REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
 
 PLATO.
 
 Representative 
 Men 
 
 
 h-M-CALDWELL 
 COMPANY 
 NEV/ORK
 
 Annex 
 
 rt-i 
 iioo 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Uses of Great Men. 
 
 II. Plato ; or, the Philosopher 39 
 
 Plato ; New Readings 77 
 
 III. Swedenborg ; or, the Mystic 89 
 
 IV. Montaigne ; or, the Skeptic *39 
 
 Y. Shakspeare ; or the Poet 1 7$ 
 
 YI. Napoleon ; or, the Man of the Wor d 205 
 
 VH. Goethe } or, the Writer 239
 
 USES OF GREAT MEN.
 
 I. 
 
 USES OF GREAT MEN. 
 
 IT is natural to believe in great men. If 
 the companions of our childhood should turn 
 out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it 
 would not surprise us. All mythology opens 
 with demigods, and the circumstance is high 
 and poetic ; that is, their genius is paramount. 
 In the legends of the Gautama, the first men 
 ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet. 
 
 Nature seems to exist for the excellent. 
 The world is upheld by the veracity of good 
 men : they make the earth wholesome. They 
 who lived with them found life glad and nu 
 tritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in 
 our belief in such society ; and actually, or 
 ideally, we manage to live with superiors. 
 We call our children and our lands by their 
 names. Their names are wrought into the 
 verbs of language, their works and effigies are 
 in our houses, and every circumstance of the 
 day recalls an anecdote of them. 
 
 9
 
 io IReprcsentative 
 
 The search after the great is the dream of 
 youth, and the most serious occupation of 
 manhood. We travel into foreign parts to 
 find his works, if possible, to get a glimpse 
 of him. But we are put off with fortune in 
 stead. You say, the English are practical ; 
 the Germans are hospitable ; in Valencia, the 
 climate is delicious ; and in the hills of Sacra 
 mento, there is gold for the gathering. Yes, 
 but I do not travel to find comfortable, rich, 
 and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots 
 that cost too much. But if there were any 
 magnet that would point to the countries and 
 houses where are the persons who are intrin 
 sically rich and powerful, I would sell all, and 
 buy it, and put myself on the road to-day. 
 
 The race goes with us on their credit. The 
 knowledge, that in the city is a man who in 
 vented the railroad, raises the credit of all the 
 citizens. But enormous populations, if they 
 be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, 
 like hills of ants, or of fleas the more, the 
 worse. 
 
 Our religion is the love and cherishing of 
 these patrons. The gods of fable are the 
 shining moments of great men. We run all 
 our vessels into one mould. Our colossal 
 theologies of Judaism, Christism, Buddhism, 
 Mahometism, are the necessary and structural 
 action of the human mind. The student of 
 history is like a man going into a warehouse 
 to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has
 
 of CJreat flben n 
 
 a new article. If he go to the factory, he 
 shall find that his new stuff still repeats the 
 scrolls and rosettes which are found on the 
 interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. 
 Our theism is the purification of the human 
 mind. Man can paint, or make, or think 
 nothing but man. He believes that the great 
 material elements had their origin from his 
 thought. And our philosophy finds one 
 essence collected or distributed. 
 
 If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds 
 of service we derive from others, let us be 
 warned of the danger of modern studies, and 
 begin low enough. We must not contend 
 against love, or deny the substantial existence 
 of other people. I know not what would 
 happen to us. We have social strengths. Our 
 affection towards others creates a sort of 
 vantage or purchase which nothing will 
 supply. I can do that by another which I 
 cannot do alone. I can say to you what I 
 cannot first say to myself. Other men are 
 lenses through which we read our own minds. 
 Each man seeks those of different quality 
 from his own, and such as are good of their 
 kind ; that is, he seeks other men, and the 
 otherest. The stronger the nature, the more 
 it is reactive. Let us have the quality pure. 
 A little genius let us leave alone. A main 
 difference betwixt men is, whether they attend 
 their own affair or not. Man is that noble en-
 
 12 IRcprcsentative 
 
 dogenous plant which grows, like the palm, 
 from within, outward. His own affair, though 
 impossible to others, he can open with celerity 
 and in sport. It is easy to sugar to be sweet, 
 and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal 
 of pains to waylay and entrap that which of 
 itself will fall into our hands. I count him a 
 great man who inhabits a higher sphere of 
 thought, into which other men rise with labor 
 and difficulty ; he has but to open his eyes to 
 see things in a true light, and in large rela 
 tions ; whilst they must make painful correc 
 tions, and keep a vigilant eye on many 
 sources of error. His service to us is of like 
 sort. It costs a beautiful person no exertion 
 to paint her image on our eyes ; yet how 
 splendid is that benefit ! It costs no more 
 for a wise soul to convey his quality to other 
 men. And every one can do his best thing 
 easiest. " peu de moyens, beancoup d effet" 
 He is great who is what he is from nature, 
 and who never reminds us of others. 
 
 But he must be related to us, and our life 
 receive from him some promise of explanation. 
 I cannot tell what I would know ; but I have 
 observed there are persons, who, in their char 
 acter and actions, answer questions which I 
 have not skill to put. One man answers some 
 questions which none of his contemporaries put, 
 and is isolated. The past and passing relig 
 ions and philosophies answer some other 
 question. Certain men affect us as rich
 
 Tllses of Great /BSen 13 
 
 possibilities, but helptess to themselves and to 
 their times, the sport, perhaps, of some in 
 stinct that rules in the air ; they do not speak 
 to our want. But the great are near : we know 
 them at sight. They satisfy expectation, and 
 fall into place. What is good is effective, 
 generative ; makes for itself room, food, and 
 allies. A sound apple produces seed, a 
 hybrid does not. Is a man in his place, he 
 is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating 
 armies with his purpose, which is thus ex 
 ecuted. The river makes its own shores, and 
 each legitimate idea makes its own channels 
 and welcome, harvest for food, institutions for 
 expression, weapons to fight with, and disciples 
 to explain it. The true artist has the planet 
 for his pedestal ; the adventurer, after years 
 of strife, has nothing broader than his own 
 shoes. 
 
 Our common discourse respects two kinds 
 of use of service from superior men. Direct 
 giving is agreeable to the early belief of men ; 
 direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, 
 as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of 
 healing, magical power, and prophecy. The 
 boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him 
 wisdom. Churches believe in imputed merit. 
 But, in strictness, we are not much cognizant 
 of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and 
 education is his unfolding. The aid we have 
 from others is mechanical, compared with the 
 discoveries of nature in us. What is thus
 
 14 "Representative flben 
 
 learned is delightful in the doing, and the 
 effect remains. Right ethics are central, and 
 go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to 
 the law of the universe. Serving others is 
 serving us. I must absolve me to myself. 
 " Mind thy affair," says the spirit : " coxcomb, 
 would you meddle with the skies, or with 
 other people ? " Indirect service is left. Men 
 have a pictorial or representative quality, and 
 serve us in the intellect. Behmen and Sweden- 
 borg saw that things were representative. 
 Men are also representative ; first, of things, 
 and secondly, of ideas. 
 
 " As plants convert the minerals into food 
 for animals, so each man converts some raw 
 material in nature to human use. The invent 
 ors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron ; lead, 
 glass, linen, silk, cotton ; the makers of tools 
 the inventor of decimal notation ; the geom 
 eter; the engineer; musician, severally 
 make an easy way for all, through unknown 
 and impossible confusions. Each man is, by 
 secret liking, connected with some district of 
 nature, whose agent and interpreter he is, as 
 Linnaeus, of plants ; Huber, of bees ; Fries, of 
 lichens ; Van Mons, of pears ; Dalton of atomic 
 forms ; Euclid, of lines ; Newton, of fluxions. 
 
 A man is a centre for nature, running out 
 threads of relation through every thing, fluid 
 and solid, material and elemental. The earth 
 rolls ; every clod and stone comes to the 
 meridian : so every organ, function, acid,
 
 of <Sreat /nben 15 
 
 crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the 
 brain. It waits long, but its turn comes. 
 Each plant has its parasite, and each created 
 thing its lover and poet. Justice has already 
 been done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, 
 to loadstone, to iodine, to corn, and cotton ; but 
 how few materials are yet used by our arts 
 The mass of creatures and of qualities are still 
 hid and expectant. It would seem as if each 
 waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy 
 tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each 
 must be disenchanted, and walk forth to the 
 day in human shape. In the history of dis 
 covery, the ripe and latent truth seems to have 
 fashioned a brain for itself. A magnet must 
 be made man, in some Gilbert, or Swecleriborg, 
 or Oersted, before the general mind can come 
 to entertain its powers. 
 
 If we limit ourselves to the first advantages ; 
 a sober grace adheres to the mineral and bo 
 tanic kingdoms, which, in the highest moments, 
 comes up as the charm of nature, the glitter of 
 the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity 
 of angles. Light and darkness, heat and cold, 
 hunger and food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid, 
 and gas, circle us round in a wreath of 
 pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, be 
 guile the day of life. The eye repeats every 
 day the finest eulogy on things " He saw 
 that they were good." We know where to find 
 them : and these performers are relished all 
 the more, after a little experience of the
 
 16 "Representative flfcen 
 
 pretending races. We are entitled, also, to 
 higher advantages. Something is wanting to 
 science, until it has been humanized. The 
 table of logarithms is one thing, and its vital 
 play, in botany, music, optics, and architecture, 
 another. There are advancements to numbers, 
 anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little sus 
 pected at first, when, by union with intellect 
 and will, they ascend into the life, and re 
 appear in conversation, character and politics. 
 But this comes later. We speak now only 
 of our acquaintance with them in their own 
 sphere, and the way in which they seem to fas 
 cinate and draw to them some genius who oc 
 cupies himself with one thing, all his life long. 
 The possibility of interpretation lies in the 
 identity of the observer with the observed. 
 Each material thing has its celestial side ; has 
 its translation, through humanity, into the 
 spiritual and necessary sphere, where it plays 
 a part as indestructible as any other. And to 
 these, their ends, all things continually ascend. 
 The gases gather to the solid firmament : 
 the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and 
 grows ; arrives at the quadruped, and walks ; 
 arrives at the man, and thinks. But also the 
 constituency determines the vote of the repre 
 sentative. He is not only representative, but 
 participant. Like can only be known by like. 
 The reason why he knows about them is, that he 
 is of them ; he has just come out of nature, or 
 from being a part of that thing. Animated
 
 of <5rcat /ken 17 
 
 chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc, 
 of zinc. Their quality makes this career ; and 
 he can variously publish their virtues, because 
 they compose him. Man, made of the dust 
 of the world, does not forget his origin ; and 
 all that is yet inanimate will one day speak 
 and reason. Unpublished nature will have its 
 whole secret told. Shall we say that quartz 
 mountains will pulverize into innumerable Wer 
 ners, Von Buchs, and Beaumonts ; and the 
 laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution 
 I know not what Berzeliuses and Davys ? 
 
 Thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on 
 the poles of the earth. This quasi omnipres 
 ence supplies the imbecility of our condition. 
 In one of those celestial days, when heaven 
 and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems 
 a poverty that we can only spend it once ; we 
 wish for a thousand heads, a thousand bodies, 
 that we might celebrate its immense beauty in 
 many ways and places. Is this fancy? Well, 
 in good faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. 
 How easily we adopt their labors ! Every ship 
 that comes to America got its chart from Co 
 lumbus. Every novel is debtor to Homer. 
 Every carpenter who shaves with a foreplane 
 borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. 
 Life is girt all around with a zodiac of sciences, 
 the contributions of men who have perished to 
 add their point of light to our sky. Engineer, 
 broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, 
 and every man, inasmuch as he has any science. 
 2
 
 iS 
 
 is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes 
 and longitudes of our condition. These road- 
 makers on every hand enrich us. We must 
 extend the area of life, and multiply our re 
 lations. We are as much gainers by finding a 
 new property in the old earth, as by acquiring 
 a new planet. 
 
 We are too passive in the reception of these 
 material or semi-material aids. We must not 
 be sacks and stomachs. To ascend one step, 
 we are better served through our sympathy. 
 Activity is contagious. Looking where others 
 look, and conversing with the same things, we 
 catch the charm which lured them. Napoleon 
 said, " you must not fight too often with one 
 enemy, or you will teach him all your art of 
 war." Talk much with any man of vigorous 
 mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of 
 looking at things in the same light, and, on 
 each occurrence, we anticipate his thought. 
 
 Men are helpful through the intellect and 
 the affections. Other help, I find a false ap 
 pearance. If you affect to give me bread and 
 fire, I perceive that I pay for it the full price, 
 and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither 
 better nor worse : but all mental and moral 
 force is a positive good. It goes out from you 
 whether you will or not, and profits me whom 
 you never thought of. I cannot even hear of 
 personal vigor of any kind, great power of per 
 formance, without fresh resolution. We are 
 emulous of all that man can do. Cecil s saying
 
 "Clses of <5reat /Ren 19 
 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh, " I know that he can 
 toil terribly/ is an electric touch. So are Clar 
 endon s portraits, of Hampden ; "who was 
 of an industry and vigilance not to be tired 
 out or wearied by the most laborious, and of 
 parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle 
 and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to 
 his best parts " of Falkland ; " who was so 
 severe an adorer of truth, that he could as 
 easily have given himself leave to steal, as to 
 dissemble." We cannot read Plutarch, with 
 out a tingling of the blood ; and I accept the 
 saying of the Chinese Mencius : " As age is the 
 instructor of a hundred ages. When the 
 manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid be 
 come intelligent, and the wavering, deter 
 mined." 
 
 This is the moral of biography ; yet it is 
 hard for departed men to touch the quick like 
 our own companions, whose names may not 
 last as long. What is he whom I never think 
 of ? whilst in every solitude are those who suc 
 cor our genius, and stimulate us in wonderful 
 manners. There is a power in love to divine 
 another s destiny better than that other can, 
 and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his 
 task. What has friendship so signaled as its 
 sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us ? 
 We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, 
 or of life. We are piqued to some purpose, 
 and the industry of the diggers on the rail 
 road will not again shame us,
 
 so IReprescntative 
 
 Under this head, too, falls that homage, very 
 pure, as I think, which all ranks pay to the 
 hero of the day, from Coriolanus and 
 Gracchus, down to Pitt, Lafayette, Wellington, 
 Webster, Lamartine. Hear the shouts in the 
 street ! The people cannot see him enough. 
 They delight in a man. Here is a head and a 
 trunk ! What a front ! What eyes ! Atlan- 
 tean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, 
 with equal inward force to guide the great 
 machine ! This pleasure of full expression to 
 that which, in their private experience, is 
 usually cramped and obstructed, runs, also, 
 much higher, and is the secret of the reader s 
 joy in literary genius. Nothing is kept back. 
 There is fire enough to fuse the mountain of 
 ore. Shakspeare s principal merit may be 
 conveyed, in saying that he, of all men, best 
 understands the English language, and can 
 say what he will. Yet these unchoked chan 
 nels and floodgates of expression are only 
 health or fortunate constitution. Shakspeare s 
 name suggests other and purely intellectual 
 benefits. 
 
 Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, 
 with their medals, swords, and armorial coats, 
 like the addressing to a human being thoughts 
 out of a certain height, and presupposing his 
 intelligence. This honor, which is possible in 
 personal intercourse scarcely twice in a life 
 time, genius perpetually pays ; contented, if 
 now and then, in a century, the proffer is ao
 
 "(Uses or rear dfcen 21 
 
 cepted. The indicators of the values of mat 
 ter are degraded to a sort of cooks and con 
 fectioners, on the appearance of the indicators 
 of ideas. Genius is the naturalist or geogra 
 pher of the supersensible regions, and draws 
 on their map ; and, by acquainting us with 
 new fields of activity, cools our affection for 
 the old. These are at once accepted as the 
 reality, of which the world we have conversed 
 with is the show. 
 
 We go to the gymnasium and the swimming- 
 school to see the power and beauty of the 
 body ; there is the like pleasure, and a higher 
 benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of 
 all kinds ; as, feats of memory, of mathemat 
 ical combination, great power of abstraction, 
 the transmutings of the imagina tion, even ver 
 satility, and concentration, as these acts ex 
 pose the invisible organs and members of the 
 mind, which respond, member for member, to 
 the parts of the body. For, we thus enter a 
 new gymnasium, and learn to choose men by 
 their truest marks, taught, with Plato, " to 
 choose those who can, without aid from the 
 eyes, or any other sense, proceed to truth and 
 to being." Foremost among these activities, 
 are the summersaults, spells, and resurrections, 
 wrought by the imagination. When this 
 wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a 
 thousand times his force. It opens the deli 
 cious sense of indeterminate size, and inspires 
 an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic
 
 22 "Representative jflfcen 
 
 as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a 
 book, or a word dropped in conversation, sets 
 free our fancy, and instantly our heads are 
 bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the 
 floor of the Pit. And this benefit is real, be 
 cause we are entitled to these enlargements, 
 and, once having passed the bounds, shall 
 never again be quite the miserable pedants 
 we were. 
 
 The high functions of the intellect are so 
 allied, that some imaginative power usually 
 appears in all eminent minds, even in arith 
 meticians of the first class, but especially in 
 meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. 
 This class serve us, so that they have the 
 perception of identity and the perception of 
 reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakspeare, 
 Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of 
 these laws. The perception of these laws is 
 a kind of metre of the mind. Little minds 
 are little, through failure to see them. 
 
 Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our 
 delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of 
 the herald. Especially when a mind of power 
 ful method has instructed men, we find the 
 examples of oppression. The dominion of 
 Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit 
 of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke, in religion 
 the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the 
 sects which have taken the name of each 
 founder, are in point. Alas ! every man is 
 such a victim. The imbecility of men is
 
 tlscs of <3teat flben 23 
 
 always inviting the impudence of power. It 
 is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to 
 bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to 
 defend us from itself. True genius will not im 
 poverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. 
 If a wise man should appear in our village, 
 he would create, in those who conversed with 
 him, a new consciousnesss of wealth, by open 
 ing their eyes to unobserved advantages ; 
 he would establish a sense of immovable 
 equality, calm us with assurances that we 
 could not be cheated ; as every one would dis 
 cern the checks and guaranties of condition. 
 The rich would see their mistakes and poverty, 
 the poor their escapes and their resources. 
 
 But nature brings all this about in due 
 time. Rotation is her remedy. The soul is 
 impatient of masters, and eager for change. 
 Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been 
 valuable, " She had lived with me long enough." 
 We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and 
 none of us complete. We touch and go, and 
 sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the 
 law of nature. When nature removes a great 
 man. people explore the horizon for a succes 
 sor; but none comes and none will. His 
 class is extinguished with him. In some 
 other and quite different field, the next man 
 will appear ; not Jefferson, not Franklin, but 
 now a great salesman ; then a road-contractor ; 
 then a student of fishes ; then a buffalo-hunt 
 ing explorer, or a semi-savage western general.
 
 24 "Representative flfcen 
 
 Thus we make a stand against our rougher 
 masters ; but against the best there is a finer 
 remedy. The power which they communicate 
 is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas, 
 we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, 
 to which, also, Plato was debtor. 
 
 I must not forget that we have a special 
 debt to a single class. Life is a scale of de 
 grees. Between rank and rank of our great 
 men are wide intervals. Mankind have, in all 
 ages, attached themselves to a few persons, 
 who, either by the quality of that idea they 
 embodied, or by the largeness of their recep 
 tion, were entitled to the position of leaders 
 and law-givers. These teach us the qualities 
 of primary nature, admit us to the constitution 
 of things. We swim, day by day, on a river 
 of delusions, and are effectually amused with 
 houses and towns in the air, of which the men 
 about us are dupes. But life is a sincerity. 
 In lucid intervals we say, " Let there be an 
 entrance opened for me into realities ; I have 
 worn the fool s cap too long." We will know the 
 meaning of our economies and politics. Give 
 us the cipher, and, if persons and things are 
 scores of a celestial music, let us read off the 
 strains. We have been cheated of our reason; 
 yet there have been sane men, who enjoyed a 
 "ich and related existence. What they know, 
 they know for us. With each new mind, a 
 new secret of nature transpires ; nor can the 
 Bible be closed, until the last great man is
 
 TH0C0 of <5reat Men 25 
 
 born. These men correct the delirium of the 
 animal spirits, make us considerate, and en 
 gage us to new aims and powers. The vener 
 ation of mankind selects these for the highest 
 place. Witness the multitude of statues, pict 
 ures, and memorials which recall their genius 
 in every city, village, house, and ship : 
 
 " Ever their phantoms arise before us, 
 
 Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
 At bed and table they lord it o er us, 
 
 With looks of beauty, and words of good." 
 
 How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of 
 ideas, the service rendered by those who in 
 troduce moral truths into the general mind ? 
 I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpet 
 ual tariff of prices. If I work in my garden, 
 and prune an apple-tree, I am well enough 
 entertained, and could continue indefinitely in 
 the like occupation. But it comes to mind 
 that a day is gone, and I have got this precious 
 nothing done. I go to Boston or New York, 
 and run up and down on my affairs : they are 
 sped, but so is the day. I am vexed by the 
 recollection of this price I have paid for a 
 trifling advantage. I remember the peau 
 d ane, on which whoso sat should have his de 
 sire, but a piece of the skin was gone for 
 every wish. I go to a convention of philan 
 thropists. Do what I can, I cannot keep my 
 eyes off the clock. But if there should appear 
 in the company some gentle soul who knows
 
 "Representative 
 
 little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba, 
 but who announces a law that disposes these 
 particulars, and so certifies me of the equity 
 which checkmates every false player, bankrupts 
 every self-seeker, and apprises me of my in 
 dependence on any conditions of country, or 
 time, or human body, that man liberates me ; 
 I forget the clock. I pass out of the sore re 
 lation to persons. I am healed of my hurts. 
 I am made immortal by apprehending- my 
 possession of incorruptible goods. Here is 
 great competition of rich and poor. We live 
 in a market, where is only so much wheat, or 
 wool, or land ; and if I have so much more, 
 every other must have so much less. I seem 
 to have no good, without breach of good man 
 ners. Nobody is glad in the gladness of 
 another, and our system is one of war, of an 
 injurious superiority. Every child of the 
 Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It 
 is ,ur system ; and a man comes to measure 
 his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds 
 of his competitors. But in these new fields 
 there is room : here are no self-esteems, no 
 exclusions. 
 
 I admire great men of all classes, those who 
 stand for facts, and for thoughts ; I like rough 
 and smooth, " Scourges of God," and " Dar 
 lings of the human race." I like the first 
 Caesar ; and Charles V., of Spain ; and Charles 
 XII. , of Sweden ; Richard Plantagenet ; and 
 Bonaparte, in France. I applaud a sufficient
 
 TUses of <3reat flBeit 27 
 
 man, an officer equal to his office ; captains, 
 ministers, senators. I like a master standing 
 firm on legs of iron, well-born, rich, handsome, 
 eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all 
 men by fascination into tributaries and sup 
 porters of his power. Sword and staff, or 
 talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the 
 work of the world. But I find him greater, 
 when he can abolish himself, and all heroes, 
 by letting in this element of reason, irrespect 
 ive of persons ; this subtilizer, and irresistible 
 upward force, into our thought, destroying 
 individualism ; the power so great, that the 
 potentate is nothing. Then he is a monarch, 
 who gives a constitution to his people ; a pon 
 tiff, who preaches the equality of souls, and 
 releases his servants from their barbarous 
 homages ; an emperor, who can spare his 
 empire. 
 
 But I intended to specify, with a little 
 minuteness, two or three points of service. 
 Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe , 
 but wherever she mars her creature with some 
 deformity or defect, lays her poppies plenti 
 fully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes 
 joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and 
 incapable of seeing it, though all the world 
 point their finger at it every day. The worth 
 less and offensive members of society, whose 
 existence is a social pest, invariably think 
 themselves the most ill-used people alive, and 
 never get over their astonishment at the
 
 8 "Representative /fcen 
 
 ingratitude and selfishness of their contempo* 
 raries. Our globe discovers its hidden virtues, 
 not only in heroes and archangels, but in 
 gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare contriv 
 ance that lodged the due inertia in every 
 creature, the conserving, resisting energy, the 
 anger at being waked or changed ? Altogether 
 independent of the intellectual force in each, 
 is the pride of opinion, the security that we 
 are right. Not the feeblest grandame, not a 
 mowing idiot, but uses what spark of percep 
 tion and faculty is left, to chuckle and triumph 
 in his or her opinion over the absurdities of 
 all the rest. Difference from me is the meas 
 ure of absurdity. Not one has a misgiving 
 of being wrong. Was it not a bright thought 
 that made things cohere with this bitumen, 
 fastest of cements ? But, in the midst of this 
 chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure goes 
 by, which Thersites too can love and admire. 
 This is he that should marshal us the way we 
 were going. There is no end to his aid. 
 Without Plato, we should almost lose our 
 faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. 
 We seem to want but one, but we want one. 
 We love to associate with heroic persons, 
 since our receptivity is unlimited ; and, with 
 the great, our thoughts and manners easily 
 become great. We are all wise in capacity, 
 though so few in energy. There needs but 
 one wise man in a company, and all are wise, 
 so rapid is the contagion.
 
 TUses of (Sreat fben 29 
 
 Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our 
 eyes from egotism, and enable us to see other 
 people and their works. But there are vices 
 and follies incident to whole populations and 
 ages. Men resemble their contemporaries, 
 even more than their progenitors. It is 
 observed in old couples, or in persons who 
 have been housemates for a course of years, 
 that they grow alike ; and, if they should live 
 long enough, we should not be able to know 
 them apart. Nature abhors these complais 
 ances, which threaten to melt the world into 
 a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin 
 agglutinations. The like assimilation goes on 
 between men of one town, of one sect, of one 
 political party ; and the ideas of the time are 
 in the air, and infect all who breathe it. 
 Viewed from any high point, the city of New 
 York, yonder city of London, the western 
 civilization, would seem a bundle of insanities. 
 We keep each other in countenance, and ex 
 asperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. 
 The shield against the stingings of conscience, 
 is the universal practice, or our contempora 
 ries. Again ; it is very easy to be as wise and 
 good as your companions. We learn of our 
 contemporaries what they know, without effort, 
 and almost through the pores of the skin, 
 We catch it by sympathy, or, as a wife arrives 
 at the intellectual and moral elevations of 
 her husband. But we stop where they stop. 
 Very hardly can we take another step. The
 
 30 Representative /JRen 
 
 great, or such as hold of nature, and transcend 
 fashions, by their fidelity to universal ideas, 
 are saviors from these federal errors, and 
 defend us from our contemporaries. They 
 are the exceptions which we wint, where all 
 grows alike. A foreign greatness is the an 
 tidote for cabalism. 
 
 Thus we feed on genius, and refresh our 
 selves from too much conversation with our 
 mates, and exult in the depth of nature in 
 that direction in which he leads us. What 
 indemnification is one great man for popula 
 tions of pigmies ! Every mother wishes one 
 son a genius, though all the rest should be 
 mediocre. But a new danger appears in the 
 excess of influence of the great man. His 
 attractions warp us from our place. We have 
 become underlings and intellectual suicides. 
 Ah ! yonder in the horizon is our help : 
 other great men, new qualities, counterweights 
 and checks on each other. We cloy of the 
 honey of each peculiar greatness. Every 
 hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire 
 was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good 
 Jesus, even, " I pray you, let me never hear 
 that man s name again." They cry up the 
 virtues of George Washington, " Damn 
 George Washington ! " is the poor Jacobin s 
 whole speech and confutation. But it is 
 human nature s indispensable defence. The 
 centripetence augments the centrifugence. 
 We balance one man with his opposite, and
 
 Tacs of <3reat flfcen 31 
 
 the health of the state depends on the see 
 saw 
 
 There is, however, a speedy limit to the use 
 of heroes. Every genius is defended from ap 
 proach by quantities of availableness. They 
 are very attractive, and seem at a distance our 
 own : but we are hindered on all sides from 
 approach. The more we are drawn, the more 
 we are repelled. There is something not solid 
 in the good that is done for us. The best dis 
 covery the discoverer makes for himself. It 
 has something unreal for his companion, until 
 he too has substantiated it. It seems as if the 
 Deity dressed each soul which he sends into 
 nature in certain virtues and powers not com 
 municable to other men, and, sending it to 
 perform one more turn through the circle of 
 beings, wrote " Not transferable" and " Good 
 for this trip only" on these garments of the 
 soul. There is somewhat deceptive about the 
 intercourse of minds. The boundaries are 
 invisible, but they are never crossed. There 
 is such good will to impart, and such good will 
 to receive, that each threatens to become the 
 other ; but the law of individuality collects its 
 secret strength : you are you, and I am I, and 
 so we remain. 
 
 For Nature wishes every thing to remain 
 itself ; and, whilst every individual strives to 
 grow and exclude, and to exclude and grow, to 
 the extremities of the universe, and to impose 
 the law of its being on every other creature,
 
 32 Representative /Ren 
 
 Nature steadily aims to protect each against 
 every other. Each is self-defended. Nothing 
 is more marked than the power by which in 
 dividuals are guarded from individuals, in a 
 world where every benefactor becomes so 
 easily a malefactor, only by continuation of 
 his activity into places where it is not due ; 
 where children seem so much at the mercy of 
 their foolish parents, and where almost all 
 men arc too social and interfering. We 
 rightly speak of the guardian angels of 
 children. How superior in their security from 
 infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and 
 second thought ! They shed their own abun 
 dant beauty on the objects they behold There 
 fore, they are not at the mercy of such poor 
 educators as we adults. If we huff and chide 
 them, they soon come not to mind it, and get 
 a self-reliance ; and if we indulge them to 
 folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere. 
 
 We need r.o*- fear excessive influence. A 
 more generous trust is permitted. Serve the 
 great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no 
 office thou canst render. Be the limb of their 
 body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise 
 thy egotism. Who cares for that, so thou gain 
 aught wider and nobler? Never mind the 
 taunt of Boswellism : the devotion may easily 
 be greater than the wretched pride which is 
 guarding its own skirts. Be another: not thy 
 self, but a Platonist ; not a soul, but a Chris 
 tian ; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian ; not d
 
 "dees of (Breat tf&ett 33 
 
 poet, but a Shaksperian. In vain, the wheels 
 of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces 
 of inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee 
 there. On, and forever onward ! The micro 
 scope observes a monad or wheel-insect among 
 the infusories circulating in water. Presently, 
 a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to 
 a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. 
 The ever-proceeding detachment appears not 
 less in all thought, and in society. Children 
 think they cannot live without their parents. 
 But, long before they are aware of it, the black 
 dot has appeared, and the detachment taken 
 place. Any accident will now reveal to them 
 their independence. 
 
 But great men: the word is injurious. Is 
 there caste ? is there fate ? What becomes of 
 the promise to virtue ? The thoughtful youth 
 laments the superfoetation of nature. " Gen 
 erous and handsome," he says, " is your hero ; 
 but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country 
 is his wheelbarrow ; look at his whole nation 
 of Paddies." Why are the masses, from the 
 dawn of history down, food for knives and 
 powder ? The idea dignifies a few leaders, 
 who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devo 
 tion ; and they make war and death sacred ; 
 but what for the wretches whom they hire and 
 kill ? The cheapness of man is every day s 
 tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should 
 be low, as that we should be low ; for we must 
 have society. 
 3
 
 34 "Representative flben 
 
 Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, 
 society is a Pestalozzian school ; all are 
 teachers and pupils in turn. We are equally 
 served by receiving and by imparting. Men 
 who know the same things, are not long the 
 best company for each other. But bring to 
 <?ach an intelligent person of another experi 
 ence, and it is as if you let off water from a 
 lake, by cutting a lower basin. It seems a 
 mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is 
 to each speaker, as he can now paint out his 
 thought to himself. We pass very fast, in our 
 personal moods, from dignity to dependence. 
 And if any appear never to assume the chair, 
 but always to stand and serve, it is because 
 we do not see the company in a sufficiently 
 long period for the whole rotation of parts to 
 come about. As to what we call the masses, 
 and common men ; there are no common 
 men. All men are at last of a size ; and true 
 art is only possible, on the conviction that 
 every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. 
 Fair play, and an open field, and freshest 
 laurels to all who have won them ! But heaven 
 reserves an equal scope for every creature. 
 Each is uneasy until he has produced his pri 
 vate ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld 
 his talent also in its last nobility and exalta 
 tion. 
 
 The heroes of the hour are relatively great : 
 of a faster growth ; or they are such, in whom, 
 at the moment of success, a quality is ripe
 
 TUscs of Great rtben 35 
 
 which is then in request. Other days will de 
 mand other qualities. Some rays escape the 
 common observer, and want a finely adapted 
 eye. Ask the great man if there be none 
 greater. His companions are ; and not the 
 less great, but the more, that society cannot 
 see them. Nature never sends a great man 
 into the planet, without confiding the secret to 
 another soul. 
 
 One gracious fact emerges from these studies, 
 that there is true ascension in our love. 
 The reputations of the nineteenth century will 
 one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. 
 The genius of humanity is the real subject 
 whose biography is written in our annals. We 
 must infer much, and supply many chasms in 
 the record. The history of the universe is 
 symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. No 
 man, in all the procession of famous men, is 
 reason or illumination, or that essence we 
 were looking for ; but is an exhibition, in some 
 quarter, of new possibilities. Could we one 
 day complete the immense figure which these 
 flagrant points compose ! The study of many 
 individuals leads us to an elemental region 
 wherein the individual is lost, or wherein all 
 touch by their summits. Thought and feel 
 ing, that break out there, cannot be im 
 pounded by any fence of personality. This is 
 the key to the power of the greatest men, 
 their spirit diffuses itself. A new quality of 
 mind travels by night and by day, in concen-
 
 36 "Representative 
 
 trie circles from its origin, and publishes itself 
 by unknown methods : the union of all minds 
 appears intimate : what gets admission to one. 
 cannot be kept out of any other: the smallest 
 acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quar 
 ter, is so much good to the commonwealth of 
 souls. If the disparities of talent and position 
 vanish, when the individuals are seen in the 
 duration which is necessary to complete the 
 career of each ; even more swiftly the seeming 
 injustice disappears, when we ascend to the 
 central identity of all the individuals, and 
 know that they are made of the same sub 
 stance which ordaineth and doeth. 
 
 The genius of humanity is the right point of 
 view of history. The qualities abide ; the 
 men who exhibit them have now more, now 
 less, and pass away ; the qualities remain on 
 another brow. No experience is more fa 
 miliar. Once you saw phoenixes : they are 
 gone ; the world is not therefore disenchanted. 
 The vessels on which you read sacred emblems 
 turn out to be common pottery ; but the sense 
 of the pictures is sacred, and you may still read 
 them transferred to the walls of the world. 
 For a time, our teachers serve us personally, as 
 metres or milestones of progress. Once they 
 were angels of knowledge, and their figures 
 touched the sky. Then we drew near, saw 
 their means, culture, and limits ; nnd they 
 yielded their place to other geniuses. Happy, 
 if a few names remain so high, that we have
 
 Tttses of (Breat jtoen 37 
 
 not been able to read them nearer, and age 
 and comparison have not robbed them of a 
 ray. But, at last, we shall cease to look in 
 men for completeness, and shall content our 
 selves with their social and delegated quality. 
 All that respects the individual is temporary 
 and prospective, like the individual himself, 
 who is ascending out of his limits, into a catho 
 lic existence. We have never come at the true 
 and best benefit of any genius, so long as we 
 believe him an original force. In the moment 
 when he ceases to help us as a cause, he be 
 gins to help us move as an effect. Then he 
 appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and 
 will. The opaque self becomes transparent 
 with the light of the First Cause. 
 
 Yet, within the limits of human education 
 and agency, we may say, great men exist that 
 there may be greater men. The destiny of 
 organized nature is amelioration, and who 
 can tell its limits ? It is for man to tame the 
 chaos ; on every side, whilst he lives, to scat 
 ter the seeds of science and of song, that cli 
 mate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and 
 the germs of love and benefit may be multi 
 plied.
 
 PLATO ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER.
 
 n. 
 
 Plato ; or, The Philosopher. 
 
 AMONG books, Plato only is entitled to 
 Omar s fanatical compliment to the Koran, 
 when he said, " Burn the libraries ; for, their 
 value is in this book." These sentences con 
 tain the culture of nations ; these are the cor 
 ner-stone of schools ; these are the fountain- 
 head of literatures. A discipline it is in logic, 
 arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, 
 rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. 
 There was never such range of speculation. 
 Out of Plato come all things that are still 
 written and debated among men of thought. 
 Great havoc makes he among our originalities. 
 We have reached the mountain from which all 
 these drift bowlders were detached. The Bible 
 of the learned for twenty-two hundred years, 
 every brisk young man, who says in succession 
 fine things to each reluctant generation, 
 Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, 
 Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge, is some reader 
 of Plato, translating into the vernacular,
 
 42 "Representative /rfcen 
 
 wittily, his good things. Even the men of 
 grander proportion suffer some deduction from 
 the misfortune (shall I say ?) of coming after 
 this exhausting generalizer. St. Augustine, 
 Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, S\vedenborg, 
 Goethe, are likewise his debtors, and must say 
 after him. For it is fair to credit the broadest 
 generalizer with all the particulars deducible 
 from his thesis. 
 
 Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato, 
 at once the glory and the shame of man 
 kind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have 
 availed to add any idea to his categories. No 
 wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of 
 all civilized nations are his posterity, and are 
 tinged with his mind. How many great men 
 Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, 
 to be his men, Platonists ! the Alexandrians, 
 a constellation of genius ; the Elizabethans, 
 not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John 
 Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Tay 
 lor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas 
 Taylor ; Marcilius Ficinus, and Picus Miran- 
 dola. Calvinism is in his Phasdo : Christian 
 ity is in it. Mahometanism draws all its 
 philosophy, in its hand-book of morals, the 
 Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him. Mysticism finds in 
 Plato all its texts. This citizen of a town in 
 Greece is no villager nor patriot. An English 
 man reads and says, " how English ! " a Ger 
 man " how Teutonic ! " an Italian- " how 
 Roman and how Greek ! " As they say that
 
 Dlato ; or, tfbe pbitosopbet 43 
 
 Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that 
 everybody felt related to her. so Plato seems, 
 to a reader in New England, an American 
 genius. His broad humanity transcends all 
 sectional lines. 
 
 This range of Plato instructs us"" what to 
 think of the vexed question concerning his 
 reputed works, what are genuine, what 
 spurious. It is singular that wherever we find 
 a man higher, by a whole head, than any of 
 his contemporaries, it is sure to come into 
 doubt, what are his real works. Thus, Homer, 
 Plato, Raffaelle, Shakspeare. For these men 
 magnetize their contemporaries, so that their 
 companions can do for them what they can 
 never do for themselves ; and the great man 
 does thus live in several bodies ; and write, 
 or paint, or act, by many hands ; and after 
 some time, it is not easy to say what is the 
 authentic work of the master, and what is only 
 of his school. 
 
 Plato, too, like every great man, consumed 
 his own times. What is a great man, but one 
 of great affinities, who takes up into himself 
 all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food ? 
 He can spare nothing ; he can dispose of 
 everything. What is not good for virtue, is 
 good for knowledge. Hence his contem 
 poraries tax him with plagiarism. But the 
 inventor only knows how to borrow ; and 
 society is glad to forget the innumerable 
 laborers who ministered to this architect, and
 
 44 TReprcsntativc 
 
 reserves all its gratitude for him. When we are 
 praising Plato, it seems we are praising quota 
 tions from Solon, and Sophron, and Philolaus. 
 Be it so. Every book is a quotation ; and 
 every house is a quotation out of all forests, 
 and mindfe, and stone quarries : and every 
 man is a quotation from all his ancestors. 
 And this grasping inventor puts all nations 
 under contribution. 
 
