
 
 Each mind has its own method. A true 
 man never acquires after college rules. What 
 you have aggregated in a natural manner sur- 
 prises and delights when it is produced. For we 
 cannot oversee each other's secret. And hence 
 the differences between men in natural endow- 
 ment are insignificant in comparison with their 
 common wealth. Do you think the porter and 
 the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no 
 wonders for you ? Everybody knows as much 
 as the savant. The walls of rude minds are 
 scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. 
 They shall one day bring a lantern and read 
 the inscriptions. Every man, in the degree in 
 which he has wit and culture, finds his curi- 
 osity inflamed concerning the modes of living 
 and thinking of other men, and especially of 
 those classes whose minds have not been sub- 
 dued by the drill of school education.
 
 INTELLECT 331 
 
 This instinctive action never ceases in a 
 healthy mind, but becomes richer and more 
 frequent in its informations through all states 
 of culture. At last comes the era of reflection, 
 when we not only observe, but take pains to 
 observe ; when we of set purpose sit down to 
 consider an abstract truth ; when we keep the 
 mind's eye open whilst we converse, whilst we 
 read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret 
 law of some class of facts. 
 
 What is the hardest task in the world ? To 
 think. I would put myself in the attitude to 
 look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cam 
 not. I blench and withdraw on this side and 
 on that. I seem to know what he meant who 
 said, No man can see God face to face and live. 
 For example, a man explores IKe^basis of civil 
 government. Let him intend his mind without 
 respite, without rest, in one direction. His best 
 heed long time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts 
 are flitting before him. We all but apprehend, 
 we dimly forebode the truth. We say I will 
 walk abroad, and the truth will take form and 
 clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot find 
 it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness 
 and composed attitude of the library to seize 
 the thought. But we come in, and are as far
 
 332 INTELLECT 
 
 from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and 
 unannounced, the truth appears. A certain 
 wandering light appears, and is the distinction, 
 the principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes 
 because we had previously laid siege to the 
 shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect 
 resembled that law of nature by which we now 
 inspire, now expire the breath ; by which the 
 heart now draws in, then hurls out the blood, 
 the law of undulation. So now you must 
 labor witn~"your brains, and now you must for- 
 bear your activity and see what the great Soul 
 showeth. 
 
 The immprtality__of man is as legitimately 
 preached from the intellections as from the 
 moral volitions. Every intellection is mainly 
 prospective. Its present value is its least. 1 In- 
 spect what delights you in Plutarch, in Shak- 
 speare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writer 
 acquires is^a lantern which he turns full on what 
 facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and 
 behold, all the mats and rubbish which had 
 littered his garret become precious. Every triv- 
 ial fact in his private biography becomes an 
 illustration of this new principle, revisits the 
 day, and delights all men by its piquancy and 
 new charm. Men say, Where did he get this ?
 
 INTELLECT 333 
 
 and think there was something divine in his 
 life. But no ; they have myriads of facts just 
 as good, would they only get a lamp to ransack 
 their attics withal. 1 
 
 We are all wise. The difference between per-* 
 sons is not in wisdom'"BuTTrrart. I knew, in an 
 academical club, a person who always deferred 
 to me ; who, seeing my whim for writing, fan- 
 cied that my experiences had somewhat supe- 
 rior ; whilst I saw that his experiences were as 
 good as mine. Give them to me and I would 
 make the same use of them. He held the old ; 
 he holds the new ; I had the habit of tacking 
 together the old and the new which he did not 
 use to exercise. This may hold in the great 
 examples. Perhaps, if we should meet Shak- 
 speare we should not be conscious of any steep 
 inferiority ; no, but of a great equality, only 
 that he possessed a strange skill of using, of 
 classifying his facts, which we lacked. For not- 
 withstanding our utter incapacity to produce 
 anything like Hamlet and Othello, see the per- 
 fect reception this wit and immense knowledge 
 of life and liquid eloquence find in us all. 
 
 If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make 
 hay, or hoe corn, and then retire within doors 
 and shut your eyes and press them with your
 
 334 INTELLECT 
 
 hand, you shall still see apples hanging in the 
 bright light with boughs and leaves thereto, or 
 the tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, and this for 
 five or six hours afterwards. There lie the im- 
 pressions on the retentive organ, though you 
 knew it not. So lies the whole series of natural 
 images with which your life has made you ac- 
 quainted, in your memory, though you know it 
 not ; and a thrillpf passion flashes light on their 
 dark chamber, and the active power seizes in- 
 stantly the fit image, as the word of its momen- 
 tary thought. 
 
 It is long ere we discover how rich we are. 
 Our history, we are sure, is quite tame : we have 
 nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our 
 wiser years still run back to the despised recol- 
 lections of childhood, and always we are fishing 
 up some wonderful article out of that pond; 
 until by and by we begin to suspect that the 
 biography of the one foolish person we know 
 is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature 
 paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Uni- 
 versal History. 
 
 In the intellect constructive, which we popu- 
 larly designate by the word Genius, we observe 
 the same balance of two elements as in intellect 
 receptive. The constructive intellect produces
 
 INTELLECT 335 
 
 thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, sys- 
 Jems. 1 It is the generation of the mind, the 
 marriage of thought with nature. To genius 
 must always go two gifts, the thought and the 
 publication. The first is revelation, always a 
 miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or 
 incessant study can ever familiarize, but which 
 must always leave the inquirer stupid with won- 
 der. It is the advent of truth into the world, a 
 form of thought now for the first time bursting 
 into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, 
 a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. 
 It seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet 
 existed and to dictate to the unborn. It affects 
 every thought of man and goes to fashion every 
 institution. But to make it available it needs a 
 vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. 
 To be communicable it must become picture 
 or sensible object. We must learn the language 
 of fats. The most wonderful inspirations die 
 with their subject if he has no hand to paint 
 them to the senses. The ray_of_light passes in- 
 visible through space and only when it falls on 
 an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy 
 is directed on something outward, then it is a 
 thought. The relation between it and you first 
 makes you, the value of you, apparent to me,
 
 336 INTELLECT 
 
 The rich inventive genius of the painter must 
 be smothered and lost for want of the power 
 of drawing, and in our happy hours we should 
 be inexhaustible poets if once we could break 
 through the silence into adequate rhyme. As 
 all men have some access to primary truth, so 
 all have some art or power of communication in 
 their head, but only in the artist does it descend 
 into the hand. There is an inequality, whose 
 laws we do not yet know, between two men and 
 between two moments of the same man, in re- 
 spect to this faculty. In common hours we have 
 the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, 
 but they do not sit for their portrait ; they are 
 not detached, but lie in a web. The thought 
 of genius is spontaneous ; but the power of pic- 
 ture or expression, in the most enriched and 
 flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a cer- 
 tain control over the spontaneous states, with- 
 out which no production is possible. 1 It is_ a 
 conversion of all nature into theCrhetoric of 
 though thunder the eye of judgment, with a 
 fftrenuous exercise of choice. And yet the im- 
 aginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous 
 also. It does not flow from experience only or 
 mainly, but from a. richer source. Not by any 
 conscious imitation of particular forms are the
 
 INTELLECT 337 
 
 grand strokes of the painter executed, but by 
 repairing to the fountain-head of all forms in 
 his mind. Who is the first drawing-master ? 
 Without instruction we know very well the ideal 
 of the human form. A child knows if an arm 
 or a leg be distorted in a picture ; if the attitude 
 be natural or grand or mean ; though he has 
 never received any instruction in drawing or 
 heard any conversation on the subject, nor can 
 himself draw with correctness a single feature. 
 A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long 
 before they have any science on the subject, and 
 a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, 
 prior to all consideration of the mechanical pro- 
 portions of the features and head. We may owe 
 to dreams some light on the fountain of this 
 skill ; for as soon as we let our will go and let 
 the unconscious states ensue, see what cunning 
 draughtsmen we are ! We entertain ourselves 
 with wonderful forms of men, of women, of ani- 
 mals, of gardens, of woods and of monsters, and 
 the mystic pencil wherewith we then draw has 
 no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness 
 or poverty ; it can design well and group well ; 
 its composition is full of art, its colors are well 
 laid on and the whole canvas which it paints is 
 lifelike and apt to touch us with terror, with
 
 33 INTELLECT 
 
 tenderness, with desire and with grief. Neither 
 are the artist's copies from experience ever mere 
 copies, but always touched and softened by tints 
 from this ideal domain. 
 
 The conditions essential to a constructive 
 mino^dcT not appear to be so often combined 
 bu that a good sentence or versej^mamsjfresh 
 and memorable for a long time. Yet when we 
 write with ease and come out into the free air 
 of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing 
 is easier than to continue this communication at 
 pleasure. Up, down, around, the kingdom of 
 thought has np4|iclosure^s, but the Muse makes 
 us free of her city. Well, the world has a million 
 writers. One would think then that good thought 
 would be as familiar as air and water, and the 
 gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. 
 Yet we can count all our good books ; nay, I re* 
 member any beautiful verse for twenty years. It 
 is true that the discerning intellect of the world 
 is always much in advance of the creative, so that 
 ftthere are many competent judges of the best 
 I book, and few writers of the best books. But 
 some of the conditions of intellectual construc- 
 tion are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a 
 whole and demands integrity in every work. 
 This is resisted equally by a man's devotion to
 
 INTELLECT 339 
 
 a single thought and by his ambition to combine 
 too many. 
 
 * Truth is our element of life, yet if a man 
 fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth 
 and_appiy"Hnh,selt' to that alone tor a long jime, 
 the truth becomes distorted and not itself but 
 falsehood ; herein resembling the air, which is 
 our natural element and the breath of our nos- 
 trils, but if a stream of the same be directed on 
 the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and 
 even death. How wearisome the grammarian, 
 the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, 
 or indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is 
 lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. It 
 is incipient insanity. Every^thpught is a prison 
 aitsa I cannot see what you see, because I am 
 caught up by a strong wind and blown so far in 
 one direction that I am out of the hoop of your 
 horizon. 1 
 
 Is it any better if the student, to avoid this 
 offence and to liberalize himself, aims to make 
 a mechanical whole of history, or science, or phi- 
 losophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts 
 that fall within his vision ? The world refuses 
 to be analyzed by addition and subtraction. 
 When we are young we spend much time and 
 pains in filling our note-books with all defini-
 
 340 INTELLECT 
 
 tions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, 
 in the hope that in the course of a few years 
 we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia 
 tHe net value of all the theories at which the 
 world has yet arrived. But year after year our 
 tables get no completeness, and at last we dis- 
 cover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs 
 will never meet. 
 
 Neither by detachment, neither by aggrega- 
 tion is the integrity of the intellect transmitted 
 to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the 
 intellect in its greatness and best state to operate 
 every moment. It must have the same whole- 
 ness which nature has. Although no diligence 
 can rebuild the universe in a model by the best 
 accumulation or disposition of details, yet does 
 the world reappear in miniature in every event, 
 so that all the laws of nature may be read in the 
 smallest fact. 1 The intellect must have the like 
 perfection in its apprehension and in its works. 
 For this reason, an index or mercury of intellec- 
 tual proficiency is the perception of identity. We 
 talk with accomplished persons who appear to 
 be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the 
 turf, the bird, are not theirs, have nothing of 
 them ; the world is only their lodging and table. 
 But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral and
 
 INTELLECT 341 
 
 complete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, 
 whatsoever face of strangeness she may put on. 
 He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more 
 likeness than variety in all her changes. We are 
 stung by the desire for new thought ; but when 
 we receive a new thought it is only the old 
 thought with a new face, and though we make 
 it our own we instantly crave another ; we are 
 not really enriched. For the truth was in us be- 
 fore it was reflected to us from natural objects ; 
 and the profound genius will cast the likeness of 
 all creatures into every product of his wit. 
 
 But if the constructive powers are rare and it 
 is given to few men to be poets, yet every man 
 is a receiver of this descending holy ghost, and 
 may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly 
 parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty to 
 the rule of moral duty. A self-denial no less 
 austere than the saint's is demanded of the 
 scholar. He must worship truth, and forego all 
 things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so 
 that his treasure in thought is thereby aug- 
 mented. 1 
 
 God offers to every mind its choice between 
 truth and repose. Take which you please, 
 you can never have both. Between these, as a 
 pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love
 
 342 INTELLECT 
 
 of repose predominates will accept the first creed, 
 the first philosophy, the first political party he 
 meets, most likely his father's. He gets rest, 
 commodity and reputation ; but he shuts the 
 door of truth. He in whom the love of truth 
 predominates will keep himself aloof from all 
 moorings, and ajloat. He will abstain from dog- 
 matism, and recognize all the orjpjositejiegations 
 between which, as walls, his bejjigjs swung. He 
 submits to the inconvenience of suspense and 
 imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, 
 as the other is not, and respects the highest law 
 of his being. 
 
 The circle of the green earth he must mea- 
 sure with his shoes to find the man who can 
 yield him truth. He shall then know that there 
 is somewhat more blessed and great in hearing 
 than in speaking. Happy is the hearing man ; 
 unhappy the speaking man. As long as I hear 
 truth I am bathed by a beautiful element and 
 am not conscious of any limits to my nature. 
 The suggestions are thousand-fold that I hear 
 and see. The waters of the great deep have 
 "ingress and egress to the soul. But if I speak, 
 I define, I confine and am less. When Socrates 
 speaks, Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by 
 no shame that they do not speak. They also
 
 INTELLECT 343 
 
 are good. He likewise defers to them, loves 
 them, whilst he speaks. Because a true and 
 natural man contains and is the same truth 
 which an eloquent man articulates ; but in the 
 eloquent man, because he can articulate it, it 
 seems something the less to reside, and he turns 
 to these silent beautiful with the more inclina- 
 tion and respect. The ancient sentence said, 
 Let us be silent T for so aretKe^ godsT^ Silence 
 is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives 
 us leave to be great and universal. Every man's 
 progress is through a succession of teachers, 
 each of whom seems at the time to have a su- 
 perlative influence, but it at last gives place to 
 a new. Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus_ 
 says. Leave father, mother, house and lands, 
 and Tollow me. Who leaves aJJ^receives^ more. 
 This is as true intellectually as morally. Each 
 new mind we approach seems to require an ab- 
 dication of all our past and present possessions. 
 A new doctrine seems at first a subversion of 
 all our opinions, tastes, and manner of living. 
 Such has Swedenborg, such has Kant, such has 
 Coleridge, such has Hegel or his interpreter 
 Cousin seemed to many young men in this 
 country. Take thankfully and heartily all they 
 can give. Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let
 
 344 INTELLECT 
 
 them not go until their blessing be won, and 
 after a short season the dismay will be over- 
 past, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they 
 will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one 
 more bright star shining serenely in your hea- 
 ven and blending its light with all your day. 
 
 But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly 
 to that which draws him, because that is his 
 own, he is to refuse himself to that which draws 
 him not, whatsoever fame and authority may 
 attend it, because it is not his own. 1 Entire 
 self-reliance belongs to the intellect. One soul 
 is a counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary col- 
 umn~oTwater is a balance for the sea. It must 
 treat things and books and sovereign genius as 
 itself also a sovereign. If JEschylus be that 
 man he is taken for, he has not yet done his 
 office when he has educated the learned of 
 Europe for a thousand years. He is now to 
 approve himself a master of delight to me also. 
 If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail 
 him nothing with me. I were a fool not to 
 sacrifice a thousand ^Eschyluses to my intellec- 
 tual integrity. Especially take the same ground 
 in regard to abstract truth, the science of the 
 mind. The Bacon, the Spinoza, the Hume. 
 Schelling, Kant, or whosoever propounds to
 
 INTELLECT 345 
 
 you a philosophy of the mind, is only a more 
 or less awkward translator of things in your 
 consciousness which you have also your way of 
 seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say then, in- 
 stead of too timidly poring into his obscure 
 sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering 
 back to you your consciousness. He has not 
 succeeded ; now let another try. If Plato can- 
 not, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, 
 then perhaps Kant. Anyhow, when at last it 
 is done, you will find it is no recondite, but a 
 simple, natural, common state which the writer 
 restores to you. 
 
 But let us end these didactics. I will not, 
 though the subject might provoke it, speak to 
 the open question between Truth and Love. 
 I shall not presume to interfere in the old pol- 
 itics oftheskies ; " The cherubim know 
 most ; the seraphim love most." The gods 
 shall settle their own quarrels. But I cannot 
 recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, 
 without remembering that lofty and sequestered 
 class who have been its prophets and oracles, 
 the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the 
 TrismtgutiJ the expounders of the principles 
 of thought from age to age. When at long in- 
 tervals we turn over their abstruse pages, won-
 
 346 INTELLECT 
 
 derful seems the calm and grand air of these 
 few, these great spiritual lords who have walked 
 in the world, these of the old religion, 
 dwelling in a worship which makes the sancti- 
 ties of Christianity look parvenues and popular ; 
 > for " persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in 
 ^intellect." 1 This band of grandees, Hermes, 
 Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olym- 
 piodorus, Proclus, Synesius and the rest, have 
 somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in 
 their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all 
 the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and litera- 
 ture, and to be at once poetry and music and 
 dancing and astronomy and mathematics. I am 
 present at the sowing of the seed of the world. 
 With a geometry of sunbeams the soul lays the 
 foundations of nature. The truth and grandeur 
 of their thought is proved by its scope and ap- 
 plicability, for it commands the entire schedule 
 and inventory of things for its illustration. But 
 what marks its elevation and has even a comic 
 look to us, is the innocent serenity with which 
 these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and 
 from age to age prattle to each other and to no 
 contemporary. Well assured that their speech 
 is intelligible and the most natural thing in the 
 world, they add thesis to thesis, without a mo-
 
 INTELLECT 347 
 
 heed of the universal astonishment of 
 the human race below, who do not comprehend 
 their plainest argument ; nor do they ever re- 
 lent so much as to insert a popular or explain- 
 ing sentence, nor testify the least displeasure or 
 petulance at the dulness of their amazed audi- 
 tory. The angels are so enamored of the lan- 
 guage that is spoken in heaven that they will 
 not distort their lips with the hissing and un- 
 musical dialects of men, but speak "their own, 
 whether there be any who understand it or not,.
 
 XII 
 ART 
 
 GIVE to barrows, trays and pang 
 Grace and glimmer of romance, 
 Bring the moonlight into noon 
 Hid in gleaming piles of stone; 
 On the city's paved street 
 Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet, 
 Let spouting fountains cool the air, 
 Singing in the sun-baked square. 
 Let statue, picture, park and hall, 
 Ballad, flag and festival, 
 The past restore, the day adorn 
 And make each morrow a new morn. 
 So shall the drudge in dusty frock 
 Spy behind the city clock 
 Retinues of airy kings, 
 Skirts of angels, starry wings, 
 His fathers shining in bright fables, 
 His children fed at heavenly tables. 
 'Tis the privilege of Art 
 Thus to play its cheerful part, 
 Man in Earth to acclimate 
 And bend the exile to his fate, 
 And, moulded of one element 
 With the days and firmament, 
 Teach him on these as stairs to climb 
 And live on even terms with Time; 
 Whilst upper life the slender rill 
 Of human sense doth overfill.
 
