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Author's Edition. 
 
 THE 
 
 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " REPRESENTATIVE MEN," "TRAITS OF ENGLISH LIFE/' 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 ,$ECONI) FT) XT JON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SMITH, ELDEE AND CO., 65, COENHILL. 
 
 M.DCCC.LX. 
 
,o 
 
 u? 
 
 
 4^"? 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 r 
 
 ~#c 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Fate . . 1 
 
 II. Power 32 
 
 HE. Wealth . . . . .51 
 
 IV. Culture . . . . . 80 
 
 V. Behaviour . • . . .104 
 
 VI. Worship . : . . . . 123 
 
 VII. Considerations by the Way , .151 
 
 VIIT. Beauty , . . ... 174 
 
 IX. Illusions . . . .191 
 
CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 I -FATE. 
 
 Delicate omens traced in air 
 To the lone bard true witness bare; 
 Birds with auguries on their wings 
 Chanted undeceiving things 
 Him to beckon, him to warn; 
 Well might then the poet scorn 
 To learn of scribe or courier 
 Hints writ in vaster character; 
 And on his mind, at dawn of day, 
 Soft shadows of the evening lay. 
 For the prevision is allied 
 Unto the thing so signified; 
 Or say, the foresight that awaits 
 Is the same Genius that creates. 
 
 It chanced during one winter, a few years ago, that 
 our cities were bent on discussing the theory of the 
 Age. By an odd coincidence, four or five noted men 
 were each reading a discourse . to the citizens of 
 Boston or New York, on the Spirit of the Times. 
 It so happened that the subject had the same pro-* 
 minence in some remarkable pamphlets and journals 
 issued in London in the same season. To me, how- 
 ever, the question ; of the times resolved itself into a 
 practical question of the conduct of life. How shall 
 I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our 
 geometry cannot - span the huge orbits of the pre- 
 vailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their 
 opposition. We can only obey our own polarity 
 'Tis fine for us to speculate and elect our course, if 
 we must accept an irresistible dictation. 
 
 1 
 
2 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come 
 upon immovable limitations. We are fired with the 
 hope to reform men. After many experiments, we 
 find that we must begin earlier, — at school. But 
 the boys and girls are not docile ; we can make 
 nothing of them. We decide that they are not of 
 good stock. We must begin our reform earlier 
 still, — at generation : that is to say, there is Fate, or 
 laws of the world. 
 
 But if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation 
 understands itself. If we must accept Fate, we are 
 not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance 
 of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of 
 character. This is true, and that other is true. But 
 our geometry cannot span these extreme points and 
 reconcile them. What to do? By obeying each 
 thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding 
 on each string, we learn at last its power. By the 
 same obedience to other thoughts, we learn theirs, 
 and then comes some reasonable hope of harmonizing 
 them. We are sure, that, though we know not how, 
 necessity does comport with liberty, the individual 
 with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the 
 times. The riddle of the age has for each a private 
 solution. If one would study his own time, it must 
 be by this method of taking up in turn each of the 
 leading topics which belong to our scheme of human 
 life, and, by firmly stating all that is agreeable to 
 experience on one, and doing the same justice to the 
 opposing facts in the others, the true limitations will 
 appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would 
 be corrected, and a just balance would be made. 
 
 But let us honestly state the facts. Our America 
 has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, 
 great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, 
 but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned 
 themselves to face it. The Spartan, embodying his 
 religion in his country, dies before its majesty without 
 
FATE. 3 
 
 a question. The Turk, who believes his doom is 
 written on the iron leaf in the moment when he 
 entered the world, rushes on the enemy's sabre with 
 undivided will. The Turk, the Arab, the Persian, 
 accept the foreordained fate. 
 
 " On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave— 
 The appointed, and the unappointed day; 
 On the first, neither balm nor physician can save, 
 Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay." 
 
 The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our 
 Calvinists, in the last generation, had something of 
 the same dignity. They felt that the weight of the 
 universe held them down to their place. What could 
 they do? Wise men feel that there is something 
 which cannot be talked or voted away, — a strap or 
 belt which girds the world. 
 
 " The Destiny, minister general, 
 That executeth in the world o'er all, 
 The purveyance which God hath seen beforne, 
 So strong it is, that tho' the world had sworn 
 The contrary of a thing by yea or nay, 
 Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day 
 That falleth not oft in a thousand year; 
 For, certainly, our appetites here, 
 Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, 
 All this is ruled by the sight above." 
 
 Chaucer: The Knighte's Tale. 
 
 The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense : 
 " Whatever is fated, that will take place. The 
 great immense mind of Jove is not to be trans- 
 gressed." 
 
 Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. 
 The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to 
 village theologies, which preach an election or fa- 
 vouritism. And, now and then, an amiable parson, 
 like Jung Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in 
 a pistareen-Providence, which, whenever the good 
 man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall 
 knock at his door, and leave a half-dollar. But 
 Nature is no sentimentalist,-— does not cosset or 
 
 1—2 
 
4 CONDUCT OF LITE. 
 
 pamper us. We must see that the world is rough 
 and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a 
 woman ; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. 
 The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, 
 benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The 
 diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, 
 respect no persons. The way of Providence is a 
 little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap 
 of the tiger, and other leapers and bloody jumpers, 
 the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the 
 anaconda, — these are in the system, and our habits 
 are like theirs. You have just dined, and, however 
 scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the 
 graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, — 
 expensive races, — race living at the expense of race. 
 The planet is liable to shocks from comets, perturba- 
 tions from planets, rendings from earthquake and 
 volcano, alterations of climate, precessions of equi- 
 noxes. Rivers dry up by opening of the forest. The 
 sea changes its bed. Towns and counties fall into it. 
 At Lisbon, an earthquake killed men like flies. At 
 Naples, three years ago, ten thousand persons were 
 crushed in a few minutes. The scurvy at sea ; the 
 sword of the climate in the west of Africa, at Cayenne, 
 at Panama, at New Orleans, cut off men like a 
 massacre. Our western prairie shakes with fever and 
 ague. The cholera, the small-pox, have proved as 
 mortal to some tribes, as a frost to the crickets, which, 
 having filled the summer with noise, are silenced by 
 a fall of the temperature of one night. Without 
 uncovering what does not concern us, or counting 
 how many species of parasites hang on a bombyx ; or 
 groping after intestinal parasites, or infusory biters, 
 or the obscurities of alternate generation ; — the forms 
 of the shark, the labnis, the jaw of the sea-wolf paved 
 with crushing teeth, the weapons of the grampus, and 
 other warriors hidden in the sea, — are hints of 
 ferocity in the interiors of nature. Let us not deny 
 
FATE. 5 
 
 it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, 
 incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try- 
 to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to 
 dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and 
 white neckcloth of a student in divinity. 
 
 Will you say, the disasters which threaten mankind 
 are exceptional, and one need not lay his account for 
 cataclysms every day ? Ay, but what happens once 
 may happen again, and so long as these strokes are 
 not to be parried by us, they must be feared. 
 
 But these shocks and ruins are less destructive to 
 us, than the stealthy power of other laws which act 
 on us daily. An expense of ends to means is fate ; — 
 organization tyrannizing over character. The me- 
 nagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book 
 of fate : the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, 
 determines tyrannically its limits. So is the scale of 
 races, of temperaments ; so is sex ; so is climate ; so 
 is the reaction of talents imprisoning the vital power 
 in certain directions. Every spirit makes its house ; 
 but afterwards the house confines the spirit. 
 
 The gross lines are legible to the dull : the cabman 
 is phrenologist so far : he looks in your face to see if 
 his shilling is sure. A dome of brow denotes one 
 thing ; a pot-belly another ; a squint, a pug-nose, 
 mats of hah*, the pigment of the epidermis, betray 
 character. People seem sheathed in their tough 
 organization. Ask Spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask 
 Quetelet, if temperaments decide nothing ? or if there 
 be anything they do not decide ? Read the descrip- 
 tion in medical books of the four temperaments, and 
 you will think you are reading your own thoughts ' 
 which you had not yet told. Find the part which 
 black eyes, and which blue eyes, play severally in 
 the company. How shall a man escape from his 
 ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop 
 which he drew from his father's or his mother's life ? 
 It often appears in a family, as if all the qualities of 
 
6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 the progenitors were potted in several jars, — some 
 ruling quality in each, son or daughter of the house, — 
 and sometimes the unmixed temperament, the rank 
 unmitigated elixir, the family vice, is drawn off in a 
 separate individual, and the others are proportionally 
 relieved. We sometimes see a change of expression 
 in our companion, and say, his father, or his mother, 
 comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a 
 remote relative. In different hours, a man represents 
 each of several of his ancestors, as if there were 
 seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, 
 —seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they con- 
 stitute the variety of notes for that new piece of 
 music which his life is. At the corner of the street, 
 you read the possibility of each passenger, in the 
 facial angle, in the complexion, in the depth of his eye. 
 His parentage determines it. Men are what their 
 mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom 
 which weaves huckaback, why it does not make 
 cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a 
 chemical discovery from that jobber. Ask the digger 
 in the ditch to explain Newton's laws : the fine organs 
 of his brain have been pinched by overwork and 
 squalid poverty from father to son, for a hundred 
 years. When each comes forth from his mother's 
 womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him. Let him 
 value his hands and feet, he has but one pair. So 
 he has but one future, and that is already prede- 
 termined in his lobes, and described in that little fatty 
 face, pig-eye, and squat form. All the privilege and 
 all the legislation of the world cannot meddle or help 
 to make a poet or a prince of him. 
 
 Jesus said, " When he looketh on her he hath 
 committed adultery." But he is an adulterer before 
 he has yet looked on the woman, by the superfluity 
 of animal, and the defect of thought, in his constitu- 
 tion. Who meets him, or who meets her, in the street, 
 sees that they are ripe to be each other's victim. 
 
FATE. 7 
 
 In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital 
 force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so 
 much weaker. The more of these drones perish, the 
 better for the hive. If, later, they give birth to some 
 superior individual, with force enough to add to this 
 animal a new aim, and a complete apparatus to work 
 it out, all the ancestors are gladly forgotten. Most 
 men and most women are merely one couple more. 
 Now and then, one has a new cell or camarilla opened 
 in his brain, — an architectural, a musical, or a philo- 
 logical knack, some stray taste or talent for flowers, 
 or chemistry, or pigments, or story-telling, a good 
 hand for drawing, a good foot for dancing, an athletic 
 frame for wide journeying, &c. — which skill nowise 
 alters rank in the scale of nature, but serves to pass 
 the time, the life of sensation going on as before. At 
 last, these hints and tendencies are fixed in one, or 
 in a succession. Each absorbs so much food and 
 force, as to become itself a new centre. The new 
 talent draws off so rapidly the vital force, that not 
 enough remains for the animal functions, hardly 
 enough for health ; so that,* in the second generation, 
 if the like genius appear, the health is visibly de- 
 teriorated, and the generative force impaired. 
 
 People are born with the moral or with the material 
 bias ; — uterine brothers with this diverging destina- 
 tion: and I suppose, with high magnifiers, Mr. Frauen- • 
 hofer or Dr. Carpenter might come to distinguish in 
 the embryo at the fourth day, this is a Whig, and 
 that a Free-soiler. 
 
 It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of 
 Fate, to reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, 
 which led the Hindoos to say, " Fate is nothing but 
 the deeds committed in a prior state of existence." 
 I find the coincidence of the extremes of eastern 
 and western speculation in the daring statement of 
 Schelling : " There is in every man a certain feeling, 
 that he has been what he is from all eternity, and 
 
8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 by no means became such in time." To say it less 
 sublimely, — in the history of the individual is always 
 an account of his condition, and he knows himself to 
 be a party to his present estate. 
 
 A good deal of our politics is physiological. Now 
 and then, a man of wealth in the heyday of youth 
 adopts the tenet of broadest freedom. In England, 
 there is always some man of wealth and large con- 
 nection planting himself, during all his years of 
 health, on the side of progress, who, as soon as he 
 begins to die, checks his forward play, calls in his 
 troops, and becomes conservative. All conservatives 
 are such from personal defects. They have been 
 effeminated by position or nature, born halt and 
 blind, through luxury of their parents, and can 
 only, like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong 
 natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, 
 Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, 
 are inevitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their 
 defects and gout, palsy and money, warp them. 
 
 The strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities 
 and nations, in the healthiest and strongest. Probably, 
 the election goes by avoirdupois weight, and, if you 
 could weigh bodily the tonnage of any hundred of 
 the Whig and the Democratic party in a town, on 
 the Dearborn balance, as they passed the hayscales, 
 you could predict with certainty which party would 
 •carry -it. On the whole, it would be rather the 
 speediest way of deciding the vote, to put the select- 
 men or the mayor and aldermen at the hayscales. 
 
 'In science, we have to consider two things : power 
 and circumstance. All we know of the egg, from. 
 each successive discovery, is, another vesicle ; and if, 
 after five hundred years, you get a better observer, 
 or a better glass, he finds within the last observed 
 another. In vegetable and animal tissue, it is just 
 alike, and all that the primary power or spasm 
 operates, is, still, vesicles, vesicles. Yes, — but the 
 
TATE. 9 
 
 tyrannical Circumstance ! A vesicle in new circum- 
 stances, a vesicle lodged in darkness, Oken thought, 
 became animal ; in light, a plant. Lodged in the 
 parent animal, it suffers changes, which end in un- 
 sheathing miraculous capability in the unaltered 
 vesicle, and it unlocks itself to fish, bird, or quad- 
 ruped, head and foot, eye and claw. The Circum- 
 stance is Nature. Nature is, what you may do. There 
 is much you may not. We have two things, — the 
 circumstance, and the life. Once we thought, positive 
 power was all. Now we learn, that negative power, 
 or circumstance, is half. Nature is the tyrannous 
 circumstance, the thick skull, the sheathed snake, 
 the ponderous, rock-like jaw; necessitated activity; 
 violent direction ; the conditions of a tool, like the 
 locomotive, strong enough on its track, but which can 
 do nothing but mischief off of it ; or skates, which 
 are wings on the ice, but fetters on the ground. 
 
 The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She 
 turns the gigantic pages, — leaf after leaf, — never 
 returning one. One leaf she lays down, a floor of 
 granite ; then a thousand ages, and a bed of slate ; a 
 thousand ages, and a measure of coal ; a thousand 
 ages, and a layer of marl and mud: vegetable forms 
 appear; her first misshapen animals, zoophyte, tri- 
 lobium, fish; then saurians, — rude forms, in which 
 she has only blocked her future statue, concealing 
 under these unwieldy monsters the fine type of 
 her coming king. The face of the planet cools 
 and dries, the races meliorate, and man is born. 
 But when a race has lived its term, it comes no 
 more again. 
 
 The population of the world is a conditional popu- 
 lation; not the best, but the best that could live now; 
 and the scale of tribes, and the steadiness with which 
 victory adheres to one tribe, and defeat to another, is 
 as uniform as the superposition of strata. We know 
 in history what weight belongs to race. We see the 
 
10 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 English, French, and Germans planting themselves 
 on every shore and market of America and Australia, 
 and monopolizing the commerce of these countries. 
 We like the nervous and victorious habit of our own 
 branch of the family. We follow the step of the 
 Jew, of the Indian, of the Negro. We see how 
 much will has been expended to extinguish the Jew, 
 in vain. Look at the unpalatable conclusions of 
 Knox, in his Fragment of Races, — a rash and un- 
 satisfactory writer, but charged with pungent and 
 unforgetable truths. "Nature respects race and not 
 hybrids." " Every race has its own habitat." " De- 
 tach a colony from the race, and it deteriorates to 
 the crab." See the shades of the picture. The 
 German and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a 
 great deal of guano in their destiny. They are 
 ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over America, 
 to ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, and 
 then to lie down prematurely to make a spot of green 
 grass on the prairie. 
 
 One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is, 
 the new science of statistics. It is a rule, that the 
 most casual and extraordinary events — if the basis of 
 population is broad enough — become matter of fixed 
 calculation. It would not be safe to say when a 
 captain like Bonaparte, a singer like Jenny Lind, or 
 a navigator like Bowditch, would be born in Boston : 
 but, on a population of twenty or two hundred mil- 
 lions, something like accuracy may be had.* 
 
 'Tis frivolous to fix pedantically the date of par- 
 ticular inventions. They have all been invented over 
 and over fifty times. Man is the arch-machine, of 
 which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy 
 
 * "Everything which pertains to the human species, considered 
 as a whole, belongs to the order of physical facts. The greater 
 the number of individuals, the more does the influence of the 
 individual will disappear, leaving predominance to a series of 
 general facts dependent on causes by which society exists, and is 
 preserved." — Quetelet. 
 
EATE. 11 
 
 models. He helps himself on each emergency by 
 copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far 
 as the need is. 'Tis hard to find the right Homer, 
 Zoroaster, or Menu ; harder still to find the Tubal 
 Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or Copernicus, or Fust, 
 or Fulton, the indisputable inventor. There are 
 scores and centuries of them. " The air is full of 
 men." This kind of talent so abounds, this construc- 
 tive tool-making efficiency, as if it adhered to the 
 chemic atoms, as if the air he breathes were made of 
 Vaucansons, Franklins, and Watts. ' 
 
 Doubtless, in every million there will be an astro- 
 nomer, a mathematician, a comic poet, a mystic. No 
 one can read the history of astronomy, without per- 
 ceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not 
 new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, 
 Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empedocles, Aristarchus, 
 Pythagoras, (Enipodes, had anticipated them; each 
 had the same tense geometrical brain, apt for the 
 same vigorous computation and logic, a mind parallel 
 to the movement of the world. The Roman mile 
 probably rested on a measure of a degree of the 
 meridian. Mahometan and Chinese know what we 
 know of leap-year, of the Gregorian calendar, and 
 of the precession of the equinoxes. As, in every 
 barrel of cowries, brought to New Bedford, there 
 shall be one orangia, so there will, in a dozen millions 
 of Malays and Mahometans, be one or two astrono- 
 mical skulls. In a large city, the most casual things, 
 and things whose beauty lies in their casualty, are 
 produced as punctually and to order as the baker's 
 muffin for breakfast. Punch makes exactly one 
 capital joke a week ; and the journals contrive to 
 furnish one good piece of news- every day. 
 
 And not less work the laws of repression, the 
 penalties of violated, functions. Famine, typhus, 
 frost, war, suicide, and effete races, must be reck- 
 oned calculable parts of the system of the world. 
 
12 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 These are pebbles from the mountain, hints ot the 
 terms by which our life is walled up, and which 
 show a kind of mechanical exactness, as of a loom or 
 mill, in what we call casual or fortuitous events. 
 
 The force with which we resist these torrents of 
 tendency looks so ridiculously inadequate, that it 
 amounts to little more than a criticism or a protest 
 made by a minority of one, under compulsion of 
 millions. I seemed, in the height of a tempest, to 
 see men overboard struggling in the waves, and 
 driven about here and there. They glanced intel- 
 ligently at each other, but 'twas little they could do 
 for one another; 'twas much if each could keep 
 afloat alone. Well, they had a right to their eye- 
 beams, and all the rest was Fate. 
 
 We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping- 
 out in our planted gardens of the core of the world. 
 No picture of life can have any veracity that does 
 not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped 
 in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he 
 touches on every side, until he learns its arc. 
 
 The element running through entire nature, which 
 we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. 
 Whatever limits us we call Fate. If w T e are brute 
 and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful 
 shape. As we refine, our checks become finer. If 
 we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a 
 spiritual form. In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu fol- 
 lows Maya through all her ascending changes, from 
 insect and crawfish up to elephant ; whatever form 
 she took, he took the male form of that kind, until 
 she became at last woman and goddess, and he a 
 man and a god. The limitations refine as the soul 
 purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched 
 at the top. 
 
 When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable 
 to bind the Fenris Wolf with steel or with weight of 
 
FATE. 13 
 
 mountains — the one lie snapped and the other he 
 spurned with his heel — they put round his foot a 
 limp band softer than silk or cobweb, and this held 
 him: the more he spurned it, the stiffer it drew. 
 So soft and so stanch is the ring of Fate. Neither 
 brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, 
 nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius, can get rid of this 
 limp band. For if we give it the high sense in 
 which the poets use it, even thought itself is not 
 above Fate : that too must act according to eternal 
 laws, and all that is wilful and fantastic in it is in 
 opposition to its fundamental essence. 
 
 And, last of all, high over thought, in the world 
 of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the 
 high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and 
 always striking soon or late, when justice is not done. 
 What is useful will last ; what is hurtful will sink. 
 " The doer must suffer," said the Greeks : (e you 
 would soothe a Deity not to be soothed." " God 
 himself cannot procure good for the wicked," said 
 the Welsh triad. " God may consent, but only for 
 a time," said the bard of Spain. The limitation is 
 impassable by any insight of man. In its last and 
 loftiest ascensions, insight itself, and the freedom of 
 the will, is one of its obedient members. But we 
 must not run into generalizations too large, but show 
 the natural bounds or essential distinctions, and seek 
 to do justice to the other elements as well. 
 
 Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and morals — 
 in race, in retardations of strata, and in thought and 
 character as well. It is everywhere bound or limi- 
 tation. But Fate has its lord ; limitation its limits ; 
 is different seen from above and from below ; from 
 within and from without. For, though Fate is im- 
 mense, so is power, which is the other fact in the 
 dual world, immense. If Fate follows and limits 
 power, power attends and antagonizes Fate. We 
 
14 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 must respect Fate as natural history, but there is 
 more than natural history. For who and what is 
 this criticism that pries into the matter ? Man is 
 not order of nature, sack and sack, belly and mem- 
 bers, link in a chain, nor any ignominious baggage, 
 but a stupendous antagonism, a dragging together of 
 the poles of the Universe. He betrays his relation 
 to what is below him — thick-skulled, small-brained, 
 fishy, quadrurnanous — quadruped ill-disguised, hardly 
 escaped into biped, and has paid for the new powers 
 by loss of some of the old ones. But the lightning 
 which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets 
 and suns, is in him. On one side, elemental order, 
 sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, 
 sea and shore ; and, on the other part, thought, the 
 spirit which composes and decomposes nature — here 
 they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and 
 matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding 
 peacefully together in the eye and brain of every 
 man. 
 
 Nor can he blink the free will. To hazard the 
 contradiction, freedom is necessary. If you please 
 to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say Fate is 
 all, then we say a part of Fate is the freedom of man. 
 For ever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting 
 in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man 
 thinks he is free. And though nothing is more dis- 
 gusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as 
 most men are, and the flippant mistaking for free- 
 dom of some paper preamble like a " .Declaration of 
 Independence," or the statute right to vote, by those 
 who have never dared to think or to act, yet it is 
 wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the other 
 way; the practical view is the other. His sound 
 relation to these facts is to use and command, not to 
 cringe to them. " Look not on nature, for her name 
 is fatal," said the oracle. The too much contem- 
 plation of these limits induces meanness. They who 
 
FATE. 15 
 
 talk much of destiny, their birth -star, &c, are in 
 a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they 
 fear. 
 
 I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud 
 believers in destiny. They conspire with it ; a loving 
 resignation is with the event. But the dogma makes 
 a different impression, when it is held by the weak 
 and lazy. 'Tis weak and vicious people who cast 
 the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to 
 bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. 
 Rude and invincible except by themselves are the 
 elements. So let man be. Let him empty his 
 breast of his windy conceits, and show his lordship 
 by manners and deeds on the scale of nature. Let 
 • him hold his purpose as with the tug of gravitation. 
 No power, no persuasion, no bribe shall make him 
 give up his point. A man ought to compare advan- 
 tageously with a river, an oak, or a mountain. He 
 shall have not less the flow, the expansion, and the 
 resistance of these. 
 
 'Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. 
 Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's 
 house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger 
 lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded 
 by the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in 
 Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your 
 good. 
 
 For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part 
 of it, and can confront fate with fate. If the 
 Universe have these savage accidents, our atoms are 
 as savage in resistance. We should be crushed 
 by the atmosphere, but for the reaction of the air 
 within the body. A tube made of a film of glass 
 can resist the shock of the ocean, if filled with the 
 same water. If there be omnipotence in the stroke, 
 there is omnipotence of recoil. 
 
 I. But Fate against Fate is only parrying and 
 defence : there are, also, the noble creative forces. 
 
16 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 The revelation of Thought takes man out of servi- 
 tude into freedom. We rightly say of ourselves, 
 we were born, and afterward we were born again, 
 and mairy times. We have successive experiences 
 so important, that the new forgets the old, and 
 hence the mythology of the seven or the nine 
 heavens. The day of days, the great day of the 
 feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens 
 to the Unity in things, to the omnipresence of law ; 
 — sees that what is must be, and ought to be, or is 
 the best. This beatitude dips from on high down 
 on us, and we see. It is not in us so much as 
 we are in it. If the air come to our lungs, we 
 breathe and live ; if not, we die. If the light. 
 come to our eyes, we see ; else not. And if truth 
 come to our mind, we suddenly expand to its 
 dimensions, as if we grew to worlds. We are as 
 lawgivers ; we speak for Nature ; we prophesy and 
 divine. 
 
 This insight throws us on the party and interest 
 of the Universe, against all and sundry ; against 
 ourselves, as much as others. A man speaking 
 from insight affirms of himself what is true of the 
 mind : seeing its immortality, he says, I am im- 
 mortal ; seeing its invincibility, he says, I am strong. 
 It is not in us, but we are in it. It is of the 
 maker, not of what is made. All things are touched 
 and changed by it. This uses, and is not used. It 
 distances those who share it, from those who share 
 it not. Those who share it not are flocks and herds. 
 It dates from itself; — not from former men or better 
 men, — gospel, or constitution, or college, or custom. 
 Where it shines, Nature is no longer intrusive, but 
 all things make a musical or pictorial impression. 
 The world of men show like a comedy without 
 laughter: — populations, interests, government, his- 
 tory; — 'tis all toy figures in a toy house. It does 
 not overvalue particular truths. We hear eagerly 
 
EATE. 17 
 
 every thought and word quoted from an intellectual 
 man. But, in his presence, our own mind is roused 
 to activity, and we forget very fast what he says, 
 much more interested in the new play of our own 
 thought, than in any thought of his. 'Tis the 
 majesty into which we have suddenly mounted, the 
 impersonality, the scorn of egotisms, the sphere of 
 laws, that engage us. Once we were stepping a 
 little this way, and a little that way ; now we are as 
 men in a balloon, and do not think so much of the 
 point we have left, or the point we would make, as 
 of the liberty and glory of the way 
 
 Just as much intellect as you add, so much 
 organic power. He who sees through the design, 
 presides over it, and must will that which must be. 
 We sit and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream 
 will come to pass. Our thought, though it were 
 only an hour old, affirms an oldest necessity, not to 
 be separated from thought, and not to be separated 
 from will. They must always have coexisted. It 
 apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead, which 
 refuse to be severed from it. It is not mine or thine, 
 but the will of all mind. It is poured into the souls 
 of all men, as the soul itself which constitutes them 
 men. I know not whether there be, as is alleged, 
 in the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent 
 westerly current, which carries with it all atoms 
 which rise to that height; but I see, that when 
 souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they 
 accept a knowledge and motive above selfishness. 
 A breath of will blows eternally through the uni- 
 verse of souls in the direction of the Right and 
 Necessary. It is the air which all intellects inhale 
 and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the 
 worlds into order and orbit. 
 
 Thought dissolves the material universe, hy car- 
 rying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. 
 Of two men, each obeying his own thought, he 
 
 2 
 
18 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 whose thought is deepest will be the strongest 
 character. Always one man more than another 
 represents the will of Divine Providence to the 
 period. 
 
 2. If thought makes free, so does the moral sen- 
 timent. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse 
 to be analyzed. Yet we can see that with the per- 
 ception of truth is joined the desire that it shall 
 prevail. That affection is essential to will. More- 
 over, when a strong will appears, it usually results 
 from a certain unity of organization, as if the whole 
 energy of body and mind flowed in one direction. 
 All great force is real and elemental. There is no 
 manufacturing a strong will. There must be a 
 pound to balance a pound. Where power is shown 
 in will, it must rest on the universal force. Alaric 
 and Bonaparte must believe they rest on a truth, or 
 their will can be bought or bent. There is a bribe 
 possible for any finite will. But the pure sympathy 
 with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot 
 be bribed or bent. Whoever has had experience 
 of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in 
 unlimited power. Each pulse from that heart is an 
 oath from the Most High. I know not what the 
 word sublime means, if it be not the intimations in 
 this infant of a terrific force. A text of heroism, a 
 name and anecdote of courage, are not arguments, 
 but sallies of freedom. One of these is the verse 
 of the Persian Hafiz : " 'Tis written on the gate of 
 Heaven, l Wo unto him who suffers himself to be 
 betrayed by Fate ! ' " Does the reading of history 
 make us fatalists? What courage does not the 
 opposite opinion show ! A little whim of will to be 
 free gallantfv contending against the universe of 
 chemistry. 
 
 But insight is not will, nor is affection will. Per- 
 ception is cold, and goodness dies in wishes; as 
 Voltaire said, 'tis the misfortune of worthy people 
 
FATE. 19 
 
 that they are cowards : " un des plus grands malheurs 
 des honnetes gens c' est quHls sont des laches." There 
 must be a fusion of these two to generate the energy 
 of will. There can be no driving force, except 
 through the conversion of the man into his will, 
 making him the will, and the will him. And one 
 may say boldly, that no man has a right perception 
 of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as 
 to be ready to be its martyr. 
 
 The one serious and formidable thing in nature is 
 a will. Society is servile from want of will, and 
 therefore the world wants saviours and religions, 
 One way is right to go : the hero sees it, and moves 
 on that aim, and has the world under him for root 
 and support. He is to others as the world. His 
 approbation is honour; his dissent, infamy. The 
 glance of his eye has the force of sunbeams. A 
 personal influence towers up in memory only worthy, 
 and we gladly forget numbers, money, climate, gravi- 
 tation, and the rest of Fate. 
 
 We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know 
 it is the meter of the growing man. We stand 
 against Fate, as children stand up against the wall 
 in their father's house, and notch their height from 
 year to year. But when the boy grows to man, and 
 is master of the house, he pulls down that wall, and 
 builds a new and bigger. 'Tis only a question of 
 time. Every brave youth is in training to ride and 
 rule this dragon. His science is to make weapons 
 and wings of these passions and retarding forces. 
 Now whether, seeing these two things, fate and power, 
 we are permitted to believe in unity ? The bulk of 
 mankind believe in two gods. They are under one 
 dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, 
 in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion : 
 but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, 
 in trade, in politics, they think they come under 
 another ; and that it would be a practical blunder to 
 
 2—2 
 
20 CONDUCT OF LITE. 
 
 transfer the method and way of working of one sphere, 
 into the other. What good, honest, generous men at 
 home, will be wolves and foxes on 'change ! What 
 pious men in the parlour will vote for what repro- 
 bates at the polls ! To a certain point, they believe 
 themselves the care of a Providence. But in a 
 steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe a 
 malignant energy rules. 
 
 But relation and connection are not somewhere 
 and sometimes, but everywhere and always. The 
 divine order does not stop where their sight stops. 
 The friendly power works on the same rules, in the 
 next farm, and the next planet. But, where they 
 have not experience, they run against it, and hurt 
 themselves. Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet 
 passed under the fire of thought ; for causes which 
 are unpenetrated. 
 
 But every jet of chaos which threatens to exter- 
 minate us, is convertible by intellect into wholesome 
 force. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water 
 drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But 
 learn to swim, trim your bark, and the wave which 
 drowned it, will be cloven by it, and carry it, like its 
 own foam, a plume and a power. The cold is incon- 
 siderate of persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man 
 like a dew-drop. But learn to skate, and the ice will 
 give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The 
 cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and 
 make you foremost men of time. Cold and sea will 
 train an imperial Saxon race, which nature cannot 
 bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thou- 
 sand years in yonder England, gives a hundred 
 Englands, a hundred Mexicos. All the bloods it 
 shall absorb and domineer: and more than Mexicos, 
 — the secrets of water and steam, the spasms of 
 electricity, the ductility of metals, the chariot 
 of the air, the ruddered balloon are awaiting 
 you, 
 
FATE. 21 
 
 The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that 
 of war; but right drainage destroys typhus. The 
 plague in the sea-service from scurvy is healed by 
 lemon-juice and other diets portable or procurable ; 
 the depopulation by cholera and small-pox is ended 
 by drainage and vaccination ; and every other pest is 
 not less in the chain of cause and effect, and may be 
 fought off. And, whilst art draws out the venom, it 
 commonly extorts some benefit from the vanquished 
 enemy. The mischievous torrent is taught to drudge 
 for man; the wild beasts lie makes useful for food, or 
 dress, or labour; the ehemie explosions are controlled 
 like his watch. These are now the steeds on which 
 he rides. Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, 
 by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by 
 electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt 
 the eagle in his own element. There's nothing he 
 will not make his carrier. 
 
 Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we 
 dreaded. Every pot made by any human potter or 
 brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy, 
 lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house 
 away. But the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and 
 Fulton bethought themselves, that, where was power, 
 was not devil, but was God ; that it must be availed 
 of, and not by any means let off and wasted. Could 
 he lift pots and roofs and. houses so handily ? he was 
 the workman they were in search of. He could be 
 used to lift away, chain, and compel other devils, 
 far more reluctant and dangerous, namely 5 cubic 
 miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance of 
 water, machinery, and the labours of all men in 
 the world ; and time he shall lengthen, and shorten 
 space. 
 
 It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds 
 of steam. The opinion of the million was the terror 
 of the world, and it was attempted, either to dis- 
 sipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with 
 
22 CONDUCT OF LEFE. 
 
 strata of society, — a layer of soldiers ; over that, a 
 layer of lords ; and a king on the top ; with clamps 
 and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. But, 
 sometimes, the religious principle would get in, and 
 burst the hoops, and rive every mountain laid on top 
 of it. The Fultons and Watts of politics, believing 
 in unity, saw that it was a power, and, by satisfying 
 it (as justice satisfies everybody), through a different 
 disposition of society, — grouping it on a level, instead 
 of piling it into a mountain, — they have contrived to 
 make of this terror the most harmless and energetic 
 form of a State. 
 
 Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. 
 Who likes to have a dapper phrenologist pronounc- 
 ing on his fortunes ? Who likes to believe that he 
 has hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the 
 vices of a Saxon or Celtic race, which will be sure 
 to pull him down, — with what grandeur of hope 
 and resolve he is fired, — into a selfish, huckstering, 
 servile, dodging animal ? A learned physician tells 
 us, the fact is invariable with the Neapolitan, that, 
 when mature, he assumes the forms of the unmis- 
 takeable scoundrel. That is a little overstated, — but 
 may pass. 
 
 But these are magazines and arsenals. A man 
 must thank his defects, and stand in some terror 
 of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so 
 largely on his forces, as to lame him ; a defect pays 
 him revenues on the other side. The sufferance, 
 which is the badge of the Jew, has made him, in 
 these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth. If 
 Fate is ore and quarry, if evil is good in the making, 
 if limitation is power that shall be, if calamities, 
 oppositions, and weights are wings and means, — we 
 are reconciled. 
 
 Fate involves the melioration. No statement of 
 the Universe can have any soundness, which does 
 not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the 
 
FATE. 23 
 
 whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in 
 proportion to the health. Behind every individual, 
 closes organization : before him, opens liberty, — the 
 Better, the Best. The first and worst races are 
 dead. The second and imperfect races are dying 
 out, or remain for the maturing of higher. In the 
 latest race, in man, every generosity, every new 
 perception, the love and praise he extorts from his 
 fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into 
 freedom. Liberation of the will from the sheaths 
 and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, is 
 the end and aim of this world. Every calamity is a 
 spur and valuable hint; and where his endeavours 
 do not yet fully avail, they tell as tendency. The 
 whole circle of animal life, — tooth against tooth, — 
 devouring war, war for food, a yelp of pain and a 
 grunt of triumph, until, at last, the whole menagerie, 
 the whole chemical mass is mellowed and refined for 
 higher use, — pleases at a sufficient perspective. 
 
 But to see how Fate slides into freedom, and free- 
 dom into Fate, observe how far the roots of every 
 creature run, or find 3 if you can, a point where there 
 is no thread of connection. Our life is consentaneous 
 and far-related. This knot of nature is so well tied, 
 that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two 
 ends. Nature is intricate, overlapped, interweaved, 
 and endless. Christopher Wren said of the beautiful 
 King's College chapel, " that, if anybody would tell 
 him where to lay the first stone, he would build such 
 another." But where shall we find the first atom in 
 this house of man, which is all consent, inosculation, 
 and balance of parts ? 
 
 The web of relation is shown in habitat, shown in 
 hybernation. When hybernation was observed, it 
 was found, that, whilst some animals became torpid 
 in winter, others were torpid in summer : hyberna- 
 tion then was a false name. The long sleep is not an 
 effect of cold, but is regulated by the supply of 
 
24 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 food proper to the animal. It becomes torpid when 
 the fruit or prey it lives on is not in season, and 
 regains its activity when its food is ready. 
 
 Eyes are found in light; ears in auricular air; 
 feet on land ; fins in watei\; wings in air ; and each 
 creature where it was meant to be, with a mutual 
 fitness. Every zone has its own Fauna. There is 
 adjustment between the animal and its food, its para- 
 site, its enemy. Balances are kept. It is not allowed 
 to diminish in numbers, nor to exceed. The like 
 adjustments exist for man. His food is cooked, 
 when he arrives ; his coal in the pit ; the house 
 ventilated; the mud of the deluge dried; his com- 
 panions arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him 
 with love, concert, laughter, and tears. These are 
 coarse adjustments, but the invisible are not less. 
 There are more belongings to every creature than 
 his air and his food. His instincts must be met, and 
 he has predisposing power that bends and fits what is 
 near him to his use. He is not possible until the 
 invisible things are right for him, as well as the 
 visible. Of what changes, then, in sky and earth, 
 and in finer skies and earths, does the appearance of 
 some Dante or Columbus apprise us ! 
 
 How is this effected? Nature is no spendthrift, 
 but takes the shortest way to her ends. As the 
 general says to his soldiers, " If you want a fort, build 
 a fort," so nature makes every creature do its own 
 work and get its living. Is it planet, animal, or tree? 
 — The planet makes itself: the animal cell makes 
 itself; — then, what it wants. Every creature, — 
 wren or dragon, — shall make its own lair. As soon 
 as there is life, there is self-direction, and absorbing 
 and using of material. Life is freedom, — life in the 
 direct ratio of its amount. You may be sure, the 
 new-born man is not inert. Life works both volun- 
 tarily and supernaturally in its neighbourhood. Do 
 you suppose he can be estimated by his weight in 
 
FATE. 25 
 
 pounds, or that he is contained in his skin, — this 
 reaching, radiating, jacuiating fellow ? The smallest 
 candle fills a mile with its rajs, and the papillae of a 
 man rmi out to every star. 
 
 When there is something to be done, the world 
 knows how to get it done. The vegetable eye makes 
 leaf, pericarp, root, bark, or thorn, as the need is ; 
 the first cell converts itself into stomach, mouth, 
 nose, or nail, according to the want : the world throws 
 its life into a hero or a shepherd ; and puts him where 
 he is wanted. Dante and Columbus were Italians, 
 in their time : they would be Russians or Americans 
 to-day. Things ripen, new men come. The adapta- 
 tion is not capricious. The ulterior aim, the purpose 
 beyond itself, the correlation by which planets subside 
 and crystallize, then animate beasts and men, will not 
 stop, but will work into finer particulars, and from 
 finer to finest. 
 
 The secret of the world is, the tie between person 
 and event. Person makes event, and event person. 
 The "times," "the age," what is that, but a few 
 profound persons and a few active persons who epito- 
 mize the times ? — Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, 
 Calhoun, Guizot, Peel, Cobden, Kossuth, Rothschild, 
 Astor, Brunei, and the rest. The same fitness must 
 be presumed between a man and the time and event, 
 as between the sexes, or between a race of animals 
 and the food it eats, or the inferior races it uses. 
 He thinks his fate alien, because the copula is hidden. 
 But the soul contains the event that shall befall it, 
 for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts ; 
 and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted. 
 The event is the print of your form. It fits you like 
 your skin. What each does is proper to him. Events 
 are the children of his body and mind. -We learn 
 that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz sings: 
 
 " Alas ! till now I had not known . 
 
 My guide and fortune's guide are one." r ■*" * k 
 
26 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play 
 for, — houses, land, money, luxury, power, fame, — are 
 the selfsame thing, with a new gauze or two of illu- 
 sion overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles by 
 which men are made willing to have their heads 
 broke, and are led out solemnly every morning to 
 parade, — the most admirable is this by which we are 
 brought to believe that events are arbitrary, and 
 independent of actions. At the conjuror's, we detect 
 the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have 
 not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties 
 cause and effect. 
 
 Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by 
 making these the fruit of his character. Ducks take 
 to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to the sea 
 margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting- 
 rooms, soldiers to the frontier. Thus events grow 
 on the same stem with persons ; are sub-persons. 
 The pleasure of life is according to the man that 
 lives it, and not according to the work or the place. 
 Life is an ecstasy. We know what madness belongs 
 to love, — what power to paint a vile object in hues of 
 heaven. As insane persons are indifferent to their 
 dress, diet, and other accommodations, and, as we do 
 in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd acts, so, 
 a drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile 
 us to strange company and work. Each creature 
 puts forth from itself its own condition and sphere, 
 as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the pear- 
 leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire 
 their own bed, and the fish its shell. In youth, we 
 clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as 
 the zodiac. In age, we put out another sort of per- 
 spiration, — gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, 
 fretting, and avarice. 
 