 Plato absorbed the learning of his times, 
 Philolaus, Timaeus, Heraclitus, Parmenides, 
 and what else ; then his master, Socrates ; 
 and finding himself still capable of a larger 
 synthesis, beyond all example then or since, 
 he travelled into Italy, to gain what Pytha 
 goras had for him ; then into Egypt, and per 
 haps still further east, to import the other 
 element, which Europe wanted, into the 
 European mind. This breadth entitles him to 
 stand as the representative of philosophy. 
 He says, in the Republic, " Such a genius as 
 philosophers must of necessity have, is wont 
 but seldom, in all its parts, to meet in one 
 man ; but its different parts generally spring 
 up in different persons." Every man, who 
 would do anything well, must come to it from 
 a higher ground. A philosopher must be 
 more than a philosopher. Plato is clothed 
 with the powers of a poet, stands upon the 
 highest place of the poet, and (though I 
 doubt he wanted the decisive gift of lyric 
 expression) mainly is not a poet, because he
 
 Plato ; or, Cbe pbilosopbet 45 
 
 chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior 
 purpose. 
 
 Great geniuses have the shortest biogra 
 phies. Their cousins can tell you nothing 
 about them. They lived in their writings, 
 and so their house and street life was trivial 
 and commonplace. If you would know their 
 tastes and complexions, the most admiring of 
 their readers most resembles them. Plato, 
 especially, has no external biography. If he 
 had lover, wife, or children, we hear nothing 
 of them. He ground them all into paint. 
 As a good chimney burns its smoke, so a phi 
 losopher converts the value of all his fortunes 
 into his intellectual performances. 
 
 He was born 430 A. C., about the time of 
 the death of Pericles ; was of patrician con 
 nection in his times and city ; and is said to 
 have had an early inclination for war ; but in 
 his twentieth year, meeting with Socrates, was 
 easily dissuaded from this pursuit, and re 
 mained for ten years his scholar, until the 
 death of Socrates. He then went to Megara ; 
 accepted the invitations of Dion and of Diony 
 sius, to the court of Sicily ; and went thither 
 three times, though very capriciously treated. 
 He travelled into Italy ; then into Egypt, 
 where he stayed a long time ; some say three, 
 some say thirteen years. It is said, he 
 went farther, into Babylonia : this is uncertain. 
 Returning to Athens, he gave lessons, in the 
 Academy, to those whom his fame drew
 
 46 "Representative /Ben 
 
 thither ; and died, as we have received it, in 
 the act of writing, at eighty-one years. 
 
 But the biography of Plato is interior. We 
 are to account for the supreme elevation of 
 this man, in the intellectual history of our 
 race, how it happens that, in proportion to 
 the culture of men, they become his scholars ; 
 that, as our Jewish Bible has implanted itself 
 in the table-talk and household life of every 
 man and woman in the European and Ameri 
 can nations, so the writings of Plato have pre 
 occupied every school of learning, every lover 
 of thought, every church, every poet, making 
 it impossible to think, on certain levels, except 
 through him. He stands between the truth 
 and every man s mind, and has almost im 
 pressed language, and the primary forms of 
 thought, with his name and seal. I am struck, 
 in reading him, with the extreme modernness 
 of his style and spirit. Here is the germ of 
 that Europe we know so well, in its long his 
 tory of arts and arms : here are all its traits, 
 already discernible in the mind of Plato, 
 and in none before him. It has spread itself 
 since into a hundred histories, J}ut has added 
 no new element. This perpetual modernness 
 is the measure of merit, in ever^ work of art; 
 since the author of it was not misled by any 
 thing short-lived or local, but abode by real 
 and abiding traits. How Plato came thus to 
 be Europe, and philosophy, and almost liter 
 ature, is the problem for us to solve.
 
 Dlato ; or, ttbc ftbttosopber 47 
 
 This could not have happened, without a 
 sound, sincere, and catholic man, able to 
 honor, at the same time, the ideal, or laws of 
 the mind, and fate, or the order of nature. 
 The first period of a nation, as of an individ 
 ual, is the period of unconscious strength. 
 Children cry, scream and stamp with fury, un 
 able to express their desires. As soon as 
 they can speak and tell their want, and the 
 reason of it, they become gentle. In adult 
 life, whilst the perceptions are obtuse, men 
 and women talk vehemently and superlatively, 
 blunder and quarrel : their manners are full of 
 desperation ; their speech is full of oaths. 
 As soon as, with culture, things have cleared 
 up a little, and they see them no longer in 
 lumps and masses, but accurately distributed, 
 they desist from that weak vehemence, and 
 explain their meaning in detail. If the 
 tongue had not been framed for articulation, 
 man would still be a beast in the forest. 
 The same weakness and want, on a higher 
 plane, occurs daily in the education of ardent 
 young men and women. " Ah ! you don t 
 understand me ; I have never met with any 
 one who comprehends me : " and they sigh 
 and weep, write verses, and walk alone, fault 
 of power to express their precise meaning. 
 In a month or two, through the favor of their 
 good genius, they meet some one so related as 
 to assist their volcanic estate; and, good 
 communication being once established, they
 
 *8 "Representative /Ben 
 
 are thenceforward good citizens. It is ever 
 thus. The progress is to accuracy, to skill, to 
 truth, from blind force. 
 
 There is a moment, in the history of every 
 nation, when, proceeding out of this brute 
 youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripe 
 ness, and have not yet become microscopic : 
 so that man, at that instant, extends across 
 the entire scale ; and, with his feet still 
 planted on the immense forces of night, con 
 verses, by his eyes and brain, with solar and 
 stellar creation. That is the moment of adult 
 health, the culmination of power. 
 
 Such is the history of Europe, in all points ; 
 and such in philosophy. Its early records, al 
 most perished, are of the immigrations from 
 Asia, bringing with them the dreams of bar 
 barians ; a confusion of crude notions of mor 
 als, and of natural philosophy, gradually sub 
 siding, through the partial insight of single 
 teachers. 
 
 Before Pericles, came the Seven Wise 
 Masters ; and we have the beginnings of ge 
 ometry, metaphysics, and ethics : then the par- 
 tialists, deducing the origin of things from 
 flux or water, or from air, or from fire, or from 
 mind. All mix with these causes mythologic 
 pictures. At last, comes Plato, the distributor, 
 who needs no barbaric paint, or tattoo, or 
 whooping ; for he can define. He leaves with 
 Asia the vast and superlative ; he is the ar 
 rival of accuracy and intelligence. " He shall
 
 IMato ; or, ttfce ipbflosopber 49 
 
 be as a god to me, who can rightly divide ad 
 define." 
 
 This defining is philosophy. Philosophy ie 
 the account which the human mind gives to it 
 self of the constitution of the world. Two 
 cardinal facts lie forever at the base ; the one, 
 and the two. i. Unity, or Identity ; and, 2. 
 Variety. We unite all things, by perceiving 
 the law which pervades them ; by perceiving 
 the superficial differences, and the profound 
 resemblances. But every mental act, this 
 very perception of identity or oneness, recog 
 nizes the difference of things. Oneness and 
 otherness. It is impossible to speak, or to 
 think, without embracing both. 
 
 The mind is urged to ask for one cause of 
 many effects ; then for the cause of that ; and 
 again the cause, diving still into the profound : 
 self-assured that it shall arrive at an absolute 
 and sufficient one, a one that shall be all. 
 " In the midst of the sun is the light, in the 
 midst of the light is truth, and in the midst of 
 truth is the imperishable being," say the Vedas. 
 All philosophy, of east and west, has the same 
 centripetence. Urged by an opposite neces 
 sity, the mind returns from the one, to that 
 which is not one, but other or many ; from 
 cause to effect ; and affirms the necessary ex 
 istence of variety, the self-existence of both, 
 as each is involved in the other. These 
 strictly-blended elements it is the problem of 
 thought to separate, and to reconcile. Their 
 4
 
 50 "Representative /Bien 
 
 existence is mutually contradictory and exclu 
 sive ; and each so fast slides into the other, 
 that we can never say what is one, and what 
 it is not. The Proteus is as nimble in the 
 highest as in the lowest grounds, when we con 
 template the one, the true, the good, as in 
 the surfaces and extremities of matter. 
 
 In all nations, there are minds which incline 
 to dwell in the conception of the fundamental 
 Unity. The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of 
 devotion lose all being in one Being. This 
 tendency finds its highest expression in the re 
 ligious writings of the East, and chiefly, in the 
 Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagavat 
 Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana. Those writings 
 contain little else than this idea, and they rise 
 to pure and sublime strains in celebrating it. 
 
 The Same, the Same : friend and foe are of 
 one stuff; the ploughman, the plough, and the 
 furrow, are of one stuff ; and the stuff is such, 
 and so much, that the variations of forms are 
 unimportant. " You are fit " (says the 
 supreme Krishna to a sage) "to apprehend 
 that you are not distinct from me. That 
 which I am, thou art, and that also is this 
 world, with its gods, and heroes, and man 
 kind. Men contemplate distinctions, because 
 they are stupefied with ignorance." " The 
 words /and mine constitute ignorance. What 
 is the great end of all, you shall now learn 
 from me. It is soul, one in all bodies, per 
 vading, uniform, perfect, preeminent over
 
 Plato ; or, Cbe pbiloeopbct 
 
 nature, exempt from birth, growth, and decay, 
 omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, 
 independent, unconnected with unrealities, 
 with name, species, and the rest, in time past, 
 present, and to come. The knowledge that 
 this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one s 
 own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of 
 one who knows the unity of things. As one 
 diffusive air, passing through the perforations 
 of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a 
 scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit is single, 
 though its forms be manifold, arising from the 
 consequences of acts. When the difference of 
 the investing form, as that of god, or the rest, 
 is destroyed, there is no distinction." " The 
 whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, 
 who is identical with all things, and is to be 
 regarded by the wise, as not differing from, 
 but as the same as themselves. I neither am 
 going nor coming ; nor is my dwelling in any 
 one place ; nor art thou, thou ; nor are others, 
 others ; nor am I, I." As if he had said, " All 
 is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu ; and 
 animals and stars are transient painting ; and 
 light is whitewash ; and durations are decep 
 tive ; and form is imprisonment ; and heaven 
 itself a decoy." That which the soul seeks is 
 resolution into being, above form, out of Tar 
 tarus, and out of heaven, liberation from 
 nature. 
 
 If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, 
 in which all things are absorbed, action tends
 
 52 "Representative flken 
 
 directly backwards to diversity. The first is 
 the course of gravitation of mind ; the second 
 is the power of nature. Nature is the mani 
 fold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. 
 Nature opens and creates. These two prin 
 ciples reappear and interpenetrate all things, 
 all thought ; the one, the many. One is being ; 
 the other, intellect: one is necessity; the 
 other, freedom : one, rest ; the other, motion : 
 one, power ; the other, distribution : one, 
 strength ; the other pleasure : one, conscious 
 ness ; the other, definition : one, genius ; the 
 other, talent : one, earnestness ; the other, 
 knowledge : one, possession ; the other, trade : 
 one, caste ; the other, culture : one king ; the 
 other, democracy : and, if we dare carry these 
 generalizations a step higher, and name the 
 last tendency of both, we might say, that the 
 end of the one is escape from organization, 
 pure science ; and the end of the other is the 
 highest instrumentality, or use of means, or 
 executive deity. 
 
 Each student adheres, by temperament and 
 by habit, to the first or to the second of these 
 gods of the mind. By religion, he tends to 
 unity; by intellect, or by the senses, to the many. 
 A too rapid unification, and an excessive appli 
 ance to parts and particulars, are the twin 
 dangers of speculation. 
 
 To this partiality the history of nations 
 corresponded. The country of unity, of im 
 movable institutions, the seat of a philosophy
 
 Plato ; or, Gbe pbilosopber 
 
 delighting in abstractions, of men faithful in 
 doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, 
 unimplorable, immense fate, is Asia; and it 
 realizes this fate in the social institution of 
 caste. On the other side, the genius of Europe 
 is active and creative : it resists caste by cult 
 ure ; its philosophy was a discipline ; it is a 
 land of arts, inventions, trade, freedom. If 
 the East loved infinity, the West delighted in 
 boundaries. 
 
 European civility is the triumph of talent, 
 the extension of system, the sharpened under 
 standing, adaptive skill, delight in forms, 
 delight in manifestation, in comprehensible 
 results. Pericles, Athens, Greece, had been 
 working in this element with the joy of genius 
 not yet chilled by any foresight of the 
 detriment of an excess. They saw before 
 them no sinister political economy ; no omi 
 nous Malthus ; no Paris or London ; no pitiless 
 subdivision of classes, the doom of the pin- 
 makers, the doom of the weavers, of dressers, 
 of stockingers, of carders, of spinners, of col 
 liers ; no Ireland ; no Indian caste, superin 
 duced by the efforts of Europe to throw it off. 
 The understanding was in its health and 
 prime. Art was in its splendid novelty. 
 They cut the Pentelican marble a\ r f it were 
 snow, and their perfect works in architecture 
 and sculpture seemed things of course, not 
 more difficult than the completion of a new 
 ship at the Medford yards, or new mills at
 
 54 "Representative flfcen 
 
 Lowell. These things are in course, and may 
 be taken for granted. The Roman legion. 
 Byzantine legislation, English trade, the 
 saloons of Versailles, the cafes of Paris, the 
 steam-mill, steamboat, steam-coach, may alf 
 be seen in perspective ; the town-meeting, thb 
 ballot-box, the newspaper and cheap press. 
 
 Meantime, Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern 
 pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in 
 which all things are absorbed. The unity of 
 Asia, and the detail of Europe ; the infinitude 
 of the Asiatic soul, and the defining, result-lov 
 ing, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera- 
 going Europe, Plato came to join, and by 
 contact to enhance the energy of each. The 
 excellence of Europe and Asia are in his 
 brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy 
 expressed the genius of Europe ; he substructs 
 the religion of Asia, as the base. 
 
 In short, a balanced soul was born, percep 
 tive of the two elements. It is as easy to be 
 great as to be small. The reason why we do 
 not at once believe in admirable souls, is 
 because they are not in our experience. In 
 actual life, they are so rare, as to be incred 
 ible ; but, primarily, there is not only n( 
 presumption against them, but the strongest 
 presumption in favor of their appearance. 
 But whether voices were heard in the sky, or 
 not ; whether his mother or his father dreamed 
 that the infant man-child was the son of 
 Apollo ; whether a swarm of bees settled on
 
 Plato ; or, Cbe ipbtlosopber 55 
 
 his lips, or not ; a man who could see two 
 sides of a thing was born. The wonderful 
 synthesis so familiar in nature ; the upper and 
 the under side of the medal of Jove ; the 
 union of impossibilities, which reappears in 
 every object ; its real and its ideal power, 
 was now, also, transferred entire to the con 
 sciousness of a man. 
 
 The balanced soul came. If he loved 
 abstract truth, he saved himself by propound 
 ing :he most popular of all principles, the 
 absolute good, which rules rulers, and judges 
 the judge. If he made transcendental dis 
 tinctions, he fortified himself by drawing all 
 his illustrations from sources disdained by 
 orators, and polite conversers ; from mares 
 and puppies; from pitchers and soup-ladles; 
 from cooks and criers ; the shops of potters, 
 horse-doctors, butchers, and fishmongers. He 
 cannot forgive in himself a partiality, but is 
 resolved that the two poles of thought shah 
 appear in his statement. His argument and 
 his sentence are self-poised and spherical. 
 The two poles appear ; yes, and become two 
 hands, to grasp and appropriate their own. 
 
 Every great artist has been such by synthe 
 sis. Our strength is transitional, alternating ; 
 or, shall I say, a thread of two strands. The 
 sea-shore, sea seen from shore, shore seen 
 from sea ; the taste of two metals in contact ; 
 and our enlarged powers at the approach and 
 at the departure of a friend ; the experience
 
 56 "Representative /Ben 
 
 of poetic creativeness, which is not founJ in 
 staying at home, nor yet in travelling, but in 
 transitions from one to the other, which must 
 therefore be adroitly managed to present as 
 much transitional surface as possible; this 
 command of two elements must explain the 
 power and the charm of Plato. Art expresses 
 the one, or the same by the different. Thought 
 seeks to know unity in unity ; poetry to show 
 it by variety ; that is, always by an object or 
 symbol. Plato keeps the two vases, one of 
 aether and one of pigment, at his side, and in 
 variably uses both. Things added to things, 
 as statistics, civil history, are inventories. 
 Things used as language are inexhaustibly 
 attractive. Plato turns incessantly the obverse 
 and the reverse of the medal of Jove. 
 
 To take an example : The physical phi 
 losophers had sketched each his theory of the 
 world ; the theory of atoms, of fire, of flux, of 
 spirit; theories mechanical and chemical in 
 their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, 
 studious of all natural laws and causes, feels 
 these, as second causes, to be no theories of 
 the world, but bare inventories and lists. To 
 the study of nature he therefore prefixes the 
 dogma, " Let us declare the cause which led 
 the Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose 
 the universe. He was good ; and he who is 
 good has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy, 
 he wished that all things should be as much 
 as possible like himself. Whosoever, taught
 
 Plato ; or, Gbe ipbilosopber 57 
 
 by wise men, shall admit this as the prime 
 cause of the origin and foundation of the 
 world, will be in the tru-th." " All things are 
 for the sake of the good, and it is the cause of 
 everything beautiful." This dogma animates 
 and impersonates his philosophy. 
 
 The synthesis which makes the character of 
 his mind appears in all his talents. Where 
 there is great compass of wit, we usually find 
 excellences that combine easily in the living 
 man, but in description appear incompatible. 
 The mind of Plato is not to be exhibited by a 
 Chinese catalogue, but is to be apprehended 
 by an original mind in the exercise of its 
 original power. In him the freest abandon 
 ment is united with the precision of a geometer. 
 His daring imagination gives him the more 
 solid grasp of facts ; as the birds of highest 
 flight have the strongest alar bones. His 
 patrician polish, his intrinsic elegance, edged 
 by an irony so subtle that it stings and par 
 alyzes, adorn the soundest health and strength 
 of frame. According to the old sentence, " If 
 Jove should descend to the earth, he would 
 speak in the style of Plato." 
 
 With this palatial air, there is, for the direct 
 aim of several of his works, and running through 
 the tenor of them all, a certain earnestness, 
 which mounts, in the Republic, and in the 
 Phaedo, to piety. He has been charged with 
 feigning sickness at the time of the death of 
 Socrates. But the anecdotes that have come
 
 5$ "Representative flben 
 
 down from the times attest his manly inter 
 ference before the people in his master s behalf, 
 since even the savage cry of the assembly to 
 Plato is preserved ; and the indignation to 
 wards popular government, in many of his 
 pieces, expresses a personal exasperation. He 
 has a probity, a native reverence for justice 
 and honor, and a humanity which makes him 
 tender for the superstitions of the people. 
 Add to this, he believes that poetry, prophecy, 
 and the high insight, are from a wisdom of 
 which man is not master ; that the gods never 
 philosophize ; but, by a celestial mania, these 
 miracles are accomplished. Horsed on these 
 winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions, visits 
 worlds which flesh cannot enter ; he saw the 
 souls in pain ; he hears the doom of the judge ; 
 he beholds the penal metempsychosis ; the 
 Fates, with the rock and shears ; and hears 
 the intoxicating hum of their spindle. 
 
 But his circumspection never forsook him. 
 One would say, he had read the inscription on 
 the gates of Busyrane, " Be bold ; " and on the 
 second gate, " Be bold, be bold and evermore 
 be bold ; " and then again had paused well at 
 the third gate, "Be not too bold." His 
 strength is like the momentum of a falling 
 planet ; and his discretion, the return of its due 
 and perfect curve, so excellent is his Greek 
 love of boundary, and his skill in definition. 
 In reading logarithms, one is not more secure, 
 than in following Plato in his flights. Nothing
 
 Plato ; or, STbe BMMlo0opber 59 
 
 can be colder than his head, when the light 
 nings of his imagination are playing in the sky. 
 He has finished his thinking, before he brings 
 it to the reader ; and he abounds in the sur 
 prises of a literary master. He has that opu 
 lence which furnishes, at every turn, the precise 
 weapon he needs. As the rich man wears no 
 more garments, drives no more horses, sits in 
 no more chambers, than the poor, but has 
 that one dress, or equipage, or instrument, 
 which is fit for the hour and the need ; so Plato, 
 in his plenty, is never restricted, but has the 
 fit word. There is, indeed, no weapon in all 
 the armory of wit which he did not possess and 
 use, epic, analysis, mania, intuition, music, 
 satire, and irony, down to the customary and 
 polite. His illustrations are poetry and his 
 jests illustrations. Socrates profession of 
 obstetric art is good philosophy ; and his find 
 ing that word " cookery," and " adulatory art," 
 for rhetoric, in the Gorgias, does us a substan 
 tial service still. No orator can measure in 
 effect with him who can give good nicknames. 
 What moderation, and understatement, and 
 checking his thunder in mid volley ! He has 
 good-naturedly furnished the courtier and 
 citizen with all that can be said against the 
 schools. " For philosophy is an elegant thing, 
 if any one modestly meddles with it ; but, if he 
 is conversant with it more than is becoming, 
 it corrupts the man." He could well afford 
 to be generous, he, who from the sunlike
 
 60 "Representative 
 
 centrality and reach of his vision, had a faith 
 without cloud. Such as his perception, was 
 his speech : he plays with the doubt, and 
 makes the most of it : he paints and quibbles; 
 and by and by comes a sentence that moves 
 the sea and land. The admirable earnest 
 comes not only at intervals, in the perfect yes 
 and no of the dialogue, but in bursts of light. 
 " I, therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these 
 accounts, and consider how I may exhibit my 
 soul before the judge in a healthy condition. 
 Wherefore, disregarding the honors that most 
 men value, and looking to the truth, I shall 
 endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I 
 can and, when I die, to die so. And I invite 
 all other men, to the utmost of my power ; and 
 you, too, I in turn invite to this contest, which, 
 I affirm, surpasses all contests here." 
 
 He is a great average man one who, to the 
 best thinking, adds a proportion and equality 
 in his faculties, so that men see in him their 
 own dreams and glimpses made available, and 
 made to pass for what they are. A great com 
 mon sense is his warrant and qualification to 
 be the world s interpreter. He has reason, as 
 all the philosophic and poetic class have : but 
 he has, also, what they have not, this strong 
 solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the 
 appearances of the world, and build a bridge 
 from the streets of cities to the Atlantis. He 
 omits never this graduation, but slopes his 
 thought, however picturesque the precipice on
 
 Plato ; or, Sbe Pbilosopbcc 
 
 one side, to an access from the plain. He 
 never writes in ecstasy, or catches us up into 
 poetic rapture. 
 
 Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He 
 could prostrate himself on the earth, and cover 
 his eyes, whilst he adored that which cannot 
 be numbered, or gauged, or known, or 
 named : that of which everything can be 
 affirmed and denied : that " which is entity 
 and nonentity." He called it super-essential. 
 He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, 
 to demonstrate that it was so, that this Being 
 exceeded the limits of intellect. No man 
 ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffable. 
 Having paid his homage, as for the human 
 race, to the Illimitable, he then stood erect, and 
 for the human race affirmed, " And yet things 
 are knowable ! " that is, the Asia in his mind 
 was first heartily honored, the ocean of love 
 and power,, before form, before will, before 
 knowledge, the Same, the Good, the One ; and 
 now, refreshed and empowered by this wor 
 ship, the instinct of Europe, namely, culture, 
 returns ; and he cries, Yet things are know- 
 able ! They are knowable, because, being 
 from one, things correspond. There is a scale : 
 and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of 
 matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is 
 our guide. As there is a science of stars, 
 called astronomy ; a science of quantities 
 called mathematics ; a science of qualities.
 
 62 "{Representative 
 
 called chemistry; so there is a science ot 
 sciences, I call it Dialectic, which is the in 
 tellect discriminating the false and the true. 
 It rests on the observation of identity and di 
 versity ; for, to judge, is to unite to an object 
 the notion which belongs to it. The sciences, 
 even the best, mathematics, and astronomy, 
 are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey 
 offers, even without being able to make any 
 use of it. Dialectic must teach the use of 
 them. " This is of that rank that no intellect 
 ual man will enter on any study for its own 
 sake, but only with a view to advance himself 
 in that one sole science which embraces all." 
 "The essence or peculiarity of man is to 
 comprehend the whole ; or that which in the 
 diversity of sensations, can be comprised 
 under a rational unity." " The soul which 
 has never perceived the truth, cannot pass in 
 to the human form." I announce to men the 
 Intellect. I announce the good of being inter 
 penetrated by the mind that made nature : 
 this benefit, namely, that it can understand 
 nature, which it made and maketh. Nature is 
 good, but intellect is better : as the law-giver 
 is before the law-receiver. I give you joy, O 
 sons of men ! that truth is altogether whole 
 some ; that we have hope to search out what 
 might be the very self of everything. The 
 misery of man is to be balked of the sight of 
 essence, and to be stuffed with conjecture : 
 but the supreme good is reality ; the supreme
 
 fMato; or, Cbe ipbilosopbcr 63 
 
 beauty is reality ; and all virtue and all felic 
 ity depend on this science of the real : for 
 courage is nothing else than knowledge : the 
 fairest fortune that can befall man, is to be 
 guided by his daemon to that which is truly 
 his own. This also is the essence of justice, 
 to attend every one his own ; nay, the no 
 tion of virtue is not to be arrived at, except 
 through direct contemplation of the divine 
 essence. Courage, then, for " the persuasion 
 that we must search that which we do not know, 
 will render us, beyond comparison, better, 
 braver, and more industrious, than if we 
 thought it impossible to discover what we do 
 not know, and useless to search for it." He 
 secures a position not to be commanded, by his 
 passion for reality ; valuing philosophy only 
 as it is the pleasure of conversing with real 
 being. 
 
 Thus, full of the genius of Europe, he said, 
 Culture. He saw the institutions of Sparta, 
 and recognized more genially, one would say, 
 than any since, the hope of education. He 
 delighted in every accomplishment, in every 
 graceful and useful and truthful performance ; 
 above all, in the splendors of genius and intel 
 lectual achievement. " The whole of life, O 
 Socrates," said Glauco, " is, with the wise the 
 measure of hearing such discourses as these." 
 What a price he sets on the feats of talent, on 
 the powers of Pericles, of Isocrate^, of Par- 
 menides ! What price, above price on the
 
 64 "Representative /foen 
 
 talents themselves ! He called the several 
 faculties, gods, in his beautiful personation. 
 What value he gives to the art of gymnastics 
 in education ; what to geometry ; what to 
 music ; what to astronomy, whose appeasing 
 and medicinal power he celebrates ! In the 
 Timaeus, he indicates the highest employment 
 of the eyes. " By us it is asserted, that God 
 invented and bestowed sight on us for this 
 purpose, that, on surveying the circles of in 
 telligence in the heavens, we might properly 
 employ those of our own minds, which, though 
 disturbed when compared with the others that 
 are uniform, are still allied to their circula 
 tions ; and that, having thus learned, and be 
 ing naturally possessed of a correct reasoning 
 faculty, we might, by imitating the uniform 
 revolutions of divinity, set right our own wan 
 derings and blunders." And in the Republic, 
 " By each of these disciplines, a certain or 
 gan of the soul is both purified and reanimated, 
 which is blinded and buried by studies of an 
 other kind ; an organ better worth saving than 
 ten thousand eyes, sir\ce truth is perceived by 
 this alone." 
 
 He said, Culture ; but he first admitted its 
 basis, and gave immeasurably the first place to 
 advantages of nature. His patrician tastes laid 
 stress on the distinctions of birth. In the 
 doctrine of the organic character and disposi 
 tion is the origin of caste. " Such as were fit 
 to govern, into their composition the informing
 
 Plato ; or, Gbe ipbilosopber 65 
 
 Deity mingled gold : into the military, silver ; 
 iron and brass for husbandmen and artificers." 
 The East confirms itself, in all ages, in this 
 faith. The Koran is explicit on this point of 
 caste. " Men have their metal, as of gold 
 and silver. Those of you who were the worthy 
 ones in the state of ignorance, will be the 
 worthy ones in the state of faith, as soon as 
 you embrace it." Plato was not less firm. 
 " Of the five orders of things, only four can 
 be taught to the generality of men." In the 
 Republic, he insists on the temperaments of 
 the youth, as the first of the first. 
 
 A happier example of the stress laid on 
 nature, is in the dialogue with the young 
 Theages, who wishes to receive lessons from 
 Socrates. Socrates declares that, if some 
 have grown wise by associating with him, no 
 thanks are due to him ; but, simply, whilst 
 they were with him, they grew wise, not be 
 cause of him ; he pretends not to know the 
 way of it. " It is adverse to many, nor can 
 those be benefited by associating with me, 
 whom the Daemon opposes ; so that it is not 
 possible for me to live with these. With many, 
 however, he does not prevent me from convers 
 ing, who yet are not at all benefited by associat 
 ing with me. Such, O Theages, is the associa 
 tion with me ; for, if it pleases the God, you 
 will make great and rapid proficiency : you 
 will not, if he does not please. Judge whether 
 it is not safer to be instructed by some one of 
 5
 
 66 TRepresentative /Ren 
 
 those who have power over the benefit which 
 they impart to men, than by me, who benefit 
 or not, just as it may happen." As if he had 
 said, " I have no system. I cannot be answer 
 able for you. You will be what you must. If 
 there is love between us, inconceivably deli 
 cious and profitable will our intercourse be ; if 
 not, your time is lost, and you will only annoy 
 me. I shall seem to you stupid, and the rep 
 utation I have, false. Quite above us, be 
 yond the will of you or me, is this secret affinity 
 or repulsion laid. All my good is magnetic, 
 and I educate, not by lessons, but by going 
 about my business." 
 
 He said, Culture ; he said, Nature : and he 
 failed not to add, " There is also the divine." 
 There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly 
 tends to convert itself into a power, and organ 
 izes a huge instrumentality of means. Plato, 
 lover of limits, loved the illimitable, saw the 
 enlargement and nobility which come from 
 truth itself and good itself, and attempted, as 
 if on the part of the human intellect, once for 
 all, to do it adequate homage, homage fit for 
 the immense soul to receive, and yet homage 
 becoming the intellect to render. He said, 
 then, " Our faculties run out into infinity, and 
 return to us thence. We can define but a 
 little way ; but here is a fact which will not be 
 skipped, and which to shut our eyes upon is 
 suicide. All things are in a scale ; and, begin 
 where we will, ascend and ascend. All things
 
 tMato ; or, be fcbilosopber 67 
 
 arc symbolical ; and what we call results are 
 beginnings." 
 
 A key to the method and completeness of 
 Plato is his twice bisected line. After he has 
 illustrated the relation between the absolute 
 good and true, and the forms of the intelligible 
 world, he says : " Let there be a line cut in 
 two unequal parts. Cut again each of these 
 two parts, one representing the visible, the 
 other the intelligible world, and these two 
 new sections, representing the bright part and 
 the dark part of these worlds, you will have, 
 for one of the sections of the visible world, 
 images, that is, both shadows and reflections ; 
 for the other section, the objects of these im 
 ages, that is, plants, animals, and the works 
 of art and nature. Then divide the intelli 
 gible world in like manner ; the one section 
 will be of opinions and hypotheses, and the 
 other section, of truths." To these four sec 
 tions, the four operations of the soul corre 
 spond, conjecture, faith, understanding, rea 
 son. As every pool reflects the image of the 
 sun, so every thought and thing restores us an 
 image and creature of the supreme Good. 
 The universe is perforated by a million chan 
 nels for his activity. All things mount and 
 mount. 
 
 All his thought has this ascension ; in 
 Phaedrus, teaching that " beauty is the most 
 lovely of all things, exciting hilarity, and 
 shedding desire and confidence through the
 
 68 "Representative /iften 
 
 universe, wherever it enters ; and it enters, in 
 some degree, into all things : but that there is 
 another, which is as much more beautiful than 
 beauty, as beauty is than chaos ; namely, 
 wisdom, which our wonderful organ of sight 
 cannot reach unto, but which, could it be seen, 
 would ravish us with its perfect reality." He 
 has the same regard to it as the source of 
 excellence in works of art. " When an artificer, 
 in the fabrication of any work, looks to that 
 which always subsists according to the same ; 
 and, employing a model of this kind, expresses 
 its idea and power in his work ; it must fol 
 low, that his production should be beautiful. 
 But when he beholds that which is born and 
 dies, it will be far from beautiful." 
 
 Thus ever : the Banquet is a teaching in 
 the same spirit, familiar now to all the poetry, 
 and to all the sermons of the world, that the 
 love of the sexes is initial ; and symbolizes, at 
 a distance, the passion of the soul for that 
 immense lake of beauty it exists to seek. 
 ThiSb.-airh in the Divinity is never out of mind, 
 an^xmstitutes the limitation of all his dogmas. 
 Boay cannot teach wisdom ; God only. In 
 the same mind, he constantly affirms that 
 virtue cannot be taught ; that it is not a 
 science, but an inspiration ; that the greatest 
 goods are produced to us through mania, and 
 are assigned to us by a divine gift. 
 
 This leads me to that central figure, which 
 he has established in his Academy, as the
 
 Plato ; or, vTbe ipbilosopber 69 
 
 organ through which every considered opinion 
 shall be announced, and whose biography he 
 has likewise so labored, that the historic facts 
 are lost in the light of Plato s mind. Socrates 
 ,nd Plato are the double star, which the most 
 powerful instruments will not entirely separate. 
 Socrates, again, in his traits and genius, is the 
 best example of that synthesis which consti 
 tutes Plato s extraordinary power. Socrates, 
 a man of humble stem, but honest enough ; of 
 the commonest history ; of a personal home 
 liness so remarkable, as to be a cause of wit 
 in others, the rather that his broad good 
 nature and exquisite taste for a joke invited the 
 sally, which was sure to be paid. The players 
 personated him on the stage ; the potters 
 copied his ugly face on their stone jugs. He 
 was a cool fellow, adding to his humor a per 
 fect temper, and a knowledge of his man, be 
 he who he might whom he talked with, whiofe 
 laid the companion open to certain defeat in 
 any debate, and in debate he immoderately 
 delighted. The young men are prodigiously 
 fond of him, and invite him to their feasts, 
 whither he goes for conversation. He can 
 drink, too ; has the strongest head in Athens ; 
 and, after leaving the whole party under the 
 table, goes away, as if nothing had happened, 
 to begin new dialogues with somebody that is 
 sober. In short, he was what our country- 
 people call an old one. 
 
 He affected a good many citizen-like tastes,
 
 70 "Representative /Ren 
 
 was monstrously fond of Athens, hated trees, 
 never willingly went beyond the walls^ knew 
 the old characters, valued the bores and philis- 
 tines, thought everything in Athens a little 
 better than anything in any other place. He 
 was plain as a Quaker in habit and speech, 
 affected low phrases, and illustrations from 
 cocks and quails, soup-pans and sycamore- 
 spoons, grooms and farriers, and unnameable 
 offices, especially if he talked with any super 
 fine person. He had a Franklin-like wisdom. 
 Thus, he showed one who was afraid to go 
 on foot to Olympia, that it was no more than 
 his daily walk within doors, if continuously 
 extended, would easily reach. 
 
 Plain old uncle as he was, with his great 
 ears, an immense talker, the rumor ran, 
 that, on one or two occasions, in the war with 
 Boeotia, he had shown a determination which 
 had covered the retreat of a troop ; and there 
 was some story that, under cover of folly, he 
 had, in the city government, when one day 
 he chanced to hold a seat there, evinced a 
 courage in opposing singly the popular voice, 
 which had well-nigh ruined him. He is very 
 poor ; but then he is hardy as a soldier, and 
 can live on a few olives ; usually, in the strict 
 est sense, on bread and water, except when 
 entertained by his friends. His necessary ex 
 penses were exceedingly small, and no onfr 
 could live as he did. He wore no under gat- 
 ment; his upper garment was the same for
 
 Plato ; or, ftbe pbllosopbet 71 
 
 summer and winter ; and he went barefooted ; 
 and it is said that, to procure the pleasure, 
 which he loves, of talking at his ease all day 
 with the most elegant and cultivated young 
 men, he will now and then return to his shop, 
 and carve statues, good or bad, for sale. 
 However that be, it is certain that he had 
 grown to delight in nothing else than this con 
 versation ; and that, under his hypocritical 
 pretense of knowing nothing, he attacks and 
 brings down all the fine speakers, all the fine 
 philosophers of Athens, whether natives, or 
 strangers from Asia Minor and the islands. 
 Nobody can refuse to talk with him, he is so 
 honest, and really curious to know ; a man 
 who was willingly confuted, if he did not 
 speak the truth, and who willingly confuted 
 others, asserting what was false ; and not less 
 pleased when confuted than when confuting ; 
 for he thought not any evil happened to men, 
 of such a magnitude as false opinion respect 
 ing the just and unjust. A pitiless disputant, 
 who knows nothing, but the bounds of whose 
 conquering intelligence no man had ever 
 reached ; whose temper was imperturbable ; 
 whose dreadful logic was always leisurely and 
 sportive : so careless and ignorant as to dis 
 arm the wariest, and draw them, in the pleas- 
 antest manner, into horrible doubts and con 
 fusion. But he always knew the way out; 
 knew it, yet would not tell it. No escape ; he 
 drives them to terrible choices by his dilem
 
 72 "Representative f&en 
 
 mas, and tosses the Hippiases and Gorgiases, 
 with their grand reputations, as a boy tosses 
 his balls. The tyrannous realist ! Meno has 
 discoursed a thousand times, at length, on 
 virtue, before many companies, and very well, 
 as it appeared to him ; but, at this moment, he 
 cannot even tell what it is, this cramp-fish of 
 a Socrates has so bewitched him. 
 
 This hard-headed humorist, whose strange 
 conceits, drollery, and bonhommie, diverted 
 the young patricians, whilst the rumor of his 
 sayings and quibbles gets abroad every day, 
 turns out, in the sequel, to have a probity as 
 invincible as his logic and to be either insane, 
 or, at least, under cover of this play, enthusi 
 astic in his religion. When accused before 
 the judges of subverting the popular creed, he 
 affirms the immortality of the soul, the future 
 reward and punishment ; and, refusing to re 
 cant, in a caprice of the popular government, 
 was condemned to die, and sent to the prison. 
 Socrates entered the prison, and took away all 
 ignominy from the place, which could not be a 
 prison, whilst he was there. Crito bribed the 
 jailer ; but Socrates would not go out by 
 treachery. " Whatever inconvenience ensue, 
 nothing is to be preferred before justice. 
 These things I hear like pipes and drums, 
 whose sound makes me deaf to everything 
 you say." The fame of this prison, the fame 
 of the discourses there, and the drinking of 
 the hemlock, are one of the most precious 
 passages in the history of the world.
 
