LETTERS
AND
SOCIAL AIMS.

BY

BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,

LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.

1876.

COPYRIGHT, 1875.

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 1]

POETRY AND IMAGINATION.

THE perception of matter is made the common-sense, and for cause. Thiswas the cradle, this the go-cart, of the human child. We must learn thehomely laws of fire and water; we must feed, wash, plant, build. Theseare ends of necessity, and first in the order of nature. Poverty, frost,famine, disease, debt, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us tocommon-sense. The intellect, yielded up to itself, cannot supersede thistyrannic necessity. The restraining grace of common-sense is the mark ofall the valid minds,—of Æsop, Aristotle, Alfred, Luther, Shakspeare,Cervantes, Franklin, Napoleon. The common-sense which does not meddlewith the absolute, but takes things at their word,—things as theyappear,—believes in the existence of matter, not because we can touchit, or conceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves, and theuniverse does not jest with us, but is in earnest,—is the house ofhealth and life. In spite of all the joys of poets and the joys ofsaints, the most imaginative and abstracted person never makes, withimpunity, the least mistake in this particular,—never tries to kindle[Pg 3]his oven with water, nor carries a torch into a powder-mill, nor seizeshis wild charger by the tail. We should not pardon the blunder inanother, nor endure it in ourselves.

But whilst we deal with this as finality, early hints are given that weare not to stay here; that we must be making ready to go;—awarning that this magnificent hotel and conveniency we call Nature isnot final. First innuendoes, then broad hints, then smart taps, aregiven, suggesting that nothing stands still in nature but death; thatthe creation is on wheels, in transit, always passing into somethingelse, streaming into something higher; that matter is not what itappears;—that chemistry can blow it all into gas. Faraday, themost exact of natural philosophers, taught that when we should arrive atthe monads, or primordial elements (the supposed little cubes or prismsof which all matter was built up), we should not find cubes, or prisms,or atoms, at all, but spherules of force. It was whispered that theglobes of the universe were precipitates of something more subtle; nay,somewhat was murmured in our ear that dwindled astronomy into atoy;—that too was no finality;—only provisional,—amakeshift;—that under chemistry was power and purpose: power andpurpose ride on matter to the last atom. It was steeped inthought,—did everywhere express thought; that, as great conquerorshave burned their ships when once they were landed on the wished-for[Pg 4]shore, so the noble house of Nature we inhabit has temporary uses, andwe can afford to leave it one day. The ends of all are moral, andtherefore the beginnings are such. Thin or solid, everything is inflight. I believe this conviction makes the charm ofchemistry,—that we have the same avoirdupois matter in an alembic,without a vestige of the old form; and in animal transformation notless, as in grub and fly, in egg and bird, in embryo and man; everythingundressing and stealing away from its old into new form, and nothingfast but those invisible cords which we call laws, on which all isstrung. Then we see that things wear different names and faces, butbelong to one family; that the secret cords, or laws, show theirwell-known virtue through every variety,—be it animal, or plant,or planet,—and the interest is gradually transferred from theforms to the lurking method.

This hint, however conveyed, upsets our politics, trade, customs,marriages, nay, the common-sense side of religion and literature, whichare all founded on low nature,—on the clearest and most economicalmode of administering the material world, considered as final. Theadmission, never so covertly, that this is a makeshift, sets the dullestbrain in ferment;—our little sir, from his first totteringsteps,—as soon as he can crow,—does not like to be practisedupon, suspects that some one is "doing" him,—and, at this alarm,[Pg 5]everything is compromised;—gunpowder is laid under every man'sbreakfast-table.

But whilst the man is startled by this closer inspection of the laws ofmatter, his attention is called to the independent action of themind,—its strange suggestions and laws,—a certain tyranny whichsprings up in his own thoughts, which have an order, method, and beliefsof their own, very different from the order which this common-senseuses.

Suppose there were in the ocean certain strong currents which drove aship, caught in them, with a force that no skill of sailing with thebest wind, and no strength of oars, or sails, or steam, could make anyhead against, any more than against the current of Niagara: suchcurrents—so tyrannical—exist in thoughts, those finest andsubtilest of all waters,—that, as soon as once thought begins, itrefuses to remember whose brain it belongs to,—what country,tradition, or religion,—and goes whirling off—swim wemerrily—in a direction self-chosen, by law of thought, and not bylaw of kitchen clock or county committee. It has its own polarity. Oneof these vortices or self-directions of thought is the impulse to searchresemblance, affinity, identity, in all its objects, and hence ourscience, from its rudest to its most refined theories.[Pg 6]

The electric word pronounced by John Hunter a hundred yearsago,—arrested and progressive development,—indicatingthe way upward from the invisible protoplasm to the highestorganisms,—gave the poetic key to Natural Science,—of whichthe theories of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, of Oken, of Goethe, of Agassiz,and Owen, and Darwin, in zoölogy and botany, are the fruits,—ahint whose power is not yet exhausted, showing unity and perfect orderin physics.

The hardest chemist, the severest analyzer, scornful of all but dryestfact, is forced to keep the poetic curve of nature, and his result islike a myth of Theocritus. All multiplicity rushes to be resolved intounity. Anatomy, osteology, exhibit arrested or progressive ascent ineach kind; the lower pointing to the higher forms, the higher to thehighest, from the fluid in an elastic sack, from radiate, mollusk,articulate, vertebrate,—up to man; as if the whole animal world wereonly a Hunterian museum to exhibit the genesis of mankind.

Identity of law, perfect order in physics, perfect parallelism betweenthe laws of Nature and the laws of thought exist. In botany we have thelike, the poetic perception of metamorphosis,—that the same vegetablepoint or eye which is the unit of the plant can be transformed atpleasure into every part, as bract, leaf, petal, stamen, pistil, orseed.[Pg 7]

In geology, what a useful hint was given to the early inquirers onseeing in the possession of Professor Playfair a bough of a fossil treewhich was perfect wood at one end, and perfect mineral coal at theother. Natural objects, if individually described, and out ofconnection, are not yet known, since they are really parts of asymmetrical universe, like words of a sentence; and if their true orderis found, the poet can read their divine significance orderly as in aBible. Each animal or vegetable form remembers the next inferior, andpredicts the next higher.

There is one animal, one plant, one matter, and one force. The laws oflight and of heat translate each other;—so do the laws of sound andof color; and so galvanism, electricity, and magnetism are varied forms ofthe selfsame energy. While the student ponders this immense unity, heobserves that all things in nature, the animals, the mountain, theriver, the seasons, wood, iron, stone, vapor,—have a mysteriousrelation to his thoughts and his life; their growths, decays, quality,and use so curiously resemble himself, in parts and in wholes, that heis compelled to speak by means of them. His words and his thoughts areframed by their help. Every noun is an image. Nature gives him,sometimes in a flattered likeness, sometimes in caricature, a copy ofevery humor and shade in his character and mind. The world is an immense[Pg 8]picture-book of every passage in human life. Every object he beholds isthe mask of a man.

for the universe is full of their echoes.

Every correspondence we observe in mind and matter suggests a substanceolder and deeper than either of these old nobilities. We see the lawgleaming through, like the sense of a half-translated ode of Hafiz. Thepoet who plays with it with most boldness best justifies himself,—ismost profound and most devout. Passion adds eyes,—is amagnifying-glass. Sonnets of lovers are mad enough, but are valuable tothe philosopher, as are prayers of saints, for their potent symbolism.

Science was false by being unpoetical. It assumed to explain a reptileor mollusk, and isolated it,—which is hunting for life in graveyards.Reptile or mollusk or man or angel only exists in system, in relation.The metaphysician, the poet, only sees each animal form as an inevitablestep in the path of the creating mind. The Indian, the hunter, the boywith his pets, have sweeter knowledge of these than the savant. We usesemblances of logic until experience puts us in possession of reallogic. The poet knows the missing link by the joy it gives. The poetgives us the eminent experiences only,—a god stepping from peak topeak, nor planting his foot but on a mountain.[Pg 9]

Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believethat a great naturalist could exist without this faculty. He was himselfconscious of its help, which made him a prophet among the doctors. Fromthis vision he gave brave hints to the zoölogist, the botanist, and theoptician.

Poetry.—The primary use of a fact is low: the secondaryuse, as it is a figure or illustration of my thought, is the real worth.First, the fact; second, its impression, or what I think of it. HenceNature was called "a kind of adulterated reason." Seas, forests, metals,diamonds, and fossils interest the eye, but 'tis only with somepreparatory or predicting charm. Their value to the intellect appearsonly when I hear their meaning made plain in the spiritual truth theycover. The mind, penetrated with its sentiment or its thought, projectsit outward on whatever it beholds. The lover sees reminders of hismistress in every beautiful object; the saint, an argument for devotionin every natural process; and the facility with which Nature lendsitself to the thoughts of man, the aptness with which a river, a flower,a bird, fire, day, or night, can express his fortunes, is as if theworld were only a disguised man, and, with a change of form, rendered tohim all his experience. We cannot utter a sentence in sprightlyconversation without a similitude. Note our incessant use of the[Pg 10]wordlike,—like fire, like a rock, like thunder, like abee, "like a year without a spring." Conversation is not permittedwithout tropes; nothing but great weight in things can afford a quiteliteral speech. It is ever enlivened by inversion and trope. God himselfdoes not speak prose, but communicates with us by hints, omens,inference, and dark resemblances in objects lying all around us.

Nothing so marks a man as imaginative expressions. A figurativestatement arrests attention, and is remembered and repeated. How oftenhas a phrase of this kind made a reputation. Pythagoras's Golden Sayingswere such, and Socrates's, and Mirabeau's, and Burke's, and Bonaparte's.Genius thus makes the transfer from one part of Nature to a remote part,and betrays the rhymes and echoes that pole makes with pole. Imaginativeminds cling to their images, and do not wish them rashly rendered intoprose reality, as children resent your showing them that their dollCinderella is nothing but pine wood and rags: and my young scholar doesnot wish to know what the leopard, the wolf, or Lucia, signify inDante's Inferno, but prefers to keep their veils on. Mark the delight ofan audience in an image. When some familiar truth or fact appears in anew dress, mounted as on a fine horse, equipped with a grand pair ofballooning wings, we cannot enough testify our surprise and pleasure. It[Pg 11]is like the new virtue shown in some unprized old property, as when aboy finds that his pocket-knife will attract steel filings and take up aneedle; or when the old horse-block in the yard is found to be a TorsoHercules of the Phidian age. Vivacity of expression may indicate thishigh gift, even when the thought is of no great scope, as when MichelAngelo, praising theterra cottas, said, "If this earth were tobecome marble, woe to the antiques!" A happy symbol is a sort ofevidence that your thought is just. I had rather have a good symbol ofmy thought, or a good analogy, than the suffrage of Kant or Plato. Ifyou agree with me, or if Locke or Montesquieu agree, I may yet be wrong;but if the elm-tree thinks the same thing, if running water, if burningcoal, if crystals, if alkalies, in their several fashions, say what Isay, it must be true. Thus, a good symbol is the best argument, and is amissionary to persuade thousands. The Vedas, the Edda, the Koran, areeach remembered by their happiest figure. There is no more welcome giftto men than a new symbol. That satiates, transports, converts them. Theyassimilate themselves to it,—deal with it in all ways, and it willlast a hundred years. Then comes a new genius, and brings another. Thusthe Greek mythology called the sea "the tear of Saturn." The return ofthe soul to God was described as "a flask of water broken in the sea."[Pg 12]Saint John gave us the Christian figure of "souls washed in the blood ofChrist." The aged Michel Angelo indicates his perpetual study as inboyhood,—"I carry my satchel still." Machiavel described the papacyas "a stone inserted in the body of Italy to keep the wound open." To theParliament debating how to tax America, Burke exclaimed, "Shear thewolf." Our Kentuckian orator said of his dissent from his companion, "Ishowed him the back of my hand." And our proverb of the courteoussoldier reads: "An iron hand in a velvet glove."