 A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. 
 A man's friends are his magnetisms. We go to 
 Herodtous and Plutarch for examples of Fate ; but 
 
FATE. 27 
 
 we are examples. " Quisque suos patimur manes" 
 The tendency of every man to enact all that is in his 
 constitution is expressed in the old belief, that the 
 efforts which we make to escape from onr destiny 
 only serve to lead us into it : and I have noticed, a 
 man likes better to be complimented oh his position, 
 as the proof of the last or total excellence, than on 
 &s merits. 
 
 A man will see his character emitted in the events 
 that seem to meet, but which exude from and accom- 
 pany him. Events expand with the character. As 
 once he found himself among toys, so now he plays a 
 part in colossal systems, and his growth is declared 
 in his ambition, his companions, and his performance. 
 He looks like a piece of luck, but is a piece of causa- 
 tion; — the mosaic, angulated and ground to fit into 
 the gap he fills. Hence in each town there is some 
 man who is, in his brain and performance, an ex- 
 planation of the tillage, production, factories, banks, 
 churches, ways of living, and society, of that town. 
 If you do not chance to meet him, all that you see 
 will leave you a little puzzled : if you see him, it will 
 become plain. We know in Massachusetts who built 
 New Bedford, who built Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, 
 Clinton, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Portland, and many 
 another noisy mart. Each of these men, if they were 
 transparent, would seem to you not so much men, 
 as walking cities, and, wherever you put them, they 
 would build one. 
 
 History is the action and reaction of these two, — 
 Nature and Thought ; — two boys pushing each other 
 on the curb-stone of the pavement. Everything is 
 pusher or pushed : and matter and mind are in per- 
 petual tilt and balance, so. Whilst the man is weak, 
 the earth takes up him. He plants his brain and 
 affections. By and by he will take up the earth, and 
 have his gardens and vineyards in the beautiful order 
 and productiveness of his thought. Every solid in 
 
28 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach 
 of the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure 
 of the mind. If the wall remain adamant, it accuses 
 the want of thought. To a subtler force, it will 
 stream into new forms, expressive of the character of 
 the mind. What is the city in which we sit here, 
 but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which 
 have obeyed the will of some man? The granite 
 was reluctant, but his hands were stronger, and it 
 came. Iron was deep in the ground, and well com- 
 bined with stone ; but could not hide from his fires. 
 Wood, lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over 
 the earth and sea, in vain. Here they are, within 
 reach of every man's day-labour, — what he wants of 
 them. The whole world is the flux of matter over 
 the wires of thought to the poles or points where it 
 would build. The races of men rise out of the 
 ground preoccupied with a thought which rules them, 
 and divided into parties ready armed and angry to 
 fight for this metaphysical abstraction. The quality 
 of the thought differences the Egyptian and the 
 Roman, the Austrian and the American. The men 
 who come on the stage at one period are all found 
 to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the 
 air. We are all impressionable, for we are made of 
 them ; all impressionable, but some more than others, 
 and these first express them. This explains the 
 curious contemporaneousness of inventions and dis- 
 coveries. The truth is in the air, and the most im- 
 pressionable brain will announce it first, but all will 
 announce it a few minutes later. So women, as most 
 susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour. 
 So the great man, that is, the man most imbued with 
 the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man, — of 
 a fibre irritable and delicate, like iodine to light. He 
 feels the infinitesimal attractions. His mind is righter 
 than others, because he yields to a current so feeble 
 as can be felt only by a needle delicately poised. 
 
FATE. 29 
 
 The correlation is shown in defects. Moller, in 
 his essay on architecture., taught that the building 
 which was fitted accurately to answer its end, would 
 turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been 
 intended. I find the like unity in human structures 
 rather virulent and pervasive ; that a crudity in the 
 blood will appear in the argument ; a hump in the 
 shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. 
 If his mind could be seen, the hump would be seen. 
 If a man has a seesaw in his voice, it will run into 
 his sentences, into his poem, into the structure of his 
 fable, into his speculation, into his charity. And, as 
 every man is hunted by his own dsemon, vexed by 
 his own disease, this checks all his activity. 
 
 So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A 
 strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent 
 enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. 
 Such an one has curculios, borers, knife-worms : a 
 swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, 
 then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish 
 as Moloch. 
 
 This correlation really existing can be divined. If 
 the threads are there, thought can follow and show 
 them. Especially when a soul is quick and docile ; 
 as Chaucer sings : 
 
 " Or if the soul of proper kind 
 Be so perfect as men find, 
 That it wot what is to corne, 
 And that he warneth all and some 
 Of every of their aventures, 
 By previsions or figures; 
 But that our flesh hath not might 
 It to understand aright 
 For it is warned too darkly/' — 
 
 Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, 
 omen, periodicity, and presage : they meet the person 
 they seek ; what their companion prepares to say to 
 them, they first say to him; and a hundred signs 
 apprise them of what is about to befall. 
 
30 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful con- 
 stancy in the design, this vagabond life admits. We 
 wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year after 
 year we find two men, two women, without legal 
 or carnal tie, spend a great part of their best time 
 within a few feet of each other. And the moral is, 
 that what we seek we shall find ; what we flee from 
 flees from us ; as Goethe said, il what we wish for in 
 youth, comes in heaps on us in old age," too often 
 cursed with the granting of our prayer ; and hence 
 the high caution, that, since we are sure of having 
 what we wish, we beware to ask only for high things. 
 
 One key, one solution to the mysteries of human 
 condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, 
 and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, 
 of the double consciousness. A man must ride 
 alternately on the horses of his private and his public 
 nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw them- 
 selves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot 
 on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of 
 the other. So when a man is the victim of his fate, 
 has sciatica in his loins, and cramp in his mind ; a 
 club-foot and a club in his wit ; a sour face, and a 
 selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in 
 his affection ; or is ground to powder by the vice of 
 his race ; he is to rally on his relation to the Universe, 
 which his ruin benefits. Leaving the daemon who 
 suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures 
 universal benefit by his pain. 
 
 To offset the drag of temperament and race, which 
 pulls down, learn this lesson, namely, that by the 
 cunning co- presence of two elements, which is 
 throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes you, 
 draws in with it the divinity, in some form, to repay. 
 A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. 
 When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will 
 bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a 
 horse. 
 
FATE. 31 
 
 Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which 
 holds nature and souls in perfect solution, and com- 
 pels every atom to serve an universal end. I do not 
 wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, 
 or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of 
 beauty under which the universe lies ; that all is and 
 must be pictorial ; that the rainbow, and the curve of 
 the horizon, and the arch of the blue vault are only 
 results from the organism of the eye. There is no need 
 for foolish amateurs to fetch me to admire a garden of 
 flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, when I 
 cannot look without seeing splendour and grace. 
 How idle to choose a random sparkle here or there, 
 when the indwelling necessity plants the rose of 
 beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central 
 intention of Nature to be harmony and joy. 
 
 Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If 
 we thought men were free in the sense, that, in a 
 single exception, one fantastical will could prevail 
 over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's 
 hand could pull down the sun. If, in the least par- 
 ticular, one could derange the order of nature, — who 
 would accept the gift of life ? 
 
 Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, 
 which secures that all is made of one piece; that 
 plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal 
 and planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In 
 astronomy, is vast space, but no foreign system ; in 
 geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day. 
 Why should we be afraid of Nature, which is no 
 other than " philosophy and theology embodied ? " 
 Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements, 
 we who are made up of the same elements ? Let us 
 build to the Beautiful Necessity, which makes man 
 brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger 
 that is appointed, nor incur one that is not; to 
 the Necessity which rudely or softly educates him 
 to the perception that there are no contingencies ; 
 
32 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 that Law rules throughout existence, a Law which 
 is not intelligent but intelligence, — not personal nor 
 impersonal, — it disdains words and passes under- 
 standing ; it dissolves persons ; it vivifies nature ; 
 yet solicits the pure in heart to draw on all its 
 omnipotence. 
 
 II -p o w E E. 
 
 His tongue was framed to music, 
 And his hand was armed with skill; 
 His face was the mould of beauty, 
 And his heart the throne of will. 
 
 There is not yet any inventory of a man's faculties, 
 any more than a bible of his opinions. Who shall set 
 a limit to the influence of a human being ? There 
 are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry 
 nations with them, and lead the activity of the human 
 race. And if there be such a tie that, wherever the 
 mind of man goes, nature will accompany him, per- 
 haps there are men whose magnetisms are of that 
 force to draw material and elemental powers, and, 
 where they appear, immense instrumentalities or- 
 ganize around them. Life is a search after power; 
 and this is an element with which the world is so 
 saturated, — there is no chink or crevice in which 
 it is not lodged, — that no honest seeking goes unre- 
 warded. A man should prize events and possessions 
 as the ore in which this fine mineral is found ; and 
 he can well afford to let events and possessions and 
 the breath of the body go, if their value has been 
 added to him in the shape of power. If he have 
 secured .the elixir, he can spare the wide gardens 
 from which it was distilled. A cultivated man, wise 
 to know and bold to perform, is the end to which 
 nature works, and the education of the will is 
 
POWER. 33 
 
 the flowering and result of all this geology and 
 astronomy. 
 
 All successful men have agreed in one thing, — 
 they were causationists. They believed that things 
 went not by luck, but by law; that there was not 
 a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the 
 first and last of things. A belief in causality, or 
 strict connection between every trifle and the prin- 
 ciple of being, and, in consequence, belief in compen- 
 sation, or that nothing is got for nothing, characterizes 
 all valuable minds, and must control every effort that 
 is made by an industrious one. The most valiant 
 men are the best believers in the tension of the laws. 
 " All the great captains," said Bonaparte, " have per- 
 formed vast achievements by conforming with the 
 rules of the art, — by adjusting efforts to obstacles." 
 
 The key to the age may be this, or that, or the 
 other, as the young orators describe ; the key to all 
 ages is — Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority 
 of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but 
 certain eminent moments ; victims of gravity, custom, 
 and fear. This gives force to the strong, — that the 
 multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original 
 action. 
 
 We must reckon success a constitutional trait. 
 Courage, the old physicians taught (and their mean- 
 ing holds, if their physiology is a little mythical): 
 courage, or the degree of life, is as the degree of cir- 
 culation of the blood in the arteries. " During passion, 
 anger, fury, trials of strength, wrestling, fighting, a 
 large amount of blood is collected in the arteries, 
 the maintenance of bodily strength requiring it, and 
 but little is sent into the veins. This condition is 
 constant with intrepid persons." Where the arteries 
 hold their blood, is courage and adventure possible. 
 Where they pour it unrestrained into the veins, the 
 spirit is low and feeble. For performance of great 
 mark, it needs extraordinary health. If Eric is in 
 
 3 
 
34 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 robust health, and has slept well, and is at the top of 
 his condition, and thirty years old, at his departure 
 from Greenland, he will steer west, and his ships 
 will reach Newfoundland. But take out Eric, and 
 put in a stronger and bolder man — Biorn or Thorfin 
 — arid the ships will, with just as much ease, sail 
 six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles 
 further, and reach Labrador and New England. 
 There is no chance in results. With adults, as with 
 children, one class enter cordially into the game, and 
 whirl with the whirling world ; the others have cold 
 hands, and remain bystanders, or are only dragged 
 in by the humour and vivacity of those who can 
 carry a dead weight. The first wealth is health. 
 Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any 
 one; it must husband its resources to live. But 
 health or fulness answers its own ends, and has to 
 spare, runs over, and inundates the neighbourhoods 
 and creeks of other men's necessities. 
 
 All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature 
 of the world. The mind that is parallel with the 
 laws of nature will be in the current of events, and 
 strong with their strength. One man is made of 
 the same stuff of which events are made; is in 
 sympathy with the course of things ; can predict it. 
 Whatever befalls, befalls him first; so that he is 
 equal to whatever shall happen. A man who 
 knows men, can talk well on politics, trade, law, 
 war, religion. For, everywhere, men are led in the 
 same manners. 
 
 The advantage of a strong pulse is not to be sup- 
 plied by any labour, art, or concert. It is like the 
 climate, which easily rears a crop, which no glass, 
 or irrigation, or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere 
 rival. It is like the opportunity of a city like New 
 York, or Constantinople, which needs no diplomacy 
 to force capital or genius or labour to it. They come 
 of themselves,, as the waters flow to it. So a broad, 
 
POWEK. 35 
 
 healthy, massive understanding seems to lie on the 
 shore of unseen rivers, of unseen oceans, which are 
 covered with barks, that, night and day, are drifted 
 to this point. That is poured into its lap, which 
 other men lie plotting for. It is in everybody's 
 secret ; anticipates everybody's discovery ; and if it 
 do not command every fact of the genius and the 
 scholar, it is because it is large and sluggish, and 
 does not think them worth the exertion which 
 you do. 
 
 This affirmative force is in one, and is not in 
 another, as one horse has the spring in him, and 
 another in the whip. " On the neck of the young 
 man," said Hafiz, " sparkles no gem so gracious as 
 enterprise." Import into any stationary district, 
 as into an old Dutch population in New York or 
 Pennsylvania, or among the planters of Virginia, 
 a colony of hardy Yankees, with seething brains, 
 heads full of steam-hammer, pully, crank, and 
 toothed wheel, — and everything begins to shine 
 with values. What enhancement to all the water 
 and land in England, is the arrival of James "Watt 
 or Brunei ! In every company, there is not only 
 the active and passive sex, but, in both men and 
 women, a deeper and more important sex of mind, 
 namely, the inventive or creative class of both men 
 and women, and the uninventive or accepting class. 
 Each plus man represents his set, and, if he have 
 the accidental advantage of personal ascendancy, — 
 which implies neither more nor less of talent, but 
 merely the temperamental or taming eye of a soldier 
 or a schoolmaster (which one has, and one has not, 
 as one has a black moustache and one a blond), then 
 quite easily, and without envy or resistance, all his 
 coadjutors and feeders will admit his right to absorb 
 them. The merchant works by book-keeper and 
 cashier ; the lawyer's authorities are hunted up by 
 clerks ; the geologist reports the surveys of his Sub- 
 s'— 2 
 
36 COXDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 alterns; Commander Wilkes appropriates the results 
 of all the naturalists attached to the Expedition; 
 Thorwaldsens statue is finished by stone-cutters; 
 Dumas has journeymen; and Shakspeare was theatre- 
 manager, and used the labour of many young men, as 
 ■well as the playbooks. 
 
 There is always room for a man of force, and 
 he makes room for many. Society is a troop of 
 thinkers, and the best heads among them take the 
 best places. A feeble man can see the farms that 
 are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. 
 The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. 
 His eye makes estates, as fast as the sun breeds 
 clouds. 
 
 When a new boy comes into school, when a 
 man travels, and encounters strangers every day, 
 or, when into any old club a new-comer is domes- 
 ticated, that happens which befalls when a strange 
 ox is driven into a pen or pasture where cattle are 
 kept; there is at once a trial of strength between 
 the best pair of horns and the new-comer, and it is 
 settled thenceforth which is the leader. So now, 
 there is a measuring of strength, very courteous, 
 but decisive, and an acquiescence thenceforward 
 when these two meet. Each reads his fate in the 
 other's eyes. The weaker party finds, that none 
 of his information or wit quite fits the occasion. 
 He thought he knew this or that; he finds that 
 he omitted to learn the end of it. Nothing that 
 he knows will quite hit the mark, whilst all the 
 rival's arrov T s are good, and well thrown. But if 
 he knew all the facts in the encyclopaedia, it would 
 not help him : for this is an affair of presence of 
 mind, of attitude, of aplomb: the opponent has the 
 sun and wind, and, in every cast, the choice of 
 weapon and mark; and, when he himself is matched 
 with some other antagonist, his own shafts fly well 
 and hit. 'Tis a question of stomach and constitu- 
 
POWER. 37 
 
 tion. The second man is as good as the first, — 
 perhaps better ; but has not stoutness or stomach, 
 as the first has, and so his wit seems over-fine or 
 under-fine. 
 
 Health is good, — power, life, that resists disease, 
 poison, and all enemies, and is conservative, as 
 well as creative. Here is question, every spring, 
 whether to graft with wax, or whether with clay ; 
 whether to whitewash or to potash, or to prune* 
 but the one point is the thrifty tree. A good tree, 
 that agrees with the soil, will grow in spite of blight, 
 or bug, or pruning, or neglect, by night and by 
 day, in all weathers and all treatments. Vivacity, 
 leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed 
 to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump 
 with dirty water, if clean cannot be had. If we 
 will make bread, we must have contagion, yeast, 
 emptyings, or what not, to induce fermentation into 
 the dough: as the torpid artist seeks inspiration 
 at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by 
 fiend, by prayer or by wine. And we have a certain 
 instinct, that where is great amount of life, though 
 gross and peccant, it has its own checks and purifi- 
 cations, and will be found at last in harmony with 
 moral laws. 
 
 We watch in children, with pathetic interest, the 
 degree in which they possess recuperative force. 
 When they are hurt by us, or by each other, or 
 go to the bottom of the class, or miss the annual 
 prizes, or are beaten in the game, — if they lose 
 heart, and remember the mischance in their chamber 
 at home, they have a serious check. But if they 
 have the buoyancy and resistance that preoccupies 
 them with new interest in the new moment, — the 
 wounds cicatrize, and the fibre is the tougher for 
 the hurt. 
 
 One comes to value this plus health, when he 
 sees that all difficulties vanish before it, A timid 
 
38 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 man listening to the alarmists in Congress, and in 
 the newspapers, and observing the profligacy of 
 party, — sectional interests nrged with a fury which 
 shuts its eyes to consequences, with a mind made 
 up to desperate extremities, ballot in one hand, and 
 rifle in the other, — might easily believe that he 
 and his country have seen their best days, and he 
 hardens himself the best he can against the com- 
 ing ruin. But after this has been foretold with 
 equal confidence fifty times, and government six 
 per cents, have not declined a quarter of a mill, he 
 discovers that the enormous elements of strength, 
 which are here in play, make our politics unim- 
 portant. Personal power, freedom, and the resources 
 of nature strain every faculty of every citizen. 
 We prosper with such vigour, that, like thrifty trees, 
 which grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, and borers, so 
 we do not suffer from the profligate swarms that 
 fatten on the national treasury. ■ The huge animals 
 nourish huge parasites, and the rancour of the 
 disease attests the strength of the constitution. The 
 same energy in the Greek Demos drew the remark, 
 that the evils of popular government appear greater 
 than they are; there is compensation for them in 
 the spirit and energy it awakens. The rough and 
 ready style which belongs to a people of sailors, 
 foresters, farmers, and mechanics, has its advantages. 
 Power educates the potentate. As long as our 
 people quote English standards they dwarf their 
 own proportions. A Western lawyer of eminence 
 said to me he wished it were a penal offence to bring 
 an English law-book into a court in this country, 
 so pernicious had he found in his experience our 
 deference to English precedent. The very word 
 " commerce " has only an English meaning, and is 
 pinched to the cramp exigencies of English expe- 
 rience. The commerce of rivers, the commerce of 
 railroads, and who knows but the commerce of air- 
 
POWEK. 39 
 
 balloons, must add an American extension to the 
 pond-hole of admiralty. As long as our people 
 quote English standards, they will miss the sove- 
 reignty of power; but let these rough-riders, — 
 legislators in shirt-sleeves, — Hoosier, Sucker, Wol- 
 verine, Badger, — or whatever hard head Arkansas, 
 Oregon, or Utah sends, half orator, half assassin, to 
 represent its wrath and cupidity at Washington, — 
 let these drive as they may ; and the disposition of 
 territories and public lands, the necessity of balanc- 
 ing and keeping at bay the snarling majorities of 
 German, Irish, and of native millions, will bestow 
 promptness, address, and reason, at last, on our 
 buffalo-hunter, and authority and majesty of man- 
 ners. The instinct of the people is right. Men 
 expect from good whigs, put into office by the 
 respectability of the country, much less skill to deal 
 with Mexico, Spain, Britain, or with our own mal- 
 content members, than from some strong trans- 
 gressor, like Jefferson, or Jackson, who first conquers 
 his own government, and then uses the same genius 
 to conquer the foreigner. The senators who dis- 
 sented from Mr. Polk's Mexican war, were not those 
 who knew better, but those who, from political posi- 
 tion, could afford it ; not Webster, but Benton and 
 Calhoun. 
 
 This power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. 
 'Tis the power of Lynch law, of soldiers and pirates ; 
 and it bullies the peaceable and loyal. But it brings 
 its own antidote ; and here is my point, — that all 
 kinds of power usually emerge at the same time ; 
 good energy and bad ; power of mind, with physical 
 health ; the extasies of devotion, with the exaspera- 
 tions of debauchery. The same elements are always 
 present, only sometimes these conspicuous, and some- 
 times those; what was yesterday foreground, being 
 to-day background, — what was surface, playing now 
 a not less effective part as basis. The longer the 
 
40 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 drought lasts, the more is the atmosphere surcharged 
 with water. The faster the ball falls to the sun, the 
 force to fly off is by so much augmented. And, in 
 morals, wild liberty breeds iron conscience ; natures 
 with great impulses have great resources, and return 
 from far. In politics, the sons of democrats will be 
 whigs ; whilst red republicanism, in the father, is a 
 spasm of nature to engender an intolerable tyrant in 
 the next age. On the other hand, conservatism, ever 
 more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and 
 drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism. 
 
 Those who have most of this coarse energy, — the 
 " bruisers," who have run the gauntlet of caucus and 
 tavern through the county or the state, have their 
 own vices, but they have the good nature of strength 
 and courage. Fierce and unscrupulous, they are 
 usually frank and direct, and above falsehood. Our 
 politics fall into bad hands, and churchmen and men 
 of refinement, it seems agreed, are not fit persons to 
 send to Congress. Politics is a deleterious profession, 
 like some poisonous handicrafts. Men in power have 
 no opinions, but may be had cheap for any opinion, 
 for any purpose, — and if it be only a question between 
 the most civil and the most forcible, I lean to the last. 
 These Hoosiers and Suckers are really better than 
 the snivelling opposition. Their wrath is at least of 
 a bold and manly cast. They see, against the unani- 
 mous declarations of the people, how much crime the 
 people will bear ; they proceed from step to step, and 
 they have calculated but too justly upon their ex- 
 cellencies, the New England governors, and upon 
 their honours, the New England legislators. The 
 messages of the governors and the resolutions of the 
 legislatures, are a proverb for expressing a sham 
 'virtuous indignation, which, in the course of events, 
 is sure to be belied. 
 
 In trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace of 
 ferocity. Philanthropic and religious bodies do not 
 
POWER. 41 
 
 commonly make their executive officers out of saints. 
 The communities hitherto founded by Socialists, — ■ 
 the Jesuits, the Port-Royalists, the American com-* 
 munities at New Harmony, at Brook Farm, at Zoar, 
 are only possible, by installing Judas as steward. 
 The rest of the offices may be filled by good bur- 
 gesses. The pious and charitable proprietor has a 
 foreman not quite so pious and charitable. The 
 most amiable of country gentlemen has a certain 
 pleasure in the teeth of the bull-dog which guards his 
 orchard. Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a 
 sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent 
 the devil to market. And in representations of the 
 Deity, painting, poetry, and popular religion have 
 ever drawn the wrath from hell. It is an esoteric 
 doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to 
 make muscle ; as if conscience were not good for 
 hands and legs, as if poor decayed formalists of law 
 and order cannot run like wild goats, wolves and 
 conies ; that, as there is a use in medicine for poisons, 
 so the world cannot move without rogues ; that public 
 spirit and the ready hand are as well found among 
 the malignants. 'Tis not very rare, the coincidence 
 of sharp private and political practice, with public 
 spirit, and good neighbourhood. 
 
 I knew a burly Boniface who for many years kept 
 a public-house in one of our rural capitals. He was 
 a knave whom the town could ill spare. He was a 
 social, vascular creature, grasping and selfish. There 
 was no crime which he did not or could not commit. 
 But he made good friends of the select men, served 
 them with his best chop, when they supped at his 
 house, and also with his honour the Judge he was 
 very cordial, grasping his hand. He introduced all 
 the fiends, male and female, into the town, and united 
 in his person the functions of bully, incendiary, 
 swindler, barkeeper, and burglar. He girdled the 
 trees, and cut off the horses' tails of the temperance 
 
42 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 people, in the night. He led the " rummies " and 
 radicals in town-meeting with a speech. Meantime, 
 he was civil, fat, and easy, in his house, and precisely 
 the most public-spirited citizen. He was active in 
 getting the roads repaired and planted with shade- 
 trees; he subscribed for the fountains, \\\q gas, and 
 the telegraph ; he introduced the new horse-rake, the 
 new scraper, the baby-jumper, and what not, that 
 Connecticut sends to the admiring citizens. He did 
 this the easier, that the pedlar stopped at his house, 
 and paid his keeping, by setting up his new trap on 
 the landlord's premises. 
 
 Whilst thus the energy for originating and exe- 
 cuting work deforms itself by excess, and so our axe 
 chops off our own fingers, — this evil is not without 
 remedy. All the elements whose aid man calls in, 
 will sometimes become his masters, especially those 
 of most subtle force. Shall he, then, renounce steam, 
 fire, and electricity, or, shall he learn to deal with 
 them? The rule for this whole class of agencies 
 is, — all plus is good ; only put it in the right place. 
 
 Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live 
 on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies ; cannot read novels, 
 and play whist ; cannot satisfy all their wants at the 
 Thursday Lecture or the Boston Athenaeum. They 
 pine for adventure, and must go to Pike's Peak ; had 
 rather die by the hatchet of a Pawnee, than sit all 
 day and every day at a counting-room desk. They 
 are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, 
 and clearing ; for hair-breadth adventures, huge 
 risks and the joy of eventful living. Some men 
 cannot endure an hour of calm at sea. I remember 
 a poor Malay cook, on board a Liverpool packet, 
 who, when the wind blew a gale, could not contain 
 his joy. " Blow !" he cried, " me do tell }^ou, blow !" 
 Their friends and governors must see that some vent 
 for their explosive complexion is provided. The 
 roisters who are destined for infamy at home, if sent 
 
POWEE. 43 
 
 to Mexico, will " cover you with glory," and come 
 back heroes and generals. There are Oregons, Cali- 
 fornias, and Exploring Expeditions enough apper- 
 taining to America, to find them in files to gnaw, and 
 in crocodiles to eat. The young English are fine 
 animals, full of blood ; and when they have no wars 
 to breathe their riotous valours in, they seek for 
 travels as dangerous as war, diving into Maelstroms ; 
 swimming Heilesponts ; wading up the snowy Him- 
 maleh; hunting lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in South 
 Africa ; gipsying with Borrow in Spain and Algiers ; 
 riding alligators in South America with Waterton ; 
 utilizing Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with Layard ; 
 yachting among the icebergs of Lancaster Sound; 
 peeping into craters on the equator ; or running on 
 the creases of Malays in Borneo. 
 
 The excess of virility has the same importance 
 in general history, as in private and industrial life. 
 Strong race or strong individual rests at last on 
 natural forces, which are best in the savage, who, like 
 the beasts around him, is still in reception of the 
 milk from the teats of nature. Cut off the connection 
 between any of our works and this aboriginal source, 
 and the work is shallow. The people lean on this, 
 and the mob is not quite so bad an argument as we 
 sometimes say, for it has this good side. " March 
 without the people," said a French deputy from the 
 tribune, " and you march into night : their instincts 
 are a finger-pointing of Providence, always turned 
 toward real benefit. But when you espouse an 
 Orleans party, or a Bourbon, or a Montalembert 
 party, or any other but an organic party, though 
 you mean well, you have a personality instead of a 
 principle, which will inevitably drag you into a 
 corner." 
 
 The best anecdotes of this force are to be had from 
 savage life, in explorers, soldiers, and buccaneers. 
 But who cares for fallings-out of assassins, and fights 
 
44 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 of "bears, or grindings of icebergs ? Physical force 
 has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in 
 snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. 
 The luxury of ice is in tropical countries and mid- 
 summer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little 
 on our hearth : and of electricity, not volleys of the 
 charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the 
 battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy ; the rests or 
 remains of it in the civil and moral man are worth 
 all the cannibals in the Pacific. 
 
 In history, the great moment is, when the savage 
 is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy 
 Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of 
 beauty : — and you have Pericles and Phidias, — not 
 yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Every- 
 thing good in nature and the world is in that moment 
 of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow r 
 plentifully from nature, but their astringency or 
 acridity is got out by ethics and humanity. 
 
 The triumphs of peace have been in some proxi- 
 mity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar 
 with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp 
 were still visible in the port and complexion of the 
 gentleman, his intellectual power culminated: the 
 compression and tension of these stern conditions is 
 a training for the finest and softest arts, and can 
 rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by 
 some analogous vigour drawn from occupations as 
 hardy as war. 
 
 We say that success is constitutional ; depends on 
 a plus condition of mind and body, on power of 
 work, on courage; that it is of main efficacy in 
 carrying on the world, and, though rarely found in 
 the right state for an article of commerce, but oftener 
 in the supersaturate or excess, which makes it dan- 
 gerous and destructive, yet it cannot be spared, and 
 must be had in that form, and absorbents provided to 
 take off its edo;e. 
 
POWER. 45 
 
 The affirmative class monopolize the homage of 
 mankind. They originate and execute all the great 
 feats. What a force was coiled up in the skull of 
 Napoleon ! Of the sixty thousand men making his 
 army at Eylau, it seems some thirty thousand were 
 thieves and burglars. The men whom, in peaceful 
 communities, we hold, if we can, with iron at their 
 legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this 
 man dealt with, hand to hand, dragged them to their 
 duty, and won his victories by their bayonets. 
 
 This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure 
 when it appears under conditions of supreme refine- 
 ment, as in the proficients in high art. When 
 Michel Angelo was forced to paint the Sistine Chapel 
 in fresco, of which art he knew nothing, he went 
 down into the Pope's gardens behind the Vatican, 
 and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, 
 mixed them with glue and water with his own 
 hands, and having, after many trials, at last suited 
 himself, climbed his ladders, and painted away, week 
 after week, month after month, the sibyls and pro- 
 phets. He surpassed his successors in rough vigour, 
 as much as in purity of intellect and refinement. He 
 was not crushed by his one picture left unfinished 
 at last. Michel was wont to draw his figures first 
 in skeleton, then to clothe them with flesh, and lastly 
 to drape them. " All ! " said a brave painter to me, 
 thinking on these things, " if a man has failed, you 
 will find he has dreamed instead of working. There 
 is no way to success in our art, but to take off your 
 coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the rail- 
 road, all day and every day." 
 
 Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus 
 or positive power : an ounce of power must balance 
 an ounce of weight. And, though a man cannot 
 return into his mother's womb, and be born with 
 new amounts of vivacity, yet there are two econo- 
 mies, which are the best succedanea which the case 
 
46 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 admits. The first is, the stopping off decisively our 
 miscellaneous activity,, and concentrating our force 
 on one or a few points ; as the gardener, by severe 
 pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two 
 vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into 
 a sheaf of twigs. 
 
 " Enlarge not thy destiny," said the oracle ; 
 "endeavour not to do more than is given thee in 
 
 | charge." The one prudence in life is concentration ; 
 the one evil is dissipation ; and it makes no differ- 
 ence whether our dissipations are coarse or fine ; 
 property and its cares, friends, and a social habit, or 
 politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good 
 which takes away one plaything and delusion more, 
 and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful 
 work. Friends, books, pictures, lower duties, talents, 
 flatteries, hopes — all are distractions which cause 
 oscillations in our giddy balloon, and make a good 
 poise and a straight course impossible. You must 
 elect your work; you shall take what your brain 
 can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount 
 of vital force accumulate, which can make the step 
 from knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty 
 of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to 
 doing is rarely taken. 'Tis a step out of a chalk 
 circle of imbecility into fruitfulness. Many an artist 
 lacking this, lacks all ^ he sees the masculine Angelo 
 or Cellini with despair. He, too, is up to Nature 
 and the First Cause in his thought. But the spasm 
 to collect and swing his whole being into one act 
 he has not. The poet Campbell said, ti^at " a man 
 
 1 accustomed to work was equal to any achievement 
 he resolved on, and that, for himself, necessity, not 
 inspiration, was the prompter of his muse." 
 
 Concentration is the secret of strength in politics^ 
 in war, in trade — in short, in all management of 
 human affairs. One of the high anecdotes of the 
 world is the reply of Newton to the inquiry, <( how 
 
POWER. 47 
 
 he had been able to achieve his discoveries ? "— et By 
 always intending my mind." Or if you will have a 
 text from politics, take this from Plutarch : — " There 
 was, in the whole city, but one street in which 
 Pericles was ever seen, the street which led to the 
 market-place and the council house. He declined 
 all invitations to banquets, and all gay assemblies 
 and company. During the whole period of his ad- 
 ministration, he never dined at the table of a friend." 
 Or if we seek an example from trade — "I hope," 
 said a good man to Rothschild, Ci your children are 
 not too fond of money and business : I am sure you 
 would not wish that." — " I am sure I should wish 
 that : I wish them to give mind, soul, heart, and 
 body to business ; that is the way to be happy. It 
 requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal 
 of caution to make a great fortune ; and, when you 
 have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep 
 it. If I were to listen to all the projects proposed to 
 me, I should ruin myself very soon." " Stick to one 
 business, young man. Stick to your brewery " (he 
 said this to young Buxton), "and you will be the 
 great brewer of London. Be brewer, and banker, 
 and merchant, and manufacturer, and you will soon 
 be in the Gazette." 
 
 Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive 
 and tenacious, but they do not rush to a decision. 
 But in our flowing affairs a decision must be made, — 
 the best, if you can ; but any is better than none. 
 There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one 
 is the shortest ; but set out at once on one. A man 
 who has that presence of mind which can bring to 
 him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action 
 a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring 
 it to light slowly. The good speaker in the House 
 is not the man who knows the theory of parliamen- 
 tary tactics, but the man who decides off-hand. The 
 good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice 
 
48 CONDUCT OP LIFE, 
 
 to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial 
 justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance 
 of suitors. The good lawyer is not the man who has 
 an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and 
 qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws him- 
 self on your part so heartily, that he can get you out 
 of a scrape. Dr. Johnson said, in one of his flowing 
 sentences : " Miserable beyond all names of wretch- 
 edness is that unhappy pair, who are doomed to 
 reduce beforehand to the principles of abstract reason 
 all the details of each domestic day. There are cases 
 where little can be said, and much must be done." 
 
 The second substitute for temperament is drill, the 
 power of use and routine. The hack is a better 
 roadster than the Arab barb. In chemistry, the 
 galvanic stream, slow, but continuous, is equal in 
 power to the electric, spark, and is, in our arts, a 
 better agent. So in human action, against the spasm 
 of energy, we offset the continuity of drill. We 
 spread the same amount of force over much time, 
 instead of condensing it into a moment. 'Tis the 
 same ounce of gold here in a ball, and there in a leaf. 
 At West Point, Colonel Buford, the chief engineer, 
 pounded with a hammer on the trunnions of a 
 cannon, until he broke them off. He fired a piece 
 of ordnance some hundred times in swift succession, 
 until it burst. Now which stroke broke the trun- 
 nion ? Every stroke. Which blast burst the piece ? 
 Every blast. ff Diligence passe sens" Henry VIII. 
 w T as wont to say, or, great is drill. John Kemble said 
 that the worst provincial company of actors would go 
 through a play better than the best amateur com- 
 pany. Basil Hall likes to show that the worst 
 regular troops will beat the best volunteers. Practice 
 is nine-tenths. A course of mobs is good practice 
 Tor orators. All the great speakers were bad speakers 
 at first. Stumping it through England for seven 
 years, made Cobden a consummate debater. Stump- 
 
POWER. 49 
 
 ing it through New England for twice seven, trained 
 Wendell Phillips. The way to learn German is, to 
 read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred 
 times, till you know every word and particle in 
 them, and can pronounce and repeat them by heart. 
 No genius can recite a ballad at first reading, so well 
 as mediocrity can at the fifteenth or twentieth read- 
 ing The rule for hospitality and Irish "help" is, to 
 ha^ve the same dinner every day throughout the year. 
 At last, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it to a 
 nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are 
 well served. A humorous friend of mine thinks, that 
 the reason why Nature is so perfect in her art, and 
 gets ap such inconceivably fine sunsets, is, that she 
 has learned how, at last, by dint of doing the same 
 thing so very often. Cannot one converse better on 
 a topic on which he has experience, than on one 
 which is new? Men whose opinion is valued on 
 'change, are only such as have a special experience, 
 and off that ground their opinion is not valuable. 
 " More are made good by exercitation, than by 
 nature," said Democritus. The friction in nature is 
 so enormous that we cannot spare any power. It is 
 not question to express our thought, to elect our way, 
 but to overcome resistances of the medium and mate- 
 rial in everything we do. Hence the use of drill, 
 and the worthlessness of amateurs to cope with prac- 
 titioners. Six hours every day at the piano, only to 
 give facility of touch ; six hours a day at painting, 
 only to give command of the odious materials, oil, 
 ochres, and brushes. The masters say, that they 
 know a master in music, only by seeing the pose of 
 the hands on the keys; — so difficult and vital an act 
 is the command of the instrument. To have learned 
 the use of the tools, by thousands of manipulations ; 
 to have learned the arts of reckoning, by endless 
 adding and dividing, is the power of the mechanic 
 and the clerk. 
 
 4 
 
50 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 I remarked in England, in confirmation of a fre- 
 quent experience at home, that, in literary circles, the 
 men of trust and consideration, bookmakers, editors, 
 university deans and professors, bishops, too, were by 
 no means men of the largest literary talent, but usually 
 of a low and ordinary intellectuality, with a sort of 
 mercantile activity and working talent. Indifferent 
 hacks and mediocrities tower, by pushing their forces 
 to a lucrative point, or by working power, over mul- 
 titudes of superior men, in Old as in New England. 
 
 I have not forgotten that there are sublime con- 
 siderations which limit the value of talent and super- 
 ficial success. We can easily overpraise the vulgar 
 hero. There are sources on which we hare not 
 drawn. I know what I abstain from. I adjourn 
 what I have to say on this topic to the chapters on 
 Culture and Worship. But this force or spirit, 
 being the means relied on by Nature for bringing the 
 work of the day about, — as far as we attach im- 
 portance to household life, and the prizes of the 
 world, we must respect that. And I hold, that an 
 economy may be applied to it ; it is as much a sub- 
 ject of exact law and arithmetic as fluids and gases 
 are ; it may be husbanded, or wasted ; every man 
 is efficient only as he is a container or vessel of this 
 force, and never was any signal act or achievement 
 in history, but by this expenditure. This is not 
 gold, but the gold-maker; not the fame, but the 
 exploit. 
 
 If these forces and this husbandry are within 
 reach of our will, and the laws of them can be read, 
 we infer that all success, and all conceivable benefit 
 for man, is also, first or last, within his reach, and 
 has its own sublime economies by which it may be 
 attained. The world is mathematical, and has no 
 casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve. Success 
 has no more eccentricity, than the gingham and 
 muslin we weave in our mills. I know no more 
 
WEALTH. 51 
 
 affecting lesson to our busy, plotting New England 
 brains, than to go into one of the factories with 
 which we have lined all the watercourses in the 
 States. A man hardly knows how much he is a 
 machine, until he begins to make telegraph, loom, 
 press, and locomotive, in his own image. But in 
 these, he is forced to leave out his follies and hin- 
 drances, so that when we go to the mill, the machine 
 is more moral than we. Let a -man dare go to a 
 loom, and see if he be equal to it. Let machine 
 confront machine, and see how they come out. The 
 world-mill is more complex than the calico-mill, and 
 the architect stooped less. In the gingham-mill, a 
 broken thread or a shred spoils the web through 
 a piece of a hundred yards, and is traced back to 
 the girl who wove it, and lessens her wages. The 
 stockholder, on being shown this, rubs his hands 
 with delight. Are you so cunning, Mr. Profitless, 
 and do you expect to swindle your master and 
 employer, in the web you weave ? A day is a more 
 magnificent cloth than any muslin, the mechanism 
 that makes it is infinitely cunninger, and you shall 
 not conceal the sleezy, fraudulent, rotten hours you 
 have slipped into the piece, nor fear that any honest 
 thread, or straighter steel, or more inflexible shaft, 
 will not testify in the web. 
 
 III.-WEAITH. 
 
 « Who shall tell what did befall, 
 Par away in time, when once, 
 Over the lifeless ball, 
 Hung idle stars and suns? 
 What god the element obeyed? 
 Wings of what wind the lichen bore, 
 Wafting the puny seeds of power, 
 Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade? 
 
 4—2 
 
52 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 And well the primal pioneer 
 
 Knew the strong task to it assigned 
 
 Patient through Heaven's enormous year 
 
 To build in matter home for mind. 
 
 From air the creeping centuries drew 
 
 The matted thicket low and wide, 
 
 This must the leaves of ages strew 
 
 The granite slab to clothe and hide, 
 
 Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. 
 