 ART 
 
 BECAUSE the soul is progressive, it^ never 
 quite repeats 'itself, but ~m~ every act at- 
 tempts fHe~ipro^u^tiorroT a new and fairer whole. 
 This appears in works both of the useful and 
 fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction 
 of works according to their aim either at use or 
 beauty. Thus jn^our fine arts, not imitation but 
 creation is the aim. In landscapes the painter 
 should give the suggestion of a fairer creation 
 than we know. The details, the prose of nature 
 he should omit and give us only the spirit and 
 splendor. He should know that the landscape 
 has beauty for his eye because it expresses a 
 thought which is to him good ; and this because 
 the same power which sees through his eyes 
 is seen in that spectacle ; and he will come to 
 value the expression of nature and not nature 
 itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that 
 please him. He will give the gloom of gloom 
 and the sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait he 
 must inscribe the character and not the features, 
 and must esteem the man who sits to him as 
 himself only an imperfect picture or likeness 
 of the aspiring original within. 1
 
 352 ART 
 
 What is that abridgment and selection we 
 observe in all spiritual activity, but itself the 
 creative impulse ? for it is the inlet of that 
 higher illumination which teaches to convey 
 a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a 
 
 man hii^ nature's finer success in self-explicar 
 
 tiorjjL_What is a man but a finer and compacter 
 landscape than the horizon figures, nature's 
 eclecticism ? and what is his speech, his love of 
 painting, love of nature, but a still finer success, 
 all the weary miles and tons of space and bulk 
 left out, and the spirit or moral of it contracted 
 into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke 
 of the pencil ? 
 
 But the artist must employ the symbols in 
 use in his day and nation to convey his enlarged 
 sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new__in_art 
 is always formed out of the old. The Genius 
 of the Hour sets his ineffaceable seal on the 
 work and gives it an inexpressible charm for 
 the imagination. As far as the spiritual char- 
 acter of the period overpowers the artist and 
 finds expression in his work, so far it will retain 
 a certain grandeur, and will represent to future 
 beholders the Unknown, the Inevitable, the 
 Divine. 1 No man can quite exclude this ele- 
 ment of Necessity from his labor. No man
 
 ART 353 
 
 can quite emancipate himself from his age and 
 country, or produce a model in which the edu- 
 cation, the religion, the politics, usages and arts 
 of his times shall have no share. Though he 
 were never so original, never so wilful and fan- 
 tastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every 
 trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. 
 The very avoidance betrays the usage he avoids. 
 Above his will and out of his sight he is neces- 
 sitated by the air he breathes and the idea on 
 which he and his contemporaries live and toil, 
 to share the manner of his times, without know- 
 ing what that manner is. Now that which is 
 inevitable in the work has a higher charm than 
 individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as the 
 artist's pen or chisel seems to have been held 
 and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line 
 in the history of the human race. This circum- 
 stance gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyph- 
 ics, to the Indian, Chinese and Mexican idols, 
 however gross and shapeless. They denote the 
 height of the human soul in that hour, and were 
 not fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as 
 deep as the world. 1 Shall I now add^ that the 
 whole extant prodiic*" "f fhe plas^r arfs h? 
 herein its highest value, as history ; as a stroke 
 drawn in the portrait of that fate, perfect and
 
 354 ART 
 
 beautiful, according to whose ordinations aH 
 beings advance to their beatitude ? 
 
 Thus, historically viewed, it has been tht 
 office of art to educate the perception of beauty. 
 We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have 
 no clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition 
 of single traits, to assist and lead the dormant 
 taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is 
 carved and painted, as students of the mystery 
 of Form. The virtue of art lies in detachment, 
 in sequestering one object from the embarrass- 
 ing variety. Until one thing comes out from 
 the connection of things, there can be enjoy- 
 ment, contemplation, but no thought. Our 
 happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. 
 The infant lies in a pleasing trance, but his 
 individual character and his practical power de- 
 pend on his daily progress in the separation of 
 things, and dealing with one at a time. Love 
 and all the passions concentrate all existence 
 around a single form. It is the habit of certain 
 minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the 
 object, the thought, the word they alight upon, 
 and to make that for the time the deputy of 
 the world. These are the artists, the orators, 
 the leaders of society. The power to 
 and to magmr7~5y"c[etaching^is the essence ol
 
 ART 355 
 
 rhetoric in the hands of the orator 
 
 _ 
 
 lis^ rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary 
 e&inency" of an__object, so remarkable in 
 Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle, the painter and 
 sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The 
 power depends on the depth of the artist's in- 
 sight of that object he contemplates. For every 
 object has its roots in central nature, and may 
 of course be so exhibited to us as to represent 
 the world. 1 Therefore each work of genius is 
 the tyrant of the hour and concentrates atten- 
 tion on itself. For the time, it is the only thing 
 worth naming to do that, be it a sonnet, an 
 opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan 
 of a temple, of a campaign, or of a voyage of 
 discovery. Presently we pass to some other 
 object, which rounds itself into a whole as did 
 the first ; for example a well-laid garden ; and 
 nothing seems worth doing but the laying out 
 of gardens. I should think fire the best thing 
 in the world, if I were not acquainted with air, 
 and water, and earth. For it is the right and 
 property of all natural objects, of all genuine 
 talents, of all native properties whatsoever, to 
 be for their moment the top of the world. A 
 squirrel leaping from bough to bough and mak- 
 ing the wood but one wide tree for his pleasure,
 
 356 ART 
 
 fills the eye not less than a lion, is beautiful, 
 self-sufficing, and stands then and there for na- 
 ture. 1 A good ballad draws my ear and heart 
 whilst I listen, as much as an epic has done 
 before. A dog, drawn by a master, or a litter 
 of pigs, satisfies and is a reality not less than 
 the frescoes of Angelo. From this succession 
 of excellent objects we learn at last the immen- 
 sity of the world, the opulence of human nature, 
 which can run out to infinitude in any direction. 
 But I also learn that what astonished and fasci- 
 nated me in the first work, astonished me in the 
 second work also ; that excellence of all things 
 is one. 
 
 The office of painting and sculpture seems to 
 be merely initial. The best pictures can easily 
 tell us their last secret. The best pictures are 
 rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots 
 and lines and dyes which make up the ever- 
 changing " landscape with figures " amidst which 
 we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what 
 dancing is to the limbs. When that has edu- 
 cated the frame to self-possession, to nimble- 
 ness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master 
 are better forgotten ; so painting teaches me the 
 splendor of color and the expression of form, 
 and as I see many pictures and higher genius
 
 ART 357 
 
 in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the 
 pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands 
 free to choose out of the possible forms. If he 
 can draw every thing, why draw any thing ? and 
 then is my eye opened to the eternal picture 
 which nature paints in the street, with mov- 
 ing men and children, beggars and fine ladies, 
 draped in red and green and blue and gray ; 
 long-haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, 
 wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, elfish, 
 capped and based by heaven, earth and sea. 1 
 
 A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely 
 the same lesson. As picture teaches the color- 
 ing, so sculpture the anatomy of form. When 
 I have seen fine statues and afterwards enter 
 a public assembly, I understand well what he 
 meant who said, " When I have been reading 
 Homer, all men look like giants." I too see 
 that painting and sculpture are gymnastics of 
 the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosi- 
 ties of its function. There is no statue like this 
 living man, with his infinite advantage over all 
 jdeal sculpture, of perpetual variety. What a 
 gallery of art have I here ! No mannerist made 
 these varied groups and diverse original single 
 figures. Here is the artist himself improvising, 
 grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought
 
 358 ART 
 
 strikes him, now another, and with each mo- 
 ment he alters the whole air, attitude and ex- 
 pression of his clay. Away with your nonsense 
 of oil and easels, of marble and chisels ; except 
 to open your eyes to the masteries of eternal 
 art, they are hypocritical rubbish. 
 
 The reference of all production at last to an 
 aboriginal Power explains the traits common to 
 all works of the highest art, that they are uni- 
 versally intelligible ; that they restore to us the 
 simplest states of mind, and are religious. Since 
 
 \what skill is therein shown is the reappearance 
 of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should 
 produce a similar impression to that made by 
 natural objects. In happy hours, nature ap- 
 pears to us one with art ; art perfected, the 
 work of genius. And the individual in whom 
 simple tastes and susceptibility to all the great 
 human influences overpower the accidents of a 
 local and special culture, is the best critic of art. 
 Though we travel the world over to find the 
 beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find 
 it not. 1 The best of beauty is a finer charm 
 than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art 
 can ever teach, namely a radiation from the work 
 of art, of human character, a wonderful ex- 
 pression through stone, or canvas, or musical
 
 ART 359 
 
 ound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of 
 our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last 
 to those souls which have these attributes. In 
 the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of 
 the Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan 
 and Venetian masters, the highest charm is the 
 universal language they speak. A confession of 
 moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, breathes 
 from them all. That which we carry to them, 
 the same we bring back more fairly illustrated 
 in the memory. The traveller who visits the 
 Vatican and passes from chamber to chamber 
 through galleries of statues, vases, sarcophagi 
 and candelabra, through all forms of beauty cut 
 in the richest materials, is in danger of forget- 
 ting the simplicity of the principles out of which 
 they all sprung, and that they had their origin 
 from thoughts and laws in his own breast. He 
 studies the technical rules on these wonderful 
 remains, but forgets that these works were not 
 always thus constellated ; ' that they are the con- 
 tributions of many ages and many countries ; 
 that each came out of the solitary workshop of 
 one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the 
 existence of other sculpture, created his work 
 without other model save life, household life, 
 and the sweet and smart of personal relations,
 
 360 ART 
 
 of beating hearts, and meeting eyes ; of poverty 
 and necessity and hope and fear. These were 
 his inspirations, and these are the effects he car- 
 ries home to your heart and mind. In propor- 
 tion to his force, the artist will find in his work 
 an outlet for his proper character. He must not 
 be in any manner pinched or hindered by his 
 material, but through his necessity of imparting 
 himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, 
 and will allow an adequate communication of 
 himself, in his full stature and proportion. He 
 need not cumber himself with a conventional 
 nature and culture, nor ask what is the mode in 
 Rome or in Paris, but that house and weather 
 and manner of living which poverty and the fate 
 of birth have made at once so odious and so 
 dear, in the gray unpainted wood cabin, on the 
 corner of a New Hampshire farm, or in the log- 
 hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging 
 where he has endured the constraints and seem- 
 ing of a city poverty, will serve as well as any 
 other condition as the symbol of a thought which 
 pours itself indifferently through all. 
 
 I remember when in my younger days I had 
 heard of the wonders of Italian painting, I fan- 
 cied the great pictures would be great strangers ; 
 some surprising combination of color and form ;
 
 ART 361 
 
 a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like 
 the spontoons and standards of the militia, which 
 play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations 
 of school-boys. I was to see and acquire I knew 
 not what. When I came at last to Rome and ^ 
 
 saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius ^ 
 left to novices the gay and fantastic and osten- /J & 
 tatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple ^ 
 and true ; that it was familiar and sincere ; that 
 ifjwas the old, eternal fact I had met already in 
 so many forms, unto which I lived ; that it 
 was the plain you and me I knew so well, had 
 left at home in so many conversations. I had 
 had the same experience already in a church at 
 Naples. There I saw that nothing was changed 
 with me but the place, and said to myself 
 ' Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, ^Y 
 over four thousand miles of salt water, to find A 
 that which was perfect to thee there at home ? ' ' 
 That fact I saw again in the Academmia at Na- 
 ples, in the chambers of sculpture, and yet again 
 when I came to Rome and to the paintings of 
 Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo 
 da Vinci. " What, old mole ! workest thou in ^f 
 the earth so fast?" 3 It had travelled by my 
 side ; that which I fancied I had left in Boston 
 was here in the Vatican, and again at Milan and
 
 ?6i ART 
 
 at Paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as a 
 treadmill. 1 I now require this of all pictures, 
 that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle 
 me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. No- 
 thing astonishes men so much as common-sense 
 and plain dealing. All great actions have been 
 simple, 2 and all great pictures are. 
 
 The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an emi- 
 nent example of this peculiar merit. A calm 
 benignant beauty shines over all this picture, and 
 goes directly to the heart. It seems almost to 
 call you by name. The sweet and sublime face 
 of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints 
 all florid expectations ! This familiar, simple, 
 home-speaking countenance is as if one should 
 meet a friend. The knowledge of picture dealers 
 has its value, but listen not to their criticism 
 when your heart is touched by genius. It was 
 not painted for them, it was painted for you ; for 
 such as had eyes capable of being touched by 
 simplicity and lofty emotions. 
 
 Yet when we have said all our fine things 
 about the arts, we must end with a frank con- 
 fession that thd arts, as we know them, are but 
 initial.] Our best praise is given to what they 
 aimed and promised, not to the actual result. 
 He has conceived meanly of the resources of
 
 ART 363 
 
 man, who believes that the best age of produc- 
 tion is past. The real value of the Iliad or the 
 Transfiguration is as signs of power; billows 
 or ripples they are of the stream of tendency ; 
 tokens of the everlasting effort to produce, which 
 even in its worst estate the soul betrays. 1 Art 
 has not yet come to its maturity if it do not put 
 itself abreast with the most potent influences of 
 the world, if it is not practical and moral, if it 
 do not stand in connection with the conscience, 
 if it do not make the poor and uncultivated feel 
 that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. 
 There is higher work for Art than the arts. 
 They are abortive births of an imperfect or vi- 
 tiated instinct. Art is the need to create; but 
 in its essence, immense and universal, it is impa- 
 tient of working with lame or tied hands, and of 
 making cripples and monsters, such as all pic- 
 tures and statues are. Nothing less than the cre- 
 ation of man and nature is its end. A man should 
 find in it an outlet for his whole energy. He 
 may paint and carve only as long as he can do 
 that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the 
 walls of circumstance on every side, awakening 
 in the beholder the same sense of universal rela- 
 tion and power which the work evinced in the ar- 
 tist, and its highest effect is to make new artists.*
 
 364 ART 
 
 Already History is old enough to witness the 
 old age and disappearance of particular arts. The 
 art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real 
 effect. It was originally a useful art, a mode of 
 writing, a savage's record of gratitude or devo- 
 tion, and among a people possessed of a won- 
 derful perception of form this childish carving- 
 was refined to the utmost splendor of effect. 
 But it is the game of a rude and youthful peo- 
 ple, and not the manly labor of a wise and spir- 
 itual nation. Under an oak-tree loaded with 
 leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, 
 I stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of 
 our plastic arts and especially of sculpture, crea- 
 tion is driven into a corner. I cannot hide from 
 myself that there is a certain appearance of pal- 
 triness, as of toys and the trumpery of a theatre, 
 in sculpture. Nature transcends all our moods 
 of thought, and its secret we do not yet find. 
 But the gallery stands at the mercy of our moods, 
 and there is a moment when it becomes friv- 
 olous. I do not wonder that Newton, with an 
 attention habitually engaged on the paths of 
 planets and suns, should have wondered what 
 the Earl of Pembroke found to admire in "stone 
 dolls." ' Sculpture may serve to teach the pupil 
 how deep is the secret of form, how purely the
 
 ART 365 
 
 spirit can translate its meanings into that elo- 
 quent dialect. But the statue will look cold and 
 false before that new activity which needs to roll 
 through all things, and is impatient of counter- 
 feits and things not alive. Picture and sculpture 
 are the celebrations and festivities of form. But 
 r true art is never fixed, but always flowing. The 
 sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the 
 human voice when it speaks from its instant 
 life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The 
 oratorio has already lost its relation to the morn- 
 ing, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuad- 
 ing voice is in tune with these. All works of art 
 should not be detached, but extempore perform- 
 ances. A great man is a new statue in every 
 attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a pic- 
 ture which drives all beholders nobly mad. Life 
 may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a 
 romance. 
 
 A true announcement of the law of creation, 
 if a man were found worthy to declare it, would 
 carry art up into the kingdom of nature, and j 
 destroy its separate and contrasted existence. 
 The fountainsof invention and beauty in modern 
 society are ajljbu^jnedjup. A popular novel, a 
 theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that we are 
 all paupers in the almshouse of this world, with*
 
 366 ART 
 
 out dignity, without skill or industry. Art is as 
 poor and low. The old tragic Necessity, which 
 lowers on the brows even of the Venuses and 
 the Cupids of the antique, and furnishes the sole 
 apology for the intrusion of such anomalous fig- 
 ures into nature, namely that they were inevi- 
 table ; that the artist was drunk with a passion 
 for form which he could not resist, and which 
 vented itself in these fine extravagances, no 
 longer dignifies the chisel or the pencil. But the 
 artist and the connoisseur now seek in art the 
 exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from 
 the evils of life. Men are not well pleased with 
 the figure they make in their own imaginations, 
 and they flee to art, and convey their better sense 
 in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes 
 the same effort which a sensual prosperity makes ; 
 namely to detach the beautiful from the useful, 
 to do up the work as unavoidable, and, hating 
 it, pass on to enjoyment. These solaces and 
 compensations, this division of beauty from use, 
 the laws of nature do not permit. As soon as 
 beauty is sought, not from religion and love but 
 for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High beauty 
 is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in 
 stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction ; an 
 effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not
 
 ART 367 
 
 beauty, is all that can be formed ; for the hand 
 can never execute any thing higher than the 
 character can inspire. 1 
 
 The art that thus separates is itself first sepa- 
 rated. Art must not be a superficial talent, but 
 must begin farther back in man. Now men do 
 not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to 
 make a statue which shall be. They abhor men 
 as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console 
 themselves with color-bags and blocks of mar- 
 ble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a 
 death which they call poetic. They despatch 
 the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous 
 reveries. They eat and drink, that they may 
 afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is art vili- 
 fied ; the name conveys to the mind its second- 
 ary and bad senses ; it stands in the imagination 
 as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with 
 death from the first. Would it not be better to 
 begin higher up, to serve the ideal before 
 they eat and drink ; to serve the ideal in eating 
 and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the 
 functions of life? Beauty must come back to 
 the useful arts, and the distinction between the 
 fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If his- 
 tory were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it 
 would be no longer easy or possible to distin-
 
 368 ART 
 
 guish the one from the other. In nature, all is 
 useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful 
 because it is alive, moving, reproductive ; it is 
 therefore useful because it is symmetrical and 
 fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legis- 
 lature, nor will it repeat in England or America 
 its history in Greece. It will come, as always, 
 unannounced, and spring up between the feet 
 of brave and earnest men. It is in vain that we 
 look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the 
 old arts ; it is its instinct to find beauty and 
 holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field 
 and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceed- 
 ing from a religious heart it will raise to a divine 
 use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint- 
 stock company ; our law, our primary assem- 
 blies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the 
 electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort ; 
 in which we seek now only an economical use. 
 Is not the selfish and even cruel aspect which 
 belongs to our great mechanical works, to mills, 
 railways, and machinery, the effect of the mer- 
 cenary impulses which these works obey ? When 
 its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat 
 bridging the Atlantic between Old and New 
 England and arriving at its ports with the punc- 
 tuality of a planet, is a step of man into har-
 
 ART 3 6<j 
 
 mony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburg, 
 which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs 
 little to make it sublime. When science is learned 
 in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they 
 will appear the supplements and continuations 
 of the material creation. 1
 
 NOTES
 
 NOTES 
 
 AFTER the publication of Nature, the first hint that 
 appears of the collection by Mr. Emerson of his writ- 
 ings into a second book, occurs in the end of a jetter to Mr. 
 Alcott, written April 16, 1839, which Mr. Sanborn gives in 
 his Memoir of Branson Alcott : " 1 have been writing a little, 
 and arranging old papers more, and by and by I hope to get 
 a shapely book of Genesis." 
 