This belief that the higher use of the material world is to furnish ustypes or pictures to express the thoughts of the mind is carried to itslogical extreme by the Hindoos, who, following Buddha, have made it thecentral doctrine of their religion, that what we call Nature, theexternal world, has no real existence,—is only phenomenal. Youth,age, property, condition, events, persons,—self, even,—aresuccessivemaias (deceptions) through which Vishnu mocks andinstructs the soul. I think Hindoo books the best gymnastics for themind, as showing treatment. All European libraries might almost be readwithout the swing of this gigantic arm being suspected. But theseOrientals deal with worlds and pebbles freely.

For the value of a trope is that the hearer is one; and indeed Natureitself is a vast trope, and all particular natures are tropes. As the[Pg 13]bird alights on the bough,—then plunges into the air again, so thethoughts of God pause but for a moment in any form. All thinking isanalogizing, and 'tis the use of life to learn metonymy. The endlesspassing of one element into new forms, the incessant metamorphosis,explains the rank which the imagination holds in our catalogue of mentalpowers. The imagination is the reader of these forms. The poet accountsall productions and changes of Nature as the nouns of language, usesthem representatively, too well pleased with their ulterior to valuemuch their primary meaning. Every new object so seen gives a shock ofagreeable surprise. The impressions on the imagination make the greatdays of life: the book, the landscape, or the personality which did notstay on the surface of the eye or ear, but penetrated to the inwardsense, agitates us, and is not forgotten. Walking, working, or talking,the sole question is how many strokes vibrate on this mysticstring,—how many diameters are drawn quite through from matter tospirit; for, whenever you enunciate a natural law, you discover that youhave enunciated a law of the mind. Chemistry, geology, hydraulics, aresecondary science. The atomic theory is only an interior processproduced, as geometers say, or the effect of a foregone metaphysicaltheory. Swedenborg saw gravity to be only an external of theirresistible attractions of affection and faith. Mountains and oceans we[Pg 14]think we understand:—yes, so long as they are contented to be such,and are safe with the geologist,—but when they are melted inPromethean alembics, and come out men, and then, melted again, come outwords, without any abatement, but with an exaltation of power!—

In poetry we say we require the miracle. The bee flies among theflowers, and gets mint and marjoram, and generates a new product, whichis not mint and marjoram, but honey; the chemist mixes hydrogen andoxygen to yield a new product, which is not these, but water; and thepoet listens to conversation, and beholds all objects in nature, to giveback, not them, but a new and transcendent whole.

Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing, topass the brute body, and search the life and reason which causes it toexist;—to see that the object is always flowing away, whilst thespirit or necessity which causes it subsists. Its essential mark is thatit betrays in every word instant activity of mind, shown in new uses ofevery fact and image,—in preternatural quickness or perception ofrelations. All its words are poems. It is a presence of mind that givesa miraculous command of all means of uttering the thought and feeling ofthe moment. The poet squanders on the hour an amount of life that wouldmore than furnish the seventy years of the man that stands next him.[Pg 15]

The term genius, when used with emphasis, implies imagination; use ofsymbols, figurative speech. A deep insight will always, like Nature,ultimate its thought in a thing. As soon as a man masters a principle,and sees his facts in relation to it, fields, waters, skies, offer toclothe his thoughts in images. Then all men understand him: Parthian,Mede, Chinese, Spaniard, and Indian hear their own tongue. For he cannow find symbols of universal significance, which are readily renderedinto any dialect; as a painter, a sculptor, a musician, can in theirseveral ways express the same sentiment of anger, or love, or religion.

The thoughts are few; the forms many; the large vocabulary ormany-colored coat of the indigent unity. The savans are chatty andvain,—but hold them hard to principle and definition, and they becomemute and near-sighted. What is motion? what is beauty? what is matter?what is life? what is force? Push them hard, and they will not beloquacious. They will come to Plato, Proclus, and Swedenborg. Theinvisible and imponderable is the sole fact. "Why changes not the violetearth into musk?" What is the term of the ever-flowing metamorphosis? Ido not know what are the stoppages, but I see that a devouring unitychanges all into that which changes not.

The act of imagination is ever attended by pure delight. It infuses acertain volatility and intoxication into all nature. It has a flute[Pg 16]which sets the atoms of our frame in a dance. Our indeterminate size isa delicious secret which it reveals to us. The mountains begin todislimn, and float in the air. In the presence and conversation of atrue poet, teeming with images to express his enlarging thought, hisperson, his form, grows larger to our fascinated eyes. And thus beginsthat deification which all nations have made of their heroes in everykind,—saints, poets, lawgivers, and warriors.

Imagination.—Whilst common-sense looks at things or visiblenature as real and final facts, poetry, or the imagination whichdictates it, is a second sight, looking through these, and using them astypes or words for thoughts which they signify. Or is this belief ametaphysical whim of modern times, and quite too refined? On thecontrary, it is as old as the human mind. Our best definition of poetryis one of the oldest sentences, and claims to come down to us from theChaldæan Zoroaster, who wrote it thus: "Poets are standingtransporters, whose employment consists in speaking to the Father and tomatter; in producing apparent imitations of unapparent natures, andinscribing things unapparent in the apparent fabrication of the world";in other words, the world exists for thought: it is to make appearthings which hide: mountains, crystals, plants, animals, are seen; thatwhich makes them is not seen: these, then, are "apparent copies of[Pg 17]unapparent natures." Bacon expressed the same sense in his definition,"Poetry accommodates the shows of things to the desires of the mind";and Swedenborg, when he said, "There is nothing existing in humanthought, even though relating to the most mysterious tenet of faith, buthas combined with it a natural and sensuous image." And again: "Names,countries, nations, and the like are not at all known to those who arein heaven; they have no idea of such things, but of the realitiessignified thereby." A symbol always stimulates the intellect; thereforeis poetry ever the best reading. The very design of imagination is todomesticate us in another, in a celestial, nature.

This power is in the image because this power is in nature. It soaffects, because it so is. All that is wondrous in Swedenborg is not hisinvention, but his extraordinary perception;—that he was necessitatedso to see. The world realizes the mind. Better than images is seenthrough them. The selection of the image is no more arbitrary than thepower and significance of the image. The selection must follow fate.Poetry, if perfected, is the only verity; is the speech of man after thereal, and not after the apparent.

Or, shall we say that the imagination exists by sharing the etherealcurrents? The poet contemplates the central identity, sees it undulate[Pg 18]and roll this way and that, with divine flowings, through remotestthings; and, following it, can detect essential resemblances in naturesnever before compared. He can class them so audaciously, because he issensible of the sweep of the celestial stream, from which nothing isexempt. His own body is a fleeing apparition,—his personality asfugitive as the trope he employs. In certain hours we can almost passour hand through our own body. I think the use or value of poetry to bethe suggestion it affords of the flux or fugaciousness of the poet. Themind delights in measuring itself thus with matter, with history, andflouting both. A thought, any thought, pressed, followed, opened, dwarfsmatter, custom, and all but itself. But this second sight does notnecessarily impair the primary or common sense. Pindar and Dante, yes,and the gray and timeworn sentences of Zoroaster, may all be parsed,though we do not parse them. The poet has a logic, though it be subtile.He observes higher laws than he transgresses. "Poetry must first be goodsense, though it is something better."

This union of first and second sight reads nature to the end of delightand of moral use. Men are imaginative, but not overpowered by it to theextent of confounding its suggestions with external facts. We live inboth spheres, and must not mix them. Genius certifies its entire[Pg 19]possession of its thought, by translating it into a fact which perfectlyrepresents it, and is hereby education. Charles James Fox thought"Poetry the great refreshment of the human mind,—the only thing,after all; that men first found out they had minds, by making and tastingpoetry."

Man runs about restless and in pain when his condition or the objectsabout him do not fully match his thought. He wishes to be rich, to beold, to be young, that things may obey him. In the ocean, in fire, inthe sky, in the forest, he finds facts adequate and as large as he. Ashis thoughts are deeper than he can fathom, so also are these. 'Tiseasier to read Sanscrit, to decipher the arrowhead character, than tointerpret these familiar sights. 'Tis even much to name them. ThusThomson's "Seasons" and the best parts of many old and many new poetsare simply enumerations by a person who felt the beauty of the commonsights and sounds, without any attempt to draw a moral or affix ameaning.

The poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher valueas symbols; that Nature is the immense shadow of man. A man's action isonly a picture-book of his creed. He does after what he believes. Yourcondition, your employment, is the fable ofyou. The world isthoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body andmind of man, and taken his mould and form. Indeed, good poetry is always[Pg 20]personification, and heightens every species of force in nature bygiving it a human volition. We are advertised that there is nothing towhich he is not related; that everything is convertible into everyother. The staff in this hand is theradius vector of the sun. Thechemistry of this is the chemistry of that. Whatever one act we do,whatever one thing we learn, we are doing and learning allthings,—marching in the direction of universal power. Every healthymind is a true Alexander or Sesostris, building a universal monarchy.

The senses imprison us, and we help them with metres aslimitary,—with a pair of scales and a foot-rule, and a clock. Howlong it took to find out what a day was, or what this sun, that makesdays! It cost thousands of years only to make the motion of the earthsuspected. Slowly, by comparing thousands of observations, there dawnedon some mind a theory of the sun,—and we found the astronomicalfact. But the astronomy is in the mind: the senses affirm that the earthstands still and the sun moves. The senses collect the surface facts ofmatter. The intellect acts on these brute reports, and obtains from themresults which are the essence or intellectual form of the experiences.It compares, distributes, generalizes, and uplifts them into its ownsphere. It knows that these transfigured results are not the brute[Pg 21]experiences, just as souls in heaven are not the red bodies they onceanimated. Many transfigurations have befallen them. The atoms of thebody were once nebulæ, then rock, then loam, then corn, then chyme,then chyle, then blood; and now the beholding and co-energizing mindsees the same refining and ascent to the third, the seventh, or thetenth power of the daily accidents which the senses report, and whichmake the raw material of knowledge. It was sensation; when memory came,it was experience; when mind acted, it was knowledge; when mind acted onit as knowledge, it was thought.