 What smiths, and. in what furnace, rolled 
 
 (In dizzy aeons dim and mute 
 
 The reeling brain can ill compute) 
 
 Copper and iron, lead and gold? 
 
 What oldest star the fame can save 
 
 Of races perishing to pave 
 
 The planet with a floor of lime? 
 
 Dust is their pyramid and mole: 
 
 Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed 
 
 Under the tumbling mountain's breast, 
 
 In the safe herbal of the coal? 
 
 But when the quarried means were piled, 
 
 All is waste and worthless, till 
 
 Arrives the wise selecting will, 
 
 And, out of slime and chaos, Wit 
 
 Draws the threads of fair and fit. 
 
 Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, 
 
 The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; 
 
 Then flew the sail across the seas 
 
 To feed the North from tropic trees; 
 
 The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, 
 
 Where they were bid the rivers ran ; 
 
 New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, 
 
 Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 
 
 Then docks were built, and crops were ored, 
 
 And ingots added to the hoard. 
 
 But, though light-headed man forget, 
 
 Remembering Matter pays her debt: 
 
 Still, through her motes and masses draw 
 
 Electric thrills and ties of Law, 
 
 Which bind the strengths of Nature wild 
 
 To the conscience of a child. 
 
 As soon as a stranger is introduced into any company, 
 one of the first questions which all wish to have 
 answered, is how does that man get his living ? And 
 with reason. He is no whole man until he knows 
 how to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is bar- 
 barous, until every industrious man can get his 
 living without dishonest customs. 
 
WEALTH. 53 
 
 Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a 
 producer. He fails to make his place good in the 
 world, unless he not only pays his debt, but also 
 adds something to the common wealth. Nor can he 
 do justice to his genius, without making some larger 
 demand on the world than a bare subsistence. He is 
 by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich. 
 
 Y^ealth has its source in applications of the mind 
 to nature, from the rudest strokes of spade and axe, 
 up to the last secrets of art. Intimate ties subsist 
 between thought and all production ; because a 
 better order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute 
 labour. The forces and the resistances are Nature's, 
 but the mind acts in bringing things from where 
 they abound to where they are wanted ; in wise 
 combining ; in directing the practice of the useful 
 arts, and in the creation of finer values, by fine art, 
 by eloquence, by song, or the reproductions of 
 memory. Wealth is in applications of mind to nature ; 
 and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, 
 much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeli- 
 ness, in being at the right spot. One man has 
 stronger arms, or longer legs ; another sees by the 
 course of streams, and growth of markets, where 
 land will be wanted, makes a clearing to the river, 
 goes to sleep, and wakes up rich. Steam is no 
 stronger now, than it was a hundred years ago ; but 
 is put to better use. A clever fellow was acquainted 
 with the expansive force of steam ; he also saw the 
 wealth of wheat and grass rotting in Michigan. 
 Then he cunningly screws on the steam-pipe to the 
 wheat-crop. Pun now, O Steam ! The steam puffs 
 and expands as before, but this time it is dragging all 
 Michigan at its back to hungry New York and hungry 
 England. Coal lay in ledges under the ground since 
 the Flood, until a labourer with, pick and windlass 
 brings it to the surface. We may well call it black 
 diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. 
 
54 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of 
 the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle: and 
 it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever 
 it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in 
 the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce 
 of coal ivill draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, 
 by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as 
 Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial 
 power. 
 
 When the farmer's peaches are taken from under 
 the tree, and carried into town, they have a new look, 
 and a hundredfold value over the fruit which grew on 
 the same bough, and lies fulsomely on the ground. 
 The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing 
 from where it abounds, to where it is costly. 
 
 Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain 
 and wind out ; in a good pump that yields you plenty 
 of sweet water ; in two suits of clothes, so to change 
 your dress when you are wet ; in dry sticks to burn ; 
 in a good double-wick lamp ; and three meals ; in a 
 horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land ; in a boat to 
 cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to 
 read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and 
 auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our 
 powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and 
 blood, length to the day, and knowledge, and good- 
 will. 
 
 Wealth begins with these articles of necessity. 
 And here we must recite the iron law which Nature 
 thunders in these northern climates. First, she re- 
 quires that each man should feed himself. If, happily, 
 his fathers have left him no inheritance, he must go 
 to work, and by making his wants less, or his gains 
 more, he must draw himself out of that state of pain 
 and insult in which she forces the beggar to lie. She 
 gives him no rest until this is done: she starves, 
 taunts, and torments him, takes away warmth, 
 laughter, sleep, friends, and daylight, until he has 
 
WEALTH. 55 
 
 fought his way to his own loaf. Then, less peremp- 
 torily, but still with sting enough, she urges him to 
 the acquisition of such things as belong to him. 
 Every warehouse and shop-window, every fruit-tree, 
 every thought of every hour, opens a new want to 
 him, which it concerns his power and dignity to 
 gratify. It is of no use to argue the wants down : 
 the philosophers have laid the greatness of man in 
 making his wants few ; but will a man content him- 
 self with a hut and a handful of dried pease? He 
 is born to be rich. He is thoroughly related; and 
 is tempted out by his appetites and fancies to the 
 conquest of this and that piece of nature, until he 
 finds his well-being in the use of his planet, and of 
 more planets than his own. Wealth requires, besides 
 the crust of bread and the roof, — the freedom of the 
 city, the freedom of the earth, travelling, machinery, 
 the benefits of science, music, and fine arts, the best 
 culture, and the best company. He is the rich man 
 who can avail himself of all men's faculties. He is 
 the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit 
 from the labours of the greatest number of men, of 
 men in distant countries, and in past times. The 
 same correspondence that is between thirst in the 
 stomach, and water in the spring, exists between the 
 whole of man and the whole of nature. The elements 
 offer their service to him. The sea, washing the 
 equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the 
 power and empire that follow it, day by day, to his 
 craft and audacity. "'Beware of me," it says, "but 
 if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands." 
 Fire offers, on its side, an equal power. Fire, steam, 
 lightning, gravity, ledges of rock, mines of iron, lead, 
 quicksilver, tin, and gold ; forests of all woods : fruits 
 of all climates ; animals of all habits ; the powers of 
 tillage ; the fabrics of his chemic laboratory ; the 
 webs of his loom ; the masculine draught of his loco- 
 motive, the talismans of the machine-shop ; all grand 
 
56 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 and subtile tilings, minerals, gases, ethers, passions, 
 war, trade, government, are his natural playmates, 
 and, according to the excellence of the machinery in 
 each human being, is his attraction for the instru- 
 ments he is to employ. The world is his tool-chest, 
 and he is successful, or his education is carried on 
 just so far, as is the marriage of his faculties with 
 nature, or the degree in which he takes up things 
 into himself. 
 
 The strong race is strong on these terms. The 
 Saxons are the merchants of the world ; now, for a 
 thousand years, the leading race, and by nothing 
 more than their quality of personal independence, 
 and, in its special modification, pecuniary independ- 
 ence. No reliance for bread and games on the 
 government, no clanship, no patriarchal style of 
 living by the revenues of a chief, no marrying-on, 
 — no system of clientsliip suits them ; but every 
 man must pay his scot. The English are prosperous 
 and peaceable, with their habit of considering that 
 every man must take care of himself, and has himself 
 to thank, if he do not maintain and improve his 
 position in society. 
 
 The subject of economy mixes itself with morals, 
 inasmuch as it is a peremptory point of virtue that 
 a man's independence be secured. Poverty demo- 
 ralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave ; and Wall- 
 street thinks it easy for a millionnaire to be a man 
 of his word, a man of honour, but, that, in failing 
 j circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his 
 j integrity. And when one observes in the hotels and 
 ! palaces of our Atlantic capitals, the habit of expense, 
 the riot of the senses, the absence of bonds, clanship, 
 fellow-feeling of any kind, he feels, that, when a man 
 or a woman is driven to the wall, the chances of 
 integrity are frightfully diminished, as if virtue were 
 coming to be a luxury which few could afford, or, 
 as Burke said, " at a market almost too high for 
 
WEALTH. 57 
 
 humanity." He may fix his inventory of necessities 
 and of enjoyments on what scale he pleases, but if he 
 wishes the power and privilege of thought, the chalk- 
 ing out his own career, and having society on his own 
 terms, he must bring his wants within his proper 
 power to satisfy. 
 
 The manly part is to do with might and main 
 what you can do. The world is full of fops who 
 never did anything, and who have persuaded beauties 
 and men of genius to wear their fop livery, and these 
 will deliver the fop opinion, that it is not respectable 
 to be seen earning a living; that it is much more 
 respectable to spend without earning ; and this doc- 
 trine of the snake will come also from the elect sons 
 of light ; for wise men are not wise at all hours, and 
 will speak five times from their taste or their humour, 
 to once from their reason. The brave workman, who 
 might betray his feeling of it in his manners, if he do 
 not succumb in his practice, must replace the grace 
 or elegance forfeited, by the merit of the work done. 
 No matter whether he make shoes, or statues, or 
 laws. It is the privilege of any human work which 
 is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughti- 
 ness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose 
 faithful work will answer for him. The mechanic at 
 his bench carries a quiet heart and assured manners, 
 and deals on even terms with men of any condition. 
 The artist has made his picture so true, that it dis- 
 concerts criticism. The statue is so beautiful, that 
 it contracts no stain from the market, but makes the 
 market a silent gallery for itself. The case of the 
 young lawyer was pitiful to disgust, — a paltry matter 
 of buttons or tw eezer-cases ; but the determined youth 
 saw in it an aperture to insert his dangerous wedges, 
 made the insignificance of the thing forgotten, and 
 gave fame by his sense and energy to the name and 
 affairs of the Tittleton snuffbox factory. 
 
 Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is 
 
58 CONDUCT OF LIEE. 
 
 made a toy. The life of pleasure is so ostentatious, 
 that a shallow observer must believe that this is the 
 agreed best use of wealth, and, whatever is pretended, 
 it ends in cosseting. But, if this were the main use 
 of surplus capital, it would bring us to barricades, 
 burned towns, and tomahawks, presently. Men of 
 sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature 
 to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of 
 the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their 
 design. Power is what they want, — not candy ; — ■ 
 power to execute their design, power to give legs and 
 feet, form and actuality to their thought, which, to 
 a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the 
 Universe exists, and all its resources might be well 
 applied. Columbus thinks that the sphere is a problem 
 for practical navigation, as well as for closet geometry, 
 and looks on all kings and peoples as cowardly lands- 
 men, until they dare fit him out. Few men on the 
 planet have more truly belonged to it. But he was 
 forced to leave much of his map blank. His suc- 
 cessors inherited his map, and inherited his fury to 
 complete it. 
 
 So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, and 
 survey, — the monomaniacs, who talk up their pro- 
 ject in marts, and offices, and entreat men to sub- 
 scribe; — how did our factories get built? how did 
 North America get netted with iron rails, except by 
 the importunity of these orators, who dragged all the 
 prudent men in ? Is party the madness of many for 
 the gain of a few ? This speculative genius is the 
 madness of few for the gain of the world. The 
 projectors are sacrificed, but the public is the gainer. 
 Each of these idealists, working after his thought, 
 would make it tyrannical, if he could. He is met 
 and antagonized by other speculators, as hot as he. 
 The equilibrium is preserved by these counteractions, 
 as one tree keeps down another in the forest, that it 
 may not absorb all the sap in the ground. And the 
 
WEALTH. 59 
 
 supply in nature of railroad presidents, copper- 
 miners, grand- junctioners, smoke-burners, fire-anni- 
 hilators, &c, is limited by the same law wbicn keeps 
 the proportion in the supply of carbon, of alum, and 
 of hydrogen. 
 
 To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the 
 master-works and chief men of each race. It is to 
 have the sea, by voyaging ; to visit the mountains, 
 Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constan- 
 tinople; to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manu- 
 factories. The reader of Humboldt's Cosmos follows 
 the marches of a man whose eyes, ears, and mind are 
 armed by all the science, arts, and implements which 
 mankind have anywhere accumulated, and who is 
 using these to add to the stock. So it is with 
 Denon, Beckford, Belzoni, Wilkinson, Layard, Kane, 
 Lepsms, and Livingston. " The rich man," says 
 Saadi, " is everywhere expected and at home." The 
 rich take up something more of the world into 
 man's life. They include the country as well as 
 the town, the ocean-side, the White Hills, the Far 
 West, and the old European homesteads of man, 
 in their notion of available material. The world 
 is his, who has money to go over it. He arrives 
 at the sea-shore, and a sumptuous ship has floored 
 and carpeted for him the stormy Atlantic, and 
 made it a luxurious hotel, amid the horrors of 
 tempests. The Persians say : (e 'Tis the same to 
 him who wears a shoe, as if the whole earth were 
 covered with leather." 
 
 Kings are said to have long arms, but every man 
 should have long arms, and should pluck his living, 
 his instruments, his power, and his knowing, from the 
 sun, moon, and stars. Is not then the demand to be 
 rich legitimate? Yet, I have never seen a rich man. 
 I have never seen a man as rich as all men ought to 
 be, or, with an adequate command of nature. The 
 pulpit and the press have many commonplaces 
 
60- CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 denouncing the thirst for wealth ; but if men should 
 take these moralists at their word., and leave off 
 aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to re- 
 kindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, 
 lest civilization should be undone. Men are urged 
 by their ideas to acquire the command over nature. 
 Ages derive a culture from the wealth of Roman 
 Caesars, Leo Tenths, magnificent Kings of France, 
 Grand Dukes of Tuscany, Dukes of Devonshire, 
 Townleys, Vernons, and Peels, in England ; or what- 
 ever great proprietors. It is the interest of all men, 
 that there should be Vaticans and Louvres full of 
 noble works of art ; British Museums, and French 
 Gardens of Plants, Philadelphia Academies of Na- 
 tural History, Bodleian, Ambrosian, Royal, Con- 
 gressional Libraries. It is the interest of all that 
 there should be Exploring Expeditions ; Captain 
 Cooks to voyage round the world, Rosses, Franklins, 
 Richardsons, aDcl Kanes, to find the magnetic and 
 the geographic poles. We are all richer for the 
 measurement of a degree of latitude on the earth's 
 surface. Our navigation is safer for the chart. 
 How intimately our knowledge of the system of the 
 Universe rests on that ! — and a true economy in a 
 state or an individual will forget its frugality in 
 behalf of claims like these. 
 
 Whilst it is each man's interest, that, not only 
 ease and convenience of living, but also wealth or 
 surplus product should exist somewhere, it need not 
 be in his hands. Often it is very undesirable to him. 
 Goethe said well, " nobody should be rich but those 
 who understand it." Some men are born to own, 
 and can animate all their possessions. Others can- 
 not : their owning is not graceful ; seems to be a 
 compromise of their character: they seem to steal 
 their own dividends. They should own who can 
 administer ; not they who hoard and conceal ; not they 
 who, the greater proprietors they are, are only the 
 
WEALTH. 61 
 
 greater beggars, but they whose work carves out 
 work for more, opens a path for all. For he is the 
 rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is 
 the poor man in whom the people are poor : and how 
 to give all access to the masterpieces of art and 
 nature, is the problem of civilization. The socialism 
 of our day has done good service in setting men 
 on thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only 
 enjoyed by the opulent, can be enjoyed by all. For 
 example, the providing to each man the means and 
 apparatus of science, and of the arts. There are 
 many articles good for occasional use, which few 
 men are able to own. Every man wishes to see the 
 ring of Saturn, the satellites and belts of Jupiter and 
 Mars ; the mountains and craters in the moon : yet 
 how few can buy a telescope ! and of those, scarcely 
 one would like the trouble of keeping it in order, and 
 exhibiting it. So of electrical and chemical appa- 
 ratus, and many the like things. Every man may 
 have occasion to consult books which he does not 
 care to possess, such as cyclopedias, dictionaries, 
 tables, charts, maps, and public documents : pictures 
 also of buds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, flowers, 
 whose names he desires to know. 
 
 There is a refining influence from the arts of 
 Design on a prepared mind, which is as positive as 
 that of music, and not to be supplied from any other 
 source. But pictures, engravings, statues, and casts, 
 beside their first cost, entail expenses, as of galleries 
 and keepers for the exhibition ; and the use which any 
 man can make of them is rare ; and their value, too, 
 is much enhanced by the numbers of men who can 
 share their enjoyment. In the Greek cities, it was 
 reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a 
 property in a work of art, which belonged to all who 
 could behold it. I think sometimes, — could I only 
 have music on my own terms; — could I live in a 
 great city, and know where I could go whenever 
 
62 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 I wished the ablution and inundation of musical 
 waves, — that were a bath and a medicine. 
 
 If properties of this kind were owned by states, 
 towns, and lyceums, they would draw the bonds of 
 neighbourhood closer. A town would exist to an 
 intellectual purpose. In Europe, where the feudal 
 forms secure the permanence of wealth in certain 
 families, those families buy and preserve these things, 
 and lay them open to the public. But in America, 
 where democratic institutions divide every estate into 
 small portions, after a few years, the public should 
 step into the place of these proprietors, and provide 
 this culture and inspiration for the citizen. 
 
 Man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows rich 
 by the use of his faculties ; by the union of thought 
 with nature. Property is an intellectual production. 
 The game requires coolness, right reasoning, prompt- 
 ness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labour 
 drives out brute labour. An infinite number of 
 shrewd men, in infinite years, have arrived at certain 
 best and shortest ways of doing, and this accumu- 
 lated skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, 
 manufactures, navigations, exchanges, constitutes the 
 worth of our world to-day. 
 
 Commerce is a game of skill, which every man 
 cannot play, which few men can play well. The 
 right merchant is one who has the just average of 
 faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong 
 affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what 
 he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the 
 truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in 
 the man, for his good or bad fortune, and so, in 
 making money. Men talk as if there were some 
 magic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts 
 of life. He know^s, that all goes on the old road, 
 pound for pound, cent for cent, — for every effect a 
 perfect cause, — and that good luck is another name 
 for tenacity of purpose. He insures himself in every 
 
WEALTH. 63 
 
 transaction, and likes small and sure gains. Probity 
 and closeness to the facts are the basis, but the 
 masters of the art add a certain long arithmetic. 
 The problem is, to combine many and remote opera- 
 tions, with the accuracy and adherence to the facts, 
 which is easy in near and small transactions ; so to 
 arrive at gigantic results, without any compromise 
 of safety. Napoleon was fond of telling the story 
 of the Marseilles banker, who said to his visitor, 
 surprised at the contrast between the splendour of 
 the banker's chateau and hospitality, and the mean- 
 ness of the counting-room in which he had seen 
 him: "Young man, you are too young to understand 
 how masses are formed, — the true and only power, 
 — whether composed of money, water, or men, it is 
 all alike, — a mass is an immense centre of motion, 
 but it must be begun, it must be kept up :" and he 
 might have added, that the way in which it must be 
 begun and kept up, is, by obedience to the law of 
 particles. 
 
 Success consists in close appliance to the laws of 
 the world; and since those laws are intellectual and 
 moral, an intellectual and moral obedience. Political 
 Economy is as good a book wherein to read the life 
 of man, and the ascendancy of laws over all private 
 and hostile influences, as any Bible which has come 
 down to us. 
 
 Money is representative, and follows the nature 
 and fortunes of the owner. The coin is a delicate 
 meter of civil, social, and moral changes. The 
 farmer is covetous of his dollar, and with reason. 
 It is no waif to him. He knows how many strokes 
 of labour it represents. His bones ache with the 
 day's work that earned it. He knows how much 
 land it represents ; how much rain, frost, and sun- 
 shine. He knows that, in the dollar, he gives you 
 so much discretion and patience, so much hoeing, 
 and threshing. Try to lift his dollar ; you must lift 
 
64 CONDUCT 01? LIEE. 
 
 all that weight. In the city, where money follows 
 the skit of a pen, or a lucky rise in exchange, it 
 comes to be looked on as light. I wish the farmer 
 held it dearer, and would spend it only for real 
 bread : force for force. 
 
 The farmer's dollar is heavy, and the clerk's is 
 light and nimble ; leaps out of his pocket ; jumps on 
 to cards and faro-tables : but still more curious is 
 its susceptibility to metaphysical changes. It is the 
 finest barometer of social storms, and announces 
 revolutions. 
 
 Every step of civil advancement makes every 
 man's dollar worth more. In California, the country 
 where it grew, — what would it buy ? A few years 
 since, it would buy a shanty, dysentery, hunger, bad 
 company, and crime. There are wide countries, 
 like Siberia, where it would buy little else to-day 
 than some petty mitigation of suffering. In Rome, 
 it will buy beauty and magnificence. Forty years 
 ago, a dollar would not buy much in Boston. Now 
 it will buy a great deal more in our old town, thanks 
 to railroads, telegraphs, steamers, and the contem- 
 poraneous growth of New York, and the whole 
 country. Yet there are many goods appertaining to 
 a capital city, which are not yet purchasable here, 
 — no, not with a mountain of dollars. A dollar in 
 Florida is not worth a dollar in Massachusetts. A 
 dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, 
 at last, of moral values. A dollar is rated for the 
 corn it will buy, or, to speak strictly, not for the 
 corn or house-room, but for Athenian corn, and 
 Roman house-room, — for the wit, probity, and power, 
 which we eat bread and dwell in houses to share and 
 exert. Wealth is mental; wealth is moral. The 
 value of a dollar is, to buy just things : a dollar goes 
 on increasing in value with all the genius, and all 
 the virtue of the world. A dollar in a university is 
 worth more than a dollar in a jail ; in a temperate, 
 
WEALTH. 65 
 
 schooled, law-abiding community, than in some sink 
 of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic are in 
 constant play. 
 
 The Bank-Note Detector is a useful publication. 
 But the current dollar, silver or paper, is itself the 
 detector of the right and wrong where it circulates. 
 Is it not instantly enhanced by the increase of equity? 
 If a trader refuses to sell his vote, or adheres to 
 some odious right, he makes so much more equity in 
 Massachusetts ; and every acre in the State is more 
 worth, in the hour of his action. If you take out of 
 State Street the ten honestest merchants, and put in 
 ten roguish persons, controlling the same amount of 
 capital, — the rates of insurance will indicate it ; the 
 soundness of banks will show it ; the highways will 
 be less secure ; the schools will feel it ; the children 
 will bring home their little dose of the poison ; the 
 judge will sit less firmly on the bench, and his deci- 
 sions be less upright; he has lost so much support 
 and constraint, — which all need ; and the pulpit will 
 betray it, in a laxer rule of life. An apple-tree, if 
 you take out every day for a number of days a load 
 of loam, and put in a load of sand about its roots, — 
 will find it out. An apple-tree is a stupid kind of 
 creature, but, if this treatment be pursued for a short 
 time, I think it would begin to mistrust something. 
 And if you should take out of the powerful class 
 engaged in trade a hundred good men, and put in a 
 hundred bad, or, what is just the same thing, intro- 
 duce a demoralizing institution, would not the dollar, 
 which is not much stupider than an apple-tree, pre- 
 sently find it out? The value of a dollar is social, 
 as it is created by society. Every man who removes 
 into this city, with any purchasable talent or skill in 
 him, gives to every man's labour in the city a new 
 worth. If a talent is anywhere born into the world, 
 the community of nations is enriched; and, much 
 more, with a new degree of probity. The expense 
 
 5 
 
66 CONDUCT OF LITE, 
 
 of crime, one of the principal charges of every nation, 
 is so far stopped. In Europe, crime is observed to 
 increase or abate with the price of bread. If the 
 Rothschilds at Paris do not accept bills, the people 
 at Manchester, at Paisley, at Birmingham, are forced 
 into the highway, and landlords are shot down in 
 Ireland. The police records attest it. The vibra- 
 tions are presently felt in New York, New Orleans, 
 and Chicago. Not much otherwise, the economical 
 power touches the masses through the political lords. 
 Rothschild refuses the Russian loan, and there is 
 peace, and the harvests are saved. He takes it, and 
 there is war, and an agitation through a large portion 
 of mankind, with every hideous result, ending in 
 revolution, and a new order. 
 
 Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. 
 The basis of political economy is non-interference. 
 The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter 
 of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, 
 and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws. 
 Give no bounties ; make equal laws : secure life and 
 property, and you need not give alms. Open the 
 doors of opportunity to talent and virtue, and they 
 will do themselves justice, and property will not be 
 in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, 
 property rushes from the idle and imbecile, to the 
 industrious, brave, and persevering. 
 
 The laws of nature play through trade, as a toy- 
 battery exhibits the effects of electricity. The level 
 of the sea is not more surely kept than is the equili- 
 brium of value in society, by the demand and supply; 
 and artifice or legislation punishes itself, by reactions, 
 gluts, and bankruptcies. The sublime laws play in- 
 differently through atoms and galaxies. Whoever 
 knows what happens in the getting and spending of 
 a loaf of bread and a pint of beer ; that no wishing 
 will change the rigorous limits of pints and penny 
 loaves ; that, for all that is consumed, so much less 
 
WEALTH. 67 
 
 remains in the basket and pot : but what is gone out 
 of these is not wasted., but well spent, if it nourish 
 his body* and enable him to finish his task ; — knows 
 all of political economy that the budgets of empires 
 can teach him. The interest of petty economy is 
 this symbolization of the great economy; the way in 
 which a house, and a private man's methods, tally 
 with the solar system, and the laws of give and take, 
 throughout nature; and, however wary we are of the 
 falsehoods and petty tricks which we suicidally play 
 off on each other, every man has a certain satisfac- 
 tion, whenever his dealing touches on the inevitable 
 facts; when he sees that things themselves dictate the 
 price, as they always tend to do, and, in large manu- 
 factures, are seen to do. Your paper is not fine or 
 coarse enough, — is too heavy, or too thin. The manu- 
 facturer says, he will furnish you with just that thick- 
 ness or thinness you want ; the pattern is quite indif- 
 ferent to him ; here is his schedule ; — any variety of 
 paper, as cheaper or dearer, with the prices annexed. 
 A pound of paper costs so much, and you may have 
 it made up in any pattern you fancy. 
 
 There is in all our dealings a self-regulation that 
 supersedes chaffering. You will rent a house, but 
 must have it cheap. The owner can reduce the rent, 
 but so he incapacitates himself from making proper 
 repairs, and the tenant gets not the house he would 
 have, but a worse one; besides that, a relation a little 
 injurious is established between landlord and tenant. 
 You dismiss your labourer, saying, " Patrick, I shall 
 send for you as soon as I cannot do without you." 
 Patrick goes off contented, for he knows that the 
 weeds will grow with the potatoes, the vines must be 
 planted next week ; and however unwilling you may 
 be, the cantelopes, crook-necks, and cucumbers will 
 send for him. Who but must wish that all labour 
 and value should stand on the same simple and surly 
 market ? If it is the best of its kind, it will. We 
 
 5—2 
 
68 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 must have joiner, locksmith, planter, priest, poet, 
 doctor, cook, weaver, ostler ; each in turn, through 
 the year. 
 
 If a St. Michael's pear sells for a shilling, it costs 
 a shilling to raise it. If, in Boston, the hest securities 
 offer twelve per cent, for money, they have just six 
 per cent, of insecurity. You may not see that the 
 fine pear costs you a shilling, hut it costs the commu- 
 nity so much. The shilling represents the number 
 of enemies the pear has, and the amount of risk in 
 ripening it. The price of coal shows the narrowness 
 of the coal-field, and a compulsory confinement of the 
 miners to a certain district. All salaries are reckoned 
 on contingent, as well as on actual services. <( If the 
 wind were always south-west by west," said the 
 skipper, u women might take ships to sea." One 
 might say, that all things are of one price ; that 
 nothing is cheap or dear ; and that the apparent dis- 
 parities that strike us, are only a shopman's trick of 
 concealing the damage in your bargain. A youth 
 coming into the city from his native New Hampshire 
 farm, with its hard fare still fresh in his remembrance, 
 boards at a first-class hotel, and believes he must 
 somehow have outwitted Dr. Franklin and Malthus, 
 for luxuries are cheap. But he pays for the one con- 
 venience of a better dinner, by the loss of some of 
 the richest social and educational advantages. He 
 has lost what guards ! what incentives ! He will 
 perhaps find by and by, that he left the Muses at the 
 door of the hotel, and found the Furies inside. 
 Money often costs too much, and power and pleasure 
 are not cheap. The ancient poet said, "the gods 
 sell all things at a fair price." 
 
 There is an example of the compensations in the 
 commercial history of this country. When the 
 European wars threw the carrying-trade of the 
 world, from 1800 to 1812, into American bottoms, 
 a seizure was now and then made of an American 
 
WEALTH. 69 
 
 ship. Of course; the loss was serious to the owner, 
 but the country was indemnified 3 for we charged 
 threepence a pound for carrying cotton, sixpence for 
 tobacco, and so on ; which paid for the risk and loss, 
 and brought into the country an immense prosperity, 
 early marriages, private wealth, the building of cities 
 and of States; and, after the war was over, we 
 received compensation over and above, by treaty, for 
 all the seizures. Yfeli, the Americans grew rich 
 and great. But the pay-day comes round. Britain, 
 Eranee, and Germany, which our extraordinary 
 profits had impoverished, send out, attracted by the 
 fame of our advantages, first their thousands, then 
 their millions of poor people, to share the crop. At 
 first we employ them, and increase our prosperity : 
 but, in the artificial system of society and of protected 
 labour, which we also have adopted and enlarged, 
 there come presently checks and stoppages. Then 
 we refuse to employ these poor men. But they will 
 not so be answered. They go into the poor rates, 
 and, though we refuse wages, we must now pay the 
 same amount in the form of taxes. Again, it turns out 
 that the largest proportion of crimes are committed 
 by foreigners. The cost of the crime, and the ex- 
 pense of courts, and of prisons, we must bear, and the 
 standing army of preventive police we must pay. 
 The cost of education of the posterity of this great 
 colony, I will not compute. But the gross amount 
 of these costs will begin to pay back what we thought 
 was a net gain from our transatlantic customers of 
 1800. It is vain to refuse this payment. We can- | 
 not get rid of these people, and we cannot get rid of ' 
 their will to be supported. That has become an in- 
 evitable element of our politics ; and, for their votes, 
 each of the dominant parties courts and assists them 
 to get it executed. Moreover, we have to pay, not 
 what would have contented them at home, but what 
 they have learned to think necessary here; so that 
 
70 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral considerations 
 complicate the problem. 
 
 There are a few measures of economy which will 
 bear to be named without disgust; for the subject 
 is tender, and we may easily have too much of it ; 
 and therein resembles the hideous animalcules of 
 which our bodies are built up, — which, offensive in 
 the particular, yet compose valuable and effective 
 masses. Our nature and genius force us to respect 
 ends, whilst we use means. We must use the means, 
 and yet, in our most accurate using, somehow screen 
 and cloak them, as we can only give them any 
 beauty by a reflection of the glory of the end. 
 That is the good head, which serves the end, and 
 commands the means. The rabble are corrupted by 
 their means : the means are too strong for them, and 
 they desert then.' end. 
 
 1. The first of these measures is that each man's 
 expense must proceed from his character. As long 
 as your genius buys, the investment is safe, though 
 you spend like a monarch. Nature arms each man 
 with some faculty which enables him to do easily 
 some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes 
 him necessary to society. This native determination 
 guides his labour and his spending. He wants an 
 equipment of means and tools proper to his talent. 
 And to save on this point, were to neutralize the 
 special strength and helpfulness of each mind. Do 
 your work, respecting the excellence of the work, 
 and not its acceptableness. This is so much economy, 
 that, rightly read, it is the sum of economy. Pro- 
 fligacy consists not in spending years of time or 
 chests of money, — but in spending them off the line 
 of your career. The crime which bankrupts men 
 and States is, job-work, — declining from your main 
 design, to serve a turn here or there. Nothing is 
 beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life: 
 
WEALTH, 71 
 
 nothing is great or desirable, if it is off from that. 
 I think we are entitled here to draw a straight line 
 and say, that society can never prosper, but must 
 always be bankrupt, until every man does that which 
 he was created to do. 
 
 Spend for your expense, and retrench the expense 
 which is not yours. Allston, the painter, was wont 
 to say, that he built a plain house, and filled it with 
 plain furniture, because he would hold out no bribe 
 to any to visit him, who had not similar tastes to 
 his own. We are sympathetic, and, like children, 
 want everything we see. But it is a large stride to 
 independence, — when a man, in the discovery of 
 his proper talent, has sunk the necessity for false 
 expenses. As the betrothed maiden, by one secure 
 affection, is relieved from a system of slaveries,— 
 the daily inculcated necessity of pleasing all, — so 
 the man who has found what he can do, can spend 
 on that, and leave all other spending. Montaigne 
 said, when he was a younger brother he went 
 brave in dress and equipage, but afterward his 
 chateau and farms might answer for him. Let a man 
 who belongs to the class of nobles, those, namely, 
 who have found out that they can do something, 
 relieve himself of all vague squandering on objects 
 not his. Let the realist not mind appearances. Let 
 him delegate to others the costly courtesies and 
 decorations of social life. The virtues are economists, 
 but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to 
 humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good 
 husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth 
 from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year. Pride 
 is handsome, economical : pride eradicates so many 
 vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as 
 if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. 
 Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, 
 can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, 
 purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can 
 
72 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 travel afoot, can talk with, poor men, or sit silent well- 
 contented in fine saloons. But vanity costs money, 
 labour, horses, men, women, health, and peace, and 
 is ■ .-till nothing at last, a long way leading nowhere. 
 — Only one drawback ; proud people are intolerably 
 selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving. 
 
 Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a 
 genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or 
 philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill pro- 
 vider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter 
 himself with duties which will embitter his days, 
 and spoil him for his proper work. We had in this 
 region, twenty years ago, among our educated men, 
 a sort of Arcadian fanaticism, a passionate desire to 
 go upon the land, and unite farming to intellectual 
 pursuits. Many effected their purpose, and made 
 the experiment, and some became downright plough- 
 men ; but all were cured of their faith that scholarship 
 and practical farming (I mean, with one's own hands) 
 could be united. 
 
 With brow bent, with firm intent, the pale scholar 
 leaves his desk to draw a freer breath, and get a 
 juster statement of his thought, in the garden- walk. 
 He stoops to pull up a purslain, or a dock, that is 
 choking the young corn, and finds there are two: 
 close behind the last, is a third ; he reaches out his 
 hand to a fourth ; behind that, are four thousand and 
 one. He is heated and untuned, and, by and by, 
 wakes up from his idiot dream of chickweed and 
 red-root, to remember his morning thought, and to 
 find, that, with his adamantine purposes, he has been 
 duped by a dandelion. A garden is like those per- 
 nicious machineries we read of, every month, in the 
 newspapers, which catch a man's coat-skirt or his 
 hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole 
 body to irresistible destruction. In an evil hour he 
 pulled down his wall, and added a field to his home- 
 stead. No land is bad, but land is worse. If a man 
 
WEALTH. 73 
 
 own land, the land owns him. Now let him leave 
 home, if he dare. Every tree and graft, every hill 
 of melons, row of corn, or quickset hedge, all he ha? 
 done, and all he means to do, stand in his way, like 
 duns, when he would go out of his gate. The 
 devotion to these vines and trees he finds poisonous. 
 Long free walks, a circuit of miles, free his brain, 
 and serve his body. Long marches are no hardship 
 to him. He believes he composes easily on the 
 hills. But this pottering in a few square yards of 
 garden is dispiriting and drivelling. The smell of 
 the plants has drugged him, and robbed him of 
 energy. He finds a catalepsy in his bones. He 
 grows peevish and poor-spiritedo The genius of 
 reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resin- 
 ous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative 
 in sparks and shocks : the other is diffuse strength ; 
 so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's 
 duties. 
 
 An engraver, wdiose hands must be of an exquisite 
 delicacy of stroke, should not lay stone walls. Sir 
 David Brewster gives exact instructions for micro- 
 scopic observation: — "Lie down on your back, 
 and hold the single lens and object over your 
 eye," &c. &c. How much more the seeker of ab- 
 stract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt 
 concentration, and almost a going out of the body to 
 think ! 
 
 2. Spend after your genius, and hj system. Nature 
 goes by rule, not by sallies and saltations. There 
 must be system in the economies. Saving and un- 
 expensiveness will not keep the most pathetic family 
 from ruin, nor will bigger incomes make free spend- 
 ing safe. The secret of success lies never in the 
 amount of money, but in the relation of income to 
 outgo ; as if, after expense has been fixed at a certain 
 point, then new and steady rills of income, though 
 never so small, being added, wealth begins. But 
 
74 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 in ordinary, as means increase, spending increases 
 faster, so that large incomes, in England and else- 
 where, are found not to help matters; — the eating 
 quality of debt does not relax its voracity. When 
 the cholera is in the potato, what is the use of plant- 
 ing larger crops ? In England, the richest country 
 in the universe, I was assured by shrewd observers, 
 that great lords and ladies had no more guineas to 
 give away than other people; that liberality with 
 money is as rare and as immediately famous a virtue 
 as it is here. Want is a growing giant whom the 
 coat of Have was never large enough to cover. I 
 remember, in Warwickshire, to have been shown a 
 fair manor, still in the same name as in Shakspeare's 
 time. The rent-roll, I was told, is some fourteen 
 thousand pounds a year : but when the second son of 
 the late proprietor was born, the father was perplexed 
 how to provide for him. The eldest son must in- 
 herit the manor; what to do with this supernume- 
 rary ? He was advised to breed him for the Church, 
 and to settle him in the rectorship, which was in the 
 gift of the family ; which was done. It is a general 
 rule in that country, that bigger incomes do not help 
 anybody. It is commonly observed, that a sudden 
 wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery, or a large 
 bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. 
 They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and, 
 with the rapid wealth, come rapid claims : which 
 they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is 
 quickly dissipated. 
 
 A system must be in every economy, or the best 
 single expedients are of no avail. A farm is a 
 good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, 
 and does not need a salary, or a shop to eke it out. 
 Thus, the cattle are a main link in the chain-ring. 
 If the nonconformist or aesthetic farmer leaves out 
 the cattle, and does not also leave out the want 
 which the cattle must supply, he must fill the gap 
 
WEALTH. 75 
 
 by begging or stealing. When men now alive were 
 born, the farm yielded everything that was con- 
 sumed on it. The farm yielded no money, and the 
 farmer got on without. If he fell sick, his neighbours 
 came in to his aid: each gave a day's work, or a 
 half-day ; or lent his yoke of oxen, or his horse, 
 and kept his work even; hoed his potatoes, mowed 
 his hay, reaped his rye ; well knowing that no man 
 could afford to hire labour without selling his land. 
 In autumn, a farmer could sell an ox or a hog, and 
 get a little money to pay taxes withal. Now, the 
 farmer buys almost all he consumes — tin-ware, cloth, 
 sugar, tea, coffee, fish, coal, railroad-tickets, and 
 newspapers. 
 
 A master in each art is required, because the 
 practice is never with still or dead subjects, but they 
 change in your hands. You think farm-buildings 
 and broad acres a. solid property: but its value is 
 flowing like water. It requires as much watching as 
 if you were decanting wine from a cask. The farmer 
 knows what to do with it, stops every leak, turns all 
 the streamlets to one reservoir, and decants wine : 
 but a blunderhead comes out of Cornhill, tries his 
 hand, and it all leaks away. So is it with granite 
 streets, or timber townships, as with fruit or flowers. 
 Nor is any investment so permanent, that it can be 
 allowed to remain without incessant watching, as the 
 history of each attempt to lock up an inheritance 
 through two generations for an unborn inheritor may 
 show. 
 
 When Mr. Cockayne takes a cottage in the country, 
 c*nd will keep his cow, he thinks a cow is a creature 
 that is fed on hay, and gives a pail of milk twice a 
 day. But the cow that he buys gives milk for three 
 months ; then her bag dries up. What to do with a 
 dry cow ? who will buy her ? Perhaps he bought 
 also a yoke of oxen to do his work ; but they get 
 blown and lame. What to do with blown and lame 
 
76 CONDUCT OF UFE. 
 
 oxen ? The farmer fats his, after the spring-work is 
 done, and kills them in the fall. But how can 
 Cockayne, who has no pastures, and leaves his cottage 
 daily in the cars, at business hours, be pothered with 
 fatting and killing oxen ? He plants trees ; but 
 there must be crops, to keep the trees in ploughed 
 land. What shall be the crops ? He will have 
 nothing to do with trees, but will have grass. After 
 a year or two, the grass must be turned up and 
 ploughed : now what crops ? Credulous Cockayne ! 
 
 3. Help comes in the custom of the country, and 
 the rule of Impera parendo. The rule is not to 
 dictate, nor to insist on carrying out each of your 
 schemes by ignorant wilfulness, but to learn prac- 
 tically the secret spoken from all nature, that things 
 themselves refuse to be mismanaged, and will show 
 to the watchful their own law. Nobody need stir 
 hand or foot. The custom of the country will do it 
 all. I know not how to build or to plant; neither 
 how to buy wood, nor what to do with the house-lot, 
 the field, or the wood-lot, when bought. Never fear: 
 it is all settled how it shall be, long beforehand, in 
 the custom of the country, whether to sand, or 
 whether to clay it, when to plough, and how to dress, 
 whether to grass, or to corn ; and you cannot help or 
 hinder it. Nature has her own best mode of doing 
 each thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if 
 we will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, she 
 will not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer 
 our own way to hers. How often we must remember 
 the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken 
 bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from 
 false position; they fly into place by the action of 
 the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely. 
 