 In a letter written in April, 1840, to Carlyle, Mr. Emer- 
 son thus alludes to the Essays : 
 
 " I am here at work now for a fortnight to spin some single 
 cord out of my thousand and one strands of every color and 
 texture that lie ravelled around me in old snarls. We need to 
 be possessed with a mountainous conviction of the value of our 
 advice to our contemporaries, if we will take such pains to find 
 what that is. But no, It is the pleasure of the spinning that 
 betrays poor spinners into the loss of so much good time. I 
 shall work with the more diligence on this book-to-be of mine, 
 that you inform me again and again that my penny tracts 1 are 
 still extant; nay, that beside friendly men, learned and poetic 
 men read and even review them. I am like Scholasticus of 
 the Greek Primer, who was ashamed to bring out so small a 
 dead child before such grand people. Pygmalion shall try if he 
 cannot fashion a better, certainly a bigger." Four months 
 later he tells of the problems at home, "a good deal of 
 movement and tendency emerging into sight every day in 
 church and state, in social modes and in letters. You will natu- 
 
 i Nature, and the various addresses, published at first separately in pam- 
 phlet form.
 
 374 NOTES 
 
 rally ask me if I try my hand at the history of all this. . . . 
 No, not in the near and practical way in which they seem to 
 invite. I incline to write philosophy, poetry, possibility 
 anything but history. And yet this phantom of the next age 
 limns himself sometimes so large and plain that every feature 
 is apprehensible and challenges a painter. ... I dot ever- 
 more in my endless journal, a line on every knowable in na- 
 ture ; but the arrangement loiters long, and I get a brick-kiln 
 instead of a house." 
 
 Soon after the coming in of the new year he sends word : 
 ' In a fortnight or three weeks my little raft will be afloat. 
 Expect nothing more of my powers of construction, no 
 ship-building, no clipper, smack, nor skiff even, only boards 
 and logs tied together." 
 
 In his Journal he wrote, in January^ 1 84J ; "All my 
 thoughts are foresters. I have scarce a day-dream on which 
 the breath of the pines has not blown and their shadows 
 waved. Shall I not therefore call my little book Forest Es- 
 tays ?" 
 
 The book was published in Mardj J ^Jii a jaJjQ_sion^by 
 James^Munroe and Company. 
 
 Soon after Nature had appeared, Carlyle had written to 
 his friend : " There is a man here called John Sterling, 
 . . . whom I love better than any one I have met with, since 
 a certain sky-messenger alighted to me at Craigenputtock and 
 vanished in the Blue again. 1 . . . Well, and what then, cry 
 you ? Why then, this John Sterling has fallen overhead in 
 love with a certain Waldo Emerson ; that is all. He saw the 
 Httle book Nature lying here ; and, across a whole silva silva- 
 rum of prejudices, discerned what was in it, took it to his 
 
 i Alluding to Emerson's first visit to him among the moon of Nithsdak 
 In 1833.
 
 NOTES 375 
 
 heart, and indeed into his pocket. . . . This is the small 
 piece of pleasant news, that two sky-messengers (such they 
 were, both of them* to me) have met and recognized each 
 other, and by God's blessing there shall one day be a trio of 
 us ; call you that nothing ? ' ' Sterling wrote to Emerson and 
 a noble friendship resulted. Although they never met in the 
 body, these friends had more in common with each other in 
 their hope, their courage, and their desire for exp/ession in 
 poetry than either had with Carlyle. Sterling died in 1844. 
 
 Emerson sent Sterling his Essays, saying, " They are not 
 yet a fortnight old. I have written your name in a copy and 
 sent it to Carlyle by the same steamer. ... I wish, but 
 scarce dare hope, you may find in it any thing of the pristine 
 sacredness of thought. All thoughts are holy when they come 
 floating up to us in magical newness from the hidden Life, and 
 'tis no wonder we are enamoured with these Muses and 
 Graces, until, in our devotion to particular beauties and in 
 our efforts at artificial disposition, we lose somewhat of our 
 universal sense and the sovereign eye of Proportion. All sins, 
 literary and aesthetic and scientific, as well as moral, grow out 
 of unbelief at last. We must needs meddle ambitiously, and 
 cannot quite trust that there is life, self-evolving and indestruc- 
 tible, but which cannot be hastened, at the heart of every phy- 
 sical and metaphysical fact. Yet how we thank and greet, 
 almost adore the person who has once or twice in a lifetime 
 treated any thing sublimely, and certified us that he beheld the 
 Law. The silence and obscurity in which he acted are of no 
 account, for every thing is equally related to the soul. 
 
 " I certainly did not mean, when I took up this paper, to 
 write an essay on Faith, and yet I am always willing to de- 
 clare how indigent I think our poetry and all literature is 
 become for want of that. My thought had only this scope.
 
 376 NOTES 
 
 no more : that though I had long ago grown extremely discon- 
 tented with my little book, yet were the thoughts in it honest 
 in their first rising and honestly reported, but that I am very 
 sensible how much in this, as in very much greater matters, in- 
 terference, or what we miscall art, will spoil true things." ' 
 
 Carlyle now had opportunity to return his friend's kindness 
 in introducing him to American readers. In ajetter written 
 to Emerson on June 25, 1841, he said : " My second piece 
 of news ... is that Emerson's Essays, the book so called, 
 is to be reprinted here ; nay, I think, is even now at press. 
 . . . Fraser undertakes it on half profits ; ' T. Carlyle 
 writing a preface, which accordingly he did. . . . The edi- 
 tion is of Seven Hundred and Fifty. . . . With what joy 
 shall I sack up the small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of 
 ' Half Profits, ' and remit them to the man Emerson ; say- 
 ing: There, Man ! tit for tat, the reciprocity not all on one 
 side ! ' I ought to say, moreover, that this was a volunteer 
 scheme of Fraser' s; the risk is all his, the origin of it was 
 with him : I advised him to have it reviewed, as being a really 
 noteworthy Book. Write you a Preface,' said he, and I 
 will reprint it; ' to which, after due delay and meditation, I 
 consented." 
 
 In a curious and characteristic preface, among other things, 
 
 " The name of Ralph Waldo Emerson is not entirely new, 
 in England ; distinguished travellers bring us tidings of such a 
 man ; fractions of his writings hare found their way into the 
 hands of the curious here ; fitful hints that there is in New 
 England some spiritual notability called Emerson glide through 
 the reviews and magazines. 
 
 " Emerson's writings and speakings amount to something ; 
 
 - -4 Correspondent between John Sterling and Ralph Waldo Emenon.
 
 NOTES 377 
 
 tnd yet, hitherto, as it seems to me, this Emerson is far less 
 notable for what he has spoken or done than for the many 
 things he has not spoken and has forborne to do. . . . 
 
 " For myself, I have looked over with no common feeling 
 to this brave Emerson, seated by his rustic hearth on the other 
 side of the ocean (yet not altogether parted from me either), 
 silently communing with his own soul and with the God's 
 World it finds itself alive in yonder. Pleasures of Virtue, 
 Progress of the Species, Black Emancipation, New Tariff, 
 Eclecticism, Locofocoism, Ghost of Improved Socinianism, 
 these, with many other Ghosts and substances, are squeaking, 
 jabbering according to their capabilities round this man. To 
 one man among the sixteen millions their jabber is all unmusi- 
 cal. The silent voices of the stars above and of the green earth 
 beneath are profitable to him tell him gradually that these 
 others are but ghosts which will shortly have to vanish ; that 
 the life-fountain these proceed out of does not vanish. . . . 
 
 " Emerson, I understand, was bred to theology ; of which 
 primary bent his latest way of thoughrsnfl Bears traces. In a 
 very enigmatic way, we heaTmuch of thT "* Universal Soul of 
 the,' etc., flickering like bright bodiless northern streamers. 
 Notions and half-notions of a metaphysic, theosophic kind are 
 seldom long wanting in these Essays. I do not advise the 
 British public to trouble itself much with all that : still less to 
 take offence at it. ... That this little book has no system, 
 and points or stretches far beyon"J~aif-^ytiii87~trioire-t>f-4ts 
 merits. We will call it thelibEIoqay of a true~soul alone under 
 thestars, in "this day." 
 
 IVIr. Geo/ge W. Cooke, in his careful study of the life of 
 Mr. Emerson, 1 relates that five years later the Countess 
 
 i Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ait Life, Writing^ and Phtlotofhy, Boston I 
 J. R. O8good& Co. 1887.
 
 378 NOTES 
 
 d'Agoult, who wrote under the nom de plume of "Daniel 
 Stern," told in the Revue Ind'ependante (July) how having 
 read a mention of the Essays by Philarete Chasles in an article 
 on literary tendencies in America, and later heard a quotation 
 from them in a lecture by a foreign poet, Mickiewicz, she tried 
 to obtain the book in Paris, but had to send to London for it. 
 She was greatly pleased, and in her article expressed surprise at 
 the general ignorance concerning the writer. " The singular 
 charm of the Essays," she said, " is that we hold him account- 
 able for nothing, because he pretends to nothing. He draws 
 you after him with irresistible bonhomie. There is no difficulty 
 in following him, for we breathe a salubrious atmosphere in his 
 work. Nothing offends, not even the discords, because all is 
 resolved and harmonized in the sentiment of a superior truth." 
 In Berlin, Herman Grimm (who later wrote the lives of 
 Michelangelo and Raphael), while waiting his turn in the 
 parlor of the American dentist, chanced to pick up the Essays 
 from the table ; "read a page, and was startled to find that 
 J had undej]stojid_jTOthing, though tolerably well acquainted 
 with English. I inquired as to the author. In reply I was 
 told that he was the first writer in America, an eminently 
 gifted man, but somewhat crazed at times, and often unable 
 to explain his own words. Notwithstanding, no one was heH 
 in such esteem for his character and for his prose writings. In 
 short, the opinion fell upon my ears as so strange that I re- 
 opened the book. Some sentences, upon a second reading, 
 shot like a Kpam_nf light iritQ_my_very soul^and Ijvas moved 
 to put thebook in myjpocket, that I might read it more_atten- 
 tavely"at~home. ... I took Webster's Dictionary and began 
 thread. The cmisjr^cliQii_ojhjemences struck me as very 
 extraordinary. I soon discovered the secret : they were real 
 tRoughtsTan individual language, a sincere man that I had be-
 
 NOTES 379 
 
 fore me ; naught superficial, second-hand. Enough ! I bought 
 the book ! From that time I have never ceased to read Emer- 
 son's works, and whenever I take up a volume anew it seems 
 to me as if I were reading it for the first time. ' * 
 
 But at home the book was not well received in all quarters. 
 
 Mr. Cooke, in his biography, quotes an author in the 
 Princeton Review who had found the Essays " more devoid of 
 real meaning than any other book which ever fell into his 
 hands, and thought such essays could be produced through a 
 lifetime as rapidly as a human pen could be made to move." 
 
 Another critic, a distinguished classical scholar connected 
 with one of the universities, seems to have recognized Mr. 
 Emerson's debt to the Greek and, through these, the Oriental 
 philosophers, seeing in the ideas set forth "ancient errors, 
 mistaken for new truths and disguised in the drapery of a 
 misty rhetoric." 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 The first essay in the volume, " History," was not delivered 
 as a single lecture, but in writing it Mr. Emerson made use 
 of passages from lectures in three distinct courses ; namely, 
 that on "English Literature" (1835-36), on "The Philo- 
 sophy of History" (1836-37), and on "Human Life" 
 (1837-38), as is shown by Mr. Cabot in the chronological 
 list of lectures and addresses in the Appendix (F) to his 
 Memoir. 
 
 The essay is a fit gateway to those that lie behind, for on its 
 threshold is the doctrine of the Universal Mind, and beyond 
 will be found those depending on and illustrating this, the 
 Unity underlying the Flowing of Nature through endless cycles 
 of Protean disguises, the Symbolism of Nature, the beautj
 
 380 NOTES 
 
 of Law, working forward and upward alike in Nature, in 
 
 races, and in the individual and his works. 
 
 The course on " The Philosophy of History " ( 1 836-37) 
 
 had the following lectures, many of which appear as such or in 
 
 their matter in the Essays. 
 I. Introduction (History VI. Religion, 
 
 has been ill written ; VII. Society. 
 
 its meaning and fu- VIII. Trades and Profes- 
 ture, etc.) sions. 
 
 II. Humanity of Science. IX. Manners. 
 
 III. Art. X. Ethics. 
 
 IV. Literature. XI. Present Age. 
 V. Politics. XII. Individualism. 
 
 In his Journal, Mr. Emerson thus lays out the course in 
 advance, with the belief in the Over-Soul as the foundation 
 of all. 
 
 There is one soul. 
 
 It is related to the world. 
 
 Art is its action thereon. 
 
 Science finds its methods. 
 
 Literature is its record. 
 
 Religion is the emotion of reverence that it inspires. 
 
 Ethics is the soul illustrated in human life. 
 
 Society is the finding of this soul by individuals in each 
 other. 
 
 Trades are the learning the soul in nature by labor. 
 
 Politics is the activity of the soul illustrated in power. 
 
 Manners are silent and mediate expressions of soul. 
 
 Page 2, note I. Both of these mottoes appear in the 
 first edition : in both is the thought of the Over- Soul, which
 
 NOTES 381 
 
 later appeared in Oriental form in Brahma. The desire to 
 express himself in verse, which Mr. Emerson felt so strongly, 
 had so far overcome his humility that during the months in 
 which he was preparing this essay he had contributed to the 
 first number of the Dial "The Problem," and "The 
 Sphinx " appeared in the third. 
 
 Page 4, note i. It will be remembered that the Sphinx's 
 fatal riddle, which CEdipus solved, related to Man in his in- 
 fancy, his prime and his decline. 
 
 In the end of Nature (vol. i. ), man as a microcosm had 
 been considered, and Herbert brought to testify in his beauti- 
 ful poem " Man." 
 
 Page j , note I. In this passage, and one in " Self-Reli- 
 ance," "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one 
 man," with the work of St. Anthony, Luther, Fox, Wesley 
 and Clarkson as instances, came out Mr. Emerson's belief 
 in the duty and the power of the man of thought, a messenger 
 of the Eternal Mind. 
 
 Page 6, note /. In the affectionate sympathy for reading 
 boys, which crops out so often in his books, memories of his 
 boyhood and of his brothers and some near friends, like Dr. 
 William H. Furness, come to light. 
 
 Page f, note z. 
 
 Methought the sky looked scornful down 
 On all was base in man. 
 
 " Walden," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Page 8, note I. Mr. Emerson often nsed to speak of the 
 pitiful figure that certain scholars and statesmen presented, ut- 
 tering elevated sentiments about Liberty and Justice in 1776, 
 and being dumb on the subject of the flagrant violation of these 
 principles in their own day.
 
 382 NOTES 
 
 Page p, note I. That a man was principally of value fa 
 his " atmosphere," and an event for the soul of it which 
 survived for an example or in a poem, was a favorite idea 
 with Mr. Emerson. He praised Sterling's line in Alfred tfa 
 Harper y 
 
 Still lives the song, though Regnar dies! 
 
 With Swedenborg he valued Nature as a symbol. 
 
 Page IO, note I. I am indebted to Professor Charles Eliot 
 Norton for calling my attention to the probable compounding 
 of the name Marmaduke Robinson, through a slip of Mr. 
 Emerson's memory, out of the names of the two Quakers hung 
 on Boston Common in 1659, Marmaduke Stevenson and 
 William Robinson. 
 
 Page 12, note I. In "The Problem" he describes the 
 evolution of the grand architecture, the temples and cathe- 
 drals, "out of Thought's interior sphere," and Nature's 
 ready adoption of them as her own. 
 
 Page if, note z. Mr. Emerson was much more alive to 
 the beauty of form than of color. Sculpture appealed to him 
 more than painting. 
 
 Page 15, note 2. The doctrine of the pervading unity 
 which appears in the poem "Xenophanes," written in 1834, 
 hence one of the earliest of the published poems. 
 
 Page 16, note I, In the month of April, 1839, Carlyle 
 sent Raphael Morghen's engraving of the Aurora, by Guido 
 in the Rospigliosi palace in Rome, to Mr. Emerson, say- 
 ing, " It is my wife's memorial to your wife. . . . Two 
 houses divided by wide seas are to understand always thaf 
 they are united nevertheless." The picture still hangs in the 
 parlor of Mr. Emerson's home, with the inscription which 
 accompanied it : Will the lady of Concord hang up this
 
 NOTES 383 
 
 Italian sun-chariot somewhere in her Drawing Room, and, 
 looking at it, think sometimes of a household here which haa 
 good cause never to forget hers. T. CARLYLE." 
 
 Mr. Emerson used to point out to his children how the 
 varied repetition of the manes, heads and prancing forefeet 
 of the horses were imitations of the curved folds of a great 
 cumulus cloud. 
 
 Page 17, note i. Here, as in the two essays on Art, in 
 this volume and in Society and Solitude, the same thought 
 appears, embodied also in "The Problem" in the lines be- 
 ginning, 
 
 The hand that rounded Peter's dome, etc. 
 
 Page 19, note I. 
 
 Come see the north wind's masonry, etc. 
 
 "The Snow-Storm," Poems. 
 
 Page 21, note I. The works of Heeren and others on 
 Egypt, and the architectural handbooks of Fergusson and 
 Garbett, with some of Ruskin's writings, were read with inter- 
 est by Mr. Emerson. The idea of Evolution, whether in 
 the works of Nature or of man, early and always appealed to 
 him. 
 
 Perhaps the first suggestion of the ideas on this page came 
 to him in his boyhood, in the welcome form of Scott's descrip- 
 tion of Melrose Abbey in the Lay of the Last Minstrel: - 
 The moon on the east oriel shone 
 Through slender shafts of shapely stone, 
 
 By foliaged tracery combined ; 
 Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand 
 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand 
 In many a freakish knot had twined,
 
 384 NOTES 
 
 Then framed a spell when the work was done, 
 And changed the willow wreaths to stone. 
 