This metonymy, or seeing the same sense in things so diverse, gives apure pleasure. Every one of a million times we find a charm in themetamorphosis. It makes us dance and sing. All men are so far poets.When people tell me they do not relish poetry, and bring me Shelley, orAikin's Poets, or I know not what volumes of rhymed English, to showthat it has no charm, I am quite of their mind. But this dislike of thebooks only proves their liking of poetry. For they relishÆsop,—cannot forget him, or not use him; bring them Homer'sIliad, and they like that; or the Cid, and that rings well: read to themfrom Chaucer, and they reckon him an honest fellow. "Lear" and "Macbeth"and "Richard III." they know pretty well without guide. Give them Robin[Pg 22]Hood's ballads, or "Griselda," or "Sir Andrew Barton," or "Sir PatrickSpense," or "Chevy Chase," or "Tam O'Shanter," and they like these wellenough. They like to see statues; they like to name the stars; they liketo talk and hear of Jove, Apollo, Minerva, Venus, and the Nine. See howtenacious we are of the old names. They like poetry without knowing itas such. They like to go to the theatre and be made to weep; to FaneuilHall, and be taught by Otis, Webster, or Kossuth, or Phillips, whatgreat hearts they have, what tears, what new possible enlargements totheir narrow horizons. They like to see sunsets on the hills or on alake shore. Now, a cow does not gaze at the rainbow, or show or affectany interest in the landscape, or a peacock, or the song of thrushes.

Nature is the true idealist. When she serves us best, when, on raredays, she speaks to the imagination, we feel that the huge heaven andearth are but a web drawn around us, that the light, skies, andmountains are but the painted vicissitudes of the soul. Who has heardour hymn in the churches without accepting the truth,—

Of course, when we describe man as poet, and credit him with the triumphsof the art, we speak of the potential or ideal man,—not found[Pg 23]now in any one person. You must go through a city or a nation, and findone faculty here, one there, to build the true poet withal. Yet all menknow the portrait when it is drawn, and it is part of religion tobelieve its possible incarnation.

He is the healthy, the wise, the fundamental, the manly man, seer of thesecret; against all the appearance, he sees and reports the truth,namely, that the soul generates matter. And poetry is the onlyverity,—the expression of a sound mind speaking after the ideal, andnot after the apparent. As a power, it is the perception of the symboliccharacter of things, and the treating them as representative: as atalent, it is a magnetic tenaciousness of an image, and by the treatmentdemonstrating that this pigment of thought is as palpable and objectiveto the poet as is the ground on which he stands, or the walls of housesabout him. And this power appears in Dante and Shakspeare. In someindividuals this insight, or second sight, has an extraordinary reachwhich compels our wonder, as in Behmen, Swedenborg, and William Blake,the painter.

William Blake, whose abnormal genius, Wordsworth said, interested himmore than the conversation of Scott or of Byron, writes thus: "He whodoes not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and[Pg 24]better light than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine atall. The painter of this work asserts that all his imaginations appearto him infinitely more perfect and more minutely organized, thananything seen by his mortal eye.... I assert for myself that I do notbehold the outward creation, and that to me it would be a hindrance, andnot action. I question not my corporeal eye any more than I wouldquestion a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not withit."

'Tis a problem of metaphysics to define the province of Fancy andImagination. The words are often used, and the things confounded.Imagination respects the cause. It is the vision of an inspired soulreading arguments and affirmations in all nature of that which it isdriven to say. But as soon as this soul is released a little from itspassion, and at leisure plays with the resemblances and types foramusement, and not for its moral end, we call its action Fancy. Lear,mad with his affliction, thinks every man who suffers must have the likecause with his own. "What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?"But when, his attention being diverted, his mind rests from thisthought, he becomes fanciful with Tom, playing with the superficialresemblances of objects. Bunyan, in pain for his soul, wrote "Pilgrim'sProgress"; Quarles, after he was quite cool, wrote "Emblems."[Pg 25]

Imagination is central; fancy, superficial. Fancy relates to surface, inwhich a great part of life lies. The lover is rightly said to fancy thehair, eyes, complexion of the maid. Fancy is a wilful, imagination aspontaneous act; fancy, a play as with dolls and puppets which we chooseto call men and women; imagination, a perception and affirming of a realrelation between a thought and some material fact. Fancy amuses;imagination expands and exalts us. Imagination uses an organicclassification. Fancy joins by accidental resemblance, surprises andamuses the idle, but is silent in the presence of great passion andaction. Fancy aggregates; imagination animates. Fancy is related tocolor; imagination, to form. Fancy paints; imagination sculptures.

Veracity.—I do not wish, therefore, to find that my poet isnot partaker of the feast he spreads, or that he would kindle or amuse mewith that which does not kindle or amuse him. He must believe in hispoetry. Homer, Milton, Hafiz, Herbert, Swedenborg, Wordsworth, areheartily enamored of their sweet thoughts. Moreover, they know that thiscorrespondence of things to thoughts is far deeper than they canpenetrate,—defying adequate expression; that it is elemental, or inthe core of things. Veracity, therefore, is that which we require inpoets,—that they shall say how it was with them, and not what might[Pg 26]be said. And the fault of our popular poetry is that it is not sincere.

"What news?" asks man of man everywhere. The only teller of news is thepoet. When he sings, the world listens with the assurance that now asecret of God is to be spoken. The right poetic mood is or makes a morecomplete sensibility,—piercing the outward fact to the meaning of thefact; shows a sharper insight: and the perception creates the strongexpression of it, as the man who sees his way walks in it.

'Tis a rule in eloquence, that the moment the orator loses command ofhis audience, the audience commands him. So, in poetry, the masterrushes to deliver his thought, and the words and images fly to him toexpress it; whilst colder moods are forced to respect the ways of sayingit, and insinuate, or, as it were, muffle the fact, to suit the povertyor caprice of their expression, so that they only hint the matter, orallude to it, being unable to fuse and mould their words and images tofluid obedience. See how Shakspeare grapples at once with the mainproblem of the tragedy, as in "Lear" and "Macbeth," and the opening of"The Merchant of Venice."

All writings must be in a degree exoteric, written to a humanshouldorwould, instead of to the fatalis: this holds even of thebravest and sincerest writers. Every writer is a skater, and must go partly[Pg 27]where he would, and partly where the skates carry him; or a sailor, whocan only land where sails can be blown. And yet it is to be added, thathigh poetry exceeds the fact, or nature itself, just as skates allow thegood skater far more grace than his best walking would show, or sailsmore than riding. The poet writes from a real experience, the amateurfeigns one. Of course, one draws the bow with his fingers, and the otherwith the strength of his body; one speaks with his lips, and the otherwith a chest voice. Talent amuses, but if your verse has not a necessaryand autobiographic basis, though under whatever gay poetic veils, itshall not waste my time.

For poetry is faith. To the poet the world is virgin soil: all ispracticable; the men are ready for virtue; it is always time to doright. He is a true re-commencer, or Adam in the garden again. Heaffirms the applicability of the ideal law to this moment and thepresent knot of affairs. Parties, lawyers, and men of the world willinvariably dispute such an application as romantic and dangerous: theyadmit the general truth, but they and their affair always constitute acase in bar of the statute. Free-trade, they concede, is very well as aprinciple, but it is never quite the time for its adoption withoutprejudicing actual interests. Chastity, they admit, is very well,—butthen think of Mirabeau's passion and temperament!—Eternal laws are[Pg 28]very well, which admit no violation,—but so extreme were the timesand manners of mankind, that you must admit miracles,—for thetimes constituted a case. Of course, we know what you say, that legendsare found in all tribes,—but this legend is different. And so,throughout, the poet affirms the laws; prose busies itself withexceptions,—with the local and individual.

I require that the poem should impress me, so that after I have shut thebook, it shall recall me to itself, or that passages should. Andinestimable is the criticism of memory as a corrective to firstimpressions. We are dazzled at first by new words and brilliancy ofcolor, which occupy the fancy and deceive the judgment. But all this iseasily forgotten. Later, the thought, the happy image which expressedit, and which was a true experience of the poet, recurs to mind, andsends me back in search of the book. And I wish that the poet shouldforesee this habit of readers, and omit all but the important passages.Shakspeare is made up of important passages, like Damascus steel made upof old nails. Homer has his own,—

and again,—

Write, that I may know you. Style betrays you, as your eyes do. We detect[Pg 29]at once by it whether the writer has a firm grasp on his fact orthought,—exists at the moment for that alone, or whether he hasone eye apologizing, deprecatory, turned on his reader. In proportionalways to his possession of his thought is his defiance of his readers.There is no choice of words for him who clearly sees the truth. Thatprovides him with the best word.

Great design belongs to a poem, and is better than any skill ofexecution,—but how rare! I find it in the poems ofWordsworth,—"Laodamia," and the "Ode to Dion," and the plan of "TheRecluse." We want design, and do not forgive the bards if they have onlythe art of enamelling. We want an architect, and they bring us anupholsterer.

If your subject do not appear to you the flower of the world at thismoment, you have not rightly chosen it. No matter what it is, grand orgay, national or private, if it has a natural prominence to you, workaway until you come to the heart of it: then it will, though it were asparrow or a spider-web, as fully represent the central law, and drawall tragic or joyful illustration, as if it were the book of Genesis orthe book of Doom. The subject—we must so often say it—isindifferent. Any word, every word in language, every circumstance, becomespoetic in the hands of a higher thought.[Pg 30]

The test or measure of poetic genius is the power to read the poetry ofaffairs,—to fuse the circumstance of to-day; not to use Scott'santique superstitions, or Shakspeare's, but to convert those of thenineteenth century, and of the existing nations, into universal symbols.'Tis easy to repaint the mythology of the Greeks, or of the CatholicChurch, the feudal castle, the crusade, the martyrdoms of mediævalEurope; but to point out where the same creative force is now working inour own houses and public assemblies, to convert the vivid energiesacting at this hour, in New York and Chicago and San Francisco, intouniversal symbols, requires a subtile and commanding thought. 'Tisboyish in Swedenborg to cumber himself with the dead scurf of Hebrewantiquity, as if the Divine creative energy had fainted in his owncentury. American life storms about us daily, and is slow to find atongue. This contemporary insight is transubstantiation, the conversionof daily bread into the holiest symbols; and every man would be a poet,if his intellectual digestion were perfect. The test of the poet is thepower to take the passing day, with its news, its cares, its fears, ashe shares them, and hold it up to a divine reason, till he sees it tohave a purpose and beauty, and to be related to astronomy and history,and the eternal order of the world. Then the dry twig blossoms in hishand. He is calmed and elevated.[Pg 31]

The use of "occasional poems" is to give leave to originality. Every onedelights in the felicity frequently shown in our drawing-rooms. In agame-party or picnic poem each writer is released from the solemnrhythmic traditions which alarm and suffocate his fancy, and the resultis that one of the partners offers a poem in a new style that hints at anew literature. Yet the writer holds it cheap, and could do the like allday. On the stage, the farce is commonly far better given than thetragedy, as the stock actors understand the farce, and do not understandthe tragedy. The writer in the parlor has more presence of mind, morewit and fancy, more play of thought, on the incidents that occur attable, or about the house, than in the politics of Germany or Rome. Manyof the fine poems of Herrick, Jonson, and their contemporaries had thiscasual origin.