 Of the two eminent engineers in the recent con- 
 struction of railways in England, Mr. Brunei went 
 straight from terminus to terminus, through moun- 
 tains, over streams, crossing highways, cutting ducal 
 
WEALTH. 77 
 
 estates in two, and shooting through this man's cellar, 
 and that man's attic window, and so arriving at his 
 end, at great pleasure to geometers, but with cost to 
 his company. Mr. Stephenson, on the contrary, 
 believing that the river knows the way, followed his 
 valley, as implicitly as our Western Railroad follows 
 the Westfiekl River, and turned out to be the safest 
 and cheapest engineer. We say the cows laid out 
 Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors. Every 
 pedestrian in our pastures has frequent occasion to 
 thank the cows for cutting the best path through the 
 thicket, and over the hills : and travellers and Indians 
 know the value of a buffalo-trail, which is sure to be 
 the easiest possible pass through the ridge. 
 
 When a citizen, fresh from Dock Square, or Milk 
 Street, comes out and buys land in the country, his 
 first thought is to a fine outlook from his windows ; 
 his library must command a western view — a sunset 
 every day, bathing the shoulder of Blue Hills, 
 Wachusett, and the peaks of Monadnoc and TTnca- 
 noonuc. What, thirty acres, and all this magnifi- 
 cence for fifteen hundred dollars ! It would be cheap 
 at fifty thousand. He proceeds at once, his eyes 
 dim with tears of joy, to fix the spot for his corner- 
 stone. But the man who is to level the ground, 
 thinks it will take many hundred loads of gravel to 
 fill the hollow to the road. The stone-mason who 
 should build the well thinks he shall have to dig 
 forty feet : the baker doubts he shall never like to 
 drive up to the door : the practical neighbour cavils 
 at the position of the barn ; and the citizen comes to 
 know that his predecessor the farmer built the house 
 in the right spot for the sun and wind, the spring, and 
 w r ater-drainage, and the convenience to the pasture, 
 the garden, the field, and the road. So Dock Square 
 yields the point, and things have their own way. 
 Use has made the farmer wise, and the foolish citizen 
 learns to take his counsel. From step to step he 
 
78 CONDUCT OE LIEE. 
 
 comes at last to surrender at discretion. The farmer 
 affects to take his orders ; hut the citizen says, " You 
 may ask me as often as you will, and in what ingenious 
 forms, for an opinion concerning the mode of "building 
 my wall, or sinking my well, or laying out my acre, 
 hut the hall will rebound to you. These are matters 
 on which I neither know, nor need to know any- 
 thing. These are questions which you, and not I, 
 shall answer." 
 
 Not less, within doors, a system settles itself para- 
 mount and tyrannical over master and mistress, 
 servant and child, cousin and acquaintance. 'Tis 
 in vain that genius, or virtue, or energy of character, 
 strive and cry against it. This is fate. And 'tis 
 very well that the poor husband reads in a book of a 
 new way of living, and resolves to adopt it at home : 
 let him go home and try it, if he dare. 
 
 4. Another point of economy is to look for seed 
 of the same kind as you sow : and not to hope to buy 
 one kind with another kind. Friendship buys friend- 
 ship ; justice, justice ; military merit, military success. 
 Good husbandry finds wife, children, and household. 
 The good merchant, large gains, ships, stocks, and- 
 money. The good poet, fame and literary credit; 
 but not either, the other. Yet there is commonly a 
 confusion of expectations on these points. Hotspur 
 lives for the moment; praises himself for it; and 
 despises Furlong, that he does not. Hotspur, of 
 course, is poor ; and Furlong a good provider. The 
 odd circumstance is, that Hotspur thinks it a supe- 
 riority in himself, this improvidence, which ought to 
 be rewarded with Furlong's lands. 
 
 I have not at all completed my design. But we 
 must not leave the topic, without casting one glance 
 into the interior recesses. It is a doctrine of phi- 
 losophy, that man is a being of degrees ; that there 
 is nothing in the world, which is not repeated in his 
 body ; his body being a sort of miniature or summary 
 
WEALTH. 79 
 
 of the world : then that there is nothing in his body, 
 which is not repeated as in a celestial sphere in 
 his mind : then, there is nothing in his brain, which 
 is not repeated, in a higher sphere, in his moral 
 system. 
 
 5. Now these things are so in Nature. All things 
 ascend, and the royal rule of economy is, that it 
 should ascend also, or whatever we do must always 
 have a higher aim. Thus it is a maxim, that money 
 is another kind of blood : pecunia alter sanguis : or, 
 the estate of a man is only a larger kind of body, and 
 admits of regimen analogous to his bodily circula- 
 tions. So there is no maxim of the merchant — e.g. 
 (i Best use of money is to pay debts : " " Every 
 business by itself : " " Best time is present time : " 
 iC The right investment is in tools of your trade," or 
 the like — which does not admit of an extended sense. 
 The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are 
 laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a 
 coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend 
 for power, and not for pleasure. It is to invest 
 income ; that is to say, to take up particulars into 
 generals ; days into integral eras, — literary, emotive, 
 practical, of its life, and still to ascend in its invest- 
 ment. The merchant has but one rule, absorb and 
 invest : he is to be capitalist : the scraps and filings 
 must be gathered back into the crucible ; the gas and 
 smoke mast be burned, and earnings must not go to 
 increase expense, but to capital again. Well, the man 
 must be capitalist. Will he spend his income, or will 
 he invest ? His body and every organ is under the 
 same law. His body is a jar, in which the liquor of 
 life is stored. Will he spend for pleasure? The 
 way to ruin is short and facile. Will he not spend, 
 but hoard for power ? It passes through the sacred 
 fermentations, by that law of Nature whereby every- 
 thing climbs to higher platforms, and bodily vigour 
 becomes mental and moral vigour. The bread he 
 
80 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 eats is first strength and animal spirits ; it becomes, 
 in higher laboratories, imagery and thought ; and in 
 still higher results, courage and endurance. This is 
 the right compound interest ; this is capital doubled, 
 quadrupled, centupled; man raised to his highest 
 power. 
 
 The true thrift is always to spend on the higher 
 plane ; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, 
 that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in 
 augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man en- 
 riched, in repeating the old experiments of animal 
 sensation, nor unless, through new powers and as- 
 cending pleasures, he knows himself, by the actual 
 experience of higher good, to be already on the way 
 to the highest. 
 
 IV.-CULTURE. 
 
 Can rules or tutors educate 
 
 The semigod whom we await? 
 
 He must be musical, 
 
 Tremulous, impressional, 
 
 Alive to gentle influence 
 
 Of landscape and of sky, 
 
 And tender to the spirit-touch 
 
 Of man's or maiden's eye: 
 
 But, to his native centre fast, 
 
 Shall into Future fuse the Past, 
 
 And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. 
 
 The word of ambition at the present day is Culture. 
 "Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of 
 wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the 
 theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his 
 power. A topical memory makes him an almanac ; 
 . a talent for debate, a disputant ; skill to get money 
 makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture re- 
 duces these inflammations by invoking the aid of 
 other powers against the dominant talent, and by 
 
CULTURE. 81 
 
 appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success. 
 For performance, nature has no mercy, and sacrifices 
 the performer to get it done ; makes a dropsy or a 
 tympany of him. If she wants a thumb, she makes 
 one at the cost of arms and legs, and any excess of 
 power in one part is usually paid for at once by some 
 defect in a contiguous part. 
 
 Our efficiency depends so much on our concentra- 
 tion, that Nature usually in the instances where a 
 marked man is sent into the world, overloads him 
 with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working 
 power. It is said, no man can write but one book ; 
 and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its im- 
 pression on all his performances. If she creates a 
 policeman like Fouche, he is made up of suspicions 
 and of plots to circumvent them. " The air," said 
 Fouche, " is full of poniards." The physician Sanc- 
 torius spent his life in a pair of scales, weighing his 
 food. Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, because 
 the Canon Yeman's Tale illustrates the statute 
 Hen, V. chap. 4, against alchemy. I saw a man 
 who believed the principal mischiefs in the English 
 State were derived from the devotion to musical 
 concerts. A freemason, not long since, set out to 
 explain to this country, that the principal cause of 
 the success of General Washington was, the aid he 
 derived from the freemasons. 
 
 But worse than the harping on one string, Nature 
 has secured individualism, by giving the private 
 person a high conceit of his weight in the system. 
 The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and 
 bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 
 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all consti- 
 tutions. In the distemper known to physicians as 
 chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and con- 
 tinues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a 
 metaphysical varioloid of this malady? The man 
 runs round a ring formed bv his own talent, falls into 
 
 6 
 
82 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world. 
 It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying 
 forms is a craving for sympathy. The sufferers 
 parade their miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, 
 reveal their indictable crimes, that you may pity 
 them. They like sickness, because physical pain will 
 extort some show of interest from the bystanders, as 
 we have seen children, who, finding themselves of no 
 account when grown people come in, will cough till 
 they choke, to draw attention. 
 
 This distemper is the scourge of talent, — of artists, 
 inventors, and philosophers. Eminent spiritualists 
 shall have an incapacity of putting their act or word 
 aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing 
 it is. Beware of the man who says, " I am on the 
 eve of a revelation." It is speedily punished, inas- 
 much as this habit invites men to humour it, and by 
 treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a 
 narrower selfism, and exclude him from the great 
 world of God's cheerful fallible men and women. Let 
 us rather be insulted, whilst we are insultable. Re- 
 ligious literature has eminent examples, and if we 
 run over our private list of poets, critics, philan- 
 thropists, and philosophers, we shall find them in- 
 fected with this dropsy, and elephantiasis, which we 
 ought to have tapped. 
 
 This goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable 
 persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in 
 nature which it subserves ; such as we see in the 
 sexual attraction. The preservation of the species 
 was a point of such necessity, that nature has secured 
 it at all hazards by immensely overloading the pas- 
 sion, at the risk of perpetual crime and disorder. So 
 egotism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which 
 each individual persists to be what he is. 
 
 This individuality is not only not inconsistent with 
 culture, but is the basis of it. Every valuable nature 
 is there in its own right, and the student we speak 
 
CULTUKE, 83 
 
 to must have a motherwit invincible by bis culture, 
 which uses all books, arts, facilities, and elegancies 
 of intercourse, but is never subdued and lost in them. 
 He only is a well-made man who has a good deter- 
 mination. And the end of culture is not to destroy 
 this, God forbid ! but to train away all impediment 
 and mixture, and leave nothing but pure power. 
 Our student must have a style and determination, 
 and be a master in his own specialty. But, having 
 this, he must put it behind him. He must have a 
 catholicity, a power to see with a free and disengaged 
 look every object. Yet is this private interest and 
 self so overcharged, that, if a man seeks a companion 
 who can look at objects for their own sake, and with- 
 out affection or self-reference, he will find the fewest 
 who will give him that satisfaction ; whilst most men 
 are afflicted with a coldness, an incuriosity, as soon 
 as any object does not connect with their self-love. 
 Though they talk of the object before them, they 
 are thinking of themselves, and their vanity is laying 
 little traps for your admiraiion. 
 
 But after a man has discovered that there are 
 limits to the interest which his private history has 
 for mankind, he still converses with his family, or 
 a few companions, — perhaps with half a dozen per- 
 sonalities that are famous in his neighbourhood. In 
 Boston, the question of life is the names of some 
 eight or ten men. Have you seen Mr. Allston, 
 Doctor Channing, Mr. Adams, Mr. Webster, Mr. 
 Greenough? Have you heard Everett, Garrison, 
 Father Taylor, Theodore Parker ? Have you 
 talked with Messieurs Turbinewheel, Summitlevel, 
 and Lacofrupees ? Then you may as well die. In 
 New York, the question is of some other eight, or 
 ten, or twenty. Have you seen a few lawyers, mer- 
 chants, and brokers, — two or three scholars, two or 
 three capitalists, two or three editors of newspapers ? 
 New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is 
 
 6—2 
 
84 CONDUCT QE LIFE. 
 
 at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of 
 a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which 
 make up our American existence. Nor do we 
 expect anybody to be other than a faint copy of 
 these heroes. 
 
 Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company 
 of intelligent men together again after ten years, 
 and if the presence of some penetrating and calming 
 genius could dispose them to frankness, what a con- 
 fession of insanities would come up ! The " causes " 
 to which we have sacrificed, Tariff or Democracy, 
 Whiggism or Abolition, Temperance or Socialism, 
 would show like roots of bitterness and dragons of 
 wrath : and our talents are as mischievous as if each 
 had been seized upon by some bird of prey, which 
 had whisked him away from fortune, from truth, 
 from the d.ear society of the poets, some zeal, some 
 bias, and only when he was now grey and nerveless, 
 was it relaxing its claws, and he awaking to sober 
 perceptions. 
 
 Culture is the suggestion from certain best thoughts, 
 that a man has a range of affinities, through which 
 he can modulate the violence of any master-tones 
 that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and 
 succour him against himself. Culture redresses his 
 balance, puts him among his equals and superiors, 
 revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns 
 him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion. 
 
 'Tis not a compliment, but a disparagement, to 
 consult a man only on horses, or on steam, or en 
 theatres, or on eating, or on books, and, whenever 
 he appears, considerately to turn the conversation to 
 the bantling he is known to fondle. In the Norse 
 heaven of our forefathers, Thor's house had five 
 hundred and forty floors ; and man's house has five 
 hundred and forty floors. His excellence is facility 
 of adaptation and of transition through many related 
 points, to wide contrasts and extremes. Culture lulls 
 
CULTURE. - 85 
 
 his exaggeration, Ms conceit of his village or his city. 
 We must leave our pets at home, when we go into 
 the street, and meet men on broad grounds of good 
 meaning and good sense. No performance is worth 
 loss of geniality. 'Tis a cruel price we pay for cer- 
 tain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy. In 
 the Norse legend, Allfadir did not get a drink of 
 Mimir's spring (the fountain of wisdom) until he 
 left his eye in pledge. And here is a pedant that 
 cannot unfold his wrinkles, nor conceal his wrath at 
 interruption by the best, if their conversation do not 
 fit his impertinency, — here is he to afflict us with his 
 personalities. 'Tis incident to scholars, that each of 
 them fancies he is pointedly odious in his community. 
 Draw him out of this limbo of irritability. Cleanse 
 with healthy blood his parchment skin. You restore 
 to him his eyes which he left in pledge at Mimir's 
 spring. If you are the victim of your doing, who 
 cares what you do ? We can spare your opera, your 
 gazetteer, your chemic analysis, your history, your 
 syllogisms. Your man of genius pays dear for his 
 distinction. His head runs up into a spire, and in- 
 stead of a healthy man, merry and wise, he is some 
 mad dominie. Nature is reckless of the individual. 
 When she has points to carry, she carries them. To 
 wade in marshes and sea-margins is the destiny of 
 certain birds, and they are so accurately made for 
 this, that they are imprisoned in those places. Each 
 animal out of its habitat would starve. To the phy- 
 sician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of 
 one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and 
 a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus 
 we are victims of adaptation. 
 
 The antidotes against this organic egotism are, 
 the range and variety of attractions, as gained by 
 acquaintance with the world, with men of merit, 
 with classes of society, with travel, with eminent 
 persons, and with the high resources of philo- 
 
86 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 sophy, art, and religion: books, travel, society, 
 solitude. 
 
 The hardiest sceptic who has seen a horse broken, 
 a pointer trained, or who has visited a menagerie, 
 or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not 
 deny the validity of education. " A boy," says 
 Plato, " is the most vicious of all wild beasts ; " and, 
 in the same spirit, the old English poet Gascoigne 
 says, (C a boy is better unborn than untaught." The 
 city breeds one kind of speech and manners; the 
 back-country, a different style ; the sea, another ; the 
 army, a fourth. We know that an army which can 
 be confided in, may be formed by discipline ; that by 
 systematic discipline all men may be made heroes : 
 Marshal Lannes said to a French officer : " Know, 
 Colonel, that none but a poltroon will boast that he 
 never was afraid." A great part of courage is the 
 courage of having done the thing before. And, in all 
 human action, those faculties will be strong which are 
 used. Robert Owen said, " Give me a tiger, and I 
 will educate him." J Tis inhuman to want faith in the 
 power of education, since to meliorate is the law of 
 nature ; and men are valued precisely as they exert 
 onward or meliorating force. On the other hand, 
 poltroonery is the acknowledging an inferiority to 
 be incurable. 
 
 Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal dis- 
 temper. There are people who can never understand 
 a trope, or any second or expanded sense given to 
 your words, or any humour ; but remain literalists, 
 after hearing the music, and poetry, and rhetoric, 
 and wit, of seventy or eighty years. They are past 
 the help of surgeon or clergy. But even these can 
 understand pitchforks and the cry of fire ! and I have 
 noticed in some of this class a marked dislike of 
 earthquakes. 
 
 Let us make our education brave and preven- 
 tive. Politics is an after-work, a poor patching. 
 
CULTURE. 87 
 
 We are always a little late. The evil is done, 
 the law is passed, and we begin the up-hill agita- 
 tion for repeal of that of which we ought to have 
 prevented the enacting. We shall one day learn 
 to supersede politics by education. What we call 
 our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, 
 gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the 
 symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, 
 in Education. 
 
 Our arts and tools give to him who can handle 
 them much the same advantage over the novice, as 
 if you extended his life, ten, fifty, or a hundred 
 years. And I think it the part of good sense to 
 provide every fine soul with such culture, that it 
 shall not, at thirty or forty years, have to say, " This 
 which I might do is made hopeless through my want 
 of weapons." 
 
 But it is conceded that much of our training fails 
 of effect; that all success is hazardous and rare; 
 that a large part of our cost and pains is thrown 
 away. Nature takes the matter into her own hands, 
 and, though we must not omit any jot of our system, 
 we can seldom be sure that it has availed much, or, 
 that as much good would not have accrued from a 
 different system. 
 
 Books, as containing the finest records of human 
 wit, must always enter into our notion of culture. 
 The best heads that ever existed, Pericles, Plato, 
 Julius Caesar, Shakspeare, Goethe, Milton, were 
 well-read, universally educated men, and quite too 
 wise to undervalue letters. Their opinion has 
 weight, because they had means of knowing the 
 opposite opinion. We look that a great man should 
 be a good reader, or, in proportion to the spontaneous 
 power should be the assimilating power. Good criti- 
 cism is very rare, and always precious. I am always 
 happy to meet persons who perceive the transcendent 
 superiority of Shakspeare over all other writers. I 
 
88 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 like people who like Plato. Because this love does 
 not consist with self-conceit. 
 
 But books are good only as far as a boy is ready 
 for them. He sometimes gets ready very slowly. 
 You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis 
 the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to 
 the Latin class, but much of his tuition comes, on 
 his way to school, from the shop-windows. You 
 like the strict rules and the long terms ; and he 
 finds his best leading in a by-way of his own, and 
 refuses any companions but of his choosing. He 
 hates the grammar and Gradus, and loves guns, 
 fishing-rods, horses, and boats. Well, the boy is 
 right ; and you are not fit to direct his bringing up, 
 if your theory leaves out his gymnastic training. 
 Archery, cricket, gun and fishing-rod, horse and 
 boat, are all educators, liberalizers ; and so are 
 dancing, dress, and the street-talk; and — provided 
 only the boy has resources, and is of a noble and 
 ingenuous strain — these will not serve him less 
 than the books. He learns chess, whist, dancing, 
 and theatricals. The father observes that another 
 boy has learned algebra and geometry in the same 
 time. But the first boy has acquired much more 
 than these poor games along with them. He is 
 infatuated for weeks with whist and chess; but 
 presently will find out, as you did, that when he rises 
 from the game too long played, he is vacant and 
 forlorn, and despises himself. Thenceforward it 
 takes place with other things, and has its due 
 weight in his experience. These minor skills and 
 accomplishments, for example, dancing, are tickets 
 of admission to the dress-circle of mankind, and the 
 being master of them enables the youth to judge 
 intelligently of much, on which, otherwise, he 
 would give a pedantic squint. Landor said, " I 
 have suffered more from my bad dancing, than from 
 all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put 
 
CULTURE. 89 
 
 together." Provided always the boy is teachable 
 (for we are not proposing to make a statue out of 
 punk), football, cricket, archery, swimming, skating, 
 climbing, fencing, riding, are lessons in the art of 
 power, which it is his main business to learn, — 
 riding, specially, of which Lord Herbert of Cherbury 
 said, " a good rider on a good horse is as much 
 above himself and others as the world can make 
 him." Besides, the gun, fishing-rod, boat, and 
 horse, constitute, among all who use them, secret 
 freemasonries. They are as if they belonged to one 
 club. 
 
 There is also a negative value in these arts. 
 Their chief use to the youth is, not amusement, but 
 to be known for what they are, and not to remain to 
 him occasions of heartburn. We are full of super- 
 stitions. Each class fixes its eyes on the advantages 
 it has not ; the refined, on rude strength ; the demo- 
 crat, on birth and breeding. One of the benefits of a 
 college education is, to show the boy its little avail. 
 I knew a leading man in a leading city, who, having 
 set his heart on an education at the university, and 
 missed it, could never quite feel himself the equal of 
 his own brothers who had gone thither. His easy 
 superiority to multitudes of professional men could 
 never quite countervail to him this imaginary defect. 
 Balls, riding, wine-parties, and billiards, pass to a 
 poor boy for something fine and romantic, which 
 they are not; and a free admission to them on an 
 equal footing, if it were possible, only once or twice, 
 would be worth ten times its cost, by undeceiving him. 
 
 I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I 
 observe that men run away to other countries, because 
 they are not good in their own, and run back to their 
 own, because they pass for nothing in the new places. 
 For the most part, only the light characters travel. 
 Who are you that have no task to keep you at home ? 
 I have been quoted as saying captious things about 
 
90 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 travel ; but I mean to do justice. I thinly there is a 
 restlessness in our people, which argues want of 
 character. All educated Americans, first or last, go 
 to Europe; — perhaps, because it is their mental 
 home, as the invalid habits of this country might 
 suggest. An eminent teacher of girls said, " the 
 idea of a girl's education is, whatever qualifies 
 them for going to Europe." Can we never extract 
 this tapeworm of Europe from the brain of our 
 countrymen? One sees very well what their fate 
 must be. He that does not fill a place at home, 
 cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insig- 
 nificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you 
 will find anything there which you have not seen at 
 home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. 
 Do you suppose there is any country where they do 
 not scald milkpans, and swaddle the infants, and 
 burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is 
 true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go 
 where he will, he can only find so much beauty or 
 worth as he carries. 
 
 Of course, for some men, travel may be useful. 
 Naturalists, discoverers, and sailors are born. Some 
 men are made for couriers, exchangers, envoys, mis- 
 sionaries, bearers of despatches, as others are for 
 farmers and working-men. And if the man is of a 
 light and social turn, and Nature has aimed to make 
 a legged and winged creature, framed for locomotion, 
 we must follow her hint, and furnish him with that 
 breeding which gives currency, as sedulously as with 
 that which gives worth. But let us not be pedantic, 
 but allow to travel its full effect. The boy grown up 
 on the farm, which he has never left, is said in the 
 country to have had no chance, and boys and men of 
 that condition look upon work on a railroad, or 
 drudgery in a city, as opportunity. Poor country 
 boys of Vermont and Connecticut formerly owed 
 what knowledge they had to their peddling trips to 
 
CULTURE. 91 
 
 the Southern States. California and the Pacific 
 Coast is now the university of this class, as Virginia 
 was in old times. "To have some chance" is their 
 word. And the phrase " to know the world/' or to 
 travel, is synonymous with all men's ideas of advan- 
 tage and superiority. No doubt, to a man of sense, 
 travel offers advantages. As many languages as he 
 has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so 
 many times is he a man. A foreign country is a 
 point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own. 
 One use of travel is, to recommend the books and 
 works of home (we go to Europe to be Americanized); 
 and another, to find men. For, as Nature has put 
 fruits apart in latitudes, a new fruit in every degree, 
 so knowledge and fine moral quality she' lodges in 
 distant men. And thus, of the six or seven teachers 
 whom each man wants among his contemporaries, it 
 often happens that one or two of them live on the 
 other side of the world. 
 
 Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain 
 solstice, when the stars stand still in our inward 
 firmament, and when there is required some foreign 
 force, some diversion or alterative to prevent stag- 
 nation. And, as a medical remedy, travel seems one 
 of the best. Just as a man witnessing the admirable 
 effect of ether to lull pain, and meditating on the 
 contingencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, rejoices 
 in Dr. Jackson's benign discovery, so a man who 
 looks at Paris, at Naples, or at London, says, (i If I 
 should be driven from my own home, here, at least, 
 my thoughts can be consoled by the most prodigal 
 amusement and occupation which the human race in 
 ages could contrive and accumulate." 
 
 Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the aesthetic 
 value of railroads is to unite the advantages of town 
 and country life, neither of which we can spare. A 
 man should live in or near a large town, because, let 
 his own genius be what it may, it will repel quite as 
 
92 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 much of agreeable and valuable talent as it draws, 
 and, in a city, the total attraction of all the citizens is 
 sure to conquer, first or last, every repulsion, and 
 drag the most improbable hermit within its walls 
 .some day in the year. In town, he can find the swim- 
 ming-school, the gymnasium, the dancing-master, the 
 shooting-gallery, opera, theatre, and panorama; the 
 chemist's shop, the museum of natural history; the 
 gallery of fine arts ; the national orators, in their 
 turn ; foreign travellers, the libraries, and his club. 
 In the country, he can find solitude and reading, 
 manly labour, cheap living, and his old shoes; moors 
 for game, hills for geology, and groves for devotion. 
 Aubrey writes, fe I have heard Thomas Hobbes say, 
 that, in the Earl of Devon's house, in Derbyshire, 
 there was a good library and books enough for him, 
 and his lordship stored the library with what books 
 he thought fit to be bought. But the want of good 
 conversation was a very great inconvenience, and, 
 though he conceived he could order his thinking as 
 well as another, yet he found a great defect. In the 
 country, in long time, for want of good conversation, 
 one's understanding and invention contract a moss on 
 them, like an old paling in an orchard." 
 
 Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and 
 New York take the nonsense out of a man. A great 
 part of our education is sympathetic and social. 
 Boys and girls who have been brought up with well- 
 informed and superior people, show in their manners 
 an inestimable grace. Fuller says, that " William, 
 Earl of Nassau, won a subject from the King of 
 Spain, every time he put off his hat." You cannot 
 have one well-bred man, without a whole society of 
 such. They keep each other up to any high point. 
 Especially women ; — it requires a great many culti- 
 vated women, — saloons of bright, elegant, reading 
 women, accustomed to ease and refinement, to spec- 
 tacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to elegant 
 
CULTURE. 93 
 
 society,— iii order that you should have one Madame 
 de Stael. The head of a commercial house, or a 
 leading lawyer or politician, is Drought into daily 
 contact with troops of men from all parts of the 
 country, and those too the driving-wheels, the business 
 men of each section, and one can hardly suggest 
 for an apprehensive man a more searching culture. 
 Besides, we must remember the high social possi- 
 bilities of a million of men. The best bribe which 
 London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in 
 such a vast variety of people and conditions, one 
 can believe there is room for persons of romantic 
 character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and 
 the hero may hope to confront their counterparts. 
 
 I wish cities could teach their best lesson, — of 
 quiet manners. It is the foible especially of American 
 youth, — pretension. The mark of the man of the 
 world is absence of pretension. He does not make 
 a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all 
 brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, 
 performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his 
 fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, 
 and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. 
 His conversation clings to the weather and the news, 
 yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, 
 and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy. 
 How the imagination is piqued by anecdotes of some 
 great man passing incognito, as a king in gray 
 clothes, — of Napoleon affecting a plain suit at his 
 glittering levee; of Burns, or Scott, or Beethoven, 
 or Wellington, or Goethe, or any container of tran- 
 scendent power, passing for nobody; of Epaminondas, 
 "who never says anything, but will listen eternally;" 
 of Goethe, who preferred trifling subjects and com- 
 mon expressions in intercourse with strangers, worse 
 rather than better clothes, and to appear a little more 
 capricious than he was. There are advantages in 
 the old hat and box-coat. I have heard, that, 
 
94 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 throughout this country, a certain respect is paid to 
 good broadcloth ; but dress makes a little restraint : 
 men will not commit themselves. But the box-coat 
 is like wine; it unlocks the tongue, and men say 
 what they think. An old poet says, 
 
 " Go far and go sparing, 
 For you'll find it certain, 
 The poorer and the baser you appear, 
 The more you'll look through still."* 
 
 Not much otherwise Milnes writes, in the Lay of the 
 Humble, 
 
 " To me men are for what they are 
 They wear no masks with me." 
 
 ? Tis odd that our people should have — not water 
 on the brain, — but a little gas there. A shrewd 
 foreigner said of the Americans, that, " whatever 
 they say has a little the air of a speech." Yet one 
 of the traits down in the books as distinguishing the 
 Anglo-Saxon, is, a trick of self-disparagement. To 
 be sure, in old, dense countries, among a million of 
 good coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinction, and 
 you find humorists. In an English party, a man 
 with no marked manners or features, with a face like 
 red dough, unexpectedly discloses wit, learning, a 
 wide range of topics, and personal familiarity with 
 good men in all parts of the world, until you think 
 you have fallen upon some illustrious personage. 
 Can it be that the American forest has refreshed 
 some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die 
 out, — the love of the scarlet feather, of beads, and 
 tinsel ? The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock 
 plumes, and embroidery ; and I remember one rainy 
 morning in the city of Palermo, the street was in a 
 blaze with scarlet umbrellas. The English have a 
 plain taste. The equipages of the grandees are plain. 
 A gorgeous livery indicates new and awkward city 
 
 * Beaumont and Fletcher: The Tamer Tamed. 
 
CULTURE. 95 
 
 wealth. Mr. Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title 
 of Mister good against any king in Europe. They 
 have piqued themselves on governing the whole 
 world in the poor, plain, dark committee-room which 
 the House of Commons sat in, before the fire. 
 
 Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best 
 things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying 
 trifles. The countryman finds the town a chop- 
 house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of 
 grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and with 
 them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among 
 a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, ser- 
 vile to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a 
 fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the 
 gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their 
 own ; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud 
 of insignificant annoyances : 
 
 " Mirmidons, race feconde, 
 Mirmidons, 
 
 Enfin nous commandons ; 
 Jupiter livre le monde 
 Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons." * 
 
 " 'Tis heavy odds 
 Against the gods, 
 
 When they will match with myrmidons. 
 "We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 
 Our turn to-day ! we take command, 
 Jove gives the globe into the hand 
 Of myrmidons, of myrmidons." 
 
 What is odious but noise, and people who scream 
 and bewail? people whose vane points always east, 
 who live to dine, who send for the doctor, who coddle 
 themselves, who toast their feet on the register, who 
 intrigue to secure a padded chair, and a corner out 
 of the draught? Suffer them once to begin the 
 enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will go 
 down on the unfinished tale. Let these triflers put 
 us out of conceit with petty comforts. To a man at 
 
 * Beranger. 
 
96 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 work, the frost is but a colour : the rain, the wind, 
 he forgot them when he came in. Let us learn to 
 live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The least 
 habit of dominion over the palate has certain good 
 effects not easily estimated. Neither will we be 
 driven into a quiddling abstemiousness. 'Tis a 
 superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made 
 at last of the same chemical atoms. 
 
 A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. 
 How can you mind diet, bed, dress, or salutes, or 
 compliments, or the figure you make in company, or 
 wealth, or even the bringing things to pass, when 
 you think how paltry are the machinery and the 
 workers ? Wordsworth was praised to me, in West- 
 moreland, for having afforded to his country neigh- 
 bours an example of a modest household where 
 comfort and culture were secured, without display. 
 And a tender boy who wears his rusty cap and out- 
 grown coat, that he may secure the coveted place in 
 college, and the right in the library, is educated to 
 some purpose. There is a great deal of self-denial 
 and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in 
 town and country, that has not got into literature 
 and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet ; that 
 saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials ; 
 that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells 
 the horse, but builds the school; works early and 
 late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, 
 six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the 
 paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to 
 work again. 
 
 We can ill spare the commanding social benefits 
 of cities ; they must be used ; yet cautiously, and 
 haughtily, — and will yield their best values to him 
 who best can do without them. Keep the town for 
 occasions, but the habits should be formed to retire- 
 ment. Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to 
 genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter 
 
CULTURE. 97 
 
 where moult the wings which will bear it farther 
 than suns and stars. He who should inspire and 
 lead his race must he defended from travelling with 
 the souls of other men, from living, breathing, read- 
 ing, and writing in the daily time-worn yoke of their 
 opinions. " In the morning, — solitude," said Pytha- 
 goras ; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as 
 she does never in company, and that her favourite may 
 make acquaintance with those divine strengths which 
 disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 
 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, 
 Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live 
 in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time 
 as benefactors; and the wise instructor will press this 
 point of securing to the young soul in the disposition 
 of time and the arrangements of living, periods and 
 habits of solitude. The high advantage of univer- 
 sity life, is often the mere mechanical one, I may call 
 it, of a separate chamber and fire, — which parents 
 will allow the boy without hesitation at Cambridge, 
 but do not think needful at home. We say solitude, 
 to mark the character of the tone of thought ; but if 
 it can be shared between two, or more than two, it is 
 happier, and not less noble. "We four," wrote 
 Neander to his sacred friends, iC will enjoy at Plalle 
 the inward blessedness of a civitas Dei, whose foun- 
 dations are for ever friendship. The more I know 
 you, the more I dissatisfy and must dissatisfy all my 
 wonted companions. Their very presence stupefies 
 me. The common understanding withdraws itself 
 from the one centre of all existence." 
 
 Solitude takes off the pressure of present impor- 
 tunities that more catholic and humane relations may 
 appear. The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the 
 most public and universal : and it is the secret of cul- 
 ture, to interest the man more in his public, than in 
 his private quality. Here is a new poem, which 
 elicits a good many comments in the journals, and 
 
 7 
 
98 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 in conversation. From these it is easy, at last, to 
 eliminate the verdict which readers passed upon it ; 
 and that is, in the main, unfavourable. The poet, as 
 a craftsman, is only interested in the praise accorded 
 to him, and not in the censure, though it be just. 
 And the poor little poet hearkens only to that, and 
 rejects the censure, as proving incapacity in the 
 critic. But the poet cultivated becomes a stockholder 
 in both companies, — say Mr. Curfew, — in the Cur- 
 few stock, and in the humanity stock; and, in the 
 last, exults as much in the demonstration of the 
 unsoundness of Curfew, as his hiterest in the former 
 gives him pleasure in the currency of Curfew. For, 
 the depreciation of his Curfew stock only shows the 
 immense values of the humanity stock. As soon as 
 he sides with his critic against himself, with joy, he 
 is a cultivated man. 
 
 We must have an intellectual quality in all pro- 
 perty and in all action, or they are nought. I must 
 have children, I must have events, I must have a 
 social state and history, or my thinking and speaking 
 want body or basis. But to give these accessories 
 any value, I must know them as contingent and 
 rather showy possessions, which pass for more to 
 the people than to me. We see this abstraction in 
 scholars, as a matter of course : but what a charm it 
 adds when observed in practical men, Bonaparte, 
 like Csesar, was intellectual, and could look at every 
 object for itself, without affection. Though an egotist 
 a Voutrance, he could criticize a play, a building, a 
 character, on universal grounds, and give a just 
 opinion. A man known to us only as a celebrity in 
 politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we 
 discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill ; 
 as when we learn of Lord Fairfax, the Long Par- 
 liament's general, his passion for antiquarian studies ; 
 or of the French regicide Carnot, his sublime genius 
 in mathematics ; or of a living banker, his success in 
 
CULTURE. 99 
 
 poetry; or of a partisan journalist, his devotion to 
 ornithology. So, if in travelling in the dreary wil- 
 dernesses of Arkansas or Texas, we should observe 
 on the next seat a man reading Horace, or Martial, 
 or Calderon, we should wish to hug him. In callings 
 that require roughest energy, soldiers, sea-captains, 
 and civil engineers sometimes betray a fine insight, if 
 only through a certain gentleness when off duty: a 
 good-natured admission that there are illusions, — and 
 who shall say that he is not their sport ? We only 
 vary the phrase, not the doctrine, when we say, that 
 culture opens the sense of beauty. A man is a 
 beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he 
 may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, 
 cannot be said to have arrived at self-possession. I 
 suffer every day, from the want of perception of 
 beauty in people. They do not know the charm with 
 which all moments and objects can be embellished, 
 the charm of manners, of self-command, of benevo- 
 lence. Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the 
 gentleman, — repose in energy. The Greek battle- 
 pieces are calm ; the heroes, in whatever violent 
 actions engaged, retain a serene aspect ; as we say of 
 Niagara, that it falls without speed. A cheerful, 
 intelligent face is the end of culture, and success 
 enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and 
 wisdom attained. 
 
 When our higher faculties are in activity, we are 
 domesticated, and awkwardness and discomfort give 
 place to natural and agreeable movements. It is 
 noticed, that the consideration of the great periods 
 and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, 
 and an indifference to death. The influence of fine 
 scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our 
 irritations and elevates our friendships. Even a 
 high dome, and the expansive interior of a cathedral, 
 have a sensible effect on manners. I have heard 
 that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness 
 
 , LofG. 
 
100 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, 
 sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us 
 manners, and abolish hurry. 
 
 But, over all, culture must reinforce from higher 
 influx the empirical skills of eloquence, or of politics, 
 or of trade, and the useful arts. There is a certain 
 loftiness of thought and power to marshal and adjust 
 particulars, which can only come from an insight of 
 their whole connection. The orator who has once 
 seen things in their divine order, w T ill never quite 
 lose sight of this, and will come to affairs as from a 
 higher ground, and, though he will say nothing of 
 philosophy, he will have a certain mastery in dealing 
 with them, and an incapableness of being dazzled or 
 frighted, which will distinguish his handling from 
 that of attorneys and factors. A man who stands on 
 a good footing with the heads of parties at Washing- 
 ton, reads the rumours of the newspapers, and the 
 guesses of provincial politicians, with a key to the 
 right and wrong in each statement, and sees well 
 enough where all this will end. Archimedes will 
 look through your Connecticut machine at a glance, 
 and judge of its fitness. And much more, a wise 
 man who knows not only what Plato, but what Saint 
 John can show him, can easily raise the affair he 
 deals with to a certain majesty. Plato says, Pericles 
 owed this elevation to the lessons of Anaxagoras. 
 Burke descended from a higher sphere when he would 
 influence human affairs. Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, 
 Washington, stood on a fine humanity, before which 
 the brawls of modern senates are but pot-house 
 politics. 
 
 But there are higher secrets of culture, which 
 are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These 
 are lessons only for the brave. We must know our 
 friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our 
 friends. Ben Jonson specifies in his Address to the 
 Muse : — 
 
CULTURE. 101 
 
 " Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will, 
 And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 
 Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse, 
 Almost all ways to any better course ; 
 With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee, 
 And. which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty." 
 
 We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at 
 heroism. But the wiser God says, Take the shame, 
 the poverty, and the penal solitude, that belong to 
 truth-speaking. Try the rough water as well as the 
 smooth. Rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. 
 When the state is unquiet, personal qualities are 
 more than ever decisive. Fear not a revolution which 
 will constrain you to live five years in one. Don't be 
 so tender at making an enemy now and then. Be will- 
 ing to go to Coventry sometimes, and let the popu- 
 lace bestow on you their coldest contempts. The 
 finished man of the world must eat of every apple 
 once. He must hold his hatreds also at arm's length, 
 and not remember spite. He has neither friends nor 
 enemies, but values men only as channels of power. 
 
 He who aims high, must dread an easy home and 
 popular manners. Heaven sometimes hedges a rare 
 character about with ungainliness and odium, as the 
 burr that protects the fruit. If there is any great 
 and good thing in store for you, it will not come at 
 the first or the second call, nor in the shape of fashion, 
 ease, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is for 
 dolls. " Steep and craggy," said Porphyry, " is the 
 path of the gods." Open your Marcus Antoninus. 
 In the opinion of the ancients, he was the great man 
 who scorned to shine, and who contested the frowns 
 of fortune. They preferred the noble vessel too late 
 for the tide, contending with winds and waves, dis- 
 mantled and unrigged, to her companion borne into 
 harbour with colours flying and guns firing. There 
 is none of the social goods that may not be purchased 
 too dear, and mere amiableness must not take rank 
 with high aims and self-subsistency. 
 
102 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Bettine replies to Goethe's mother, who chides her 
 disregard of dress, " If I cannot do as I have a 
 mind, in our poor Frankfort, I shall not carry things 
 far." And the youth must rate at its true mark the 
 inconceivable levity of local opinion. The longer we 
 live, the more we must endure the elementary ex- 
 istence of men and women ; and every brave heart 
 must treat society as a child, and never allow it to 
 dictate. 
 
 " All that class of the severe and restrictive 
 virtues," said Burke, " are almost too costly for 
 humanity." Who wishes to be severe? Who 
 wishes to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf of 
 the poor, and low, and impolite ? and who that dares 
 do it, can keep his temper sweet, his frolic spirits? 
 The high virtues are not debonnaire, but have their 
 redress in being illustrious at last. What forests of 
 laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those 
 who stood firm against the opinion of their contem- 
 poraries ! The measure of a master is his success in 
 bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years 
 later. 
 
 Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too 
 early. In talking with scholars, I observe that they 
 lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood 
 which alone could give imaginative literature a 
 religious and infinite quality in their esteem. I find, 
 too, that the chance for appreciation is much increased 
 by being the son of an appreciate, and that these 
 boys who now grow up are caught not only years too 
 late, but two or three births too late, to make the 
 best scholars of. And I think it a presentable motive 
 to a scholar, that, as, in an old community, a well- 
 born proprietor is usually found, after the first heats 
 of youth, to be a careful husband, and to feel a 
 habitual desire that the estate shall suffer no harm 
 by his administration, but shall be delivered down to 
 the next heir in as good condition as he received it; — 
 
CULTURE. 103 
 
 so, a considerate man will reckon himself a subject of 
 that secular melioration by which mankind is mol- 
 lified, cured, and refined, and will shun every ex- 
 penditure of his forces on pleasure or gain, which will 
 jeopardize this social and secular accumulation. 
 
 The fossil strata show us that Nature began with 
 rudimental forms, and rose to the more complex, as 
 fast as the earth was fit for their dwelling-place ; and 
 that the lower perish, as the higher appear. Yery 
 few of our race can be said to be yet finished men. 
 We still carry sticking to us some remains of the 
 preceding inferior quadruped organization. We call 
 these millions men ; but they are not yet men. Half 
 engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs 
 all the music that can be brought to disengage him. 
 If Love, red Love, with tears and joy ; if Want with 
 his scourge ; if War with his cannonade ; if Chris- 
 tianity with its charity ; if Trade with its money ; 
 if Art with its portfolios ; if Science with her tele- 
 graphs through the deeps of space and time ; can set 
 his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the 
 tough chrysalis can break its walls, and let the new 
 creature emerge erect and free, — make way, and sing 
 psean ! The age of the quadruped is to go out, — the 
 age of the brain and of the heart is to come in. The 
 time will come when the evil forms we have known 
 can no more be organized. Man's culture can spare 
 nothing, wants all the material. He is to convert all 
 impediments into instruments, all enemies into power. 
 The formidable mischief will only make the more 
 useful slave. And if one shall read the future of the 
 race hinted in the organic effort of Nature to mount 
 and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the 
 Better in the human being, we shall dare affirm that 
 there is nothing he will not overcome and convert, 
 until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and 
 gehenna. He will convert the Furies into Muses, 
 and the hells into benefit. 
 
104 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 V.-BEHAVIOUE. 
 
 Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 
 
 Build this golden portal; 
 
 Graceful women, chosen men 
 
 Dazzle every mortal: 
 
 Their sweet and lofty countenance 
 
 His enchanting food; 
 
 He need not go to them, their forms 
 
 Beset his solitude. 
 
 He looketh seldom in their face, 
 
 His eyes explore the ground, 
 
 The green grass is a looking-glass 
 
 Whereon their traits are found. 
 
 Little he says to them, 
 
 So dances his heart in his "breast, 
 
 Their tranquil mien bereaveth him 
 
 Of wit, of words, of rest. 
 
 Too weak to win, too fond to shun 
 
 The tyrants of his doom, 
 
 The much deceived Endymion 
 
 Slips behind a tomb. 
 
 The soul which animates Nature is not less signifi- 
 cantly published in the figure, movement, and gesture 
 of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of articu- 
 late speech. This silent and subtile language is 
 Manners ; not ivhat, but how. Life expresses. A 
 statue has no tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux 
 do not need declamation. Nature tells every secret 
 once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by 
 form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the 
 face, and by the whole action of the machine. The 
 visible carriage or action of the individual, as result' 
 ing from his organization and his will combined, we 
 call manners. What are they but thought entering 
 the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the 
 body, the speech and behaviour ? 
 
 There is always a best way of doing everything, if 
 it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways 
 of doing things ; each once a stroke of genius or of 
 
BEHAVIOUR. 105 
 
 love — now repeated and hardened into usage. They 
 form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of 
 life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are 
 superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a 
 depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very 
 communicable: men catch them from each other. 
 Consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons she 
 had given the nobles in manners, on the stage ; and, 
 in real life, Talma taught Napoleon the arts of beha- 
 viour. Genius invents fine manners, which the baron 
 and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advan- 
 tage of a palace, better the instruction. They 
 stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode. 
 
 The power of manners is incessant — an element as 
 unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any 
 country be disguised, and no more in a republic or a 
 democracy, than in a kingdom. No man can resist 
 their influence. There are certain manners which 
 are learned in good society, of that force, that, if a 
 person have them, he or she must be considered, and 
 is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or 
 wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and accom- 
 plishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces 
 and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble 
 of earning or owning them : they solicit him to enter 
 and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating 
 disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding- 
 school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can 
 come into acquaintance and nearness of leading per- 
 sons of their own sex; where they might learn 
 address, and see it near at hand. The power of a 
 woman of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and 
 repel, derives from their belief that she knows re- 
 sources and behaviours not known to them ; but when 
 these have mastered her secret, they learn to con- 
 front her, and recover their self-possession. 
 
 Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. 
 People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. 
 
106 CONDUCT OE LIFE, 
 
 The mediocre circle learns to demand that which be- 
 longs to a high state of nature or of culture. Your 
 manners are always under examination, and by com- 
 mittees little suspected — a police in citizens' clothes 
 — but are awarding or denying you very high prizes 
 when you least think of it. 
 
 We talk much of utilities — but 'tis our manners 
 that associate us. In hours of business we go to him 
 who knows, or has, or does this or that which we 
 want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in 
 the way. But this activity over, we return to the 
 indolent state, and wish for those we can be at ease 
 with ; those who will go where we go, whose man- 
 ners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with 
 ours. When we reflect on their persuasive and 
 cheering force ; how they recommend, prepare, and 
 draw people together; how, in all clubs, manners 
 make the members ; how manners make the fortune 
 of the ambitious youth ; that, for the most part, his 
 manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries 
 manners ; when we think what keys they are, and to 
 what secrets ; what high lessons and inspiring tokens 
 of character they convey ; and what divination is 
 required in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph, 
 we see what range the subject has, and what relations 
 to convenience, power, and beauty. 
 
 Their first service is very low — when they are the 
 minor morals : but 'tis the beginning of civility — to 
 make us, I mean, endurable to each other. We prize 
 them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force ; to get 
 people out of the quadruped state; to get them 
 washed, clothed, and set up on end ; to slough their 
 animal husks and habits ; compel them to be clean ; 
 overawe their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle 
 the base, and choose the generous expression, and 
 make them know how much happier the generous 
 behaviours are. 
 
 Bad behaviour the laws cannot reach. Society is 
 
BEHAVIOUR. 107 
 
 infested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous 
 persons who prey upon the rest, and whom a public 
 opinion concentrated into good manners, forms ac- 
 cepted by the sense of all, can reach : the contra- 
 dictors and railers at public and private tables, who 
 are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of 
 honour to growl at any passer-by, and do the honours 
 of the house by barking him out of sight : I have 
 seen men who neigh like a horse when you contradict 
 them, or say something which they do not under- 
 stand; then the overbold, who make their own in- 
 vitation to your hearth ; the persevering talker, who 
 gives you his society in large, saturating doses ; the 
 pitiers of themselves — a perilous class ; the frivolous 
 Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of 
 sand to twist ; the monotones ; in short, every stripe 
 of absurdity ; these are social inflictions which the 
 magistrate cannot cure or defend you from, and 
 which must be intrusted to the restraining force of 
 custom, and proverbs, and familiar rules of behaviour 
 impressed on young people in their school-days. 
 
 In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they 
 print, or used to print, among the rules of the house, 
 that ff no gentleman can be permitted to come to the 
 public table without his coat ; " and in the same 
 country, in the pews of the churches, little placards 
 plead with the worshipper against the fury of expec- 
 toration. Charles Dickens self-sacrificingly under- 
 took the reformation of our American manners in 
 unspeakable particulars. I think the lesson was not 
 quite lost ; that it held bad manners up, so that the 
 churls could see the deformity. Unhappily, the book 
 had its own deformities. It ought not to need to 
 print in a reading-room a caution to strangers not to 
 speak loud ; nor to persons who look over fine 
 engravings, that they should be handled like cob- 
 webs and butterflies' wings ; nor to persons who look 
 at marble statues, that they shall not smite them with 
 
108 CONDUCT OE LIFE, 
 
 canes. But even in the perfect civilization of this 
 city, such cautions are not quite needless in the 
 Athenaeum and City Library. 
 
 Manners are factitious, and grow out of circum- 
 stance as well as out of character. If you look at 
 the pictures of patricians and of peasants, of different 
 periods and countries, you will see how well they 
 match the same classes in our towns. The modern 
 aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian's Venetian 
 doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but also in 
 the pictures which Commodore Perry brought home 
 of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands and great 
 interests not only arrive to such heads as can 
 manage them, but form manners of power. A keen 
 eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank, or see in 
 the manners the degree of homage the party is wont 
 to receive. A prince who is accustomed every day 
 to be courted and deferred to by the highest 
 grandees, acquires a corresponding expectation and 
 a becoming mode of receiving and replying to this 
 homage. 
 
 There are always exceptional people and modes. 
 English grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse 
 is a fop, and, under the finish of dress and levity of 
 behaviour, hides the terror of his war. But Nature 
 and Destiny are honest, and never fail to leave their 
 mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every 
 quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and per- 
 haps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the 
 whole secret when he has learned that disengaged 
 manners are commanding. Don't be deceived by a 
 facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong 
 wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, 
 who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of 
 state, without overcoming an extreme irritability of 
 face, voice, and bearing : when he spoke, his voice 
 would not serve him ; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, 
 it piped ; — little cared he ; he knew that it had got to 
 
BEHAVIOUE. 109 
 
 pipe, or wheeze* or screech his argument and his in- 
 dignation. When he sat down, after speaking, he 
 seemed in a sort of fit, and held on to his chair with 
 both hands : but underneath all this irritability was 
 a puissant will, firm, and advancing, and a memory 
 in which lay in order and method like geologic strata 
 every fact of his history, and under the control of 
 his will. 
 
 Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there 
 must be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all 
 culture is vain. The obstinate prejudice in favour 
 of blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and 
 monarchical fabrics of the Old World, has some reason 
 in common experience. Every man — mathematician, 
 artist, soldier, or merchant — looks with confidence 
 for some traits and talents in his own child, which he 
 would not dare to presume in the child of a stranger. 
 The Orientalists are very orthodox on this point. 
 u Take a thorn-bush," said the Emir Abd-el-Kader, 
 "and sprinkle at for a whole year with water; — it 
 will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, 
 leave it without culture, and it will always produce 
 dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab popu- 
 lace is a bush of thorns." 
 
 A main fact in the history of manners is the won- 
 derful expressiveness of the human body. If it 
 were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts were 
 written on steel tablets within, it could not publish 
 more truly its meaning than now, Wise men 
 read very sharply all your private history in your 
 look and gait and behaviour. The whole economy 
 of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body 
 is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with 
 crystal faces, which expose the whole movement. 
 They carry the liquor of life flowing up and down 
 in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the 
 curious how it is with them. The face and eyes 
 reveal what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what 
 
110 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 aims it has. The eyes indicate the antiquity of the 
 soul, or through how many forms it has already 
 ascended. It almost violates the proprieties, if we 
 say above the breath here what the confessing 
 eyes do not hesitate to utter to every street pas- 
 senger. 
 
 Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far 
 seems imperfect. In Siberia a late traveller found 
 men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with 
 their unarmed eye. In some respects the animals 
 excel us. The birds have a longer sight, beside the 
 advantage by their wings of a higher observatory. 
 A cow can bid her calf, by secret signal, probably, 
 of the eye, to run away, or to lie clown and hide 
 itself. The jockeys say of certain horses, that " they 
 look over the whole ground." The out-door life, 
 and hunting, and labour, give equal vigour to the 
 human eye. A farmer looks out at you as strong as 
 the horse ; his eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff. 
 An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, 
 or can insult like hissing or kicking ; or, in its altered 
 mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart 
 dance with joy. 
 
 The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. 
 When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain 
 gazing at a distance ; in enumerating the names of 
 persons or of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, 
 Turkey, the eyes wink at each new name. There is 
 no nicety of learning sought by the mind, which the 
 eyes do not vie in acquiring. "An artist," said 
 Michel Angelo, " must have his measuring tools not 
 in the hand but in the eye ; " and there is no end to 
 the catalogue of its performances, whether in indolent 
 vision (that of health and beauty), or in strained 
 vision (that of art and labour). 
 
 Eyes are bold as lions — roving, running, leaping, 
 here and there, far and near. They speak all lan- 
 guages. They wait for no introduction : they are 
 
BEHAVIOUK. Ill 
 
 no Englishmen ; ask no leave of age or rank ; they 
 respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning 
 nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and 
 come again, and go through and through you, in 
 a moment of time. What inundation of life and 
 thought is discharged from one soul into another, 
 through them ! The glance is natural magic. The 
 mysterious communication established across a house 
 between two entire strangers, moves all the springs 
 of wonder. The communication by the glance is in 
 the greatest part not subject to the control of the 
 will. It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. 
 We look into the eyes to know if this other form is 
 another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a 
 faithful confession what inhabitant is there. The 
 revelations are sometimes terrific. The confession of 
 a low, usurping devil is there made, and the observer 
 shall seem to feel the stirring of owls, and bats, and 
 horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence and 
 simplicity. 'Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit that 
 appears at the windows of the house does at once 
 invest himself in a new form of his own to the mind 
 of the beholder. 
 
 The eyes of men converse as much as their 
 tongues, with the advantage that the ocular dialect 
 needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world 
 over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue 
 another, a practised man relies on the language of 
 the first. If the man is off his centre, the. eyes show , 
 it. You can read in the eyes of your companion 
 whether your argument hits him, though his tongue 
 will not confess it. There is a look by which a man 
 shows he is going to say a good thing, and a look 
 when he has said it. Yain and forgotten are all the 
 fine offers and offices of hospitality, if there is no 
 holiday in the eye. How many furtive inclinations 
 avowed by the eye, though dissembled by the lips ! 
 One comes away from a company in which, it may 
 
112 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 easily happen, lie has said nothing, and no important 
 remark has been addressed to him, and yet, if in 
 sympathy with the society, he shall not have a sense 
 of this fact, such a stream of life has been flowing 
 into him, and out from him, through the eyes. 
 There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admis- 
 sion into the man than blueberries. Others are 
 liquid and deep — wells that a man might fall into ; 
 others are aggressive and devouring, seem to call out 
 the police, take all too much notice, and require 
 crowded Broadways, and the security of millions, to 
 protect individuals against them. The military eye 
 I meet, now darkly sparkling under clerical, now 
 under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of Lacedsemon ; 
 'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, 
 asserting eyes, prowling eyes, and eyes full of fate — 
 some of good, and some of sinister omen. The 
 alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in 
 beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a 
 victory achieved in the will, before it can be sig- 
 nified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each man 
 carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in 
 the immense scale of men, and we are always learn- 
 ing to read it. A complete man should need no 
 auxiliaries to his personal presence. Whoever looked 
 on him would consent to his will, being certified that 
 his aims were generous and universal. The reason 
 why men do not obey us is because they see the mud 
 at the bottom of our eye. 
 
 If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, 
 the other features have their own. A man finds 
 room in the few square inches of the face for the 
 traits of all his ancestors ; for the expression of 
 all his history, and his wants. The sculptor, and 
 Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how signi- 
 ficant a feature is the nose ; how its forms express 
 strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. 
 The nose of Julius Cassar, of Dante, and of Pitt, 
 
BEHAVIOUK. 113 
 
 suggest " the terrors of the beak." What refinement, 
 and what limitations, the teeth betray ! " Beware 
 you don't laugh," said the wise mother, " for then 
 you show all your faults." 
 
 Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he 
 called (i Theorie de la demarche" in which he says : 
 " The look, the voice, the respiration, and the atti- 
 tude or walk, are identical. But, as it has not been 
 given to man, the power to stand guard, at once, 
 over these four different simultaneous expressions of 
 his thought, watch that one which speaks out the 
 truth, and you will know the whole man." 
 
 Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of 
 manners, which, in the idle and expensive society 
 dwelling in them, are raised to a high art. The 
 maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm 
 and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embel- 
 lishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncom- 
 fortable feeling, are essential to the courtier : and 
 Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Rcederer, 
 and an encyclopaedia of Memoires, will instruct you, 
 if you wish, in those potent secrets. Thus, it is a 
 point of pride with kings to remember faces and 
 names. It is reported of one prince, that his head 
 had the air of leaning downwards, in order not to 
 humble the crowd. There are people who come in 
 ever like a child with a piece of good news. It 
 was said of the late Lord Holland, that he always 
 came down to breakfast with the air of a man who 
 had just met with some signal good-fortune. In 
 " Notre Dame" the grandee took his place on the 
 dais, with the look of one who is thinking of some- 
 thing else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop at 
 palace-doors. 
 
 Fine manners need the support of fine manners in 
 others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he 
 may not. The enthusiast is introduced to polished 
 scholars in societv, and is chilled and silenced by 
 
 8 
 
114 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 finding himself not in their element. They all have 
 somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, ought to 
 have. But if he finds a scholar apart from his com- 
 panions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the 
 scholar has no defence, hut must deal on his terms. 
 Now they must fight the battle out on their private 
 strengths. "What is the talent of that character so 
 common — the successful man of the world — in all 
 marts, senates, and drawing-rooms ? Manners : 
 manners of power; sense to see his advantage, and 
 manners up to it. See him approach his man. He 
 knows that troops behave as they are handled at 
 first ; — that is his cheap secret ; just what happens to 
 every two persons who meet on any affair, — one 
 instantly perceives that he has the key of the situa- 
 tion, that his will comprehends the other's will, as the 
 cat does the mouse ; and he has only to use courtesy, 
 and furnish good-natured reasons to his victim to 
 cover up the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance. 
 The theatre in which this science of manners has 
 a formal importance is not with us a court, but dress- 
 circles, wherein, after the close of the day's business, 
 men and women meet at leisure, for mutual enter- 
 tainment, hi ornamented drawing-rooms. Of course, 
 it has every variety of attraction and merit ; but, to 
 earnest persons, to youths or maidens who have great 
 objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well- 
 dressed, talkative company, where each is bent to 
 amuse the other — yet the high-born Turk who came 
 hither fancied that every woman seemed to be suffer- 
 ing for a chair ; that all the talkers were brained and 
 exhausted by the deoxygenated air: it spoiled the 
 best persons : it put all on stilts. Yet here are the 
 secret biographies written and read. The aspect of 
 that man is repulsive ; 1 do not wish to deal with 
 him. The other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. 
 The youth looks humble and manly : I choose him. 
 Look on this woman. There is not beauty, nor 
 
BEHAVIOUK. 115 
 
 brilliant sayings, nor distinguished power to serve 
 you; but all see her gladly; her whole air and im- 
 pression are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, 
 and the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in 
 coming into the world, and has always increased it 
 since. Here are creep-mouse manners ; and thievish 
 manners. " Look at Northcote," said Fuseli ; " he 
 looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the shallow 
 company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the 
 columnar Bernard : the Alleghanies do not express 
 more repose than his behaviour. Here are the sweet 
 following eyes of Cecile: it seemed always that she 
 demanded the heart. Nothing can be more excellent 
 in kind than the Corinthian grace of Gertrude's 
 manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has 
 better manners than she; for the movements of 
 Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which is sufficient 
 for the moment, and she can afford to express every 
 thought by instant action. 
 
 Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to 
 be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a 
 distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who 
 do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her 
 attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and, 
 if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you ; 
 or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages the 
 party attacked ; the second is still more effective, but 
 is not to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is 
 not easily found. People grow up and grow old 
 under this infliction, and never suspect the truth, 
 ascribing the solitude which acts on them very 
 injuriously to any cause but the right one. 
 
 The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Ne- 
 cessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. 
 Those who are not self-possessed, obtrude, and pain 
 us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a 
 Pariah caste. They fear to offend, they bend and 
 apologize, and walk through life with a timid step. 
 
116 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 As we sometimes dream that we are in a well-dressed 
 company without any coat, so Godfrey acts ever as 
 if he suffered from some mortifying circumstance. 
 The hero should find himself at home, wherever he 
 is ; should impart comfort by his own security and 
 good-nature to all beholders. The hero is suffered to 
 be himself. A person of strong mind comes to per- 
 ceive that for him an immunity is secured so long as 
 he renders to society that service which is native and 
 proper to him — an immunity from all the observances, 
 yea, and duties, which society so tyrannically imposes 
 on the rank and file of its members. " Euripides," 
 says Aspasia, " has not the fine manners of Sophocles ; 
 but," she adds good-hum ouredly, " the movers and 
 masters of our souls have surely a right to throw out 
 their limbs as carelessly as they please, on the world 
 that belongs to them, and before the creatures they 
 have animated." * 
 
 Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar 
 than haste. Friendship should be surrounded with 
 ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into cor- 
 ners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy 
 men can usually command. Here comes to me, 
 Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading and in- 
 wrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. 'Tis 
 a great destitution to both that this should not be 
 entertained with large leisures, but contrariwise 
 should be balked by importunate affairs. 
 
 But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is 
 ever shining. 'Tis hard to keep the what from break- 
 ing through this pretty painting of the how. The 
 core will come to the surface. Strong will and keen 
 perception overpower old manners, and create new ; 
 and the thought of the present moment has a greater 
 value than all the past. In persons of character, we 
 do not remark manners, because of their instanta- 
 neousness. We are surprised by the thing done, out 
 
 * Landor: Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
BEHAVIOUK. 117 
 
 of all power to watch tlie way of it. Yet nothing is 
 more charming than to recognize the great style which 
 runs through the actions of such. People masquerade 
 before us in their fortunes, titles, offices, and con- 
 nections, as academic or civil presidents, or senators, 
 or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on the 
 frivolous, and a good deal on each other, by these 
 fames. At least, it is a point of prudent good man- 
 ners to treat these reputations tenderly, as if they 
 were merited. But the sad realist knows these fellows 
 at a glance, and they know him ; as when in Paris 
 the chief of the police enters a ballroom, so many 
 diamonded pretenders shrink and make themselves as 
 inconspicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating 
 look as they pass. is I had received," said a sibyl, 
 " I had received at birth the fatal gift of penetration" 
 — and these Cassandras are always born. 
 
 Manners impress as they indicate real power. A 
 man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and 
 contented expression, which everybody reads. And 
 you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, 
 except by making him the kind of man of whom that 
 manner is the natural expression. Nature for ever 
 puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect, 
 is seen to be done for effect ; what is done for love, is 
 felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection 
 and honour, because he was not lying in wait for 
 these. The things of a man for which we visit him, 
 were done in the dark and the cold. A little integrity 
 is better than any career. So deep are the sources of 
 this surface-action, that even the size of your com- 
 panion seems to vary with his freedom of thought. 
 Not only is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts 
 gerierous, but everything around him becomes varia- 
 ble with expression. No carpenter's rule, no rod and 
 chain, will measure the dimensions of any house or 
 house-lot: go into the house: if the proprietor is 
 constrained and deferring, 'tis of no importance how 
 
118 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 large his house., how beautiful his grounds — you 
 quickly come to the end of all: but if the man is 
 self-possessed, happy, and at home, his house is deep- 
 founded, indefinitely large and. interesting, the roof 
 and dome buoyant as the sky. Under the humblest 
 roof, the commonest person in plain clothes sits there 
 massive, cheerful, yet formidable, like the Egyptian 
 colossi. 
 
 Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor 
 Champollion has set down the grammar-rules of this 
 dialect, older than Sanscrit ; but they who cannot yet 
 read English, can read this. Men take each other's 
 measure when they meet for the first time — and 
 every time they meet. How do they get this rapid 
 knowledge, even before they speak, of each other's 
 power and dispositions ? One would say, that the 
 persuasion of their speech is not in what they say — 
 or, that men do not convince by their argument — but 
 by their personality, by who they are, and what they 
 said and did heretofore. A man already strong is 
 listened to, and everything he says is applauded. 
 Another opposes him with sound argument, but the 
 argument is scouted, until by and by it gets into the 
 mind of some weighty person ; then it begins to tell 
 on the community. 
 
 Self-reliance is the basis of behaviour, as it is the 
 guaranty that the powers are not squandered in too 
 much demonstration. In this country, where school 
 education is universal, we have a superficial culture, 
 and a profusion of reading and writing and expres- 
 sion. We parade our nobilities in poems and 
 orations, instead of working them up into happiness. 
 There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can 
 understand it, — " whatever is known to thyself alone, 
 has always very great value." There is some reason 
 to believe, that, when a man does not write his 
 poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, 
 instead of the one vent of writing ; clings to his 
 
BEHAVIOUE. 119 
 
 form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing 
 poetical about them except their verses. Jacobi said, 
 that te when a man has fully expressed his thought, 
 he has somewhat less possession of it." One would 
 say, the rule is, — What a man is irresistibly urged 
 to say, helps him and us. In explaining his thought 
 to others, he explains it to himself: but when he 
 opens it for show, it corrupts him. 
 
 Society is the stage on which manners are shown; 
 novels are their literature. Novels are the journal 
 or record of manners ; and the new importance of 
 these books derives from the fact, that the novelist 
 begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part 
 of life more worthily. The novels used to be all 
 alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. The novels 
 used to lead us on to a foolish interest in the 
 fortunes of the boy and girl they described. The 
 boy was to be raised from a humble to a high 
 position. He was in want of a wife and a castle, 
 and the object of the story was to supply him with 
 one or both. We watched sympathetically, step by 
 step, his climbing, until, at last, the point is gained, 
 the wedding-day is fixed, and we follow the gala 
 procession home to the castle, when the doors are 
 slammed in our face, and the poor reader is left 
 outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an 
 idea, or a virtuous impulse. 
 
 But the victories of character are instant, and 
 victories for all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are 
 fortified by every heroic anecdote. The novels are 
 as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, that 
 the best of life is conversation, and the greatest 
 success is confidence, or perfect understanding be- 
 tween sincere people. 5 Tis a French definition of 
 friendship, rien que £ entendre, good understanding. 
 The highest compact we can make with our fellow, 
 is, — " Let there be truth between us two for ever- 
 more," That is the charm in all good novels, as 
 
120 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 it is the charm in all good histories, that the heroes 
 mutually understand, from the first, and deal loyally, 
 and with a profound trust in each other. It is 
 sublime to feel and say of another, " I need never 
 meet, or speak, or write to him : we need not rein- 
 force ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance : I 
 rely on him as on myself: if he did thus or thus, 
 I know it was right." 
 
 In all the superior people I have met, I notice 
 directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything 
 of obstruction, of malformation, had been trained 
 away. What have they to conceal? What have 
 they to exhibit ? Between simple and noble persons, 
 there is always a quick intelligence : they recognize 
 at sight, and meet on a better ground than the talents 
 and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on 
 sincerity and uprightness. For, it is not what talents 
 or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, 
 that constitutes friendship and character. The man 
 that stands by himself, the universe stands by him 
 also. It is related of the monk Basle, that, being 
 excommunicated by the Pope, he was, at his death, 
 sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place of 
 suffering in hell ; but, such was the eloquence and 
 good-humour of the monk, that, wherever he went 
 he was received gladly, and civilly treated, even by 
 the most uncivil angels : and, when he came to 
 discourse with them, instead of contradicting or 
 forcing him, they took his part, and adopted his 
 manners : and even good angels came from far, to see 
 him, and take up their abode with him. The angel 
 that was sent to find a place of torment for him, 
 attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with 
 no better success ; for such was the contented spirit 
 of the monk, that he found something to praise in 
 every place and company, though in hell, and made 
 a kind of heaven of it. At last the escorting angel 
 returned with his prisoner to them that sent him, 
 
BEHAVIOUR. 121 
 
 saying, that no phlegethon could be found that would 
 burn him ; for that, in whatever condition, Basle 
 remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says, his 
 sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into 
 heaven, and was canonized as a saint. 
 
 There is a stroke of magnanimity in the corre- 
 spondence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, 
 when the latter was King of Spain, and complained 
 that he missed in Napoleon's letters the affectionate 
 tone which had marked their childish correspondence. 
 " I am sorry," replies Napoleon, i( you think you 
 shall find your brother again only in the Elysian 
 Fields. It is natural, that at forty, he should not 
 feel towards you as he did at twelve. But his feel- 
 ings towards you have greater truth and strength. 
 His friendship has the features of his mind." 
 
 How much we forgive to those who yield us the 
 rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon 
 them the want of books, of arts, and even of the 
 gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember 
 them ! Here is a lesson which I brought along with 
 me in boyhood from the Latin School, and which 
 ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus 
 Scaur us was accused by Quintus Yarius Hispanus, 
 that he had excited the allies to take arms against the 
 Republic. But he, full of firmness and gravity, 
 defended himself in this manner : " Quintus Yarius 
 Hispanus alleges that Marcus Scaur us, President of 
 the Senate, excited the allies to arms : Marcus 
 Scaurus, President of the Senate, denies it. There 
 is no witness. Which do you believe, Romans ? " 
 " Utri creditis, Quirites f " When he had said these 
 words, he was absolved by the assembly of the 
 people. 
 
 I have seen manners that make a similar impression 
 with personal beauty; that give the like exhilara- 
 • tion, and refine us like that ; and, in memorable expe- 
 riences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and 
 
122 CONDUCT OF LIEE. 
 
 make that superfluous aud ugly. But they must be 
 marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real 
 beauty. They must always show self-control : you 
 shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over 
 your word ; and every gesture and action shall indi- 
 cate power at rest. Then they must be inspired by 
 the good heart. There is no beautifier of com- 
 plexion, or form, or behaviour, like the wish to 
 scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give 
 a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better 
 to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, 
 and give courage to a companion. We must be as 
 courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we 
 are willing to give the advantage of a good light. 
 Special precepts are not to be thought of : the talent 
 of well-doing contains them all. Every hour will 
 show a duty as paramount as that of my whim just 
 now ; and yet I will write it — that there is one topic 
 peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational 
 mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not 
 slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, 
 or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder- stroke, I beseech 
 you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute 
 the morning, to which all the housemates bring serene 
 and pleasant thoughts, by corruption and groans. 
 Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not 
 leave the sky out of your landscape. The oldest and 
 the most deserving person should come very modestly 
 into any newly awakened company, respecting the 
 divine communications, out of which all must be 
 presumed to have newly come. An old man who 
 added an elevating culture to a large experience of life, 
 said to me, " When you come into the room, I think 
 I will study how to make humanity beautiful to you." 
 As respects the delicate question of culture, I do 
 not think that any other than negative rules can be 
 laid down. For positive rules, for suggestion, 
 Nature alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide 
 
WOESHIP. 123 
 
 a youth, a maid, to perfect manners? — the golden 
 mean is so delicate, difficult — say frankly, unattain- 
 able. What finest hands would not be clumsy to 
 sketch the genial precepts of the young girl's de- 
 meanour? The chances seem infinite against suc- 
 cess ; and yet success is continually attained. There 
 must not be secondariness, and 'tis a thousand to one 
 that her air and manner will at once betray that she 
 is not primary, but that there is some other one or 
 many of her class, to whom she habitually postpones 
 herself. But Nature lifts her easily, and without 
 knowing it, over these impossibilities, and we are 
 continually surprised with graces and felicities not 
 only unteachable, but undescribable. 
 
 YL'-WOESHIP. 
 
 This is he, who, felled by foes, 
 
 Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows : 
 
 He to captivity was sold, 
 
 But him no prison-bars would hold : 
 
 Though they sealed him in a rock, 
 
 Mountain chains he can unlock : 
 
 Thrown to lions for their meat, 
 
 The crouching lion kissed his feet : 
 
 Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, 
 
 But arched o'er him an honouring vault. 
 
 This is he men miscall Fate, 
 
 Threading dark ways, arriving late, 
 
 But ever coming in time to crown 
 
 The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down. 
 
 He is the oldest, and best known, f 
 
 More near than aught thou call'st thy own, 
 
 Yet, greeted in another's eyes, 
 
 Disconcerts with glad surprise. 
 
 This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, 
 
 Floods with blessings unawares. 
 
 Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, 
 
 Severing rightly his from thine, 
 
 Which is human, which divine. 
 
 Some of my friends have complained, when the 
 preceding papers were read, that we discussed Fate, 
 
124 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Power, and Wealth, on too low a platform; gave 
 too much line to the evil spirit of the times; too 
 many cakes to Cerberus; that we ran Cudworth's 
 risk of making, by excess of candour, the argument 
 of atheism so strong, that he could not answer it. 
 I have no fears of being forced in my own despite 
 to play, as we say, the devil's attorney. I have no 
 infirmity of faith ; no belief that it is of much im- 
 portance what I or any man may say : I am sure 
 that a certain truth will be said through me, though 
 I should be dumb, or though I should try to say 
 the reverse. Nor do I fear scepticism for any good 
 soul. A just thinker will allow full swing to his 
 scepticism. I clip my pen in the blackest ink, be- 
 cause I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. 
 I have no sympathy with a poor man I knew, who, 
 when suicides abounded, told me he dared not look 
 at his razor. We are of different opinions at different 
 hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on 
 the side of truth, 
 
 I see not why we should give ourselves such 
 sanctified airs. If the Divine Providence has hid 
 from men neither disease, nor deformity, nor cor- 
 rupt society, but has stated itself out in passions, in 
 war, in trade, in the love of power and pleasure, 
 in hunger and need, in tyrannies, literatures, and 
 arts, — let us not be so nice that we cannot write 
 these facts down coarsely as they stand, or doubt 
 but there is a counter-statement as ponderous, which 
 we can arrive at, and which, being put, will make 
 all square. The solar system has no anxiety about 
 its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty 
 is as safe; nor have I any fear that a sceptical 
 bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of 
 fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doc- 
 trine of Faith cannot down-weigh. The strength 
 of that principle is not measured in ounces and 
 pounds : it tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. We 
 
WOESHIP. 125 
 
 may well give scepticism as much line as we can. 
 The spirit will return, and fill us. It drives the 
 drivers. It counterbalances any accumulations of 
 power. 
 
 "Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." 
 
 We are born loyal. The whole creation is made 
 of hooks and eyes, of bitumen, of sticking-plaster; 
 and whether your community is made in Jerusalem 
 or in California, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres 
 in a perfect ball. Men as naturally make a state, 
 or a church, as caterpillars a web. If they were 
 more refined, it would be less formal, it would be 
 nervous, like that of the Shakers, who, from long 
 habit of thinking and feeling together, it is said, are 
 affected in the same way, at the same time, to work 
 and to play, and as they go with perfect sympathy 
 to their tasks in the field or shop, so are they in- 
 clined for a ride or a journey at the same instant, 
 and the horses come up with the family carriage 
 unbespoken to the door. 
 
 We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as 
 a tree bears apples. A self-poise belongs to every 
 particle ; and a rectitude to every mind, and is the 
 Nemesis and protector of every society. I and my 
 neighbours have been bred in the notion, that, unless 
 we came soon to some good church, — Calvinism, 
 or Behmenism, or Romanism, or Mormonism, — 
 there would be a universal thaw and dissolution. 
 No Isaiah or Jeremy has arrived. Nothing can 
 exceed the anarchy that has followed in our skies. 
 The stern old faiths have all pulverized. 'Tis a 
 whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in 
 search of religions. 'Tis as flat anarchy in our 
 ecclesiastic realms, as that which existed in Massa- 
 chusetts in the revolution, or which prevails now 
 on the slope of the Rocky Mountains or Pike's 
 Peak. Yet we make shift to live. Men are loyal. 
 Nature has self-poise in all her works ; certain pro- 
 
126 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 portions in which oxygen and azote combine, and, 
 not less a harmony in faculties, a fitness in the spring 
 and the regulator. 
 
 The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fenelon, 
 or Wesley, or Channing, need give us no uneasiness. 
 The builder of heaven has not so ill constructed 
 his creature as that the religion, that is, the public 
 nature, should fall out: the public and the private 
 element, like north and south, like inside and out- 
 side, like centrifugal and centripetal, adhere to every 
 soul, and cannot be subdued, except the soul is 
 dissipated. God builds his temple in the heart on 
 the ruins of churches and religions. 
 
 In the last chapters, we treated some particulars 
 of the question of culture. But the whole state 
 of man is a state of culture; and its flowering 
 and completion may be described as Religion, or 
 Worship. There is always some religion, some 
 hope and fear extended into the invisible, — from 
 the blind boding which nails a horseshoe to the 
 mast or the threshold, up to the song of the Elders 
 in the Apocalypse. But the religion cannot rise 
 above the state of the votary. Heaven always 
 bears some proportion to earth. The god of the 
 cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a cru- 
 sader, and of the merchants a merchant. In all 
 ages, souls out of time, extraordinary, prophetic. 
 are born, who are rather related to the system of 
 the world, than to their particular age and locality, 
 These announce absolute truths, which, with what- 
 ever reverence received, are speedily dragged down 
 into a savage interpretation. The interior tribes of 
 our Indians, and some of the Pacific islanders, flog 
 their gods, when things take an unfavourable turn. 
 The Greek poets did not hesitate to let loose their 
 petulant wit on their deities also. Laomedon, in his 
 anger at Neptune and Apollo, who had built Troy 
 for him, and demanded their pj ce, does not hesitate 
 
WOESHIP. 127 
 
 to menace them that he will cut their ears off.* 
 Among our Norse forefathers, King Olaf 's mode of 
 converting Eyvind to Christianity was to put a pan 
 of glowing coals on his belly, which hurst asunder. 
 ee Wilt thou now, Eyvind, believe in Christ ? " asks 
 Olaf, in excellent faith. Another argument was an 
 adder put into the mouth of the reluctant disciple 
 Rand, who refused to believe. 
 
 Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified Euro- 
 pean culture, — the grafted or meliorated tree in a 
 crab forest. And to marry a pagan wife or husband, 
 was to marry Beast, and voluntarily to take a step 
 backwards towards the baboon. 
 
 " Hengist had verament 
 A daughter both fair and gent, 
 But she was heathen Sarazine, 
 And Vortigern for love fine 
 Her took to fere and to wife, 
 And was cursed in all his life; 
 Eor he let Christian wed heathen, 
 And mixed our blood as flesh and mathen."f 
 
 What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed drew from 
 the pagan sources, Richard of Devizes' chronicle of 
 Richard I.'s crusade, in the twelfth century, may 
 show. King Richard taunts God with forsaking 
 him : " Oh, fie ! Oh, how unwilling should I be to 
 forsake thee, in so forlorn and dreadful a position, 
 were I thy lord and advocate, as thou art mine. 
 In sooth, my standards will in future be despised, 
 not through my fault, but through thine : in sooth, 
 not through any cowardice of my warfare, art thou 
 thyself, my King and my God, conquered this day, 
 and not Richard thy vassal." The religion of the 
 early English poets is anomalous, so devout and so 
 blasphemous, in the same breath. Such is Chaucer's 
 extraordinary confusion of heaven and earth in the 
 picture of Dido : — 
 
 * Eiad, Book xxi. 1. 4 S. f Moths or worms. 
 
128 CONDUCT OF LIEE. 
 
 " She was fair, 
 So young, so lusty, with her eyen glad, 
 That if that God that heaven and earthe made 
 "Would have a love for beauty and goodness, 
 And womanhede, truth, and seemliness, 
 Whom should he loven but this lady sweet ? 
 There n' is no woman to him half so meet." 
 
 With these grossnesses, we complacently compare 
 our own taste and decorum. We think and speak 
 with more temperance and gradation, — but is not 
 indifferentism as bad as superstition ? 
 
 We live in a transition period, when the old faiths 
 which comforted nations, and not only so, but made 
 nations, seem to have spent their force. I do not 
 find the religions of men at this moment very credit- 
 able to them, but either childish and insignificant, or 
 unmanly and effeminating. The fatal trait is the 
 divorce between religion and morality. Here are 
 know-nothing religions, or churches that proscribe 
 intellect ; scortatory religions ; slave-holding and 
 slave-trading religions ; and, even in the decent 
 populations, idolatries wherein the whiteness of the 
 ritual covers scarlet indulgence. The lover of the 
 old religion complains that our contemporaries, 
 scholars as well as merchants, succumb to a great 
 despair, — have corrupted into a timorous conser- 
 vatism, and believe in nothing. In our large cities, 
 the population is godless, materialized, — no bond, 
 no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not 
 men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites 
 walking. How is it people manage to live on, — 
 so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn 
 aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their 
 bones alone held them together, and not any worthy 
 purpose. There is no faith in the intellectual, none 
 in the moral universe. There is faith in chemistry, 
 in meat, and wine, in wealth, in machinery, in 
 the steam-engine, galvanic battery, turbine-wheels, 
 sewing machines, and in public opinion, but not in 
 
 . 
 