 Page 22, note I. Astaboras was a river of ^Ethiopia mtn 
 doned by Strabo. 
 
 Page 22, note 2. The following is the version of the re- 
 mainder of this paragraph in the first edition of the Essays : 
 
 "The difference between men in this respect is the faculty 
 of rapid domestication, the power to find his chair and bed 
 everywhere which one man has, and another has not. Some 
 men have so much of the Indian left, have constitutionally 
 such habits oraccommodation, that at sea, or in the forest, or 
 in the snow, they sleep as warm and dine with as good appe- 
 tite and associate as happily as in their own house. And, to 
 push this old fact one degree nearer, we may find it a repre- 
 entative of a permanent fact in human nature. The intellec- 
 tual nomadism is the faculty of objectiveness, or of eyes which 
 everywhere feed themselves. Who hath such eyes every- 
 where falls into easy relation with his fellow-men. Every 
 man, every thing, is a prize, a study, a property to him, and 
 this love smooths his brow, joins him to men, and makes him 
 beautiful and beloved in their sight. His house is a wagon : 
 he roams through all latitudes as easily as a Calmuc." 
 
 Page 22, note 3. 
 
 And well he loved to quit his home 
 
 And Calmuc in his wagon roam 
 
 To read new landscapes and old skies. 
 
 "The Poet," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Page 23, note i. In the balancing of the claims on the 
 scholar of society and solitude, so frequent in his writings^ 
 Mr. Emerson always gives most weight to solitude, yet admit- 
 ting the necessity, for his sanity, his character, and his supply
 
 NOTES 385 
 
 of raw material to work on, of mingling with the world and 
 sharing the common exposures and experiences. 
 
 In his journal of his first trip to Europe, it is remarkable 
 how little he found to detain him and how anxious he was to 
 return to his proper field of action and work. The same feel- 
 ing was very marked during his visit to Europe and Egypt in 
 his old age. 
 
 Page 2J, note i. The freedom, the dignity and profit of 
 self-help was a rule of practice, not a mere theory, with Mr. 
 Emerson. 
 
 Page 28, note 7. Many strange pilgrims were on the 
 road in those days, ridiculous enough to the eye of the aver- 
 age New Englander, and these were attracted to Concord by 
 the report that there hospitality to thought could be found. 
 Their host ministered to their physical wants, and to theit 
 hunger to be heard. He took them by " their best handle," 
 and, as he wrote of his ideal man, "The madness which 
 he harbored he did not share." 
 
 Page 29, note i. The respect for the old religion that 
 made New England, remained deeply ingrained in Mr. Emer- 
 son, though he had left that phase of belief and spiritual growth 
 behind. Yet it was always before him in the fiery faith of his 
 Aunt Mary, and in his own household in the devoted Chris- 
 tianity of his mother and his wife. He was aware of the losses 
 that might well accompany too extreme reaction from early 
 faith, and the Luther anecdote might well have had something 
 akin to it in his domestic experience. 
 
 Page jo, note I, Compare Byron's Prometheus. 
 Titan, to whose immortal eye 
 The sufferings of mortality, 
 Seen in their sad reality, 
 Were not as things that gods despise, etc.
 
 386 NOTES 
 
 Page 31, note I. The power of true vision to unsettle 
 and move and elevate everything, indeed the old doctrine of 
 "The Flowing" of Heracleitus, the dance of the trees and 
 the very mountains that Orpheus led, occurs in the prose, 
 but especially in Mr. Emerson's ' Poet " in the Appendix 
 to the Poems. 
 
 Page 32, note I. 
 
 I drank at thy fountains 
 False waters of thirst. 
 
 " Ode to Beauty, "Poems. 
 
 Page 32 t note 2. " We probably perceive the influence 
 of these latent inheritances " [dormant tendencies to suppressed 
 bestial parts of traits] ' when, in the battle of existence, 
 species undergo retrograde changes, or, as naturalists phrase it, 
 revert to a lower state of being. ... In the moral as well 
 as the physical world, we may see these hidden seeds of an- 
 cestral impulse, when no longer overshadowed by the newer 
 and therefore stronger motives, spring into activity and win 
 the creature back to a lower estate." The Interpretation of 
 Nature, by Professor N. S. Shaler. Boston, 1893. 
 
 Page JJ, note I. See the opening paragraphs of " The 
 Poet," Essays, Second Series, and " Poetry and Imagina- 
 tion," Letters and Social Aims, for the true use of facts. 
 
 Mr. Emerson eagerly sought facts, not for themselves, but 
 as oracles from which he was to draw the hidden but univer- 
 sal meaning. In his Journal in 1847, he speaks of the avarice 
 with which he looks at the Insurance Office, and his longing 
 to be admitted to hear the gossip of the notables of the village 
 there: " For an hour to be invisible and hear the best informed 
 men retail their information he would pay great prices, but 
 every company dissolves at his approach. He so eager and 
 they so coy. . . .
 
 NOTES 387 
 
 We want society on our own terms. Each man has facts 
 that I want, and, though I talk with him, I cannot get at 
 them for want of the clue. He does not know what to do 
 with his facts: I know. . . . Here is all Boston, all rail- 
 roads, all manufactures and trade, in the head of this well- 
 informed merchant at my side. . . . Here is Agassiz with 
 his theory of anatomy and nature; I am in his chamber and I 
 do not know what question to put. . . . Here is all Fourier 
 in Brisbane's head; all language in Kraitser's; all Swedenborg 
 in Reed's; all the Revolution in old Adams's head; all mod- 
 ern Europe and America in John Quincy Adams's, and I 
 cannot appropriate a fragment of all their experience. . . . 
 Now if I could cast a spell on this man at my side, and see 
 his pictures without his intervention or organs, and having 
 learned that lesson, turn the spell on another, lift up the cover 
 of another hive, and see the cells and suck the honey . . . 
 they were not the poorer and I the richer." 
 
 Page 34, note I. When asked by one of his children 
 whether some verse of Shakspeare, or perhaps it was a picture 
 by Michelangelo, really was meant to carry with it the sig- 
 nificance attributed to it, Mr. Emerson answered: " Every 
 one has a right to be credited with whatever of good another 
 can find in his work." 
 
 Page 35, note I. Perceforeit was a medizeval French his- 
 torical romance, its scene being Britain in the pre-Arthurian 
 period. 
 
 Amadis de Gaul, a romance written in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, by Vasco de Lobeira, in Portugal, but which became very 
 popular in later versions in other tongues. 
 
 The Boy and the Mantle, an ancient English ballad. See 
 Percy's Reliques. 
 
 , note I. This passage with regard to man's fac-
 
 388 NOTES 
 
 nlties occurred in a lecture called " The Doctrine of the 
 Hands " in the course on " Human Culture," 1837-38. 
 
 Page 37, note I. See Shakspeare's Henry VI., Part I.* 
 Act II., Scene iii. 
 
 Page 40, note I. It was a characteristic of Mr. Emerson' k 
 writings to concentrate attention on some aspect of the matter 
 on which he was speaking. He did not weaken a sentence, a 
 paragraph, even, in some cases, a whole poem or lecture, by 
 much qualification of his statement. He reserved the counter- 
 statement, the other aspect, to present as neatly in another 
 place. Hence, if but one essay be read, his position with 
 reference to the church, or towards society, or reform, might 
 be misunderstood. 
 
 Page 41, note I. This passage appears in verse in 
 ' Limits," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 During the period of Mr. Emerson's ministry in Boston he 
 had written thus in his Journal : 
 
 CHARDON ST., OCT. 14, 1832. 
 
 tf The great difficulty is that men do not think enough of 
 themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing 
 when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their estab- 
 lishment. They know not how divine is a Man. I know you 
 say such a man thinks too much of himself. Alas ! he is wholly 
 ignorant. He yet wanders in the outer darkness, in the skirts 
 and shadows of himself, and has not seen his inner light. 
 
 " Would it not be a text of a useful discourse to young men, 
 that every man must learn in a different way ? How much 
 is lost by imitation. Our best friends may be our worst ene*
 
 NOTES 389 
 
 mies. A man should learn to detect and foster that gleam of 
 light which flashes across his mind from within far more than 
 the lustre of the whole firmament without. Yet he dismisses 
 without notice his peculiar thought because it is peculiar. The 
 time will come when he will postpone all acquired knowledge 
 to this spontaneous wisdom, and will watch for this illumina- 
 tion more than those who watch for the morning. For this 
 is the principle by which the other is to be arranged. This 
 thinking would go to show the significance of self-education, 
 that in reality there is no other, for all other is nought without 
 this." 
 
 This entry is continued by the passage now appearing in 
 the latter part of " Self- Reliance " beginning, "That which 
 each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him," end' 
 ing with the sentence about " the Scipionism of Scipio." 
 After several more jottings as to what might be said on the 
 subject, he writes: 
 
 "Landor knows many things treats of the continual 
 appeal that is made from the facts to the feelings, from the 
 world to the high, inward, infallible Judge, ever suggesting a 
 grander creation," etc. 
 
 In the entry of the preceding day he transcribes various 
 sentences from Lander's Imaginary Conversations (mostly 
 from the talk of Epicurus with his friends), among them this: 
 "Since all transcendent, all true and genuine greatness must 
 be of a man's own raising, and only on the foundation that 
 the hand of God has laid, do not let any touch it: keep them 
 off civilly, but keep them off." 
 
 Thus it appears that the writings of Landor, read the year 
 before Mr. Emerson sought him out in Rome, may have given 
 the original push towards the writing of this essay on ' ' Self- 
 Reliance." A small portion of the essay came from the lecture
 
 J9Q NOTES 
 
 " Individualism," the last in the course on " The Philosophy 
 of History" in 183637, and other passages from the lec- 
 tures " School," " Genius," and " Duty " in the course on 
 "Human Life." 183839. 
 
 In reading this essay, it is well to call to mind, 1st, Mr. 
 Emerson's fear of weakening the effect of his presentation of 
 a subject by qualification ; zd, That the Self he refers to is 
 the higher self, man's share of divinity. Hence " The Over- 
 Soul " should be read after " Self- Reliance." 
 
 Journal, Oct. 23, 1840. "And must I go and do some- 
 what if I would learn new secrets of self-reliance ? for my 
 chapter is not finished. But self-reliance is precisely that secret 
 to make your supposed deficiency redundancy. If I am true, 
 the theory is, the very want of action, my very impotency, 
 shall become a greater excelling than all skill and toil." 
 
 Page 45, note I. Perhaps these were the poems of Wash- 
 ington Allston. His " Paint -King " is quoted in the chapter 
 on Plato in Representative Men. If not these, it is probable 
 that William Blake's remarkable poems are alluded to. 
 
 Page 46, note I. This image recalls the departure of the 
 Day in his poem, when the thoughtless poet from among her 
 proffered gifts chose 
 
 A few herbs and apples . . . 
 
 ... I, too late, 
 
 Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. 
 
 Page 4J , note i. The doctrine of "The Over-Soul." 
 Page 48, note I. Sympathy for children, loving reverence 
 for unspoiled boys and girls, was part of Mr. Emerson's 
 character, and appears throughout his writings, especially in 
 "Domestic Life" and "Education."
 
 NOTES 391 
 
 Page 49, note I. An annoyance at the notoriety which 
 followed his action with regard to the rite of the Last Supper 
 in his church, and later, on his simple statement to the Divin- 
 ity students of the message that came to him with regard to 
 the torpor of the church of that day, and their resulting duties, 
 shows in Mr. Emerson's letters and journals at these times 
 rather than any deeper trouble. It is that "sad self-know- 
 ledge" of Uriel. 
 
 P*g e S 2 ' note * A characteristic case of his presentation 
 of aspects. " But it is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot 
 strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other." 
 " History." 
 
 Page 52, note 2. Of his "own poor" and his own 
 causes, Mr. Emerson was mindful, and his hand was free. 
 
 Page 54, note i. It need hardly be said that Mr. Emer- 
 son was an independent in politics, as in social or ecclesiasti- 
 cal movements. He writes in his Journal : "The relation of 
 men of thought to society is always the same; they refuse that 
 necessity of mediocre men, to take sides. They keep their 
 own equilibrium. The sun's path is never parallel to the 
 equator. ' ' 
 
 Page 57, note I. Mr. Emerson said, " I deny personal- 
 ity to God because it is too little not too much." 
 
 Page 58, note I. It may be interesting to reproduce here 
 the version of the first edition with a ruder vigor, more adapted 
 to delivery in the Lyceum. 
 
 " With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. 
 He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. 
 Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with pack-thread, 
 do ! else, if you would be a man, speak what you think to-day 
 in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what 
 to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict
 
 39* NOTES 
 
 everything you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged 
 ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! 
 It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunder- 
 stood ? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, anc 
 Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, 
 and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be 
 great is to be misunderstood." 
 P*g* 58* note 2. 
 
 As sunbeams stream through liberal space 
 And nothing jostle or displace, 
 So waved the pine-tree through my thought 
 And fanned the dreams it never brought. 
 
 "Woodnotes," II., Poems. 
 
 Page 6l, note i. Mr. Emerson's reading was largely in 
 biographies. For novels and romances he cared little, but the 
 human, the heroic, the individual in historic characters, he was 
 keen to find out, and equally so the natural speech, the inde- 
 pendent action and native refinement in persons whom he met, 
 whether high or low. From his childhood he copied anec- 
 dotes of persons, and he read them to his scholars. Plutarch 
 was his delight. Dr. Holmes interested himself in making a 
 list of the persons most often referred to by Mr. Emerson, 
 and found that after Shakspeare, Napoleon, and Plato came 
 Plutarch, and there were seventy references to him. 
 
 Page 62, note I. A version of this story is the Induction 
 of The Taming of the Shrew. 
 
 Page 64, note I. This paragraph furnishes two instances 
 of the nicety of Mr. Emerson's choice of words in closest 
 accordance with their derivation to make clear his thought. 
 His doctrine, that there was one great source of all special 
 manifestation of spirit, which was from the beginning [4
 
 NOTES 393 
 
 origin e "In the Beginning was the Word"] ; that this 
 spirit was self-renewed in each one who would listen, by 
 teachings from within [in-tuitionsj, and could go out from the 
 receiver to help the world [tuitions], made clearer by ex- 
 actly fitting words, shows the real Self on which men shall 
 rely. 
 
 Pag: 65, note i. He went alone to the woods to listen. 
 Perhaps his early friends among the Quakers at New Bedford 
 had confirmed this tendency in him to wait until the Spirit 
 spoke. He felt himself the mere ambassador charged to faith- 
 fully deliver the message committed to him. This must be its 
 own evidence and it was not for him to argue about it. 
 
 Page 67, note I. Compare the seventh stanza of " The 
 Sphinx." 
 
 Page 6p, note I. Though Mr. Emerson's is by no means 
 a Latin style, the training of his youth shows often in the 
 use of words of Latin origin, not as adjectives but as present 
 participles; as "man, agent and patient," and here "power 
 not confident but agent." 
 
 Page 71, note i, 
 
 Hold of the Maker, not the Made ; 
 Sit with the Cause, or grim or glad. 
 "Fragments on The Poet," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Page 72, note I. " Respect the child, respect him to the 
 end, but also respect yourself. Be the companion of his 
 thought, the friend of his friendship, the lover of his virtue, 
 but no kinsman of his sin. Let him find you so true to your- 
 se'f that you are the irreconcilable hater of his vice and the 
 imperturbable slighter of his trifling." "Education," Lee- 
 f*res and Biographical Sketches. 
 
 Page 14, note I. After the somewhat startling and radical
 
 394 NOTES 
 
 counsels of the last paragraph, it is well that some mitigation 
 of their drastic quality should follow. Dr. Holmes does well in 
 calling attention to what follows to show how Mr. Emerson 
 " guarded his proclamation of self-reliance as the guide of 
 mankind." 
 
 Page 76, note I. In the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, many a New England boy thus acquired experience and 
 laid the foundations of his fortune, pecuniary or intellectual. 
 Mr. Alcott went on foot with his pack more than once through 
 Virginia and the Carolinas, furnishing Connecticut wares or 
 teaching, at the option of the owners of the plantations. 
 
 Page 78, note I. While studying divinity, Mr. Emerson 
 one day, as he worked in his uncle's hayfield beside a Meth- 
 odist farm-hand, fell into talk with him. This man maintained 
 that men are always praying, and that all prayers are answered. 
 This statement interested Mr. Emerson, and on this theme 
 he wrote his first sermon, adding for a third point that it be- 
 hooves men to well consider these acted prayers. After his 
 "approbation to preach," he read this sermon in the pulpit 
 of his kind uncle, Rev. Mr. Samuel Ripley, of Waltham, and 
 the next day a stranger addressed him in the stage-coach, say- 
 ing, " Young man, you '11 never preach a better sermon than 
 that." 
 
 A short paper, " Prayers," originally printed in the Dial, 
 is included in the volume Natural History of Intellect, 
 
 Page 80, note I. 
 
 The inevitable morning 
 Finds them who in cellars be. 
 
 ' The World-Soul," Poems. 
 
 Page 82, note I. Mr. Emerson, when he first went 
 abroad in 1833, was sick and sad, with prospects all unsettled,
 
 NOTES 395 
 
 tnd he was little engaged by the novelty and beauty of the 
 sights which met his eye when, after a short stay in Malta, he 
 landed at Naples. This paragraph reflects the tone of his 
 journals, and in them he wrote verses recording his feeling 
 at Naples and at Rome. Both of these are printed in the 
 Appendix to the Poems. 
 
 But his call to his appointed work made him through life a 
 bad visitor, and also traveller, except in the line of his dutjr, 
 when his lines in Woodnotes " were true for him : 
 
 Go where he will, the wise man is at home, . . . 
 Where his clear spirit leads him, there 's his road, 
 By God's own light illumined and foreshowed. 
 
 Page 8j, note I. Most of the paragraph up to this point 
 was from the entry in the Journal in 1832, mentioned in the 
 introduction to this essay, when the thought of writing on 
 this theme first came to him. 
 
 Page 83, note /. The checks in development, later much 
 emphasized by the Evolutionists, seem to have been early 
 apprehended by him. 
 
 Page 88, note i. This saying of Ali is rendered in the last 
 lines of the second motto of ' Compensation." 
 
 COMPENSATION 
 
 When in 1865 Mr. Emerson met by invitation many of 
 the ladies who, as girls, had attended the finishing school for 
 young ladies kept in Boston by his brother William and him- 
 self, when hardly more than boys, he told them that he felt 
 certain regrets with regard to his teaching. " I was at that 
 very time already writing every night in my chamber my first
 
 396 NOTES 
 
 thoughts on morals and the beautiful laws of Compensation 
 and of individual genius, which to observe and illustrate have 
 given sweetness to my life. I am afraid no hint of this ever 
 came into the school, where we clung to the safe and cold 
 details of languages, geography, arithmetic and chemistry. 
 Now I believe that each should serve the other by his or her 
 strength, not by their weakness, and that if I could have had 
 one hour of deep thought at that time, I could have engaged 
 you in thoughts that would have given reality, depth and joy 
 to the school, and raised ali these details to the highest plea- 
 sure and nobleness." 
 