 Plato ; or, Gbe ipbtloaopber 73 
 
 The rare coincidence, in one ugly body, of 
 the droll and the martyr, the keen street and 
 market debater with the sweetest saint known 
 to any history at that time, had forcibly struck 
 the mind of Plato, so capacious of these con 
 trasts ; and the figure of Socrates, by a neces 
 sity, placed itself in the foreground of the 
 scene, as the fittest dispenser of the intellect 
 ual treasures he had to communicate. It was 
 a rare fortune, that this ^Esod of the mob, and 
 this robed scholar, should meet, to make each 
 other immortal in their mutual faculty. The 
 strange synthesis, in the character of Socrates, 
 capped the synthesis in the mind of Plato. 
 Moreover, by this means, he was able, in the 
 direct way, and without envy, to avail himself 
 of the wit and weight of Socrates, to which 
 unquestionably his own debt was great ; and 
 these derived again their principal advantage 
 from the perfect art of Plato. 
 
 It remains to say, that the defect of Plato 
 in power is only that which results inevitably 
 from his quality. He is intellectual in his 
 aim ; and, therefore, in expression, literary. 
 Mounting into heaven, driving into the pit, ex 
 pounding the laws of the state, the passion of 
 love, the remorse of crime, the hope of the 
 parting soul, he is literary, and never other 
 wise. It is almost the sole deduction from 
 the merit of Plato, that his writings have not, 
 what is, no doubt, incident to this regnancy 
 of intellect in his work, the vital authority
 
 74 TRepresentativc Men 
 
 which the screams of prophets and the ser 
 mons of unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. 
 There is an interval ; and to cohesion, contact 
 is necessary. 
 
 I know not what can be said in reply to this 
 criticism, but that we have come to a fact in 
 the nature of things : an oak is not an orange. 
 The qualities of sugar remain with sugar, and 
 those of salt, with salt. 
 
 In the second place, he has not a system. 
 The dearest defenders and disciples are at 
 fault. He attempted a theory of the universe, 
 and his theory is not complete or self-evident. 
 One man thinks he means this, and another, 
 that : he has said one thing in one place, and 
 the reverse of it in another place. He is 
 charged with having failed to make the transi 
 tion from ideas to matter. Here is the world, 
 sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece 
 of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a 
 mark of haste, or botching, or second thought ; 
 but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds 
 and patches. 
 
 The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea. 
 Plato would willingly have a Platonism, a 
 known and accurate expression for the world, 
 and it should be accurate. It shall be the 
 world passed through the mind of Plato, 
 nothing less. Every atom shall have the Pla 
 tonic tinge ; every atom, every relation or 
 quality you knew before, you shall know 
 again and find here, but now ordered ; not
 
 Iplato ; or, tTbc ipbilosopbet 75 
 
 aature, but art. And you shall feel that Alex 
 ander indeed overran, with men and horses, 
 some countries of the planet ; but countries, 
 and things of which countries are made, ele 
 ments, planet itself, laws of planet and of men, 
 have passed through this man as bread into 
 his body, and become no longer bread, but 
 body : so all this mammoth morsel has become 
 Plato. He has clapped copyright on the 
 world. This is the ambition of individualism. 
 But the mouthful proves too large. Boa con 
 strictor has good will to eat it, but he is foiled. 
 He falls abroad in the attempt; and biting, 
 gets strangled : the bitten world holds the 
 biter fast by his own teeth. There he per 
 ishes : unconquered nature lives on, and for 
 gets him. So it fares with all : so must it fare 
 with Plato. In view of eternal nature, Plato 
 turns out to be philosophical exercitations. 
 He argues on this side, and on that. The 
 acutest German, the lovingest disciple, could 
 never tell what Platonism was ; indeed, ad 
 mirable texts can be quoted on both sides of 
 every great question from him. 
 
 These things we are forced to say, if we 
 must consider the effort of Plato, or of any phi 
 losopher, to dispose of Nature, which will not 
 be disposed of. No power of genius has ever 
 yet had the smallest success in explaining ex 
 istence. The perfect enigma remains. But 
 there is an injustice in assuming this ambition 
 for Plato. Let us not seem to tre^t with flip*
 
 7 6 "Representative /fcen 
 
 pancy his venerable name. Men, in propor 
 tion to their intellect, have admitted his tran 
 scendent claims. The way to know him, is to 
 compare him, not with nature, but with other 
 men. How many ages have gone by, and he 
 remains unapproached ! A chief structure of 
 human wit, like Karnac, or the mediaeval cathe 
 drals, or the Etrurian remains, it requires all the 
 breadth of human faculty to know it. I think 
 it is truliest seen, when seen with the most 
 respect. His sense deepens, his merits multi 
 ply, with study. When we say, here is a fine 
 collection of fables ; or, when we praise the 
 style ; or the common sense ; or arithmetic ; 
 we speak as boys, and much of our impatient 
 criticism of the dialectic, I suspect, is no 
 better. The criticism is like our impatience 
 of miles, when we are in a hurry ; but it is still 
 best that a mile should have seventeen hun 
 dred and sixty yards. The great-eyed Plato 
 proportioned the lights and shades alter the 
 genius of our life.
 
 PLATO : NEW READINGS.
 
 PLATO ! NEW READINGS. 
 
 THE publication, in Mr. Bonn s " Serial Li 
 brary," of the excellent translations of Plato, 
 which we esteem one of the chief benefits the 
 cheap press has yielded, gives us an occasion 
 to take hastily a few more notes of the eleva 
 tion and bearings of this fixed star ; or, to add 
 a bulletin, like the journals, of Plato at the 
 latest dates. 
 
 Modern science, by the extent of its gener 
 alization, has learned to indemnify the student 
 of man for the defects of individuals, by trac 
 ing growth and ascent in races ; and, by the 
 simple expedient of lighting up the vast back 
 ground, generates a feeling of complacency 
 and hope. The human being has the saurian 
 and the plant in his rear. His arts and 
 sciences, the easy issue of his brain, look glori 
 ous when prospectively beheld from the dis 
 tant brain of ox, crocodile, and fish. It seems 
 as if nature, in regarding the geologic night 
 behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, 
 
 79
 
 8o TRepresentattve /nben 
 
 she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, 
 Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was nowise 
 discontented with the result. These samples 
 attested the virtue of the tree. These were a 
 clear amelioration of trilobite and saurus, and 
 a good basis for further proceeding. With 
 this artist time and space are cheap, and she 
 is insensible of what you say of tedious prep 
 aration. She waited tranquilly the flowing 
 periods of paleontology, for the hour to be 
 struck when man should arrive. Then periods 
 must pass before the motion of the earth can 
 be suspected ; then before the map of the 
 instincts and the cultivable powers can be 
 drawn. But as of races, so the succession 
 of individual men is fatal and beautiful, and 
 Plato has the fortune, in the history of man 
 kind, to mark an epoch. 
 
 Plato s fame does not stand on a syllogism, 
 or on any masterpieces of the Socratic reason 
 ing, or on any thesis, as, for example, the im 
 mortality of the soul. He is more than an ex 
 pert, or a school-man, or a geometer, or the 
 prophet of a peculiar message. He repre 
 sents the privilege of the intellect, the power, 
 namely, of carrying up every fact to succes 
 sive platforms, and so disclosing, in every 
 fact, a germ of expansion. These expansions 
 are in the essence of thought. The naturalist 
 would never help us to them by any discov 
 eries of the extent of the universe, but is as 
 tjoor, when cataloguing the resolved nebula of
 
 Plato : t}ew "Readings 81 
 
 Orion, as when measuring the angles of an 
 acre. But the Republic of Plato, by these 
 expansions, may be said to require, and so to 
 anticipate, the astronomy of Laplace. The 
 expansions are organic. The mind does not 
 create what it perceives, any more than the eye 
 creates the rose. In ascribing to Plato the 
 merit of announcing them, we only say, here 
 was a more complete man, who could apply to 
 nature the whole scale of the senses, the under 
 standing, and the reason. These expansions, 
 or extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual 
 sight where the horizon falls on our natural 
 vision, and, by this second sight, discovering 
 the long lines of law which shoot in every 
 direction. Everywhere he stands on a path 
 which has no end, but runs continuously round 
 the universe. Therefore, every word becomes 
 an exponent of nature. Whatever he looks 
 upon discloses a second sense, and ulterior 
 senses. His perception of the generation of 
 contraries, of death out of life, and life out of 
 death, that law by which, in nature, decom 
 position is recomposition, and putrefaction and 
 cholera are only signals of a new creation ; his 
 discernment of the little in the large, and the 
 large in the small-, studying the state in the 
 citizen, and the citizen in the state; and leav 
 ing it doubtful whether he exhibited the Re 
 public as an allegory on the education of the 
 private soul ; his beautiful definitions of ideas, 
 of time, of form, of figure, of the line, some- 
 6
 
 82 TRepresentative 
 
 times hypothetically given, as his defining of 
 virtue, courage, justice, temperance ; his love 
 of the apologue, and his apologues themselves ; 
 the cave of Trophonius ; the ring of Gyges ; the 
 charioteer and two horses ; the golden, silver, 
 brass, and iron temperaments ; Theuth and 
 Thamus ; and the visions of Hades and the 
 Fates, fables which have imprinted them 
 selves in the human memory like the signs of 
 the zodiac; his soliform eye and his boniform 
 soul ; his doctrine of assimilation ; his doctrine 
 of reminiscence ; his clear vision of the laws 
 of return, or reaction, which secure instant 
 justice throughout the universe, instanced 
 everywhere, but specially in the doctrine, 
 "what comes from God to us, returns from us 
 to God," and in Socrates belief that the laws 
 below are sisters of the laws above. 
 
 More striking examples are his moral conclu 
 sions. Plato affirms the coincidence of science 
 and virtue ; for vice can never know itself and 
 virtue ; but virtue knows both itself and vice. 
 The eye attested that justice was best, as long 
 as it was profitable ; Plato affirms that it is 
 profitable throughout ; that the profit is in 
 trinsic, though the just conceal his justice from 
 gods and men ; that it is better to suffer in 
 justice, than to do it ; that the sinner ought to 
 covet punishment ; that the lie was more hurt 
 ful than homicide ; and that ignorance, or the 
 involuntary lie, was more calamitous than in 
 voluntary homicide ; that the soul is umv.il-
 
 Plato : Trtew IReaOinge 83 
 
 ingly deprived of true opinions ; and that no 
 man sins willingly; that the order of proceed 
 ing of nature was from the mind to the body; 
 and, though a sound body cannot restore an 
 unsound mind, yet a good soul can, by its vir 
 tue, render the body the best possible. The in 
 telligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, 
 the right of instructing them. The right pun 
 ishment of one out of tune, is to make him play 
 in tune ; the fine which the good, refusing to 
 govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a 
 worse man ; that his guards shall not handle 
 gold and silver, but shall be instructed that 
 there is gold and silver in their souls, which will 
 make men willing to give them everything 
 which they need. 
 
 This second sight explains the stress laid on 
 geometry. He saw that the globe of earth 
 was not more lawful and precise than was the 
 supersensible ; that a celestial geometry was in 
 place there, as a logic of lines and angles here 
 below ; that the world was throughout math 
 ematical ; the proportions are constant of 
 oxygen, azote, and lime ; there is just so much 
 water, and slate, and magnesia ; not less are 
 the proportions constant of moral elements. 
 
 This eldest Goethe, hating varnish and false 
 hood, delighted in revealing the real at the 
 base of the accidental ; in discovering con 
 nection, continuity, and representation, very- 
 where ; hating insulation ; and appears like the 
 god of wealth among the cabins of vagabonds,
 
 84 "Representative /Ren 
 
 opening power and capability in everything he 
 touches. Ethical science was new and vacant, 
 when Plato could write thus : " Of all whose 
 arguments are left to the men of the present 
 time, no one has ever yet condemned injustice, 
 or praised justice, otherwise than as respects 
 the repute, honors, and emoluments arising 
 therefrom ; while, as respects either of them in 
 itself, and subsisting by its own power in the 
 soul of the possessor, and concealed both from 
 gods and men, no one has yet sufficiently inves 
 tigated, either in poetry or prose writings, how, 
 namely, that the one is the greatest of all the 
 evils that the soul has within it, and justice 
 the greatest good." 
 
 His definition of ideas, as what is simple, 
 permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever 
 discriminating them from the notions of the 
 understanding, marks an era in the world. He 
 was born to behold the self-evolving power of 
 spirit, endless generator of new ends ; a power 
 which is the key at once to the centrality and 
 the evanescence of things. Plato is so centred, 
 that he can well spare all his dogmas. Thus 
 the fact of knowledge and ideas reveals to him 
 the fact of eternity ; and the doctrine of remi 
 niscence he offers as the most probable partic 
 ular explication. Call that fanciful, it mat 
 ters not : the connection between our knowl 
 edge and the abyss of being is still real, and 
 the explication must be not less magnificent. 
 
 He has indicated every eminent point in
 
 Plato: 1Rew "Readings 85 
 
 speculation. He wrote on the scale of the mind 
 itself, so that all things have symmetry in his 
 tablet. He put in all the past, without weari 
 ness, and descended into detail with a courage 
 like that he witnessed in nature. One would 
 say, that his forerunners had mapped out each 
 a farm, or a district, or an island, in intellect 
 ual geography, but that Plato first drew the 
 sphere. He domesticates the soul in nature: 
 man is the microcosm. All the circles of the 
 visible heaven represent as many circles in the 
 rational soul. There is no lawless particle, 
 and there is nothing casual in the action of the 
 human mind. The names of things, too, are 
 fatal, following the nature of things. All the 
 gods of the Pantheon are, by their names, sig 
 nificant of a profound sense. The gods are 
 the ideas. Pan is speech, or manifestation ; 
 Saturn, the contemplative ; Jove, the regal 
 soul ; and Mars, passion. Venus is propor 
 tion ; Calliope, the soul of the world ; Aglaia, 
 intellectual illustration. 
 
 These thoughts, in sparkles of light, had ap 
 peared often to pious and to poetic souls ; but 
 this well-bred, all-knowing Greek geometer 
 comes with command, gathers them all up into 
 rank and gradation, the Euclid of holiness, 
 and marries the two parts of nature. Before 
 all men, he saw the intellectual values of the 
 moral sentiment. He describes his own 
 ideal, when he paints in Timaeus a god leading
 
 86 TRepresentattoe /Ren 
 
 things from disorder into order. He kindled 
 a fire so truly in the centre, that we see the 
 sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, 
 equator, and lines of latitude, every arc and 
 node : a theory so averaged, so modulated, 
 that you would say, the winds of ages had 
 swept through this rhythmic structure, and not 
 that it was the brief extempore blotting of one 
 short-lived scribe. Hence it has happened 
 that a very well-marked class of souls, namely 
 those who delight in giving a spiritual, that is, 
 an ethico-intellectual expression to every truth 
 by exhibiting an ulterior end which is yet 
 legitimate to it, are said to Platonize. Thus, 
 Michel Angelo is a Platonist, in his sonnets. 
 Shakspeare is a Platonist, when he writes, 
 " Nature is made better by no mean, but nat 
 ure makes that mean," or, 
 
 " He, that can endure 
 To follow with allegiance a fallen lord, 
 Does conquer him that did his master conquer, 
 And earns a place in the story." 
 
 Hamlet is a pure Platonist, and tis the magni 
 tude only of Shakspeare s proper genius that 
 hinders him from being classed as the most 
 eminent of this school. Swedenborg, through 
 out his prose poem of " Conjugal Love," is a, 
 Platonist. 
 
 His subtlety commended him to men of 
 thought. The secret of his popular success id
 
 IMato ; flew "Readings 87 
 
 the moral aim, which endeared him to man 
 kind. " Intellect," he said, " is king of 
 heaven and of earth ; " but, in Plato, intellect is 
 always moral. His writings have also the 
 sempiternal youth of poetry. For their argu^ 
 ments, most of them, might have been couched 
 in sonnets : and poetry has never soared higher 
 than in the Timasus and the Phaedrus. As the 
 poet, too, he is only contemplative. He did 
 not, like Pythagoras, break himself with an in 
 stitution. All his painting in the Republic 
 must be esteemed mythical, with intent to 
 bring out, sometimes in violent colors, his 
 thought. You cannot institute, without peril 
 of charlatan. 
 
 It was a high scheme, his absolute privilege 
 for the best (which, to make emphatic, he ex 
 pressed by community of women), as the pre 
 mium which he would set on grandeur. There 
 shall be exempts of two kinds : first, those 
 who by demerit have put themselves below 
 protection, outlaws ; and secondly, those who 
 by eminence of nature and desert are out of 
 the reach of your rewards : let such be free of 
 the city, and above the law. We confide them 
 to themselves ; let them do with us as they 
 will. Let none presume to measure the irreg 
 ularities of Michel Angelo and Socrates by 
 village scales. 
 
 In his eighth book of the Republic, he 
 throws a little mathematical dust in our eyes. 
 I am sorry to see him, after such noble supe-
 
 88 TKcpreaentativc /Hben 
 
 riorities, permitting the lie to governors. Plato 
 plays Providence a little with the baser sort, 
 as people allow themselves with their dogs and 
 cats.
 
 SWEDENBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC*
 
 III. 
 Swedenborg ; or, The Mystic. 
 
 AMONG eminent persons, those who are most 
 dear to men are not the class which the econ 
 omist calls producers ; they have nothing in 
 their hands; they have not cultivated corn, 
 nor made bread ; they have not led out a 
 colony, nor invented a loom. A higher class, 
 in the estimation and love of this city-building-, 
 market-going race of mankind, are the poets, 
 who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the 
 thought and imagination with ideas and pict 
 ures which raise men out of the world of corn 
 and money, and console them for the short 
 comings of the day, and the meannesses of labor 
 and traffic. Then, also, the philosopher has his 
 value, who flatters the intellect of this laborer, 
 by engaging him with subtleties which instruct 
 him in new faculties. Others may build cities ; 
 he is to understand them, and keep them in 
 awe. But there is a class who lead us into 
 another region, the world of morals, or of 
 
 9 1
 
 92 IRepresentative 
 
 will. What is singular about this region of 
 thought, is, its claim. Wherever the sentiment 
 of right comes in, it takes precedence of every 
 thing else. For other things, I make poetry 
 of them ; but the moral sentiment makes 
 poetry of me. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that he would 
 render the greatest service to modern criticism, 
 who shall draw the line of relation that sub 
 sists between Shakspeare and Swedenborg. 
 The human mind stands ever in perplexity, 
 demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, im 
 patient equally of each without the other. 
 The reconciler has not yet appeared. If we 
 tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of 
 refuge. Yet the instincts presently teach, that 
 the problem of essence must take precedence 
 of all others, the questions of Whence? 
 What ? and Whither ? and the solution of 
 these must be in a life, and not in a book. A 
 drama or poem is a proximate or oblique reply ; 
 but Moses, Menu, Jesus, work directly on this 
 problem. The atmosphere of moral sentiment 
 is a region of grandeur which reduces all 
 material magnificence to toys, yet opens to 
 every wretch that has reason the doors of the 
 universe. Almost with a fierce haste it lays 
 its empire on the man. In the language of 
 the Koran, " God said, the heaven and the 
 earth, and all that is between them, think ye 
 that we created them in jest, and that ye shall 
 not return to us ? " It is the kingdom of the
 
 SweOenborg ; or, tTbe fl&E0ttc. 93 
 
 will, and by inspiring the will, which .s the 
 seat of personality, seems to convert the 
 universe into a person : 
 
 " The realms of being to no other bow, 
 Not only all are thine, but all are Thou." 
 
 All men are commanded by the saint. The 
 Koran makes a distinct class of those who are 
 by nature good, and whose goodness has an 
 influence on others, and pronounces this class 
 to be the aim of creation : the other classes 
 are admitted to the feast ot being, only as 
 following in the train of this. And the Per 
 sian poet exclaims to a soul of this kind : 
 
 " Go boldly forth, and feast on being s banquet ; 
 Thou art the called, the rest admitted with thee." 
 
 The privilege of this caste is an access to the 
 secrets and structure of nature, by some higher 
 method than by experience. In common par 
 lance, what one man is said to learn by ex 
 perience, a man of extraordinary sagacity is 
 said, without experience, to divine. The 
 Arabians say, that Abul Khain, the mystic, 
 and Abu Ali Seena, the Philosopher, conferred 
 together ; and, on parting, the philosopher 
 said, "All that he sees, I know;" and the 
 mystic said, " All that he knows, I see." If 
 one should ask the reason of this intuition, the 
 solution would lead us into that property which 
 Plato denoted as Reminiscence, and which is 
 implied by the Bramins in the tenet of Trans-
 
 94 "Representative fben 
 
 migration. The soul having been often born, 
 or, as the Hindoos say, " travelling the path 
 of existence through thousands of births," 
 having beheld the things which are here, those 
 which are in heaven, and those which are 
 beneath, there is nothing of which she has not 
 gained the knowledge : no wonder that she is 
 able to recollect, in regard to any one thing, 
 what formerly she knew. " For, all things in 
 nature being linked and related, and the soul 
 having heretofore known all, nothing hinders 
 but that any man who has recalled to mind, 
 or, according to the common phrase, has 
 learned one thing only, should of himself re 
 cover all his ancient knowledge, and find out 
 again all the rest, if he have but courage, and 
 faint not in the midst of his researches. For 
 inquiry and learning is reminiscence all." 
 How much more, if he that inquires be a holy 
 and godlike soul ! For, by being assimilated 
 to the original soul, by whom, and after whom, 
 all things subsist, the soul of man does then 
 easily flow into all things, and all things flow 
 into it : they mix ; and he is present and sym 
 pathetic with their structure and law. 
 
 This path is difficult, secret, and beset with 
 terror. The ancients called it ecstasy or 
 absence, a getting out of their bodies to 
 think. All religious history contains traces of 
 the trance of saints, a beatitude, but without 
 any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even sad ; 
 " the flight," P-lotinus called it, " of the alone to
 
 Swe&enborg ; or, Gbe flBEStfc. 95 
 
 the alone ; " Mve<ru, the closing of the eyes, 
 whence our word, Mystic. The trances of 
 Socrates, Plotinus, Porphyry, Behmen, Bunyan, 
 Fox, Pascal, Guion, Swedenborg, will readily 
 come to mind. But what as readily comes to 
 mind, is, the accompaniment of disease. This 
 beatitude comes in terror, and with shocks to 
 the mind of the receiver. " It o erinforms 
 the tenement of clay/ and drives the man 
 mad ; or, gives a certain violent bias, which 
 taints his judgment. In the chief examples 
 of religious illumination, somewhat morbid 
 has mingled, in spite of the unquestionable 
 increase of mental power. Must the highest 
 good drag after it a quality which neutralizes 
 and discredits it ? 
 
 " Indeed it takes 
 
 From our achievements, when performed at height, 
 The pith and marrow of our attribute." 
 
 Shall we say, that the economical mother dis 
 burses so much earth and so much fire, by 
 weight and metre, to make a man, and will 
 not add a pennyweight, though a nation is 
 perishing for a leader ? Therefore, the men 
 of God purchased their science by folly or 
 pain. If you will have pure carbon, carbuncle, 
 or diamond, to make the brain transparent, 
 the trunk and organs shall be so much the 
 grosser : instead of porcelain, they are potter s 
 earth, clay, or mud. 
 
 In modern times, no such remarkable ex-
 
 96 Representative /Ben 
 
 ample of this introverted mind has occurred, 
 as in Emanuel Swedenborg, born in Stock 
 holm, in 1688. This man, who appeared to 
 his contemporaries a visionary, and elixir of 
 moonbeams, no doubt led the most real life of 
 any man then in the world : and now, when 
 the royal and ducal Frederics, Cristierns, and 
 Brunswicks, of that day, have slid into 
 oblivion, he begins to spread himself into the 
 minds of thousands. As happens in great 
 men, he seemed, by the variety and amount of 
 his powers, to be a composition of several 
 persons, like the giant fruits which are 
 matured in gardens by the union of four or 
 five single blossoms. His frame is on a larger 
 scale, and possesses the advantage of size. 
 As it is easier to see the reflection of the great 
 sphere in large globes, though defaced by some 
 crack or blemish, than in drops of water, so 
 men of large calibre, though with some eccen 
 tricity or madness, like Pascal or Newton, 
 help us more than balanced mediocre minds. 
 His youth and training could not fail to 
 be extraordinary. Such a boy could not 
 whistle or dance, but goes grubbing into 
 mines and mountains, prying into chemistry 
 and optics, physiology, mathematics, and as 
 tronomy, to find images fit for the measure of 
 his versatile and capacious brain. He was a 
 scholar from a child, and was educated at 
 Upsala. At the age of twenty-eight, he was 
 made Assessor of the Board of Mines, bj
 
 Swe&cnbora ; or, tTbe fbystic. 97 
 
 Charles XII. In 1716, he left home for four 
 years, and, visited the universities of England, 
 Holland, France, and Germany. He per 
 formed a notable feat of engineering in 1718, 
 at the siege of Fredericshall, by hauling two 
 galleys, five boats, and a sloop, some fourteen 
 English miles overland, for the royal service. 
 In 1721, he journeyed over Europe, to ex 
 amine mines and smelting works. He pub 
 lished, in 1716, his Daedalus Hyperboreus, 
 and, from this time, for the next thirty years, 
 was employed in the composition and publica 
 tion of his scientific works. With the like 
 force, he threw himself into theology. In 
 1743, when he was fifty-four years old, what 
 is called his illumination began. All his met 
 allurgy, and transportation of ships overland, 
 was absorbed into this ecstasy. He ceased to 
 publish any more scientific books, withdrew 
 from his practical labors, and devoted himself 
 to the writing and publication of his volumi 
 nous theological works, which were printed at 
 his own expense, or at that of the Duke of 
 Brunswick, or other prince, at Dresden, Leipsic, 
 London, or Amsterdam. Later, he resigned 
 his office of Assessor : the salary attached 
 t<? this office continued to be paid to him 
 during his life. His duties had brought him 
 into intimate acquaintance with King Charles 
 XII., by whom he was much consulted and 
 honored. The like favor was continued to 
 him, by his successor. At the Diet of 1751, 
 1
 
 98 TRcprcscntatlve Men 
 
 Count Hopken says, the most solid memorials 
 on finance were from his pen. In Sweden, 
 he appears to have attracted a marked regard. 
 His rare science and practical skill, and the 
 added fame of second sight and extraordinary 
 religious knowledge and gifts, drew to him 
 queens, nobles, clergy, shipmasters, and peo 
 ple about the ports through which he was 
 wont to pass in his many voyages. The 
 clergy interfered a little with the importation 
 and publication of his religious works ; but he 
 seems to have kept the friendship of men in 
 power. He was never married. He had 
 great modesty and gentleness of bearing. 
 His habits were simple ; he lived on bread, 
 milk, and vegetables ; and he lived in a house 
 situated in a large garden : he went several 
 times to England, where he does not seem to 
 have attracted any attention whatever from the 
 learned or the eminent ; and died at London, 
 March 29, 1772, of apoplexy, in his eighty- 
 fifth year. He is described, when in London, 
 as a man of quiet, clerical habit, not averse to 
 tea and coffee, and kind to children. He 
 wore a sword when in full velvet dress, and, 
 whenever he walked out, carried a gold-headed 
 cane. There is a common portrait of him in 
 antique coat and wig, but the face has a wan 
 dering or vacant air. 
 
 The genius which was to penetrate the 
 science of the age with a far more subtle 
 science ; to pass the bounds of space and time ;
 
 Swefcenborg j or, tFbe favstic 99 
 
 venture into the dim spirit-realm, and attempt 
 to establish a new religion in the world, be 
 gan its lessons in quarries and forges, in the 
 smelting-pot and crucible, in ship-yards and 
 dissecting-rooms. No one man is perhaps 
 able to judge of the merits of his works on so 
 many subjects. One is glad to learn that his 
 books on mines and metals are held in the 
 highest esteem by those who understand these 
 matters. It seems that he anticipated much 
 science of the nineteenth century ; anticipated, 
 in astronomy, the discovery of the seventh 
 planet, but, unhappily, not also of the eighth ; 
 anticipated the views of modern astronomy in 
 regard to the generation of earth by the sun ; 
 in magnetism, some important experiments and 
 conclusions of later students ; in chemistry, 
 the atomic theory ; in anatomy, the discoveries 
 of Schlichting, Monro, and Wilson ; and first 
 demonstrated the office of the lungs. His 
 excellent English editor magnanimously lays 
 no stress on his discoveries, since he was too 
 great to care to be original ; and we are to 
 judge, by what he can spare, of what remains. 
 A colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his 
 times, uncomprehended by them, and requires 
 a long local distance to be seen ; suggest, a3 
 Aristotle, Bacon, Selden, Humboldt, that a 
 certain vastness of learning, or quasi omnipres 
 ence of the human soul in nature, is possible. 
 His superb speculation, as from a tower, over 
 nature and arts, without ever losing sight of
 
 Representative 
 
 the texture and sequence of things, almost real 
 izes his own picture, in the " Principia," of the 
 original integrity of man. Over and above 
 the merit of his particular discoveries, is the 
 capital merit of his self-equality. A drop of 
 water has the properties of the sea, but can 
 not exhibit a storm. There is beauty of a 
 concert, as well as of a flute ; strength of a 
 host, as well as of a hero ; and, in Sweden- 
 borg, those who are best acquainted with mod 
 ern books will most admire the merit of mass. 
 One of the missouriums and mastodons of 
 literature, he is not to be measured by whole 
 colleges of ordinary scholars. His stalwart 
 presence would flutter the gowns of an univer 
 sity. Our books are false by being fragment 
 ary; their sentences are ban mots, and not 
 parts of natural discourse ; childish expres 
 sions of surprise or pleasure in nature ; or, 
 worse, owing a brief notoriety to their petu 
 lance, or aversion from the order of nature, 
 being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not 
 in harmony with nature, and purposely framed 
 to excite surprise, as jugglers do by conceal 
 ing their means. But Swedenborg is system 
 atic, and respective of the world in every sen 
 tence ; all the means are orderly given ; his 
 faculties work with astronomic punctuality, and 
 this admirable writing is pure from all pert- 
 ness or egotism. 
 
 Swedenborg was born into an atmosphere 
 of great ideas. Tis hard to say what was his
 
 Swefcenborg ; or, be B$8tic 101 
 
 own : yet his life was dignified by noblest pict 
 ures of the universe. Hie robust Aristotelian 
 method, with its breadth and adequatenass, 
 shaming our sterile and linear logic by its 
 genial radiation, conversant with series and 
 degree, with effects and ends, skilful to dis 
 criminate power from form, essence from acci 
 dent, and opening by its terminology and defi 
 nition, high roads into nature, had trained a 
 race of athletic philosophers. Harvey had 
 shown the circulation of the blood : Gilbert 
 had shown that the earth was a magnet : Des 
 cartes, taught by Gilbert s magnet, with its 
 vortex, spiral, and polarity, had filled Europe 
 with the leading thought of vortical motion, as 
 the secret of nature. Newton, in the year in 
 which Swedenborg was born, published the 
 " Principia," and established the universal 
 gravity. Malpighi, following the high doc 
 trines of Hippocrates, Leucippus, and Lucre 
 tius, had given emphasis to the dogma that 
 nature works in leasts, " tota in minimis 
 existit natura." Unrivalled dissectors, Swam- 
 merdam, Leeuwenhoek, Winslow, Eustachius, 
 Heister, Vesalius, Boerhaave, had left nothing 
 for scalpel or microscope to reveal in human 
 or comparative anatomy : Linnaeus, his con 
 temporary, was affirming, in his beautiful 
 science, that " Nature is always like herself : " 
 and, lastly, the nobility of method, the largest 
 application of principles, had been exhibited 
 by Leibnitz and Christian Wolff, in cosmology;
 
 102 "Representative 
 
 whilst Locke and Grotius had drawn the moral 
 argument. What was left for a genius of the 
 largest calibre, but to go over their ground, 
 and verify and unite? It is easy to see, in 
 these minds, the original of Swedenhorg s 
 studies, and the suggestion of his problems. 
 He had a capacity to entertain and vivify these 
 volumes of thought. Yet the proximity of 
 these geniuses, one or other of whom had in 
 troduced all his leading ideas, makes Sweden- 
 borg another example of the difficulty, even in 
 a highly fertile genius, of proving originality, 
 the first birth and annunciation of one of the 
 laws of nature. 
 
 He named his favorite views, the doctrine 
 of Forms, the doctrine of Series and Degrees, 
 the doctrine of Influx, the doctrine of Corre 
 spondence. His statement of these doctrines 
 deserves to be studied in his books. Not 
 every man can read them, but they will reward 
 him who can. His theologic works are valu 
 able to illustrate these. His writings would be 
 a sufficient library to a lonely and athletic 
 student ; and the " Economy of the Animal 
 Kingdom " is one of those books which, by 
 the sustained dignity of thinking, is an honor 
 to the human race. He had studied spars 
 and metals to some purpose. His varied and 
 solid knowledge makes his style lustrous with 
 points and shooting spicula of thought, and 
 resembling one of those winter mornings when 
 the air sparkles with crystals. The grandeus
 
 SweDcnborg ; or, Gbe /tootle 103 
 
 of the topics makes the grandeur of the style. 
 He was apt for cosmology, because of that 
 native perception of identity which made mere 
 size of no account to him. In the atom of 
 magnetic iron, he saw the quality which 
 would generate the spiral motion of sun and 
 planet. 
 
 The thoughts in which he lived were, the 
 universality of each law in nature ; the Pla 
 tonic doctrine of the scale or degrees; the 
 version or conversion of each into other, and 
 so the correspondence of all the parts ; the 
 fine secret that little explains large, and large", 
 little ; the centrality of man in nature, and the 
 connection that subsists throughout all things: 
 he saw that the human body was strictly unr 
 versal, or an instrument through which the 
 soul feeds and is fed by the whole of matter : 
 so that he held, in exact antagonism to the 
 skeptics, that, " the wiser a man is, the more will 
 he be a worshipper of the Deity." In short, 
 he was a believer in the Identity-philosophy, 
 which he held not idly, as the dreamers of Berlin 
 or Boston, but which he experimented with 
 and stablished through years of labor, with the 
 heart and strength of the rudest Viking that 
 his rough Sweden ever sent to battle. 
 
 This theory dates from the oldest philoso 
 phers, and derives perhaps its best illustration 
 from the newest. It is this : that nature iter 
 ates her means perpetually on successive 
 planes. In the old aphorism, nature is at-
 
 104 Representative /Ren 
 
 ways self-similar. In the plant, the eye or 
 germinative point opens to a leaf, then to an 
 other leaf, with a power of transforming the 
 leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, 
 sepal, or seed. The whole art of the plant is 
 still to repeat leaf on leaf without end, the 
 jnore or less of heat, light, moisture, and food, 
 determining the form it shall assume. In the 
 animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a spine of 
 vertebrae, and helps herself still by a new 
 spine, with a limited power of modifying its 
 form, spine on spine, to the end of the world. 
 A poetic anatomist, in our own day, teaches 
 that a snake, being a horizontal line, and man, 
 being an erect line, constitute a right angle ; 
 and, between the lines of this mystical quad 
 rant, all animated beings find their place ; and 
 he assumes the hair-worm, the span-worm, or 
 the snake, as the type or prediction of the 
 spine. Manifestly, at the end of the spine, 
 nature. puts out smaller spines, as arms; at 
 the end of the arms, new spines, as hands ; at 
 the other end, she repeats the process, as legs 
 and feet. At the top of the column, she puts 
 out another spine, which doubles or loops 
 itself over, as a span-worm, into a ball, and 
 forms the skull, with extremities again ; the 
 hands being now the upper jaw, the feet the 
 lower jaw, the fingers and toes being repre 
 sented this time by upper and lower teeth. 
 This new spine is destined to high uses. It is 
 a new man on the shoulders of the last. It
 
 SwcDcnbors ; or, ftbe ^Bgstic 105 
 
 can almost shed its trunk, and manage to live 
 alone, according to the Platonic idea in the 
 Timaeus. Within it, on a higher plane, all that 
 was done in the trunk repeats itself. Nature 
 recites her lesson once more in a higher mood. 
 The mind is a finer body, and resumes its 
 functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, ex 
 cluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal 
 element. Here, in the brain, is all the process 
 of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, 
 comparing, digesting, and assimilating of ex 
 perience. Here again is the mystery of gen 
 eration repeated. In the brain are male and 
 female faculties ; here is marriage, here is fruit. 
 And there is no limit to this ascending scale, 
 but series on series. Everything, at the end 
 of one use, is taken up into the next, each 
 series punctually repeating every organ and 
 process of the last. We are adapted to in 
 finity. We are hard to please, and love noth 
 ing which ends; and in nature is no end; 
 but everything, at the end of one use, is 
 lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these 
 things climbs into daemonic and celestial 
 natures. Creative force, like a musical com 
 poser, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple 
 air or theme, now high, now low. in solo, in 
 chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it 
 fills earth and heaven with the chant. 
 
 Gravitation, as explained by Newton, is 
 good, but grander, when we find chemistry 
 only an extension of the law of masses into
 
 io6 "Representative flhen 
 
 particles, and that the atomic theory shows the 
 action of chemistry to be mechanical also. 
 Metaphysics shows us a sort of gravitation, 
 operative also in the mental phenomena ; and 
 the terrible tabulation of the French statists 
 brings every piece of whim and humor to be 
 reducible also to exact numerical rations. If 
 one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thou 
 sand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, 
 then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty 
 thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, 
 or marries his grandmother. What we call 
 gravitation, and fancy ultimate, is one fork of 
 a mightier stream, for which we have yet no 
 name. Astronomy is excellent ; but it must 
 come up into life to have its full value, and 
 not remain there in globes and spaces. The 
 globule of blood gyrates around its own axis in 
 the human veins, as the planet in the sky ; 
 and the circles of intellect relate to those of 
 the heavens. Each law of nature has the like 
 universality ; eating, sleep or hibernation, 
 rotation, generation, metamorphosis, vortical 
 motion, which is seen in eggs as in planets, 
 these grand rhymes or returns in nature, the 
 dear, best-known face startling us at every turn, 
 under a mask so unexpected that we think it 
 the face of a stranger, and, carrying up the 
 semblance into divine forms, delighted the 
 prophetic eye of Swedenborg ; and he must b* 
 reckoned a leader in that revolution, which, by 
 giving to science an idea, has given to an airo*
 
 SvveDcr.bovg ; or, abe d&ssttc 107 
 
 less accumulation of experiments, guidance 
 and form, and a beating heart. 
 
 I own, with some regret, that his printed 
 works amount to about fifty stout octaves, his 
 scientific works being about half of the whole 
 number ; and it appears that a mass of manu 
 script still unedited remains in the royal 
 library at Stockholm. The scientific works 
 have just now been translated into English, in 
 an excellent edition. 
 