WORSHIP. 129 
 
 divine causes. A silent revolution lias loosed the 
 tension of the old religious sects, and, in place of the 
 gravity and permanence of those societies of opinion, 
 they run into freak and extravagance. In creeds 
 never was such levity; witness the heathenisms in 
 Christianity, the periodic " revivals," the millennium 
 mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression 
 to Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor 
 of mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, the rat 
 and mouse revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and 
 black art. The architecture, the music, the prayer, 
 partake of the madness : the arts sink into shift and 
 makebelieve. Not knowing what to do, we ape our 
 ancestors ; the churches stagger backward to the 
 mummeries of the dark ages. By the irresistible 
 maturing of the general mind, the Christian tra- 
 ditions have lost their hold. The dogma of the 
 mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he 
 standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis 
 impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his per- 
 sonality ; and it recedes, as all persons must, before 
 the sublimity of the moral laws. From this change, 
 and in the momentary absence of any religious 
 genius that could offset the immense material 
 activity, there is a feeling that religion is gone. 
 When Paul Leroux offered his article " Dieu " to the 
 conductor of a leading French journal, he replied, 
 " La question de Dieu manque aVactualite" In Italy, 
 Mr. Gladstone said of the late King of Naples, "it 
 has been a proverb, that he has erected the negation 
 of God into a system of government." In this 
 country, the like stupefaction was in the air, and 
 the phrase "higher law" became a political jibe. 
 What proof of infidelity, like the toleration and 
 propagandism of slavery? What, like the direction 
 of education ? What, like the facility of conversion ? 
 What, like the externality of churches that once 
 sucked the roots of right and wrong, and now have 
 
130 CONDUCT OF LITE. 
 
 perished away till they are a speck of whitewash on 
 the wall ? What proof of scepticism like the base 
 rate at which the highest mental and moral gifts are 
 held? Let a man attain the highest and broadest 
 culture that any American has possessed, then let 
 him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other 
 accident, and all America will acquiesce that the 
 best thing has happened to him; that, after the 
 education has gone far, such is the expensiveness 
 of America, that the best use to put a fine person to, 
 is, to drown him to save his board. 
 
 Another scar of this scepticism is the distrust in 
 human virtue. It is believed by well-dressed pro- 
 prietors that there is no more virtue than they 
 possess; that the solid portion of society exist for 
 the arts of comfort; that life is an affair to put 
 somewhat between the upper and lower mandibles. 
 How prompt the suggestion of a low motive ! 
 Certain patriots in England devoted themselves 
 for years to creating a public opinion that should 
 break down the corn-laws and establish free trade. 
 " Well," says the man in the street, " Cobden got 
 a stipend out of it." Kossuth fled hither across the 
 ocean to try if he could rouse the New World to 
 a sympathy with European liberty. "Ay" says 
 New York, " he made a handsome thing of it, 
 enough to make him comfortable for life." 
 
 See what allowance vice finds in the respectable 
 and well-conditioned class. If a pickpocket intrude 
 into the society of gentlemen, they exert what moral 
 force they have, and he finds himself uncomfortable, 
 and glad to get away. But if an adventurer go 
 through all the forms, procure himself to be elected 
 to a post of trust, as of senator, or president, — 
 though by the same arts as we detest in the house- 
 thief, — the same gentlemen who agree to discounte- 
 nance the private rogue, will be forward to show 
 civilities and marks of respect to the public one; 
 
WOKSHIP. 131 
 
 and no amount of evidence of his crimes will prevent 
 them giving him ovations,, complimentary dinners, 
 opening their own houses to him, and priding them- 
 selves on his acquaintance. We were not deceived 
 by the professions of the private adventurer, — the 
 louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted 
 our spoons ; but we appeal to the sanctified preamble 
 of the messages and proclamations of the public 
 sinner, as the proof of sincerity. It must be that 
 they who pay this homage have said to themselves, 
 On the whole, we don't know about this that you. 
 call honesty ; a bird in the hand is better. 
 
 Even well-disposed, good sort of people, are 
 touched with the same infidelity, and for brave, 
 straightforward action, use half-measures, and com- 
 promises. Forgetful that a little measure is a great 
 error, forgetful that a wise mechanic uses a sharp 
 tool, they go on choosing the dead men of routine. 
 But the official men can in nowise help you in any 
 question of to-day, they deriving entirely from the 
 old dead things. Only those can help in counsel or 
 conduct who did not make a party pledge to defend 
 this or that, but who were appointed by God Al- 
 mighty, before they came into the world, to stand for 
 this which they uphold. 
 
 It has been charged that a want of sincerity in the 
 leading men is a vice general throughout American 
 society. But the multitude of the sick shall not 
 make us deny the existence of health. In spite of 
 our imbecility and terrors, and " universal decay of 
 religion," &c. &c, the moral sense reappears to-day 
 with the same morning newness that has been from 
 of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You 
 say, there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in 
 rainy weather there is no sun, when at that moment 
 we are witnessing one of his superlative effects. 
 The religion of the cultivated class now, to be sure, 
 consists in an avoidance of acts and engagements 
 
 9—2 
 
132 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 which it was once their religion to assume. But 
 this avoidance will yield spontaneous forms in their 
 due hour. There is a principle which is the basis 
 of things, which all speech aims to say, and all 
 action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, un- 
 describable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, 
 our rightful lord : we are not to do, but to let do ; 
 not to work, but to be worked upon ; and to this 
 homage there is a consent of all thoughtful and just 
 men in all ages and conditions. To this sentiment 
 belong vast and sudden enlargements of power. 
 'Tis remarkable that our faith in ecstasy consists 
 with total inexperience of it. It is the order of the 
 world to educate with accuracy the senses and the 
 understanding ; and the enginery at work to draw 
 out these powers in priority, no doubt, has its office. 
 But we are never without a hint that these powers 
 are mediate and servile, and that we are one day 
 to deal with real being, — essences with essences. 
 Even the fury of material activity has some results 
 friendly to moral health. The energetic action of 
 the times develops individualism, and the religious 
 appear isolated. I esteem this a step in the right 
 direction. Heaven deals with us on no represen- 
 tative system. Souls are not saved in bundles. The 
 Spirit saith to the man, s How is it with thee? thee 
 personally? is it well? is it ill?' For a great nature, 
 it is a happiness to escape a religious training, — 
 religion of character is so apt to be invaded. Reli- 
 gion must always be a crab fruit : it cannot be 
 grafted and keep its wild beauty. " I have seen," 
 said a traveller who had known the extremes of 
 society, " I have seen human nature in all its forms ; 
 it is everywhere the same, but the wilder it is, the 
 more virtuous." 
 
 Yfe say, the old forms of religion decay, and that 
 a scepticism devastates the community. I do not 
 think it can be cured or stayed by any modification 
 
WORSHIP. 133 
 
 of tlieologic creeds, much less by theologic disci- 
 pline. The cure for false theology is motherwit. 
 Forget your books and traditions, and obey your 
 moral perceptions at this hour. That which is sig- 
 nified by the words " moral " and " spiritual," is a 
 lasting essence, and, with whatever illusions we 
 have loaded them, will certainly bring back the 
 words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. 
 I know no words that mean so much. In our 
 definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describ- 
 ing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is 
 real; that law which executes itself, which works 
 without means, and which cannot be conceived as 
 not existing. Men talk of " mere morality," — which 
 is much as if one should say, " poor God, with nobody 
 to help him." I find the omnipresence and the 
 almightiness in the reaction of every atom in Nature. 
 I can best indicate by examples those reactions by 
 which every part of Nature replies to the purpose of 
 the actor, — beneficently to the good, penally to the 
 bad. Let us replace sentimentalism by realism, and 
 dare to uncover those simple and terrible laws which, 
 be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern. 
 
 Every man takes care that his neighbour shall not 
 cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to 
 care that he do not cheat his neighbour. Then all 
 goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a 
 chariot of the sun. What a clay dawns, when we 
 have taken to heart the doctrine of faith ! to prefer, 
 as a better investment, being to doing ; being to 
 seeming ; logic to rhythm and to display ; the year 
 to the day ; the life to the year ; character to per- 
 formance ; — and have come to know, that justice 
 will be done us ; and, if our genius is slow, the term 
 will be long. 
 
 'Tis certain that worship stands in some com- 
 manding relation to the health of man, and to his 
 highest powers, so as to be, in some manner, the 
 
134 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 source of intellect. All the great ages have been 
 ages of belief. I mean, when there was any ex- 
 traordinary power of performance, when great 
 national movements began, when arts appeared, 
 when heroes existed, when poems were made, the 
 human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its thoughts 
 on spiritual verities, with as strict a grasp as that 
 of the hands on the sword, or the pencil, or the 
 trowel. It is true that genius takes its rise out 
 of the mountains of rectitude ; that all beauty and 
 power which men covet, are somehow born out of 
 that Alpine district ; that any extraordinary degree 
 of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm. 
 Thus, I think, we very slowly admit in another man 
 a higher degree of moral sentiment than our own, — 
 a finer conscience, more impressionable, or which 
 marks minuter degrees ; an ear to hear acuter notes 
 of right and wrong, than we can. I think we listen 
 suspiciously and very slowly to any evidence to that 
 point. But, once satisfied of such superiority, we 
 set no limit to our expectation of his genius. For 
 such persons are nearer to the secret of God than 
 others ; are bathed by sweeter waters ; they hear 
 notices, they see visions, where others are vacant. 
 We believe that holiness confers a certain insight, 
 because not by our private, but by our public force, 
 can we share and know the nature of things. 
 
 There is an intimate interdependence of intellect 
 and morals. Given the equality of two intellects, 
 — which will form the most reliable judgments, 
 the good or the bad hearted ? " The heart has its 
 arguments, with which the understanding is not 
 acquainted." For the heart is at once aware of the 
 state of health or disease, which is the controlling 
 state, that is, of sanity or of insanity, prior, of course, 
 to all question of the ingenuity of arguments, the 
 amount of facts, or the elegance of rhetoric. So 
 intimate is this alliance of mind and heart, that 
 
WORSHIP. 135 
 
 talent uniformly sinks with character. The bias of 
 errors of principle carries away men into perilous 
 courses, as soon as their will does not control their 
 passion or talent. Hence the extraordinary blunders, 
 and final wrong head, into which men spoiled by 
 ambition usually fall. Hence the remedy for all 
 blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is 
 love. <s As much love, so much mind," said the Latin 
 proverb. The superiority that has no superior ; the 
 redeemer and instructor of souls, as it is their primal 
 essence, is love. 
 
 The moral must be the measure of health. If 
 your eye is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, 
 and your opinions and actions will have a beauty 
 which no learning or combined advantages of other 
 men can rival. The moment of your loss of faith, 
 and acceptance of the lucrative standard, will be 
 marked in the pause, or solstice of genius, the sequent 
 retrogression, and the inevitable loss of attraction 
 to other minds. The vulgar are sensible of the 
 change in 3'ou, and of your descent, though they 
 clap you on the back, and congratulate you on your 
 increased common sense. 
 
 Our recent culture has been in natural science. 
 We have learned the manners of the sun and of the 
 moon, of the rivers and the rains, of the mineral 
 and elemental kingdoms, of plants and animals. 
 Man has learned to weigh the sun, and its weight 
 neither loses nor gains. The path of a star, the 
 moment of an eclipse, can be determined to the 
 fraction of a second. Well, to him the book of 
 history, the book of love, the lures of passion, and 
 the commandments of duty, are opened : and the next 
 lesson taught, is the continuation of the inflexible 
 law of matter into the subtile kingdom of will, and 
 of thought ; that, if in sidereal ages, gravity and 
 projection keep their craft, and the ball never loses 
 its way in its wild path through space, — a secreter 
 
136 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 gravitation, a secreter projection, rule not less 
 tyrannically in human history, and keep the balance 
 of power from age to age unbroken. For, though 
 the new element of freedom and an individual 
 has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms are 
 prefigured and predetermined to moral issues, are in 
 search of justice, and ultimate right is done. Religion 
 or worship is the attitude of those who see this unity, 
 intimacy, and sincerity; who see that, against all 
 appearances, the nature of things works for truth and 
 right for ever. 
 
 'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those 
 of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. 
 Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, 
 but push the same geometry and chemistry up into 
 the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, 
 look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes 
 of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment, 
 keeps watch and ward. And this appears in a class 
 of facts which concerns all men, within and above 
 their creeds. 
 
 Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circum- 
 stances : it was somebody's name, or he happened to 
 be there at the time, or it was so then, and another 
 day it would have been otherwise. Strong men 
 believe in cause and effect. The man was born to 
 do it, and his father was born to be the father of him 
 and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall 
 see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a 
 problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry. 
 The curve of the flight of the moth is preordained, 
 and all things go by number, rule, and weight. 
 
 Scepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man 
 does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks : as he 
 deals, so he is, and so he appears ; he does not see, 
 that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his 
 actions ; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits ; 
 that relation and connection are not somewhere and 
 
WORSHIP. 137 
 
 sometimes, but everywhere and always ; no mis- 
 cellany, no exemption, no anomaly, — but method, 
 and an even web ; and what comes out, that was put 
 in. As we are, so we do ; and as we do, so is it done 
 to us ; we are the builders of our fortunes ; cant and 
 lying and the attempt to secure a good which does 
 not belong to us, are, once for all, balked and vain. 
 But, in the human mind, this tie of fate is made 
 alive. The law is the basis of the human mind. In 
 us, it is inspiration ; out there in Nature, we see its 
 fatal strength. We call it the moral sentiment. 
 
 We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of 
 Law, which compares well with any in our Western 
 books. " Law it is, which is without name, or colour, 
 or hands, or feet ; which is smallest of the least, 
 and largest of the large ; all, and knowing all things ; 
 which hears without ears, sees without eyes, moves 
 without feet, and seizes without hands." 
 
 If any reader tax me with using vague and tra- 
 ditional phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few 
 examples, what kind of a trust this is, and how real. 
 Let me show him that the dice are loaded ; that the 
 colours are fast, because they are the native colours 
 of the fleece; that the globe is a battery, because 
 every atom is a magnet; and that the police and 
 sincerity of the Universe are secured by God's dele- 
 gating his divinity to every particle ; that there is no 
 room for hypocrisy, no margin for choice. 
 
 The countryman leaving his native village, for the 
 first time, and going abroad, finds all his habits 
 broken up. In a new nation and language, his sect, 
 as Quaker, or Lutheran, is lost. What! it is not 
 then necessary to the order and existence of society ? 
 He misses this, and the commanding eye of his 
 neighbourhood, which held him to decorum. This 
 is the peril of New York, of New Orleans, of London, 
 of Paris, to young men. But after a little expe- 
 rience, he makes the discovery that there are no 
 
138 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 large cities, — none large enough to hide in ; that the 
 censors of action are as numerous and as near in 
 Paris, as in Littleton or Portland ; that the gossip is 
 as prompt and vengeful. There is no concealment, 
 and, for each offence, a several vengeance ; that, re- 
 action, or nothing for nothing, or, things are as broad 
 as they are long, is not a rule for Littleton or Port- 
 land, but for the Universe, 
 
 We cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. 
 We are disgusted by gossip ; yet it is of importance 
 to keep the angels in their proprieties. The smallest 
 fly will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon impos- 
 sible to exclude from the privatest, highest, selectest. 
 Nature created a police of many ranks. God has 
 delegated himself to a million deputies. From these 
 low external penalties, the scale ascends. Next come 
 the resentments, the fears, which injustice calls out; 
 then, the false relations in which the offender is put 
 to other men ; and the reaction of his fault on him- 
 self, in the solitude and devastation of his mind. 
 
 You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succour 
 his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will 
 characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If 
 you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder 
 in that state of mind you had, when you made it. If 
 you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on 
 pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are 
 all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and 
 things themselves are detective. If you follow the 
 suburban fashion in building a sumptuous-looking 
 house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as 
 a cheap dear house. There is no privacy that cannot 
 be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized 
 world. Society is a masked ball 5 where every one 
 hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding. If 
 a man wish to conceal anything he carries, those 
 whom he meets know that he conceals somewhat, and 
 usually know what he conceals. Is it otherwise if 
 
WORSHIP. 139 
 
 there be some belief or some purpose he would bury 
 in his breast ? Tis as hard to hide as fire. He is a 
 strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man 
 cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing 
 to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life 
 and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the 
 senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and 
 imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty. 
 People seem not to see that their opinion of the 
 world is also a confession of character. We can 
 only see what we are, and if we misbehave we 
 suspect others. The fame of Shakspeare or of Vol- 
 taire, of Thomas a Kempis or of Bonaparte, charac- 
 terizes those who give it. As gas-light is found to 
 be the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects 
 itself by pitiless publicity. 
 
 Each must be armed — not necessarily with musket 
 and pike. Happy, if, seeing these, he can feel that 
 he has better muskets and pikes in his energy and 
 constancy. To every creature is his own weapon, 
 however skilfully concealed from himself, a good 
 while. His work is sword and shield. Let him 
 accuse none, let him injure none. The way to mend 
 the bad world, is to create the right world. Here is 
 a low political economy plotting to cut the throat of 
 foreign competition, and establish our own; — ex- 
 cluding others by force, or making war on them ; or, 
 by cunning tariffs, giving preference to worse wares 
 of ours. But the real and lasting victories are those 
 of peace, and not of war. The way to conquer the 
 foreign artisan, is, not to kill him, but to beat his 
 work. And the Crystal Palaces and World Fairs, 
 with their committees and prizes on all kinds of 
 industry, are the result of this feeling. The Ame- 
 rican workman who strikes ten blows with his 
 hammer, whilst the foreign workman only strikes 
 one, is as really vanquishing that foreigner, as if the 
 blows were aimed at and told on his person. I look 
 
140 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 on that man as happy, who, when there is question 
 of success, looks into his work for a reply, not into 
 the market, not into opinion, not into patronage. In 
 every variety of human employment, in the mechani- 
 cal and in the fine arts, in navigation, in farming, in 
 legislating, there are among the numbers who do 
 their task perfunctorily, as we say, or just to pass, 
 and as badly as they dare, — there are the working- 
 men, on whom the burden cf the business falls, — 
 those who love work, and love to see it rightly done, 
 who finish their task for its own sake ; and the state 
 and the world is happy, that has the most of such 
 finishers. The world will always do justice at last 
 to such finishers : it cannot otherwise. He who has 
 acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion 
 of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it 
 will not loiter. Men talk as if victory were some- 
 thing fortunate. Work is victory. Wherever work 
 is done, victory is obtained. There is no chance, and 
 no blanks. You want but one verdict : if you have 
 your own, you are secure of the rest. And yet, if 
 witnesses are wanted, witnesses are near. There was 
 never a man born so wise or good, but one or more 
 companions came into the world with him, who de- 
 light in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see 
 without awe, that no man thinks alone, and no man 
 acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with 
 him into life, — now under one disguise, now under 
 another, — like a police in citizens' clothes, walk with 
 him, step for step, through all the kingdom of time. 
 
 This reaction, this sincerity, is the property of all 
 things. To make our word or act sublime, we must 
 make it real. It is our system that counts, not the 
 single word or unsupported action. Use what lan- 
 guage you will, you can never say anything but what 
 you are. What I am, and what I think, is conveyed 
 to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it back. What 
 I am has been secretly conveyed from me to another, 
 
WORSHIP. 141 
 
 whilst I was vainly making up my mind to tell him 
 it. He has heard from me what I never spoke. 
 
 As men get on in life, they acquire a love for 
 sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or 
 amused. In the progress of the character, there is 
 an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a de- 
 creasing faith in propositions. Young people admire 
 talents, and particular excellences. As we grow 
 older, we value total powers and effects, as the spirit, 
 or quality of the man. We have another sight, and 
 a new standard ; an insight which disregards what is 
 done for the eye, and pierces to the doer ; an ear 
 which hears not what men say, but hears what they 
 do not say. 
 
 There was a wise, devout man who is called, in 
 the Catholic Church, St. Philip Neri, of whom many 
 anecdotes touching his discernment and benevolence 
 are told at Naples and Rome. Among the nuns in a 
 convent not far from Rome, one had appeared, who 
 laid claim to certain rare gifts of inspiration and pro- 
 phecy, and the abbess advised the Holy Father, at 
 Rome, of the wonderful powers shown by her novice. 
 The Pope did not well know what to make of these 
 new claims, and Philip coming in from a journey 
 one day, he consulted him. Philip undertook to 
 visit the nun, and ascertain her character. He threw 
 himself on his mule, all travel-soiled as he was, and 
 hastened through the mud and mire to the distant 
 convent. He told the abbess the wishes of his Holi- 
 ness, and begged her to summon the nun without 
 delay. The nun was sent for, and, as soon as she 
 came into the apartment, Philip stretched out his leg 
 all bespattered with mud, and desired her to draw off 
 his boots. The young nun, who had become the 
 object of much attention and respect, drew back 
 with anger, and refused the office : Philip ran out 
 of doors, mounted his mule, and returned instantly 
 to the Pope : " Give yourself no uneasiness, Holy 
 
142 CONDUCT OE LIFE. 
 
 Father, any longer : here is no miracle, for here is no 
 humility." 
 
 We need not much mind what people please to 
 say, but what they must say; what their natures 
 say, though their busy, artful, Yankee understand- 
 ings try to hold back, and choke that word, and 
 to articulate something different. If we will sit 
 quietly, — what they ought to say is said, with their 
 will, or against their will. We do not care for 
 you, let us pretend what we will: we are always 
 looking through you to the dim dictator behind 
 you. Whilst your habit or whim chatters, we 
 civilly and impatiently wait until that wise superior 
 shall speak again. Even children are not deceived 
 by the false reasons which their parents give in 
 answer to their questions, whether touching natural 
 facts, or religion, or persons. When the parent, 
 instead of thinking how it really is, puts them off 
 with a traditional or a hypocritical answer, the children 
 perceive that it is traditional or hypocritical. To 
 a sound constitution the defect of another is at once 
 manifest: and the marks of it are only concealed 
 from us by our own dislocation. An anatomical 
 observer remarks, that the sympathies of the chest, 
 abdomen, and pelvis, tell at last on the face, and on 
 all its features. Not only does our beauty waste, 
 but it leaves word how it went to waste. Phy- 
 siognomy and phrenology are not new sciences, 
 but declarations of the soul that it is aware of certain 
 new sources of information. And now sciences of 
 broader scope are starting up behind these. And so 
 for ourselves, it is really of little importance what 
 blunders in statement we make, so only we make no 
 wilful departures from the truth. How a man's 
 truth comes to mind, long after we have forgotten 
 all Ins words ! How it comes ..to us in silent hours, 
 that truth is our only armour in all passages of life 
 and death ! Wit is cheap, and anger is cheap ; but 
 
WOESHIP. 143 
 
 if you cannot argue or explain yourself to the other 
 party, cleave to the truth against me, against thee, 
 and you gain a station from which you cannot be 
 dislodged. The other party will forget the words 
 that you spoke, but the part you took continues to 
 plead for you. 
 
 Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which 
 life offers me? I am well assured that the Ques- 
 tioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring 
 the answers also in due time. Very rich, very 
 potent, very cheerful Giver that he is, he shall have 
 it all his own way, for me. Why should I give up 
 my thought, because I cannot answer an objection 
 to it? Consider only, whether it remains in my 
 life the same it was. That only which we have 
 within, can we see without. If we meet no gods, 
 it is because we harbour none. If there is grandeur 
 in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps. 
 He only is rightly immortal, to whom all things 
 are immortal. I have read somewhere, that none 
 is accomplished, so long as any are incomplete ; that 
 the happiness of one cannot consist with the misery 
 of any other. 
 
 The Buddhists say, " No seed will die : " every 
 seed will grow. Where is the service which can 
 escape its remuneration ? What is vulgar, and the 
 essence of all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward? 
 'Tis the difference of artisan and artist, of talent 
 and genius, of sinner and saint. The man whose 
 eyes are nailed not on the nature of his act, but on 
 the wages, whether it be money, or office, or fame, 
 — is almost equally low. He is great, whose eyes 
 are opened to see that the reward of actions cannot 
 be escaped, because he is transformed into his action, 
 and taketh its nature, which bears its own fruit, 
 like every other tree. A great man cannot be 
 hindered of the effect of his act, because it is im- 
 mediate. The genius of life is friendly to the noble, 
 
144 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 and in the dark brings them friends from far. Fear 
 God, and where yon go, men shall think they walk 
 in hallowed cathedrals. 
 
 And so I look on those sentiments which make 
 the glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, 
 as being also the intimacy of Divinity in the atoms ; 
 and, that, as soon as the man is right, assurances 
 and previsions emanate from the interior of his 
 body and his mind ; as, when flowers reach their 
 ripeness, incense exhales from them, and, as a 
 beautiful atmosphere is generated from the planet 
 by the averaged emanations from all its rocks and 
 soils. 
 
 Thus man is made equal to every event. He 
 can face danger for the right. A poor, tender, 
 painful body, he can run into flame or bullets or 
 pestilence, with duty for his guide. He feels the 
 insurance of a just employment. I am not afraid 
 of accident, as long as I am in my place. It is 
 strange that superior persons should not feel that 
 they have some better resistance against cholera, 
 than avoiding green peas and salads. Life is hardly 
 respectable — is it ? — if it has no generous, guaran- 
 teeing task, no duties or affections, that constitute 
 a necessity of existing. Every man's task is his life- 
 preserver. The conviction that his work is dear 
 to God and cannot be spared, defends him. The 
 lightning-rod that disarms the cloud of its threat 
 is his body in its duty. A high aim reacts on 
 the means, on the days, on the organs of the 
 body. A high aim is curative, as well as arnica. 
 "Napoleon," says Goethe, "visited those sick of 
 the plague, in order to prove that the man who 
 could vanquish fear, could vanquish the plague also ; 
 and he was right. 'Tis incredible what force the 
 will has in such cases : it penetrates the body, and 
 puts it in a state of activity, which repels all hurtful 
 influences ; whilst fear invites them." 
 
WOKSHIP. 145 
 
 It is related of William of Orange, that, whilst lie 
 was besieging a town on the continent, a gentleman 
 sent to him on public business came to his camp, 
 and, learning that the king was before the walls, he 
 ventured to go where he was. He found him direct- 
 ing the operation of his gunners, and, having ex- 
 plained his errand, and received his answer, the king- 
 said, " Do you not know, sir, that every moment 
 you spend here is at the risk of your life ? " "I run 
 no more risk," replied the gentleman, "than your 
 majesty." " Yes," said the king, " but my duty 
 brings me here, and yours does not." In a few 
 minutes, a cannon-ball fell on the spot, and the gen- 
 tleman was killed. 
 
 Thus can the faithful student reverse all the warn- 
 ings of his early instinct, under the guidance of a 
 deeper instinct. He learns to welcome misfortune, 
 learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great. 
 He learns the greatness of humility. He shall work 
 in the dark, work against failure, pain, and ill-will. 
 If he is insulted, he can be insulted ; all his affair is 
 not to insult. Hafiz writes, — 
 
 " At the last day, men shall wear 
 On their heads the dust, 
 As ensign and as ornament 
 Of their lowly trust." 
 
 The moral equalizes all ; enriches, empowers all. 
 It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in 
 their pocket. Under the whip of the driver, the 
 slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes. 
 In the greatest destitution and calamity, it surprises 
 man with a feeling of elasticity which makes nothing 
 of loss. 
 
 I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose 
 life and discourse betrayed many inspirations of this 
 sentiment. Benedict was always great in the pre- 
 sent time. He had hoarded nothing from the past, 
 neither in his cabinets, neither in his memory. He 
 
 10 
 
146 CONDUCT OF LITE. 
 
 had no designs on the future, neither for what he 
 should do to men, nor for what men should do for 
 him. He said, {i I am never beaten until I know that 
 I am beaten. I meet powerful brutal people to whom 
 I have no skill to reply. They think they have 
 defeated me. It is so published in society, in the 
 journals ; I am defeated in this fashion, in all men's 
 sight, perhaps on a dozen different lines. My ledger 
 may show that I am in debt, cannot yet make my 
 ends meet, and vanquish the enemy so. My race 
 may not be prospering : we are sick, ugly, obscure, 
 unpopular. My children may be worsted. I seem 
 to fail in my friends and clients, too ; that is to say, 
 in all the encounters that have yet chanced, I have 
 not been weaponed for that particular occasion, and 
 have been historically beaten ; and yet I know, all 
 the time, that I have never been beaten — have never 
 yet fought, shall certainly fight, when my hour comes, 
 and shall beat." " A man," says the Vishnu Sarma, 
 "who, having well compared his own strength or 
 weakness with that of others, after all doth not know 
 the difference, is easily overcome by his enemies.'' 
 
 " I spent," he said, " ten months in the country. 
 Thick -starred Orion was my only companion. 
 Wherever a squirrel or a bee can go with security, 
 I can go. I ate whatever was set before me ; I 
 touched ivy and dogwood. When I went abroad, 
 I kept company with every man on the road, for I 
 knew that my evil and my good did not come from 
 these, but from the Spirit, whose servant I was. For 
 I could not stoop to be a circumstance, as they did, 
 who put their life into their fortune and their com- 
 pany. I would not degrade myself by casting about 
 in my memory for a thought, nor by waiting for one. 
 If the thought come, I would give it entertainment. 
 It should, as it ought, go into my hands and feet ; 
 but if it come not spontaneously, it comes not rightly 
 at all. If it can spare me, I am sure I can spare it. 
 
 
WORSHIP. 147 
 
 It shall be the same with my friends. I will never 
 woo the loveliest. I will not ask any friendship or 
 favour. When I come to my own, we shall both 
 know it. Nothing will be to be asked or to be 
 granted." Benedict went out to seek his friend, and 
 met him on the way ; but he expressed no surprise 
 at any coincidences. On the other hand, if he called 
 at the door of his friend, and he was not at home, he 
 did not go again; concluding that he had misinter- 
 preted the intimations. 
 
 He had the whim not to make an apology to the 
 same individual whom he had wronged ; for this, he 
 said, was a piece of personal vanity ; but he would 
 correct his conduct in that respect in which he had 
 faulted, to the next person he should meet. Thus, 
 he said, universal justice was satisfied. 
 
 Mira came to ask what she should do with the 
 poor Genesee woman who had hired herself to work 
 for her, at a shilling a day, and, now, sickening, was 
 like to be bedridden on her hands. Should she keep 
 her, or should she dismiss her ? But Benedict said, 
 " Why ask ? One thing will clear itself as the thing 
 to be done, and not another, when the hour comes. 
 Is it a question, whether to put her into the street ? 
 Just as much whether to thrust the little Jenny on 
 your arm into the street. The milk and meal you 
 give the beggar will fatten Jenny. Thrust the 
 w^oman out, and you thrust your babe out of doors, 
 whether it so seem to you or not." 
 
 In the Shakers, so called, I find one piece of belief, 
 in the doctrine which they faithfully hold, that en- 
 courages them to open their doors to every wayfaring 
 man who proposes to come among them ; for, they say, 
 the Spirit will presently manifest to the man himself, 
 and to the society, what manner of person he is, and 
 whether he belongs among them. They do not receive 
 him, they do not reject him. And not in vain have 
 they worn their clay coat, and drudged in their fields, 
 
 10—2 
 
148 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 and shuffled in their Bruin dance, from year to year, 
 if they have truly learned thus much wisdom. 
 
 Honour him whose life is perpetual victory ; him, 
 who, by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds 
 support in labour, instead of praise — who does not 
 shine, and would rather not. With eyes open, he 
 makes the choice of virtue, which outrages the vir- 
 tuous ; of religion, which churches stop their discords 
 to burn and exterminate : for the highest virtue is 
 always against the law. 
 
 Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the 
 arithmetician. Talent and success interest me but 
 moderately. The great class, they who affect our 
 imagination, the men who could not make their 
 hands meet around their objects, the rapt, the lost, 
 the fools of ideas — they suggest what they cannot 
 execute. They speak to the ages, and are heard 
 from afar. The Spirit does not love cripples and 
 malformations. If there ever was a good man, be 
 certain, there was another, and will be more. 
 
 And so in relation to that future hour, that spectre 
 clothed with beauty at our curtain by night, at our 
 table by day — the apprehension, the assurance of a 
 coming change. The race of mankind have always 
 offered at least this implied thanks for the gift of 
 existence, namely, the terror of its being taken away; 
 the insatiable curiosity and appetite for its continua- 
 tion. The whole revelation that is vouchsafed us is 
 the gentle trust, which, in our experience we find, 
 will cover also with flowers the slopes of this chasm. 
 
 Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is 
 incurious. It is so well, that it is sure it will be 
 well. It asks no questions of the Supreme Power. 
 The son of Antiochus asked his father when he 
 would join battle. " Dost thou fear," replied the 
 king, " that thou only in all the army wilt not hear 
 the trumpet ? " 'Tis a higher thing to confide, that, 
 if it is best we should live, we shall live ; 'tis higher 
 
WORSHIP. 149 
 
 to have this conviction, than to have the lease of in- 
 definite centuries and millenniums and aeons. Higher 
 than the question of our duration is the question of 
 our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are 
 fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future, 
 must be a great soul now. It is a doctrine too great 
 to rest on any legend — that is, on any man's expe- 
 rience but our own. It must be proved, if at all, 
 from our own activity and designs, which imply an 
 interminable future for their play. 
 
 What is called religion effeminates and demo- 
 ralizes. Such as you are, the gods themselves could 
 not help you. Men are too often unfit to live, from 
 their obvious inequality to their own necessities ; or 
 they suffer from politics, or bad neighbours, or from 
 sickness, and they would gladly know that they were 
 to be dismissed from the duties of life. But the wise 
 instinct asks, " How will death help them ? " These 
 are not dismissed when they die. You shall not wish 
 for death out of pusillanimity The weight of the 
 universe is pressed down on the shoulders of each 
 moral agent to hold him to his task. The only path 
 of escape known in all the worlds of God is perform- 
 ance. You must do your work, before you shall be 
 released. And as far as it is a question of fact re- 
 specting the government of the Universe, Marcus 
 Antoninus summed the whole in 'a word — "It is 
 pleasant to die, if there be gods ; and sad to live, if 
 there be none." 
 
 And so I think that the last lesson of life, the 
 choral song which rises f^om all elements and all 
 angels, is a voluntary obedience, a necessitated free- 
 dom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world 
 is ; he shares the same impressions, predispositions, 
 and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, wheij 
 his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the 
 sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the 
 stones do by structure. 
 
150 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 The religion which is to guide and fulfil the pre- 
 sent and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be 
 intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith 
 which is science. " There are two things," said 
 Mahomet, " which I abhor — the learned in his infi- 
 delities, and the fool in his devotions." Our times 
 are impatient of both, and specially of the last. Let 
 us have nothing now which is not its own evidence. 
 There is surely enough for the heart and imagina- 
 tion in the religion itself. Let us not be pestered 
 with assertions and half-truths, with emotions and 
 snuffle. 
 
 There will be a new church founded on moral 
 science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger 
 again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, 
 the church of men to come, without shawms, or 
 psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and 
 earth for its beams and rafters ; science for symbol 
 and illustration ; it will fast enough gather beauty, 
 music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern 
 and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home 
 to his central solitude, shame these social, suppli- 
 cating manners, and make him know that much of 
 the time he must have himself to his friend. He shall 
 expect no co-operation, he shall walk with no com- 
 panion. The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, 
 the superpersonal Heart — he shall repose alone on 
 that. He needs only his own verdict. No good 
 fame can help, no bad fame can hurt him. The 
 laws are his consolers, the good laws themselves are 
 alive; they know if he have kept them; they animate 
 him with the leading of great duty, and an endless 
 horizon. Honour and fortune exist to him who 
 always recognizes the neighbourhood of the great, 
 always feels himself in the presence of high causes. 
 
151 
 
 VII.-CONSIDEEATIONS BY THE WAY. 
 
 Hear what British Merlin sung, 
 
 Of keenest eye and truest tongue. 
 
 Say not, the chiefs who first arrive 
 
 Usurp the seats for which all strive; 
 
 The forefathers this land who found 
 
 Failed to plant the vantage-ground; 
 
 Ever from one who comes to-morrow 
 
 Men wait their good and truth to borrow. 
 
 But wilt thou measure all thy road, 
 
 See thou lift the lightest load. 
 
 Who has little, to him who has less, can spare, 
 
 And thou, Cyndyllan's son ! beware 
 
 Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear, 
 
 To falter ere thou thy task fulfil, — 
 
 Only the light- armed climb the hill. 
 
 The richest of all lords is Use, 
 
 And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. 
 
 Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, 
 
 Drink the wild air's salubrity: 
 
 Where the star Canope shines in May, 
 
 Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. 
 
 The music that can deepest reach, 
 
 And cure all ill, is eordial speech: 
 
 Mask thy wisdom with delight, 
 
 Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 
 
 Of all wit's uses, the main one 
 
 Is to live well with who has none. 
 
 Cleave to thine acre ; the round year 
 
 Will fetch all fruits and virtues here : 
 
 Tool and foe may harmless roam, 
 
 Loved and lovers bide at home. 
 
 A day for toil, an hour for sport, 
 
 But for a friend is life too short. 
 
 Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, 
 I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than 
 of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dic- 
 tation from temperament and unknown inspiration, 
 enters into it, that we doubt we can say anything out 
 of our own experience whereby to help each other. 
 All the professions are timid and expectant agencies. 
 The priest is glad if his prayers or his sermon meet 
 
152 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 tlie condition of any soul ; if of two, if of ten, 'tis a 
 signal success. But he walked to the church without 
 any assurance that he knew the distemper, or could 
 heal it. The physician prescribes hesitatingly out of 
 his few resources, the same tonic or sedative to this 
 new and peculiar constitution, which he has applied 
 with various success to a hundred men before. If the 
 patient mends, he is glad and surprised. The lawyer 
 advises the client, and tells his story to the jury, and 
 leaves it with them, and is as gay and as much 
 relieved as the client, if it turns out that he has a 
 verdict. The judge weighs the arguments, and puts a 
 brave face on the matter, and, since there must be a 
 decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done 
 justice, and given satisfaction to the community ; but 
 is only an advocate after all. And so is all life a 
 timid and unskilful spectator. We do what we must, 
 and call it by the best names. We like very well to 
 be praised for our action, but our conscience says, 
 " Not unto us." 'Tis little we can do for each other. 
 We accompany the youth with sympathy, and mani- 
 fold old sayings of the wise, to the gate of the arena, 
 but 'tis certain that not by strength of ours, or of the 
 old sayings, but only on strength of his own, unknown 
 to us or to any, he must stand or fall. That by 
 which a man conquers in any passage, is a profound 
 secret to every other being in the world, and it is only 
 as he turns his back on us and on all men, and draws 
 on this most private wisdom, that any good can come 
 to him. What we have, therefore, to say of life, is 
 rather description, or, if you please, celebration, than 
 available rules. 
 
 Yet vigour is contagious, and whatever makes us 
 either think or feel strongly adds to our power, and 
 enlarges our field of action. We have a debt to 
 every great heart, to every fine genius ; to those who 
 have put life and fortune on the cast of an act of 
 justice ; to those who have added new sciences ; to 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 153 
 
 those who have refined life by elegant pursuits, 'Tis 
 the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called 
 fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection 
 against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern. 
 Fine society, in the common acceptation, has neither 
 ideas nor aims. It renders the service of a per- 
 fumery, or a laundry, not of a farm or factory. 'Tis 
 an exclusion and a precinct. Sidney Smith said, 
 " A few yards in London cement or dissolve friend- 
 ship." It is an unprincipled decorum; an affair of 
 clean linen and coaches, of gloves, cards, and 
 elegance in trifles. There are other measures of 
 self-respect for a man, than the number of clean 
 shirts he puts on every day. Society wishes to be 
 amused. I do not wish to be amused. I wish that 
 life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the 
 days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we 
 reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is 
 to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some 
 pleasure we are to taste. Is all we have to do to 
 draw the breath in, and blow it out again ? Por- 
 phyry's definition is better : " Life is that which 
 holds matter together." The babe in arms is a 
 channel through which the energies we call fate, 
 love, and reason, visibly stream. See what a come- 
 tary train of auxiliaries man carries with him, of 
 animals, plants, stones, gases, and imponderable 
 elements. Let us infer his ends from this pomp of 
 means. Mirabeau said, " Why should we feel our- 
 selves to be men, unless it be to succeed in every- 
 thing, everywhere. You must say of nothing, That 
 is beneath me, nor feel that anything can be out of 
 your power. Nothing is impossible to the man who 
 can will. Is that necessary f That shall be : — this 
 is the only law of success." Whoever said it, this 
 is in the right key. But this is not the tone and 
 genius of the men in the street. In the streets, we 
 grow cynical. The men we meet are coarse and 
 
154 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 torpid. The finest wits have their sediment. What 
 quantities of fribbles, paupers, invalids, epicures, 
 antiquaries, politicians, thieves, and triflers of both 
 sexes, might be advantageously spared ! Mankind 
 divides itself into two classes, — benefactors and male- 
 factors. The second class is vast, the first a handful. 
 A person seldom falls sick, but the bystanders are 
 animated with a faint hope that he will die : — 
 quantities of poor lives ; of distressing invalids ; of 
 cases for a gun. Franklin said, " Mankind are very 
 superficial and dastardly : they begin upon a thing, 
 but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it dis- 
 couraged : but they have capacities, if they would 
 employ them." Shall we then judge a country by 
 the majority, or by the minority ? By the minority, 
 surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the 
 census, or by square miles of land, or other than by 
 their importance to the mind of the time. 
 
 Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. 
 Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their 
 demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, 
 but to be schooled, I wish not to concede any- 
 thing to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break 
 them up, and draw individuals out of them. The 
 worst of charity is, that the lives you are asked to 
 preserve are not worth preserving. Masses ! the 
 calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass 
 at all, but .honest men only, lovely, sweet, accom- 
 plished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow- 
 brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni 
 at all. If government knew how, I should like to 
 see it check, not multiply, the population. When it 
 reaches its true law of action, every man that is born 
 will be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah 
 of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of 
 single men spoken on their honour and their con- 
 science. In old Egypt, it was established law, that 
 the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred 
 
CONSIDEEATIONS BY THE WAY. 155 
 
 hands. I think it was much underestimated. " Clay 
 and clay differ in dignity," as we discover by our 
 preferences every day. What a vicious practice is 
 this of our politicians at Washington pairing off ! as 
 if one man who votes wrong, going away, could 
 excuse you, who mean to vote right, for going 
 away; or, as if your presence did not tell in more 
 ways than in your vote. Suppose the three hundred 
 heroes at Thermopylae had paired off with three hun- 
 dred Persians : would it have been all the same to 
 Greece and to history ? Napoleon was called by his 
 men Cent Mille. Add honesty to him, and they might 
 have called him Hundred Million. 
 
 Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that is 
 good, and shakes down a tree full of gnarled, wormy, 
 unripe crabs, before you can find a dozen dessert 
 apples; and she scatters nations of naked Indians, 
 and nations of clothed Christians, with two or three 
 good heads among them. Nature works very hard, 
 and only hits the white once in a million throws. 
 In mankind, she is contented if she yields one master 
 in a century. The more difficulty there is in creat- 
 ing good men, the more they are used when they 
 come. I once counted in a little neighbourhood, 
 and found that every able-bodied man had, say from 
 twelve to fifteen persons dependent on him for 
 material aid, — to whom he is to be for spoon and 
 jug, for backer and sponsor, for nursery and hospital, 
 and many functions beside: nor does it seem to make 
 much difference whether he is bachelor or patriarch ; 
 if he do not violently decline the duties that fall to 
 him, this amount of helpfulness will in one way or 
 another be brought home to him. This is the tax 
 which his abilities pay. The good men are employed 
 for private centres of use and for larger influence. 
 All revelations, whether of mechanical or intellectual 
 or moral science, are made not to communities, but 
 to single persons. All the marked events of our 
 
156 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 day, all the cities, all the colonizations, may be 
 traced back to their origin in a private brain. All 
 the feats which make our civility were the thoughts 
 of a few good heads. 
 
 Meantime, this spawning productivity is not 
 noxious or needless. You would say, this rabble of 
 nations might be spared. But no, they are all counted 
 and depended on. Fate keeps everything alive so 
 long as the smallest thread of public necessity holds 
 it on to the tree. The coxcomb and bully and thief 
 class are allowed as proletaries, every one of their 
 vices being the excess or acridity of a virtue. The 
 mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee. 
 But the units, whereof this mass is composed, are 
 neuters, every one of which may be grown to a 
 queen-bee. The rule is, we are used as brute atoms, 
 until we think : then, we use all the rest. Nature 
 turns all malfaisance to good. Nature provided for 
 real needs. No sane man at last distrusts himselfl 
 His existence is a perfect answer to all sentimental 
 cavils. If he is, he is wanted, and has the precise 
 properties that are required. That we are here, is 
 proof we ought to be here. We have as good right, 
 and the same sort of right to be here, as Cape Cod or 
 Sandy Hook have to be there. 
 
 To say then, the majority are wicked, means no 
 malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply, 
 that the majority are unripe, and have not yet come 
 to themselves, do not yet know their opinion. That, 
 if they knew it, is an oracle for them and for all. 
 But in the passing moment, the quadruped interest 
 is very prone to prevail : and this beast- force, whilst 
 it makes the discipline of the world, the school of 
 heroes, the glory of martyrs, has provoked, in every 
 age, the satire of wits, and the tears of good men. 
 They find the journals, the clubs, the governments, 
 the churches, to be in the interest and the pay of the 
 devil. And wise men have met this obstruction in 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 157 
 
 their times, like Socrates, with his famous irony ; like 
 Bacon, with life-long dissimulation ; like Erasmus, 
 with his book " The Praise of Folly ;" like Rabelais, 
 with his satire rending the nations. " They were the 
 fools who cried against me, you will say," wrote the 
 Chevalier de Boufflers to Grimm ; " ay, but the fools 
 have the advantage of numbers, and 'tis that which 
 decides. 'Tis of no use for us to make war with 
 them; we shall not weaken them; they will always 
 be the masters. There will not be a practice or an 
 usage introduced, of which they are not the authors." 
 In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of 
 history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, 
 but Bad is sometimes a better. 'Tis the oppressions 
 of William the Norman, savage forest-laws, and 
 crushing despotism, that made possible the inspira- 
 tions of Magna Charta under John. Edward I. 
 wanted money, armies, castles, and as much as he 
 could get. It was necessary to call the people to- 
 gether by shorter, swifter ways, — and the House of 
 Commons arose. To obtain subsidies, he paid in 
 privileges. In the twenty-fourth year of his reign, 
 he decreed, " that no tax should be levied without 
 consent of Lords and Commons ; " — which is the 
 basis of the English Constitution. Plutarch affirms 
 that the cruel wars which followed the march of 
 Alexander introduced the civility, language, and 
 arts of Greece into the savage 'East ; introduced 
 marriage; built seventy cities; and united hostile 
 nations under one government. The barbarians who 
 broke up the Roman empire did not arrive a day 
 too soon. Schiller says, the Thirty Years' War 
 made Germany a nation. Rough, selfish despots 
 serve men immensely, as Henry VIII. in the contest 
 with the Pope ; as the infatuations no less than the 
 wisdom of Cromwell ; as the ferocity of the Russian 
 czars ; as the fanaticism of the French regicides 
 of 1789. The frost which kills the harvest of a 
 
158 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 year, saves the harvests of a century, by destroying 
 the weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break 
 up immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten 
 races and dens of distemper, and open a fair field 
 to new men. There is a tendency in things to right 
 themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy 
 that shatters a rotten system, allows things to take 
 a new and natural order. The sharpest evils are 
 bent into that periodicity which makes the errors 
 of planets, and the fevers and distempers of men, 
 self-limiting. Nature is upheld by antagonism. 
 Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We 
 acquire the strength we have overcome. Without 
 war, no soldier; without enemies, no hero. The 
 sun were insipid, if the universe were not opaque. 
 And the glory of character is in affronting the 
 horrors of depravity, to draw thence new nobilities 
 of power : as Art lives and thrills in new use and 
 combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark 
 evermore for blacker pits of night. What would 
 painter do, or what would poet or saint, but for 
 crucifixions and hells ? And evermore in the world 
 is this marvellous balance of beauty and disgust, 
 magnificence and rats. Not Antoninus, but a poor 
 washer- woman said, "The more trouble, the more 
 lion ; that's my principle." 
 
 I do not think very respectfully of the designs or 
 the doings of the people who went to California in 
 1849. It was a rush and a scramble of needy adven- 
 turers, and in the western country a general jail- 
 delivery of all the rowdies of the rivers. Some of 
 them went with honest purposes, some with very bad 
 ones, and all of them with the very commonplace 
 wish to find a short way to wealth. But Nature 
 watches over all, and turns this malfaisance to good. 
 California gets peopled and subdued, — civilized in 
 this immoral way, — and, on this fiction, a real pro- 
 sperity is rooted and grown. 'Tis a decoy duck ; 'tis 
 
CONSIDEKATIONS BY THE WAY. 159 
 
 tubs thrown to amuse the whale : but real ducks, and 
 whales that yield oil, are caught. And, out of Sabine 
 rapes, and out of robbers' forays, real Homes and their 
 heroisms come in fulness of time. 
 
 In America, the geography is sublime, but the men 
 are not : the inventions are excellent, but the inven- 
 tors one is sometimes ashamed of. The agencies by 
 which events so grand as the opening of California, 
 of Texas, of Oregon, and the junction of the two 
 oceans, are effected, are paltry,— coarse selfishness, 
 fraud, and conspiracy : and most of the great results 
 of history are brought about by discreditable means. 
 
 The benefaction derived in Illinois, and the great 
 West, from railroads is inestimable, and vastly exceed- 
 ing any intentional philanthropy on record. What 
 is the benefit done by a good King Alfred, or by a 
 Howard, or Pestalozzi, or Elizabeth Fry, or Florence 
 Nightingale, or any lover, less or larger, compared 
 with the involuntary blessing wrought on nations by 
 the selfish capitalists who built the Illinois, Michigan, 
 and the network of the Mississippi valley roads, which 
 have evoked not only all the wealth of the soil, but 
 the energy of millions of men, 'Tis a sentence of an- 
 cient wisdom, " that God hangs the greatest weights 
 on the smallest wires." 
 
 What happens thus to nations, befalls every day in 
 private houses. When the friends of a gentleman 
 brought to his notice the follies of his sons, with many 
 hints of their danger, he replied, that he knew so 
 much mischief when he was a boy, and had turned 
 out on the whole so successfully, that he was not 
 alarmed by the dissipation of boys ; 'twas dangerous 
 water, but, he thought, they would soon touch bottom, 
 and then swim to the top. This is bold practice, and 
 there are many failures to a good escape. Yet one 
 would say, that a good understanding would suffice 
 as well as moral sensibility to keep one erect ; the 
 gratifications of the passions are so quickly seen to be 
 
160 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 damaging, and — what men like least — seriously 
 lowering them in social rank. Then all talent sinks 
 with character. 
 
 " Croyez moi, Verreur aussi a son merite" said 
 Voltaire. We see those wdio surmount, by dint of 
 some egotism or infatuation, obstacles from which 
 the prudent recoil. The right partisan is a heady, 
 narrow man, who, because he does not see many 
 things, sees some one thing with heat and exaggera- 
 tion, and, if he falls among other narrow men, or 
 on objects which have a brief importance, as some 
 trade or politics of the hour, he prefers it to the 
 universe, and seems inspired, and a godsend to those 
 who wish to magnify the matter, and carry a point. 
 Better, certainly, if we could secure the strength and 
 fire which rude, passionate men bring into society, 
 quite clear of their vices. But who dares draw out 
 the linchpin from the waggon- wheel ? 'Tis so mani- 
 fest, that there is no moral deformity but is a good 
 passion out of place ; that there is no man who is not 
 indebted to his foibles; that, according to the old 
 oracle, " the Furies are the bonds of men ; " that the 
 poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the 
 disease, and save the life. In the high prophetic 
 phrase, He causes the ivrath of man to praise him, and 
 twists and wrenches our evil to our good. Shak- 
 speare wrote, — 
 
 " 'Tis said, best men are moulded of their faults;" 
 
 and great educators and lawgivers, and especially 
 generals, and leaders of colonies, mainly rely on this 
 stuff, and esteem men of irregular and passional force 
 the best timber. A man of sense and energy, the 
 late head of the Farm School in Boston harbcur, said 
 to me, " I want none of your good boys, — give me 
 the bad ones." And this is the reason, I suppose, 
 why, as soon as the children are good, the mothers 
 are scared, and think they are going to die. Mira- 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAT. 161 
 
 beau said, ff There are none but men of strong pas- 
 sions capable of going to greatness ; none but such 
 capable of meriting the public gratitude." Passion, 
 though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. Any 
 absorbing passion has the effect to deliver from the 
 little coils and cares of every day : 'tis the heat which 
 sets our human atoms spinning, overcomes the fric- 
 tion of crossing thresholds, and first addresses in 
 society, and gives us a good start and speed, easy to 
 continue, when once it is begun. In short, there is no 
 man wdio is not at some time indebted to his vices, 
 as no plant that is not fed from manures. We only 
 insist that the man meliorate, and that the plant grow 
 upward, and convert the base into the better nature. 
 The wise workman will not regret the poverty or 
 the solitude which brought out his working talents. 
 The youth is charmed with the fine air and accom- 
 plishments of the children of fortune. But all great 
 men come out of the middle classes. 'Tis better 
 for the head ; 'tis better for the heart. Marcus 
 Antoninus says, that Fronto told him, " that the so- 
 called high-born are for the most part heartless;" 
 whilst nothing is so indicative of deepest culture as 
 a tender consideration of the ignorant. Charles 
 James Fox said of England, " The history of this 
 country proves that we are not to expect irom men 
 in affluent circumstances the vigilance, energy, and 
 exertion without which the House of Commons 
 would lose its greatest force and weight. Human 
 nature is prone to indulgence, and the most merito- 
 rious public services have always been performed 
 by persons in a condition of life removed from opu- 
 lence." And yet what we ask daily, is to be con- 
 ventional. Supply, most kind gods ! this defect in 
 my address, in my form, in my fortunes, which puts 
 me a little out of the ring : supply it, and let me be 
 like the rest whom I admire, and on good terms 
 with them. But the wise gods say. No, we have 
 
 11 
 
162 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 better things for thee. By humiliations, by defeats, 
 by loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, learn a 
 wider truth and humanity than that of a fine gentle- 
 man. A Fifth- Avenue landlord, a West-End house- 
 holder, is not the highest style of man : and, though 
 good hearts and sound minds are of no condition, 
 jet he who is to be wise for many, must not be 
 protected. He must know the huts where poor 
 men lie, and the chores which poor men do. The 
 first-class minds, .ZEsop, Socrates, Cervantes, Shak- 
 speare, Franklin, had the poor man's feeling and 
 mortification. A rich man was never insulted in 
 his life : but this man must be stung. A rich man 
 was never in danger from cold, or hunger, or war, 
 or ruffians, and you can see he was not, from the 
 moderation of his ideas. 'Tis a fatal disadvantage 
 to be cockered, and to eat too much cake. What 
 tests of manhood could he stand ? Take him out of 
 his protections. He is a good book-keeper; or he 
 is a shrewd adviser in the insurance office : perhaps 
 he could pass a college examination, and take his 
 degrees: perhaps he can give wise counsel in a 
 court of law. Now plant him down among farmers, 
 firemen, Indians, and emigrants. Set a dog on 
 him : set a highwayman on him : try him with a 
 course of mobs : send him to Kansas, to Pike's Peak, 
 to Oregon : and, if he have true faculty, this may 
 be the element he wants, and he will come out of 
 it with broader wisdom and manly power. iEsop, 
 Saadi, Cervantes, Pegnard, have been taken by cor- 
 sairs, left for dead, sold for slaves, and know the 
 realities of human life. 
 
 Bad times have a scientific value. These are occa- 
 sions a good learner would not miss. As we go gladly 
 to Faneuil Hall, to be played upon by the stormy 
 winds and strong fingers of enraged patriotism, so is 
 a fanatical persecution, civil war, national bankruptcy, 
 or revolution, more rich in the central tones than 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 163 
 
 languid years of prosperity. What had been, ever 
 since our memory, solid continent, yawns apart, and 
 discloses its composition and genesis. We learn geo- 
 logy the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly 
 diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and 
 the dry bed of the sea. 
 
 In our life and culture, everything is worked up 
 and comes in use — passion, war, revolt, bankruptcy, 
 and not less, folly and blunders, insult, ennui, and bad 
 company. Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up 
 every shred and ort and end into new creations ; like 
 a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his 
 laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white 
 sugar. Life is a boundless privilege, and when you 
 pay for your ticket, and get into the car, you have 
 no guess what good company you shall find there. 
 You buy much that is not rendered in the bill. Men 
 achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working 
 to another aim. 
 
 If now in this connection of discourse, we should 
 venture on laying down the first obvious rules of 
 life, I will not here repeat the first rule of economy, 
 already propounded once and again, that every man 
 shall maintain himself, — but I will say, get health. 
 No labour, pains, temperance, poverty, nor exercise, 
 that can gain it, must be grudged. For sickness is 
 a cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it 
 can lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daugh- 
 ters. I figure it as a pale, wailing, distracted phan- 
 tom, absolutely selfish, heedless of what is good and 
 great, attentive to its sensations, losing its soul and 
 afflicting other souls with meanness and mopings, and 
 with ministration to its voracity of trifles. Dr. Johnson 
 said severely, " Every man is a rascal as soon as he is 
 sick." Drop the cant, and treat it sanely. In dealing 
 with the drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. We 
 must treat the sick with the same firmness, giving 
 them, of course, every aid, — but withholding ourselves. 
 
 11—2 
 
164 CONDUCT OF LIFE, 
 
 I once asked a clergyman in a retired town, who were 
 his companions ? what men of ability he saw ? he re- 
 plied, that he spent his time with the sick and the 
 dying. I said, he seemed to me to need quite other 
 company, and all the more that he had this: for if 
 people were sick and dying to any purpose, we would 
 leave all and go to them, but, as far as I had observed, 
 they were as frivolous as the rest, and sometimes much 
 more frivolous. Let us engage our companions not 
 to spare us. I knew a wise woman who said to her 
 friends, " When I am old, rule me." And the best 
 part of health is fine disposition. It is more essential 
 than talent, even in the works of talent. Nothing will 
 supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, to make 
 knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness 
 of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased, 
 you are nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates 
 its strength. All healthy things are sweet-tempered. 
 Genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the 
 last ; and, for the reason, that whoever sees the law 
 which distributes things, does not despond, but is 
 animated to great desires and endeavours. He who 
 desponds betrays that he has not seen it. 
 
 'Tis a Dutch proverb, that " paint costs nothing," 
 such are its preserving qualities in damp climates. 
 Well, sunshine costs less, yet is finer pigment. And 
 so of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is 
 spent, the more of it remains. The latent heat of an 
 ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible. You may 
 rub the same chip of pine to the point of kindling, a 
 hundred times ; and the power of happiness of any 
 soul is not to be computed or drained. It is observed 
 that a depression of spirits develops the germs of a 
 plague in individuals and nations. • 
 
 It is an old commendation of right behaviour, 
 " A His Icetus, sapiens sibi" which our English pro- 
 verb translates, " Be merry and wise." I know how 
 easy it is to men of the world to look grave and 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 165 
 
 sneer at your sanguine youth, and its glittering 
 dreams. JBut I find the gayest castles in the air that 
 were ever piled, far better for comfort and for use, 
 than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and 
 caverned out by grumbling, discontented people. I 
 know those miserable fellows, and I hate them, who 
 see a black star always riding through the light and 
 coloured clouds in the sky overhead : waves of light 
 pass over and hide it for a moment, but the black 
 star keeps fast in the zenith. But power dwells 
 with cheerfulness ; hope puts us in a working mood, 
 whilst despair is no muse, and untunes the active 
 powers. A man should make life and Nature happier 
 to us, or he had better never been born. When the 
 political economist reckons up the unproductive 
 classes, he should put at the head this class of pitiers 
 of themselves, cravers of sympathy, bewailing imagi- 
 nary disasters. An old Trench verse runs, in my 
 translation : — 
 
 Some of your griefs you have cured, 
 And the sharpest you still have survived; 
 
 But what torments of pain you endured 
 Eroru evils that never arrived ! 
 
 There are three wants which never can be satis- 
 fied : that of the rich, who wants something more ; 
 that of the sick, who wants something different ; and 
 that of the traveller, who says, " Any where but here." 
 The Turkish cadi said to Layard, " After the fashion 
 of thy people, thou hast wandered from one place to 
 another, until thou art happy and content in none." 
 My countrymen are not less infatuated with the 
 rococo toy of Italy. All America seems on the point 
 of embarking for Europe. But we shall not always 
 traverse seas and lands with light purposes, and for 
 pleasure, as we say. One day we shall cast out the 
 passion for Europe, by the passion for America. 
 Culture will give gravity and domestic rest to those 
 who now travel only as not knowing how else to 
 
166 CONDUCT OP LIFE. 
 
 spend money. Already, who provoke pity like that 
 excellent family party just arriving in their well- 
 appointed carriage, as far from home and any honest 
 end as ever? Each nation has asked successively, 
 "What are they here for?" until at last the party 
 are shamefaced, and anticipate the question at the 
 gates of each town. 
 
 Genial manners are good, and power of accom- 
 modation to any circumstance, but the high prize of 
 life, the crowning fortune of a man is to he horn with 
 a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employ- 
 ment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, 
 or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or. songs. I 
 doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when 
 he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being 
 actually, not apparently so. 
 
 In childhood, we fancied ourselves walled in by 
 the horizon, as by a glass bell, and doubted not, by 
 distant travel, we should reach the baths of the 
 descending sun and stars. On experiment, the 
 horizon flies before us, and leaves us on an endless 
 common, sheltered by no glass bell. Yet 'tis strange 
 how tenaciously we cling to that bell-astronomy, of a 
 protecting domestic horizon. I find the same illusion 
 in the search after happiness, which I observe, every 
 summer, recommenced in this neighbourhood, soon 
 after the pairing of the birds. The young people do 
 not like the town, do not like the sea-shore, they will 
 go inland; find a dear cottage deep in the mountains, 
 secret as their hearts. They set forth on their travels 
 in search of a home : they reach Berkshire ; they 
 reach Vermont ; they look at the farms ; — good 
 farms, high mountain-sides : but where is the seclu- 
 sion ? The farm is near this ; 'tis near that ; they 
 have got far from Boston, but 'tis near Albany, or 
 near Burlington, or near Montreal. They explore a 
 farm, but the house is small, old, thin ; discontented 
 people lived there, and are gone : — there's too much 
 
CONSIDEEATIONS BY THE WAY. 167 
 
 sky, too much out-doors ; too public. The youth 
 aches for solitude. When he comes to the house, 
 he passes through the house. That does not make 
 the deep recess he sought. (t Ah ! now, I perceive," 
 he says, " it must be deep with persons ; friends only 
 can give depth." Yes, but there is a great dearth, 
 this year, of friends ; hard to find, and hard to have 
 when found : they are just going away : they too are 
 in the whirl of the flitting world, and have engage- 
 ments and necessities. They are just starting for 
 Wisconsin ; have letters from Bremen : — see you 
 again, soon. Slow, slow to learn the lesson, that 
 there is but one depth, but one interior, and that is— 
 his purpose. When joy or calamity or genius shall 
 show him it, then woods, then farms, then city shop- 
 men and cab-drivers, indifferently with prophet or 
 friend, will mirror back to him its unfathomable 
 heaven, its populous solitude. 
 
 The uses of travel are occasional, and short ; but 
 the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversa- 
 tion ; and this is a main function of life. What a 
 difference in the hospitality of minds ! Inestimable 
 is he to whom we can say what we cannot say to our- 
 selves. Others are involuntarily hurtful to us, and 
 bereave us of the power of thought, impound and 
 imprison us. As, when there is sympathy, there 
 needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, 
 — so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his compa- 
 nion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this 
 brother. When he comes into the office or public 
 room, the society dissolves ; one after another slips 
 out, and the apartment is at his disposal. What is 
 incurable but a frivolous habit ? A fly is as untam- 
 able as a hyena. Yet folly in the sense of fun, fool- 
 ing, or dawdling can easily be borne ; as Talleyrand 
 said, " I find nonsense singularly refreshing ; " but a 
 virulent, aggressive fool taints the reason of a 
 household. I have seen a whole family of quiet, 
 
168 CONDUCT OE LIFE, 
 
 sensible people unhinged and beside themselves, 
 victims of such a rogue. For the steady wrong- 
 headedness of one perverse person irritates the best : 
 since we must withstand absurdity. But resistance 
 only exasperates the acrid fool, who believes that 
 Nature and gravitation are quite wrong, and he only 
 is right. Hence all the dozen inmates are soon per- 
 verted, with whatever virtues and industries they 
 have, into contradictors, accusers," explainers, and 
 repairers of this one malefactor ; like a boat about to 
 be overset, or a carriage run away with, — not only 
 the foolish pilot or driver, but everybody on board is 
 forced to assume strange and ridiculous attitudes, to 
 balance the vehicle and prevent the upsetting. For 
 remedy, whilst the case is yet mild, I recommend 
 phlegm and truth : let all the truth that is spoken or 
 done be at the zero of indifferency, or truth itself will 
 be folly. But, when the case is seated and malig- 
 nant, the only safety is in amputation ; as seamen 
 say, you shall cut and run. How to live with unfit 
 companions ? — for, with such, life is for the most part 
 spent: and experience teaches little better than our 
 earliest instinct of self-defence, namely, not to engage, 
 not to mix yourself in any manner with them; but 
 let their madness spend itself unopposed ; — you are 
 you, and I am I. 
 
 Conversation is an art in which a man has all man- 
 kind for his competitors, for it is that which all are 
 practising every day while they live. Our habit of 
 thought, — take men as they rise, — is not satisfying ; 
 in the common experience, I fear, it is poor and 
 squalid. The success which will content them, is a 
 bargain, a lucrative employment, an advantage gained 
 over a competitor, a marriage, a patrimony, a legacy, 
 and the like. With these objects, their conversation 
 deals with surfaces: politics, trade, personal defects, 
 exaggerated bad news, and the rain. This is forlorn, 
 and they feel sore and sensitive. Now, if one comes 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 169 
 
 who can illuminate this dark house with thoughts, 
 show them their native riches, what gifts they have, 
 how indispensable each is, what magical powers over 
 nature and men ; what access to poetry, religion, and 
 the powers which constitute character ; he wakes in 
 them the feeliug of worth, his suggestions require 
 new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts 
 and sciences, — then we come out of our eggshell 
 existence into the great dome, and see the zenith over 
 and the nadir under us. Instead of the tanks and 
 buckets of knowledge to which we are daily confined, 
 we come down to the shore of the sea, and dip our 
 hands in its miraculous waves. 'Tis wonderful the 
 effect on the company. They are not the men they 
 were. They have all been to California, and all have 
 come back millionnaires. There is no book and no 
 pleasure in life comparable to it. Ask what is best 
 in our experience, and we shall say, a few pieces of 
 plain dealing with w T ise people. Our conversation 
 once and again has apprised us that we belong to 
 better circles than w T e have yet beheld ; that a mental 
 power invites us, whose generalizations are more 
 worth for joy and for effect than anything that is now 
 called philosophy or literature. In excited conversa- 
 tion, we have glimpses of the universe, hints of 
 power native to the soul, far-darting lights and 
 shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can 
 hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles 
 sometimes profusely given, to which the memory 
 goes back in barren hours. 
 
 Add the consent of will and temperament, and 
 there exists the covenant of friendship. Our chief 
 want in life, is somebody who shall make us do what 
 we can. This is the service of a friend. With him 
 we are easily great. There is a sublime attraction in 
 him to whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide 
 the doors of existence ! What questions we ask of 
 him ! what an understanding we have ! how few 
 
170 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 words are needed ! It is the only real society. An 
 Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad 
 truth, — 
 
 " He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 
 And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere." 
 
 But few writers have said anything better to this 
 point than Hafiz, who indicates this relation as the 
 test of mental health : " Thou learnest no secret until 
 thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound no 
 heavenly knowledge enters." Neither is life long 
 enough for friendship. That is a serious and majestic 
 affair, like a royal presence, or a religion, and not a 
 postilion's dinner to be eaten on the run. There is a 
 pudency about friendship, as about love, and though 
 fine souls never lose sight of it, yet they do not name 
 it. With the first class of men our friendship or 
 good understanding goes quite behind all accidents of 
 estrangement, of condition, of reputation. And yet 
 we do not provide for the greatest good of life. We 
 take care of our health ; we lay up money ; we make 
 our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient ; but who 
 provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the 
 best property of all, — friends? We know that all 
 our training is to fit us for this, and we do not take 
 the step towards it. How long shall we sit and wait 
 for these benefactors ? 
 
 It makes no difference, in looking back five years, 
 how you have been dieted or dressed ; whether you 
 have been lodged on the first floor or the attic; 
 whether you have had gardens and baths, good 
 cattle and horses, have been carried in a neat equipage, 
 or in a ridiculous truck : these things are forgotten 
 so quickly, and leave no effect. But it counts much 
 whether we have had good companions, in that time ; 
 — almost as much as what we have been doing. And 
 see the overpowering importance of neighbourhood in 
 all association. As it is marriage, fit or unfit, that 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 171 
 
 makes our home, so it is who lives near us of equal 
 social degree, — a few people at convenient distance, 
 no matter how bad company, — these, and these only, 
 shall be your life's companions: and all those wdio 
 are native, congenial, and by many an oath of the 
 heart, sacramented to you, are gradually and totally 
 lost. You cannot deal systematically with this fine 
 element of society, and one may take a good deal of 
 pains to bring people together, and to organize clubs 
 and debating societies, and yet no result come of it. 
 But it is certain that there is a great deal of good in 
 us that does not know itself, and that a habit of union 
 and competition brings people up and keeps them up 
 to their highest point ; that life would be twice or ten 
 times life, if spent with wise and fruitful companions. 
 The obvious inference is, a little useful deliberation 
 and preconcert, when one goes to buy house and 
 land. 
 
 But we live with people on other platforms; we 
 live with dependants, not only with the young whom 
 we are to teach all we know, and clothe with the 
 advantages we have earned, but also with those who 
 serve us directly, and for money. Yet the old rules 
 hold good. Let not the tie be mercenary, though 
 the service is measured by money. Make yourself 
 necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to 
 any. This point is acquiring new importance in 
 American social life. Our domestic service is usually 
 a foolish fracas of unreasonable demand on one side, 
 and shirking on the other. A man of wit was asked, 
 in the train, what was his errand in the city ? He 
 replied, " I have been sent to procure an angel to do 
 cooking." A lady complained to me, that, of her 
 two maidens, one was absent-minded, and the other 
 was absent-bodied. And the evil increases, from the 
 ignorance and hostility of every ship-load of the 
 immigrant population swarming into houses and 
 farms. Few people discern that it rests with the 
 
172 CONDUCT OF LITE. 
 
 master or the mistress, what service comes from the 
 man or the maid; that this identical hussy was a 
 tutelar spirit in one house, and a harridan in the other. 
 All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging 
 at every contract to make the terms of it fair. If 
 you are proposing only your own, the other party 
 must deal a little hardly by you. If you deal gene- 
 rously, the other, though selfish and unjust, will make 
 an exception in your favour, and deal truly with you. 
 When I asked an iron-master about the slag and 
 cinder in railroad iron, — " Oh," he said, " there's 
 always good iron to be had : if there's cinder in the 
 iron, 'tis because there was cinder in the pay." 
 
 But why multiply these topics, and their illus- 
 trations, which are endless? Life brings to each 
 his task, and, whatever art you select — algebra, 
 planting, architecture, poems, commerce, politics — 
 all are attainable, even to the miraculous triumphs, 
 on the same terms, of selecting that for which you 
 are apt ; — begin at the beginning, proceed in order, 
 step by step. Tis as easy to twist iron anchors, 
 and braid cannons, as to braid straw, to boil granite 
 as to boil water, if you take all the steps in order. 
 Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, 
 some superstition about luck, some step omitted, 
 which Nature never pardons. The happy conditions 
 of life may be had on the same terms. Their attrac- 
 tion for you is the pledge that they are within your 
 reach. Our prayers are prophets. There must be 
 fidelity, and there must be adherence. How respec- 
 table the life that clings to its objects ! Youthful 
 aspirations are fine things, your theories and plans of 
 life are fair and commendable : — but will you stick ? 
 Not one, I fear, in that Common full of people, or, 
 in a thousand, but one ; and when you tax them with 
 treachery, and remind them of their high resolutions, 
 they have forgotten that they made a vow. The in- 
 dividuals are fugitive, and in the act of becoming 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 173 
 
 something else, and irresponsible. The race is great, 
 the ideal fair, but the men whiffling and unsure. 
 The hero is he who is immovably centred. The 
 main difference between people seems to be, that 
 one man can come under obligations on which you 
 can rely, — is obligable ; and another is not. As 
 he has not a law within him, there's nothing to tie 
 him to. 
 
 'Tis inevitable to name particulars of virtue, and 
 of condition, and to exaggerate them. But all rests 
 at last on that integrity which dwarfs talent, and 
 can spare it. Sanity consists in not being subdued 
 by your means. Fancy prices are paid for position, 
 and for the culture of talent, but to the grand in- 
 terests, superficial success is of no account. The 
 man — it is his attitude — not feats, but forces — not 
 on set days and public occasions, but at all hours, 
 and in repose alike as in energy, still formidable, and 
 not to be disposed of. The populace says, with 
 Home Tooke, " If you would be powerful, pretend to 
 be powerful." I prefer to say, with the old prophet, 
 " Seekest thou great things ? seek them not : " or, 
 what was said of a Spanish prince, " The more you 
 took from him, the greater he looked." Plus on lid 
 ote, plus il est grand. 
 
 The secret of culture is to learn that a few great 
 points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the 
 obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan 
 life, and that these few are alone to be regarded — the 
 escape from all false ties; courage to be what we 
 are ; and love of what is simple and beautiful ; in- 
 dependence, and cheerful relation, these are the 
 essentials — these, and the wish to serve — to add 
 somewhat to the well-being of men. 
 
174 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 VIIL-BEAUTY. 
 
 Was never form and never face 
 So sweet to Seyd as only grace 
 Which did not slumber like a stone 
 But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
 Beauty chased he everywhere 
 In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
 He smote the lake to feed his eye 
 
 With the beryl beam of the broken wave; 
 He flung in pebbles well to hear 
 
 The moment's music which they gave. 
 Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
 From nodding pole and belting zone. 
 He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centred and from errant sphere. 
 The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
 Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
 In dens of passion, and pits of wo, 
 He saw strong Eros struggling through, 
 To sun the dark and solve the curse, 
 And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
 While thus to love he gave his days 
 In loyal worship, scorning praise, 
 How spread their lures for him, in vain, 
 Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain ! 
 He thought it happier to be dead, 
 To die for Beauty, than live for bread. 
 
 The spiral tendency of vegetation infects education 
 also. Our books approach very slowly the things we 
 most wish to know. What a parade we make of our 
 science, and how far off, and at arm's length, it is 
 from its objects ! Our botany is all names, not 
 powers : poets and romancers talk of herbs of grace 
 and healing ; but what does the botanist know of the 
 virtues of his weeds ? The geologist lays bare the 
 strata, and can tell them all on his fingers : but does 
 he know what effect passes into the man who builds 
 his house in them? what effect on the race that 
 inhabits a granite shelf? what on the inhabitants of 
 marl and of alluvium ? 
 
 We should go to the ornithologist with a new feel- 
 
BEAUTY. 175 
 
 ing, if he could teach us what the social birds say 5 
 when they sit in the autumn council, talking together 
 in the trees. The want of sympathy makes his 
 record a dull dictionary. His result is a dead bird. 
 The bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in its 
 relations to Nature ; and the skin or skeleton you 
 show me, is no more a heron, than a heap of ashes 
 or a bottle of gases into which his body has been 
 reduced is Dante or Washington. The naturalist is 
 led from the road by the whole distance of his fancied 
 advance. The boy had juster views when he gazed 
 at the shells on the beach, or the flowers in the mea- 
 dow, unable to call them by their names, than the 
 man in the pride of his nomenclature. Astrology 
 interested us, for it tied man to the system. In- 
 stead of an isolated beggar, the farthest star felt him, 
 and he felt the star. However rash and however 
 falsified by pretenders and traders in it, the hint was 
 true and divine, the soul's avowal of its large rela- 
 tions, and that climate, century, remote natures, as 
 well as near, are part of its biography. Chemistry 
 takes to pieces, but it does not construct. Alchemy, 
 which sought to transmute one element into another, 
 to prolong life, to arm with power, — that was in the 
 right direction. All our science lacks a human side. 
 The tenant is more than the house. Buds and stamens 
 and spores, on which we lavish so many years, are 
 not finalities, and man, when his powers unfold in 
 order, will take Nature along with him, and emit 
 light into all her recesses. The human heart con- 
 cerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and 
 is larger than can be measured by the pompous 
 figures of the astronomer. 
 
 We are just so frivolous and sceptical. Men hold 
 themselves cheap and vile : and yet a man is a fagot 
 of thunderbolts. All the elements pour through his 
 system : he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the 
 fire ; he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of 
 
176 • CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 his blood : they are the extension of his personality. 
 His duties are measured by that instrument he is ; 
 and a right and perfect man would be felt to the 
 centre of the Copernican system. 'Tis curious that 
 we only believe as deep as we live. We do not 
 think heroes can exert any more awful power than that 
 surface-play which amuses us. A deep man believes 
 in miracles, waits for them ; believes in magic ; believes 
 that the orator will decompose his adversary ; believes 
 that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing 
 can heal ; that love can exalt talent, can overcome 
 all odds. From a great heart secret magnetisms flow 
 incessantly to draw great events. But we prize very 
 humble utilities, a prudent husband, a good son, a 
 voter, a citizen, and deprecate any romance of cha- 
 racter; and perhaps reckon only his money value, — 
 his intellect, his affection, as a sort of bill of exchange, 
 easily convertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, 
 and wine. 
 
 The motive of science was the extension of man, 
 on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch 
 the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears 
 understand the language of beast and bird, and the 
 sense of the wind ; and, through his sympathy, 
 heaven and earth should talk with him. But that 
 is not our science. These geologies, chemistries, 
 astronomies, seem to make wise, but they leave us 
 where they found us. The invention is of use to 
 the inventor, of questionable help to any other. 
 The formulas of science are like the papers in your 
 pocket-book, of no value to any but the owner. 
 Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, 
 hates the name of love and moral purpose. There's 
 a revenge for this inhumanity. Vv^hat manner of 
 man does science make ? The boy is not attracted. 
 He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man as 
 my professor is. The collector has dried all the 
 plants in his herbal, but he has lost weight and 
 
BEAUTY. 177 
 
 humour. He lias got all snakes and lizards in his 
 phials, but science has done for him also, and has put 
 the man into a bottle. Our reliance on the physician 
 is a kind of despair of ourselves. The clergy have 
 bronchitis, which does not seem a certificate of 
 spiritual health. Macready thought it came of the 
 falsetto of their voicing. An Indian prince, Tisso, 
 one day riding in the forest, saw a herd of elk sport- 
 ing. iS See how happy," he said, " these browsing 
 elks are ! Why should not priests, lodged and fed 
 comfortably in the temples, also amuse themselves ? " 
 Returning home, he imparted this reflection to the 
 king. The king, on the next day, conferred the 
 sovereignty on him, saying, " Prince, administer this 
 empire for seven days : at the termination of that 
 period, I shall put thee to death." At the end of the 
 seventh day, the king inquired, " From what cause 
 hast thou become so emaciated ? " He answered, 
 " From the horror of death." The monarch rejoined : 
 "Live, my child, and be wise. Thou hast ceased 
 to take recreation, saying to thyself, In seven days I 
 shall be put to death. These priests in the temple 
 incessantly meditate on death ; how can they enter 
 into healthful diversions ? " But the men of science 
 or the doctors or the clergy are not victims of their 
 pursuits, more than others. The miller, the lawyer, 
 and the merchant, dedicate themselves to their own 
 details, and do not come out men of more force. 
 Have they divination, grand aims, hospitality of soul, 
 and the equality to any event, which we demand in 
 man, or only the reactions of the mill, of the wares, 
 of the chicane ? 
 
 No object really interests us but man, and in man 
 only his superiorities; and, though we are aware of a 
 perfect law in Nature, it has fascination for us only 
 through its relation to him, or as it is rooted in the 
 mind. At the birth of Winckelmann, more than a 
 hundred years ago, side by side with this arid, depart- 
 
 12 
 
178 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 mental, post-mortem science, rose an enthusiasm in the 
 study of Beauty; and perhaps some sparks from it 
 may yet light a conflagration in the other. Know- 
 ledge of men, knowledge of manners, the power of 
 form, and our sensibility to personal influence, never 
 go out of fashion. These are facts of a science which 
 we study without book, whose teachers and subjects 
 are always near us. 
 
 So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much of 
 our knowledge in this direction belongs to the chap- 
 ter of pathology. The crowd in the street oftener 
 furnishes degradations than angels or redeemers: but 
 they all prove the transparency. Every spirit makes 
 its house ; and we can give a shrewd guess from the 
 house to the inhabitant. But not less does Nature 
 furnish us with every sign of grace and goodness. 
 The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school- 
 girls, "the sweet seriousness of sixteen," the lofty air 
 of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories 
 in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, 
 and the varied power in all that well-known company 
 thafe escort us through life, — we know how these 
 forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us. 
 
 Beauty is the form under which the intellect pre- 
 fers to study the world. All privilege is that of 
 beauty; for there are many beauties ; as, of general 
 nature, of the human face and form, of manners, of 
 brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty of the soul. 
 
 The ancients believed that a genius or demon took 
 possession at birth of each mortal, to guide him ; that 
 these genii were sometimes seen as a flame of fire 
 partly immersed in the bodies which they governed ; 
 — on an evil man, resting on his head ; in a good man, 
 mixed with his substance. They thought the same 
 genius, at the death of its ward, entered a new-born 
 child, and they pretended to guess the pilot, by the 
 sailing of the ship. We recognize obscurely the same 
 fact, though we give it our own names. We say, that 
 
BEAUTY. 179 
 
 every man is entitled to be valued by his best mo- 
 ■ ment. We measure our friends so. We know, they 
 have intervals of folly, whereof Ave take no heed, bnt 
 wait the reappearings of the genius, which are sure 
 and beautiful. On the other side, everybody knows 
 people who appear beridden, and who, with all degrees 
 of ability, never impress us with the air of free 
 agency. They know it too, and peep with their eyes 
 to see if you detect their sad plight. We fancy could 
 we pronounce the solving word, and disenchant them, 
 the cloud would roll up, the little rider would be dis- 
 covered and unseated, and they would regain their 
 freedom. The remedy seems never to be far off, since 
 the first step into thought lifts this mountain of neces- 
 sity. Thought is the pent air-ball which can rive the 
 planet, and the beauty which certain objects have for 
 him is the friendly fire which expands the thought 
 and acquaints the prisoner that liberty and power 
 await him. 
 