 During the days of his ministry, he wrote thus in his 
 Journal: 
 
 CHARDCN ST., JUNE 29, 1831. 
 
 Is not the law of Compensation perfect ? It holds, as far as 
 we can see, different gifts to different individuals, but with a 
 mortgage of responsibility on every one. The gods sell all 
 things." Well, old man, hast got no farther? Why, this 
 was taught thee months and years ago. It was writ on the 
 autumn leaves at Roxbury in keep -school days it sounded 
 in the blind man's ear at Cambridge. 1 And all the joy and 
 all the sorrow since have added nothing to thy wooden book. 
 I can't help it. Heraclitus, grown old, complains that all 
 resolved itself into identity. . . . And I have nothing char- 
 actered in my brain that outlives this word Compensation. 
 
 Three years later, in 1834, he wrote the verses entitled 
 " Compensation ' ' which are printed in the Poems. 
 
 It does not appear that the essay "Compensation," as it 
 stands, was ever delivered as a lecture. No doubt portions 
 
 i Referring to a time when trouble with the eyes deprived him for a tim 
 of their uie.
 
 NOTES 397 
 
 of it appeared in many sermons, and several pages of it came 
 from the lecture " Duty " in the course on Human Life," 
 given in 183839. 
 
 In the first motto the image of *' The lonely Earth amid 
 the balls ' ' is one among many instances of the charm which 
 astronomical phenomena had for Mr. Emerson. Evidences of 
 his reading treatises on the heavenly bodies, and of walks for 
 the purpose of gazing on them, occur frequently in journals 
 and writings. 
 
 Page pj, note I. Mr. Emerson, having left the pulpit, 
 was striving the harder to awaken real religion among those to 
 whom he spoke, to make them feel, not only on Sundays, but 
 through the week, day and night, a beautiful, present Deity 
 working surely through law. 
 
 Page 94, note i. Dr. Holmes ekes out the forlorn view 
 of the preacher whose representations of the Christian's aims 
 and spirit had stirred Mr. Emerson to write this discourse, by 
 the statement of the unhappy John Bunyan : 
 
 A Christian man is never long at ease; 
 
 When one fright 's gone, another doth him seize. 
 
 Page p6, note I. This is a keynote of many of the essays. 
 
 "The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than its 
 works." The Over-Soul. " Heroism is an obedience to a 
 secret impulse of an individual's character." Heroism. 
 
 Himself from God he could not free ; 
 He builded better than he knew. 
 
 ' ' The Problem, ' ' Poems. 
 
 Page 96, note 2. "In this and the following chapter."
 
 398 NOTES 
 
 Compensation is not so obviously treated of in Spiritual 
 Laws ' ' as might be expected from this expression. Yet the 
 doctrine is there in " A man passes for what he is worth," 
 and other statements of the great laws of balance and return. 
 
 Page pf, note I. Every scientific fact and law had its 
 charm for Mr. Emerson, and ne sought its spiritual corre- 
 spondent. Again and again he uses polarity as a parable. It 
 may be found in the third stanza of " The Sphinx " and in 
 "Merlin." 
 
 The reconciliation in the very definition of Polarity of the 
 apparently contradictory notions held by the early philosophers 
 and priests, viz., of the One, and of the Duality that is more 
 obvious in the world, delighted him. 
 
 Page 99, note I. One day Mr. Emerson saw the little 
 child of a neighbor, whom he had always thought to be a 
 sulky churl, playing with a pretty painted cart. He asked 
 the child who made it. " My Papa," answered he, and this 
 fortified Mr. Emerson in the optimism from which he had 
 temporarily lapsed. 
 
 Page 101, note I. 
 
 No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, 
 My oldest force is good as new, 
 And the fresh rose on yonder thorn 
 Gives back the bending heavens in dew. 
 
 " Song of Nature," Poems. 
 
 i <( Polarity (Physics). A term used to designate opposite or dissimilar 
 properties or powers simultaneously developed by a common cause in oppo- 
 Ste or contrasted parts, as in the extremities of a magnet, or in the sides of 
 a polarized ray of light, situated respectively in the plane of polarization and 
 the plane perpendicular to it." Worcester* t Dictionary,
 
 NOTES 399 
 
 Page IO2, note I. A fragment from a lost p,ay of Sopho- 
 cles. 
 
 Page 103, note I. In the poem ' Voluntaries," after the 
 national crime of the long tolerance by our people of African 
 slavery has been told, these lines follow: 
 
 Destiny sat by, and said, 
 " Pang for pang your seed shall pay, 
 Hide in false peace your coward head, 
 I bring round the harvest day." 
 
 And this Nemesis, denied the name of Fate, because justice 
 is a beneficent force, appears as " Worship " in the poem 
 which serves as motto to the essay so named. 
 
 Page 105, note I. 
 
 Naturam expellas furca, tarn en usque recurret, 
 Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix. 
 
 Horace, Epistles, i. 10. 
 
 Page 106, note i. Confessions of St. Augustine, Book I. 
 
 Page 106, note 2. From the Prometheus of ^Eschylus. 
 
 Page 108, note I. The same thought that is more fully 
 expressed in the extract from the letter to Sterling given in the 
 Introduction to the notes on the essays of this volume. It also 
 appears in "The Problem." 
 
 Page no, note i. Mr. Emerson, after his return from 
 Europe in 1833, preached often at New Bedford, and later 
 gave a course of lectures at Nantucket, remaining for some time 
 on the island. Those were the great days of the whaling in- 
 dustry of both those towns, and Mr. Emerson used to repeat 
 the anecdotes of peril and accident in hunting the monster 
 which had been told him by his hosts.
 
 400 NOTES 
 
 Page 112, note I. Herodotus tells that Fortune had so 
 favored Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, that his friend Ama- 
 sis, king of Egypt, sent him word that to ward off the fate 
 sure to follow unbroken prosperity, he ought to sacrifice what- 
 ever he valued most. Struck by this counsel, Polycrates cast 
 into the sea his emerald ring. Next day it returned to him 
 in the stomach of a fish sent as a present. Amasis at once 
 broke off the alliance, foreseeing in this event the impending 
 doom of Polycrates. Revolt of his subjects, and civil and for- 
 eign wars followed, and not long after the tyrant was lured 
 out of his domain by the satrap of Sardis and crucified. 
 
 Page 113, note I. This maxim was a household word 
 with Mr. Emerson. He was loath to place himself under 
 obligation. He wrote: 
 
 Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill ? 
 Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill. 
 
 See also in the Poems, the " Translation from Ibn Jemin." 
 
 Page nj t note I. These thoughts find expression in the 
 arguments used by educators in the last few years to show the 
 mental and moral advantage of manual training schools. 
 
 Page II 6, note I. Wordsworth's Sonnets to Liberty, 
 * September, 1802." 
 
 Page I if, note i. This passage, expanded from an entry 
 made in Mr. Emerson's Journal of Oct. 18, 1832, was dis- 
 tinctly personal in its origin, and shows his habitual humility 
 and courage. It continues : " The stammering tongue and 
 awkward and formal manners which hinder your success in 
 social circles keep you true to the mark which is your own 
 to that particular power which God has given you for your 
 own and others' benefit." 
 
 Page 118, note i. This and the next two sentences are
 
 NOTES 401 
 
 the entry made by Mr. Emerson in his Journal, Sept. 29, 
 1838, two months after he had delivered his earnest message 
 to the young divines on the eve of their entry into the minis- 
 try, and the ensuing disclaimers and attacks on his address had 
 been made by professors and clergymen, vigorously answered 
 by Mr. George Ripley, Mr. Brownson, Professor Parsons, 
 and Rev. James Freeman Clarke. 
 Page Zip, note I. 
 
 If the Law should thee forget, 
 More enamoured serve it yet ; 
 Though it hate thee, suffer long ; 
 Put the Spirit in the wrong. 
 
 "The Poet," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Page 1 2O, note I. This was well said in Boston, where, 
 within a few years, Mr. Garrison, for attempting to address 
 an anti-slavery meeting, had been hustled up State Street 
 with a rope around his body, by the solid men of business 
 and of the professions ; and the mayor, to save his life, had 
 him committed to the jail as a " disturber of the peace." His 
 statue stands now at the head of the handsomest avenue in 
 Boston. 
 
 Page 121, note I. The translation of " Being " in the 
 next word into its pleasing Latin form, and immediately mak- 
 ing it the same as God, is a striking and condensed statement 
 of the creed Each in All, the Universal Mind. 
 
 Page 123, note I, This passage, as written in the Journal, 
 March 19, 1839, is perhaps more fresh and vigorous: 
 
 " Such is my confidence in the compensations of nature, 
 that I no longer wish to find silver dollars in the road, nor to 
 have the best of the bargain in my dealings with people, nor 
 tnat my property should be increased, knowing that all ? l
 
 402 NOTES 
 
 gains are apparent and not real ; for they pay their sure tax. 
 But the perception that it is not desirable to find the dollar I 
 enjoy without any alloy. This is an abiding good : this is so 
 much accession of Godhead." 
 
 The description of the growth and liberation of the ideal 
 man, which follows, written forty years before Mr. Emer- 
 son's death, is strangely autobiographical. 
 
 Page 125, note I. Compare the last stanza of " Give All 
 to Love," Poems. 
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS 
 
 This essay does not appear to have been given in its present 
 form as a lecture; it may have been so used in Concord or 
 some neighboring town just before the Essays were pub- 
 lished, but was not in the Boston courses. Certain passages 
 of the essay, however, are found in the lectures " Religion" 
 and " Manners" in the course on "The Philosophy of His- 
 tory " (183637), in "Being and Seeming" in the course 
 on "Human Culture" (1837-38), and in "School" and 
 "Duty" in the course on "Human Life" (1838-39). 
 
 There was no motto to " Spiritual Laws " in the first edi- 
 tion. 
 
 The verses that he placed before the new edition in 1 847 
 show the fear which he felt, especially at that period, of weak- 
 ening the poetic thought by what, in the letter to Sterling 
 which has been already quoted, he calls "meddling ambi- 
 tiously." Here, in twelve strong lines presenting the great 
 Laws of the Universal Mind, Self-Reliance, Compensation, 
 and Good out of Evil, he followed the counsel to the bard 
 mat he puts in the lips of Merlin in his poem:
 
 NOTES 403 
 
 Great is the art, 
 
 Great be the manners of the bard. 
 
 He shall not his brain encumber 
 
 With the coil of rhythm and number; 
 
 But, leaving rule and pale forethought, 
 
 He shall aye climb 
 
 For his rhyme. 
 
 Pass in, pass in," the angels say, 
 
 "In to the upper doors, 
 
 Nor count compartments of the floors. 
 
 But mount to paradise 
 
 By the stairway of surprise.'* 
 
 Page rji, note I. In the year of the publication of this 
 essay, his honored friend, the Rev. Doctor Ripley, the min- 
 ister of Concord for more than half a century, died. He had 
 married the widow of William Emerson, his predecessor, a 
 chaplain in the army at T iconderoga. Dr. Ripley had been 
 a true friend to his wife's grandchildren. Mr. Emerson tells 
 in his Journal of his visit to the Old Manse at the time of 
 his death ; 
 
 " His body is a handsome and noble spectacle. My mother 
 was moved just now to call it ' the beauty of the dead.' He 
 looks like a sachem fallen in the forest, or rather like a war- 
 rior taking his rest with his martial cloak around him.' I car- 
 ried Waldo to see him and he testified neither repulsion nor 
 surprise, but only the quietest curiosity. He was ninety years 
 old. . . . Yet this face has the tension and resolution of 
 vigorous manhood. ... A man is but a little thing in the 
 midst of these great objects of nature, ... yet a man by 
 moral quality may abolish all thoughts of magnitude, and in his 
 manners equal the majesty of the world."
 
 *04 NOTES 
 
 Page 131, note 2. This passage calls to mind the " morn- 
 ing thought," the " Matutina Cognitio " of St. Augustine. 
 See Notes to Nature (" Prospects "). 
 
 P a S e I3 2 * note ! He would have liked the answer which 
 William Morris gave to one who asked if he were subject to the 
 extreme despondency which so often accompanies the highly 
 poetic temperament. "I dare say I am," said he, "but I 've 
 never had the time to think of it, so I really can't say." 
 
 P a S e *3 2 > note 2 - From Wordsworth's Sonnet XII. in 
 Poems dedicated to National Independence, part ii. 
 
 Page 133, note I. The relative value of his imposed and 
 his chosen studies came up often in Mr. Emerson's mind to 
 the advantage of the latter. Always an eager and delighted 
 reader of the books (or a few passages in books) that he knew 
 as "written for him," he found little in the text-books at 
 school or college, besides the classics, that interested him. In 
 " Heroism " he tells of the power for good of a romance 
 " over a boy who grasps the forbidden book under the bench 
 at school; our delight in the hero is the main fact to our pur- 
 pose. ... If we dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the 
 Roman pride, it is that we are already domesticating the same 
 sentiment." 
 
 Page 134, note I. Purified mankind as transmitters of 
 divine thought are described in the poetical note-books as 
 
 Pipes through which the breath of God doth blow 
 A universal music. 
 
 Page IJS> note i> The image of Mother Nature calming 
 her flustered little son is repeated, sail with a little humor, in 
 the poem " Experience," which serves as motto to the essay 
 of that name in Essays, Second Series. 
 
 Page ijS, note I. Pyrrho of Elis (360-270 B. c.),
 
 NOTES 405 
 
 Greek painter, poet and philosopher, who joined the expedi- 
 tion of Alexander to conquer the East, but returned to Elis 
 and became a priest. ' * He held that the only condition wor- 
 thy of a philosopher was that of suspended judgment. Virtu- 
 ous imperturbability was the highest aim of life, but truth was 
 unattainable. ' ' Appleton's Encyclopedia. 
 
 Page 140, note i. During his stay in New Bedford, in 
 1834, while officiating for his friend the Rev. Dr. Dewey, 
 Mr. Emerson heard the doctrine of Obedience as adopted by 
 the Friends, renunciation of all will, and awaiting the 
 divine motion in the breast. 
 
 Journal. "The sublime religion of Miss Rotch yesterday. 
 She was very much disciplined, she said, in the years of 
 Quaker dissensions, and driven inward, drawn home to find 
 an anchor, until she learned to have no choice, to acquiesce 
 without understanding the reason when she found an obstruc- 
 tion to any particular course of acting. She objected to having 
 this spiritual direction called an impression, or an intimation, 
 or *'' oracle. It was none of them. It was so simple it could 
 han' >e spoken of." 
 
 This statement of faith interested him, but he had already 
 learned to yield himself to the divine stream sweeping away 
 the distinctions of forms. 
 
 Page 141, note i. The boast of Glendower to Hotspur, 
 Henry IP., Part I., Act III., Scene i. 
 
 Page 142, note I. Mr. Emerson thus celebrates the dig- 
 nity of the farmer's work: 
 
 He planted where the deluge p/oughed, 
 His hired hands were wind and cloud; 
 His eye detects the Gods concealed 
 In the hummocks of the field. 
 
 Fragments," Poems, Appendix.
 
 406 NOTES 
 
 Page 143, note I. This image was suggested by a passage 
 in Scott's Old Mortality which Mr. Emerson often repeated 
 with something of the pleasure it had given him in his boyhood. 
 The fierce fanatic, Balfour of Burley, speaks of the possibility 
 of influencing some opponents of the Covenanters by pros- 
 pects of worldly gain, but thus tells in his wrath of the incor- 
 ruptibility of the young nob\eman who opposes them: " But 
 Lord Evandale is a malignant of heart like flint and brow like 
 adamant; the goods of this world fall on him like the leaves 
 on the frost-bound earth, and unmoved he will see them 
 whirled off by the first wind. The heathen virtues of such as 
 he are more dangerous to us than the sordid cupidity of those 
 who . . . may be compelled to work in the vineyard, were 
 it but to earn the wages of sin. ' ' 
 
 Page 147, note i. 
 
 Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own. 
 Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality. 
 
 Page 148, note I. In the essay " Demonology," in Lec- 
 tures and Biographical Sketches, dreams are treated of. See 
 also the quatrain '* Memory " in the Poems. 
 
 Page 151, note I. When somewhat importunately urged 
 to be presented to a person for whom he felt no affinity, Mr. 
 Emerson said, Whom God hath put asunder, let no man 
 put together." 
 
 Page ifj, note z. It was the sentence more than the 
 paragraph in the essay that he valued, hence he strove to make 
 every syllable tell. 
 
 Page 156, note I. This was the remark of his honored 
 friend, Samuel Hoar, Esq. See the notice of him in Lectures 
 and Biographical Sketches, and the sonnet by Mr. F. B. 
 Sanborn prefixed to it. Also Mr. Emerson's quatrain & 
 H." in Poems.
 
 NOTES 407 
 
 Page 164, note I. 
 
 Jack was embarrassed, never hero more, 
 And, as he knew not what to say, he swore. 
 
 Byron's Lland, Canto III., 5. 
 It was, however, Jack Skyscrape and not Ben Bunting. 
 
 Page l6j, note I. Another name for the British queen 
 Boadicea. Mr. Emerson valued certain passages in Beaumont 
 and Fletcher's ' Tragedy of Bonduca," especially the speeches 
 of Caratach in the first scene. 
 
 Page 166, note I. Dr. Holmes in his Life of Emerson 
 quotes the passage, and thus comments: " This is not any the 
 worse for being the flowering out of a poetical bud of George 
 Herbert's." He alludes to "The Elixer," beginning 
 
 Teach me, my God and King, 
 In all things thee to see ; 
 
 and especially to the verse 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 
 Makes drudgerie divine ; 
 
 Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, 
 
 Makes that and th' action fine. 
 
 LOVE 
 
 This essay is almost identical with the fourth lecture in the 
 course on "Human Life," given in Boston by Mr. Emerson 
 in the winter of 1838-39. He made a few verbal changes 
 and unimportant omissions in the later editions from the earlier 
 form. Because the love that Emerson treats of here is not 
 considered from the point of view of young lovers alone, but as 
 fife-long, and unfolding to "a love which knows not sex, nor
 
 408 NOTES 
 
 person, nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom every, 
 where," his poem " Eros " might have served for its motto: < 
 
 The sense of the world is short, 
 
 Long and various the report, 
 To love and be beloved ; v. 
 
 Men and gods have not outlearned it; 
 
 And, how oft soe'er they 've turned it, 
 
 Not to be improved. 
 