 Swedenborg printed these scientific books 
 in the ten years from 1734 to 1744, and 
 they remained from that time neglected : and 
 now, after their century is complete, he has at 
 last found a pupil in Mr. Wilkinson, in Lon 
 don, a philosophic critic, with a coequal vigor 
 of understanding and imagination comparable 
 only to Lord Bacon s, who has produced his 
 master s buried books to the day, and trans 
 ferred them, with every advantage, from their 
 forgotten Latin into English, to go round the 
 world in our commercial and conquering 
 tongue. This startling reappearance of 
 Swedenborg, after a hundred years, in his 
 pupil, is not the least remarkable fact in his his 
 tory. Aided, it is said, by the munificence of 
 Mr. Clissold, and also by his literary skill, this 
 piece of poetic justice is done. The admirable 
 preliminary discourses with which Mr. Wilkin 
 son has enriched these volumes, throw all the 
 contemporary philosophy of England into 
 shade, and leave mo nothing to say on their 
 proper grounds.
 
 io8 "Representative /fcen 
 
 The " Animal Kingdom " is a book of won- 
 derful merits. It was written with the highest 
 end, to put science and the soul, long 
 estranged from each other, at one again. It 
 was an anatomist s account of the human body, 
 in the highest style of poetry. Nothing can ex 
 ceed the bold and brilliant treatment of a sub 
 ject usually so dry and repulsive. He saw 
 nature " wreathing through an everlasting 
 spiral, with wheels that never dry, on axles 
 that never creak," and sometimes sought "to 
 uncover those secret recess is where nature is 
 sitting at the fires in the depths of her labora 
 tory ; " whilst the picture comes recommended 
 by the hard fidelity with which it is based on 
 practical anatomy. It is remarkable that this 
 sublime genius decides, peremptorily for the 
 analytic, against the synthetic method ; and, 
 in a book whose genius is a daring poetic 
 synthesis, claims to confine himself to a rigid 
 experience. 
 
 He knows, if he only, the flowing of nature 
 and how wise was that old answer of Amasis 
 to him who bade him drink up the sea, " Yes, 
 willingly, if you will stop the rivers that flow 
 in." Few knew as much about nature and her 
 subtle manners, or expressed more subtly her 
 goings. H f j thought as large a demand is 
 made on our faith by nature, as by miracles. 
 " He noted that in her proceeding from first 
 principles through her several subordinations, 
 there was no state through which she did not
 
 Swe&enborg ; or, tTbe /Bgstic 109 
 
 pass, as if her path lay through all things." 
 " For as often as she betakes herself upward 
 from visible phenomena, or, in other words, 
 withdraws herself inward, she instantly, as it 
 were, disappears, while no one knows what 
 has become of her, or whither she is gone : so 
 that it is necessary to take science as a guide 
 in pursuing her steps." 
 
 The pursuing the inquiry under the light of 
 an end or final cause, gives wonderful anima 
 tion, a sort of personality to the whole writing. 
 This book announces his favorite dogmas. 
 The ancient doctrine of Hippocrates, that the 
 brain is a gland ; and of Leucippus, that the 
 atom may be known by the mass ; or, in Plato, 
 the macrocosm by the microcosm ; and, in the 
 verses of Lucretius, 
 
 Ossa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis 
 Ossibus sic et de pauxillis atque minutis 
 Visceribus viscus gigni, sanguenque creari 
 Sanguinis inter se multis coeuntibus guttis ; 
 Ex aurique putat micis consistere posse 
 Aurum, et de terns terram concrescere parvis; 
 Ignibus ex igneis, humorem humoribus esse. 
 
 LIB. I. 835. 
 
 " The princiole of all things entails made 
 Of smallest entrails ; bone, oFamallest bone , 
 Blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one ; 
 Gold, of small grains ; earth, of small sands compacted 
 Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted : " 
 
 and which Malpighi had summed in his max 
 im, that " nature exists entirely in leasts," 
 is a favorite thought of Swedenborg. " It is a
 
 no "Representative flken 
 
 constant law of the organic body, that large, 
 compound, or visible forms exist and subsist 
 from smaller, simpler, and ultimately from in 
 visible forms, which act similarly to the larger 
 ones, but more perfectly and more universally, 
 and the least forms so perfectly and univer 
 sally, as to involve an idea representative of 
 their entire universe." The unities of each 
 organ are so many little organs, homogeneous 
 with their compound : the unities of the 
 tongue are little tongues ; those of the stom 
 ach, little stomachs ; those of the heart are 
 little hearts. This fruitful idea furnishes a 
 key to every secret. What was too small for 
 the eye to detect was read by the aggregates ; 
 what was too large, by the units. There is no 
 end to his application of the thought. " Hun 
 ger is an aggregate of very many little hun 
 gers, or losses of blood by the little veins all 
 over the body." It is the key to his theology, 
 also. " Man is a kind of very minute heaven, 
 corresponding to the world of spirits and to 
 heaven. Every particular idea of man, and 
 every affection, yea, every smallest spark of his 
 affection, is an image and effigy of him. A 
 spirit may be known from only a single 
 thought. God is the grand man." 
 
 The hardihood and thoroughness of his 
 study of nature required a theory of forms, 
 also. " Forms ascend in order from the low 
 est to the highest. The lowest form is an 
 gular, or the terrestrial and corporeal. The
 
 SweOenborg; or, Gbe /Rustic. 
 
 second and next higher form is the circular, 
 which is also called the perpetual-angular, be 
 cause the circumference of a circle is a perpet 
 ual angle. The form above this is the spiral, 
 parent and measure of circular forms : its diam 
 eters are not rectilinear, but variously cir 
 cular, and have a spherical surface for centre ; 
 therefore it is called the perpetual-circular. 
 The form above this is the vortical, or per 
 petual-spiral : next, the perpetual-vortical, or 
 celestial : last, the perpetual-celestial, or spir 
 itual." 
 
 Was it strange that a genius so bold should 
 take the last step, also, conceive that he 
 might attain the science of all sciences, to un 
 lock the meaning of the world ? In the first 
 volume of the " Animal Kingdom," he 
 broaches the subject, in a remarkable note. 
 
 "In our doctrine of Representations and 
 Correspondences, we shall treat of both these 
 symbolical and typical resemblances, and of the 
 astonishing things which occur, I will not say, 
 in the living body only, but throughout nature, 
 and which correspond so entirely to supreme 
 and spiritual things, that one would swear that 
 the physical world was purely symbolical of 
 the spiritual world ; insomuch, that if we choose 
 to express any natural truth in physical and 
 definite vocal terms, and to convert these 
 terms only into the corresponding and spirit 
 ual terms, we shall by this means elicit a spirit 
 ual truth, or theological dogma, in place of
 
 ix2 Representative flbcn. 
 
 the physical truth or precept : although no 
 mortal would have predicted that anything of 
 the kind could possibly arise by bare literal 
 transposition ; inasmuch as the one precept, 
 considered separately from the other, appears 
 to have absolutely no relation to it. I intend, 
 hereafter, to communicate a number of exam 
 ples of such correspondences, together with a 
 vocabulary containing the terms of spiritual 
 things, as well as of the physical things for 
 which they are to be substituted. This sym 
 bolism pervades the living body." 
 
 The fact, thus explicitly stated, is implied 
 in all poetry, in allegory, in fable, in the use 
 of emblems, and in the structure of language. 
 Plato knew of it, as is evident from his twice 
 bisected line, in the sixth book of the Repub 
 lic. Lord Bacon had found that truth and 
 nature differed only as seal and print ; and he 
 instanced some physical proportions, with 
 their translation into a moral and political 
 sense. Behmen, and all mystics, imply this 
 law, in their dark riddle-writing. The poets, 
 in as far as they are poets, use it ; but it is 
 known to them only, as the magnet was known 
 for ages, as a toy. Swendenborg first put 
 the fact into a detached and scientific state 
 ment, because it was habitually present to him, 
 and never not seen. It was involved, as we 
 explained already, in the doctrine of identity 
 and iteration, because the mental series ex 
 actly tallies with the material series. It re-
 
 Swefcenbora ; or, be flb8tic 1 13 
 
 quired an insight that could rank things in 
 order and series ; or, rather, it required such 
 Tightness of position, that the poles of the 
 eye should coincide with the axis of the world. 
 The earth has fed its mankind through- five 
 or six millenniums, and they had sciences, 
 religions, philosophies ; and yet had failed to 
 see the correspondence of meaning between 
 every part and every other part. And, down 
 to this hour, literature has no book in which 
 the symbolism of things is scientifically opened. 
 One would say, that, as soon as men had the 
 first hint that every sensible object, animal, 
 rock, river, air, nay, space and time, sub 
 sists not for itself, nor finally to a material 
 end, but as a picture-language, to tell another 
 story of beings and duties, other science would 
 be put by, and a science of such grand presage 
 would absorb all faculties : that each man 
 would ask of all objects, what they mean: 
 Why does the horizon hold me fast, with my 
 joy and grief, in this centre ? Why hear I the 
 same sense from countless differing voices, 
 and read one never quite expressed fact in end 
 less picture-language ? Yet, whether it be, that 
 these things will not be intellectually learned, 
 or, that many centuries must elaborate and 
 compose so rare and opulent a soul, there is 
 no comet, rock-stratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, 
 spider, or fungus, that, for itself, does not 
 interest more scholars and classifiers, than the 
 meaning and upshot of the frame of things.
 
 ii4 "Representative 
 
 But Swedenborg was not content with the 
 culinary use of the world. In his fifty-fourth 
 year, these thoughts held him fast, and his pro 
 found mind admitted the perilous opinion, too 
 frequent in religious history, that he was an 
 abnormal person, to whom was granted the 
 privilege of conversing with angels and spirits ; 
 and this ecstasy connected itself with just this 
 office of explaining the moral import of the 
 sensible world. To a right perception, at 
 once broad and minute, of the order of nature, 
 he added the comprehension of the moral 
 laws in their widest social aspects ; but what 
 ever he saw, through some excessive determin 
 ation to form, in his constitution, he saw not 
 abstractly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, 
 constructed it in events. When he attempted 
 to announce the law most sanely, he was 
 forced to couch it in parable. 
 
 Modern psychology offers no similar ex 
 ample of a deranged balance. The principal 
 powers continued to maintain a healthy action ; 
 and, to a reader who can make due allowance 
 in the report for the reporter s peculiarities, 
 the results are still instructive, and a more 
 striking testimony to the sublime laws he 
 announced, than any that balanced dulness 
 could afford. He attempts to give some 
 account of the modus of the new state, affirm 
 ing that " his presence in the spiritual world 
 is attended with a certain separation, but only 
 as to the intellectual part of his mind, not as
 
 Swe&enborfl; or, Gbe /iRgstfc 115 
 
 to the will part ; " and he affirms that " he 
 sees, with the internal sight, the things that 
 are in another life, more clearly than he sees 
 the things which are here in the world." 
 
 Having adopted the belief that certain 
 books of the Old and New Testaments were 
 exact allegories, or written in the angelic and 
 ecstatic mode, he employed his remaining 
 years in extricating from the literal, the universal 
 sense. He had borrowed from Plato the fine 
 fable of " a most ancient people, men better 
 than we, and dwelling nigher to the gods ; 
 and Swedenborg added, that they used the 
 earth symbolically ; that these, when they 
 saw terrestrial objects, did not think at all 
 about them, but only about those which 
 they signified. The correspondence between 
 thoughts and things henceforward occupied 
 him. The very organic form resembles the 
 end inscribed on it." A man is in general, 
 and in particular, an organized justice or in 
 justice, selfishness or gratitude. And the 
 cause of this harmony he assigned in the 
 Arcana : " The reason why all and single 
 things, in the heavens and on earth, are repre 
 sentative, is because they exist from an in 
 flux of the Lord, through heaven." This de 
 sign of exhibiting such correspondences, which, 
 if adequately executed, would be the poem of 
 the world, in which all history and science 
 would play an essential part, was narrowed 
 and defeated by the exclusively theologic
 
 n6 "Representative /Iben 
 
 direction which his inquiries took. His per 
 ception of nature is not human and universal, 
 but is mystical and Hebraic. He fastens each 
 natural object to a theologic notion : a horse 
 signifies carnal understanding; a tree, per 
 ception ; the moon, faith ; a cat means this ; 
 an ostrich, that; an artichoke, this other; and 
 poorly tethers every symbol to a several 
 ecclesiastic sense. The slippery Proteus is 
 not so easily caught. In nature, each indi 
 vidual symbol plays innumerable parts, as 
 each particle of matter circulates in turn 
 through every system. The central identity 
 enables any one symbol to express succes 
 sively all the qualities and shades of the 
 real being. In the transmission of the 
 heavenly waters, every hose fits every hydrant. 
 Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard 
 pedantry that would chain her waves. She 
 is no literalist. Everything must be taken 
 genially, and we must be at the top of our 
 condition, to understand anything rightly. 
 
 His theological bias thus fatally narrowed 
 his interpretation of nature, and the dictionary 
 of symbols is yet to be written. But the in 
 terpreter, whom mankind must still expect, will 
 find no predecessor who has approached so 
 near to the true problem. 
 
 Swedenborg styles himself, in the title-page 
 of his books, " Servant of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ ; " and by force of intellect, and in 
 effect, he is the last Father in the Church, and
 
 Swe5>enborfl ; or, tTbc /Rustic 117 
 
 Is not likely to have a successor. No wonder 
 that his depth of ethical wisdom should give 
 him influence as a teacher. To the withered 
 traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he 
 let in nature again, and the worshipper, 
 escaping from the vestry of verbs and texts, is 
 surprised to find himself a party to the whole 
 of his religion. His religion thinks for him, 
 and is of universal application. He turns it 
 on every side ; it fits every part of life, in 
 terprets and dignifies every circumstance. 
 Instead of a religion which visited him diplo 
 matically three or four times, when he was 
 born, when he married, when he fell sick, and 
 when he died, and for the rest never interfered 
 with him, here was a teaching which accom 
 panied him all day, accompanied him even 
 into sleep and dreams ; into his thinking, and 
 showed him through what a long ancestry his 
 thoughts descend ; into society, and showed 
 by what affinities he was girt to his equals and 
 his counterparts ; into natural objects, and 
 showed their origin and meaning, what are 
 friendly, and what are hurtful ; and opened 
 the future world, by indicating the continuity 
 of the same laws. His disciples allege that 
 their intellect is invigorated by the study of 
 his books. 
 
 There is no such problem for criticism as 
 his theological writings, their merits are so 
 commanding ; yet such grave deductions must 
 be made. Their immense and sandy diffuse-
 
 n8 "Representative 
 
 ness is like the prairie, or the desert, and their 
 incongruities are like the last deliration. He 
 is superfluously explanatory, and his feeling of 
 the ignorance of men, strangely exaggerated. 
 Men take truths of this nature very fast. Ye* 
 he abounds in assertions : he is a rich dis 
 coverer, and of things which most import us 
 to know. His thought dwells in essential re 
 semblances, like the resemblance of a house 
 to the man who built it. He saw things in 
 their law, in likeness of function, not o 
 structure. There is an invariable method and 
 order in his delivery of his truth, the habitual 
 proceeding of the mind from inmost to out 
 most. What earnestness and weightiness, 
 his eye never roving, without one swell of 
 vanity, or one look to self, in any common 
 form of literary pride ! a theoretic or specu 
 lative man, but whom no practical man in the 
 universe could affect to scorn. Plato is a 
 gownsman : his garment, though of purple, 
 and almost skywoven, is an academic robe, 
 and hinders action with its voluminous folds. 
 But this mystic is awful to Caesar. Lycurgus 
 himself would bow. 
 
 The moral insight of Swedenborg, the 
 correction of popular errors, the announcmen v 
 of ethical laws, take him out of comparison 
 -vith any other modern writer, and entitle him 
 to a place, vacant for some ages, among 
 the lawgivers of mankind. That slow but 
 commanding influence which he has acquired,
 
 SweDenbors ; or, be dfegstic 1 19 
 
 like that of other religious geniuses, must be 
 excessive also, and have its tides, before it 
 subsides into a permanent amount. Of course, 
 what is real and universal cannot be confined 
 to the circle of those who sympathize strictly 
 with his genius, but will pass forth into the 
 common stock of wise and just thinking. The 
 world has a sure chemistry, by which it attracts 
 what is excellent in its children, and lets fall 
 the infirmities and limitations of the grandest 
 mind. 
 
 That metempsychosis which is familiar in 
 the old mythology of the Greeks, collected in 
 Ovid, and in the Indian Transmigration, and 
 is there objective, or really takes place in bodies 
 by alien will, in Swedenborg s mind, has a 
 more philosophic character. It is subjective, 
 or depends entirely upon the thought of the 
 person. All things in the universe arrange 
 themselves to each person anew, according to 
 his ruling love. Man is such as his affection 
 and thought are. Man is man by virtue of 
 willing, not by virtue of knowing and under 
 standing. As he is, so he sees. The marriages 
 of the world are broken up. Interiors asso 
 ciate all in the spiritual world. Whatever the 
 angels looked upon was to them celestial. 
 Each Satan appears to himself a man to those 
 as bad as he, a comely man ; to the purified a 
 heap of carrion. Nothing can resist states: 
 everything gravitates : like will to like : what 
 we call poetic justice takes effect on the spot.
 
 izo "Representative 
 
 We have come into a world which is a living 
 poem. Everything is as I am. Bird and 
 beast is not bird and beast, but emanation and 
 effluvia of the minds and wills of men there 
 present. Every one makes his own house and 
 state. The ghosts are tormented with the fear 
 of death, and cannot remember that they have 
 died. They who are in evil and falsehood are 
 afraid of all others. Such as have deprived 
 themselves of charity, wander and flee : the 
 societies which they approach discover their 
 quality, and drive them away. The covetous 
 seem to themselves to be abiding in cells 
 where their money is deposited, and these to 
 be infested with mice. They who place merit 
 in good works seem to themselves to cut wood. 
 " I asked such, if they were not wearied ? 
 They replied, that they have not yet done 
 work enough to merit heaven." 
 
 He delivers golden sayings, which express 
 with singular beauty the ethical laws ; as when 
 he uttered that famed sentence, that, " in 
 heaven the angels are advancing continually 
 to the springtime of their youth, so that the 
 oldest angel appears the youngest : " " The 
 more angels, the more room : " " The perfection 
 of man is the love of use : " " Man, in his per 
 fect form, is heaven : " " What is from Him, is 
 Him : " Ends always ascend as nature de 
 scends : " And the truly poetic account of the 
 writing in the inmost heaven, which, as it con 
 sists of inflexions according to the form of
 
 Swe&enborg; or, tTbe /Rustic 1*1 
 
 heaven, can be read without instruction. He 
 almost justifies his claim to preternatural 
 vision, by strange insights of the structure of 
 the human body and mind. " It is never per 
 mitted to any one, in heaven, to stand behind 
 another and look at the back of his head : for 
 then the influx which is from the Lord is dis 
 turbed." The angels, from the sound of the 
 voice, know a man s love ; from the articulation 
 of the sound, his wisdom ; and from the sense 
 of the words, his science. 
 
 In the " Conjugal Love," he has unfolded 
 the science of marriage. Of this book, one 
 would say, that, with the highest elements, it 
 has failed of success. It came near to be the 
 Hymn of Love, which Plato attempted in the 
 " Banquet ; " the love, which, Dante says, 
 Casella sang among the angels in Paradise ; 
 and which, as rightly celebrated, in its genesis, 
 fruition, and effect, might well entrance the 
 souls, as it would lay open the genesis of all 
 institutions, customs, and manners. The book 
 had been grand, if the Hebraism had been 
 omitted, and the law stated without Gothicism, 
 as ethics, and with that scope for ascension of 
 state which the nature of things requires. It 
 is a fine Platonic development of the science 
 of marriage ; teaching that sex is universal, and 
 not local ; virility in the male qualifying every 
 organ, act, and thought ; and the feminine in 
 woman. Therefore, in the real or spiritual 
 world, the nuptial union is not momentary,
 
 122 "Representative 
 
 but incessant and total ; and chastity not a 
 local, but a universal virtue ; unchastity being 
 discovered as much in the trading, or planting, 
 or speaking, or philosophizing, as in generation ; 
 and that, though the virgins he saw in heaven 
 were beautiful, the wives were incomparably 
 more beautiful, and went on increasing in 
 beauty evermore. 
 
 Yet Swedenborg, after his mode, pinned his 
 theory to a temporary form. He exaggerates 
 the circumstance of marriage , and, though he 
 finds false marriages on the earth, fancies a 
 wiser choice in heaven. But of progressive 
 souls, all loves and friendships are momentary. 
 Do you love me? means, Do you see the same 
 truth ? If you do, we are happy with the same 
 happiness ; but presently one of us passes into 
 the perception of new truth ; we are divorced, 
 and no tension in nature can hold us to each 
 other. I know how delicious is this cup of 
 love, I existing for you, you existing for me 
 but it is a child s clinging to his toy ; an attempt 
 to eternize the fireside and nuptial chamber ; 
 to keep the picture-alphabet through which 
 our first lessons are prettily conveyed. The 
 Eden of God is bare and grand : like the out 
 door landscape, remembered from the even 
 ing fireside, it seems cold and desolate, whilst 
 you cower over the coals ; but, once abroad 
 again, we pity those who can forego the mag 
 nificence of nature, for candle-light and cards. 
 Perhaps the true subject of the " Conjugal
 
 SweOenborg; or, ftbe /lRg0tic 123 
 
 Love " is conversation, whose laws are pro 
 foundly eliminated. It is false, if literally 
 applied to marriage. For God is the bride or 
 bridegroom of the soul. Heaven is not the 
 pairing of two, but the communion of all souls. 
 We meet, and dwell an instant under the temple 
 of one thought, and part as though we parted 
 not, to join another thought in other fellow 
 ships of joy. So far from there being any 
 thing divine in the low and proprietary sense 
 of Do you love me? it is only when you leave 
 and lose me, by casting yourself on a sentiment 
 which is higher than both of us, that I draw 
 near, and find myself at your side ; and I am 
 repelled, if you fix your eye on me, and de^ 
 mand love. In fact, in the spiritual world, we 
 change sexes every moment. You love the 
 worth in me ; then I am your husband : but it 
 is not me, but the worth, that fixes the love ; 
 and that worth is a drop of the ocean of 
 worth that is beyond me. Meantime, I adore 
 the greater worth in another, and so become 
 his wife. He aspires to a higher worth in 
 another spirit, and is wife or receiver of that 
 influence. 
 
 Whether a self-inquisitorial habit, that he 
 grew into, from jealousy of the sins to which 
 men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in 
 disentangling and demonstrating that particu 
 lar form of moral disease, an acumen which no 
 conscience can resist. I refer to his feeling of 
 the profanation of thinking to what is good
 
 124 "Representative 
 
 "from scientifics." "To reason about faith, 
 is to doubt and deny. " He was painfully alive 
 to the difference between knowing and doing, 
 and this sensibility is incessantly expressed. 
 Philosophers are, therefore, vipers, cockatrices, 
 asps, hemorrhoids, presters,and flying serpents ; 
 literary men are conjurers and charlatans. 
 
 But this topic suggests a sad afterthought, 
 that here we find the seat of his own pain. 
 Possibly Swedenborg paid the penalty of in 
 troverted faculties. Success, or a fortunate 
 genius, seems to depend on a happy adjustment 
 of heart and brain ; on a due proportion, hard 
 to hit, of moral and mental power, which, 
 perhaps, obeys the law of those chemical ratios 
 which make a proportion in volumes necessary 
 to combination, as when gases will combine 
 in certain fixed rates, but not at any rate. It is 
 hard to carry a full cup : and this man, pro 
 fusely endowed in heart and mind, early fell 
 into dangerous discord with himself. In his 
 Animal Kingdom, he surprised us, by declar 
 ing that he loved analysis, and not synthesis ; 
 and now, after his fiftieth year, he falls into 
 jealousy of his intellect ; and, though aware 
 that truth is not solitary, nor is goodness 
 solitary, but both must ever mix and marry, 
 he makes war on his mind, takes the part of 
 the conscience against it, and, on all occasions, 
 traduces and blasphemes it. The violence is 
 instantly avenged. Beauty is disgraced, love 
 is unlovely, when truth, the half part of heaven,
 
 SweDenbors ; or, Cbe /Sbgstfc. 125 
 
 is denied, as much as when a bitterness in 
 men of talent leads to satire, and destroys the 
 judgment. He is wise, but wise in his own 
 despite. There is an air of infinite grief, and 
 the sound of wailing, all over and through 
 this lurid universe. A vampyre sits in the 
 seat of the prophet, and turns with gloomy 
 appetite to the images of pain. Indeed, a 
 bird does not more readily weave its nest, or 
 a mole bore into the ground, than this seer of 
 the souls substructs a new hell and pit, each 
 more abominable than the last, round every 
 new crew of offenders. He was let down 
 through a column that seemed of brass, but it 
 was formed of angelic spirits, that he might 
 descend safely amongst the unhappy, and 
 witness the vastation of souls ; and heard 
 there, for a long continuance, their lamenta 
 tions ; he saw their tormentors, who increase 
 and strain pangs to infinity ; he saw the hell 
 of the jugglers, the hell of the assassins, the 
 hell of the lascivious ; the hell of robbers, who 
 kill and boil men ; the infernal tun of the 
 deceitful ; the excrementitious hells ; the hell 
 of the revengeful, whose faces resembled a 
 round, broad cake, and their arms rotate like 
 a wheel. Except Rabelais and Dean Swift, 
 nobody ever had such science of filth and 
 corruption. 
 
 These books should be used with caution. 
 It is dangerous to sculpture these evanescing 
 images of thought. True in transition, they
 
 iz6 Uepresentatfve fl&en 
 
 become false if fixed. It requires, for his just 
 apprehension, almost a genius equal to his 
 Own. But when his visions become the ste 
 reotyped language of multitudes of persons, of 
 all degrees of age and capacity, they are 
 perverted. The wise people of the Greek race 
 were accustomed to lead the most intelligent 
 and virtuous young men, as part of their 
 education, through the Eleusinian mysteries, 
 wherein, with much pomp and graduation, the 
 highest truths known to ancient wisdom were 
 taught. An ardent and contemplative young 
 man, at eighteen or twenty years, might read 
 once these books of Swedenborg, these mys 
 teries of love and conscience, and then throw 
 them aside forever. Genius is ever haunted by 
 similar dreams, when the hells and the heavens 
 are opened to it. But these pictures are to be 
 held as mystical, that is, as a quite arbitrary 
 and accidental picture of the truth not as 
 the truth. Any other symbol would be as 
 good : then this is safely seen. 
 
 Swedenborg s system of the world wants 
 central spontaneity ; it is dynamic, not vital, 
 and lacks power to generate life. There is no 
 individual in it. The universe is a gigantic 
 crystal, all those atoms and lamina? lie in un 
 interrupted order, and with unbroken unity, 
 but cold and still. What seems an individual 
 and a will, is none. There is an immense 
 chain of intermediation, extending from centra
 
 Swe&enborfi ; or, ftbe /Sb^sttc 127 
 
 to extremes, which bereaves every agency of 
 all freedom and character. The universe, in 
 his poem, suffers under a magnetic sleep, and 
 only reflects the mind of the .magnetizer. 
 Every thought comes into each mind by in 
 fluence from a society of spirits that surround 
 it, and into these from a higher society, and so 
 on. All his types mean the same few things. 
 All his figures speak one speech. All his 
 interlocutors Swedenborgize. Be they who 
 they may, to this complexion must they come 
 at last. This Charon ferries them all over in 
 his boat ; kings, counsellors, cavaliers, doctors, 
 Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, King 
 George II., Mahomet, or whosoever, and all 
 gather one grimness of hue and style. Only 
 when Cicero comes by, our gentle seer sticks 
 a little at saying he talked with Cicero, and, 
 with a touch of human relenting, remarks, 
 "one whom it was given me to believe was 
 Cicero ; " and when the soi disant Roman 
 opens his mouth, Rome and eloquence have 
 ebbed away, it is plain theologic Sweden- 
 borg, like the rest. His heavens and hells 
 are dull ; fault of want of individualism. The 
 thousand-fold relation of men is not there. 
 The interest that attaches in nature to each 
 man, because he is right by his wrong, and 
 wrong by his right, because he defies all 
 dogmatizing and classification, so many allow 
 ances, and contingences, and futurities, are to 
 be taken into account, strong by his vices,
 
 128 "Representative 
 
 often paralyzed by his virtues, sinks into 
 entire sympathy with his society. This want 
 reacts to the centre of the system. Though 
 the agency of " the Lord " is in every line 
 referred to by name, it never becomes alive. 
 There is no lustre in that eye which gazes 
 from the centre, and which should vivify the 
 immense dependency of beings. 
 
 The vice of Swedenborg s mind is its theo- 
 logic determination. Nothing with him has 
 the liberality of universal wisdom, but we are 
 always in a church. That Hebrew muse, 
 which taught the lore of right and wrong to 
 men, had the same excess of influence for 
 him, it has had for the nations. The mode, 
 as well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine 
 is ever the more valuable as a chapter in 
 universal history, and ever the less an avail 
 able element in education. The genius of 
 Swedenborg, largest of all modern souls in 
 this department of thought, wasted itself in 
 the endeavor to reanimate and conserve what 
 had already arrived at its natural term, and, in 
 the great secular Providence, was retiring 
 from its prominence, before western modes of 
 thought and expression. Swedenborg and 
 Behmen both failed by attaching themselves 
 to the Christian symbol, instead of to the 
 moral sentiment, which carries innumerable 
 Christianities, humanities, divinities, in its 
 bosom. 
 
 The excess of influence shows itself in the
 
 Swefienborg ; or, Gbe /fcggtic 129 
 
 incongruous importation of a foreign rhetoric, 
 " What have I to do," asks the impatient 
 reader, " with jasper and sardonyx, beryl and 
 chalcedony; what with arks and passovers, 
 ephahs and ephods ; what with lepers and 
 emerods ; what with heave-offerings and un 
 leavened bread ; chariots of fire, dragons 
 crowned and horned, behemoth and unicorn ? 
 Good for orientals, these are nothing to me. 
 The more learning you bring to explain them, 
 the more glaring the impertinence. The more 
 coherent and elaborate the system, the less I 
 like it. I say, with the Spartan, Why do you 
 speak so much to the purpose, of that which 
 is nothing to the purpose ? My learning is 
 such as God gave me in my birth and habit, 
 in the delight and study of my eyes, and not 
 of another man s. Of all absurdities, this ot 
 some foreigner, proposing to take away my 
 rhetoric, and substitute his own, and amuse 
 me with pelican and stork, instead of thrush and 
 robin ; palm-trees and shittim-wood, instead 
 of sassafras and hickory, seems the most 
 needless." 
 
 Locke said, "God, when he makes the 
 prophet, does not unmake the man." Sweden- 
 borg s history points the remark. The parish 
 disputes, in the Swedish church, between the 
 friends and foes of Luther and Melancthon, 
 concerning " faith alone," and " works alone," 
 intrude themselves into his speculations upon 
 the economy of the universe, and of the celes- 
 9
 
 130 "Representative /Ren 
 
 tial societies. The Lutheran bishop s son, for 
 whom the heavens are opened, so that he sees 
 with eyes, and in the richest symbolic forms, 
 the awful truth of things, and utters again, in 
 his books, as under a heavenly mandate, the 
 indisputable secrets of moral nature, with all 
 these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the 
 Lutheran bishop s son ; his judgments are 
 those of a Swedish polemic, and his vast en 
 largements purchased by adamantine limita 
 tions. He carries his controversial memory 
 with him, in his visits to the souls. He is like 
 Michel Angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the 
 cardinal who had offended him to roast under 
 a mountain of devils; or, like Dante, who 
 avenged, in vindictive melodies, all his private 
 wrongs ; or, perhaps still more like Mon 
 taigne s parish priest, who, if a hailstorm passes 
 over the village, thinks the day of doom has 
 come, and the cannibals already have got the 
 pip. Swedenborg confounds us not less with 
 the pains of Melancthon, and Luther, and 
 Wolfius, and his own books, which he adver 
 tises among the angels. 
 
 Under the same theologic cramp, many of 
 his dogmas are bound. His cardinal position 
 in morals is, that evils should be shunned as 
 sins. But he does not know what evil is, or 
 what good is, who thinks any ground remains 
 to be occupied, after saying that evil is to be 
 shunned as evil. I doubt not he was led by 
 the desire to insert the element of personality
 
 ; or, Gbc dfc0ttc 
 
 of Deity. But nothing is added. One man, 
 you say, dreads erysipelas, show him that 
 this dread is evil : or, one dreads hell, show 
 him that dread is evil. He who loves good 
 ness, harbors angels, reveres reverence, and 
 lives with God. The less we have to do with 
 our sins, the better. No man can afford to 
 waste his moments in compunctions. " That 
 is active duty," say the Hindoos, " which is 
 not for our bondage ; that is knowledge, which 
 is for our liberation ; all other duty is good 
 only unto weariness." 
 
 Another dogma, growing out of this perni 
 cious theologic limitation, is this Inferno. 
 Swedenborg has devils. Evil, according to 
 old philosophers, is good in the making. That 
 pure malignity can exist, is the extreme prop 
 osition of unbelief. It is not to be enter 
 tained by a rational agent ; it is atheism ; it is 
 the last profanation. Euripides rightly said, 
 
 " Goodness and being in the gods are one ; 
 He who imputes ill to them makes them none." 
 
 To what a painful perversion had Gothic 
 theology arrived, that Swedenborg admitted 
 no conversion for evil spirits ! But the divine 
 effort is never relaxed ; the carrion in the sun 
 will convert itself to grass and flowers ; and 
 man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gib 
 bets, is on his way to all that is good and true. 
 Burns, with the wild humor of his apostrophe 
 to " poor old Nickie Ben,"
 
 13* Representative dfcen 
 
 " O wad ye tak a thought, and mend!" 
 
 has the advantage of the vindictive theologian. 
 Everything is superficial, and perishes, but 
 love and truth only. The largest is always the 
 truest sentiment, and we feel the more gener 
 ous spirit of the Indian Vishnu, " I am the 
 same to all mankind. There is not one who 
 is worthy of my love or hatred. They who 
 serve me with adoration, I am in them, and 
 they in me. If one whose ways are altogether 
 evil, serve me alone, he is as respectable as 
 the just man ; he is altogether well employed ; 
 he soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, and 
 obtaineth eternal happiness." 
 
 For the anomalous pretension of Revelations 
 of the other world, only his probity and 
 genius can entitle it to any serious regard. 
 His revelations destroy their credit by run 
 ning into detail. If a man say, that the Holy 
 Ghost has informed him that the Last Judg 
 ment (or the last of the judgments) took place 
 in 1757; or, that the Dutch, in the other 
 world, live in a heaven by themselves, and 
 the English, in a heaven by themselves ; I re 
 ply, that the Spirit which is holy, is reserved, 
 taciturn, and deals in laws. The rumors of 
 ghosts and hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes. 
 The teaching of the high Spirit are abstemious, 
 and, in regard to particulars, negative. Soc 
 rates Genius did not advise him to act or to 
 find, but if he proposed to do somewhat not
 
 Swe&enbors ; or, Gbe Obvstic 133. 
 
 advantageous, it dissuaded him. " What God 
 is," he said, " I know not ; what he is not I 
 know." The Hindoos have denominated the 
 Supreme Being, the " Internal Check." The 
 illuminated Quakers explained their Light, 
 not as somewhat which leads to any action, 
 but it appears as an obstruction to anything 
 unfit. But the right examples are private ex 
 periences, which are absolutely at one on this 
 point. Strictly speaking, Swedenborg s reve 
 lation is a confounding of planes, a capital 
 offence in so learned a categorist. This is to 
 carry the law of surface into the plane of sub 
 stance, to carry individualism and its fopperies 
 into the realm of essences and generals, which 
 is dislocation and chaos. 
 
 The secret of heaven is kept from age to- 
 age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever 
 dropt an early syllable to answer the long 
 ings of saints, the fears of mortals. We 
 should have listened on our knees to any 
 favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had 
 brought his thoughts into parallelism with the 
 celestial currents, and could hint to human 
 ears the scenery and circumstance of the 
 newly parted soul. But it is certain that it 
 must tally with what is best in nature. It 
 must not be inferior in tone to the already 
 known works of the artist who sculptures the 
 globes of the firmament, and writes the moral 
 law. It must be fresher than rainbows, stabler 
 than mountains, agreeing with flowers, with
 
 134 "Representative /Ben 
 
 tides, and the rising and setting of autumnal 
 stars. Melodious poets shall be hoarse as 
 street ballads, when once the penetrating key 
 note of nature and spirit is sounded, the 
 earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat which makes 
 the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule 
 of blood, and the sap of trees. 
 
 In this mood, we hear the rumor that the 
 seer has arrived, and his tale is told. But 
 there is no beauty, no heaven : for angels, 
 goblins. The sad muse loves night and death, 
 and the pit. His Inferno is mesmeric. His 
 spiritual world bears the same relation to the 
 generosities and joys of truth, of which human 
 souls have already made us cognizant, as a 
 man s bad dreams bear to his ideal life. It is 
 indeed very like, in its endless power of lurid 
 pictures, to the phenomena of dreaming, which 
 nightly turns many an honest gentleman, 
 benevolent, but dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulk 
 ing like a dog about the outer yards and ken 
 nels of creation. When he mounts into the 
 heavens, I do not hear its language. A man 
 should not tell me that he has walked among 
 the angels ; his proof is, that his eloquence 
 makes me one. Shall the archangels be less 
 majestic and sweet than the figures that have 
 actually walked the earth ? These angels that 
 Swedenborg paints give us no very high idea 
 of their discipline and culture ; they are all 
 country parsons ; their heaven is a. fete chain- 
 and evangelical picnic, or French dis
 
 Swe&cnborg; or, ftbe jfldgstic 135 
 
 tribution of prizes to virtuous peasants. 
 Strange, scholastic, didactic, passionless, 
 bloodless man, who denotes classes of souls as 
 a botanist disposes of a carex, and visits dole 
 ful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende ! 
 He has no sympathy. He goes up and down 
 the world of men, a modern Rhadamanthua 
 in gold-headed cane and peruke, and with 
 nonchalance, and the air of a referee, distrib 
 utes souls. The warm, many-weathered, pas 
 sionate-peopled world is to him a grammat 
 of hieroglyphs, or an emblematic freemason s 
 procession. How different is Jacob Behmenl 
 he is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe 
 struck, with the gentlest humanity, to th* 
 Teacher whose lessons he conveys ; and \vhet 
 he asserts that, " in some sort, love is gvt&tet 
 than God," his heart beats so high that th* 
 thumping against his leathern coat is audible; 
 across the centuries. Tis a great difference. 
 Behmen is healthily and beautifully wise, not 
 withstanding the mystical narrowness and in- 
 communicableness. Swedenbovg is disagree 
 ably wise, and, with all his accumulated gifts, 
 paralyzes and repels. 
 
 It is the best sign of a great nature, that it 
 opens a foreground, and, like the breath of 
 morning landscapes, invites us onward. Swe- 
 denborg is retrospective, nor can we divest 
 him of his mattock and shroud. Some minds 
 are forever restrained from descending into 
 nature; others are forever prevented from
 
 136 IRepresentative 
 
 ascending out of it. With a force of many men, 
 he could never break the umbilical cord which 
 held him to nature, and he did not rise to the 
 platform of pure genius. 
 
 It is remarkable that this man, who, by his 
 perception of symbols, saw the poetic construc 
 tion of things, and the primary relation of 
 mind to matter, remained entirely devoid of 
 the whole apparatus of poetic expression, 
 which that perception creates. He knew the 
 grammar and rudiments of the Mother-Tongue, 
 how could he not read off one strain into 
 music? Was he like Saadi, who, in his vision, 
 designed to fill his lap with the celestial 
 flowers, as presents for his friends ; but the 
 fragrance of the roses so intoxicated him, that 
 the skirt dropped from his hands ? or, is re 
 porting a breach of the manners of that 
 heavenly society ? or, was it that he saw the 
 vision intellectually, and hence that chiding of 
 the intellectual that pervades his books ? Be 
 it as it may, his books have no melody, no 
 emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead prosaic 
 level. In his profuse and accurate imagery is 
 no pleasure, for there is no beauty. We wander 
 forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. No bird 
 ever sang in all these gardens of the dead. 
 The entire want of poetry in so transcendent 
 a mind betokens the disease, and, like a hoarse 
 voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of warn 
 ing. I think, sometimes, he will not be read 
 2>nger. His great name will turn a sentence.
 