I know there is entertainment and room for talent in the artist'sselection of ancient or remote subjects; as when the poet goes to India,or to Rome, or Persia, for his fable. But I believe nobody knows betterthan he, that herein he consults his ease, rather than his strength orhis desire. He is very well convinced that the great moments of life arethose in which his own house, his own body, the tritest and nearest waysand words and things, have been illuminated into prophets and teachers.What else is it to be a poet? What are his garland and singing robes?[Pg 32]What but a sensibility so keen that the scent of an elder-blow, or thetimber-yard and corporation-works of a nest of pismires is event enoughfor him,—all emblems and personal appeals to him. His wreath and robeis to do what he enjoys; emancipation from other men's questions, andglad study of his own; escape from the gossip and routine of society,and the allowed right and practice of making better. He does not givehis hand, but in sign of giving his heart; he is not affable with all,but silent, uncommitted, or in love, as his heart leads him. There is nosubject that does not belong to him,—politics, economy, manufactures,and stock-brokerage, as much as sunsets and souls; only, these things,placed in their true order, are poetry; displaced, or put in kitchenorder, they are unpoetic. Malthus is the right organ of the Englishproprietors; but we shall never understand political economy, untilBurns or Béranger or some poet shall teach it in songs, and he will notteach Malthusianism.

Poetry is thegai science. The trait and test of the poet is that hebuilds, adds, and affirms. The critic destroys: the poet says nothingbut what helps somebody; let others be distracted with cares, he isexempt. All their pleasures are tinged with pain. All his pains areedged with pleasure. The gladness he imparts he shares. As one of theold Minnesingers sung,—[Pg 33]

Poetry is the consolation of mortal men. They live cabined, cribbed,confined, in a narrow and trivial lot,—in wants, pains, anxieties,and superstitions, in profligate politics, in personal animosities, in meanemployments,—and victims of these; and the nobler powers untried,unknown. A poet comes, who lifts the veil; gives them glimpses of thelaws of the universe; shows them the circumstance as illusion; showsthat nature is only a language to express the laws, which are grand andbeautiful,—and lets them, by his songs, into some of the realities.Socrates; the Indian teachers of the Maia; the Bibles of the nations;Shakspeare, Milton, Hafiz, Ossian, the Welsh Bards,—these all dealwith nature and history as means and symbols, and not as ends. With suchguides they begin to see that what they had called pictures arerealities, and the mean life is pictures. And this is achieved by words;for it is a few oracles spoken by perceiving men that are the texts onwhich religions and states are founded. And this perception has at onceits moral sequence. Ben Jonson said, "The principal end of poetry is toinform men in the just reason of living."

Creation.—But there is a third step which poetry takes, andwhich seems higher than the others, namely, creation, or ideas taking forms[Pg 34]of their own,—when the poet invents the fable, and invents thelanguage which his heroes speak. He reads in the word or action of theman its yet untold results. His inspiration is power to carry out andcomplete the metamorphosis, which, in the imperfect kinds, arrested forages,—in the perfecter, proceeds rapidly in the same individual.For poetry is science, and the poet a truer logician. Men in the courtsor in the street think themselves logical, and the poet whimsical. Dothey think there is chance or wilfulness in what he sees and tells? Tobe sure, we demand of him what he demands of himself,—veracity,first of all. But with that, he is the lawgiver, as being an exactreporter of the essential law. He knows that he did not make histhought,—no, his thought made him, and made the sun and the stars.Is the solar system good art and architecture? The same wise achievementis in the human brain also, can you only wile it from interference andmarring. We cannot look at works of art but they teach us how near manis to creating. Michel Angelo is largely filled with the Creator thatmade and makes men. How much of the original craft remains in him, andhe a mortal man! In him and the like perfecter brains the instinct isresistless, knows the right way, is melodious, and at all points divine.The reason we set so high a value on any poetry,—as often on a line[Pg 35]or a phrase as on a poem,—is, that it is a new work of Nature, asa man is. It must be as new as foam and as old as the rock. But a newverse comes once in a hundred years; therefore Pindar, Hafiz, Dante,speak so proudly of what seems to the clown a jingle.

The writer, like the priest, must be exempted from secular labor. Hiswork needs a frolic health; he must be at the top of his condition. Inthat prosperity he is sometimes caught up into a perception of means andmaterials, of feats and fine arts, of fairy machineries and funds ofpower hitherto utterly unknown to him, whereby he can transfer hisvisions to mortal canvas, or reduce them into iambic or trochaic, intolyric or heroic rhyme. These successes are not less admirable andastonishing to the poet than they are to his audience. He has seensomething which all the mathematics and the best industry could neverbring him unto. Now at this rare elevation above his usual sphere, hehas come into new circulations, the marrow of the world is in his bones,the opulence of forms begins to pour into his intellect, and he ispermitted to dip his brush into the old paint-pot with which birds,flowers, the human cheek, the living rock, the broad landscape, theocean, and the eternal sky were painted.

These fine fruits of judgment, poesy, and sentiment, when once theirhour is struck, and the world is ripe for them, know as well as coarser[Pg 36]how to feed and replenish themselves, and maintain their stock alive,and multiply; for roses and violets renew their race like oaks, andflights of painted moths are as old as the Alleghanies. The balance ofthe world is kept, and dewdrop and haze and the pencil of light are aslong-lived as chaos and darkness.

Our science is always abreast of our self-knowledge. Poetry begins, orall becomes poetry, when we look from the centre outward, and are usingall as if the mind made it. That only can we see which we are, and whichwe make. The weaver sees gingham; the broker sees the stock-list; thepolitician, the ward and county votes; the poet sees the horizon, andthe shores of matter lying on the sky, the interaction of theelements,—the large effect of laws which correspond to the inwardlaws which he knows, and so are but a kind of extension of himself. "Theattractions are proportional to the destinies." Events or things areonly the fulfilment of the prediction of the faculties. Better men sawheavens and earths; saw noble instruments of noble souls. We seerailroads, mills, and banks, and we pity the poverty of these dreamingBuddhists. There was as much creative force then as now, but it madeglobes, and astronomic heavens, instead of broadcloth and wine-glasses.[Pg 37]

The poet is enamored of thoughts and laws. These know their way, and,guided by them, he is ascending from an interest in visible things to aninterest in that which they signify, and from the part of a spectator tothe part of a maker. And as everything streams and advances, as everyfaculty and every desire is procreant, and every perception is adestiny, there is no limit to his hope. "Anything, child, that the mindcovets, from the milk of a cocoa to the throne of the three worlds, thoumayest obtain, by keeping the law of thy members and the law of thymind." It suggests that there is higher poetry than we write or read.

Rightly, poetry is organic. We cannot know things by words and writing,but only by taking a central position in the universe, and living in itsforms. We sink to rise.

All the parts and forms of nature are the expression or production ofdivine faculties, and the same are in us. And the fascination of geniusfor us is this awful nearness to Nature's creations.

I have heard that the Germans think the creator of Trim and Uncle Toby,though he never wrote a verse, a greater poet than Cowper, and thatGoldsmith's title to the name is not from his "Deserted Village," butderived from the "Vicar of Wakefield." Better examples are Shakspeare's[Pg 38]Ariel, his Caliban, and his fairies in the "Midsummer Night's Dream."Barthold Niebuhr said well, "There is little merit in inventing a happyidea, or attractive situation, so long as it is only the author's voicewhich we hear. As a being whom we have called into life by magic arts,as soon as it has received existence acts independently of the master'simpulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and relateswhat they do and say. Such creation is poetry, in the literal sense ofthe term, and its possibility is an unfathomable enigma. The gushingfulness of speech belongs to the poet, and it flows from the lips ofeach of his magic beings in the thoughts and words peculiar to itsnature."[1]

This force of representation so plants his figures before him that hetreats them as real; talks to them as if they were bodily there; putswords in their mouth such as they should have spoken, and is affected bythem as by persons. Vast is the difference between writing clean versesfor magazines, and creating these new persons and situations,—newlanguage with emphasis and reality. The humor of Falstaff, the terror ofMacbeth, have each their swarm of fit thoughts and images, as ifShakspeare had known and reported the men, instead of inventing them athis desk. This power appears not only in the outline or portrait of his[Pg 39]actors, but also in the bearing and behavior and style of eachindividual. Ben Jonson told Drummond "that Sidney did not keep a decorumin making every one speak as well as himself."

This reminds me that we all have one key to this miracle of the poet,and the dunce has experiences that may explain Shakspeare to him,—onekey, namely, dreams. In dreams we are true poets; we create the personsof the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costume; they areperfect in their organs, attitude, manners: moreover, they speak aftertheir own characters, not ours;—they speak to us, and we listen withsurprise to what they say. Indeed, I doubt if the best poet has yetwritten any five-act play that can compare in thoroughness of inventionwith this unwritten play in fifty acts, composed by the dullest snoreron the floor of the watch-house.

Melody, Rhyme, Form.—Music and rhyme are among the earliestpleasures of the child, and, in the history of literature, poetryprecedes prose. Every one may see, as he rides on the highway through anuninteresting landscape, how a little water instantly relieves themonotony: no matter what objects are near it,—a gray rock, agrass-patch, an alder-bush, or a stake,—they become beautiful bybeing reflected. It is rhyme to the eye, and explains the charm of rhymeto the ear. Shadows please us as still finer rhymes. Architecture[Pg 40]gives the like pleasure by the repetition of equal parts in a colonnade,in a row of windows, or in wings; gardens, by the symmetric contrasts ofthe beds and walks. In society, you have this figure in a bridalcompany, where a choir of white-robed maidens give the charm of livingstatues; in a funeral procession, where all wear black; in a regiment ofsoldiers in uniform.

The universality of this taste is proved by our habit of casting ourfacts into rhyme to remember them better, as so many proverbs may show.Who would hold the order of the almanac so fast but for the ding-dong,

or of the Zodiac, but for

We are lovers of rhyme and return, period and musical reflection. Thebabe is lulled to sleep byyo-heave-o. Soldiers can march better andfight better for the drum and trumpet. Metre begins with pulse-beat, andthe length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalationand exhalation of the lungs. If you hum or whistle the rhythm of thecommon English metres,—of the decasyllabic quatrain, or theoctosyllabic with alternate sexisyllabic, or other rhythms, you can[Pg 41]easily believe these metres to be organic, derived from the human pulse,and to be therefore not proper to one nation, but to mankind. I thinkyou will also find a charm heroic, plaintive, pathetic, in thesecadences, and be at once set on searching for the words that can rightlyfill these vacant beats. Young people like rhyme, drum-beat, tune,things in pairs and alternatives; and, in higher degrees, we know theinstant power of music upon our temperaments to change our mood, andgive us its own: and human passion, seizing these constitutional tunes,aims to fill them with appropriate words, or marry music to thought,believing, as we believe of all marriage, that matches are made inheaven, and that for every thought its proper melody or rhyme exists,though the odds are immense against our finding it, and only genius canrightly say the banns.

Another form of rhyme is iterations of phrase, as the record of thedeath of Sisera:—

"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, hefell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead."

The fact is made conspicuous, nay, colossal, by this simple rhetoric.