 In a letter written to a friend in the year of the publication 
 of this essay, this passage occurs : 
 
 " The same Goodness in which we believe, or rather which 
 alway believes on itself, as soon as we cease to consider duties 
 and consider persons, becomes Love, imperious Love, that 
 great Prophet and Poet, that Comforter, that Omnipotency 
 in the heart. Its eye falls on some mortal form, but it rests 
 not a moment there ; but, as every leaf represents to us all 
 vegetable nature, so Love looks through that spotted, blighted 
 form to the vast spiritual element of which it was created and 
 which it represents. We demand of those we love that they 
 shall be excellent in countenance, in speech, in behavior, in 
 power, in will. They are not so ; we are grieved, but we 
 were in the right to ask it. If they do not share the Deity 
 that dictated to our thought this immense wish, they will 
 quickly pass away, but the demand will not die, but will go 
 on accumulating as the supply accumulates, and the virtues of 
 the soul in the remotest ages will only begin to fulfil the first 
 raving of our poor heart." 
 
 Page 167, note I. In a note-book Mr. Emerson gives 
 the quotation from the Koran thus : 
 
 I was as a treasure concealed: then I loved that I might 
 be known."
 
 NOTES 409 
 
 And below it his own rendering 
 I was as a gem concealed; 
 I burned with love and was revealed. 
 
 And then the second line altered thus : 
 Me my burning love revealed. 
 
 Page 171, note I. Although Mr. Emerson did not allow 
 his mind to revert, looking ever to the brightness before, yet 
 when, of a sudden, a memory came over him of his young 
 wife, his brothers, his mother, gone from this life, he would, 
 for the moment, start and moan, wrung by " infinite com- 
 punctions," due to his own tenderness and humble rating of 
 himself, not thinking how they had prized him. 
 
 Page 172, note I. Once a young school-teacher was 
 invited to tea at his house. He was, as ever, courteous and 
 kind, but after she had gone, he mentioned that, perhaps a 
 dozen years before, he had found on the way to Walden a 
 childish love-letter, open and weather-stained, addressed to 
 her, and, though he did not know the schoolgirl, he had re- 
 membered her name and the little romance. 
 
 Page 775, note I. From the Epithalamium of John 
 Donne. 
 
 Page If6, note I. This was a favorite line of Mr. Em- 
 erson' s, perhaps written by one of his friends, but I have never 
 been able to find whence it came. 
 
 Page iff, note i. From A Nice Valour, by John Fletcher, 
 
 HI., 3- 
 
 Page 777, note 2. 
 
 He looketh seldom in their face, 
 His eyes explore the ground, 
 The green grass is a looking-glass 
 Whereon theii traits are found. 
 
 "Manners," Poems.
 
 410 NOTES 
 
 Page 179, note I. *' The end of all liberal training should 
 be the We of beauty " Socrates having previously de- 
 scribed proper education as a training in virtue. (Plato's Re- 
 public, Book III.) 
 
 Page 281, note z. This passage recalls the one from Plu- 
 tarch, already quoted, to the effect that the Sun is the cause 
 why all men are ignorant of Apollo, by sense withdrawing 
 the mind from that which is to that which seems. 
 
 Professor Wright, of Harvard University, says of this para- 
 graph of Mr. Emerson's, " It is distinctly Platonic, and 
 seems to be an echo of the Phtedrus, where the entombment 
 of the soul is referred to, and the necessity that it must see 
 true being before it can take human form is stated. The 
 thought that it is stupefied by the light of the natural sun and 
 unable to see any other object but those of this world, which 
 are but shadows of real things, ' is perhaps supported by the 
 opening of the seventh book of the Republic, where appears 
 the famous 'image of the cave.' " 
 
 Page 182, note I. I think that the word " base" is used in 
 its primary sense, to signify the humble foundation on the 
 earth. 
 
 Thou shalt not scale Love's height divine 
 By burrowing at its earthly base ; 
 Nor call the priceless treasure thine 
 Who car'st but to affront the case. 
 "The Angel in the House," Coventry Patmore. 
 
 Page 184, note I. From Donne's " Elegy on Mistress 
 Drury." 
 
 Page 183, note I. Compare Emerson' s early poem, Thine 
 Eyes Still Shined." 
 
 Page 1 86, note i. From Abraham Cowley's st Resolved
 
 NOTES 411 
 
 ID be Beloved," in The Mistress; or, Several Copies of Lovt 
 Letters. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 This essay was not given as a lecture under this title and 
 as a whole in any of the Boston courses, although very prob- 
 ably it served in that capacity in some of the Lyceums. As is 
 shown in Mr. Cabot's Memoir (Appendix F), portions of 
 it were taken from the lecture on "Society," in the course 
 on "The Philosophy of History" (1836-37), and others 
 from "The Heart" in the course on " Human Culture," 
 given in Boston the following year. Several paragraphs come 
 from "Private Life," in the course on "The Present Age" 
 (1839-40). 
 
 Friendship, as Mr. Emerson said in the essay, seemed 
 "too good to be believed," and he earnestly desired it, yet 
 so high was his standard that he felt that he had not his share 
 of this blessing and cast the blame on himself. 
 Friends to me are frozen wine ; 
 I wait the sun on them should shine. 
 
 He had many, in the usual sense of the word, and their num- 
 ber increased with the years ; many also unknown to him ; 
 but he had few close friends in all his life. This lack he re- 
 cognized as temperamental and deplored. But here too was 
 " good out of evil " for him. At a little distance he could 
 take the greatest pleasure in his friends, could see them in 
 their proper atmosphere. The treatment that he asked for 
 himself he gave in some tempered degree to them : 
 
 You shall not love me for what daily spends ; 
 You shall not know me in the crowded street,
 
 412 NOTES 
 
 Where I, as others, follow petty ends ; 
 Nor when in fair saloons we chance to meet. 
 Nor when I 'm jaded, sick, anxious or mean. 
 But love me then and only, when you know 
 Me for the channel of the rivers of God 
 From deep, ideal, fontal heavens that flow. 
 
 In practice he was loyal and serviceable to his friends, ye( 
 preferred to see them sparingly, to find in them what thej 
 were meant to be, and " take each by his best handle." 
 
 In writing to one of his nearest friends through life, a gen- 
 tleman of great charm and culture, Mr. Emerson said, prob- 
 ably about the new essay on Love" or on Friendship," 
 a year before its publication : 
 
 "I send you ... [a paper] of last winter's composi- 
 tion, a piece which I wrote with good heart, and trust you 
 may find some sparks still alive in the cinders. The argu- 
 ment were fitter for rhyme, but that comes only by the special 
 favor of the skies. . . . Certainly we discover our friends by 
 the very highest tokens, and these not describable, often not 
 even intelligible, but not the less sure to that augury which is 
 within the intellect, and therefore higher. This is to me the 
 most attractive of all topics, and, I doubt not, whenever I get 
 your full confession of faith, we shall be at one on the matter. 
 Because the subject is so high and sacred, we cannot walk 
 straight up to it ; we must saunter if we would find the secret. 
 Nature's roads are not turnpikes, but circles, and the instincts 
 are the only sure guides." ' 
 
 While lecturing in Philadelphia, in January, 1 843, he wrote 
 to the same friend as follows : 
 
 " I must thank the Quaker City, however, for a new con- 
 viction, that this whim called friendship was the brightest 
 
 i Letters from Ralph Waldo Emerton to a Friend. Houghton, Mifflia 
 & Co., 1899.
 
 NOTES 413 
 
 thought in what Eden or Olympus it first occurred. I think 
 the two first friends must have been travellers. I doubt you 
 think my practice of the finest art to be bad enough, but 
 friendship does not ever seem to me quite real in the world, 
 but always prophetic ; and if I wrote on the Immortality of 
 the Soul, this would be my first topic. Yet is nothing more 
 right than that men should think to address each other with 
 truth and the highest poetry t certain moments, far as their 
 ordinary intercourse is therefrom and buried in trifles. I will 
 try if a man is a man. I will know if he feels that star as I 
 feel it : among trees, does he know them and they him ? Is 
 he at the same time both flowing and fixed ? Does he feel 
 that Nature proceeds from him, yet can he carry himself as if 
 he were the meanest particle ? All and nothing ? These things 
 I would know of him, yet without catechism : he shall tell 
 me them in all manner of unexpected ways, in his behavior 
 and in his repose." 
 
 Page 191, note i. Journal, 1838. "At church I saw that 
 
 beautiful child and my fine, natural, manly neighbor, 
 
 who bore the bread and wine to the communicants with so 
 clear an eye and excellent face and manners. 
 
 "The softness and peace, the benignant humanity that hov- 
 ers over our assembly when it sits down at the morning serviol 
 In church." 
 
 Page 192, note I. 
 
 The tongue is prone to lose the way ; 
 Not so the pen, for in a letter 
 We have not better things to say, 
 But surely say them better. 
 
 " Fragments on Life," Potms,
 
 4H NOTES 
 
 Page 1 94, note 7. The high sidewalk under vhe warn 
 sandy southern slope of hills opposite Mr. Emerson's house, 
 on the " Great Road " to Boston, has a different climate from 
 the rest of Concord, and so used to be a favorite walk in the 
 cold half of the year. Mr. Alcott and Mr. Hawthorne lived 
 on this road, and it was the venerable Squire Hoar's favorite 
 walk. Not only these friends, but the farmers and laborers, 
 the schoolgirls and the schoolboys would have been surprised 
 if they had known with what respectful or admiring eyes 
 Mr. Emerson looked on them from his study windows, and 
 had heard his comments on them. 
 
 Page 195, note i. Milton, Comus. 
 
 Page 196, note I. Compare with this paragraph " The 
 Park ' ' in the Poems. 
 
 Page 197, note i. Journal, 1833. "My entire success, 
 uch as it is, is composed wholly of particular failures." 
 
 Page 197, note 2. 
 
 When half-gods go 
 The gods arrive. 
 
 " Give All to Love," Poems. 
 Page 199, note i. 
 
 If love his moment overstay, 
 Hatred's swift repulsions play. 
 
 The Visit," Poems. 
 
 Page 2OO, note I. Shakspeare, Sonnet xxv. 
 
 Page 202, note I. In his first letter to John Sterling, 
 May 29, 1840, a few months before the publication of this 
 essay, Mr. Emerson wrote : "I am a worshipper of Friend- 
 ship, and cannot find any other good equal to it. As soon ai 
 any man pronounces the words which approve him fit for that 
 great office, I make no haste : he is holy; let me be holy also;
 
 NOTES 415 
 
 our relations are eternal; why should we count days and 
 weeks ? I had this feeling in reading your paper on Carlyle, 
 in which I admired the rare behavior, with far less heed the 
 things said; these were opinions, but the tone was the man." 1 
 
 Page 203, note i. The allusion is to Jones Very, of 
 Salem, a mystic and ascetic, of whom an interesting account 
 it given in Mr. Cabot's Memoir of Emerson, vol. i., chapter 
 x., and a fuller one by Mr. W. P. Andrews, in his introduc- 
 tion to Essays and Poems by Jones Very. In a letter to Miss 
 Margaret Fuller, written in November, 1838, Mr. Emerson 
 wrote: " Very has been here lately and stayed a few days, con- 
 founding us all with the question whether he was insane. At 
 first sight and speech you would certainly pronounce him so. 
 Talk with him a few hours, and you will think all insane but 
 he. Monomania or monosania, he is a very remarkable per- 
 aon; and though his mind is not in a natural, and probably 
 not in a permanent state, he is a treasure of a companion, and 
 I had with him most memorable conversations." 
 
 He records that Very said to him : " I always felt, when 
 I heard you read or speak your writings, that you saw the 
 truth better than others, yet I felt that your spirit was not quite 
 right. It was as if a vein of colder air blew across me." 
 
 Page 2O4t note I, This quotation is from Montaigne, 
 Book I., chapter xxxix., "A Consideration upon Cicero." 
 
 Page 207, note I. In converse with Nature he felt that 
 tne same rule held. " Nature says to man, ' One to one, my 
 dear.' " Journal. 
 
 Page 208, note I. Compare with this paragraph his poem 
 tienne de la Boece." 
 
 Page 209, note I. From the recent notice of the death 
 of a business man of integrity in Chicago, who was also a lover 
 
 i Correipondtncc of Sterling and Emerton.
 
 416 NOTES 
 
 of good books and a loyal friend of Mr. Emerson, I copy thk 
 anecdote showing Mr. Emerson's conscience, and that of his 
 friend also, in the matter of rashly endeavoring to come near 
 to those whom we admire by letters of introduction. " Mr. 
 
 wanted to know Mr. Longfellow and desired Mr. 
 
 Emerson to introduce him. The cautious philosopher replied 
 that he would do so if his young friend could truthfully say that 
 he stood in such relation to the genius of the poet as made it 
 fitting. This the youth decided that he could not do. There 
 seems to me something charming in Mr. Emerson's reliance 
 on the integral delicacy of the boy to guard him against a pos- 
 sible false position." 
 
 Page 212, note I. Here followed in the first edition these 
 two sentences : " The only money of God is God. He 
 pays never with anything less or anything else." 
 
 Page 213, note I. See the poem " Rubies." 
 
 Page 214, note I. This paragraph closes in the first edi- 
 tion with the sentence, "It is the property of the divine to 
 be reproductive." 
 
 Page 215, note I. Carrying out the comparison of friends 
 and books in the chapter "Nominalist and Realist" in the 
 second series of Essays, Mr. Emerson writes: " I find most 
 pleasure in reading a book in a manner least flattering to the 
 author. ... I read for the lustres, as if one should use a 
 fine picture in a chromatic experiment for its rich colors." 
 
 Page 216, note I. " The astronomers are very eager to 
 know whether the moon has an atmosphere ; I am only con- 
 cerned that every man have one. I observe however that it 
 takes two to make an atmosphere. I am acquainted with per. 
 sons who go attended with this ambient cloud." "Aristo- 
 cracy," Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 
 
 Page 21 f t note i. This trait may be found in all Mr.
 
 NOTES 417 
 
 Emerson's letters to his friends, especially those to Carlyle, 
 wherein all his friend's petulances and faults are ignored. 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 The greater part of this essay was probably given as a lec- 
 ture in Boston, the seventh in the course on " Human Cul- 
 ture" in the winter of 1837-38. Mr. Emerson was by 
 education and temperament prudent, but in no petty way. 
 Knowing his want of practical faculty, and the idea of debt or 
 of dependence on others being abhorrent to him, he strove to 
 practise honorable economies. But every humblest fact was 
 valuable to him as a symbol, and he loved to detect the work- 
 ings of the great laws in small things. Recalling in one of 
 his note-books two or three of his experiences as a young 
 Boston minister, he wrote, ' One day when I read a ser- 
 mon of which the text might have been ' Don't mind 
 trifles,' old William Little said to me at the door that, 'if 
 he were to make the sermon, he should have taken the other 
 side.' " 
 
 In the chapter on " Swedenborg " in Representative Men, 
 he said, " Malpighi, following the high doctrines of Hippo- 
 crates, Leucippus and Lucretius, had given emphasis to the 
 dogma that nature works in leasts, tota in minimis existat 
 natura.' " So accepting Plato's word that the macrocosm 
 may be known by the microcosm, in spite of poetic traditions, 
 yet, as a poet, and still young, he found pleasure in a 
 
 Theme no poet gladly sung, 
 Fair to old and foul to young, - 
 
 It he calls it in the motto which he wrote for the second edt
 
 418 NOTES 
 
 tion. An example of the fitness and seeming originality of his 
 English, by steadily holding its classic foundations in mind, 
 occurs in the diminutive in the fourth line, where the little 
 arts of which great arts are built find due recognition. 
 
 Page 221, note I. The other Garden is described in his 
 poem of that name. Although in the early years of his house- 
 keeping, for economy's sake and health's, he hoed and weeded, 
 he soon found that a higher prudence required his spending 
 the time hitherto given to the home garden in that by Wai- 
 den's shores, whence he brought home better and more 
 lasting fruit. 
 
 Page 221, note 2. This is a good illustiarion of the plea- 
 sure Mr. Emerson took in ' ' Aspects " ; in coming to firm, 
 homely ground after a high flight. 
 
 Page 222, note f. The influence of his Beading of the old 
 philosophers, and also of Swedenborg, shows in this para- 
 graph. 
 
 Mr. Emerson loved to look for what his friend Whittier 
 called 
 
 The unsung beauty hid life's common things below. 
 
 Page 223, note I. " Nature is too thin a screen ; the glory 
 of the one breaks in everywhere." -"The Preacher," 
 Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 
 
 Page 223, note 2. A less complimentary estimate of pro- 
 verbs than that given in the essay on " Compensation." It 
 recalls Stevenson's essay ''Crabbed Age and Youth" in 
 Virginibus Puerisque, in which, among other strictures on 
 cowardly and prudential proverbs, he says that, according to 
 them, " never to forget your umbrella through a long life 
 would seem to be a higher and wiser flight of achievement 
 than to go smiling to the stake ; and so long as you are a bit
 
 NOTES 419 
 
 ef a coward, and inflexible in money matters, you fulfil the 
 whole duty of man." 
 
 Page 226, note I. The necessary interruptions of his study 
 and writing that befell Mr. Emerson as a householder he bore 
 with philosophy. He never allowed himself to complain of 
 mischances in the house or abroad, unless later to serve up his 
 misfortune in an amusing manner. Of one thing he was sure, 
 that there was some modest share of benefit in it, and 
 that was his business to find. 
 
 Page 226, note 2. The austere benefits which the North 
 gives to her children are celebrated in the Poems in the lesson 
 which the hardy Titmouse gives to the wanderer in the woods, 
 in " Voluntaries," a war poem, and in the lines in " May- 
 Day:" 
 
 Titan-born, to hardy natures 
 Cold is genial and dear. 
 As Southern wrath to Northern right 
 Is but straw to anthracite ; 
 As in the day of sacrifice, 
 When heroes piled the pyre, 
 The dismal Massachusetts ice 
 Burned more than others' fire, 
 So Spring guards with surface cold 
 The garnered heat of ages old. 
 
 Of course the constant consideration of the effect of Slavery 
 and Free Labor on our people before the Civil War emphasized 
 these distinctions. 
 
 Page 2 JO, note I. Amidst the stream of visionaries flowing 
 by him, often without visible means of support, it was impor- 
 tant that some one should stand firm, with feet planted on 
 the ground.
 
 420 NOTES 
 
 Page 231, note /. Compare his poem " Limits," Poems, 
 Appendix. 
 
 Page 232, note 7. Mr. Emerson could never hear with 
 patience of the divorce of Morals from Intellect. There was 
 always abatement of his enjoyment of Goethe because of hi 
 shortcomings in morals, and hence in insight. 
 
 Poge 2 33* note ! 1 scattered verses on " The Poet'* 
 or The Discontented Poet," written in the same years with 
 these Essays, and only gathered after Mr. Emerson's death 
 in the Appendix to the Poems, he describes these floods and 
 ebbs in the passage beginning 
 
 Ah! happy if a sun or star 
 
 Could chain the wheel of Fortune's car. 
 
 Page 235, note I. Again the ancient doctrine of "The 
 Flowing," shown in the hurrying life of the Yankee of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 Page 237, note I. " In prceliis oculi primi vincuntur " 
 (Tacitus); a quotation often used by Mr. Emerson, but with- 
 out giving the source. 
 