 Swefcenborg ; or, ftbe dfcgstlc 137 
 
 His books have become a monument. His 
 laurel so largely mixed with cypress, a charnel- 
 breath so mingles with the temple incense, 
 that boys and maids will shun the spot. 
 
 Yet, in this immolation of genius and fame 
 at the shrine of conscience, is a merr: sublime 
 beyond praise. He lived to purpose : he gave 
 a verdict. He elected goodness as the clue 
 to which the soul must cling in all this laby 
 rinth of nature. Many opinions conflict as to 
 the true centre. In the shipwreck, some cling 
 to running rigging, some to cask and barrel, 
 some to spars, some to mast; the pilot chooses 
 with science, I plant myself here ; all will 
 sink before this ; " he comes to land who sails 
 with me." Do not rely on heavenly favor, or 
 on compassion to folly, or on prudence, on 
 common sense, the old usage and main chance 
 of men ; nothing can keep you, not fate, nor 
 health, nor admirable intellect ; none can keep 
 you, but rectitude only, rectitude forever and 
 ever ! and, with a tenacity that never swerved 
 in alt his studies, inventions, dreams, he ad 
 heres to this brave choice. I think of him 
 as of some transmigrating votary of Indian 
 legend, who says, " Though I be dog, or jackal, 
 or pismire, in the last rudiments of nature, 
 under what integument or ferocity, I cleave to 
 right, as the sure ladder that leads up to man 
 and to God." 
 
 Swedenborg has rendered a double service 
 to mankind, which is now only beginning to be
 
 138 Representative /Ben 
 
 known. By the science of experiment and 
 use, he made his first steps ; he observed and 
 published the laws of nature ; and, ascending 
 by just degrees, from events to their summits 
 and causes, he was fired with piety at the har 
 monies he felt, and abandoned himself to his 
 joy and worship. This was his first service. 
 If the glory was too bright for his eyes to 
 bear, if he staggered under the trance of de 
 light, the more excellent is the spectacle he 
 saw, the realities of being which beam and 
 blaze through him, and which no infirmities 
 of the prophet are suffered to obscure ; and 
 he renders a second passive service to men, 
 not less than the first, perhaps, in the great 
 circle of being, and in the retributions of 
 spiritual nature, not less glorious or less 
 beautiful to himself.
 
 MONTAIGNE ; OR, THE SKEPTIC.
 
 MONTAIOHE.
 
 IV. 
 
 MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SKEPTIC. 
 
 EVERY fact is related on one side to sensa 
 tion, and, on the other, to morals. The game 
 of thought is, on the appearance of one of 
 these two sides, to find the other ; given the 
 upper, to find the under side. Nothing so thin, 
 but has these two faces ; and, when the ob 
 server has seen the obverse, he turns it over to 
 see the reverse. 
 
 Life is a pitching of this penny, heads or 
 tails. We never tire of this game, because 
 there is still a slight shudder of astonishment 
 at the exhibition of the other face, at the con 
 trast of the two faces. A man is flushed with 
 success, and bethinks himself what this good 
 luck signifies. He drives his bargain in the 
 street ; but it occurs, that he also is bought and 
 sold. He sees the beauty of a human face, and 
 searches the cause of that beauty, which must be 
 more beautiful. He builds his fortunes, main 
 tains the laws, cherishes his children ; but he 
 
 141
 
 142 "Representative dfcen 
 
 asks himself, why ? and whereto ? This head 
 and this tail are called, in the language of phi 
 losophy, Infinite and Finite ; Relative and 
 Absolute ; Apparent and Real ; and many fine 
 names beside. 
 
 Each man is born with a predisposition to 
 one or the other of these sides of nature ; and 
 it will easily happen that men will be found 
 devoted to one or the other. One class has 
 the perception of difference, and is conversant 
 with facts and surfaces ; cities and persons ; 
 and the bringing certain things to pass ; the 
 men of talent and action. Another class have 
 the perception of identity, and are men of 
 faith and philosophy, men of genius. 
 
 Each of these riders drives too fast. Plo- 
 tinus believes only in philosophers ; Fdnelon, 
 in saints ; Pindar and Byron, in poets. Read 
 the haughty language in which Plato and the 
 Platonists speak of all men who are not de 
 voted to their own shining abstractions : other 
 men are rats and mice. The literary class is 
 usually proud and exclusive. The correspond 
 ence of Pope and Swift describes mankind 
 around them as monsters ; and that of Goethe 
 and Schiller, in our own time, is scarcely 
 more kind. 
 
 It is easy to see how this arrogance comes. 
 The genius is a genius by the first look he casts 
 on any object. Is his eye creative ? Does he 
 not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the 
 design, he will presently undervalue the
 
 or, Cbe Sfceptic 143 
 
 actual object. In powerful moments, his 
 thought has dissolved the works of art and 
 nature into their causes, so that the works 
 appear heavy and faulty. He has a conception 
 of beauty which the sculptor cannot embody. 
 Picture, statue, temple, railroad, steam-engine, 
 existed first in an artist s mind, without flaw, 
 mistake, or friction, which impair the executed 
 models. So did the church, the state, college, 
 court, social circle, and all the institutions. It 
 is not strange that these men, remembering 
 what they have seen and hoped of ideas, should 
 affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas. 
 Having at some time seen that the happy soul 
 will carry all the arts in power, they say, Why 
 cumber ourselves with superfluous realiza 
 tions ? and, like dreaming beggars, they as 
 sume to speak and act as if these values were 
 already substantiated. 
 
 On the other part, the men of toil and trade 
 and luxury, the animal world, including the 
 animal in the philosopher and poet also, and 
 the practical world, including the painful drudg 
 eries which are never excused to philosopher 
 or poet any more than to the rest, weigh 
 heavily on the other side. The trade in our 
 streets believes in no metaphysical causes, 
 thinks nothing of the force which necessitated 
 traders and a trading planet to exist : no, but 
 sticks to cotton, sugar, wool, and salt. The 
 ward meetings, on election days, are not soft 
 ened by any misgiving of the value of these
 
 144 Representative flben 
 
 ballotings. Hot life is streaming in a single 
 direction. To the men of this world, to the 
 animal strength and spirits, to the men of 
 practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man 
 of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone 
 have reason. 
 
 Things always bring their own philosophy 
 with them, that is, prudence. No man acquires 
 property without acquiring with it a little arith 
 metic, also. In England, the richest country 
 that ever existed, property stands for more, 
 compared with personal ability, than in any 
 other. After dinner, a man believes less, denies 
 more : verities have lost some charm. After 
 dinner, arithmetic is the only science : ideas 
 are disturbing, incendiary, follies of young 
 men, repudiated by the solid portion of society : 
 and a man comes to be valued by his athletic 
 and animal qualities. Spence relates, that Mr- 
 Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller, one day, 
 when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. 
 " Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, " you have the 
 honor of seeing the two greatest men in the 
 world." " I don t know how great men you 
 may be," said the Guinea man. " but I don t 
 like your looks. I have often bought a man 
 much better than both of you, all muscles and 
 bones, for ten guineas." Thus, the men of the 
 senses revenge themselves on the professors, 
 and repay scorn for scorn. The first had 
 leaped to conclusions not yet ripe, and say 
 more than is true ; the others make themselves
 
 Montaigne; or, Cbe Sfceptfc 145 
 
 merry with the philosopher, and weigh man by 
 the pound. They believe that mustard bites 
 the tongue, that pepper is hot, friction-matches 
 are incendiary, revolvers to be avoided, and 
 suspenders hold up pantaloons ; that there is 
 much sentiment in a chest of tea ; and a man 
 will be eloquent, if you give him good wine. 
 Are you tender and scrupulous, you must eat 
 more mince-pie. They hold that Luther had 
 milk in him when he said, 
 
 " Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang 
 Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang ; " 
 
 and when he advised a young scholar perplexed 
 with fore-ordination and free-wall, to get well 
 drunk. " The nerves," says Cabanis, " they 
 are the man." My neighbor, a jolly farmer, 
 in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of 
 money is sure and speedy spending. " For his 
 part," he says, " he puts his down his neck, 
 and gets the good of it." 
 
 The inconvenience of this way of thinking is, 
 that it runs into indifferentism, and then into 
 disgust. Life is eating us up. We shall be 
 fables presently. Keep cool : it will be all one 
 a hundred years hence. Life s well enough ; 
 but we shall be glad to get out of it, and they 
 will all be glad to have us. Why should we 
 fret and drudge ? Our meat will taste to 
 morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last 
 have had enough of it. " Ah," said my languid 
 10
 
 146 1Representatix>e /Ren 
 
 gentleman at Oxford, " there s nothing new ot 
 true, and no matter." 
 
 With a little more bitterness, the cynic 
 moans : our life is like an ass led to market by 
 a bundle of hay being carried before him : 
 he sees nothing but the bundle of hay. " There 
 js so much trouble in coming into the world," 
 said Lord Bolingbroke, " and so much more, 
 as well as meanness, in going out of it, that tis 
 hardly worth while to be here at all." I knew 
 a philosopher of this kidney, who was accus 
 tomed briefly to sum up his experience of 
 human nature in saying, " Mankind is a 
 damned rascal : " and the natural corollary is 
 pretty sure to follow, " The world lives by 
 humbug, and so will I." 
 
 The abstractionist and the materialist thus 
 mutually exasperating each other, and the 
 scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, 
 there arises a third party to occupy the middle 
 ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. 
 He finds both wrong by being in extremes. 
 He labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of 
 the balance. He will not go beyond his card. 
 He sees the one-sidedness of these men of the 
 street ; he will not be a Gibeonite ; he stands 
 for the intellectual faculties, a cool head, and 
 whatever serves to keep it cool : no unadvised 
 industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss 
 of the brains in toil. Am I an ox, or a dray ? 
 You are both in extremes, he says. You 
 that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead,
 
 flbontaiflne ; or, Cbe Sceptic 147 
 
 deceive yourselves grossly. You believe your 
 selves rooted and grounded on adamant ; and 
 yet, if we uncover the last facts of our knowl 
 edge, you are spinning like bubbles in a river, 
 you kn6w not whither or whence, and you are 
 bottomed and capped and wrapped in delu 
 sions. 
 
 Neither will he be betrayed to a book, and 
 wrapped in a gown. The studious class are 
 their own victims : they are thin and pale, 
 their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the 
 night is without sleep, the day a fear of inter 
 ruption, pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. 
 If you come near them, and see what conceits 
 they entertain, they are abstractionists, and 
 spend their days and nights in dreaming some 
 dreams ; in expecting the homage of society 
 to some precious scheme built on a truth, but 
 destitute of proportion in its presentment, of 
 justness in its application, and of all energy 
 of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it. 
 
 But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see. 
 I know that human strength is not in extremes, 
 but in avoiding extremes. I, at least, will shun 
 the weakness of philosophizing beyond my 
 depth. What is the use of pretending to 
 powers we have not ? What is the use of pre 
 tending to assurances we have not, respecting 
 the other life ? Why exaggerate the power of 
 virtue ? \Vhy be an angel before your time ? 
 These strings, wound up too high, will snap. 
 If there is a wish for immortality, and no evi-
 
 i4& "Kepresentative dfcen 
 
 dence, why not say just that ? If there are 
 conflicting evidences, why not state them ? If 
 there is not ground for a candid thinker to 
 make up his mind, yea or nay, why not sus 
 pend the judgment ? I weary of these dog- 
 matizers. I tire of these hacks of routine, who 
 deny the dogmas. I neither affirm nor deny. 
 I stand here to try the case. I am here to 
 consider, ffKeirreiv, to consider how it is. I will 
 try to keep the balance true. Of what use to 
 take the chair, and glibly rattle off theories of 
 societies, religion, and nature, when I know 
 that practical objections lie in the way, insur 
 mountable by me and by my mates ? Why so 
 talkative in public, when each of my neighbors 
 can pin me to my seat by arguments I cannot 
 refute ? Why pretend that life is so simple a 
 game, when we know how subtle and elusive 
 the Proteus is ? Why think to shut up all 
 things in your narrow coop, when we know 
 there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, 
 a thousand things, and unlike? Why fancy 
 that you have all the truth in your keeping ? 
 There is much to say on all sides. 
 
 Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing 
 that there is no practical question on which 
 anything more than an approximate solution 
 can be had ? Is not marriage an open ques 
 tion, when it is alleged, from the beginning of 
 the world, that such as are in the institution 
 wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get 
 in ? And the reply of Socrates, to him who
 
 jflbontaigne ; or, be Sceptic 149 
 
 asked whether he should choose a wife, still 
 remains reasonable, " that, whether he should 
 choose one or not, he would repent it." Is 
 not the state a question ? All society is 
 divided in opinion on the subject of the state. 
 Nobody loves it ; great numbers dislike it, and 
 suffer conscientious scruples to allegiance : 
 and the only defence set up, is, the fear of do 
 ing worse in disorganizing. Is it otherwise 
 with the church ? Or, to put any of the ques 
 tions which touch mankind nearest, shall the 
 young man aim at a leading part in law, in 
 politics, in trade ? It will not be pretended 
 that a success in either of these kinds is quite 
 coincident with what is best and inmost in his 
 mind. Shall he, then, cutting the stays that 
 hold him fast to the social state, put out to sea 
 with no guidance but his genius ? There is 
 much to say on both sides. Remember the 
 open question between the present order of 
 " competition," and the friends of " attractive 
 and associated labor." The generous minds 
 embrace the proposition of labor shared by all ; 
 it is the only honesty ; nothing else is safe. 
 It is from the poor man s hut alone, that 
 strength and virtue come : and yet, on the 
 other side, it is alleged that labor impairs the 
 form, and breaks the spirit of man, and the 
 laborers cry unanimously, " We have no 
 thoughts." Culture, how indispensable ! I 
 cannot forgive you the want of accomplish 
 ment ; and yet, culture will instantly destroy
 
 150 Representative fl&en 
 
 that chiefest beauty of spontaneousness. Ex 
 cellent is culture for a savage ; but once let 
 him read in the book, and he is no longer able 
 not to think of Plutarch s heroes. In short, 
 since true fortitude of understanding consist? 
 " in not letting what we know be embarrassed 
 by what we do not know," we ought to secure 
 those advantages which we can command, and 
 not risk them by clutching after the airy and 
 unattainable. Come, no chimeras ! Let us 
 go abroad ; let us mix in affairs ; let us learn, 
 and get, and have, and climb. " Men are a 
 sort of moving plants, and, like trees, receive 
 a great part of their nourishment from the air. 
 If they keep too much at home, they pine." 
 Let us have a robust, manly life ; let us know 
 what we know, for certain ; what we have, let 
 it be solid, and seasonable, and our own. A 
 world in the hand is worth two in the bush. 
 Let us have to do with real men and women, 
 and not with skipping ghosts. 
 
 This, then, is the right ground of the skeptic, 
 this of consideration, of self-containing ; not 
 at all of unbelief; not at all of universal deny 
 ing, nor of universal doubting, doubting even 
 that he doubts ; least of all, of scoffing and 
 profligate jeering at all that is stable and good. 
 These are no more his moods than are those 
 of religion and philosophy. He is the con- 
 siderer, the prudent, taking in sail, counting 
 stock, husbanding his means, believing that a 
 man has too many enemies, than that he can
 
 flSontafgne; or, Gbe Sfceptfc 151 
 
 afford to be his own ; that we cannot give our 
 selves too many advantages, in this unequal 
 conflict, with powers so vast and unweariable 
 ranged on one side, and this little, conceited, 
 vulnerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up 
 and down into every danger, on the other. It 
 is a position taken up for better defence, as of 
 more safety, and one that can be maintained ; 
 and it is one of more opportunity and range : 
 as, when we build a house, the rule is, to set 
 it not too high nor too low, under the wind, 
 but out of the dirt. 
 
 The philosophy we want is one of fluxions 
 and mobility. The Spartan and Stoic schemes 
 are too stark and stiff for our occasion. A 
 theory of Saint John, and of non-resistance, 
 seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial. 
 We want some coat woven of elastic steel, 
 stout as the first, and limber as the second. 
 We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. 
 An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to 
 chips and splinters, in this storm of many 
 elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the 
 form of man, to live at all ; as a shell is the 
 architecture of a house founded on the sea. 
 The soul of man must be the type of our 
 scheme, just as the body of man is the type 
 after which a dwelling-house is built. Adap- 
 tiveness is the peculiarity of human nature. 
 We are golden averages, volitant stabilities, 
 compensated or periodic errors, houses founded 
 on the sea. The wise skeptic wishes to have
 
 152 "Representative Oben 
 
 a. near view of the best game, and the chief 
 players ; what is best in the planet ; art and 
 nature, places and events, but mainly men. 
 Everything that is excellent in mankind, a 
 form of grace, an arm of iron, lips of persua 
 sion, a brain of resources, every one skilful to 
 play and win, he will see and judge. 
 
 The terms of admission to this spectacle 
 are, that he have a certain solid and intelligi 
 ble way of living of his own ; some method of 
 answering the inevitable needs of human life ; 
 proof that he has played with skill and success ; 
 that he has evinced the temper, stoutness, and 
 the range of qualities which, among his con 
 temporaries and countrymen, entitle him to 
 fellowship and trust. For, the secrets of life 
 are not shown except to sympathy and like 
 ness. Men do not confide themselves to boys, 
 or coxcombs, or pedants, but to their peers. 
 Some wise limitation, as the modern phrase is ; 
 some condition between the extremes, and 
 having itself a positive quality ; some stark 
 and sufficient man, who is not salt or sugar, 
 but sufficiently related to the world to do 
 justice to Paris or London, and, at the same 
 time, a vigorous and original thinker, whom 
 cities cannot overawe, but who uses them, 
 is the fit person to occupy this ground of 
 speculation. 
 
 These qualities meet in the character of 
 Montaigne. And yet, since the personal re 
 gard which I entertain for Montaigne may be
 
 or, Sbe Sceptic 153 
 
 unduly great, I will, under the shield of this 
 prince of egotists, offer, as an apology for 
 electing him as the representative of skepti 
 cism, a word or two to explain how my love 
 began and grew for this admirable gossip. 
 
 A single odd volume of Cotton s translation 
 of the Essays remained to me from my father s 
 library, when a boy. It lay long neglected, 
 until, after many years, when I was newly 
 escaped from college, I read the book, and 
 procured the remaining volumes. I remember 
 the delight and wonder in which I lived with 
 it. It seemed to me as if I had myself written 
 the book, in some former life, so sincerely it 
 spoke to my thought and experience. It hap 
 pened, when in Paris, in 1833, that, in the cem 
 etery of Pere le Chaise, I came to a tomb of Au 
 gustus Collignon, who died in 1830, aged sixty- 
 eight years, and who, said the monument, " lived 
 to do right, and had formed himself to virtue on 
 the Essays of Montaigne." Some years later, 
 I became acquainted with an accomplished 
 English poet, John Sterling ; and, in prosecut 
 ing my correspondence, I found that, from a 
 love of Montaigne, he had made a pilgrimage 
 to his chateau, still standing near Castellan, 
 in Perigord, and, after two hundred and fifty 
 years, had copied from the walls of his library 
 the inscriptions which Montaigne had written 
 there. That Journal of Mr. Sterling s, pub 
 lished in the Westminster Review, Mr. Hazlitt 
 has reprinted in the Prolegomena to his edition
 
 iS4 Representative /Ren 
 
 of the Essays. I heard with pleasure that one 
 of the newly-discovered autographs of William 
 Shakspeare vas in a copy of Florio s transla 
 tion of Montaigne. It is the only book which 
 we certainly know to have been in the poet s 
 library. And, oddly enough, the duplicate 
 copy of Florio, which the British Museum 
 purchased, with a view of protecting the 
 Shakspeare autograph (as I was informed in 
 the Museum), turned out to have the autograph 
 of Ben Jonson in the fly-leaf. Leigh Hunt 
 relates of Lord Byron, that Montaigne was the 
 
 J t o 
 
 only great writer of past times whom he read 
 with avowed satisfaction. Other coincidences, 
 not needful to be mentioned here, concurred 
 to make this old Gascon still new and immortal 
 for me. 
 
 In 1571, on the death of his father, Mon 
 taigne, then thirty-eight years old, retired from 
 the practice of law, at Bordeaux, and settled 
 himself on his estate. Though he had been a 
 man of pleasure, and sometimes a courtier, his 
 studious habits now grew on him, and he loved 
 the compass, staidness, and independence of 
 the country gentleman s life. He took up his 
 economy in good earnest, and made his farms 
 yield the most. Downright and plain-dealing, 
 and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he 
 was esteemed in the country for his sense and 
 probity. In the civil wars of the League, 
 which converted every house into a fort, Mon 
 taigne kept his gates open, and his house with-
 
 /fcontaigne; or, Cbe Sfceptfc 155 
 
 out defence. All parties freely came and went, 
 his courage and honor being universally es 
 teemed. The neighboring lords and gentry 
 brought jewels and papers to him for safe-keep 
 ing. Gibbon reckons, in these bigoted times, 
 but two men of liberality in France, Henry 
 IV. and Montaigne. 
 
 Montaigne is the frankest and honestest of 
 all writers. His French freedom runs into 
 grossness ; but he has anticipated all censures 
 by the bounty of his own confessions. In his 
 times, books were written to one sex only, and 
 almost all were written in Latin ; so that, in a 
 humorist, a certain nakedness of statement 
 was permitted, which our manners, of a litera 
 ture addressed equally to both sexes, do not 
 allow. But, though a biblical plainness, coupled 
 with a most uncanonical levity, may shut his 
 pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offence 
 is superficial. He parades it : he makes the 
 most of it ; nobody can think or say worse of 
 him than he does. He pretends to most of 
 the vices ; and, if there be any virtue in him, 
 he says, it got in by stealth. There is no man, 
 in his opinion, who has not deserved hanging 
 five or six times ; and he pretends no exception 
 in his own behalf. " Five or six as ridiculous 
 stories," too, he says, " can be told of me, as 
 of any man living." But, with all this really 
 superfluous frankness, the opinion of an invin 
 cible probity grows into every reader s mind. 
 
 "When I the most strictly and religiously
 
 156 "Representative 
 
 confess myself, I find that the best virtue I 
 have has in it some tincture of vice ; and I am 
 afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue (I, who 
 am as sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of 
 that stamp as any other whatever), if he had 
 listened, and laid his ear close to himself, 
 would have heard some jarring sound of 
 human mixture ; but faint and remote, and 
 only to be perceived by himself." 
 
 Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at 
 color or pretence of any kind. He has been 
 in courts so long as to have conceived a furi 
 ous disgust at appearances ; he will indulge 
 himself with a little cursing and swearing ; he 
 will talk with sailors and gypsies, use flash and 
 street ballads : he has stayed in-doors till he is 
 deadly sick : he will to the open air, though it 
 rain bullets. He has seen too much of gentle 
 men of the long robe, until he wishes for can 
 nibals ; and is so nervous, by factitious life, 
 that he thinks, the more barbarous man is, the 
 better he is. He likes his saddle. You may 
 read theology, and grammar, and metaphysics 
 elsewhere. Whatever you get here, shall 
 smack of the earth and of real life, sweet, or 
 smart, or stinging. He makes no hesitation to 
 entertain you with the records of his disease ; 
 and his journey to Italy is quite full of that 
 matter. He took and kept this position of 
 equilibrium. Over his name, he drew an em 
 blematic pair of scales, and wrote Qiie scats 
 je? under it. As I look at his effigy opposite
 
 flbontakjne ; or, be Sfceptfc 157 
 
 the title-page, I seem to hear him say, " You 
 may play old Poz, if you will ; you may rail 
 and exaggerate, I stand here for truth, and 
 will not, for all the states, and churches, 
 and revenues, and personal reputations of 
 Europe, overstate the dry fact, as I see it ; 
 I will rather mumble and prose about what 
 I certainly know, my house and barns ; my 
 father, my wife, and my tenants ; my old lean 
 bald pate ; my knives and forks : what meats 
 I eat, and what drinks I prefer ; and a hun 
 dred straws just as ridiculous, than I will 
 write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine .romance. 
 I like gray days, and autumn and winter 
 weather. I am gray and autumnal myself, 
 and think an undress, and old shoes that do 
 not pinch my feet, and old friends who do not 
 constrain me, and plain topics where I do not 
 need to strain myself and pump my brains, 
 the most suitable. Our condition as men is 
 risky and ticklish enough. One cannot be 
 sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but 
 he may be whisked off into some pitiable or 
 ridiculous plight. Why should I vapor and 
 play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the 
 best I can, this dancing balloon ? So, at least, 
 I live within compass, keep myself ready for 
 action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, with 
 decency. If there be anything farcical in 
 such a life, the blame is not mine : let it lie at 
 fate s and nature s door." 
 
 The Essays, therefore, are an entertaining
 
 158 "Representative 
 
 soliloquy on every random topic that comes 
 into his head ; treating everything without 
 ceremony, yet with masculine sense. There 
 have been men with deeper insight ; but, one 
 would say, never a man with such abundance 
 of thoughts : he is never dull, never insincere, 
 and has the genius to make the reader care 
 for all that he cares for. 
 
 The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches 
 to his sentences. I know not anywhere the 
 book that seems less written. It is the lan 
 guage of conversation transferred to a book. 
 Cut these words, and they would bleed : they 
 are vascular and alive. One has the same 
 pleasure in it that we have in listening to the 
 necessary speech of men about their work, 
 when any unusual circumstance gives moment 
 ary importance to the dialogue. For black 
 smiths and teamsters do not trip in their 
 speech ; it is a shower of bullets. It is Cam 
 bridge men who correct themselves, and begin 
 again at every half sentence, and, moreover, 
 will pun, and refine too much, and swerve from 
 the matter to the expression. Montaigne talks 
 with shrewdness, knows the world, and books, 
 and himself, and uses the positive degree : 
 never shrieks, or protests, or prays : no weak 
 ness, no convulsion, no superlative ; does not 
 wish to jump out of his skin, or play any 
 antics, or annihilate space or time ; but is 
 stout and solid ; tastes every moment of the 
 day ; likes pain, because it makes him feel
 
 flbontatgne ; or, Ube Sfteptfc 159 
 
 himself, and realize things ; as we pinch our 
 selves to know that we are awake. He keeps 
 the plain ; he rarely mounts or sinks ; likes to 
 feel solid ground, and the stones underneath. 
 His writing has no enthusiasms, no aspiration ; 
 contented, self-respecting, and keeping the 
 middle of the road. There is but one excep 
 tion, in his love for Socrates. In speaking 
 of him, for once his cheek flushes, and his 
 style rises to passion. 
 
 Montaigne died of a quinsy, at the age of 
 sixty, in 1592. When he came to die, he 
 caused the mass to be celebrated in his cham 
 ber. At the age of thirty-three, he had been 
 married. " But," he says, " might I have had 
 my own will, I would not have married Wisdom 
 herself, if she would have had me : but tis to 
 much purpose to evade it, the common custom 
 and use of life will have it so. Most of my 
 actions are guided by example, not choice." 
 In the hour of death he gave the same weight 
 to custom. Que seals je ? What do I know. 
 
 This book of Montaigne the world has en 
 dorsed, by translating it into all tongues, and 
 printing seventy-five editions of it in Europe : 
 and that, too, a circulation somewhat chosen, 
 namely, among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men 
 of the world, and men of wit and generosity. 
 
 Shall we say that Montaigne has spoken 
 wisely, and given the right and permanent 
 expression of the human mind, on the conduct 
 of life ?
 
 160 Representative flfcen 
 
 We are natural believers. Truth, or the 
 connection between cause and effect, alone 
 interests us. We are persuaded that a thread 
 runs through all things : all worlds are strung 
 on it, as beads : and men, and events, and 
 life, come to us, only because of that thread : 
 they pass and repass, only that we may know 
 the direction and continuity of that line. A 
 book or statement which goes to show that 
 there is no line, but random and chaos, a 
 calamity out of nothing, a prosperity and no 
 account of it, a hero born from a fool, a fool 
 from a hero, dispirits us. Seen or unseen, 
 we believe . the tie exists. Talent makes 
 counterfeit ties ; genius finds the real ones. 
 We hearken to the man of science, because 
 we anticipate the sequence in natural phe 
 nomena which he uncovers. We love whatever 
 affirms, connects, preserves ; and dislike what 
 scatters or pulls down. One man appears 
 whose nature is to all men s eyes conserving 
 and constructive : his presence supposes a 
 well-ordered society, agriculture, trade, large 
 institutions, and empire. If these did not 
 exist, they would begin to exist through his 
 endeavors. Therefore, he cheers and comforts 
 men, who feel all this in him very readily. 
 The nonconformist and the rebel say all man 
 ner of unanswerable things against the exist 
 ing republic, but discover to our sense no plan 
 of house or state of their own. Therefore, 
 though the town, and state, and way of living,
 
 flbcmtafgne ; or, tTbe Sfceptfc 161 
 
 which our counsellor contemplated, mignt be 
 a very modest or musty prosperity, yet men 
 rightly go for him, and reject the reformer, so 
 long as he comes only with axe and crowbar. 
 
 But though we are natural conservers and 
 causationists, and reject a sour, dumpish unbe 
 lief, the skeptical class, which Montaigne repre 
 sents, have reason, and every man, at some 
 time, belongs to it. Every superior mind will 
 pass through this domain of equilibration, I 
 should rather say, will know how to avail him 
 self of the checks and balances in nature, as a 
 natural weapon against the exaggeration and 
 formalism of bigots and blockheads. 
 
 Skepticism is the attitude assumed by the 
 student in relation to the particulars which 
 society adores, but which he sees to be rever 
 ent only in their tendency and spirit. The 
 ground occupied by the skeptic is the vesti 
 bule of the temple. Society does not like to 
 have any breath of question blown on the ex 
 isting order. But the interrogation of custom 
 at all points is an inevitable stage in the growth 
 of every superior mind, and is the evidence of 
 its perception of the flowing power which re 
 mains itself in all changes. 
 
 The superior mind will find itself equally at 
 odds with the evils of society, and with the 
 projects that are offered to relieve them. 
 The wise skeptic is a bad citizen ; no conserv 
 ative ; he sees the selfishness of property, and 
 the drowsiness of institutions. But neither is 
 ii
 
 1 62 IRepresentattve dfcen 
 
 he fit to work with any democratic party that 
 ever was constituted : for parties wish every 
 one committed, and he penetrates the popular 
 patriotism. His politics are those of the 
 " Soul s Errand " of Sir Walter Raleigh ; or of 
 Krishna, in the Bhagavat, " There is none who 
 is worthy of my love or hatred ; " while he 
 sentences law, physic, divinity, commerce, and 
 custom. He is a reformer : yet he is no better 
 member of the philanthropic association. It 
 turns out that he is not the champion of the 
 operative, the pauper, the prisoner, the slave. 
 It stands in his mind, that our life in this world 
 is not of quite so easy interpretation as 
 churches and school-books say. He does not 
 wish to take ground against these benevo 
 lences, to play the part of devil s attorney, and 
 blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the 
 sun for him. But he says, There are doubts. 
 
 I mean to use the occasion, and celebrate 
 the calendar-day of our Saint Michel de Mon 
 taigne, by counting and describing these 
 doubts or negations. I wish to ferret them 
 out of their holes, and sun them a little. We 
 must do with them as the police do with old 
 rogues, who are shown up to the public at the 
 marshal s office. They will never be so for 
 midable, when once they have been identified 
 and registered. But I mean honestly by them 
 that justice shall be done to their terrors. I 
 shall not take Sunday objections, made up on 
 purpose to be put down. I shall take the
 
 fl&ontaigne ; or, Cbe Sfcepttc 165 
 
 worst I can find, whether I can dispose of 
 them, or they of me. 
 
 I do not press the skepticism of the materi 
 alist. I know the quadruped opinion will not 
 prevail. Tis of no importance what bats and 
 oxen think. The first dangerous symptom I 
 report, is, the levity of intellect ; as if it were 
 fatal to earnestness to know much. Knowl 
 edge is the knowing that we cannot know. 
 The dull pray ; the geniuses are light mockers. 
 How respectable is earnestness on every plat 
 form ! but intellect kills it. Nay, San Carlo, 
 my subtle and admirable friend, one of the 
 most penetrating of men, finds that all direct 
 ascension, even of lofty piety, leads to this 
 ghastly insight, and sends back the votary or 
 phaned. My astonishing San Carlo thought 
 the lawgivers and saints infected. They found 
 the ark empty ; saw, and would not tell ; and 
 tried to choke off their approaching followers, 
 by saying, " Action, action, my dear fellows, 
 is for you ! " Bad as was to me this detection, 
 by San Carlo, this frost in July, this blow from 
 a brick, there was still a worse, namely, the 
 cloy or satiety of the saints. In the mount of 
 vision, ere they have yet risen from their 
 knees, they say, " We discover that this our 
 homage and beatitude is partial and deformed 
 we must fly for relief to the suspected and 
 reviled Intellect, to the Understanding, the 
 Mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of talent." 
 
 This is hobgoblin the first ; and, though it
 
 1 64 "Representative 
 
 has been the subject of much elegy, in out 
 nineteenth century, from Byron, Goethe, and 
 other poets of less fame, not to mention many 
 distinguished private observers, I confess it 
 is not very affecting to my imagination ; for it 
 seems to concern the shattering of baby-houses 
 and crockery-shops. What flutters the church 
 of Rome, or of England, or of Geneva, or of 
 Boston, may yet be very far from touching 
 any principle of faith. I think that the in 
 tellect and moral sentiment are unanimous ; 
 and that, though philosophy extirpates bug 
 bears, yet it supplies the natural checks of 
 vice, and polarity to the soul. I think that 
 the wiser a man is, the more stupendous he 
 finds the natural and moral economy, and lifts 
 himself to a more absolute reliance. 
 
 There is the power of moods, each setting 
 at nought all but its own tissue of facts and 
 beliefs. There is the power of complexions, 
 obviously modifying the dispositions and senti 
 ments. The beliefs and unbeliefs appear to be 
 structural ; and, as soon as each man attains 
 the poise and vivacity which allow the whole 
 machinery to play, he will not need extreme 
 examples, but will rapidly alternate all opin 
 ions in his own life. Our life is March 
 weather, savage and serene in one hour. We 
 go forth austere, dedicated, believing in the 
 iron links of Destiny, and will not turn on our 
 heel to save our life : but a book, or a bust, or 
 only the sound of a name, shoots a spark
 
 /Rontaignc ; or, Cbe Sfceptic 165 
 
 through the nerves, and we suddenly believe 
 in will : my finger-ring shall be the seal of 
 Solomon : fate is for imbeciles : all is possible 
 to the resolved mind. Presently, a new experi 
 ence gives a new turn to our thoughts : common 
 sense resumes its tyranny : we say, " Well, the 
 army, after all, is the gate to fame, manners, and 
 poetry : and, look you, on the whole, selfish 
 ness plants best, prunes best, makes the best 
 commerce, and the best citizen." Are the 
 opinions of a man on right and wrong, on fate 
 and causation, at the mercy of a broken sleep or 
 an indigestion ? Is his belief in God and Duty 
 no deeper than a stomach evidence ? And what 
 guaranty for the permanence of his opinions ? 
 I like not the French celerity, a new church 
 and state once a week. This is the second 
 negation ; and I shall let it pass for what it 
 will. As far as it asserts rotation of states of 
 mind, I suppose it suggests its own remedy, 
 namely, in the record of larger periods. What 
 is the mean of many states ; of all the states ? 
 Does the general voice of ages affirm any prin 
 ciple, or is no community of sentiment discover 
 able in distant times and places ? And when it 
 shows the power of self-interest, I accept that 
 as a part of the divine law, and must recon 
 cile it with aspiration the best I can. 
 
 The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the 
 sense of mankind, in all ages, that the laws 
 of the world do not always befriend, but often 
 hurt ,-tnd crush us. Fate, in the shape of
 
 166 "Representative fl&en 
 
 Kinde or nature, grows over us like grass. 
 We paint Time with a scythe ; Love and 
 Fortune, blind ; and Destiny, deaf. We have 
 too little power of resistance against this feroc 
 ity which champs us up. What front can we 
 make against these unavoidable, victorious, 
 maleficent forces ? What can I do against 
 the influence of Race, in my history ? What 
 can I do against hereditary and constitutional, 
 habits, against scrofula, lymph, impotence ? 
 against climate, against barbarism, in my 
 country ? I can reason down or deny every 
 thing, except this perpetual Belly : feed he must 
 and will, and I cannot make him respectable. 
 
 But the main resistance which the affirmative 
 impulse finds, and one including all others, is 
 in the doctrine of the Illusionists. There is a 
 painful rumor in circulation, that we have been 
 practised upon in all the principal perform 
 ances of life, and free agency is the emptiest 
 name. We have been sopped and drugged 
 with the air, with food, with woman, with chil 
 dren, with sciences, with events which leaves us 
 exactly where they found us. The mathematics, 
 tis complained, leave the mind where they find 
 it : so do all sciences ; and so do all events and 
 actions. I find a man who has passed through 
 all the sciences, the churl he was ; and, through 
 all the offices, learned, civil, and social, can 
 detect the child. We are not the less -neces 
 sitated to dedicate life to them. In fact, we
 
 or, iTbe Sfteptfc 167 
 
 may come to accept it as the fixed rule and 
 theory of our state of education, that God is 
 a substance, and his method is illusion. The 
 eastern sages owned the goddess Yoganidra. 
 the great illusory energy of Vishnu, by whom, 
 as utter ignorance, the whole world is beguiled, 
 Or, shall I state it thus ? The astonishment 
 of life, is, the absence of any appearance of 
 reconciliation between the theory and practice 
 of life. Reason, the prized reality, the Law, 
 is apprehended, now and then, for a serene 
 and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of 
 cares and works which have no direct bearing 
 on it ; is then lost, for months or years, and 
 again found, for an interval, to be lost again. 
 If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, 
 have half a dozen reasonable hours. But what 
 are these cares and works the better? A 
 method in the world we do not see, but this 
 parallelism of great and little, which never react 
 on each other, nor discover the smallest ten 
 dency to converge. Experiences, fortunes, 
 governings, readings,writings are nothing to the 
 purpose ; as when a man comes into the room, 
 it does not appear whether he has been fed on 
 yams or buffalo, he has contrived to get so 
 much bone and fibre as he wants, out of rice or 
 out of snow. So vast is the disproportion 
 between the sky of law and the pismire of per 
 formance under it, that, whether he is a man 
 of worth or a sot, is not so great a matter as 
 we say. Shall I add, as one juggle of this en-
 
 1 68 "Representative flben 
 
 chantment, the stunning non-intercourse law 
 which makes cooperation impossible ? The 
 young spirit pants to enter society. But all the 
 ways of culture and greatness lead to solitary 
 imprisonment. He has been often baulked. 
 He did not expect a sympathy with his thought 
 from the village, but he went with it to the 
 chosen and intelligent, and found no enter 
 tainment for it, but mere misapprehension, dis 
 taste, and scoffing. Men are strangely mistimed 
 and misapplied ; and the excellence of each 
 is an inflamed individualism which separates 
 him more. 
 