"They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall waxold like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shallbe changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

[Pg 42]

Milton delights in these iterations:—

So in our songs and ballads the refrain skilfully used, and derivingsome novelty or better sense in each of many verses:—

Of course rhyme soars and refines with the growth of the mind. The boyliked the drum, the people liked an overpowering jewsharp tune. Laterthey like to transfer that rhyme to life, and to detect a melody asprompt and perfect in their daily affairs. Omen and coincidence show therhythmical structure of man; hence the taste for signs, sortilege,prophecy and fulfilment, anniversaries, etc. By and by, when theyapprehend real rhymes, namely, the correspondence of parts innature,—acid and alkali, body and mind, man and maid, character andhistory, action and reaction,—they do not longer value rattles andding-dongs, or barbaric word-jingle. Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry,[Pg 43]Hydraulics and the elemental forces have their own periods and returns,their own grand strains of harmony not less exact, up to the primevalapothegm "that there is nothing on earth which is not in the heavens ina heavenly form, and nothing in the heavens which is not on the earth inan earthly form." They furnish the poet with grander pairs andalternations, and will require an equal expansion in his metres.

There is under the seeming poverty of metres an infinite variety, asevery artist knows. A right ode (however nearly it may adoptconventional metre, as the Spenserian, or the heroic blank-verse, or oneof the fixed lyric metres) will by any sprightliness be at once liftedout of conventionality, and will modify the metre. Every good poem thatI know I recall by its rhythm also. Rhyme is a pretty good measure ofthe latitude and opulence of a writer. If unskilful, he is at oncedetected by the poverty of his chimes. A small, well-worn, sprucelybrushed vocabulary serves him. Now try Spenser, Marlow, Chapman, and seehow wide they fly for weapons, and how rich and lavish their profusion.In their rhythm is no manufacture, but a vortex, or musical tornado,which falling on words and the experience of a learned mind, whirlsthese materials into the same grand order as planets and moons obey, andseasons, and monsoons.

There are also prose poets. Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, for instance,[Pg 44]is really a better man of imagination, a better poet, or perhaps Ishould say a better feeder to a poet, than any man between Milton andWordsworth. Thomas Moore had the magnanimity to say, "If Burke and Baconwere not poets (measured lines not being necessary to constitute one),he did not know what poetry meant." And every good reader will easilyrecall expressions or passages in works of pure science which have givenhim the same pleasure which he seeks in professed poets. Richard Owen,the eminent paleontologist, said:—

"All hitherto observed causes of extirpation point either to continuousslowly operating geologic changes, or to no greater sudden cause thanthe, so to speak, spectral appearance of mankind on a limited tract ofland not before inhabited."

St. Augustine complains to God of his friends offering him the books ofthe philosophers:—

"And these were the dishes in which they brought to me, being hungry,the Sun and the Moon instead of Thee."

It would not be easy to refuse to Sir Thomas Browne's "Fragment onMummies" the claim of poetry:—

"Of their living habitations they made little account, conceiving ofthem but ashospitia, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres ofthe dead, and, planting thereon lasting bases, defied the crumbling[Pg 45]touches of time, and the misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all werebut Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all things, and is nowdominant, and sitteth upon a Sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and oldThebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous on a pyramid,gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turningold glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. Thetraveller as he paceth through those deserts asketh of her, Who buildedthem? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not."

Rhyme, being a kind of music, shares this advantage with music, that ithas a privilege of speaking truth which all Philistia is unable tochallenge. Music is the poor man's Parnassus. With the first note of theflute or horn, or the first strain of a song, we quit the world ofcommon-sense, and launch on the sea of ideas and emotions: we pourcontempt on the prose you so magnify; yet the sturdiest Philistine issilent. The like allowance is the prescriptive right of poetry. Youshall not speak ideal truth in prose uncontradicted: you may in verse.The best thoughts run into the best words; imaginative and affectionatethoughts into music and metre. We ask for food and fire, we talk of ourwork, our tools, and material necessities in prose, that is, without anyelevation or aim at beauty; but when we rise into the world of thought,[Pg 46]and think of these things only for what they signify, speech refinesinto order and harmony. I know what you say of mediæval barbarism andsleighbell-rhyme, but we have not done with music, no, nor with rhyme,nor must console ourselves with prose poets so long as boys whistle andgirls sing.

Let Poetry then pass, if it will, into music and rhyme. That is the formwhich itself puts on. We do not enclose watches in wooden, but incrystal cases, and rhyme is the transparent frame that allows almost thepure architecture of thought to become visible to the mental eye.Substance is much, but so are mode and form much. The poet, like adelighted boy, brings you heaps of rainbow bubbles, opaline, air-borne,spherical as the world, instead of a few drops of soap and water. VictorHugo says well, "An idea steeped in verse becomes suddenly more incisiveand more brilliant: the iron becomes steel." Lord Bacon, we are told,"loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical dactyls andspondees"; and Ben Jonson said, "that Donne, for not keeping of accent,deserved hanging."

Poetry being an attempt to express, not the common-sense, as theavoirdupois of the hero, or his structure in feet and inches, but thebeauty and soul in his aspect as it shines to fancy andfeeling,—and so of all other objects in nature,—runs intofable, personifies every fact:—"the clouds clapped theirhands,"—"the hills skipped,"—"the sky spoke." This is the[Pg 47]substance, and this treatment always attempts a metrical grace. Outsideof the nursery the beginning of literature is the prayers of a people,and they are always hymns, poetic,—the mind allowing itself range,and therewith is ever a corresponding freedom in the style which becomeslyrical. The prayers of nations are rhythmic,—have iterations, andalliterations, like the marriage-service and burial-service in ourliturgies.

Poetry will never be a simple means, as when history or philosophy isrhymed, or laureate odes on state occasions are written. Itself must beits own end, or it is nothing. The difference between poetry andstock-poetry is this, that in the latter the rhythm is given, and thesense adapted to it; while in the former the sense dictates the rhythm.I might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, andimage themselves. Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not avehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case: the versemust be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of maninspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by themusic. In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; butin poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts, theexpression mounts. 'Tis cumulative also; the poem is made up of lineseach of which filled the ear of the poet in its turn, so that mere[Pg 48]synthesis produces a work quite superhuman.

Indeed, the masters sometimes rise above themselves to strains whichcharm their readers, and which neither any competitor could outdo, northe bard himself again equal. Try this strain of Beaumont andFletcher:—

Keats disclosed by certain lines in his "Hyperion" this inward skill;and Coleridge showed at least his love and appetency for it. It appearsin Ben Jonson's songs, including certainly "The faery beam upon you,"etc., Waller's "Go, lovely rose!," Herbert's "Virtue" and "Easter," andLovelace's lines "To Althea" and "To Lucasta," and Collins's "Ode, to[Pg 49]Evening," all but the last verse, which is academical. Perhaps thisdainty style of poetry is not producible to-day, any more than a rightGothic cathedral. It belonged to a time and taste which is not in theworld.

As the imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health ofevery man, so also is this joy of musical expression. I know the prideof mathematicians and materialists, but they cannot conceal from metheir capital want. The critic, the philosopher, is a failed poet. Grayavows "that he thinks even a bad verse as good a thing or better thanthe best observation that was ever made on it." I honor the naturalist;I honor the geometer, but he has before him higher power and happinessthan he knows. Yet we will leave to the masters their own forms. Newtonmay be permitted to call Terence a play-book, and to wonder at thefrivolous taste for rhymers; he only predicts, one would say, a granderpoetry: he only shows that he is not yet reached; that the poetry whichsatisfies more youthful souls is not such to a mind like his, accustomedto grander harmonies;—this being a child's whistle to his ear; thatthe music must rise to a loftier strain, up to Handel, up to Beethoven, upto the thorough-bass of the sea-shore, up to the largeness of astronomy:at last that great heart will hear in the music beats like its own: thewaves of melody will wash and float him also, and set him into concert[Pg 50]and harmony.

Bards and Trouveurs.—The metallic force of primitive wordsmakes the superiority of the remains of the rude ages. It costs theearly bard little talent to chant more impressively than the later, morecultivated poets. His advantage is that his words are things, each thelucky sound which described the fact, and we listen to him as we do tothe Indian, or the hunter, or miner, each of whom represents his factsas accurately as the cry of the wolf or the eagle tells of the forest orthe air they inhabit. The original force, the direct smell of the earthor the sea, is in these ancient poems, the Sagas of the North, theNiebelungen Lied, the songs and ballads of the English and Scotch.

I find or fancy more true poetry, the love of the vast and the ideal, inthe Welsh and bardic fragments of Taliessin and his successors than inmany volumes of British Classics. An intrepid magniloquence appears inall the bards, as:—

A favorable specimen is Taliessin's "Invocation of the Wind" at the doorof Castle Teganwy.[Pg 51]

In one of his poems he asks:—

He says of his hero, Cunedda,—

To another,—

Of an enemy,—

"The caldron of the sea was bordered round by his land, but it would notboil the food of a coward."

To an exile on an island he says,—

"The heavy blue chain of the sea didst thou, O just man, endure."

[Pg 52]

Another bard in like tone says,—

"I am possessed of songs such as no son of man can repeat; one of themis called the 'Helper'; it will help thee at thy need in sickness,grief, and all adversities. I know a song which I need only to sing whenmen have loaded me with bonds: when I sing it, my chains fall in piecesand I walk forth at liberty."

The Norsemen have no less faith in poetry and its power, when theydescribe it thus:—

"Odin spoke everything in rhyme. He and his temple-gods were calledsong-smiths. He could make his enemies in battle blind or deaf, andtheir weapons so blunt that they could no more cut than a willow-twig.Odin taught these arts in runes or songs, which are calledincantations."[2]

The Crusades brought out the genius of France, in the twelfth century,when Pierre d'Auvergne said,—

"I will sing a new song which resounds in my breast: never was a songgood or beautiful which resembled any other."

And Pons de Capdeuil declares,—

"Since the air renews itself and softens, so must my heart renew itself,and what buds in it buds and grows outside of it."