 The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, 
 to thinking of the foundations of things. Goethe 
 said, " The beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws 
 of Nature, which, but for this appearance, had been 
 for ever concealed from us." And the working of 
 this deep instinct makes all the excitement — much of 
 it superficial and absurd enough — about works of 
 art, which leads armies of vain travellers every year 
 to Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Every man values 
 every acquisition he makes in the science of beauty, 
 above his possessions. The most useful man in the 
 most useful world, so long as only commodity was 
 served, would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he 
 sees beauty, life acquires a very high value. 
 
 I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers 
 not to attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather 
 enumerate a few of its qualities. We ascribe beauty 
 to that which is simple ; which has no superfluous 
 parts ; which exactlv answers its end ; which stands 
 
 12—2 
 
180 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 related to all things; which, is the mean of many 
 extremes. It is the most enduring quality, and the 
 most ascending quality. We say, Love is blind, and 
 the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round 
 his eyes. Blind : — yes, because he does not see what 
 he does not like ; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the 
 universe is Love, for finding what he seeks, and only 
 that; and the mythologists tell us, that Vulcan was 
 painted lame, and Cupid blind, to call attention to the 
 fact, that one was all limbs, and the other, all eyes. 
 In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, 
 and Beauty leads him as a guide : nor can we express 
 a deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is the pilot 
 of the young soul. 
 
 Beyond their sensuous delight the forms and colours 
 of Nature have a new charm for us in our percep- 
 tion, that not one ornament was added for ornament, 
 but is a sign of some better health, or more excellent 
 action. Elegance of form in bird or beast, or in the 
 human figure, marks some excellence of structure : 
 or beauty is only an invitation from what belongs to 
 us. 'Tis a law of botany, that in plants, the same 
 virtues follow the same forms. It is a rule of largest 
 application, true in a plant, true in a loaf of bread, 
 that in the construction of any fabric or organism, 
 any real increase of fitness to its end is an increase of 
 beauty. 
 
 The lesson taught by the study of Greek and of 
 Gothic art, of antique and of pre-Raphaelite paint- 
 ing, was worth all the research, — namely, that all 
 beauty must be organic ; that outside embellishment 
 is deformity. It is the soundness of the bones that 
 ulti mates itself in a peach-bloom complexion : health 
 of constitution that makes the sparkle and the power 
 of the eye. 'Tis the adjustment of the size and of 
 the joining of the sockets of the skeleton, that gives 
 grace of outline and the finer grace of movement. 
 The cat and the deer cannot move or sit inelegantly. 
 
BEAUTY. 181 
 
 The dancing-master can never teach a badly built 
 man to walk well. The tint of the flower proceeds 
 from its root, and the lustres of the sea-shell begin 
 w r ith its existence. Hence our taste in building 
 rejects paint, and all shifts, and shows the original 
 grain of the wood : refuses pilasters and columns 
 that support nothing, and allows the real supporters 
 of the house honestly to show themselves. Every 
 necessary or organic action pleases the beholder. A 
 man leading a horse to water, a farmer sowing seed, 
 the labours of haymakers in the field, the carpenter 
 building a ship, the smith at his forge, or whatever 
 useful labour, is becoming to the wise eye. But if it 
 is done to be seen, it is mean. How t beautiful are 
 ships on the sea ! but ships in the theatre, — or ships 
 kept for picturesque effect on Virginia Water, by 
 George IV., and men hired to stand in fitting costumes 
 at a penny an hour! What a difference in effect 
 between a battalion of troops inarching to action, and 
 one of our independent companies on a holiday ! In 
 the midst of a military show, and a festal procession 
 gay with banners, I saw a boy seize an old tin pan 
 that lay rusting under a wall, and, poising it on tlm 
 top of a stick, he set it turning, and made it describe 
 the most elegant imaginable curves, and drew away 
 attention from the decorated procession by this 
 startling beauty. 
 
 Another text from the mythologists. The Greeks 
 fabled that Venus was born of the foam of the sea. 
 Nothing interests us which is stark or bounded, but 
 only what streams with life, what is in act or en- 
 deavour to reach somewhat beyond. The pleasure a 
 palace or a temple gives the eye is, that an order and 
 method has been communicated to stones, so that they 
 speak and geometrize, become tender or sublime with 
 expression. Beauty is the moment of transition, as if 
 the form were just ready to flow into other forms. 
 Any fixedness, heaping, or concentration on one 
 
182 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 feature — a long nose, a sharp chin, a hump-back — 
 is the reverse of the flowing, and therefore deformed. 
 Beautiful as is the symmetry of any form, if the form 
 can move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. The 
 interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire 
 the restoration of symmetry, and to watch the steps 
 through which it is attained. This is the charm 
 of running water, sea-waves, the flight of birds, and 
 the locomotion of animals. This is the theory of 
 dancing, to recover continually in changes the lost 
 equilibrium, not by abrupt and angular, but by 
 gradual and curving movements. I have been told 
 by persons of experience in matters of taste, that the 
 fashions follow a law of gradation, and are never 
 arbitrary. The new mode is always only a step on- 
 ward in the same direction as the last mode ; and a 
 cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new 
 fashion. This fact suggests the reason of all mistakes 
 and offence in our own modes. It is necessary in 
 music, when you strike a discord, to let down the ear 
 by an intermediate note or two to the accord again : 
 and many a good experiment, born of good sense, 
 and destined to succeed, fails, only because it is offen- 
 sively sudden. I suppose the Parisian milliner who 
 dresses the world from her imperious boudoir will 
 know how to reconcile the Bloomer costume to the 
 eye of mankind, and make it triumphant over Punch 
 himself, by interposing the just gradations. I need 
 not say how wide the same law ranges ; and how 
 much it can be hoped to effect. All that is a little 
 harshly claimed by progressive parties, may easily 
 come to be conceded without question, if this rule 
 be observed. Thus the circumstances may be easily 
 imagined, in which woman may speak, vote, argue 
 causes, legislate, and drive a coach, and all the most 
 naturally in the world, if only it comes by degrees. 
 To this streaming or flowing belongs the beauty that 
 all circular movement has; as the circulation of 
 
BEAUTY. 183 
 
 waters, the circulation of the blood, the periodical 
 motion of planets, the annual wave of vegetation, 
 the action and reaction of Nature : and, if we follow 
 it out, this demand in our thought for an ever-onward 
 action, is the argument for the immortality. 
 
 One more text from the mythologists is to the 
 same purpose — Beauty rides on a lion. Beauty rests 
 on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of 
 perfect economy. The cell of thjfe bee is built at that 
 angle which gives the most strength with the least 
 wax ; the bone or the quill of the bird gives the most 
 alar strength with the least weight. " It is the pur- 
 gation of superfluities," said Michel Angelo. There 
 is not a particle to spare in natural structures. There 
 is a compelling reason in the uses of the plant, for 
 every novelty of colour or form : and our art saves 
 material, by more skilful arrangement, and reaches 
 beauty by taking every superfluous ounce that can 
 be spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength in 
 the poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this art of omis- 
 sion is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is 
 proof of high culture, to say the greatest matters in 
 the simplest way. 
 
 Veracity first of all, and for ever. Rim de heaic 
 que le vrai. In all design, art lies in making your 
 object prominent, but there is a prior art in choosing 
 objects that are prominent. The fine arts have 
 nothing casual, but spring from the instincts of the 
 nations that created them. 
 
 Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. In 
 a house 'that I know, I have noticed, a block of sper- 
 maceti lying about closets and mantelpieces, for 
 twenty years together, simply because the tallow-man 
 gave it the form of a rabbit ; and, I suppose, it may 
 continue to be lugged about unchanged for a century. 
 Let an artist scrawl a few lines or figures on the back 
 of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued from 
 danger, is put in portfolio, is framed and glazed, and. 
 
184 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 in proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, will 
 be kept for centuries. Burns writes a copy of verses, 
 and sends them to a newspaper, and the human race 
 take charge of them that they shall not perish. 
 
 As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see how 
 surely a beautiful form strikes the fancy of men, and 
 is copied and reproduced without end. How many 
 copies are there of the Belvedere Apollo, the Venus, 
 the Psyche, the Warwick Vase, the Parthenon, and 
 the Temple of Vesta ? These are objects of tender- 
 ness to all. In our cities, an ugly building is soon 
 removed, and is never repeated, but any beautiful 
 building is copied and improved upon, so that all 
 masons and carpenters work to repeat and preserve the 
 agreeable forms, whilst the ugly ones die out. 
 
 The felicities of design in art, or in works of 
 Nature, are shadows or forerunners of that beauty 
 which reaches its perfection in the human form. All 
 men are its lovers. Wherever it goes, it creates joy 
 and hilarity, and everything is permitted to it. It 
 reaches its height in woman. " To Eve," say the 
 Mahometans, " God gave two-thirds of all beauty." 
 A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her 
 savage mate, planting tenderness, hope, and eloquence, 
 in all whom she approaches. Some favours of con- 
 dition must go with it, since a certain serenity is 
 essential, but we love its reproofs and superiorities. 
 Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet 
 she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sar- 
 casm, which seems to say, " Yes, I am willing to 
 attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man 
 than any I yet behold." French memoires of the 
 fifteenth century celebrate the name of Pauline de 
 Viguiere, a virtuous and accomplished maiden, who so 
 fired the enthusiasm of her contemporaries, by her 
 enchanting form, that the citizens of her native city 
 of Toulouse obtained the aid of the civil authorities 
 to compel her to appear publicly on the balcony at 
 
BEAUTY. 185 
 
 least twice a week, and, as often as sue showed her- 
 self, the crowd was dangerous to life. Not less, in 
 England, in the last century, was the fame of the 
 Gunnings, of whom, Elizabeth married the Duke of 
 Hamilton ; and Maria, the Earl of Coventry. Wal- 
 pole says, " The concourse was so great, when the 
 Duchess of Hamilton was presented at court, on 
 Friday, that even the noble crowd in the drawing- 
 room clambered on chairs and tables to look at her. 
 There are mobs at their doors to see them get into 
 their chairs, and people go early to get places at the 
 theatres, when it is known they will be there." 
 " Such crowds," he adds, elsewhere, " flock to see the 
 Duchess of Hamilton, that seven hundred people sat 
 up all night, in and about an inn, in Yorkshire, to see 
 her get into her post-chaise next morning." 
 
 But why need we console ourselves with the 
 fames of Helen of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of 
 Toulouse, or the Duchess of Hamilton ? We all 
 know this magic very well, or can divine it. It 
 does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes 
 never so long. Women stand related to beautiful 
 Nature around us, and the enamoured youth mixes 
 their form with moon and stars, with woods and 
 waters, and the pomp of summer. They heal us of 
 awkwardness by their words and looks. We ob- 
 serve their intellectual influence on the most serious 
 student. They refine and clear his mind ; teach him 
 to put a pleasing method into what is dry and diffi- 
 cult. We talk to them, and wish to be listened to ; we 
 fear to fatigue them, and acquire a facility of expres- 
 sion which passes from conversation into habit of style. 
 
 That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the 
 perpetual effort of Nature to attain it. Mirabeau 
 had an ugly face on a handsome ground ; and we 
 see faces every day which have a good type, but 
 have been marred in the casting: a proof that we 
 are all entitled to beauty, should have been beau- 
 
186 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 tiful, if our ancestors had kept the laws, — as every 
 lily and every rose is well. But our bodies do not 
 fit us, but caricature and satirize us. Thus, short 
 legs, which constrain us to short, mincing steps, 
 are a kind of personal insult and contumely to the 
 owner ; and long stilts, again, put him at perpetual 
 disadvantage, and force him to stoop to the general 
 level of mankind. Martial ridicules a gentleman of 
 his day whose countenance resembled the face of 
 a swimmer seen under water. Saadi describes a 
 schoolmaster " so ugly and crabbed, that a sight of 
 him would derange the ecstasies of the orthodox." 
 Faces are rarely true to any ideal type, but are a 
 record in sculpture of a thousand anecdotes of whim 
 and folly. Portrait painters say that most faces and 
 forms are irregular and unsymmetrical ; have one 
 eye blue, and one gray ; the nose not straight ; and 
 one shoulder higher than another ; the hair un- 
 equally distributed, &c. The man is physically, as 
 well as metaphysically, a thing of shreds and patches, 
 borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, 
 and a misfit from the start. 
 
 A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was 
 thought to betray by this sign some secret favour 
 of the immortal gods : and we can pardon pride, 
 when a woman possesses such a figure, that wher- 
 ever she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the 
 wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers 
 a favour on the world. And yet — it is not beauty 
 that inspires the deepest passion. Beauty without 
 grace is the hook without the bait. Beauty, with- 
 out expression, tires. Abbe Menage said of the 
 President Le Bailleul, " that he was fit for nothing 
 but to sit for his portrait." A Greek epigram in- 
 timates that the force of love is not shown by the 
 courting of beauty, but when the like desire is in- 
 named for one who is ill-favoured. And petulant 
 old gentlemen — who have chanced to suffer some 
 
BEAUTY. 187 
 
 intolerable weariness from pretty people, or who 
 have seen cut flowers to some profusion, or who see, 
 after a world of pains have been successfully taken 
 lor the costume, how the least mistake in sentiment 
 takes all the beauty out of your clothes — affirm, that 
 the secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but 
 in being uninteresting. 
 
 We love any forms, however ugly, from which 
 great qualities shine. If command, eloquence, art, 
 or invention, exist in the most deformed person, all 
 the accidents that usually displease, please, and raise 
 esteem and wonder higher. The great orator was an 
 emaciated, insignificant person, but he was all brain. 
 Cardinal De Retz says of De Bouillon, " With the 
 physiognomy of an ox, he had the perspicacity of an 
 eagle." It was said of Hooke, the friend of Newton, 
 " he is the most, and promises the least, of any man 
 in England." " Since I am so ugly," said Du 
 Guesclin, " it behoves that I be bold." Sir Philip 
 Sidney, the darling of mankind, Ben Jonson tells us, 
 " was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being 
 spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and long." 
 Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, 
 for thousands of years, were not handsome men. If a 
 man can raise a small city to be a great kingdom, 
 can make bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join 
 oceans by canals, can subdue steam, can organize 
 victory, can lead the opinions of mankind, can enlarge 
 knowledge, 'tis no matter whether his nose is parallel 
 to his spine, as it ought to be, or whether he has a 
 nose at all ; whether his legs are straight, or whether 
 his legs are amputated ; his deformities will come to 
 be reckoned ornamental, and advantageous on the 
 whole. This is the triumph of expression, ^degrading 
 beauty, charming us with a power so fine and friendly 
 and intoxicating, that it makes admired persons in- 
 sipid, and the thought of passing our lives with them 
 insupportable. There are faces so fluid with expres- 
 
188 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 sion, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, 
 that we can hardly find what the mere features really 
 are. When the delicious beauty of lineaments loses 
 its power, it is because a more delicious beauty has 
 appeared ; that an interior and durable form has been 
 disclosed. Still, Beauty rides on her lion, as before. 
 Still, " it was for beauty that the world was made." 
 The lives of the Italian artists, who established a 
 despotism of genius amidst the dukes and kings and 
 mobs of their stormy epoch, prove how loyal men in 
 all times are to a finer brain, a finer method, than 
 their own. If a man can cut such a head on his 
 stone gate-post as shall draw and keep a crowd about 
 it all day, by its beauty, good nature, and inscrutable 
 meaning ; — if a man can build a plain cottage with 
 such symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces look 
 cheap and vulgar ; can take such advantage of Nature, 
 that all her powers serve him ; making use of 
 geometry, instead of expense ; tapping a mountain 
 for his water-jet ; causing the sun and moon to seem 
 only the decorations of his estate; this is still the 
 legitimate dominion of beauty. 
 
 The radiance of the human form, though some- 
 times astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few 
 years or a few months, at the perfection of youth, 
 and in most, rapidly declines. But we remain lovers 
 of it, only transferring our interest to interior ex- 
 cellence. And it is not only admirable in singular 
 and salient talents, but also in the world of manners. 
 
 But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. 
 Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, 
 but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet 
 beautiful. This is the reason why beauty is still 
 escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet possessed, 
 it cannot be handled. Proclus says, " it swims on 
 the light of forms." It is properly not in the form, 
 but in the mind. It instantly deserts possession, and 
 flies to an object in the horizon. If I could put my 
 
BEAUTY. 189 
 
 hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? 
 The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty 
 forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and 
 senses cannot be gratified at the same time. Words- 
 worth rightly speaks of " a light that never was on 
 sea or land," meaning, that it was supplied by the 
 observer, and the Welsh bard warns his country- 
 women, that 
 
 — "half of their charms with Cadvvallon shall die." 
 
 The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful 
 is a certain cosmical quality, or a power to suggest 
 relation to the whole world, and so lift the object out 
 of a pitiful individuality. Every natural feature, — 
 sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone, — has in it 
 somewhat which is not private, but universal, speaks 
 of that central benefit which is the soul of Nature, 
 and thereby is beautiful. And, in chosen men and 
 women, I find somewhat in form, speech, and manners, 
 which is not of their person and family, but of a 
 humane, catholic, and spiritual character, and we 
 love them as the sky. They have a largeness of 
 suggestion, and their face and manners carry a certain 
 grandeur, like time and justice. 
 
 The feat of the imagination is in showing the 
 convertibility of every thing into every other thing. 
 Facts which had never before left their stark common 
 sense, suddenly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My 
 boots and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, 
 meteors and constellations. All the facts in Nature 
 are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of 
 the eternal language. Every word has a double, 
 treble, or centuple use and meaning. What! has 
 my stove and pepper-pot a false bottom ! I cry you 
 mercy, good shoebox ! I did not know you were a 
 jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to sparkle, and are 
 clothed about with immortality. And there is a joy 
 in perceiving the representative or symbolic character 
 
190 CONDUCT OF LIFE. - 
 
 of a fact, which no bare fact or event can ever give. 
 There are n© days in life so memorable as those 
 which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. 
 
 The poets are quite right in decking their mis- 
 tresses with the spoils of the landscape, flower- 
 gardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning, and 
 stars of night, since all beauty points at identity, and 
 whatsoever thing does not express to me the sea and 
 sky, day and night, is somewhat forbidden and wrong. 
 Into every beautiful object, there enters somewhat 
 immeasurable and divine, and just as much into form 
 bounded by outlines, like mountains on the horizon, 
 as into tones of music, or depths of space. Polarized 
 light showed the secret architecture of bodies ; and 
 when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one 
 colour or form or gesture, and now another, has a 
 pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, 
 disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things. 
 
 The laws of this translation we do not know, or i 
 why one feature or gesture enchants, why one word 
 or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that 
 the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a 
 phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders ; as if 
 the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away mountains 
 of obstruction, and deigns to draw a truer line, which 
 the mind knows and owns. This is that haughty 
 force of beauty, "vis superba formce" which the poets 
 praise, — under calm and precise outline, the immea- 
 surable and divine : Beauty hiding all wisdom and 
 power in its calm sky. 
 
 All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I 
 find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Anto- 
 ninus : and the beauty ever in proportion to the depth 
 of thought. Gross and obscure natures, however de- 
 corated, seem impure shambles : but character gives 
 splendour to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and grey 
 hairs. An adorer of truth, we cannot choose but obey, 
 and the woman who has shared with us the moral 
 
BEAUTY. 191 
 
 sentiment, — her locks must appear to us sublime. 
 Thus there is a climbing scale of culture, from the 
 first agreeable sensation which a sparkling gem or a 
 scarlet stain affords the eye, up through fair outlines 
 and details of the landscape, features of the human 
 face and form, signs and tokens of thought and cha- 
 racter in manners, up to the ineffable mysteries of the 
 intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our steps 
 tend : an ascent from the joy of a horse in his trap- 
 pings, up to the perception of Newton, that the globe 
 on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from 
 a larger tree; up to the perception of Plato, that 
 globe and universe are rude and early expressions of 
 an all- dissolving Unity, — the first stair on the scale to 
 the temple of the Mind. 
 
 XX.-ILLUSIOFS. 
 
 Flow, flow the waves hated, 
 Accursed, adored, 
 The waves of mutation: 
 No anchorage is. 
 Sleep is not, death is not; 
 Who seem to die live. 
 House you were born in, 
 Friends of your spring-time, 
 Old man and young maid, 
 Day's toil and its guerdon, 
 They are all vanishing, 
 Fleeing to fables, 
 Cannot be moored. 
 See the stars through them, 
 Through treacherous marbles. 
 Know, the stars yonder, 
 The stars everlasting, 
 Are fugitive also, 
 And emulate, vaulted, 
 The lambent heat-lightning. 
 And fire-fly's flight. 
 
 When thou dost return 
 On the wave's circulation, 
 
192 CONDUCT. OF LIFE. 
 
 Beholding the shimmer, 
 The wild dissipation, 
 And, out of endeavour 
 To change and to flow, 
 The gas become solid, 
 And phantoms and nothings 
 Eeturn to be things, 
 And endless imbroglio 
 Is law and the world. — 
 Then first shalt thou know, 
 That in the wild turmoil, 
 Horsed on the Proteus, 
 Thou ridest to power, 
 And to endurance. 
 
 Some years ago, in company with an agreeable party, 
 I spent a long summer clay in exploring the Mam- 
 moth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through 
 spacious galleries affording a solid masonry founda- 
 tion for the town and county overhead, the six or 
 eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to 
 the innermost recess which tourists visit — a niche 
 or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, 
 I believe, Serena's Bower. I lost the light of one 
 day. I saw high domes, and bottomless pits ; heard 
 the voice of unseen waterfalls ; paddled three-quarters 
 of a mile in the deep Echo River, whose waters are 
 peopled with the blind fish; crossed the streams 
 "Lethe" and "Styx.;" plied with music and guns 
 the echoes in these alarming galleries ; saw every 
 form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and 
 fretted chambers — icicle, orangeflower, acanthu? 
 grapes and snowball. We shot Bengal lights in, 
 the vaults and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and 
 examined all the master -pieces which the four com- 
 bined engineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and 
 time, could make in the dark. 
 
 The mysteries and scenery of the cave had the 
 same dignity that belongs to all natural objects, 
 and which shames the fine things to which we 
 foppishly compare them. I remarked especially the 
 mimetic habit, with which Nature, on new instru- 
 
ILLUSIONS. 193 
 
 ruents, hums her old tunes, making night to mimic 
 day, and chemistry to ape vegetation. But I then 
 took notice, and still chiefly remember, that the best 
 thing which the caye had to offer was an illusion. 
 On arriving at what is called the " Star Chamber," 
 our lamps were taken from us by the guide, and 
 extinguished or put aside, and on looking upwards 
 I saw, or seemed to see, the night heaven thick with 
 stars glimmering more or less brightly over our 
 heads, and even what seemed a comet flaming among 
 them. All the party were touched with astonishment 
 and pleasure. Our musical friends sung with much 
 feeling a pretty song, " The stars are in the quiet 
 sky," &c, and I sat down on the rocky floor to enjoy 
 the serene picture. Some crystal specks in the black 
 ceiling high overhead, reflecting the light of a half- 
 hid lamp, yielded this magnificent effect. 
 
 I own I did not like the cave so well for eking 
 out its sublimities with this theatrical trick. But I 
 have had many experiences like it before and since ; 
 and we must be content to be pleased without too 
 curiously analyzing the occasions. Our conversation 
 with Nature is not just what it seems. The cloud- 
 rack, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows, and 
 northern lights are not quite so spheral as our child- 
 hood thought them; and the part our organization 
 plays in them is too large. The senses interfere 
 everywhere, and mix their own structure with all 
 they report of. Once we fancied the earth a plane, 
 and stationary. In admiring the sunset we do not 
 yet deduct the rounding, co-ordinating, pictorial 
 powers of the eye. 
 
 The same interference from our organization creates 
 the most of our pleasure and pain. Our first mistake 
 is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which 
 we give to the circumstance. Life is an ecstasy. Life 
 is sweet as nitrous oxide ; and the fisherman dripping 
 all day over a cold pond, the switchman at the rait- 
 
 13 
 
194 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 way intersection, the farmer in the field, the negro 
 in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street, the hunter 
 in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle 
 at the ball, all ascribe a certain pleasure to their 
 employment, which they themselves give it. Health 
 and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, 
 and meat. We fancy that our civilization has got on 
 far, but we still come back to our primers. 
 
 We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, 
 by our sentiments. The child walks amid heaps of 
 illusions, which he does not like to have disturbed. 
 The boy, how sweet to him is his fancy ! how dear 
 the story of barons and battles ! What a hero he 
 is, whilst he feeds on his heroes ! What a debt is 
 his to imaginative books! He has no better friend 
 or influence than Scott, Shakspeare, Plutarch, and 
 Homer. The man lives to other objects, but who 
 dare affirm that they are more real? Even the 
 prose of the streets is full of refractions. In the 
 life of the dreariest alderman, fancy enters into all 
 details, and colours them with rosy hue. He imi- 
 tates the air and actions of people whom he admires, 
 and is raised in his own eyes. He pays a debt 
 quicker to a rich man than to a poor man. He 
 wishes the bow and compliment of some leader in 
 the state or in society; weighs what he says; perhaps 
 he never comes nearer to him for that, but dies at 
 last better contented for this amusement of his eyes 
 and his fancy. 
 
 The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. 
 In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, 
 the carnival, the masquerade is at its height. Nobody 
 drops his domino. The unities, the fictions of the 
 piece it would be an impertinence to break. The 
 chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is paint ; 
 nay, God is the painter ; and we rightly accuse the 
 critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does 
 not love its unmaskers. It was wittily, if somewhat 
 
ILLUSIONS. 195 
 
 bitterly, said by D'Alembert, " quhin etat de vapeur 
 dtait un Stat tres facheux, par cequHl nous f await voir les 
 choses commie elles sonV I find men victims of illusion 
 in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and 
 old men, all are led by one bawble or another. 
 Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or 
 Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, — for the Power has 
 many names, — is stronger than the Titans, stronger 
 than Apollo. Few have overheard the gods, or sur- 
 prised their secret. Life is a succession of lessons 
 which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, 
 and the key to a riddle is another riddle. There are 
 as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. 
 We wake from one dream into another dream. The 
 toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in 
 refinement to the quality of the dupe. The intel- 
 lectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily 
 amused. But everybody is drugged with his own 
 frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with 
 music and banner and badge. 
 
 Amid the joyous troop who give in to the chari- 
 vari, comes now and then a sad-eyed boy, whose 
 eyes lack the requisite refractions to clothe the show 
 in due glory, and who is afflicted with a tendency 
 to trace home the glittering miscellany of fruits 
 and flowers to one root. Science is a search after 
 identity, and the scientific whim is lurking in all 
 corners. At the State Fair, a friend of mine com- 
 plained that all the varieties of fancy pears in our 
 orchards seem to have been selected by somebody 
 who had a whim for a particular kind of pear, and 
 only cultivated such as had that perfume ; they were 
 all alike. And I remember the quarrel of another 
 youth with the confectioners, that, when he racked 
 his wit to choose the best comfits in the shops, in all 
 the endless varieties of sweetmeat he could only 
 find three flavours, or two. What then? Pears 
 and cakes are good for something ; and because you, 
 
 13—2 
 
196 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 unluckily, have an eye or nose too keen, why need 
 you spoil the comfort which the rest of us find in 
 them ? I knew a humorist, who, in a good deal 
 of rattle, had a grain or two of sense. He shocked 
 the company by maintaining that the attributes of 
 God were two, — power and risibility; and that it 
 was the duty of every pious man to keep up the 
 comedy. And I have known gentlemen of great 
 stake in the community, but whose sympathies were 
 cold, — presidents of colleges, and governors, and 
 senators, — who held themselves bound to sign every 
 temperance pledge, and act with Bible societies, and 
 missions, and peace-makers, and cry Hist-a-boy ! to 
 every good dog. We must not carry comity too 
 far, but we all have kind impulses in this direction. 
 When the boys come into my yard for leave to 
 gather horse-chesnuts, I own I enter into Nature's 
 game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, 
 fearing that any moment they will find out the im- 
 posture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is 
 quite unnecessary ; the enchantments are laid on 
 very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. 
 Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in 
 the hovel I saw yesterday ; yet not the less they 
 hung it round with frippery romance, like the chil- 
 dren of the happiest fortune, and talked of " the 
 dear cottage where so many joyful hours had flown." 
 Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the 
 country. Women, more than all, are the element and 
 kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate. 
 They see through Claude-Lorraines. And how dare 
 any one, if he could, pluck away the coulisses, stage 
 effects, and ceremonies, by which they live? Too 
 pathetic, too pitiable, is the region of affection, and 
 its atmosphere always liable to mirage. 
 
 We are not very much to blame for our bad 
 marriages. We live amid hallucinations; and this 
 especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all 
 
ILLUSIONS. 197 
 
 are tripped up first or last. But the mighty Mother 
 who had been so sly with us, as if she felt that she 
 owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora- 
 box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and 
 some great joys. We find a delight in the beauty 
 and happiness of children, that makes the heart too 
 big for the body. In the worst assorted connections 
 there is ever some mixture of true marriage. Teague 
 and his jade get some just relations of mutual respect, 
 kindly observation, and fostering of each other, learn 
 something, and would carry themselves wiselier, if 
 they were now to begin. 
 
 'Tis fine for us to point at one or another fine 
 madman, as if there were any exempts. The scholar 
 in his library is none. I, who have all my life heard 
 any number of orations and debates, read poems and 
 miscellaneous books, conversed with many geniuses, 
 am still the victim of any new page ; and, if Marma- 
 duke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any other, invent 
 a new style or mythology, I fancy that the world 
 will be all brave and right, if dressed in these colours, 
 which I had not thought of. Then at once I will 
 daub with this new paint ; but it will not stick. 'Tis 
 like the cement which the peddler sells at the door ; 
 he makes broken crockery hold with it, but you can 
 never buy of him a bit of the cement which will 
 make it hold when he is gone. 
 
 Men who make themselves felt in the world avail 
 themselves of a certain fate in their constitution, 
 which they know how to use. But they never deeply 
 interest us, unless they lift a corner of the curtain, 
 or betray never so slightly their penetration of what 
 is behind it. 'Tis the charm of practical men, that 
 outside of their practicality are a certain poetry and 
 play, as if they led the good horse Power by the 
 bridle, and preferred to walk, though they can ride 
 so fiercely. Bonaparte is intellectual, as well as 
 Cassar ; and the best soldiers, sea-captains, and rail- 
 
198 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 way men have a gentleness, when off duty ; a good- 
 natured admission that there are illusions, and who 
 shall say that he is not their sport ? We stigmatize 
 the cast-iron fellows, who cannot so detach them- 
 selves, as "dragon-ridden," " thunder-stricken," and 
 fools of fate, with whatever powers endowed. 
 
 Since our tuition is through emblems and indi- 
 rections, 'tis well to know that there is method in it, 
 a fixed scale, and rank above rank in the phantasms. 
 We begin low with coarse masks, and rise to the 
 most subtle and beautiful. The red men told 
 Columbus, " they had an herb which took away 
 fatigue ; " but he found the illusion of u arriving 
 from the east at the Indies " more composing to his 
 lofty spirit than any tobacco. Is not our faith in the 
 impenetrability of matter more sedative than nar- 
 cotics ? You play with jackstraws, balls, bowls, 
 horse and gun, estates and politics ; but there are 
 finer games before you. Is not time a pretty toy ? 
 Life will show you masks that are worth all your 
 carnivals. Yonder mountain must migrate into your 
 mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous blur in 
 Orion, " the portentous year of Mizar and Alcor," 
 must come down and be dealt with in your house- 
 hold thought. What if you shall come to discern 
 that the play and playground of all this pompous 
 history are radiations from yourself, and that the sun 
 borrows his beams ? What terrible questions we are 
 learning to ask ! The former men believed in magic, 
 by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed 
 up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on 
 the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds 
 all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their 
 fathers held and were framed upon. 
 
 There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of 
 the passions, and the structural, beneficent illusions 
 of sentiment and of the intellect. There is the illu- 
 sion of love, which attributes to the beloved person 
 
ILLUSIONS. 199 
 
 all which that person shares with his or her family, 
 sex, age, or condition, nay, with the human mind 
 itself. 'Tis these which the lover loves, and Anna 
 Matilda gets the credit of them. As if one shut up 
 always in a tower, with one window, through which 
 the face of heaven and earth could be seen, should 
 fancy that all the marvels he beheld belonged to that 
 window. There is the illusion of time, which is very 
 deep ; who has disposed of it? or come to the con- 
 viction that what seems the succession of thought is 
 only the distribution of wholes into casual series? 
 The intellect sees that every atom carries the whole 
 of Nature; that the mind opens to omnipotence; 
 that, in the endless striving and ascents, the meta- 
 morphosis is entire, so that the soul doth not know 
 itself in its own act, when that act is perfected. 
 There is illusion that shall deceive even the elect. 
 There is illusion that shall deceive even the performer 
 of the miracle. Though he make his body, he denies 
 that he makes it. Though the world exists from 
 thought, thought is daunted in presence of the world. 
 One after the other we accept the mental laws, still 
 resisting those which follow, which, however, must 
 be accepted. But all our concessions only compel 
 us to new profusion. And what avails it that science 
 has come to treat space and time as simply forms of 
 thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and 
 withal our pretension of property and even of self- 
 hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our 
 thoughts are not finalities ; but the incessant flowing 
 and ascension reach these also, and each thought 
 which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to 
 a larger generalization ? 
 
 With such volatile elements to work in, 'tis no 
 wonder if our estimates are loose and floating. We 
 must work and affirm, but we have no guess of the 
 value of what we say or do. The cloud is now as 
 Ibig as your hand, and now it covers a county. That 
 
200 CONDUCT OF LITE. 
 
 story of Thor, who was set to drain the drinking-horn 
 in Asgard, and to wrestle with the old woman, and to 
 run with the runner Lok, and presently found that he 
 had been drinking up the sea, and wrestling with 
 Time, and racing with Thought, describes us who 
 are contending, amid these seeming trifles, with the 
 supreme energies of Nature. We fancy we have 
 fallen into bad company and squalid condition, low 
 debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, 
 butcher's meat, sugar, milk, and coal. " Set me some 
 great task, ye gods ! and I will show my spirit." "Not 
 so," says the good Heaven ; " plod and plough, vamp 
 your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring ; great 
 affairs and the best wine by and by!" Well, 'tis all 
 phantasm; and if we weave a yard of tape in all 
 humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we 
 shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy 
 which we braided, and that the threads were Time 
 and Nature. 
 
 We cannot write the order of the variable winds. 
 How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods 
 and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and no- 
 thing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which 
 our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops 
 us in ; we cannot even see what or where our stars of 
 destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of 
 human life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the 
 mist rolls up, and reveals them, and we think how 
 much good time is gone, that might have been saved, 
 had any hint of these things been shown. A sudden 
 rise in the road shows us the system of mountains, 
 and all the summits, which have been just as near us 
 all the year, but quite out of mind. But these alter- 
 nations are not without their order, and we are parties 
 to our various fortune. If life seem a succession of 
 dreams, yet poetic justice is done in dreams also. 
 The visions of good men are good ; it is the undis- 
 ciplined will that is whipped with bad thoughts and 
 
ILLUSIONS. 201 
 
 bad fortunes. When we break the laws, we lose our 
 hold on the central reality. Like sick men in hospi- 
 tals, we change only from bed to bed, from one folly 
 to another ; and it cannot signify much what becomes 
 of such castaways, — wailing, stupid, comatose crea- 
 tures, — lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of 
 life to the nothing of death. 
 
 In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for 
 stays and foundations. There is none but a strict and 
 faithful dealing at home, and a severe barring out of 
 all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever games are 
 played with us, we must play no games with our- 
 selves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty 
 and truth. I look upon the simple and childish vir- 
 tues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is 
 sublime in character. Speak as you think, be what 
 you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be 
 owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as 
 my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissi- 
 pated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the universe. 
 This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, 
 poetry, and art. At the top or at the bottom of all 
 illusions, I set the cheat which still leads us to work 
 and live for appearances, in spite of our conviction, in 
 all sane hours, that it is what we really are that avails 
 with friends, with strangers, and with fate or fortune. 
 
 One would think from the talk of men, that riches 
 and poverty were a great matter ; and our civilization 
 mainly respects it. But the Indians say, that they 
 do not think the white man with his brow of care, 
 always toiling, afraid of heat and cold, and keeping 
 within doors, has any advantage of them. The per- 
 manent interest of every man is, never to be in a 
 false position, but to have the weight of Nature to 
 back him in all that he does. Riches and poverty 
 are a thick or thin costume ; and our life — the life of 
 all of us — identical. For we transcend the circum- 
 stance continually, and taste the real quality of exis- 
 
202 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 tence ; as in our employments, which only differ in 
 the manipulations, but express the same laws ; or in 
 our thoughts, which wear no silks, and taste no ice- 
 creams. We see God face to face every hour, and 
 know the savour of Nature. 
 
 The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and 
 Xenophanes measured their force on this problem of 
 identity. Diogenes of Apollonia said, that unless the 
 atoms were made of one stuff, they could never blend 
 and act with one another. But the Hindoos, in their 
 sacred writings, express the liveliest feeling, both of 
 the essential identity, and of that illusion which they 
 conceive variety to be. " The notions, e I am/ and 
 s Tliis is mine/ which influence mankind, are but 
 delusions of the mother of the world. Dispel, O 
 Lord of all creatures ! the conceit of knowledge 
 which proceeds from ignorance." And the beatitude 
 of man they hold to lie in being freed from fascination. 
 
 The intellect is stimulated by the statement of 
 truth in a trope, and the will by clothing the laws of 
 life in illusions. But the unities of Truth and of 
 Right are not broken by the disguise. There need 
 never be any confusion in these. In a crowded life 
 of many parts and performers, on a stage of nations, 
 or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the 
 same elements offer the same choices to each new- 
 comer, and, according to his election, he fixes his 
 fortune in absolute Nature. It would be hard to put 
 more mental and moral philosophy than the Persians 
 have thrown into a sentence: — . 
 
 " Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise : 
 Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice." 
 
 There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the uni- 
 verse. All is system and gradation. Every god is 
 there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters 
 the hall of the firmament: there is he alone with 
 them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and 
 gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones. On the 
 

 ILLUSIONS. 203 
 
 instant^ and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. 
 He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this 
 way and that, and whose movement and doings he 
 must obey: he fancies himself poor, orphaned, in- 
 significant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, 
 now furiously commanding this thing to be done, 
 now that. What is he that he should resist their 
 will, and think or act for himself? Every moment, 
 new changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle 
 and distract him. And when, by and by, for an 
 instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there 
 are the gods still sitting around him on their 
 thrones, — they alone with him alone. 
 
 THE END. 
 
London : 
 
 Trinted bt Smith, Elder and Co., 
 
 Little Gheen Arbour Court, Old Bailey, E.C. 
 
^: 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 A NEW EDITION. 
 
 Revised by the Author. With Further Eevision, and> 
 
 an Introduction, by his Eldest Son. 
 
 Small post 8vo. 2s. 6d. cloth. 
 
 [British Quarterly Review.] 
 " It is not often that a man is at his best when he writes about himself, 
 hut it is so with the author of this volume. He wrote many things that 
 were pleasant to read, but nothing so pleasant as this account of his ex- 
 periences and friendships as the London Man of Letters." 
 
 [Morning Herald.] 
 
 " The volume abounds with pleasant reading, and will be found 
 to contain information to be acquired from no other source. The per- 
 sonal characteristics of the leading literary men of the past generation 
 are fully detailed, and are in some degree invaluable. The anecdotal 
 matter contained in these pages is unique of its kind, and the volume is 
 a perfect treasury of reference to Hook, Matthews the Elder, Byron, 
 Shelley, and Charles Lamb, their opinions and their modes of thought, 
 speech, and action." 
 
 [Saturday Review.] 
 
 "It is, perhaps, the first charm of an autobiography that it should 
 make us like the writer, and certainly this is a chartn which the ' Auto- 
 biography of Leigh Hunt ' possesses in an unusual degree." 
 
 [Illustrated London News.] 
 " In every respect it carries with it a charm which ought to make the 
 book popular in the higher sense of the term." 
 [Eclectic Review.] 
 " A charming gossiping volume, written in Leigh Hunt's happiest 
 style." 
 
 [Globe.] 
 "Few persons who are fitted to judge of the matter will hesitate to 
 ■assert that Leigh Hunt's ' Autobiography' is one of the very best books 
 of its kind. It gives a true and vivid account of the people, and the 
 events among which the writer's life was passed. Politics, art, litera- 
 ture and (what is worth them all) personal character are truthfully 
 shown, and cleverly, admiringly, and often affectionately commented on 
 in these pages." 
 
 [Economist.] 
 "This Autobiography is certainly one of the best of Leigh Hunt's 
 numerous works, and one calculated to ensure him a wider circle of 
 readers and a more lasting remembrance than any other." 
 [Atlas.] 
 "The stoiy of a man's life told by himself is always interesting; but 
 it must b,e doubly so when the teller is a man of so fine a genius, so 
 richly cultivated a mind, and so beautiful a nature as Leigh Hunt." 
 
 LONDON : SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
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