 There are these, and more than these dis 
 eases of thought, which our ordinary teachers 
 do not attempt to remove. Now shall we, 
 because a good nature inclines us to virtue s 
 side, say, There are no doubts, and lie for 
 the right ? Is life to be led in a brave or in a 
 cowardly manner ? and is not the satisfaction 
 of the doubts essential to all manliness ? Is 
 the name of virtue to be a barrier to that which 
 is virtue ? Can you not believe that a man of 
 earnest and burly habit may find small good in 
 tea, essays, and catechism, and want a rougher 
 instruction, want men, labor, trade, farming. 
 war, hunger, plenty, love, hatred, doubt, and 
 terror, to make tX .gs plain to him ; and has he 
 not a right to insist on being convinced in his 
 own way ? When he is convinced, he will be 
 worth the pains. 
 
 Belief consists in accepting the affirmations
 
 dfeontaigne ; or, be Sfceptic 169 
 
 9i the soul ; unbenef in denying them. Some 
 minds are incapable of skepticism. The doubts 
 they profess to entertain are rather a civility 
 or accommodation to the common discourse of 
 their company. They may well give them 
 selves leave to speculate, for they are secure of 
 a return. Once admitted to the heaven of 
 thoughtthey see no relapse into night, but infi 
 nite invitation on the other side. Heaven is 
 within heaven, and sky over sky, and they are 
 encompassed with divinities. Others there are, 
 to whom the heaven is brass, and it shuts down 
 to the surface of the earth. It is a question of 
 temperament, or of more or less immersion in 
 nature. The last class must needs have a 
 reflex or parasite faith ; not a sight of realities, 
 but an instinctive reliance on the seers and be 
 lievers of realities. The manners and thoughts 
 of believers astonish them, and convince 
 them that these have seen something which is 
 hid from themselves. But their sensual habit 
 would fix the believer to his last position, whilst 
 he as inevitably advances ; and presently the 
 unbeliever, for love of belief, burns the be 
 liever. 
 
 Great believers are always reckoned infi 
 dels, impracticable, fantastic, atheistic, and 
 really men of no account. The spiritualist 
 finds himself driven to express his faith by a 
 series of skepticisms. Charitable souls come 
 with their projects, and ask his cooperation. 
 How can he hesitate? It is the rule of mere
 
 170 "Representative 
 
 comity and courtesy to agree where you can, 
 and to turn your sentence with something 
 auspicious, and not freezing and sinister. 
 But he is forced to say, " O, these things will 
 be as they must be : what can you do ? These 
 particular griefs and crimes are the foliage 
 and fruit of such trees as we see growing. It 
 is vain to complain of the leaf or the berry : 
 cut it off ; it will bear another just as bad. 
 You must begin your cure lower down." The 
 generosities of the day prove an intractable 
 element for him. The people s questions are 
 not his ; their methods are not his ; and, 
 against all the dictates of good nature, he is 
 driven to say, he has no pleasure in them. 
 
 Even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, 
 of the divine Providence, and of the immor 
 tality of the soul, his neighbors cannot put the 
 statement so that he shall affirm it. But he 
 denies out of more faith, and not less. He 
 denies out of honesty. He had rather stand 
 charged with the imbecility of skepticism, 
 than with untruth. I believe, he says, in the 
 moral design of the universe ; it exists hos 
 pitably for the weal of the souls ; but your 
 dogmas seem to me caricatures ; why should 
 I make believe them ? Will any say, this is 
 cold and infidel ? The wise and magnani 
 mous will not say so. They will exult in his 
 far-sighted good-will, that can abandon to the 
 adversary all the ground of tradition and 
 common belief, without losing a jot of strength.
 
 flfcontafgne ; or, Gbe Skeptic 171 
 
 It sees to the end of all transgression. 
 George Fox saw " that there was an ocean of 
 darkness and death ; but withal, an infinite 
 ocean of light and love which flowed over that 
 of darkness." 
 
 The final solution in which skepticism is 
 lost is in the moral sentiment, which never 
 forfeits its supremacy. All moods may be 
 safely tried, and their weight allowed to all 
 objections : the moral sentiment as easily out 
 weighs them all, as any one. This is the drop 
 which balances the sea. I play with the mis 
 cellany of facts, and take those superficial 
 views which we call skepticism ; but I know 
 that they will presently appear to me in that 
 order which makes skepticism impossible. A 
 man of thought must feel the thought that is 
 parent of the universe ; that the masses of 
 nature do undulate and flow. 
 
 This faith avails to the whole emergency of 
 life and objects. The world is saturated with 
 deity and with law. He is content with just 
 and unjust, with sots and fools, with the 
 triumph of folly and fraud. He can behold 
 with serenity the yawning gulf between the 
 ambition of man and his power of perform 
 ance, between the demand and supply of 
 power, which makes the tragedy of all souls. 
 
 Charles Fourier announced that "the at 
 tractions of man are proportioned to his 
 destinies ; " in other words, that every desire 
 predicts its own satisfaction. Yet, all ex-
 
 i7 2 IReprcscntative 
 
 perience exhibits the reverse of this ; the in- 
 competency of power is the universal grief of 
 young and ardent minds. They accuse the 
 divine Providence of a certain parsimony. It 
 has shown the heaven and earth to every child, 
 and filled him with a desire for the whole ; a 
 desire raging, infinite ; a hunger, as of space 
 to be filled with planets ; a cry of famine, as 
 of devils for souls. Then for the satisfaction, 
 to each man is administered a single drop, 
 a bead of dew of vital power per day, a cup 
 as large as space, and one drop of the water 
 of life in it. Each man woke in the morning, 
 with an appetite that could eat the solar 
 system like a cake ; a spirit for action and 
 passion without bounds ; he could lay his 
 hand on the morning star ; he could try con 
 clusions with gravitation or chemistry; but, 
 on the first motion to prove his strength 
 hands, feet, senses, gave way, and would not 
 serve him. He was an emperor deserted by 
 his states, and left to whistle by himself, or 
 thrust into a mob of emperors, all whistling : 
 and still the sirens sang, "The attractions are 
 proportioned to the destinies." In every 
 house, in the heart of each maiden, nd of 
 each boy, in the soul of the soaring saint, this 
 chasm is found, between the largest promise 
 of ideal power, and the shabby experience. 
 The expansivo nature of truth comes to our 
 succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. Man 
 helps himself by larger generalizations. The
 
 /Ifcontaigne ; or, be Sfceptic 173 
 
 lesson of life is practically to generalize ; to 
 believe what the years and the centuries say 
 against the hours ; to resist the usurpation of 
 particulars ; to penetrate to their catholic 
 sense. Things seem to say one thing, and 
 say the reverse. The appearance is immoral ; 
 the result is moral. Things seem to tend 
 downward, to justify despondency, to promote 
 rogues, to defeat the just ; and, by knaves, 
 as by martyrs, the just cause is carried for 
 ward. Although knaves win in every polit 
 ical struggle, although society seems to be 
 delivered over from the hands of one set of 
 criminals into the hands of another set of 
 criminals, as fast as the government is changed, 
 and the march of civilization is a train of fel 
 onies, yet, general ends are somehow- an 
 swered. We see, now, events forced on, which 
 seem to retard or retrograde the civility of 
 ages. But the world-spirit is a good swim 
 mer, and storms and waves cannot drown him. 
 He snaps his finger at laws : and so, through 
 out history, heaven seems to affect low and 
 poor means. Through the years and the cent 
 uries, through evil agents, through toys and 
 atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irre 
 sistibly streams. 
 
 Let a man learn to look for the permanent 
 in the mutable and fleeting ; let him learn to 
 bear the disappearance of things he was wont 
 to reverence, without losing his reverence; 
 let him learn that he is here, not t& work, but
 
 174 "Representative flben 
 
 to be worked upon ; and that, though abyss 
 open under abyss, and opinion displace 
 opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal 
 cause. 
 
 * It my bark sink, tis to another sea.
 
 SHAKSPEARE ; OR, THE POET.
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
 
 V. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 
 
 GREAT men are more distinguished by range 
 and extent, than by originality. If we require 
 the originality which consists in weaving, like 
 a spider, their web from their own bowels ; in 
 finding clay, and making bricks, and building 
 the house ; no great men are original. Nor 
 does valuable originality consist in unlikeness 
 to other men. The hero is in the press of 
 knights, and the thick of events ; and, seeing 
 what men want, and sharing their desire, he 
 adds the needful length of sight and of arm, 
 to come at the desired point. The greatest 
 genius is the most indebted man. A poet is 
 no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, 
 and, because he says everything, saying, at 
 last, something good ; but a heart in unison 
 with his time and country. There is nothing 
 whimsical and fantastic in his production, but 
 sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the 
 weightiest convictions, and pointed with the 
 
 12 177
 
 178 "Representative /Ren 
 
 most determined aim which any man or class 
 knows of in his times. 
 
 The Genius ot our life is jealous of individ 
 uals, and will not have any individual great, 
 except through the general. There is no 
 choice to genius. A great man does not wake 
 up on some fine morning, and say, " I am full 
 of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic 
 continent : to-day I will square the circle : I 
 will ransack botany, and find a new food for 
 man : I have a new architecture in my mind : 
 I foresee a new mechanic power ; " no, but he 
 finds himself in the river of the thoughts and 
 events, forced onward by the ideas and neces 
 sities of his contemporaries. He stands where 
 all the eyes of men look one way, and their 
 hands all point in the direction in which he 
 should go. The church has reared him amidst 
 rites and pomps, and he carries out the advice 
 which her music gave him, and builds a cathe 
 dral needed by her chants and processions. 
 He finds a war raging : it educates him by 
 trumpet, in barracks, and he betters the instruc 
 tion. He finds two counties groping to bring 
 coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of produc 
 tion to the place of consumption, and he hits 
 on a railroad. Every master has found his ma 
 terials collected, and his power lay in his 
 sympathy with his people, and in his love of 
 the materials he wrought in. What an 
 economy of power ! and what a compensation 
 for the shortness of life ! All is done to his
 
 Sbafcspeare ; or, be poet 179 
 
 hand. The world has brought him thus far 
 on his way. The human race has gone out 
 before him, sunk the hills, filled the hollows, 
 and bridged the rivers. Men, nations, poets, 
 artisans, women, all have worked for him, and 
 he enters into their labors. Choose any other 
 thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the 
 national feeling and history, and he would 
 have all to do for himself : his powers would 
 be expended in the first preparations. Great 
 genial power, one would almost say, consists 
 in not being original at all ; in being altogether 
 receptive ; in letting the world do all, and suf 
 fering the spirit of the hour to pass unob 
 structed through the mind. 
 
 Shakspeare s youth fell in a time when the 
 English people were importunate for dramatic 
 entertainments. The court took offence easily 
 at political allusions, and attempted to sup 
 press them. The Puritans, a growing and 
 energetic party, and the religious among the 
 Anglican church, would suppress them. But 
 the people wanted them. Inn-yards, houses 
 without roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures 
 at country fairs, were the ready theatres of 
 strolling players. The people had tasted this 
 new joy ; and, as we could not hope to sup 
 press newspapers now, no, not by the strong 
 est party, neither then could king, prelate, 
 or puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ, 
 which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, 
 lecture, punch, and library, at the same time.
 
 180 "Representative /Bben 
 
 Probably king, prelate, and puritan, all found 
 their own account in it. It had become, by 
 all causes, a national interest, by no means 
 conspicuous, so that some great scholar would 
 have thought of treating it in an English his 
 tory, but not a whit less considerable, be 
 cause it was cheap, and of no account, like a 
 baker s-shop. The best proof of its vitality is 
 the crowd of writers which suddenly broke 
 into this field ; Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson, 
 Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Mid- 
 dleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont, 
 and Fletcher. 
 
 The secure possession, by the stage, of the 
 public mind, is of the first importance to the 
 poet who works for it. He loses no time in 
 idle experiments. Here is audience and ex 
 pectation prepared. In the case of Shak- 
 speare there is much more. At the time when 
 he left Stratford, and went up to London, a 
 great body of stage-plays, of all dates and 
 writers, existed in manuscript, and were in 
 turn produced on the boards. Here is the 
 Tale of Troy, which the audience will beat 
 hearing some part of every week ; the Death 
 of Julius Caesar, and other stories out of Plu 
 tarch, which they never tire of ; a shelf full of 
 English history, from the chronicles of Brut 
 and Arthur, down to the royal Henries, which 
 men hear eagerly ; and a string of doleful 
 tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish 
 voyages, which all the London prentices know.
 
 Sbafcspeare ; or, be Ipoet 181 
 
 All the mass has been treated, with more or 
 less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter 
 has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is 
 now no longer possible to say who wrote them 
 first. They have been the property of the 
 Theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses 
 have enlarged or altered them, inserting a 
 speech, or a whole scene, or adding a song, 
 that no man can any longer claim copyright 
 on this work of numbers. Happily, no man 
 wishes to. They are not yet desired in that 
 way. We have few readers, many spectators 
 and hearers. They had best lie where they 
 are. 
 
 Shakspeare, in common with his comrades, 
 esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, 
 in which any experiment could be freely tried. 
 Had the prestige which hedges about a modern 
 tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. 
 The rude warm blood of the living England 
 circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and 
 gave body which he wanted to his airy and 
 majestic fancy. The poet needs a ground in 
 popular tradition on which he may work, and 
 which, again, may restrain his art within the due 
 temperance. It holds him to the people, sup 
 plies a foundation for his edifice ; and, in 
 furnishing so much work done to his hand, 
 leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for 
 the audacities of his imagination. In short, 
 the poet owes to his legend what sculpture 
 owe** to the temple. Sculpture in Egypt, and
 
 182 IRepresentatfve flfcen 
 
 in Greece, grew up in subordination to archi 
 tecture. It was the ornament of the temple 
 wall : at first, a rude relief carved on pediments, 
 then the relief became bolder, and a head or 
 arm was projected from the wall, the groups 
 being sti arrayed with reterence to the build 
 ing, which serves also as a frame to hold the 
 figures ; and when, at last, the greatestfreedom 
 of style and treatment was reached, the pre 
 vailing genius of architecture still enforced a 
 certain calmness and continence in the statue. 
 As soon as the statue was begun for itself, and 
 with no reference to the temple or palace, the 
 art began to decline : freak, extravagance, and 
 exhibition, took the place of the old temper 
 ance. This balance-wheel, which the sculptor 
 found in architecture, the perilous irritability 
 of poetic talent found in the accumulated 
 dramatic materials to which the people were 
 already wonted, and which had a certain excel 
 lence which no single genius, however extraor 
 dinary, could hope to create. 
 
 In point of fact, it appears that Shakspeare 
 did owe debts in all directions, and was able 
 to use whatever he found ; and the amount of 
 indebtedness may be inferred from Malone ? 
 laborious computations in regard to the First, 
 Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., in 
 which, " out of 6043 lines, 1771 were written 
 by some author preceding Shakspeare ; 
 2373 by him, on the foundation laid by his 
 predecessors ; and 1899 were entirely his own,"
 
 Sbaftspeare ; or, &be poet 
 
 And the preceding investigation hardly leaves 
 a single drama of his absolute invention. 
 Malone s sentence is an important piece of 
 external history. In Henry VIII., I think I 
 see plainly the cropping out of the original 
 rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. 
 The first play was written by a superior, 
 thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can 
 mark his lines, and know well their cadence. 
 See Wolsey s soliloquy, and the following scene 
 with Cromwell, where, instead of the metre 
 of Shakspeare, whose secret is, that the 
 thought constructs the tune, so that reading 
 for the sense will best bring out the rhythm, 
 here the lines are constructed on a given tune, 
 and the verse has even a trace of pulpit elo 
 quence. But the play contains, through all 
 its length, unmistakable traits of Shakspeare s 
 hand, and some passages, as the account of 
 the coronation, are like autographs. What is 
 odd, the compliment to Queen Elizabeth is in 
 the bad rhythm. 
 
 Shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a 
 better fable than any invention can. If he 
 lost any credit of design, he augmented his 
 resources ; and, at that day our petulant de 
 mand for originality was not so much pressed. 
 There was no literature for the million. The 
 universal reading, the cheap press, were 
 unknown. A great poet, who appears in illit 
 erate times, absorbs into his sphere all the 
 light which is anywhere radiating. Every
 
 184 "Representative dlben 
 
 intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment, 
 it is his fine office to bring to his people ; and 
 he comes to value his memory equally with 
 his invention. He is therefore little solicitous 
 whence his thoughts have been derived ; 
 whether through translation, whether through 
 tradition, whether by travel in distant countries, 
 whether by inspiration ; from whatever source, 
 they are equally welcome to his uncritical 
 audience. Nay, he borrows very near home. 
 Other men say wise things as well as he ; only 
 they say a good many foolish things, and do 
 not know when they have spoken wisely. He 
 knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts 
 it in high place, wherever he finds it. Such 
 is the happy position of Homer, perhaps ; of 
 Chaucer, of Saadi. They felt that all wit was 
 their wit. And they are librarians and his 
 toriographers, as well as poets. Each ro 
 mancer was heir and dispenser of all the hun 
 dred tales of the world, 
 
 " Presenting Thebes and Pelops line 
 And the tale of Troy divine." 
 
 The influence "of Chaucer is conspicuous in 
 all our early literature ; and, more recently, 
 not only Pope and Dryden have been beholden 
 to him, but, in the whole society of English 
 writers, a large unacknowledged debt is easily 
 traced. One is charmed with the opulence 
 which feeds so many pensioners. But Chaucer
 
 Sbafcspcate: or, ftbe ipoet 185 
 
 is a huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drevf 
 continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, 
 from Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance 
 of the Trojan war was in turn a compilation 
 from Dares Phrygius, Ovid, and Statius. 
 Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Provengal 
 poets, are his benefactors : the Romaunt of 
 the Rose is only judicious translation from 
 William of Lorris and John of Meun : Troilus 
 and Creseide, from Lollius of Urbino : The 
 Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of Marie : 
 The House of Fame, from the French or 
 Italian : and poor Gower he uses as if he were 
 only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry out of which 
 to build his house. He steals by this apology, 
 that what he takes has no worth where he 
 finds it, and the greatest where he leaves it. 
 It has come to be practically a sort of rule in 
 literature, that a man, having once shown him 
 self capable of original writing, is entitled 
 thenceforth to steal from the writings of others 
 at discretion. Thought is the property of him 
 who can entertain it ; and of him who can 
 adequately place it. A certain awkwardness 
 marks the use of borrowed thoughts ; but, as 
 soon as we have learned what to do with them, 
 they become our own. 
 
 Thus, all originality is relative. Every 
 thinker is retrospective. The learned member 
 of the legislature, at Westminster, or at 
 Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. 
 Show us the constituency, and the now invisi-
 
 1 86 IRepresentative 
 
 ble channels by which the senator is made aware 
 of their wishes, the crowd of practical and 
 knowing men, who, by correspondence or con 
 versation, are feeding him with evidence, 
 anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereava 
 his fine attitude and resistance of something 
 of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert Peel 
 and Mr. Webster vote, so Locke and Rousseau 
 think for thousands ; and so there were fount 
 ains all around Homer, Menu, Saadi, or 
 Milton, from which they drew ; friends, lovers, 
 books, traditions, proverbs, all perished, 
 which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. 
 Did the bard speak with authority ? Did he 
 feel himself overmatched by any companion ? 
 The appeal is to the consciousness of the 
 writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi 
 whereof to ask concerning any thought or 
 thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? 
 and to have answer, and to rely on that? 
 All the debts which such a man could contract 
 to other wit, would never disturb his conscious 
 ness of originality : for the ministrations of 
 books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke 
 to that most private reality with which he has 
 conversed. 
 
 It is easy to see that what is best written or 
 done by genius, in the world, was no man s 
 work, but came by wide social labor, when a 
 thousand wrought like one, sharing the same 
 impulse. Our English Bible is a wonderful 
 specimen of the strength and music of the
 
 or, Cbe poet 187 
 
 English language. But it was not made by 
 one man, or at one time ; but centuries and 
 churches brought it to perfection. There never 
 was a time when there was not some translation 
 existing. The Liturgy, admired for its energy 
 and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of 
 ages and nations, a translation of the prayers 
 and forms of the Catholic church, these col 
 lected, too, in long periods, from the prayers 
 and meditations of every saint and sacred 
 writer, all over the world. Grotius makes the 
 like remark in respect to the Lord s Prayer, that 
 the single clauses of which it is composed were 
 already in use, in the time of Christ, in the 
 rabbinical forms. He picked out the grains of 
 gold. The nervous language of the Common 
 Law, the impressive forms of our courts, and 
 the precision and substantial truth of the legal 
 distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp- 
 sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in 
 the countries where these laws govern. The 
 translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by 
 being translation on translation. There never 
 was a time when there was none. All the truly 
 diomatic and national phrases are kept, and 
 all others successively picked out, and thrown 
 away. Something like the same process had 
 gone on. long before, with the originals of 
 these books. The world takes liberties with 
 world-books. Vedas, ^Esop s Fables, Pilpay, 
 Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, Robin Hood, 
 Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work of single
 
 1 88 "Representative /nben 
 
 men. In the composition of such works, the 
 time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the 
 carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, 
 all think for us. Every book supplies its time 
 with one good word ; every municipal law, 
 every trade, every folly of the day, and the 
 generic catholic genius who is not afraid or 
 ashamed to owe his originality to the originality 
 of all, stands with the next age as the recorder 
 and embodiment of his own. 
 
 We have to thank the researches of anti 
 quaries, and the Shakspeare Society, for as 
 certaining the steps of the English drama, from 
 the Mysteries celebrated in churches and by 
 churchmen, and the final detachment from the 
 church, and the completion of secular plays, 
 from Ferrex and Porrex, and Gammer Gurton s 
 Needle, down to the possession of the stage by 
 the very pieces which Shakspeare altered, re 
 modelled, and finally made his own. Elated 
 with success, and piqued by the growing interest 
 of the problem, they have left no book-stall 
 unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no 
 file of old yellow accounts to decompose in 
 damp and worms, so keen was the hope to dis 
 cover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or 
 not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, 
 whether he kept school, and why he left in his 
 will only his second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, 
 his wife. 
 
 There is somewhat touching in the madness 
 with which the passing age mischooses the
 
 Sbafc0peare ; or, ZTbc poet 
 
 object on which all candles shine, and all eyes 
 are turned ; the care with which it registers 
 every trifle touching Queen Elizabeth, and 
 King James, and the Essexes, Leicesters, 
 Burleighs, and Buckinghams ; and let pass with 
 out a single valuable note the founder of another 
 dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor 
 dynasty to be remembered, the man who 
 carries the Saxon race in him by the inspira 
 tion which feeds him, and on whose thoughts 
 the foremost people of the world are now for 
 some ages to be nourished, and minds to re 
 ceive this and not another bias. A popular 
 player, nobody suspected he was the poet of 
 the human race ; and the secret was kept as 
 faithfully from poets and intellectual men, as 
 from courtiers and frivolous people. Bacon, 
 who took the inventory of the human under 
 standing for his times, never mentioned his 
 name. Ben Jonson, though we have strained 
 his few words of regard and panegyric, had no 
 suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vi 
 brations he was attempting. He no doubt 
 thought the praise he has conceded to him 
 generous, and esteemed himself, out of all 
 question, the better poet of the two. 
 
 If it need wit to know wit, according to the 
 proverb, Shakspeare s time should be capable 
 of recognizing it. Sir Henry Wotton was born 
 four years after Shakspeare, and died twenty- 
 three years after him ; and I find among his 
 correspondents and acquaintances, the follow-
 
 igo IReprcsentative 
 
 ing persons : Theodore Beza, Isaac Ca^iubon, 
 Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, 
 Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, 
 Bellarmine, Charles Cotton, John Pym, John 
 Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus Gentilis, Paul 
 Sarpi, Arminius ; with all of whom exist some 
 token of his having communicated, without 
 enumerating many others, whom doubtless he 
 saw, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, 
 Massinger, two Herberts, Marlow, Chapman, 
 and the rest. Since the constellation of great 
 men who appeared in Greece in the time of 
 Pericles, there was never any such society ; 
 yet their genius failed them to find out the 
 best head in the universe. Our poet s mask 
 was impenetrable. You cannot see the mount 
 ain near. It took a century to make it sus 
 pected ; and not until two centuries had passed, 
 after his death, did any criticism which we 
 think adequate begin to appear. It was not 
 possible to write the history of Shakspeare 
 till now ; for he is the father of German 
 literature : it was on the introduction of 
 Shakspeare into German by Lessing, and the 
 translation of his works by Wieland and Schle- 
 gel, that the rapid burst of German literature 
 was most intimately connected. It was not 
 until the nineteenth century, whose speculative 
 genius is a sort of living Hamlet, that the 
 tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering 
 readers, Now, literature, philosophy, and
 
 Sbafcspeare; or, Gbe poet 191 
 
 thought, are Shakspearized. His mind is the 
 horizon beyond which, at present, we do not 
 see. Our ears are educated to music by his 
 rhythm. Coleridge and Goethe are the only 
 critics who have expressed our convictions 
 with any adequate fidelity : but there is in all 
 cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his 
 superlative power and beauty, which, like 
 Christianity, qualifies the period. 
 
 The Shakspeare Society have inquired in aM 
 directions, advertised the missing facts, offered 
 money for any information that will lead to 
 proof ; and with what results ? Beside some 
 important illustration of the history of the 
 English stage, to which I have adverted, they 
 have gleaned a few facts touching the property, 
 and dealings in regard to property, of the poet. 
 It appears that, from year to year, he owned a 
 larger share in the Blackfriars Theatre : its 
 wardrobe and other appurtenances were his : 
 that he bought an estate in his native village, 
 with his earnings, as writer and shareholder ; 
 that he lived in the best house in Stratford ; 
 was intrusted by his neighbors with their com 
 missions in London, as of borrowing money, 
 and the like ; that he was a veritable farmer. 
 About the time when he was writing Macbeth, 
 he sues Philip Rogers, in the borough-court 
 of Stratford, for thirty-five shillings, ten pence, 
 for corn delivered to him at different times ; 
 and, in all respects, appears as a good hus 
 band, with no reputation for eccentricity or
 
 192 "Representative flfcett 
 
 excess. He was a good-natured sort of man, 
 an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in 
 any striking manner distinguished from other 
 actors and managers. I admit the importance 
 of this information. It was well worth the 
 pains that have been taken to procure it. 
 
 But whatever scraps of information concern 
 ing his condition these researches may have 
 rescued, they can shed no light upon that in 
 finite invention which is the concealed magnet 
 of his attraction for us. We are very clumsy 
 writers of history. We tell the chronicle of 
 parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling, school 
 mates, earning of money, marriage, publication 
 of books, celebrity, death ; and when we have 
 come to an end of this gossip, no ray of relation 
 appears between it and the goddess-born ; and 
 it seems as if, had we dipped at random into 
 the " Modern Plutarch," and read any other 
 life there, it would have fitted the poems as 
 well. It is the essence of poetry to spring, 
 like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from 
 the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse 
 all history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and 
 Collier, have wasted their oil. The famed 
 theatres, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the 
 Park, and Tremont, have vainly assisted. 
 Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Mac- 
 ready, dedicate their lives to this genius ; him 
 they crown, elucidate, obey, and express. The 
 genius knows them not. The recitation be 
 gins i one golden word leaps out immortal from
 
 Sbafcspeare ; or, tTbc poet 193 
 
 all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments 
 us with invitations to its own inaccessible 
 homes. I remember, I went once to see the 
 Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the 
 English stage ; and all I then heard, and all I 
 now remember, of the tragedian, was that in 
 which the tragedian had no part ; simply, 
 Hamlet s question to the ghost, 
 
 " What may this mean, 
 
 That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
 Revisit st thus the glimpses of the moon ? " 
 
 That imagination which dilates the closet he 
 writes in to the world s dimension, crowds it 
 with agents in rank and order, as quickly 
 reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of 
 the moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for 
 us the illusions of the green-room. Can any 
 biography shed light on the localities into 
 which the Midsummer Night s Dream admits 
 me ? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary 
 or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in 
 Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation ? 
 The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone 
 Castle, the moonlight of Portia s villa, " the 
 antres vast and desarts idle," of Othello s 
 captivity, where is the third cousin, or grand- 
 nephew, the chancellor s file of accounts, or 
 private letter, that has kept one word of those 
 transcendent secrets ? In fine, in this drama, 
 as in all great works of art, in the Cyclopaean 
 architecture of Egypt and India ; in the Phidian 
 3
 
 194 "Representative /Bben 
 
 sculpture ; the Gothic minsters ; the Italian 
 painting ; the Ballads of Spain and Scotland, 
 the Genius draws up the ladder after him, 
 when the creative age goes up to heaven, and 
 gives way to a new, who see the works, and 
 ask in vain for a history. 
 
 Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shaks- 
 peare ; and even he can tell nothing, except 
 to the Shakspeare in us ; that is, to our most 
 apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He can 
 not step from off his tripod, and give us 
 anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the 
 antique documents extricated, analyzed, and 
 compared, by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; 
 and now read one of those skyey sentences, 
 aerolites, which seem to have fallen out of 
 heaven, and which, not your experience, but 
 the man within the breast, has accepted as 
 words of fate ; and tell me if they match ; if 
 the former account in any manner for the 
 latter; or, which gives the most historical in 
 sight into the man. 
 
 Hence, though our external history is so 
 meagre, yet, with Shakspeare for biographer, 
 instead of Aubrey and Rowe, we have really 
 the information which is material, that which 
 describes character and fortune ; that which, 
 if we were about to meet the man and deal 
 with him, would most import us to know. We 
 have his recorded convictions on those ques 
 tions which knock for answer at every heart, 
 on life and death, on love, on wealth and
 
 Sbafcspeare ; or, Hbe IPoet 195 
 
 poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways 
 whereby we come at them ; on the characters 
 of men, and the influences, occult and open, 
 which affect their fortunes : and on those mys 
 terious and demoniacal powers which defy our 
 science, and which yet interweave their mal 
 ice and their gift in our brightest hours. Who 
 ever read the volume of the Sonnets, without 
 finding that the poet had there revealed, under 
 masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the 
 lore of friendship and of love ; the confusion 
 of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at 
 the same time, the most intellectual of men ? 
 What trait of his private mind has he hidden 
 in his dramas ? One can discern, in his ample 
 pictures of the gentleman and the king, what 
 forms and humanities pleased him ; his delight 
 in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in 
 cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let 
 Antonio the merchant, answer for his great 
 heart. So far from Shakspeare being the least 
 known, he is the one person, in all modern his 
 tory, known to us. What point of morals, of 
 manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, 
 of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not 
 settled ? What mystery has he not signified 
 his knowledge of ? What office or function, 
 or district of man s work, has he not remem 
 bered ? What king has he not taught state, as 
 Talma taught Napoleon ? What maiden has 
 not found him finer than her delicacy ? What 
 lover has he not outloved ? What sage has he
 
 1?epresentative 
 
 not outseen ? What gentleman has he not in 
 structed in the rudeness of his behavior ? 
 
 Some able and appreciating critics think no 
 criticism on Shakspeare valuable, that does 
 not rest purely on the dramatic merit ; that he 
 is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I 
 think as highly as these critics of his dramatic 
 merit, but still think it secondary. He was a 
 full man, who liked to talk ; a brain exhaling 
 thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, 
 found the drama next at hand. Had he been 
 less, we should have had to consider how well 
 he filled his place, how good a dramatist he 
 was, and he is the best in the world. But it 
 turns out, that what he has to say is of that 
 weight, as to withdraw some attention from 
 the vehicle ; and he is like some saint whose 
 history is to be rendered into all languages, 
 into verse and prose, into songs and pictures, 
 and cut up into proverbs ; so that the occasions 
 which gave the saint s meaning the form of a 
 conversation, or of a prayer, or of a code of 
 laws, is immaterial compared with the univer 
 sality of its application. So it fares with the 
 wise Shakspeare and his book of life. He 
 wrote the airs for all our modern music : he 
 wrote the text of modern life ; the text of 
 manners : he drew the man of England and 
 Europe ; the father of the man in America : 
 he drew the man and described the day, 
 and what is done in it : he read the hearts 
 of men and women, their probity, and their
 
 Sbafcspearc ; or, be poet 197 
 
 second thought, and wiles ; the wiles of in 
 nocence, and the transitions by which virtues 
 and vices slide into their contraries : he could 
 divide the mother s part from the father s part 
 in the face of the child, or draw the fine de 
 marcations of freedom and of fate : he knew 
 the laws of repression which make the police 
 of nature : and all the sweets and all the ter 
 rors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but 
 as softly as the landscape lies on the eye. 
 And the importance of this wisdom of life 
 sinks the form, as of Drama or Epic, out of 
 notice. Tis like making a question concern 
 ing the paper on which a king s message is 
 written. 
 
 Shakspeare is as much out of the category 
 of eminent authors, as he is out of the crowd. 
 He is inconceivably wise ; the others, con 
 ceivably. A good reader can, in a sort, nestle 
 into Plato s brain, and think from thence ; but 
 not into Shakspeare s. We are still out of 
 doors. For executive faculty, for creation, 
 Shakspeare is unique. No man can imagine 
 it better. He was the farthest reach of sub 
 tlety compatible with an individual self, the 
 subtilest of authors, and only just within the 
 possibility of authorship. With this wisdom of 
 life, is the equal endowment of imaginative and 
 of lyric power. He clothed the creatures of his 
 legend with form and sentiments, as if they 
 were people who had lived under his roof j 
 and few real men have left such distinct char-
 
 198 "Representative 
 
 acters as these fictions. And they spoke in 
 language as sweet as it was fit. Yet his talents 
 never seduced him into an ostentation, nor did 
 he harp on one string. An omnipresent 
 humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. Give 
 a man of talents a story to tell, and his par 
 tiality will presently appear. He has certain 
 observations, opinions, topics, which have some 
 accidental prominence, and which he disposes 
 all to exhibit. He crams this part, and starves 
 that other part, consulting not the fitness of the 
 thing, but his fitness and strength. But 
 Shakspeare has no peculiarity, no importunate 
 topic ; but all is duly given ; no veins, no curi 
 osities: no cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no man 
 nerist is he : he has no discoverable egotism : the 
 great he tells greatly ; the small subordinate- 
 ly. He is wise without emphasis or assertion ; 
 he is strong, as nature is strong, who lifts the 
 land into mountain slopes without effort, and by 
 the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, 
 and likes as well to do the one as the other. 
 This makes that equality of power in farce, 
 tragedy, narrative, and love-songs ; a merit so 
 incessant, that each reader is incredulous of 
 the perception of other readers. 
 
 This power of expression, or of transferring 
 the inmost truth of things into music and verse, 
 makes him the type of the poet, and has added 
 a new problem to metaphysics. This is that 
 which throws him into natural history, as a 
 main production of the globe, and as announo
 
 Sbafcspeare ; or, be poet 199 
 
 ing new eras and ameliorations. Things were 
 mirrored in his poetry without loss or blur: 
 he could paint the fine with precision, the great 
 with compass ; the tragic and the comic indif 
 ferently, and without any distortion or favor. 
 He carried his powerful execution into minute 
 details, to a hair point ; finishes an eyelash 
 or a dimple as firmly as he draws a mountain ; 
 and yet these like nature s, will bear the scru 
 tiny of the solar microscope. 
 
 In short, he is the chief example to prove 
 that more or less of production, more or fewer 
 pictures, is a thing indifferent. He had the 
 power to make one picture. Daguerre learned 
 how to let one flower etch its image on his 
 plate of iodine ; and then proceeds at leisure 
 to etch a million. There are always objects ; 
 but there was never representation. Here is 
 perfect representation, at last ; and now let 
 the world of figures sit for their portraits. No 
 recipe can be given for the making of a 
 Shakspeare ; but the possibility of the trans 
 lation of things into song is demonstrated. 
 
 His lyric power lies in the genius of the 
 piece. The sonnets, though their excellence 
 is lost in the splendor of the dramas, are as 
 inimitable as they : and it is not a merit of 
 lines, but a total merit of the piece ; like the 
 tone of voice of some incomparable person, 
 so is this a speech of poetic beings, and 
 any clause as unproducible now as a whole 
 poem.
 
 too "Representative flfcen 
 
 Though the speeches in the plays, and 
 single lines, have a beauty which tempts the 
 ear to pause on them for their euphuism, yet 
 the sentence is so loaded with meaning, and 
 so linked with its foregoers and followers, 
 that the logician is satisfied. His means are 
 as admirable as his ends ; every subordinate 
 invention, by which he helps himself to con 
 nect some irreconcilable opposites, is a poem 
 too. He is not reduced to dismount and 
 walk, because his horses are running off 
 with him in some distant direction : he always 
 rides. 
 
 The finest poetry was first experience : but 
 the thought has suffered a transformation 
 since it was an experience. Cultivated men 
 often attain a good degree of skill in writing 
 verses ; but it is easy to read, through their 
 poems, their personal history : any one ac 
 quainted with parties can name every figure : 
 this is Andrew, and that is Rachel. The 
 sense thus remains prosaic. It is a caterpillar 
 with wings, and not yet a butterfly. In the 
 poet s mind, the fact has gone quite over into 
 the new element of thought, and has lost all 
 that is exuvial. This generosity abides with 
 Shakspeare. We say, from the truth and 
 closeness of his pictures, that he knows the 
 lesson by heart. Yet there is not a trace of 
 egotism. 
 
 One more royal trait properly belongs to the 
 poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which
 
 Sbahspeare ; or, Ebe Poet 201 
 
 no man can be a poet, for beauty is his aim. 
 He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for 
 its grace : he delights in the world, in man, in 
 woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from 
 them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, 
 *ie sheds over the universe. Epicurus relates, 
 that poetry hath such charms that a lover might 
 forsake his mistress to partake of them. And 
 the true bards have been noted for their firm 
 and cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine ; 
 Chaucer is glad and erect ; and Saadi says, 
 " It was rumored abroad that I was penitent ; 
 but what had I to do with repentance ? " Not 
 less sovereign and cheerful, much more sov 
 ereign and cheerful is the tone of Shakspeare. 
 His name suggests joy and emancipation to 
 the heart of men. If he should appear in any 
 company of human souls, who would not 
 march in his troop ? He touches nothing that 
 does not borrow health and longevity from his 
 festive style. 
 
 And now, how stands the account of man 
 with this bard and benefactor, when in soli 
 tude, shutting our ears to the reverberations of 
 his fame, we seek to strike the balance ? Soli 
 tude has austere lessons ; it can teach us to 
 spare both heroes and poets ; and it weighs 
 Shakspeare also, and finds him to share the 
 halfness and imperfection of humanity. 
 
 Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw 
 the splendor of meaning that plays over the
 
 aoa "Representative flben 
 
 visible world ; knew that a tree had another 
 use than for apples, and corn another than for 
 meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage 
 and roads : that these things bore a second 
 and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems 
 of its thoughts, and conveying in all their 
 natural history a certain mute commentary on 
 human life. Shakspeare employed them as 
 colors to compose his picture. He rested 
 in their beauty ; and never took the step which 
 seemed inevitable to such genius, namely, to 
 explore the virtue which resides in these 
 symbols, and imparts this power, what is 
 that which they themselves say ? He con 
 verted the elements, which waited on his 
 command, into entertainments. He was 
 master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as 
 if one should have, through majestic powers 
 of science, the comets given into his hand, or 
 the planets and their moons, and should draw 
 them from their orbits to glare with the munic 
 ipal fireworks on a holiday night, and adver 
 tise in all towns, " very superior pyrotechny 
 this evening ! " Are the agents of nature, and 
 the power to understand them, worth no more 
 than a street serenade, or the breath of a 
 cigar ? One remembers again the trumpet- 
 text in the Koran " The heavens and the 
 earth, and all that is between them, think ye 
 we have created them in jest ? " As long as 
 the question is of talent and mental power, 
 the world of men has not his equal to show.
 