[Pg 53]

There is in every poem a height which attracts more than other parts,and is best remembered. Thus, in "Morte d'Arthur," I remember nothing sowell as Sir Gawain's parley with Merlin in his wonderful prison:—

"After the disappearance of Merlin from King Arthur's court he wasseriously missed, and many knights set out in search of him. Amongothers was Sir Gawain, who pursued his search till it was time to returnto the court. He came into the forest of Broceliande, lamenting as hewent along. Presently, he heard the voice of one groaning on his righthand; looking that way, he could see nothing save a kind of smoke whichseemed like air, and through which he could not pass; and thisimpediment made him so wrathful that it deprived him of speech.Presently he heard a voice which said, 'Gawain, Gawain, be not out ofheart, for everything which must happen will come to pass.' And when heheard the voice which thus called him by his right name, he replied,'Who can this be who hath spoken to me?' 'How,' said the voice, 'SirGawain, know you me not? You were wont to know me well, but thus thingsare interwoven and thus the proverb says true, "Leave the court and thecourt will leave you." So is it with me. Whilst I served King Arthur, Iwas well known by you and by other barons, but because I have left thecourt, I am known no longer, and put in forgetfulness, which I ought notto be if faith reigned in the world.' When Sir Gawain heard the voice[Pg 54]which spoke to him thus, he thought it was Merlin, and he answered,'Sir, certes I ought to know you well, for many times I have heard yourwords. I pray you appear before me so that I may be able to recognizeyou.' 'Ah, sir,' said Merlin, 'you will never see me more, and thatgrieves me, but I cannot remedy it, and when you shall have departedfrom this place, I shall nevermore speak to you nor to any other person,save only my mistress; for never other person will be able to discoverthis place for anything which may befall; neither shall I ever go outfrom hence, for in the world there is no such strong tower as thiswherein I am confined; and it is neither of wood, nor of iron, nor ofstone, but of air, without anything else; and made by enchantment sostrong, that it can never be demolished while the world lasts, neithercan I go out, nor can any one come in, save she who hath enclosed mehere, and who keeps me company when it pleaseth her: she cometh when shelisteth, for her will is here.' 'How, Merlin, my good friend,' said SirGawain, 'are you restrained so strongly that you cannot deliver yourselfnor make yourself visible unto me; how can this happen, seeing that youare the wisest man in the world?' 'Rather,' said Merlin, 'the greatestfool; for I well knew that all this would befall me, and I have beenfool enough to love another more than myself, for I taught my mistressthat whereby she hath imprisoned me in such manner that none can set mefree.' 'Certes, Merlin,' replied Sir Gawain, 'of that I am rightsorrowful, and so will King Arthur, my uncle, be, when he shall know it,as one who is making search after you throughout all countries.' 'Well,'[Pg 55]said Merlin, 'it must be borne, for never will he see me, nor I him;neither will any one speak with me again after you, it would be vain toattempt it; for you yourself, when you have turned away, will never beable to find the place: but salute for me the king and the queen, andall the barons, and tell them of my condition. You will find the king atCarduel in Wales; and when you arrive there you will find there all thecompanions who departed with you, and who at this day will return. Nowthen go in the name of God, who will protect and save the King Arthur,and the realm of Logres, and you also, as the best knights who are inthe world.' With that Sir Gawain departed joyful and sorrowful; joyfulbecause of what Merlin had assured him should happen to him, andsorrowful that Merlin had thus been lost."

Morals.—We are sometimes apprised that there is a mental powerand creation more excellent than anything which is commonly calledphilosophy and literature; that the high poets,—that Homer, Milton,Shakspeare, do not fully content us. How rarely they offer us theheavenly bread! The most they have done is to intoxicate us once andagain with its taste. They have touched this heaven and retainafterwards some sparkle of it: they betray their belief that suchdiscourse is possible. There is something—our brothers on this orthat side of the sea do not know it or own it; the eminent scholars ofEngland, historians and reviewers, romancers and poets included, might[Pg 56]deny and blaspheme it—which is setting us and them aside and thewhole world also, and planting itself. To true poetry we shall sit downas the result and justification of the age in which it appears, andthink lightly of histories and statutes. None of your parlor or pianoverse,—none of your carpet poets, who are content to amuse, willsatisfy us. Power, new power, is the good which the soul seeks. Thepoetic gift we want, as the health and supremacy of man,—notrhymes and sonneteering, not bookmaking and bookselling; surely not coldspying and authorship.

Is not poetry the little chamber in the brain where is generated theexplosive force which, by gentle shocks, sets in action the intellectualworld? Bring us the bards who shall sing all our old ideas out of ourheads, and new ones in; men-making poets; poetry which, like the versesinscribed on Balder's columns in Breidablik, is capable of restoring thedead to life;—poetry like that verse of Saadi, which the angelstestified "met the approbation of Allah in Heaven";—poetry which[Pg 57]finds its rhymes and cadences in the rhymes and iterations of nature,and is the gift to men of new images and symbols, each the ensign andoracle of an age; that shall assimilate men to it, mould itself intoreligions and mythologies, and impart its quality tocenturies;—poetry which tastes the world and reports of it,upbuilding the world again in the thought;

Poetry must be affirmative. It is the piety of the intellect. "Thussaith the Lord," should begin the song. The poet who shall use nature ashis hieroglyphic must have an adequate message to convey thereby.Therefore, when we speak of the Poet in any high sense, we are driven tosuch examples as Zoroaster and Plato, St. John and Menu, with theirmoral burdens. The Muse shall be the counterpart of Nature, and equallyrich. I find her not often in books. We know Nature, and figure herexuberant, tranquil, magnificent in her fertility, coherent; so thatevery creation is omen of every other. She is not proud of the sea, ofthe stars, of space or time, or man or woman. All her kinds share theattributes of the selectest extremes. But in current literature I do notfind her. Literature warps away from life, though at first it seems tobind it. In the world of letters how few commanding oracles! Homer didwhat he could,—Pindar, Æschylus, and the Greek Gnomic poets and thetragedians. Dante was faithful when not carried away by his fiercehatreds. But in so many alcoves of English poetry I can count only nineor ten authors who are still inspirers and lawgivers to their race.[Pg 58]

The supreme value of poetry is to educate us to a height beyond itself,or which it rarely reaches;—the subduing mankind to order and virtue.He is the true Orpheus who writes his ode, not with syllables, but men."In poetry," said Goethe, "only the really great and pure advances us,and this exists as a second nature, either elevating us to itself, orrejecting us." The poet must let Humanity sit with the Muse in his head,as the charioteer sits with the hero in the Iliad. "Show me," saidSarona in the novel, "one wicked man who has written poetry, and I willshow you where his poetry is not poetry; or rather, I will show you inhis poetry no poetry at all."[3]

I have heard that there is a hope which precedes and must precede allscience of the visible or the invisible world; and that science is therealization of that hope in either region. I count the genius ofSwedenborg and Wordsworth as the agents of a reform in philosophy, thebringing poetry back to nature,—to the marrying of nature and mind,undoing the old divorce in which poetry had been famished and false, andnature had been suspected and pagan. The philosophy which a nationreceives, rules its religion, poetry, politics, arts, trades, and wholehistory. A good poem—say Shakspeare's "Macbeth," or "Hamlet," or the"Tempest"—goes about the world offering itself to reasonable men, who[Pg 59]read it with joy and carry it to their reasonable neighbors. Thus itdraws to it the wise and generous souls, confirming their secretthoughts, and, through their sympathy, really publishing itself. Itaffects the characters of its readers by formulating their opinions andfeelings, and inevitably prompting their daily action. If they buildships, they write "Ariel" or "Prospero" or "Ophelia" on the ship'sstern, and impart a tenderness and mystery to matters of fact. Theballad and romance work on the hearts of boys, who recite the rhymes totheir hoops or their skates if alone, and these heroic songs or linesare remembered and determine many practical choices which they makelater. Do you think Burns has had no influence on the life of men andwomen in Scotland,—has opened no eyes and ears to the face of natureand the dignity of man and the charm and excellence of woman?

We are a little civil, it must be owned, to Homer and Æschylus, toDante and Shakspeare, and give them the benefit of the largestinterpretation. We must be a little strict also, and ask whether, if wesit down at home, and do not go to Hamlet, Hamlet will come to us?whether we shall find our tragedy written in his,—our hopes, wants,pains, disgraces, described to the life,—and the way opened to theparadise which ever in the best hour beckons us? But our overpraise andidealization of famous masters is not in its origin a poor Boswellism,[Pg 60]but an impatience of mediocrity. The praise we now give to our heroes weshall unsay when we make larger demands. How fast we outgrow the booksof the nursery,—then those that satisfied our youth. What we onceadmired as poetry has long since come to be a sound of tin pans; andmany of our later books we have outgrown. Perhaps Homer and Milton willbe tin pans yet. Better not to be easily pleased. The poet shouldrejoice if he has taught us to despise his song; if he has so moved usas to lift us,—to open the eye of the intellect to see farther andbetter.

In proportion as a man's life comes into union with truth, his thoughtsapproach to a parallelism with the currents of natural laws, so that heeasily expresses his meaning by natural symbols, or uses the ecstatic orpoetic speech. By successive states of mind all the facts of nature arefor the first time interpreted. In proportion as his life departs fromthis simplicity, he uses circumlocution,—by many words hoping tosuggest what he cannot say. Vexatious to find poets, who are byexcellence the thinking and feeling of the world, deficient in truth ofintellect and of affection. Then is conscience unfaithful, and thoughtunwise. To know the merit of Shakspeare, read "Faust." I find "Faust" alittle too modern and intelligible. We can find such a fabric at severalmills, though a little inferior. "Faust" abounds in the disagreeable.The vice is prurient, learned, Parisian. In the presence of Jove,[Pg 61]Priapus may be allowed as an offset, but here he is an equal hero. Theegotism, the wit, is calculated. The book is undeniably written by amaster, and stands unhappily related to the whole modern world; but itis a very disagreeable chapter of literature, and accuses the author aswell as the times. Shakspeare could, no doubt, have been disagreeable,had he less genius, and if ugliness had attracted him. In short, ourEnglish nature and genius has made us the worst critics of Goethe,

It is not style or rhymes, or a new image more or less, that imports,but sanity; that life should not be mean; that life should be an imagein every part beautiful; that the old forgotten splendors of theuniverse should glow again for us;—that we should lose our wit, butgain our reason. And when life is true to the poles of nature, thestreams of truth will roll through us in song.

Transcendency.—In a cotillon some persons dance and othersawait their turn when the music and the figure come to them. In the danceof God there is not one of the chorus but can and will begin to spin,monumental as he now looks, whenever the music and figure reach hisplace and duty. O celestial Bacchus! drive them mad,—this multitude[Pg 62]of vagabonds, hungry for eloquence, hungry for poetry, starving forsymbols, perishing for want of electricity to vitalize this too muchpasture, and in the long delay indemnifying themselves with the falsewine of alcohol, of politics, or of money.

Every man may be, and at some time a man is, lifted to a platform whencehe looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth; and in that mooddeals sovereignly with matter, and strings worlds like beads upon histhought. The success with which this is done can alone determine howgenuine is the inspiration. The poet is rare because he must beexquisitely vital and sympathetic, and, at the same time, immovablycentred. In good society, nay, among the angels in heaven, is noteverything spoken in fine parable, and not so servilely as it befell tothe sense? All is symbolized. Facts are not foreign, as they seem, butrelated. Wait a little and we see the return of the remote hyperboliccurve. The solid men complain that the idealist leaves out thefundamental facts; the poet complains that the solid men leave out thesky. To every plant there are two powers; one shoots down as rootlet,and one upward as tree. You must have eyes of science to see in the seedits nodes; you must have the vivacity of the poet to perceive in thethought its futurities. The poet is representative,—whole man,[Pg 63]diamond-merchant, symbolizer, emancipator; in him the world projects ascribe's hand and writes the adequate genesis. The nature of things isflowing, a metamorphosis. The free spirit sympathizes not only with theactual form, but with the power or possible forms; but for obviousmunicipal or parietal uses, God has given us a bias or a rest onto-day's forms. Hence the shudder of joy with which in each clear momentwe recognize the metamorphosis, because it is always a conquest, asurprise from the heart of things. One would say of the force in theworks of nature, all depends on the battery. If it give one shock, weshall get to the fish form, and stop; if two shocks, to the bird; ifthree, to the quadruped; if four, to the man. Power of generalizingdifferences men. The number of successive saltations the nimble thoughtcan make, measures the difference between the highest and lowest ofmankind. The habit of saliency, of not pausing but going on, is a sortof importation or domestication of the Divine effort in a man. After thelargest circle has been drawn, a larger can be drawn around it. Theproblem of the poet is to unite freedom with precision; to give thepleasure of color, and be not less the most powerful of sculptors. Musicseems to you sufficient, or the subtle and delicate scent of lavender; butDante was free imagination,—all wings,—yet he wrote likeEuclid. And mark the equality of Shakspeare to the comic, the tender andsweet, and to the grand and terrible. A little more or less skill in[Pg 64]whistling is of no account. See those weary pentameter tales of Drydenand others. Turnpike is one thing and blue sky another. Let the poet, ofall men, stop with his inspiration. The inexorable rule in the muses'court,either inspiration or silence, compels the bard to reportonly his supreme moments. It teaches the enormous force of a few wordsand in proportion to the inspiration checks loquacity. Much that we callpoetry is but polite verse. The high poetry which shall thrill andagitate mankind, restore youth and health, dissipate the dreams underwhich men reel and stagger, and bring in the new thoughts, the sanityand heroic aims of nations, is deeper hid and longer postponed than wasAmerica or Australia, or the finding of steam or of the galvanicbattery. We must not conclude against poetry from the defects of poets.They are, in our experience, men of every degree of skill,—some ofthem only once or twice receivers of an inspiration, and presentlyfalling back on a low life. The drop ofichor that tingles intheir veins has not yet refined their blood, and cannot lift the wholeman to the digestion and function of ichor,—that is, to godlikenature. Time will be when ichor shall be their blood, when what are nowglimpses and aspirations shall be the routine of the day. Yet evenpartial ascents to poetry and ideas are forerunners, and announce thedawn. In the mire of the sensual life, their religion, their poets,[Pg 65]their admiration of heroes and benefactors, even their novel andnewspaper, nay, their superstitions also, are hosts of ideals,—acordage of ropes that hold them up out of the slough. Poetry isinestimable as a lonely faith, a lonely protest in the uproar ofatheism.