 Page 239, note 7. " He who taketh the sword shall 
 perish by the sword " was a rule that Mr. Emerson held to 
 with regard to argument, whether as a weapon offensive or 
 defensive. His feeling on this subject is shown in his second 
 letter to his friend, Rev. Henry Ware, after the Divinity 
 School Address, printed by Mr. Cabot in his Memoir of Em 
 trson, vol. ii., p. 689. 
 
 Page 2j<p, note 2. By adhering to this simple rule and 
 faith in "The Universal Mind," Mr. Emerson, as Dr. 
 Holmes said, " could go anywhere and find willing listener! 
 n\ong those farthest in their belief from the views he held. 
 Such was his simplicity of speech and manner, such his trans-
 
 NOTES 421 
 
 parent sincerity, that it was next to impossible to quarrel with 
 the gentle image-breaker." Suggesting George Herbert's 
 teaching in his " Church Porch : " 
 
 Scorn no man's love, though of a mean degree; 
 
 (Love is a present for a mightie king.) 
 
 Much lesse make any one thine enemie. 
 
 As gunnes destroy, so may a little sling. 
 
 HEROISM 
 
 This essay is probably the lecture of that name essentially 
 as delivered in the course on Human Culture " in Boston, 
 in the winter of 1837-38. 
 
 The homage which Mr. Emerson felt bound to render to 
 the lowly virtues of Prudence, after dealing with " the fine 
 lyric words of Love and Friendship," made an interesting 
 contrast for his hearers, the more effective by his leading them 
 up to the heights of Heroism in the succeeding lecture. 
 
 In a lecture called " The Present Age," delivered in the 
 following year, this expression occurs, his recognition of 
 the awakening of those days to the need of individual, social, 
 and political reform: "Religion does not seem now to tend 
 to a cultus, but to a heroic life. He who would undertake it 
 is to front a corrupt society and speak rude truth, and he must 
 be ready to meet collision and suffering." 
 
 The saying of Mahomet alone served for motto in the first, 
 edition. 
 
 Page 245, note I. In this list of plays, all from Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, Mr. Emerson evidently trusted to his memory, 
 and gave to one the name from a leading character. There is no 
 play by the name of*' Sophocles," but the extract given is from
 
 422 NOTES 
 
 a piece called Four Plays in One," the special play being 
 "The Triumph of Honor." This is founded on a story of 
 Boccaccio's in the Decameron, the tenth day and the fifth 
 novel. 
 
 Page 24.7, note I. Burley's description of the incorrupti- 
 bility of the young nobleman in Old Mortality, chapter xlii., 
 a passage often repeated by Mr. Emerson to his children. 
 
 Page 248, note I. From youth to age he took delight in 
 Plutarch, the Lives and the Morals. This passage from Mr. 
 Emerson's Introduction to Professor William Watson Good- 
 win's translations of the Morals (printed also in Lectures 
 tnd Biographical Sketches} shows what attracted him to Plu- 
 tarch. " His extreme interest in every trait of character and 
 his broad humanity lead him constantly to Morals, to the 
 study of the Beautiful and Good. Hence his love of heroes, 
 his rule of life, and his clear convictions of the high destiny 
 of the Soul." 
 
 Page 2JO, note I. This paragraph is suggestive of much 
 that is written in Aristocracy," in Lectures and Biographi' 
 (al Sketches. 
 
 Page 2^1, note I. 
 
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
 
 The youth replies, I can. 
 
 Best befriended of the God 
 
 He who, in evil times, 
 
 Warned by an inward voice, 
 
 Heeds not the darkness and the dread, 
 
 Biding by his rule and choice. 
 
 Feeling only the fiery thread
 
 NOTES 423 
 
 Leading over heroic ground, 
 
 Walled with mortal terror round, 
 
 To the aim which him allures, 
 
 And the sweet heaven his deed secures. 
 
 ' Voluntaries," Poems. 
 
 253, note i. From Shakspeare's Henry IV. t Part 
 fl., Act II., Scene ii. 
 
 Page 2JJ, note 2. In the translation of the Oriental 
 Geography of Ibn (or Ebn) Haukal, by Sir George Ouseley, 
 published in London in 1800, this anecdote may be found 
 with somewhat different wording. 
 
 Page 254., note I. One of the most remarkable instances 
 of Mr. Emerson's applied philosophy is the absence in his 
 journals of complaint of untimely, exacting, and wearisome 
 visitors, towards whose bodies and souls he had to exercise 
 hospitality. Once or twice nature asserts herself by a half- 
 humorous explosion of protest. 
 
 The subjects that inspired the poem "The Visit" were 
 probably unaware that they outstayed their welcome. 
 
 Page 256, note i. Another version of this story is told by 
 Plutarch in his " Apothegms of Kings and Great Command- 
 ers," in the Morals, "When Paetilius and Quintus accused 
 him of many crimes before the people ; ' On this very day,' 
 he said, I conquered Hannibal and Carthage ; I for my 
 part am going with my crown on to the capitol to sacrifice ; 
 and let him that pleaseth stay and pass his vote upon me.' 
 Having thus said, he went his way 5 and the people followed 
 him, leaving his accusers declaiming to themselves." 
 
 Page 257, note I. An allusion to the charm of " the novel, 
 hardly smuggled into the tolerance of father and mother " by 
 Jhe schoolboy, occurs again in Domestic Life " in the pas*
 
 424 NOTES 
 
 sage which describes the home life of the Emerson brothers 
 in childhood. 
 
 Page 258, note i. 
 
 Because I was content with these poor fields, 
 Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, 
 And found a home in haunts which others scorned, 
 The partial wood-gods overpaid my love 
 And granted me the freedom of their state. 
 
 Musketaquid," Poems. 
 
 Page 260, note j. Scorn trifles, lift your aims ; do 
 what you are afraid to do : sublimity of character must come 
 from sublimity of motive. ' ' These were the teachings which 
 the Emerson boys received in their youth from their brilliant, 
 loving, and eccentric aunt, Miss Mary Moody Emerson. Her 
 nephew has left an account of her in Lectures and Biographi~ 
 cal Sketches. His words concerning her are carved upon her 
 gravestone in Concord Cemetery : " She gave high counsels. 
 It was the privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably 
 high standard indicated to their childhood, a blessing which 
 nothing else in education could supply." 
 
 Page 262, note I. The Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a Presby- 
 terian minister of intelligence, courage and blameless character, 
 devoted himself to the cause of awakening public sentiment in 
 the Southern and Border States to the wrong of Slavery and its 
 evil results, and became editor of the St. Louis Observer. His 
 press was destroyed by a mob, and he and his family were 
 driven from the city. He then settled in Alton, Illinois, and 
 established his paper, maintaining anti-slavery views. Riots 
 resulted, and three presses, furnished in succession by friends 
 of the cause, were destroyed. Mr. Lovejoy sent for another 
 press. A public meeting of citizens was called because of the
 
 NOTES 425 
 
 excited state of public opinion in the city. Resolutions were 
 passed requiring Lovejoy to retire from the charge of his paper. 
 He stood upon his rights under the Constitution to publish his 
 beliefs freely. To the demand that in deference to mob law 
 he should yield up his post, he said: This I never will do. 
 God in his providence so say all my brethren, and so \ 
 think has devolved upon me the responsibility of maintain- 
 ing my ground here; and, Mr. Chairman, I am determined 
 to do it. A voice comes to me from Maine, from Massachu- 
 setts, from Connecticut, from New York, from Pennsylvania, 
 yea, from Kentucky, from Mississippi, from Missouri, call- 
 ing upon me in the name of all that is dear in heaven or earth 
 to stand fast, and by the help of God I will stand. I know 
 I am but one and you are many. My strength will avail 
 but little against you all. You can crush me if you will, but I 
 shall die at my post, for I cannot and will not forsake it." 
 The press arrived and was lodged by his friends in a stone 
 warehouse belonging to one of a gallant little company who 
 undertook to defend the right of free speech. On the night 
 of November 7, 1 837, the mob demanded the press. The city 
 authorities gave no protection. Mr. Lovejoy' s friends refused 
 to surrender and were attacked. They resisted, and when 
 the building was set on fire, Lovejoy coming out to prevent 
 it was shot dead. 
 
 Mr. George P. Bradford, one of Mr. Emerson's nearest 
 friends, described to me the occasion when he delivered this 
 discourse in Boston. Towards the end of the lecture, while 
 carrying his audience the cultivated people of Boston 
 with him, in full sympathy with devoted courage in other 
 times and lands, suddenly, looking his hearers in the eyes, he 
 brought before them the instance in their own day and coun- 
 try, and told of the martyrdom of Lovejoy for the right of
 
 *26 NOTES 
 
 free speech. Mr. Bradford said that a cold shudder seemed 
 to run through the audience at this calm braving of public 
 opinion twenty years before its ripening in the great war for 
 freedom. Of course Lovejoy had other defenders in Boston, 
 notably Wendell Phillips, who first entered the lists as an 
 anti-slavery champion at the time of his slaying. 
 Page 262, note 2. 
 
 Freedom's secret wilt thou know ? 
 
 Counsel not with flesh and blood ; 
 
 Loiter not for cloak or food ; 
 
 Right thou feelest such to do. 
 
 Page 263, note I. These lines were evidently quoted 
 from memory from " A Dirge," one of Tennyson's early 
 poems. The burden, "Let them rave," runs through all 
 the verses. The following one comes as near the lines as 
 quoted as any of them : 
 
 Thou wilt not turn upon thy bed ; 
 
 Chaunteth not the brooding bee 
 
 Sweeter tones than calumny ? 
 Let them rave. 
 
 Thou wilt never raise thine head 
 
 From the green that folds thy grave 
 Let them rave. 
 
 THE OVER-SOUL 
 
 This essay was not given as a lecture in the Boston courses. 
 Portions of it came from " Religion " in that on the " Philo- 
 sophy of History " (1836-37), from "Holiness" in that 
 on "Human Culture" (1837-38); much was taken from 
 the "Doctrine of the Soul," the first lecture in the course on
 
 NOTES 427 
 
 "Human Life," and a little from "School" in the same 
 course. 
 
 Mr. George Willis Cooke in his Life of Emerson speaks 
 of the influence first exerted by German thought in this coun- 
 try about the year 1830, received mainly through Coleridge 
 as a medium, in opposition to the utilitarian views held by Eng- 
 lish moralists. I quote from his interesting chapter on " The 
 Era of Transcendentalism: " " The new thought was every- 
 where a reaction against it [the philosophy of Locke and 
 Bentham, and of many English Unitarians]. . . . It declared 
 that man has innate ideas, and a faculty transcending the senses 
 and the understanding. It identified morality and religion, and 
 made intuition their source. Coleridge calls this transcendent 
 faculty Reason, and regarded it as the immediate beholding of 
 supersensual things. He says it cannot be called a faculty, and 
 much less a personal property of the human mind. We do 
 not possess it, but partake of it. It is identical with the Uni- 
 versal Reason, a spark from which enters the human mind. 
 He says there is but one reason, which all intelligent beings 
 share in, and it is identical in them all. This idea became 
 most fruitful in Emerson's mind, the source of his doctrine of 
 the Over-Soul." 
 
 It is certain that Mr. Emerson set a high value on Cole- 
 ridge's teachings, through which he first came in contact with 
 German ideas, but his eager readings of Plato, beginning in 
 college, led him later to Plotinus, Porphyry, Synesius, Proclus, 
 and the other Neo-platonists influenced by Oriental thought. 
 These " great spiritual lords who have walked in the world," 
 " the high priesthood of the pure reason," ' had given him a 
 broader conception than contemporary preachers entertained 
 of "Him in whom we live and move and have our being.'* 
 i In the last pages of the essay on " Intellect."
 
 4 i8 NOTES 
 
 Dr. Holmes, in commenting on "The Over-Soul," says: 
 "It is a curious amusement to trace many of these thought! 
 and expressions to Plato, or Plotinus, or Proclus, or Porphyry, 
 to Spinoza or Schelling, but the same tune is a different thing 
 according to the instrument on which it is played. There are 
 tongs without words, and there are states in which, in place 
 of the trains of thought moving in endless procession with ever- 
 varying figures along the highway of Consciousness, the soul 
 is possessed by a single all-absorbing idea, which, in the high- 
 est state of spiritual exaltation, becomes a vision." 
 
 The only motto which wa"s prefixed to the essay in the 
 first edition was that from the Psychozoia, or Life of the Soul, 
 Canto II., 19, by Henry More, printed in 1620. This verse 
 was included by Mr. Emerson in his collection of poems, Par- 
 nassus, where he gave it the title " Euthanasia." 
 
 Page 267, note I. Hardly anywhere in his writings has 
 Mr. Emerson stated his belief in the sure triumph of beneficent 
 law more compactly than in this sentence, suggesting that the 
 leaven of conscience would work to the salvation of the race. 
 Page 268, note I. This expression recalls the line in which 
 Mr. Emerson took great pleasure in a poem sent to him by 
 Mr. George E. Tufts, of New York : 
 
 Life is a flame whose splendor hides its base. 
 Page 268, note 2. Again the doctrine of The Flowing ' * t 
 Far seen the river glides below, 
 Tossing one sparkle to the eyes. 
 I catch thy meaning, wizard wave ; 
 The River of my Life replies. 
 
 Peter's Field," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Page 2fO t note /. Dr. Holmes said that ' In the Ov
 
 NOTES 429 
 
 Soul ' Emerson attempted the impossible. He is as folly con- 
 scious of this fact as the reader of his rhapsody, nay, he U 
 more profoundly penetrated with it than any of his readers. 
 . . . The ' Over-Soul ' might almost be called the Over- 
 fiow of a spiritual imagination." 
 
 Page 270, note 2. Compare the essay on " Demonology " 
 in Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 
 
 Page 2fO> note j. This suggests the expressions of Cole- 
 ridge as rendered by Mr. Cooke in the note at the beginning 
 of this chapter. 
 
 Page 271, note I. This, as Mr. Emerson says elsewhere, 
 is the weakness of talent as compared with genius. 
 
 Page 271, note 2. Found in a list of Spanish proverbs given 
 te one of his early journals. 
 
 Page 272, note i. 
 
 Olympian bards who sung 
 Divine ideas below, 
 Which always find us young, 
 And always keep us so. 
 
 Lines from the "Ode to Beauty," Poems; used also u 
 motto to "The Poet," in Essays, Second Series. 
 
 Page 274, note I. In the first edition this last clause is 
 thus given : " All else is idle weeds for her wearing." 
 
 Page 275, note /. The doctrine of Each in All, the ev KCU 
 Trav of Xenophanes, and " the venerable and awful Parme- 
 nides," is also a familiar thought of Plato. 
 
 Page 2J5> note 2. Through his preaching, and increas- 
 ingly through his lecturing experiences, Emerson honored his 
 hearers, however humble, by not " coming down to them," 
 but reached them by his assuming their virtue, and speaking 
 to the "common soul" in them. 
 
 Page 2j6 t note I. A favorite image with him, drawn from
 
 430 NOTES 
 
 the Copernican astronomy, which, by considering the systot 
 from the centra! sun, did away with the perturbations appar 
 cnt in the Ptolemaic system. This is spiritualized in the poem 
 "Uriel." 
 
 Page 278, note I. John Murray Forbes, a great and silent 
 power for good in the State and Country during and after the 
 Civil War, and one of Mr. Emerson's valued friends, used to 
 tell his children : "So the thing is done, it is of no conse- 
 quence who does it." 
 
 Page 278, note 2, " We know better than we do," and 
 " We are wiser than we know," recur in Emerson's teachings. 
 The line in " The Problem," 
 
 He builded better than he knew, 
 
 has passed into a proverb. 
 
 Page 278, note 3. In the end of the poem " Worship" 
 this image is rendered in verse. 
 
 Page 279, note I. With this may be compared a para- 
 graph in the essay " Education " in Lectures and Biographical 
 Sketches. 
 
 Page 281, note I. Here, as also some three pages earlief 
 in this essay, recurs the favorite image 
 
 Being's tide 
 
 Swells hitherward, and myriads of forms 
 Lave, robed with beauty, painted by the sun; 
 Their dust, pervaded by the nerves of God, 
 Throbs with an overmastering energy 
 Knowing and doing. 
 
 " Pan," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Page 281, note 2. He quotes Bacon elsewhere as saying 
 Nature is commanded by obeying her."
 
 NOTES 431 
 
 Page 282, note i. 
 
 Blasted with excess of light. 
 
 Gray, Progress of Poesy. 
 
 Page 282, note 2, It was Emerson's custom to answer 
 the crude inquiries on great subjects of his young visitors cour- 
 teously, not directly, but in a way to show the great propor- 
 tions of the subject, and set them really thinking. " The 
 gods like indirect names and dislike to be named directly." 
 
 Page 283, note i. This is like a passage in " Demono- 
 logy," in Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 
 
 Page 284, note I. Believing in the indestructibility of spirit 
 and of matter, and regarding the latter as a method of instruc- 
 tion, he never disquieted himself, but, assured that he and all 
 men shared in the universal existence, did not care to peep 
 beyond the curtain. He said, " I am. The whole fact is here 
 or nowhere." 
 
 Page 285, note I. The Spirit lodged in man has spurred 
 him to seeking light, and works out the answer in his life. 
 
 They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 When me they fly, I am the wings; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 
 
 " Brahma," Poems. 
 
 Page 286, note i. 
 
 Thou art the unanswered question. 
 
 "The Sphinx," Poems. 
 
 God enters by a private door into every individual. " In- 
 tellect," Essays, Second Series. 
 
 Page 286, note 2. In his first letter to John Sterling Emer- 
 ion said, speaking of Sterling's paper on Carlyle, in it 1
 
 432 NOTES 
 
 admired the rare behavior, with far less heed the things saidj 
 these were opinions, but the tone was the man." 
 
 Page 288, note i. Journal, 1851. " There is something . 
 our brothers over the sea do not know it or own it ; Scott, 
 Southey, Hallam, and Dickens would deny and blaspheme it 
 which is setting them all aside, and the whole world also, 
 tnd planting itself forever and ever. ' ' 
 
 Page 289, note I. 
 
 Himself from God he could not free. 
 
 "The Problem," Poems. 
 
 Page 28y> note 2. This image is used in some lines on the 
 fl-ansient character of grief, printed among the " Fragments on 
 Life ' ' in the Appendix to the Poems. 
 
 Page 292, note i. Emerson believed that in saying " I and 
 the Father are one " Jesus meant to teach that all men could 
 become channels of deity, instancing himself. 
 
 Page 292, note 2. Dr. Holmes spoke of him as "an icon- 
 oclast without a hammer, who took down our idols from their 
 pedestals so tenderly that it seemed like an act of worship." 
 In quoting this passage, Mr. Cabot adds : " That is well said. 
 But I am not sure that he took them down, or ever thought it 
 worth while that they should come down so long as they were 
 really objects of worship. What he wished to disturb was 
 formalism, ... the gazing after past revelations until we are 
 blind to the present." 
 