 Sbafcspeare ; or t tTbc poet 203 
 
 But when the question is to life, and its 
 materials, and its auxiliaries, how does he 
 profit me ? What does it signify ? It is but 
 a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer-Night s Dream, 
 or a Winter Evening s Tale : what signifies 
 another picture more or less ? The Egyptian 
 verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to 
 mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. 
 I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other 
 admirable men have led lives in some sort of 
 keeping with their thought ; but this man, in 
 wide contrast. Had he been less, had he 
 reached only the common measure of great 
 authors, of Bacon, Milton, Tasso, Cervantes, 
 we might leave the fact in the twilight of human 
 fate : but, that this man of men, he who gave 
 to the science of mind a new and larger sub 
 ject than had ever existed, and planted the 
 standard of humanity some furlongs forward 
 into Chaos, that he should not be wise for 
 himself, it must even go into the world s 
 history, that the best poet led an obscure and 
 profane life, using his genius for the public 
 amusement. 
 
 Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite, 
 German, and Swede, beheld the same objects: 
 they also saw through them that which was 
 contained. And to what purpose ? The beauty 
 straightway vanishes ; they read command 
 ments, all-excluding mountainous duty; an 
 obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, 
 fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless,
 
 204 Representative 
 
 a pilgrim s progress, a probation, beleaguered 
 round with doleful histories of Adam s fall and 
 curse, behind us ; with doomsdays and pur 
 gatorial and penal fires before us ; and the 
 heart of the seer and the heart of the listener 
 sank in them. 
 
 It must be conceded that these are half- 
 views of half-men. The world still wants its 
 poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle 
 with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in 
 graves with Swedenborg the mourner ; but who 
 shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspira 
 tion. For knowledge will brighten the sun 
 shine ; right is more beautiful than private 
 affection ; and love is compatible with univer 
 sal wisdom.
 
 NAPOLEON ; OR, THE MAN OF THE 
 WORLD.
 
 NAPOLEON AT JENA.
 
 VI. 
 
 Napoleon ; or. The Man of The 
 World. 
 
 AMONG the eminent persons of the nine 
 teenth century, Bonaparte is far the best 
 known, and the most powerful ; and owes his 
 predominance to the fidelity with which he 
 expresses the tone of thought and belief, the 
 aims of the masses of active and cultivated 
 men. It is Swedenborg s theory, that every 
 organ is made up of homogeneous particles : 
 or, as it is sometimes expressed, every whole 
 is made of similars ; that is, the lungs are com 
 posed of infinitely small lungs ; the liver, of 
 infinitely small livers ; the kidney, of little 
 kidneys, etc. Following this analogy, if any 
 man is found to carry with him the power and 
 affections of vast numbers, if Napoleon is 
 France, if Napoleon is Europe, it is because the 
 people whom he sways are little Napoleons. 
 
 In our society, there is a standing antago 
 nism between the conservative and the demo-
 
 "Kcpresentativc flben 
 
 cratic classes ; between those who have made 
 their fortunes, and the young and the poor 
 who have fortunes to make : between the 
 interests of dead labor, that is, the labor of 
 hands long ago still in the grave, which labor 
 is now entombed in money stocks, or in land 
 and buildings owned by idle capitalists, and 
 the interests of living labor, which seeks to 
 possess itself of land, and buildings, and 
 money stocks. The first class is timid, selfish, 
 illiberal, hating innovation, and continually 
 losing numbers by death. The second class is 
 selfish also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, 
 always outnumbering the other, and recruiting 
 its numbers every hour by births. It desires 
 to keep open every avenue to the competition 
 of all, and to multiply avenues ; the class of 
 business men in America, in England, in 
 France, and throughout Europe ; the class of 
 industry and skill. Napoleon is its represent 
 ative. The instinct of active, brave, able 
 men, throughout the middle class everywhere, 
 has pointed out Napoleon as the incarnate 
 Democrat. He had their virtues, and their 
 vices ; above all, he had their spirit or aim. 
 That tendency is material, pointing at a sen 
 sual success, and employing the richest and 
 most various means to that end ; conversant 
 with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, 
 widely and accurately learned and skilful, bu; 
 subordinating all intellectual and spiritual 
 forces into means to a material success. To
 
 Vlapoleon ; or, be flfcan of tbc TJdorlO 209 
 
 be the rich man, is the end. " God has 
 granted," says the Koran, " to every people 
 a prophet in its own tongue." Paris, and 
 London, and New York, the spirit of com 
 merce, of money, and material power, were 
 also to have their prophet ; and Bonaparte 
 was qualified and sent. 
 
 Every one of the million readers of anec 
 dotes, or memoirs, or lives of Napoleon, de 
 lights in the page, because he studies in it 
 his own history. Napoleon is thoroughly 
 modern, and, at the highest point of his fort 
 unes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. 
 He is no saint, to use his own word, "no 
 capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense. 
 The man in the street finds in him the qualities 
 and powers of other men in the street. He 
 finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, 
 by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a 
 commanding position, that he could indulge 
 all those tastes which the common man pos 
 sesses, but is obliged to conceal and deny: 
 good society, good books, fast travelling, dress, 
 dinners, servants without number, personal 
 weight, the execution of his ideas, the stand 
 ing in the attitude of a benefactor to all per 
 sons about him, the refined enjoyments of 
 pictures, statues, music, palaces, and conven 
 tional honors, precisely what is agreeable to 
 the heart of every man in the nineteenth cent 
 ury, this powerful man possessed. 
 
 It is true that a man of Napoleon s truth of 
 14
 
 no tRepresentatfve .flfcen 
 
 adaptation to the mind of the masses around 
 him becomes not merely representative, but 
 actually a monopolizer and usurper of other 
 minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized every 
 good thought, every good word, that was 
 spoken in France. Dumont relates, that he 
 sat in the gallery of the Convention, and 
 heard Mirabeau make a speech. It struck 
 Dumont that he could fit it with a peroration, 
 which he wrote in pencil immediately, and 
 showed to Lord Elgin, who sat by him. Lord 
 Elgin approved it, and Dumont, in the even 
 ing, showed it to Mirabeau. Mirabeau read 
 it, pronounced it admirable, and declared he 
 would incorporate it into his harangue, to 
 morrow, to the Assembly. " It is impossible," 
 said Dumont, "as, unfortunately, I have shown 
 it to Lord Elgin." " If you have shown it to 
 Lord Elgin, and to fifty persons beside, I shall 
 still speak it to-morrow : " and he did speak 
 it, with much effect, at the next day s session. 
 For Mirabeau, with his overpowering person 
 ality, felt that these things, which his presence 
 inspired, were as much his own, as if he had 
 said them, and that his adoption of them gave 
 them their weight. Much more absolute and 
 centralizing was the successor to Mirabeau s 
 popularity, and to much more than his predomi 
 nance in France. Indeed, a man of Napoleon s 
 stamp almost ceases to have a private speech 
 and opinion. He is so largely receptive, and 
 is so placed, that he comes to be a bureau for
 
 IRapoleon; or, Gbe flfean of tbe TKHotio 211 
 
 all the intelligence, wit, and power, of the age 
 and country. He gains the battle ; he makes 
 the code ; he makes the system of weights and 
 measures ; he levels the Alps ; he builds the 
 road. All distinguished engineers, savants, 
 statists, report to him : so likewise do all good 
 heads in every kind : he adopts the best meas 
 ures, sets his stamp on them, and not these 
 alone, but on every happy and memorable ex 
 pression. Every sentence spoken by Napo 
 leon, and every line of his writing, deserves 
 reading, as it is the sense of France. 
 
 Bonaparte was the idol of common men, 
 because he had in transcendent degree the 
 qualities and powers of common men. There 
 is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the 
 lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of 
 cant and hypocrisy. Bonaparte wrought, in 
 common with that great class he represented, 
 for power and wealth, but Bonaparte, 
 specially, without any scruple as to the means. 
 All the sentiments which embarrass men s 
 pursuit of these objects, he set aside. The 
 sentiments were for women and children. 
 Fontanes, in 1804, expressed Napoleon s own 
 sense, when, in behalf of the Senate, he ad 
 dressed him, " Sire, the desire of perfection 
 is the worst disease that ever afflicted the 
 human mind." The advocates of liberty, and 
 of progress, are " ideologists ; " a word of 
 contempt often in his mouth ; " Necker is an 
 ideologist : " " Lafayette is an ideologist."
 
 212 "Representative 
 
 An Italian proverb, too well known, declares 
 that, " if you would succeed, you must not be 
 too good." It is an advantage, within certain 
 limits, to have renounced the dominion of the 
 sentiments of piety, gratitude, and generosity ; 
 since, what was an impassable bar to us, and 
 still is to others, becomes a convenient weapon 
 for our purposes ; just as the river which was 
 a formidable barrier, winter transforms into 
 the smoothest of roads. 
 
 Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments 
 and affections, and would help himself with 
 his hands and his head. With him is no 
 miracle, and no magic. He is a worker in 
 brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in 
 buildings, in money, and in troops, and a very 
 consistent and wise master-workman. He is 
 never weak and literary, but acts with the 
 solidity and the precision of natural agents. 
 He has not lost his native sense and sympathy 
 with things. Men give way before such a man 
 as before natural events. To be sure, there are 
 men enough who are immersed in things, as 
 farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics gener 
 ally ; and we know how real and solid such men 
 appear in the presence of scholars and gram 
 marians : but these men ordinarily lack the 
 power of arrangement, and are like hands with 
 out a head. But Bonaparte superadded to this 
 mineral and animal force, insight and general 
 ization, so that men saw in him combined the 
 natural and the intellectual power, as if the sea
 
 Hapoleon; or, tlbc dfcan of tbe TKHotlfc 213 
 
 and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. 
 Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose 
 him. He came unto his own, and they received 
 him. This ciphering operative knows what he 
 is working with, and what is the product. He 
 knew the properties of gold and iron, of wheels 
 and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and re 
 quired that each should do after its kind. 
 
 The art of war was the game in which he 
 exerted his arithmetic. It consisted, accord 
 ing to him, in having always more forces than 
 the enemy, on the point where the enemy is 
 attacked, or where he attacks : and his whole 
 talent is strained by endless manoeuvre and 
 evolution, to march always on the enemy at 
 an angle, and destroy his forces in detail. It 
 is obvious that a very small force, skilfully 
 and rapidly manoeuvring, so as always to bring 
 two men against one at the point of engage 
 ment, will be an overmatch for a much larger 
 body of men. 
 
 The times, his constitution, and his early 
 circumstances, combined to develop this pat 
 tern democrat. He had the virtues of his 
 class, and the conditions for their activity. 
 That common sense, which no sooner respects 
 any end, than it finds the means to effect it ; 
 the delight in the use of means ; in the choice, 
 simplification, and combining of means ; the 
 directness and thoroughness of his work ; the 
 prudence with which all was seen, and the 
 energy with which all was done, make him the
 
 IRepresentative dfcen 
 
 natural organ and head of what I may almost 
 call, from its extent, the modern party. 
 
 Nature must have far the greatest share in 
 every success, and so in his. Such a man was 
 wanted, and such a man was born ; a man of 
 stone and iron, capable of sitting on horseback 
 sixteen or seventeen hours, of going many days 
 together without rest or food, except by 
 snatches, and with the speed and spring of a 
 tiger in action ; a man not embarrassed by any 
 scruples ; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, 
 and of a perception which did not suffer itself 
 to be balked or misled by any pretences of 
 others, or any superstition, or any heat or 
 haste of his own. " My hand of iron," he 
 said, " was not at the extremity of my arm i it 
 was immediately connected with my head." 
 He respected the power of nature and fortune, 
 and ascribed to it his superiority, instead of 
 valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opin- 
 ionativeness and waging war with nature. 
 His favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his star : 
 and he pleased himself, as well as the people, 
 when he styled himself the "Child of Des 
 tiny." " They charge me," he said, " with 
 the commission of great crimes: men of my 
 stamp do not commit crimes. Nothing has 
 been more simple than my elevation : tis in 
 vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime : it was 
 owing to the peculiarity of the times, and to 
 my reputation of having fought well against 
 the enemies of my country. I have always
 
 Rapoteon; or,tTbc /Ran of tbe TtfUotlo 215 
 
 marched with the opinion of great masses, 
 and with events. Of what use, then, would 
 crimes be to me ? " Again he said, speaking 
 of his son, " My son cannot replace me ; I 
 could not replace myself. I am the creature 
 of circumstances." 
 
 He had a directness of action never before 
 combined with so much comprehension. He 
 is a realist, terrific to all talkers, and confused 
 truth-obscuring persons. He sees where the 
 matter hinges, throws himself on the precise 
 point of resistance, and slights all other con 
 siderations. He is strong in the right manner, 
 namely, by insight. He never blundered into 
 victory, but won his battles in his head, before 
 he won them on the field. His principal 
 means are in himself. He asks counsel of 
 no other. In 1796, he writes to the Direc 
 tory : " I have conducted the campaign with 
 out consulting any one. I should have done 
 no good, if I had been under the necessity of 
 conforming to the notions of another person. 
 I have gained some advantages over superior 
 forces, and when totally destitute of every 
 thing, because, in the persuasion that your 
 confidence was reposed in me, my actions 
 were as prompt as my thoughts." 
 
 History is full, down to this day, of the 
 imbecility of kings and governors. They are 
 a class of persons much to be pitied, for they 
 know not what they should do. The weavers 
 strike for bread ; and the king and his minis-
 
 i6 "Representative Aen 
 
 ters, not knowing what to do, meet them with 
 bayonets. But Napoleon understood his 
 business. Here was a man who, in each 
 moment and emergency, knew what to do 
 next. It is an immense comfort and refresh 
 ment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of 
 citizens. Few men have any next ; they live 
 from hand to mouth, without plan, and are 
 ever at the end of their line, and, after each 
 action, wait for an impulse from abroad. 
 Napoleon had been the first man of the world 
 if his ends had been purely public. As he is, 
 he inspires confidence and vigor by the ex 
 traordinary unity of his action. He is firm, 
 sure, self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing 
 everything to his aim, money, troops, gen 
 erals, and his own safety also, to his aim ; 
 not misled, like common adventurers, by the 
 splendor of his own means. " Incidents 
 ought not to govern policy," he said, " but 
 policy, incidents." " To be hurried away by 
 every every event, is to have no political 
 system at all." His victories were only so 
 many doors, and he never for a moment lost 
 sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and up 
 roar of the present circumstance. He knew 
 what to do, and . he flew to his mark. He 
 would shorten a straight line to come at his 
 object. Horrible anecdotes may, no doubt, 
 be collected from his history, of the price at 
 which he bought his successes ; but he must 
 not therefore be set down as cruel ; but only 
 as one who knew no impediment to his will ;
 
 *lapoieon; or, Gbe flban of tbe TEdorlO 217 
 
 not bloodthirsty, not cruel, but wo to what 
 thing or person stood in his way ! Not blood 
 thirsty, but not sparing of blood, and pitiless. 
 He saw only the object : the obstacle must 
 give way. " Sire, General Clarke cannot 
 combine with General Junot, for the dreadful 
 fire of the Austrian battery." " Let him 
 carry the battery." " Sire, every regiment that 
 approaches the heavy artillery is sacrificed : 
 Sire, what orders ? " " Forward, forward ! " 
 Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his 
 Military Memoirs, the following sketch of a 
 scene after the battle of Austerlitz. " At the 
 moment in which the Russian army was mak 
 ing its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on 
 the ice of the lake, the Emperor Napoleon 
 came riding at full speed toward the artillery. 
 You are losing time, he cried; fire upon 
 those masses ; they must be engulfed ; fire 
 upon the ice ! The order remained unexe 
 cuted for ten minutes. In vain several officers 
 and myself were placed on the slope of a hill 
 to produce the effect : their balls and mine 
 rolled upon the ice, without breaking it up. 
 Seeing that, I tried a simple method of elevat 
 ing light howitzers. The almost perpendicular 
 fall of the heavy projectiles produced the 
 desired effect. My method was immediately 
 followed by the adjoining batteries, and in less 
 than no time we buried " some * " thousands oi 
 
 * As I quote at second-hand, and cannot procure 
 Seruzier, I dare not adopt the h .gh figure I find.
 
 2i8 Representative flben 
 
 Russians and Austrians under the waters of 
 the lake." 
 
 In the plenitude of his resources, every ob 
 stacle seemed to vanish. "There shall be no 
 Alps," he said ; and he built his perfect roads, 
 climbing by graded galleries their steepest 
 precipices, until Italy was as open to Paris as 
 any town in France. He laid his bones to, 
 and wrought for his crown. Having decided 
 what was to be done, he did that with might 
 and main. He put out all his strength. He 
 risked everything, and spared nothing, neither 
 ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor 
 generals, nor himself. 
 
 We like to see every thing do its office after 
 its kind, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattle 
 snake ; and, if fighting be the best mode of 
 adjusting national differences (as large major 
 ities of men seem to agree), certainly Bona 
 parte was right in making it thorough. " The 
 grand principle of war, " he said, " was, that 
 an army ought always to be ready, by day and 
 by night, and at all hours, to make all the re 
 sistance it is capable of making." He never 
 economized his ammunition, but, on a hostile 
 position, rained a torrent of iron, shells, balls, 
 grape-shot, to annihilate all defence. On 
 any point of resistance, he concentrated squad 
 ron on squadron in overwhelming numbers, 
 until it was swept out of existence. To a reg 
 iment of horse-chasseurs at Lobenstein, two 
 days before the battle of Jena, Napoleon said,
 
 ftapoleon ; or, be /foan of tbe Tidorlo 2 19 
 
 " My lads, you must not fear death ; when 
 soldiers brave death, they drive him into the 
 enemy s ranks." In the fury of assault, he no 
 more spared himself. He went to the edge 
 of his possibility. It is plain that in Italy he 
 did what he could, and all that he could. He 
 came, several times, within an inch of ruin ; 
 and his own person was all but lost. He was 
 flung into the marsh at Arcola. The Austrians 
 were between him and his troops, in the melee, 
 and he was brought off with desperate efforts. 
 At Lonato, and at other places, he was on the 
 point of being taken prisoner. He fought 
 sixty battles. He had never enough. Each 
 victory was a new weapon. " My power 
 would fall, were I not to support it by new 
 achievements. Conquest has made me what 
 I am, and conquest must maintain me." He 
 felt, with every wise man, that as much life is 
 needed for conservation as for creation. We 
 are always in peril, always in a bad plight, 
 just on the edge of destruction, and only to 
 be saved by invention and courage. 
 
 This vigor was guarded and tempered by 
 the coldest prudence and punctuality. A 
 thunderbolt in the attack, he was found in 
 vulnerable in his intrenchments. His very 
 attack was never the inspiration of courage, 
 but the result of calculation. His idea of the 
 best defence consists in being still the attack 
 ing party. " My ambition," he says, " was 
 great, but was of a cold nature." In one of
 
 220 "Representative flden 
 
 his conversations with Las Casas, he re 
 marked, " As to moral courage, I have rarely 
 met with the two-o clock-in-the-morning kind ; 
 I mean unprepared courage, that which, is 
 necessary on an unexpected occasion; and 
 which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, 
 leaves full freedom of judgment and decis 
 ion : " and he did not hesitate to declare 
 that he was himself eminently endowed with 
 this " two-o clock-in-the-morning courage, and 
 that he had met with few persons equal to 
 himself in this respect." 
 
 Everything depended on the nicety of his 
 combinations, and the stars were not more 
 punctual than his arithmetic. His personal 
 attention descended to the smallest par 
 ticulars. " At Montebello, I ordered Keller- 
 mann to attack with eight hundred horse, and 
 with these he separated the six thousand 
 Hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes of 
 the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half 
 a league off, and required a quarter of an 
 hour to arrive on the field of action ; and I 
 have observed, that it is always these quarters 
 of an hour that decide the fate of a battle." 
 " Before he fought a battle, Bonaparte thought 
 little about what he should do in case of suc 
 cess, but a great deal about what he should 
 do in case of a reverse of fortune." The 
 same prudence and good sense mark all his 
 behavior. His instructions to his secretary at 
 the Tuilleries are worth remembering. " Dur-
 
 Hapoleon ; or, Ubc /Ban of tbe TPUorlO 221 
 
 ing the night, enter my chamber as seldom as 
 possible. Do not awake me when you have 
 any good news to communicate ; with that 
 there is no hurry. But when you bring bad 
 news, rouse me instantly, for then there is not 
 a moment to be lost." It was a whimsical 
 economy of the same kind which dictated his 
 practice, when general in Italy, in regard to 
 his burdensome correspondence. He directed 
 Bourienne to leave all letters unopened for 
 three weeks, and then observed with satis 
 faction how large a part of the correspondence 
 had thus disposed of itself, and no longer re 
 quired an answer. His achievement of busi 
 ness was immense, and enlarges the known 
 powers of man. There have been many 
 working kings, from Ulysses to William of 
 Orange, but none who accomplished a tithe of 
 this man s performance. 
 
 To these gifts of nature, Napoleon added 
 the advantage of having been born to a pri 
 vate and humble fortune. In his latter days, 
 he had the weakness of wishing to add to his 
 crowns and badges the prescription of aristoc 
 racy: but he knew his debt to his austere 
 education, and made no secret of his contempt 
 for the born kings, and for " the hereditary 
 asses," as he coarsely styled the Bourbons. 
 He said that, " in their exile, they had learned 
 nothing, and forgot nothing." Bonaparte had 
 passed through all the degrees of military 
 service, but also was citizen before he was
 
 222 "Representative 
 
 emperor, and so has the key to citizenship. 
 His remarks and estimates discover the in 
 formation and justness of measurement of the 
 middle class. Those who had to deal with 
 him, found that he was not to be imposed 
 upon, but could cipher as well as another man. 
 This appears in all parts of his Memoirs, dic 
 tated at St. Helena. When the expenses of 
 the empress, of his household, of his palaces, 
 had accumulated great debts, Napoleon exam 
 ined the bills of the creditors himself, de 
 tected overcharges and errors, and reduced 
 the claims by considerable sums. 
 
 His grand weapon, namely, the millions 
 whom he directed, he owed to the representa 
 tive character which clothed him. He in 
 terests us as he stands for France and for 
 Europe ; and he exists as captain and king, 
 only as far as the Revolution, or the interest 
 of the industrious masses, found an organ and 
 a leader in him. In the social interests, he 
 knew the meaning and value of labor, and 
 threw himself naturally on that side. I like 
 an incident mentioned by one of his biogra 
 phers at St. Helena. " When walking with 
 Mrs. Balcombe, some servants, carrying 
 heavy boxes, passed by on the road, and Mrs. 
 Balcombe desired them, in rather an angry 
 tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered, say 
 ing, Respect the burden, Madam. " In the 
 time of the empire, he directed attention to the 
 improvement and embellishment of the markets
 
 flapoleon; or, {Ibe /Ran of tbe TJQorlD 223 
 
 of the capital. " The market-place," he said, 
 "is the Louvre of the common people." The 
 principal works that have survived him are 
 his magnificent roads. He filled the troops 
 with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and com 
 panionship grew up between him and them, 
 which the forms of his court never permitted 
 between the officers and himself. They per 
 formed, under his eye, that which no others 
 could do. The best document of his relation 
 to his troops is the order of the day on the 
 morning of the battle of Austerlitz, in which 
 Napoleon promises the troops that he will 
 keep his person out of reach of fire. This 
 declaration, which is the reverse of that ordi 
 narily made by generals and sovereigns on the 
 eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devo 
 tion of the army to their leader. 
 
 But though there is in particulars this 
 identity between Napoleon and the mass of 
 the people, his real strength lay in their con 
 viction that he was their representative in his 
 genius and aims, not only when he courted, 
 but when he controlled and even when he dec 
 imated them by his conscriptions. He knew, 
 as well as any Jacobin in France, how to phi 
 losophize on liberty and equality ; and, when 
 allusion was made to the precious blood of 
 centuries, which was spilled by the killing of 
 the Due d Enghien, he suggested, " Neither is 
 my blood ditch-water." The people felt that 
 no longer the throne was occupied, and the
 
 224 "Representative flfcen 
 
 land sucked of its nourishment, by a small 
 class of legitimates, secluded from all com 
 munity with the children of the soil, and hold 
 ing the ideas and superstitions of a long-for 
 gotten state of society. Instead of that vam- 
 pyre, a man of themselves held, in the Tuilleries, 
 knowledge and ideas like their own, opening, 
 of course, to them and their children, all 
 places of power and trust. The day of sleepy, 
 selfish policy, ever narrowing the means and 
 opportunities of young men, was ended, and a 
 day of expansion and demand was come. A 
 market for all the powers and productions of 
 man was opened ; brilliant prizes glittered in 
 the eyes of youth and talent. The old, iron- 
 bound, feudal France was changed into a 
 young Ohio or New York ; and those who 
 smarted under the immediate rigors of the new 
 monarch, pardoned them, as the necessary 
 severities of the military system which had 
 driven out the oppressor. And even when the 
 majority of the people had begun to ask, 
 whether they had really gained anything under 
 the exhausting levies of men and money of 
 the new master, the whole talent of the coun 
 try, in every rank and kindred, took his part, 
 and defended him as its natural patron. In 
 1814, when advised to rely on the higher 
 classes, Napoleon said to those around him, 
 ** Gentlemen, in the situation in which I stand, 
 my only nobility is the rabble of the Fau 
 bourgs."
 
 HapoIeon ; or, Ebe /Ban of tbc TJdorlo 225 
 
 Napoleon met this natural expectation. 
 The necessity of his position required a hos 
 pitality to every sort of talent, and its appoint 
 ment to trusts ; and his feeling went along 
 with this policy. Like every superior person, 
 he undoubtedly felt a desire for men and com 
 peers, and a wish to measure his power with 
 other masters, and an impatience of fools and 
 underlings. In Italy, he sought for men, and 
 found none. " Good God ! " he said, " how 
 rare men are ! There are eighteen millions 
 in Italy, and I have with difficulty found two, 
 Dandolo and Melzi." In later years, with 
 larger experience, his respect for mankind was 
 not increased. In a moment of bitterness, he 
 said, to one of his oldest friends, " Men de 
 serve the contempt with which they inspire 
 me. I have only to put some gold lace on the 
 coat of my virtuous republicans, and they im 
 mediately become just what I wish them." 
 This impatience at levity was, however, an 
 oblique tribute of respect to those able persons 
 who commanded his regard, not only when he 
 found them friends and coadjutors, but also 
 when they resisted his will. He could not 
 confound Fox and Pitt, Carnot, Lafayette, and 
 Bernadotte, with the danglers of his court ; 
 and, in spite of the detraction which his sys 
 tematic egotism dictated toward the great cap 
 tains who conquered with and for him, ample 
 acknowledgments are made by him to Lannes, 
 Duroc, Kleber, Dessaix, Massena, Murat, Ney,
 
 226" "Representative ffoen 
 
 and Augereau. If he felt himself their patron, 
 and the founder of their fortunes, as when he 
 said, " I made my generals out of mud," he 
 could not hide his satisfaction in receiving 
 from them a seconding and support commen 
 surate with the grandeur of his enterprise. In 
 the Russian campaign, he was so much im 
 pressed by the courage and resources of 
 Marshal Ney, that he said, " I have two hun 
 dred millions in my coffers, and I would give 
 them all for Ney." The characters which he 
 has drawn of several of his marshals are dis 
 criminating, and, though they did not content 
 the insatiable vanity of French officers, are, no 
 doubt, substantially just. And, in fact, every 
 species of merit was sought and advanced un 
 der his government. "I know," he said, "the 
 depth and draught of water of every one of my 
 generals." Natural power was sure to be well 
 received at his court. Seventeen men, in his 
 time, were raised from common soldiers to the 
 rank of king, marshal, duke, or general : and 
 the crosses of his Legion of Honor were given 
 to personal valor, and not to family connexion. 
 "When soldiers have been baptized in the 
 fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in 
 my eyes." 
 
 When a natural king becomes a titular king, 
 everybody is pleased and satisfied. The Rev 
 olution entitled the strong populace of the 
 Faubourg St. Antoine, and every horse-boy 
 and powder-monkey in the army, to look on
 
 flapoteon; or, tTbe /Ran of tbe TKHorlfc 227 
 
 Napoleon, as flesh of his flesh, and the creature 
 of his party : but there is something in the 
 success of grand talent which enlists an univer 
 sal sympathy. For, in the prevalence of sense 
 and spirit over stupidity and malversation, all 
 reasonable men have an interest ; and, as in 
 tellectual beings, we feel the air purified by 
 the electric shock, when material force is over 
 thrown by intellectual energies. As soon as 
 we are removed out of the reach of local and 
 accidental partialities, man feels that Napoleon 
 fights for him ; these are honest victories ; 
 this strong steam-engine does our work. 
 Whatever appeals to the imagination, by tran 
 scending the ordinary limits of human- ability, 
 wonderfully encourages and liberates us. 
 This capacious head, revolving and disposing 
 sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating 
 such multitudes of agents ; this eye, which 
 looked through Europe ; this prompt inven 
 tion ; this inexhaustible resource ; what 
 events ! what romantic pictures ! what strange 
 situations ! when spying the Alps, by a sun 
 set in the Sicilian sea ; drawing up his army 
 for battle, in sight of the Pyramids, and saying 
 to his troops, " From the tops of those 
 pyramids, forty centuries look down on you ; " 
 fording the Red Sea ; wading in the gulf of 
 the Isthmus of Suez. On the shore of Ptole- 
 mais, gigantic projects agitated him. * Had 
 Acre fallen, I should have changed the face 
 of the world." His army, on the night of the
 
 228 Hepresentatfve 
 
 battle of Austerlitz, which was the anniversary 
 of his inauguration as Emperor, presented him 
 with a bouquet of forty standards taken in the 
 fight. Perhaps it is a little puerile, the pleasure 
 he took in making these contrasts glaring ; as 
 when he pleased himself with making kings 
 wait in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris, 
 and at Erfurt. 
 
 We cannot, in the universal imbecility, inde 
 cision, and indolence of men, sufficiently con 
 gratulate ourselves on this strong and ready 
 actor, who took occasion by the beard, and 
 showed us how much may be accomplished by 
 the mere force of such virtues as all men pos 
 sess in less degrees ; namely, by punctuality, 
 by personal attention, by courage, and thor 
 oughness. "The Austrians," he said, " do not 
 know the value of time." I should cite him, 
 in his earlier years, as a model of prudence. 
 His power does not consist in any wild or 
 extravagant force ; in any enthusiasm, like 
 Mahomet s ; or singular power of persuasion ; 
 but in the exercise of common sense on each 
 emergency, instead of abiding by rules and 
 customs. The lesson he teaches is that which 
 vigor always teaches, that there is always 
 room for it. To what heaps of cowardly 
 doubts is not that man s life an answer. 
 When he appeared, it was the belief of all 
 military men that there could be nothing new 
 in war ; as it is the belief of men to-day, that 
 nothing new can be undertaken in politics, or
 
 or, ftbe /Ran ot tbe "GdotW 229 
 
 in church, or in letters, or in trade, or in farm 
 ing, or in our social manners and customs ; 
 and as it is, at all times, the belief of society 
 that the world is used up. But Bonaparte 
 knew better than society ; and, moreover, 
 knew that he knew better. I think all 
 men know better than they do ; know that 
 the institutions we so volubly commend are go- 
 carts and baubles; but they dare not trust 
 their presentiments. Bonaparte relied on his 
 own sense, and did not care a bean for other 
 people s. The world treated his novelties just 
 as it treats everybody s novelties, made in 
 finite objection ; mustered all the impedi 
 ments ; but he snapped his ringer at their ob 
 jections. " What creates great difficulty," he 
 remarks, " in the profession of the land com 
 mander, is the necessity of feeding so many 
 men and animals. If he allows himself to be 
 guided by the commissaries, he will never stir, 
 and all his expeditions will fail." An ex 
 ample of his common sense is what he says of 
 the passage of the Alps in winter, which all 
 writers, one repeating after the other, had 
 described as impracticable. " The winter," 
 says Napoleon, " is not the most unfavorable 
 season for the passage of lofty mountains. 
 The snow is then firm, the weather settled, 
 and there is nothing to fear from avalanches, 
 the real and only danger to be apprehended in 
 the Alps. On those high mountains, there 
 are often very fine days in December, of a dry
 
 230 "Representative dfcen 
 
 cold, with extreme calmness in the air." Read 
 his account, too, of the way in which battles 
 are gained. " In all battles, a moment occurs, 
 when the bravest troops, after having made 
 the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run. That 
 terror proceeds from a want of confidence in 
 their own courage ; and it only requires a 
 slight opportunity, a pretence, to restore con 
 fidence to them. The art is to give rise to the 
 opportunity, and to invent the pretence. At 
 Arcola, I won the battle with twenty-five horse 
 men. I seized that moment of lassitude, gave 
 every man a trumpet, and gained the day with 
 this handful. You see that two armies are 
 two bodies which meet, and endeavor to 
 frighten each other : a moment of panic occurs, 
 and that moment must be turned to advantage. 
 When a man has been present in many actions, 
 he distinguishes that moment without diffi 
 culty; it is as easy as casting up an addi 
 tion." 
 
 This deputy of the nineteenth century added 
 to his gifts a capacity for speculation on gen 
 eral topics. He delighted in running through 
 the range of practical, of literary, and of ab 
 stract questions. His opinion is always orig 
 inal, and to the purpose. On the voyage rx> 
 Egypt, he liked, after dinner, to fix on three oi 
 four persons to support a proposition, and as 
 many to oppose it. He gave a subject, and 
 the discussions turned on questions of religion^. 
 the different kinds of government, and the art
 
 or, Gbe /foan of tbe TTClorlo 231 
 
 of war. One day, he asked, whether tha 
 planets were inhabited? On another, what 
 was the age of the world ? Then he proposed 
 to consider the probability of the destruction 
 of the globe, either by water or by fire ; at an 
 other time, the truth or fallacy of presentiments, 
 and the interpretation of dreams. He was very 
 fond of talking of religion. In 1806, he con 
 versed with Fournier, bishop of Montpellier, on 
 matters of theology. There were two points on 
 which they could not agree, viz., that of hell, 
 and that of salvation out of the pale of the 
 church. The Emperor told Josephine, that he 
 disputed like a devil on these two points, on 
 which the bishop was inexorable. To the phi 
 losophers he readily yielded all that was proved 
 against religion as the work of men and time ; 
 but he would not hear of materialism. One fine 
 night, on deck, amid a clatter of materialism, 
 Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and said, " You 
 may talk as long as you please, gentle 
 men, but who made all that ? " He delighted 
 in the conversation of men of science, particu 
 larly of Monge and Berthollet ; but the men of 
 letters he slighted ; " they were manufacturers 
 of phrases." Of medicine, too, he was fond of 
 talking, and with those of its practitioners 
 whom he most esteemed, with Corvisart at 
 Paris, and with Antonomarchi at St. Helena. 
 " Believe me," he said to the last, " we had 
 better leave off all these remedies : Me is a 
 fortress which neither you nor I know any-
 
 23* 
 
 thing about. Why throw obstacles in the way 
 of its defence ? Its own means are superior to 
 all the apparatus of your laboratories. Cor- 
 visart candidly agreed with me, that all your 
 filthy mixtures are good for nothing. Medi- 
 *ine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, 
 ,he results of which, taken collectively, are 
 more fatal than useful to mankind. Water, 
 air, and cleanliness, are the chief articles in 
 my pharmacopeia." 
 
 His memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon 
 and General Gourgaud, at St. Helena, have 
 great value, after all the deduction that, it 
 seems, is to be made from them, on account of 
 his known disingenuousness. He has the good 
 nature of strength and conscious superiority. 
 I admire his simple, clear narrative of his 
 battles ; good as Caesar s ; his good-natured 
 and sufficiently respectful account of Marshal 
 Wurmser and his other antagonists, and his 
 own equality as a writer to his varying subject. 
 The most agreeable portion is the Campaign 
 in Egypt. 
 
 He had hours of thought and wisdom. In 
 intervals of leisure, either in the camp or the 
 palace, Napoleon appears as a man of genius, 
 directing on abstract questions the native 
 appetite for truth, and the impatience of words, 
 he was wont to show in war. He could enjoy 
 every play of invention, a romance, a ban mot, 
 as well as a stratagem in a campaign. He 
 delighted to fascinate Josephine and her ladies,
 
 flapoleon ; or, tfbe /Ran of the tdorlo 233 
 
 in a dim-lighted apartment, by the terrors of a 
 fiction, to which his voice and dramatic power 
 lent every addition. 
 
 I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the 
 middle class of modern society; of the throng 
 who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses, 
 manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aim 
 ing to be rich. He was the agitator, the de 
 stroyer of prescription, the internal improver, 
 the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, 
 the opener of doors and markets, the subverter 
 of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich 
 and aristocratic did not like him. England, the 
 center of capital, and Rome and Austria, 
 centers of tradition and genealogy, opposed 
 him. The consternation of the dull and 
 conservative classes, the terror of the foolish 
 old men and old women of the Roman conclave, 
 who in their despair took hold of anything, 
 and would cling to red-hot iron, --the vain 
 attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, 
 of the emperor of Austria to bribe him ; and 
 the instinct of the young, ardent, and active 
 men, everywhere, which pointed him out as 
 the giant of the middle class, make his history 
 bright and commanding. He had the virtues 
 of the masses of his constituents : he had also 
 ieir vices. I am sorry that the brilliant picture 
 has its reverse. But that is the fatal quality 
 which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, 
 that it is treacherous, and is bought by the 
 breaking or weakening of the sentiments : and
 
 234 Representative 
 
 it is inevitable that we should find the same fact 
 in the history of this champion, who proposed 
 to himself simply a brilliant career, without any 
 stipulation or scruple concerning the means. 
 