But so many men are ill-born or ill-bred,—the brains are so marred,so imperfectly formed, unheroically,—brains of the sons of fallenmen,—that the doctrine is imperfectly received. One man sees a sparkor shimmer of the truth, and reports it, and his saying becomes a legend orgolden proverb for ages, and other men report as much, but none whollyand well. Poems,—we have no poem. Whenever that angel shall beorganized and appear on earth, the Iliad will be reckoned a poorballad-grinding. I doubt never the riches of nature, the gifts of thefuture, the immense wealth of the mind. O yes, poets we shall have,mythology, symbols, religion, of our own. We, too, shall know how totake up all this industry and empire, this Western civilization, intothought, as easily as men did when arts were few; but not by holding ithigh, but by holding it low. The intellect uses and is not used,—usesLondon and Paris and Berlin, east and west, to its end. The only heartthat can help us is one that draws, not from our society, but fromitself, a counterpoise to society. What if we find partiality andmeanness in us? The grandeur of our life exists in spite of us,—all[Pg 66]over and under and within us, in what of us is inevitable and above ourcontrol. Men are facts as well as persons, and the involuntary part oftheir life so much as to fill the mind and leave them no countenance tosay aught of what is so trivial as their selfish thinking and doing.Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fairand manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

[Pg 67]

[Pg 69]

SOCIAL AIMS.

MUCH ill-natured criticism has been directed on American manners. I donot think it is to be resented. Rather, if we are wise, we shall listenand mend. Our critics will then be our best friends, though they did notmean it. But in every sense the subject of manners has a constantinterest to thoughtful persons. Who does not delight in fine manners?Their charm cannot be predicted or overstated. 'Tis perpetual promise ofmore than can be fulfilled. It is music and sculpture and picture tomany who do not pretend to appreciation of those arts. It is even truethat grace is more beautiful than beauty. Yet how impossible to overcomethe obstacle of an unlucky temperament, and acquire good manners, unlessby living with the well-bred from the start; and this makes the value ofwise forethought to give ourselves and our children as much as possiblethe habit of cultivated society.

'Tis an inestimable hint that I owe to a few persons of fine manners,that they make behavior the very first sign of force,—behavior, and[Pg 71]not performance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. Whilst almost everybodyhas a supplicating eye turned on events and things and other persons, afew natures are central and forever unfold, and these alone charm us. Hewhose word or deed you cannot predict, who answers you without anysupplication in his eye, who draws his determination from within, anddraws it instantly,—that man rules.

The staple figure in novels is the man ofaplomb, who sits, amongthe young aspirants and desperates, quite sure and compact, and, neversharing their affections or debilities, hurls his word like a bulletwhen occasion requires, knows his way, and carries his points. They mayscream or applaud, he is never engaged or heated. Napoleon is the typeof this class in modern history; Byron's heroes in poetry. But we, forthe most part, are all drawn into thecharivari; we chide, lament,cavil, and recriminate.

I think Hans Andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that itwas invisible,—woven for the king's garment,—must meanmanners, which do really clothe a princely nature. Such a one can wellgo in a blanket, if he would. In the gymnasium or on the sea-beach hissuperiority does not leave him. But he who has not this fine garment ofbehavior is studious of dress, and then not less of house and furnitureand pictures and gardens, in all which he hopes to lieperdu, andnot be exposed.[Pg 72]

"Manners are stronger than laws." Their vast convenience I must alwaysadmire. The perfect defence and isolation which they effect makes aninsuperable protection. Though the person so clothed wrestle with you,or swim with you, lodge in the same chamber, eat at the same table, heis yet a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you.Manners seem to say,You are you, and I am I. In the most delicatenatures, fine temperament and culture build this impassable wall. Balzacfinely said: "Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness ofdistance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze."

Nature values manners. See how she has prepared for them. Who teachesmanners of majesty, of frankness, of grace, of humility,—who but theadoring aunts and cousins that surround a young child? The babe meetssuch courting and flattery as only kings receive when adult; and, tryingexperiments, and at perfect leisure with these posture-masters andflatterers all day, he throws himself into all the attitudes thatcorrespond to theirs. Are they humble? he is composed. Are they eager?he is nonchalant. Are they encroaching? he is dignified and inexorable.And this scene is daily repeated in hovels as well as in high houses.

Nature is the best posture-master. An awkward man is graceful whenasleep, or when hard at work, or agreeably amused. The attitudes of[Pg 73]children are gentle, persuasive, royal, in their games and in theirhouse-talk and in the street, before they have learned to cringe. 'Tisimpossible but thought disposes the limbs and the walk, and is masterlyor secondary. No art can contravene it, or conceal it. Give me athought, and my hands and legs and voice and face will all go right. Andwe are awkward for want of thought. The inspiration is scanty, and doesnot arrive at the extremities.

It is a commonplace of romances to show the ungainly manners of thepedant who has lived too long in college. Intellectual men pass forvulgar, and are timid and heavy with the elegant. But, if the elegantare also intellectual, instantly the hesitating scholar is inspired,transformed, and exhibits the best style of manners. An intellectualman, though of feeble spirit, is instantly reinforced by being put intothe company of scholars, and, to the surprise of everybody, becomes alawgiver. We think a man unable and desponding. It is only that he ismisplaced. Put him with new companions, and they will find in himexcellent qualities, unsuspected accomplishments, and the joy of life.'Tis a great point in a gallery, how you hang pictures; and not less insociety, how you seat your party. The circumstance of circumstance istiming and placing. When a man meets his accurate mate, society begins,and life is delicious.

What happiness they give,—what ties they form! Whilst one man by his[Pg 74]manners pins me to the wall, with another I walk among the stars. Oneman can, by his voice, lead the cheer of a regiment; another will haveno following. Nature made us all intelligent of these signs, for oursafety and our happiness. Whilst certain faces are illumined withintelligence, decorated with invitation, others are marked withwarnings: certain voices are hoarse and truculent; sometimes they evenbark. There is the same difference between heavy and genial manners asbetween the perceptions of octogenarians and those of young girls whosee everything in the twinkling of an eye.

Manners are the revealers of secrets, the betrayers of any disproportionor want of symmetry in mind and character. It is the law of ourconstitution that every change in our experience instantly indicatesitself on our countenance and carriage, as the lapse of time tellsitself on the face of a clock. We may be too obtuse to read it, but therecord is there. Some men may be obtuse to read it, but some men are notobtuse and do read it. In Borrow's "Lavengro," the gypsy instantlydetects, by his companion's face and behavior, that some good fortunehas befallen him, and that he has money. We say, in these days, thatcredit is to be abolished in trade: is it? When a stranger comes to buygoods of you, do you not look in his face and answer according to whatyou read there? Credit is to be abolished? Can't you abolish faces and[Pg 75]character, of which credit is the reflection? As long as men are bornbabes they will live on credit for the first fourteen or eighteen yearsof their life. Every innocent man has in his countenance a promise topay, and hence credit. Less credit will there be? You are mistaken.There will always be more and more. Charactermust be trusted; and,just in proportion to the morality of a people, will be the expansion ofthe credit system.

There is even a little rule of prudence for the young experimenter whichDr. Franklin omitted to set down, yet which the youth may finduseful,—Do not go to ask your debtor the payment of a debt on the daywhen you have no other resource. He will learn by your air and tone howit is with you, and will treat you as a beggar. But work and starve alittle longer. Wait till your affairs go better, and you have othermeans at hand; you will then ask in a different tone, and he will treatyour claim with entire respect.

Now, we all wish to be graceful, and do justice to ourselves by ourmanners; but youth in America is wont to be poor and hurried, not atease, or not in society where high behavior could be taught. But thesentiment of honor and the wish to serve make all our pains superfluous.Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.Self-command is the main elegance. "Keep cool, and you commandeverybody," said St. Just; and the wily old Talleyrand would still say,[Pg 76]Surtout, messieurs, pas de zêle,—"Above all, gentlemen, noheat."

Why have you statues in your hall, but to teach you that, when thedoor-bell rings, you shall sit like them. "Eat at your table as youwould eat at the table of the king," said Confucius. It is an excellentcustom of the Quakers, if only for a school of manners,—the silentprayer before meals. It has the effect to stop mirth, and introduce amoment of reflection. After the pause, all resume their usualintercourse from a vantage-ground. What a check to the violent mannerswhich sometimes come to the table,—of wrath, and whining, and heat intrifles!

'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration. A lady loses as soon asshe admires too easily and too much. In man or woman, the face and theperson lose power when they are on the strain to express admiration. Aman makes his inferiors his superiors by heat. Why need you, who are nota gossip, talk as a gossip, and tell eagerly what the neighbors or thejournals say? State your opinion without apology. The attitude is themain point, assuring your companion that, come good news or come bad,you remain in good heart and good mind, which is the best news you canpossibly communicate. Self-control is the rule. You have in you there anoisy, sensual savage which you are to keep down, and turn all his[Pg 77]strength to beauty. For example, what a seneschal and detective islaughter! It seems to require several generations of education to traina squeaking or a shouting habit out of a man. Sometimes, when in almostall expressions the Choctaw and the slave have been worked out of him, acoarse nature still betrays itself in his contemptible squeals of joy.It is necessary for the purification of drawing-rooms, that theseentertaining explosions should be under strict control. LordChesterfield had early made this discovery, for he says, "I am sure thatsince I had the use of my reason, no human being has ever heard melaugh." I know that there go two to this game, and, in the presence ofcertain formidable wits, savage nature must sometimes rush out in somedisorder.