 Page 293, note i. This thought is found in the second 
 motto of "Compensation," "And all that Nature made 
 thine own," etc. 
 
 Page 293, note 2. This sentence was first an entry made 
 by Mr. Emerson in his Journal on the eve of going to deliver 
 his Divinity School Address in 1838. The sentence and tht
 
 NOTES 433 
 
 entire paragraph were a portion of a sermon preached, prob- 
 ably in the following winter, in East Lexington. Mrs. Emer- 
 son cared so much for this passage that she gave it to her 
 children to read while they were very young. 
 Page 297, note I. 
 
 No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, 
 My oldest force is good as new, 
 And the fresh rose on yonder thorn 
 Gives back the bending heavens in dew. 
 
 Song of Nature," Poems- 
 
 CIRCLES 
 
 No part of this essay appears to have been taken from ear- 
 lier papers, and no lecture of that name is recorded. On the 
 I zth of September, 1 840, in a letter to Miss Elizabeth Hoar, 
 Mr. Emerson wrote : My chapter on Circles ' begins to 
 prosper, and when it is October I shall write like a Latin 
 Father." 
 
 His friend, William Ellery Channing, thus spoke of the range 
 of Emerson's mind : 
 
 The circles of thy thought shine vast as stars, 
 No glass shall round them, 
 No plummet sound them, 
 
 They hem the observer like bright steel wrought bars, 
 And limpid as the sun, 
 Or as bright waters run 
 From the cold fountain of the Alpine springs, 
 Or diamonds richly set in the king's rings. 
 Dr. Richard Garnctt writes: The object of this fine essay 
 
 * Lift of Ralph Waldo Emtrton, by Richard Garnett, LL. D., London, 
 Walter Scott, 1888. 
 II
 
 434 NOTES 
 
 quaintly entitled Circles ' is to reconcile this rigidity of unal 
 terable law with the fact of human progress. Compensation 
 illustrates one property of a circle, which always returns to the 
 point where it began, but it is no less true that around every 
 circle another can be drawn. . . . Hence there is no security 
 but in infinite progress. . . . Emerson followed his own coun- 
 sel ; he always keeps a reserve of power. His theory oi 
 Circles ' reappears without the least verbal indebtedness to 
 himself in the splendid essay on ' Love.' " 
 
 The poem " Uriel " should be read in connection with thi 
 essay. 
 
 Page jar, note I. 
 
 Line in Nature is not found, 
 Unit and Universe are round. 
 
 " Uriel," Poem. 
 Page JOI, note 2. 
 
 Another morn has risen on mid-noon. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, V., 310. 
 
 The last clause in the sentence suggests one by Mr. Emer- 
 son's neighbor poet, William Ellery Channing, in " The Poet** 
 Hope," 
 
 If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea. 
 
 Page 302, note /. The old doctrine of Heracleitus again, 
 brought to the modern use of progress by evolution. The 
 prophecies of 1 841 made in the later portion of this paragraph 
 have been strangely fulfilled in sixty years. 
 
 Page JOJ, note I. 
 
 Giddy with motion, Nature reels, 
 Sun, moon, man, undulate and stream. 
 The mountains flow, the solids seem.
 
 NOTES 435 
 
 Change acts, reacts ; back, forward hurled, 
 And pause were palsy to the world. 
 
 "The Poet," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Page 304, note i. " Throw a stone into the stream, and 
 die circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of 
 all influence. ' ' Nature, chapter iv. 
 
 The ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. 
 
 Woodnotes," II., Poems. 
 
 Page 304, note 2. It was a curious superstition in the 
 Middle Ages that evil spirits could not get out of a circle 
 drawn around them. Some American Indians leave a slight 
 break in the colored circles that decorate their baskets for the 
 Vevil to get out. 
 
 Page J07, note I. 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man. 
 
 Samuel Daniels " To the Countess of Cumberland." 
 (Quoted in Civilization," Society and Solitude.} 
 
 Page JO/, note 2. The ideas expressed in this paragraph 
 may also be found in the Poems. 
 
 Have I a lover 
 Who is noble and free ? 
 I would he were nobler 
 Than to love me. 
 
 " The Sphinx," Poems. 
 
 Heartily know, 
 When half-gods go 
 The gods arrive." 
 
 Give All to Love," Poems. 
 See also " The Park."
 
 436 NOTES 
 
 Page 308, note z. It was Mr. Emerson's own habit it 
 his lectures, after presenting strongly one side of his theme, 
 suddenly to show the other aspect of it, almost ignored be- 
 fore. This might be done in another Jecture of the course, 
 but often in the same one. 
 
 In vain produced, all rays return. 
 Evil will bless, and ice will burn. 
 
 " Uriel," Poems. 
 
 Page 311, note /. In "The Poet," I. (Appendix), 
 nd in " Woodnotes," II., in the passage beginning, 
 " Hearken once more," he tells of the instability of apparent 
 permanencies. 
 
 Page 312, note I. The necessary alternation from books 
 to nature, from society to solitude, was always urged by Mr. 
 Emerson, the latter in each case ranking the former. See the 
 passage in "The American Scholar " beginning " Undoubt- 
 edly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordi- 
 nated." 
 
 See thou bring not to field or stone 
 
 The fancies found in books ; 
 
 Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, 
 
 To brave the landscape's looks. 
 
 "Waldeinsamkeit," Poem*. 
 
 Page Jij, note i. The need of direct relation of the 
 soul with God is dwelt upon at length in the latter part of 
 the "Address to the Senior Class of the Divinity School" in 
 Nature, Addresses, and Lectures : " Let me admonish you, 
 6rst of all, to go alone . . . and dare to love God without 
 mediator or veil," etc. 
 
 Page 314., note I. The welcome idea of the symbolism 
 of Nature he received first from Plato, and it was this whit*
 
 NOTES 437 
 
 give him pleasure in Swedenborg's teachings. " The noblest 
 ministry of Nature is to stand as an apparition of God." 
 Nature, chapter vii. 
 
 Page 314, note 2. Compare the second motto of " Com- 
 pensation ' ' in this volume. 
 
 P*g e 3I7> note i. From Young's Night Thoughts. 
 
 Page 3*7* no*' 2. Pyrrho of Elis (360-270 B. c.) 
 taught that truth was unattainable, and that men should be 
 indifferent to all external circumstances. 
 
 P a S e 318 1 note I. This consoling idea of Good out of 
 Evil is taught in the motto for "Spiritual Laws" in thw 
 volume and in " Uriel " in the Poems. 
 
 The balance-beam of Fate was bent, 
 The bounds of good and ill were rent, 
 Strong Hades could not keep his own, 
 But all slid to confusion. 
 
 Page 318, note 2. Dr. Holmes, referring to this para- 
 graph, says : " But Emerson states his own position so frankly 
 in his essay entitled Circles,' that the reader cannot take is- 
 sue with him as against utterances which he will not defend." 
 
 Page 319, note i. His poem "Terminus" shows how 
 Emerson met advancing old age. 
 
 INTELLECT 
 
 This lecture was not given in any of the Boston courses. 
 Passages of no great length were taken from the lectures OB 
 ''Literature" in the course on "The Philosophy of His- 
 tory" (1836-37), and from " The Doctrine of the Soul " 
 gnd " Genius " in that on " Human Life " (1838-39).
 
 43 NOTES 
 
 Mr. Emerson never took any pleasure in systems of met*- 
 physics. He even once said in a lecture, " Who has not 
 looked into a metaphysical book ? And what sensible man 
 ever looked twice?" "Yet," as Mr. Cabot says in his 
 Memoir, ' the repulsiveness lay not in the subject, but in 
 the way in which it is treated." He wished to " state the 
 laws and powers of the mind as simply and as attractively as 
 the physical laws are stated by Owen and Faraday." He 
 welcomed all the scientific discoveries of his day for their 
 symbolic value, assured that the same laws ruled mind and 
 matter. Hence for years he planned a work on the Natural 
 History of Intellect. He gave three lectures on that sub- 
 ject in England in 1848, and later others in America, espe- 
 cially two courses at Harvard College. But he was prevented 
 by failing strength from completing the work he designed. 
 After his death Mr. Cabot collected what matter vas avail- 
 able from the manuscripts, and this gives the title to the vol- 
 ume Natural History of Intellect. 
 
 The motto of this chapter appears in one of Mr. Emer- 
 son's note-books as the third verse of a short poem which is 
 included in the Appendix to the Poems, among the Frag- 
 ments on the Poet. ' ' The introductory verses run thus : 
 
 Pale genius roves alone, 
 
 No scout can track his way, 
 None credits him till he have shown 
 
 His diamonds to the day. 
 
 Not his the feaster's wine, 
 
 Nor land, nor gold, nor power, 
 
 By want and pain God screeneth him 
 Till his elected hour.
 
 NOTES 439 
 
 Page 325, note I. Mr. Emerson at the age of nineteen 
 was associated with his brother William, who taught a pri- 
 rate school for young ladies in Boston. In this capacity he 
 taught chemistry from some elementary text-book, possibly 
 showing a few of the simpler experiments. Later he heard 
 with great interest of the discoveries in that science from his 
 wife's brother, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, an accomplished 
 chemist and geologist. Each new fact he viewed as a symbol 
 awaiting interpretation. 
 
 Page 327, note i. Journal, Of the most romantic fact 
 the memory is more romantic." 
 
 Page 327, note 2. " Thoughts come into our minds by 
 avenues which we never left open." 
 
 Page 328, note I. In the early part of" Natural History 
 of Intellect " in the volume thus named, Intellect is consid- 
 ered " as an ethereal sea, which ebbs and flows, which 
 surges and washes hither and thither, carrying its whole vir- 
 tue into every creek and inlet which it bathes. To this sea 
 every human house has a water front. But this force, cre- 
 ating nature, visiting whom it will and withdrawing from 
 whom it will, making day where it comes and leaving night 
 when it departs, is no fee or property of man or angel. 
 It is as the light, public and entire to each, and on the same 
 terms. ' ' 
 
 Page 329, note I. Mr. Emerson himself strove to ren- 
 der the thought that came to him truly, not to " meddle am- 
 bitiously " and spoil it by "what we miscall Art," as he 
 said in his letter to Sterling. 1 He brought kindred thoughts 
 together, but purposely did not elaborate the argument, and 
 left to the reader the pleasure of letting the electric spark pass 
 and show the connection. 
 
 i Letters of Emerson and Sterling, No. IV.
 
 440 NOTES 
 
 Page 332, note I. It is a Jittle seed," found in die 
 first edition, is here omitted. 
 
 Page 333, note i. ' Day creeps after day, each full of 
 facts, dull, strange despised things. . . . And presently the 
 roused intellect finds gold and gems in one of these scorned 
 facts, then finds that a day of facts is a rock of diamonds ; 
 that a fact is an Epiphany of God." " Education," Lec- 
 tures and Biographical Sketches, 
 
 Page 333, note I. The seeming contradiction by this 
 sentence of what has gone before, as to the reception rather 
 than the originating of ideas, is done -away with by the au- 
 thor's strictly classic use of the word produce, to bring 
 forward the ideas received, joined perhaps with others that 
 shed light on them. 
 
 Page 336, note /. 
 
 Unless to thought be added will, 
 Apollo is an imbecile. 
 
 Lines from one of the Note-boob. 
 
 Page 339, note /. " Excess of individualism, when it is 
 not corrected or subordinated to the Supreme Reason, makes 
 that vice which we stigmatize as monotones, ... or, as the 
 French say, enfant perdu d'une conviction iso/ee, which give 
 such a comic tinge to all society." Natural History ijf 
 In'illect. 
 
 Page 340, note I. 
 
 For thought, and not praise, 
 
 Thought is the wages 
 
 For which I sell days, 
 
 Will gladly sell ages, 
 
 And willing grow old, 
 
 Deaf and dumb and blind and cold*
 
 NOTES 441 
 
 Melting matter into dreams, 
 Panoramas which I saw, 
 And whatever glows or seems 
 Into substance, into law. 
 Fragments on the Poet," Poems, Appendix. 
 
 Pag* 341, note /. The duties and sacrifice required of 
 the scholar are dwelt on in The American Scholar*' in 
 Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, and in "The Man of 
 Letters " and The Scholar " in Lectures and Biographical 
 Sketches. 
 
 Page 343, note i. The Egyptian god Horus it repre- 
 sented with his finger on his lips. 
 
 Page 344, note i. His counsel was always to read a 
 little proudly," and in life he urged that one should not mis- 
 take others' chivalries for one's own. 
 
 Page 345, note I. A name given to a group of philoso- 
 phers, mostly Neo-platonists, from the mythical Hermes 
 Trismegistus (thrice great), a Greek name for the Egyptian 
 god Thoth, to whom many of these writings were ascribed. 
 
 Page 346, note I. This saying is quoted from Plotinus. 
 Ic is evident from his mention of these masters of ancient 
 thought and his markings on the fly-leaves of their books, 
 that, following his custom, he rapidly found such things as 
 were for him, and turning their abstruse pages " read for lus- 
 tres." It was evidently the lofty tone that pleased him, and 
 certain quotations and " Chaldean Oracles." 
 
 Mr. George Willis Cooke in his book on Emerson, chap- 
 ter xix., gives an interesting brief abstract of the doctrine! 
 of the Neo-platonistt.
 
 442 NOTES 
 
 ART 
 
 In the course on the "Philosophy of History*' given in 
 Boston in 183637, the third lecture was on "Art," following 
 "The Humanity of Science," and preceding "Literature." 
 Much from this lecture appears in this essay, but some pages 
 come from " Eye and Ear," in the next year's course. 
 
 In Mr. Emerson's youth there were almost no works of 
 art, except portraits, to be seen in New England. At a sad 
 epoch of his life he landed in Italy and spent a few weeks 
 there. He saw the statues in the museums of Naples and 
 Rome. Looking for greatness of character through works of art, 
 endowed with a good sense of form and fitness, but little for 
 color, and none for technique, he evidently took great and 
 lasting pleasure in the works of Michelangelo and Raphael in 
 the Vatican. The temperance, simplicity and perfect taste of 
 Greek art always charmed him. He saw the Elgin Marbles 
 in London. 
 
 After his return he saw the paintings of Allston, enjoyed the 
 drawings of Flaxman, and a friend, a connoisseur in art, lent 
 him his collection of engravings and drawings, in which Mr. 
 Emerson took great pleasure. 1 Among the artists he had few 
 friends, but he read works on art, especially valuing them for 
 the glimpses they gave of the artist at work, and his sayings. 
 
 Dr. Holmes, while praising the clothing by Emerson of the 
 common aspects of life with the colors of his imagination, 
 feels that the danger line was crossed when, in the motto to 
 " Art," he would have us give even to 
 
 Barrows, trays and pans 
 Grace and glimmer of romance. 
 
 Vet he could do so, and see even planetary motion in a school- 
 See Lettert of Eminon to a Friend. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.
 
 NOTES 443 
 
 boy's play. Journal. " I saw a boy on the Concord Com- 
 mon pick up an old bruised tin milk pan that was rusting by 
 the roadside, and, poising it on the top of a stick, . . . mad<? 
 it describe the most elegant imaginable curves." 
 
 Page jfi, note I. Thomas Couture, in his admirable 
 little book, Methods et Entretiens d* Atelier, speaks thus of 
 the portrait painter's duty of giving the best that can be seen 
 in his sitter : " Faites faire a toutes vos formes, a toutes vos 
 lignes, un travail ascensionnel vers ce que constitue la beaute, 
 tout en restent cependant dans les limites du vrai, et vous ob- 
 tiendrez un portrait ressemblant qui, a 1'etonnement de tous, 
 excepte pourtant celui que vous aurez represente, semblera 
 beaucoup moins laid que le modele." 
 
 Page 352, note I. " The universal soul is the alone cre- 
 ator of the useful and the beautiful j therefore to make any- 
 thing useful or beautiful the individual must be submitted to 
 the universal mind." " Art," Society and Solitude. 
 
 Page 353, note I. These thoughts are expressed in his 
 poem " The Problem " and in the essay on "History" in 
 this volume. 
 
 *' Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being 
 MS earth and sun." " Art," Society and Solitude. 
 
 Page 355, note I. Selection, ' the first office of art," 
 and then what Ruskin calls " Principality," the concen- 
 tration of interest, or focussing in a picture, are dwelt upon 
 in this paragraph, and the old doctrine of the Macrocosm 
 shown in the Microcosm. 
 
 Page 356, note I. As stated by the squirrel to the moun- 
 tain, in an early poem of Emerson's, 
 
 Talents differ, 
 
 All is well and wisely put ;
 
 444 NOTES 
 
 If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
 Neither can you crack a nut. 
 
 Page 35 f t note I. Mr. Emerson found, and said of him- 
 self, that, though he did not have a musical ear, he had 
 " musical eyes." In the physical and metaphysical sense 
 his eyes were opened. Like his Seyd, 
 
 Beauty chased he everywhere, 
 and he found what he looked for. 
 
 Page 358, note I. Mr. Emerson knew well the truth 
 which the French artist insisted on to his pupils : It is not 
 true that one knows what one sees. One sees what one 
 knows." 
 
 This paragraph was taken from the lecture ' Eye and 
 Ear " in the course on " Human Culture." 
 
 Page 359, note i. An instance of his happy use of hia 
 classical studies in the choice of this best yet unusual word. 
 Page 361, note I. 
 
 Coelum non animum mutant 
 Qui trans mare currunt. 
 
 Horace. 
 
 PS e 3& 1 ' note 2 ' See Hamlet, Act I., Scene v. 
 
 P a & e 3& 2 > note * I D tne " Fragments on the Poet," in 
 the Poems, he tells of a random word, overheard from the 
 Muse, 
 
 I travelled and found it at Rome 
 
 Eastward it filled all Heathendom, 
 
 And it lay on my hearth when I came home. 
 
 Page 362, note 2. "Newton did not exercise more 
 ingenuity, but less than another to see the world." 
 
 Art," Society and Solitude.
 
 NOTES 445 
 
 Page 363, note I. His application of the evolution doc- 
 trines of Hunter and Lamarck appears in the words tendency 
 and effort. 
 
 Page 362, note 2. With "the negative," the dismal, or 
 sceptical in painting or in writing he had no sympathy. 
 
 Page 364., note I. This paragraph seems a strong in- 
 stance of that quality of Mr. Emerson of staring aspects with- 
 out qualification, against which he warns his readers in ' ' Cir- 
 cles " : "When I obey my whims, let me remind the 
 reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least 
 value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, 
 as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. . . . 
 I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my 
 back." He valued painting, and sculpture more, and the 
 motto, written long after the essav ilscif, shows his feeling 
 of the necessity and blessing of art. 
 
 Pag' 367, note i. The low state of art in his day and 
 country should be remembered. 
 
 Page 369, note I. Emerson's far sight and faith went 
 beyond the materialism of his age and country, regarding these 
 M a necessary stage in evolution.
 
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