 Bonaparte was singularly destitute of gen 
 erous sentiments. The highest-placed individ 
 ual in the most cultivated age and population 
 of the world, he has not the merit of common 
 truth and honesty. He is unjust to his 
 generals ; egotistic, and monopolizing ; meanly 
 stealing the credit of their great actions from 
 Kellermann, from Bernadotte; intriguing to 
 involve his faithful Junot in hopeless bank 
 ruptcy, in order to drive him to a distance 
 from Paris, because the familiarity of his 
 manners offends the new pride of his throne. 
 He is a boundless liar. The official paper, his 
 " Moniteurs," and all his bulletins, are proverbs 
 for saying what he wished to be believed ; and 
 worse, he sat, in his premature old age, in his 
 lonely island, coldly falsifying facts, and dates, 
 and characters, and giving to history a theatri 
 cal dclat. Like all Frenchmen, he has a 
 passion for stage effect. Every action that 
 breathes of generosity is poisoned by this cal 
 culation. His star, his love of glory, his doc 
 trine of the immortality of the soul, are all 
 French. " I must dazzle and astonish. If I 
 were to give the liberty of the press, my power 
 could not last three days." To make a great 
 noise is his favorite design. " A great reputa 
 tion is a great noise : the more there is made,
 
 Hapoleon ; or, Cbc /Ran of tbe TOOttb 235 
 
 the farther off it is heard. Laws, institutions, 
 monuments, nations, all fall ; but the noise 
 continues, and resounds in after ages." His 
 doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His 
 theory of influence is not flattering. " There 
 are two levers for moving men, interest and 
 fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon 
 it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. 
 I do not even love my brothers : perhaps 
 Joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is 
 my elder; and Duroc, I love him too ; but 
 why? because his character pleases me : he 
 is stern and resolute, and, I believe, the fellow 
 never shed a tear. For my part, I know very 
 well that I have no true friends. As long as I 
 continue to be what I am, I may have as many 
 pretended friends as I please. Leave sensibil 
 ity to women : but men should be firm in heart 
 and purpose, or they should have nothing to 
 do with war and government." He was 
 thoroughly unscrupulous. He would steal, 
 slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his 
 interest dictated. He had no generosity ; but 
 mere vulgar hatred : he was intensely selfish : 
 he was perfidious : he cheated at cards : he 
 was a prodigious gossip ; and opened letters ; 
 and delighted in his infamous police ; and 
 rubbed his hands with joy when he had inter 
 cepted some morsel of intelligence concerning 
 the men and women about him, boasting that 
 " he knew everything ; " and interfered with 
 the cutting the dresses of the women ; and
 
 236 Representative rflben 
 
 listened after the hurrahs and the compliments 
 of the street, incognito. His manners were 
 coarse. He treated women with low familiarity. 
 He had the habit of pulling their ears and 
 pinching their cheeks, when he was in good 
 humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers 
 of men, and of striking and horse-play with 
 them, to his last days. It does not appear 
 that he listened at keyholes, or, at least, that 
 he was caught at it. In short, when you have 
 penetrated through all the circles of power and 
 splendor, you were not dealing with a gentle 
 man, at last ; but with an impostor and a rogue : 
 and he fully deserves the epithet of Jupiter 
 Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter. 
 
 In describing the two parties into which 
 modern society divides itself, the democrat 
 and the conservative, I said, Bonaparte rep 
 resents the democrat, or the party of men of 
 business, against the stationary or conservative 
 party. I omitted then to say, what is material 
 to the statement, namely, that these two parties 
 differ only as young and old. The democrat 
 is a young conservative ; the conservative is 
 an old democrat. The aristocrat is the demcK 
 crat ripe, and gone to seed, because both 
 parties stand on the one ground of the supreme 
 value of property, which one endeavors to get, 
 and the other to keep. Bonaparte may be 
 said to represent the whole history of this 
 party, its youth and its age ; yes, and with
 
 Tlapoleon ; or, tlbe flfcan of tbc Tidotlo 237 
 
 poetic justice, its fate, in his own. The 
 counter-revolution, the counter-party, still 
 waits for its organ and representative, in a 
 lover and a man of truly public and universal 
 aims. 
 
 Here was an experiment, under the most 
 favorable conditions, of the powers of intellect 
 without conscience. Never was such a leader 
 so endowed, and so weaponed ; never leader 
 found such aids and followers. And what was 
 the result of this vast talent and power, of 
 these immense armies, burned cities, squan 
 dered treasures, immolated millions of men, of 
 this demoralized Europe ? It came to no result. 
 All passed away, like the smoke of his artillery, 
 and left no trace. He left France smaller, 
 poorer, feebler, than he found it ; and the whole 
 contest for freedom was to be begun again. 
 The attempt was, in principle, suicidal. France 
 served him with life, and limb, and estate, as 
 long as it could identify its interest with him ; 
 but when men saw that after victory was an 
 other war; after the destruction of armies, new 
 conscriptions ; and tluy who had toiled so 
 desperately were never nearer to the reward, 
 they could not spend what they had earned, 
 nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in 
 their chateaux, they deserted him. Men 
 found that his absorbing egotism was deadly 
 to all other men. It resembled the torpedo, 
 which inflicts a succession of shocks on any 
 one who takes hold of it, producing spasm*
 
 233 "Representative /fcen 
 
 which contract the muscles of the hand, so 
 that the man cannot open his fingers ; and the 
 animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, 
 until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So, 
 this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, 
 and absorbed the power and existence of those 
 who served him ; and the universal cry of 
 France, and of Europe, in 1814, was, "enough 
 of him ; " " assez de Bonaparte" 
 
 It was not Bonaparte s fault. He did all 
 that in him lay, to live and thrive without 
 moral principle. It was the nature of things, 
 the eternal law of man and of the world, which 
 baulked and ruined him ; and the result, in a 
 million experiments, will be the same. Every 
 experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, 
 that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. 
 The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the 
 pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civiliza 
 tion is essentially one of property, of fences, 
 of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delu 
 sions. Our riches will leave us sick ; there will 
 be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine 
 will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, 
 which we can taste with all doors open, and 
 which serves all men.
 
 GOETHE ; OR, THE WRITER.
 
 GOETHE.
 
 VII. 
 
 Goethe; or, The Writer 
 
 i FIND a provision, in the constitution of the 
 world, for the writer or secretary, who is to re 
 port the doings of the miraculous spirit of life 
 that everywhere throbs and works. His office 
 is a reception of the facts into the mind, and 
 then a selection of the eminent and character 
 istic experiences. 
 
 Nature will be reported. All things are en 
 gaged in writing their history. The planet, 
 the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The 
 rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mount 
 ain ; the river, its channel in the soil ; the 
 animal, its bones in the stratum ; the fern and 
 leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The 
 falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or 
 the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or 
 along the ground, but prints, in characters 
 more or less lasting, a map of its march. 
 Every act of the man inscribes itself in the 
 memories of hi* fellows, and in his own man- 
 16
 
 242 "(Representative dfcen 
 
 ners and face. The air is full of sounds ; the 
 sky, of tokens ; the ground is all memoranda 
 and signatures; and every object covered over 
 with hints, which speak to the intelligent. 
 
 In nature, this self-registration is incessant, 
 and the narrative is the print cf the seal. It 
 neither exceeds nor comes short of the fact. 
 But nature strives upward ; and, in man, the 
 report, is something more than print of the 
 seal, It is a new and finer form of the original. 
 The record is alive, as that which it recorded 
 is alive. In man, the memory is a kind of 
 looking-glass, which, having received the im 
 ages of surrounding objects, is touched with 
 life, and disposes them in a new order. The 
 facts which transpired do not lie in it inert ; 
 but some subside, and others shine ; so that 
 soon we have a new picture, composed of the 
 eminent experiences. The man cooperates. 
 He loves to communicate ; and that which is 
 for him to say lies as a load on his heart until 
 it is delivered. But, besides the universal joy 
 of conversation, some men are born with ex 
 alted powers for this second creation. Men 
 are born to write. The gardener saves every 
 slip, and seed, and peach -stone : his vocation 
 is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the 
 writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds 
 or experiences, comes to him as a model, and 
 sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense 
 that they say, that some things are -undescrib- 
 able. He believes that all that can be thought
 
 <5oetbe ; or, ^Tbe Idriter 243 
 
 can be written, first or last ; and he would re 
 port the Holy Ghost, or attempt it. Nothing 
 so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes 
 therefore commended to his pen, and he will 
 write. In his eyes, a man is the faculty of 
 reporting, and the universe is the possibility 
 of being reported. In conversation, in calam 
 ity, he finds new materials ; as our German 
 poet said, " some god gave me the power to 
 paint what I suffer." He draws his rents from 
 rage and pain. By acting rashly, he buys the 
 power of talking wisely. Vexations, and a 
 tempest of passion, only fill his sails ; as the 
 good Luther writes, " When I am angry I can 
 pray well, and preach well ; " and if we knew 
 the genesis of fine strokes of eloquence, they 
 might recall the complaisance of Sultan Amu- 
 rath, who struck off some Persian heads, that 
 his physician, Vesalius, might see the spasms 
 in the muscles of the neck. His failures are 
 the preparation of his victories. A new 
 thought, or a crisis of passion, apprises him 
 that all that he has yet learned and written is 
 exoteric is not the fact, but some rumor of 
 the fact. What then ? Does he throw away 
 the pen ? No ; he begins again to describe in 
 the new light which has shined on him, if, by 
 some means, he may yet save some true word. 
 Nature conspires. Whatever can be thought 
 can be spoken, and still rises for utterance, 
 though to rude and stammering organs. If 
 they cannot compass it, it waits and works.
 
 244. IRepresentatfve flfcen 
 
 until, at last, it moulds them to its perfect will, 
 and is articulated. 
 
 This striving atter imitative expression, 
 which one meets everywhere, is significant of 
 the aim of nature, but is mere stenography. 
 There are higher degrees, and nature has more 
 splendid endowments for those whom she 
 elects to a superior office ; for the class of 
 scholars or writers, who see connection where 
 the multitude see fragments, and who are im 
 pelled tc exhibit the facts in order, and so to 
 supply the axis on which the frame of things 
 turns. Nature has dearly at heart the forma 
 tion of the. speculative man, or scholar. It is 
 an end never lost sight of, and is prepared in 
 the original casting of things. He is no per 
 missive or accidental appearance, but an 
 organic agent, one of the estates of the realm, 
 provided and prepared, from of old and from 
 everlasting, in the knitting and contexture of 
 things. Presentiments, impulses, cheer him. 
 There is a certain heat in the breast, which 
 attends the perception of a primary truth, 
 which is the shining of the spiritual sun down 
 into the shaft of the mine. Every thought 
 which dawns on the mind, in the moment of its 
 emergency announces its own rank, whether 
 it is some whimsy, or whether it is a power. 
 
 If he have his incitements, there is, on the 
 other side, invitation and need enough of his 
 gift. Society has, at all times, the same want, 
 namely, of one sane man with adequate powers
 
 Soetbe ; or, Cbc Write 245 
 
 of expression to hold up each object of mono 
 mania in its right relations. The ambitious 
 vid mercenary bring their last new mumbo- 
 jumbo, whether tariff, Texas, railroad, Roman 
 ism, mesmerism, or California ; and, by de 
 taching the object from its r eiations ; easily 
 succeed in making it seen in a glare ; and a 
 multitude go mad about it, and they are not 
 tc be reproved or cured by the opposite mul 
 titude, who are kept from this particular in 
 sanity by an equal frenzy on another crochet. 
 Bi^ let one man have the comprehensive eye 
 that can replace this isolated prodigy in its 
 right neighborhood and bearings, the illusion 
 vanishes, and the returning reason of the com 
 munity thanks the reason of the monitor. 
 
 The scholar is the man of the ages, but he 
 must also wish with other men to stand well 
 with his contemporaries. But there is a certain 
 ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on 
 the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import, 
 unless the scholars heed it. In this country, 
 the emphasis of conversation, and of public 
 opinion, commends the practical man ; and 
 the solid portion of the community is named 
 with significant respect in every circle. Our 
 people are of Bonaparte s opinion concerning 
 ideologists. Ideas are subversive of social 
 order and comfort, and at last make a fool of 
 the possessor. It is believed, the ordering a 
 cargo of goods from New York to Smyrna ; 
 or, the running up and down to procure a
 
 **6 TRepresentative dfcen 
 
 company of subscribers to set a-going five or 
 ten thousand spindles ; or, the negotiations of 
 a caucus, and the practising on the prejudices 
 and facility ot. country-people, to secure their 
 vc jes In. November, is practical and com 
 mendable. 
 
 If I were to compare action of a much 
 higher strain with a life of contemplation, I 
 should not venture to pronounce with much 
 confidence in favor of the former. Mankind 
 have such a deep stake in inward illumination, 
 that there is much to be said by the hermit or 
 monk in defence of his life of thought and 
 prayer. A certain partiality, a headiuess, and 
 loss of balance, is the tax which all action 
 roust pay. Act, if you like, but you do it at 
 you r peril. Men s actions are too strong for 
 them. Show me a man who has acted, and 
 whr has not been the victim and slave of his 
 action. What they have done commits and 
 enforces them to do the same again. The first 
 act. which was to be an experiment, becomes 
 a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his 
 aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he 
 and his friends cleave to the form, and lose 
 the aspiration. The Quaker has established 
 Quakerism, the Shaker has established his 
 mcnastery and his dance ; and, although each 
 prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repeti 
 tion, which is anti-spiritual. But where are his 
 jwv things of to-day ? In actions of enthu- 
 this drawback appears : but in those
 
 (Soetbe ; or, Gbe THIlriter 247 
 
 lower activities, which have no higher aim 
 than to make us more comfortable and more 
 cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that 
 steal and lie, actions that divorce the specu 
 lative from the practical faculty, and put a ban 
 on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else 
 but drawback and negation. The Hindoos 
 write in their sacred books, " Children only, 
 and not the learned, speak of the speculative 
 and the practical faculties as two. They are 
 but one for both obtain the selfsame end, and 
 the place which is gained by the followers of 
 the one, is gained by the followers of the other. 
 That man sjeeth, who seeth that the specula 
 tive and the practical doctrines are one." 
 For great action must draw on the spiritual 
 nature. The measure of action is the senti 
 ment from which it proceeds. The greatest 
 action may easily be one of the most private 
 circumstances. 
 
 This disparagement will not come from the 
 leaders, but from inferior persons. The robust 
 gentlemen who stand at the head of the prac 
 tical class, share the ideas of the time, and 
 have too much sympathy with the speculative 
 class. It is not from men excellent in any 
 kind, that disparagement of any other is to be 
 looked for. With such, Talleyrand s question 
 is ever the main one ; not, is he rich ? is he 
 committed ? is he well-meaning ? has he this 
 or that faculty ? is he of the movement ? is he 
 of the establishment ? but, Is he anybody ?
 
 248 Representative Obcn 
 
 does he stand for something ? He must be 
 good of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand, 
 all that State-street, all that the common sense 
 of mankind asks. Be real and admirable, 
 not as we know, but as you know. Able men 
 do not care in what kind a man is able, so 
 only that he is able. A master likes a master, 
 and does not stipulate whether it be orator, 
 artist, craftsman, or king. 
 
 Society has really no graver interest than 
 the well-being of the literary class. And it is 
 not to be denied that men are cordial in their 
 recognition and welcome of intellectual accom 
 plishments. Still the writer does not stand with 
 us on any commanding ground. I think this 
 to be his own fault. A pound passes for a 
 pound. There have been times when he was 
 a sacred person ; he wrote Bibles ; the first 
 hymns ; the codes ; the epics ; tragic songs ; 
 Sibylline verses ; Chaldean oracles ; Laconian 
 sentences, inscribed on temple walls. Every 
 word was true, and woke the nations to new 
 life. He wrote without levity, and without 
 choice. Every word was carved before his 
 eyes, into the earth and sky ; and the sun and 
 stars were only letters of the same purport ; and 
 of no more necessity. But how can he be 
 honored, when he does not honor himself; 
 when he loses himself in the crowd ; when he 
 is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, 
 ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless 
 public ; when he must sustain with shameless
 
 CJoetbe } or, tTbe Wrftet 249 
 
 advocacy some bad government, or must bark, 
 all the year round, in opposition ; or write con* 
 ventional criticism, or profligate novels ; or, 
 at any rate, write without thought, and without 
 recurrence, by day and by night, to the sources 
 of inspiration ? 
 
 Some reply to these questions may be 
 furnished by looking over the list of men of 
 literary genius in our age. Among these, no 
 more instructive name occurs than that of 
 Goethe, to represent the power and duties of 
 the scholar or writer. 
 
 I described Bonaparte as a representative 
 of the popular e?t rnal life and aims of the 
 nineteenth century Its other half, its poet, is 
 Goethe, a man quut domesticated in the cent 
 ury, breathing its air, enjoying its fruits, im 
 possible at any earlier time, and taking away, 
 by his colossal parts, the reproach of weak 
 ness, which, but for him, would lie on the 
 intellectual works of the period. He appears 
 at a time when a general culture has spread 
 itself, and has smoothed down all sharp indi 
 vidual traits ; when, in the absence of heroic 
 characters, a social comfort and cooperation 
 have come in. There is no poet, but scores 
 of poetic writers ; no Columbus, but hundreds 
 of post-captains, with transit-telescope, barom 
 eter, and concentrated soup and pemmican; 
 no Demosthenes, no Chatham, but any num 
 ber of clever parliamentary and forensic 
 debaters ; no prophet or saint, but colleges of
 
 "Representative /fccn 
 
 divinity ; no learned man, but learned soci* 
 eties. a cheap press, reading-rooms, and book* 
 clubs, without number. There was never such 
 a miscellany of facts. The world extends it 
 self like American trade. We conceive Greek 
 or Roman life, life in the middle ages, to 
 be a simple and comprehensible affair ; but 
 modern life to respect a multitude of things, 
 which is distracting. 
 
 Goethe was the philosopher of this multi 
 plicity ; hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and 
 happy to cope with this rolling miscellany of 
 facts and sciences, and, by his own versatility, 
 to dispose of them with ease ; a manly mind, 
 unembarrassed by the variety of coats of con 
 vention with which life had got encrusted, 
 easily able by his subtlety to pierce these, and 
 to draw his strength from nature, with which 
 he lived in full communion. What is strange, 
 too, he lived in a small town, in a petty state, 
 in a defeated state, and in a time when Ger 
 many played no such leading part in the 
 world s affairs as to swell the bosom of her sons 
 with any metropolitan pride, such as n.ight 
 have cheered a French, or English, or, once, a 
 Roman or Attic genius. Yet there is no trace 
 of provincial limitation in his muse. He is 
 not a debtor to his position, but was born 
 with a free and controlling genius. 
 
 The Helena, or the second part of Faust, is a 
 philosophy of literature set in poetry ; the work 
 of one who found himself the master of his-
 
 <5oetbe; or, ZTbc Writer 251 
 
 tories, mythologies, philosophies, sciences, and 
 national literatures, in the encyclopaedical 
 manner in which modern erudition, with its 
 international intercourse of the whole earth s 
 population, researches into Indian, Etruscan, 
 and all Cyclopaean arts, geology, chemistry, 
 astronomy; and every one of these kingdoms 
 assuming a certain aerial and poetic character, 
 by reason of the multitude. One looks at a 
 king with reverence ; but if one should chance 
 to be at a congress of kings, the eye would 
 take liberties with the peculiarities of each. 
 These are not wild miraculous songs, but 
 elaborate forms, to which the poet has con 
 fided the results of eighty years of observation. 
 This reflective and critical wisdom makes the 
 poem more truly the flower of this time. It 
 dates itself. Still he is a poet, poet of a 
 prouder laurel than any contemporary, and, 
 under this plague of microscopes (for he seems 
 to see out of every pore of his skin), strikes 
 the harp with a hero s strength and grace. 
 
 The wonder of the book is its superior in 
 telligence. In the menstruum of this man s 
 wit, the past and the present ages, and their 
 religions, politics, and modes of thinking, are 
 dissolved into archetypes and ideas. What 
 new mythologies sail through his head ! The 
 Greeks said, that Alexander went as far as 
 Chaos ; Goethe went, only the other day, as 
 far; -and one step farther he hazarded, and 
 brought himself safe back.
 
 "Representative 
 
 There is a heart-cheering freedom in his 
 speculation. The immense horizon which 
 journeys with us lends its majesties to trifles, 
 and to matters of convenience and necessity, 
 as to solemn and festal performances. He was 
 the soul of his century. If that was learned, 
 and had become, by population, compact 
 organization, and drill of parts, one great 
 Exploring Expedition, accumulating a glut of 
 facts and fruits too fast for any hitherto-existing 
 savants to classify, this man s mind had ample 
 chambers for the distribution of all. He had 
 a power to unite the detached atoms again by 
 their own law. He has clothed our modern 
 existence with poetry. Amid littleness and 
 detail, he detected the Genius of life, the old 
 cunning Proteus, nestling close beside us, 
 and showed that the dulness and prose we 
 ascribe to the age was only another of his 
 masks : 
 
 "His very flight is presence in disguise: 
 
 that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue 
 dress, and was not a whit less vivacious or 
 rich in Liverpool or the Hague, than once in 
 Rome or Antioch. He sought him in public 
 squares and main streets, in boulevards and 
 hotels ; and, in the solidest kingdom of routine 
 and the senses, he showed the lurking daemonic 
 power ; that, in actions of routine, a thread 
 of mythology and fable spins itself ; and this,
 
 oetbe ; or, Gbe Writer 253 
 
 by tracing the pedigree of every usage and 
 practice, every institution, utensil, and means, 
 home to its origin in the structure of man. 
 He had an extreme impatience of conjecture 
 and of rhetoric. " I have guesses enough of 
 my own ; if a man write a book, let him 
 set down only what he knows." He writes in 
 the plainest and lowest tone, omitting a great 
 deal more than he writes, and putting ever 
 a thing for a word. He has explained the 
 distinction between the antique and the 
 modern spirit and art. He has defined art, 
 its scope and laws. He has said the best 
 things about nature that ever were said. He 
 treats nature as the old philosophers, as the 
 seven wise masters did, and, with whatever 
 loss of French tabulation and dissection, poetry 
 and humanity remain to us ; and they have 
 some doctoral skill. Eyes are better, on the 
 whole, than telescopes or microscopes. He 
 has contributed a key to many parts of nature, 
 through the rare turn for unity and simplicity 
 in his mind. Thus Goethe suggested the 
 leading idea of modern botany, that a leaf, or 
 the eye of a leaf, is the unit of botany, and 
 that every part of the plant is only a trans 
 formed leaf to meet a new condition ; and, by 
 varying the conditions, a leaf may be convert 
 ed into any other organ, and any other organ 
 into a leaf. In like manner, in osteology, he 
 assumed that one vertebra of the spine might 
 be considered the unit of the skeleton ; the
 
 254 Representative flben 
 
 head was only the uppermost vertebra trans 
 formed. " The plant goes from knot to knot, 
 closing, at last, with the flower and the seed. 
 So the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes from 
 knot to knot, and closes with the head. Men 
 and the higher animals are built up through 
 the vertebrae, the powers being concentrated 
 in the head." In optics, again, he rejected 
 the artificial theory of seven colors, and con 
 sidered that every color was the mixture of 
 light and darkness in new proportions. It is 
 really of very little consequence what topic he 
 v/rites upon. He sees at every pore, and has 
 a certain gravitation towards truth. He will 
 realize what you say. He hates to be trifled 
 with, and to be made to say over again some 
 old wife s fable, that has had possession of 
 men s faith these thousand years. He may as 
 well see if it is true as another. He sifts it. 
 I am here, he would say, to be the measure 
 and judge of these things. Why should I 
 take them on trust ? And, therefore, what 
 he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, 
 of manners, property, of paper money, of 
 periods of beliefs, of omens, of luck, or what 
 ever else, refuses to be forgotten. 
 
 Take the most remarkable example that 
 could occur of this tendency to verify every 
 term in popular use. The Devil had played 
 an important part in mythology in all times. 
 Goethe would have no word that does not 
 cover a thing. The same measure will still
 
 <5oetbe ; or, Cbe TKHrtter 255 
 
 serve : " I have never heard of any crime 
 which I might not have committed." So he 
 flies at the throat of this imp. He shall be 
 real ; he shall be modern ; he shall be Euro 
 pean ; he shall dress like a gentleman, and 
 accept the manner, and walk in the streets, 
 and be well initiated in the life of Vienna, and 
 of Heidelberg, in 1820, or he shall not exist. 
 Accordingly, he stripped him of mythologic 
 gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail, 
 brimstone, and blue-fire, and, instead of look 
 ing in books and pictures, looked for him in 
 his own mind, in every shade of coldness, 
 selfishness, and unbelief that, in crowds, or 
 In solitude, darkens over the human thought, 
 and found that the portrait gained reality and 
 terror by everything he added, and by every 
 thing he took away. He found that the essence 
 of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow 
 about the habitations of men, ever since they 
 \vere men, was pure intellect, applied, as 
 always there is a tendency, to the service of 
 the senses : and he flung into literature, in his 
 Mephistopheles, the first organic figure that 
 has been added for some ages, and which will 
 remain as long as the Prometheus. 
 
 I have no design to enter into any analysis 
 of his numerous works. They consist of 
 translations, criticism, dramas, lyric and every 
 other description of poems, literary journals, 
 and portraits of distinguished men. Yet I can 
 not omit to specify the Wilhelm Meister.
 
 256 "Representative dfcen 
 
 Wilhelm Meister is a novel in every sense, 
 the first of its kind, called by its admirers the 
 only delineation of modern society, as if 
 other novels, those of Scott, for example, dealt 
 with costume and condition, this with the spirit 
 of life. It is a book over which some veil is 
 still drawn. It is read by very intelligent 
 persons with wonder and delight. It is pre 
 ferred by some such to Hamlet, as a work of 
 genius. I suppose no book of this century 
 can compare with it in its delicious sweetness^ 
 so new, so provoking to the mind, gratifying it 
 with so many and so solid thoughts, just in 
 sights into life, and manners, and characters z 
 so many good hints for the conduct of life, so 
 many unexpected glimpses into a higher sphere,, 
 and never a trace of rhetoric or dulness. A 
 very provoking book to the curiosity of youngj 
 men of genius, but a very unsatisfactory one_ 
 Lovers of light reading, those who look in it 
 for the entertainment they find in a romance r 
 are disappointed. On the other hand, those 
 who begin it with the higher hope to read in it 
 a worthy history of genius, and the just award 
 of the laurel to its toils and denials, have also 
 reason to complain. We had an English 
 romance here, not long ago, professing to em 
 body the hope of a new age, and to unfold the 
 political hope of the party called "Young; 
 England," in which the only reward of virtue 
 is a seat in parliament, and a peerage. Goethe s 
 romance has a conclusion as lame and immoral
 
 (5oetbe ; or, tlbe TUJlritet 257 
 
 George Sand, in Consuelo and its continuation, 
 has sketched a truer and more dignified picture. 
 In the progress of the story, the characters of 
 the hero and heroine expand at a rate that 
 shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic 
 convention : they quit the society and habits 
 of their rank ; they lose their wealth ; they 
 become the servants of great ideas, and of the 
 most generous social ends ; until, at last, the 
 hero, who is the centre and fountain of an 
 association for the rendering of the noblest ben 
 efits to the human race, no longer answers to his 
 own titled lame : it sounds foreign and remote 
 in his ear. 
 
 " I am only man," he says ; " I breathe and 
 work for man," and this in poverty and extreme 
 sacrifices. Goethe s hero, on the contrary, 
 has so many weaknesses and impurities, and 
 keeps such bad company, that the sober 
 English public, when the book was translated, 
 were disgusted. And yet it is so crammed 
 with wisdom, with knowledge of the world, and 
 with knowledge of laws ; the persons so truly 
 and subtly drawn, and with such few strokes, 
 and not a word too much, the book remains 
 ever so new and unexhausted, that we must 
 even )et it go its way, and be willing to get 
 what good from it we can, assured that it has 
 only begun its office, and has millions of readers 
 yet to serve. 
 
 The argument is the passage of a democrat 
 to the aristocracy, using both words in their
 
 "(Representative 
 
 best sense. And this passage is not made in 
 any mean or creeping way, but through the 
 hall door. Nature and character assist, and 
 the rank is made real by sense and probity in 
 the nobles. No generous youth can escape 
 this charm of reality in the book, so that it is 
 highly stimulating to intellect and courage. 
 
 The ardent and holy Novalis characterized 
 the book as " thoroughly modern and prosaic ; 
 the romantic is completely levelled in it ; so is 
 the poetry of nature ; the wonderful. The 
 book treats only of the ordinary affairs of 
 men : it is a poeticized civic and domestic 
 story. The wonderful in it is expressly treated 
 as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming : " and 
 yet. what is also characteristic, Novalis soon 
 returned to this book, and it remained his 
 favorite reading to the end of his life. 
 
 What distinguishes Goethe for French and 
 English readers, is a property which he shares 
 with his nation, a habitual reference to in 
 terior truth. In England and in America, 
 there is a respect for talent ; and, if it is exerted 
 in support of any ascertained or intelligible 
 interest or party, or in regular opposition to 
 any, the public is satisfied. In France, there 
 is even a greater delight in intellectual brill 
 iancy, for its own sake. And, in all these coun 
 tries, men of talent write from talent. It is 
 enough if the understanding is occupied, the 
 taste propitiated, so many columns so many 
 hours, filled in a lively and creditable way.
 
 (Soetbe j or, Sbe Writer 259 
 
 The German intellect wants the French spright- 
 liness, the fine practical understanding of the 
 English, and the American adventure ; but it 
 has a certain probity, which never rests in a 
 superficial performance, but asks steadily, To 
 what end ? A German public asks for a con 
 trolling sincerity. Here is activity of thought ; 
 but what is it for ? What does the man mean ? 
 Whence, whence, all these thoughts ? 
 
 Talent alone cannot make a writer. There 
 must be a man behind the book ; a personality 
 which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the 
 doctrines there set forth, and which exists to 
 see and state things so, and not otherwise ; 
 holding things because they are things. If 
 he cannot rightly express himself to-day, the 
 same things subsist, and will open themselves 
 to-morrow. There lies the burden on his mind, 
 the burden of truth to be declared, more 
 or less understood ; and it constitutes his busi 
 ness and calling in the world, to see those facts 
 through, and to make them known. What 
 signifies that he trips and stammers ; that his 
 voice is harsh or hissing ; that his method or 
 his tropes are inadequate ? That message will 
 find method and imagery, articulation and 
 melody. Though he were dumb, it would 
 speak. If not, if there be no such God s 
 word in the man, what care we how adroit, 
 how fluent, how brilliant he is ? 
 
 It makes a great difference to the force of 
 any sentence, whether there be a man behind
 
 Representative Oben 
 
 it, or no. In the learned journal, in the influ 
 ential newspaper, I discern no form ; only some 
 irresponsible shadow ; oftener some monied 
 corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in 
 the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass 
 for somebody. But, through every clause and 
 part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes 
 of the most determined of men : his force and 
 terror inundate every word : the commas and 
 dashes are alive ; so that the writing is athletic 
 and nimble, can go far and live long. 
 
 In England and America, one may be an 
 adept in the writing of a Greek or Latin poet, 
 without any poetic taste or fire. That a man 
 has spent years on Plato and Proclus, does 
 not afford a presumption that he holds heroic 
 opinions, or undervalues the fashions of his 
 town. But the German nation have the most 
 ridiculous good faith on these subjects : the 
 student, out of the lecture-room, still broods 
 on the lessons ; and the professor cannot di 
 vest himself of the fancy, that the truths of 
 philosophy have some application to Berlin 
 and Munich. This earnestness enables them 
 to out-see men of much more talent. Hence, al 
 most all the valuable distinctions which are cur 
 rent in higher conversation, have been derived 
 to us from Germany. But, whilst men distin 
 guished for wit and learning, in England and 
 France, adopt their study and their side with 
 a certain levity, and are not understood to be 
 1rery deeply engaged, from grounds of charao
 
 <3oetbe ; or, Cbe rariter 261 
 
 ter, to the topic or the part they espouse, 
 Goethe, the head and body of the German 
 nation, do not speak from talent, but the 
 truth shines through : he is very wise, though 
 his talent often veils his wisdom. However 
 excellent his sentence is, he has somewhat 
 better in view. It awakens my curiosity. He 
 has the formidable independence which con 
 verse with truth gives : hear you, or forbear, 
 his fact abides ; and your interest in the writer 
 is not confined to his story, and he dismissed 
 from memory, when he has performed his task 
 creditably, as a baker when he has left his 
 loaf ; but his work is the least part of him. 
 The old Eternal Genius who built the world 
 has confided himself more to this man than to 
 any other. I dare not say that Goethe as 
 cended to the highest grounds from which 
 genius has spoken. He has not worshipped 
 the highest unity ; he is incapable of a self- 
 surrender to the moral sentiment. There are 
 nobler strains in poetry than any he has 
 sounded. There are writers poorer in talent, 
 whose tone is purer, and more touches the 
 heart. Goethe can never be dear to men. 
 His is not even the devotion to pure truth ; 
 but to truth for the sake of culture. He has 
 no aims less large than the conquest of 
 universal nature, of universal truth, to be his 
 portion ; a man not to be bribed, nor deceived, 
 nor overawed ; of a stoical self-command and 
 self-denial, and having one test for all men,
 
 262 TRepresent-avG iRen 
 
 What can you teach me? All possessions are 
 valued by him for that only ; rank, privileges, 
 health, time, being itself. 
 
 He is the type of culture, the amateur of 
 all arts, and sciences, and events ; artistic, but 
 not artist ; spiritual, but not spiritualist. There 
 is nothing he had not right to know ; there is 
 no weapon in the army of universal genius he 
 did not take into his hand, but with peremptory 
 heed that he should not be for a moment 
 prejudiced by his instruments. He lays a ray 
 of light under every fact, and between himself 
 and his dearest property. From him nothing 
 was hid, nothing withholden. The lurking 
 daemons sat to him, and the saint who saw the 
 daemons ; and the metaphysical elements took 
 form. " Piety itself is no aim, but only a 
 means whereby, through purest inward peace, 
 we may attain to highest culture." And his 
 penetration of every secret of the fine arts will 
 make Goethe still more statuesque. His af 
 fections help him, like women employed by 
 Cicero to worm out the secret of conspirators. 
 Enmities he has none. Enemy of him you 
 may be, if so you shall teach him aught 
 which your good-will cannot, were it only 
 what experience will accrue from your ruin. 
 Enemy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. 
 He cannot hate anybody ; his time is worth 
 too much. Temperamental antagonisms may 
 be suffered, but like feuds of emperors, who 
 fight dignifiedly across kingdoms.
 
 Goetbe; or, tTbe TOlritOT 263 
 
 His autobiography, under the title of " Poetry 
 and Truth Out of My Life," is the expression 
 of the idea, now familiar to the world through 
 the German mind, but a novelty to England, 
 Old and New, when that book appeared, 
 that a man exists for culture ; not for what he 
 can accomplish, but for what can be accom 
 plished in him. The reaction of things on the 
 man is the only noteworthy result. An in 
 tellectual man can see himself as a third per 
 son ; therefore his faults and delusions interest 
 him equally with his successes. Though he 
 wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to 
 know the history and destiny of man ; whilst 
 the clouds of egotists drifting about him are 
 only interested in a low success. 
 
 This idea reigns in the Dichtung und Wahr- 
 heit, and directs the selection of the incidents; 
 and nowise the external importance of events, 
 the rank of the personages, or the bulk of in 
 comes. Of course, the book affords slender 
 materials for what would be reckoned with us 
 a " Life of Goethe ; " few dates ; no corre 
 spondence ; no details of offices or employ 
 ments ; no light on his marriage ; and, a period 
 of ten years, that should be the most active in 
 his life, after his settlement at Weimar, is sunk 
 in silence. Meantime, certain love-affairs, 
 that came to nothing, as people say, have the 
 strangest importance : he crowds us with de 
 tail : certain whimsical opinions, cosmogonies, 
 and religions of his own invention, and, es-
 
 264 TRepr-csentatfve 
 
 pecially his relations to remarkable minds, 
 and to critical epochs of thought : these he 
 magnifies. His " Daily and Yearly Journal," 
 his " Italian Travels," his " Campaign in 
 France," and the historical part of his 
 " Theory of Colors," have the same interest. 
 In the last, he rapidly notices Kepler, Roger 
 Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Voltaire, etc.; and 
 the charm of this portion of the book consists 
 in the simplest statement of the relation betwixt 
 these grandees of European scientific history 
 and himself ; the mere drawing of the lines 
 from Goethe to Kepler, from Goethe to Bacon, 
 from Goethe to Newton. The drawing of the 
 line is for the time and person, a solution of 
 the formidable problem, and gives pleasure 
 when Iphigenia and Faust do not, without any 
 cost of invention comparable to that of Iphi 
 genia and Faust. 
 
 This lawgiver of art is not an artist. Was it 
 that he knew too much, that his sight was micro 
 scopic, and interfered with the just perspec 
 tive, the seeing of the whole ? He is fragment 
 ary ; a writer of occasional poems, and of an 
 encyclopaedia of sentences. When he sits 
 down to write a drama or a tale, he collects 
 and sorts his observations from a hundred 
 sides, and combines them into the body as 
 fitly as he can. A great deal refuses to in 
 corporate : this he adds loosely, as letters of 
 the parties, leaves from their journals, or the 
 like. A great deal still is left that will not
 
 <3oetbe ; or, Gbe mriter 265 
 
 find any place. This the bookbinder alone 
 can give any cohesion to : and, hence, not 
 withstanding the looseness of many of his 
 works, we have volumes of detached para 
 graphs, aphorisms, xenien, etc. 
 
 I suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew 
 out of the calculations of self-culture. It was 
 the infirmity of an admirable scholar, who 
 loved the world out of gratitude ; who knew 
 where libraries, galleries, architecture, labora 
 tories, savants, and leisure, were to be had, and 
 who did not quite trust the compensations 
 of poverty and nakedness. Socrates loved 
 Athens ; Montaigne, Paris ; and Madame de 
 Stael said, she was only vulnerable on that 
 Siue (namely, of Paris). It has its favorable 
 aspect. All the geniuses are usually so ill- 
 assorted and sickly, that one is ever wishing 
 them somewhere else. We seldom see any 
 body who is not uneasy or afraid to live. 
 There is a slight blush of shame on the cheek 
 of good men and aspiring men, and a spice of 
 caricature. But this man was entirely at 
 home and happy in his century and the world. 
 None was so fit to live, or more heartily enjoyed 
 the game. In this aim of culture, which is 
 the genius of his works, is their power. The 
 idea of absolute, eternal truth, without refer 
 ence to my own enlargement by it, is higher. 
 The surrender to the torrent, of poetic inspira 
 tion is higher ; but compared with any motives 
 on which books are written in England and
 
 266 "Representative 
 
 America, this is very truth, and has the power 
 to inspire which belongs to truth. Thus has 
 he brought back to a book some of its ancient 
 might and dignity. 
 
 Goethe, coming into an over-civilized time 
 and country, when original talent was oppressed 
 under the load of books, and mechanical 
 auxiliaries, and the distracting variety of claims, 
 taught men how to dispose of this mountainous 
 miscellany, and make it subservient. I join 
 Napoleon with him, as being both representa 
 tives of the impatience, and reaction of nature 
 against the morgue or conventions, two stern 
 realists, who, with thek -scnolars, have severally 
 setfthe axe at the root of the tree of cant and 
 seeming, for this time, and for all time. This 
 cheerful laborer, with no external popularity or 
 provocation, drawing his motive and his plan 
 from his own breast, tasked himself with stints 
 for a giant, and, without relaxation or rest, 
 except by alternating his pursuits, worked on 
 for eighty years with the steadiness of his first 
 2e al. 
 
 It is the last lesson of modern science, that 
 the highest simplicity of structure is produced, 
 not by few elements, but by the highest com 
 plexity. Man is the most composite of all 
 creatures: the wheel-insect, volvox globator, 
 is at the other extreme. We shall learn to 
 draw rents and revenues from the immense 
 patrimony of the old and recent ages. Goethe 
 teaches courage, and the equivalence of all
 
 Ooetbe ; or, Gbe Writer 267 
 
 times : that the disadvantages of any epoch 
 exist only to the faint-hearted. Genius hovers 
 with his sunshine and music close by the 
 darkest and deafest eras. No mortgage, no 
 attainder, will hold on men or hours. The 
 world is young ; the former great men call to 
 us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, 
 to unite again the heavens and the earthly 
 world. The secret of genius is to suffer no 
 fiction to exist for us ; to realize all that we 
 know ; in the high refinement of modern life, 
 in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact 
 good faith, reality, and a purpose ; and first, 
 last, midst, and without end, to honor every 
 truth by use. 
 
 TUB END.
 
 A 000002139 4