To pass to an allied topic, one word or two in regard to dress, in whichour civilization instantly shows itself. No nation is dressed with moregood sense than ours. And everybody sees certain moral benefit in it.When the young European emigrant, after a summer's labor, puts on forthe first time a new coat, he puts on much more. His good and becomingclothes put him on thinking that he must behave like people who are sodressed; and silently and steadily his behavior mends. But quite anotherclass of our own youth, I should remind, of dress in general, that somepeople need it, and others need it not. Thus a king or a general does[Pg 78]not need a fine coat, and a commanding person may save himself allsolicitude on that point. There are always slovens in State Street orWall Street, who are not less considered. If a man have manners andtalent he may dress roughly and carelessly. It is only when mind andcharacter slumber that the dress can be seen. If the intellect werealways awake, and every noble sentiment, the man might go in huckabackor mats, and his dress would be admired and imitated. Remember GeorgeHerbert's maxim, "This coat with my discretion will be brave." If,however, a man has not firm nerves, and has keen sensibility, it isperhaps a wise economy to go to a good shop and dress himselfirreproachably. He can then dismiss all care from his mind, and mayeasily find that performance an addition of confidence, a fortificationthat turns the scale in social encounters, and allows him to go gaylyinto conversations where else he had been dry and embarrassed. I am notignorant,—I have heard with admiring submission the experience of thelady who declared "that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed givesa feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."

Thus much for manners: but we are not content with pantomime; we say,this is only for the eyes. We want real relations of the mind and theheart; we want friendship; we want knowledge; we want virtue; a moreinward existence to read the history of each other. Welfare requires one[Pg 79]or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out lifewith,—persons with whom we can speak a few reasonable words everyday, by whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast togood sense and virtue; and these we are always in search of. He must beinestimable to us to whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves.Yet now and then we say things to our mates, or hear things from them,which seem to put it out of the power of the parties to be strangersagain. "Either death or a friend," is a Persian proverb. I suppose Igive the experience of many when I give my own. A few times in my lifeit has happened to me to meet persons of so good a nature and so goodbreeding, that every topic was open and discussed without possibility ofoffence,—persons who could not be shocked. One of my friends saidin speaking of certain associates, "There is not one of them but I canoffend at any moment." But to the company I am now considering, were noterrors, no vulgarity. All topics were broached,—life, love,marriage, sex, hatred, suicide, magic, theism, art, poetry, religion,myself, thyself, all selves, and whatever else, with a security andvivacity which belonged to the nobility of the parties and to theirbrave truth. The life of these persons was conducted in the same calmand affirmative manner as their discourse. Life with them was anexperiment continually varied, full of results, full of grandeur,[Pg 80]and by no means the hot and hurried business which passes in the world.The delight in good company, in pure, brilliant, social atmosphere; theincomparable satisfaction of a society in which everything can be safelysaid, in which every member returns a true echo, in which a wisefreedom, an ideal republic of sense, simplicity, knowledge, and thoroughgood-meaning abide,—doubles the value of life. It is this thatjustifies to each the jealousy with which the doors are kept. Do notlook sourly at the set or the club which does not choose you. Everyhighly organized person knows the value of the social barriers, sincethe best society has often been spoiled to him by the intrusion of badcompanions. He of all men would keep the right of choice sacred, andfeel that the exclusions are in the interest of the admissions, thoughthey happen at this moment to thwart his wishes.

The hunger for company is keen, but it must be discriminating, and mustbe economized. 'Tis a defect in our manners that they have not yetreached the prescribing a limit to visits. That every well-dressed ladyor gentleman should be at liberty to exceed ten minutes in his or hercall on serious people, shows a civilization still rude. A universaletiquette should fix an iron limit after which a moment should not beallowed without explicit leave granted on request of either the giver or[Pg 81]receiver of the visit. There is inconvenience in such strictness, butvast inconvenience in the want of it. To trespass on a public servant isto trespass on a nation's time. Yet presidents of the United States areafflicted by rude Western and Southern gossips (I hope it is only bythem) until the gossip's immeasurable legs are tired of sitting; then hestrides out and the nation is relieved.

It is very certain that sincere and happy conversation doubles ourpowers; that, in the effort to unfold our thought to a friend, we makeit clearer to ourselves, and surround it with illustrations that helpand delight us. It may happen that each hears from the other a betterwisdom than any one else will ever hear from either. But these ties aretaken care of by Providence to each of us. A wise man once said to methat "all whom he knew, met":—meaning that he need not take pains tointroduce the persons whom he valued to each other: they were sure to bedrawn together as by gravitation. The soul of a man must be the servantof another. The true friend must have an attraction to whatever virtueis in us. Our chief want in life,—is it not somebody who can make usdo what we can? And we are easily great with the loved and honoredassociate. We come out of our eggshell existence and see the great domearching over us; see the zenith above and the nadir under us.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to[Pg 82]bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense. You are to bemissionary and carrier of all that is good and noble. Virtues speak tovirtues, vices to vices,—each to their own kind in the people withwhom we deal. If you are suspiciously and dryly on your guard, so is he orshe. If you rise to frankness and generosity, they will respect it nowor later.

In this art of conversation, Woman, if not the queen and victor, is thelawgiver. If every one recalled his experiences, he might find the bestin the speech of superior women,—which was better than song, andcarried ingenuity, character, wise counsel, and affection, as easily asthe wit with which it was adorned. They are not only wise themselves,they make us wise. No one can be a master in conversation who has notlearned much from women; their presence and inspiration are essential toits success. Steele said of his mistress, that "to have loved her was aliberal education." Shenstone gave no bad account of this influence inhis description of the French woman: "There is a quality in which nowoman in the world can compete with her,—it is the power ofintellectual irritation. She will draw wit out of a fool. She strikeswith such address the chords of self-love, that she gives unexpectedvigor and agility to fancy, and electrifies a body that appearednon-electric." Coleridge esteems cultivated women as the depositaries[Pg 83]and guardians of "English undefiled"; and Luther commends thataccomplishment of "pure German speech" of his wife.

Madame de Staël, by the unanimous consent of all who knew her, was themost extraordinary converser that was known in her time, and it was atime full of eminent men and women; she knew all distinguished personsin letters or society, in England, Germany, and Italy, as well as inFrance, though she said, with characteristic nationality, "Conversation,like talent, exists only in France." Madame de Staël valued nothing butconversation. When they showed her the beautiful Lake Leman, sheexclaimed, "O for the gutter of the Rue de Bac!" the street in Paris inwhich her house stood. And she said one day, seriously, to M. Molé, "Ifit were not for respect to human opinions, I would not open my window tosee the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundredleagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen." Ste. Beuvetells us of the privileged circle at Coppet, that, after making anexcursion one day, the party returned in two coaches from Chambéry toAix, on the way to Coppet. The first coach had many rueful accidents torelate,—a terrific thunder-storm, shocking roads, and danger andgloom to the whole company. The party in the second coach, on arriving,heard this story with surprise;—of thunder-storm, of steeps, of mud,[Pg 84]of danger, they knew nothing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed apurer air: such a conversation between Madame de Staël and MadameRécamier and Benjamin Constant and Schlegel! they were all in a stateof delight. The intoxication of the conversation had made theminsensible to all notice of weather or rough roads. Madame de Tessésaid, "If I were Queen, I should command Madame de Staël to talk to meevery day." Conversation fills all gaps, supplies all deficiencies. Whata good trait is that recorded of Madame de Maintenon, that, duringdinner, the servant slipped to her side, "Please, madame, one anecdotemore, for there is no roast to-day."

Politics, war, party, luxury, avarice, fashion, are all asses withloaded panniers to serve the kitchen of Intellect, the king. There isnothing that does not pass into lever or weapon.

And yet there are trials enough of nerve and character, brave choicesenough of taking the part of truth and of the oppressed against theoppressor, in privatest circles. A right speech is not well to bedistinguished from action. Courage to ask questions; courage to exposeour ignorance. The great gain is, not to shine, not to conquer yourcompanion,—then you learn nothing but conceit,—but to find acompanion who knows what you do not; to tilt with him and be overthrown,horse and foot, with utter destruction of all your logic and learning.There is a defeat that is useful. Then you can see the real and the[Pg 85]counterfeit, and will never accept the counterfeit again. You will adoptthe art of war that has defeated you. You will ride to battle horsed onthe very logic which you found irresistible. You will accept the fertiletruth, instead of the solemn customary lie.

Let nature bear the expense. The attitude, the tone, is all. Let oureyes not look away, but meet. Let us not look east and west formaterials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A justfeeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be moregrateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle,lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalkeggs. Don'tsay things. What youare stands over you thewhile, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. Alady of my acquaintance said, "I don't care so much for what they say as Ido for what makes them say it."

The main point is to throw yourself on the truth, and say with Newton,"There's no contending against facts." When Molyneux fancied that theobservations of the nutation of the earth's axis destroyed Newton'stheory of gravitation, he tried to break it softly to Sir Isaac, whoonly answered, "It may be so; there's no arguing against facts andexperiments."

But there are people who cannot be cultivated,—people on whom speechmakes no impression,—swainish, morose people, who must be kept down[Pg 86]and quieted as you would those who are a little tipsy; others, who are notonly swainish, but are prompt to take oath that swainishness is the onlyculture; and though their odd wit may have some salt for you, yourfriends would not relish it. Bolt these out. And I have seen a man ofgenius who made me think that if other men were like him co-operationwere impossible. Must we always talk for victory, and never once fortruth, for comfort, and joy? Here is centrality and penetration, strongunderstanding, and the higher gifts, the insight of the real, or fromthe real, and the moral rectitude which belongs to it: but all this andall his resources of wit and invention are lost to me in everyexperiment that I make to hold intercourse with his mind; always someweary, captious paradox to fight you with, and the time and temperwasted. And beware of jokes; too much temperance cannot be used:inestimable for sauce, but corrupting for food: we go away, hollow andashamed. As soon as the company give in to this enjoyment, we shall haveno Olympus. True wit never made us laugh. Mahomet seems to have borrowedby anticipation of several centuries a leaf from the mind of Swedenborg,when he wrote in the Koran:—

"On the day of resurrection, those who have indulged in ridicule will becalled to the door of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces when[Pg 87]they reach it. Again, on their turning back, they will be called toanother door, and again, on reaching it, will see it closed againstthem; and so on,ad infinitum, without end."

Shun the negative side. Never worry people with your contritions, norwith dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness; even ifyou could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling avaletudinarian, who will soon give you your fill of it.

The law of the table is Beauty,—a respect to the common soul of allthe guests. Everything is unseasonable which is private to two or three orany portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law;never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or atariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talkshop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters frominsults, whilst they sit in one parlor with common friends.

Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions. See howit lies there in you; and if there is no counsel, offer none. What wewant is, not your activity or interference with your mind, but yourcontent to be a vehicle of the simple truth. The way to have largeoccasional views, as in a political or social crisis, is to have largehabitual views. When men consult you, it is not that they wish you to[Pg 88]stand tiptoe, and pump your brains, but to apply your habitual view,your wisdom, to the present question, forbearing all pedantries, and thevery name of argument; for in good conversation parties don't speak tothe words, but to the meanings of each other.

Manners first, then conversation. Later, we see that, as life was not inmanners, so it is not in talk. Manners are external; talk is occasional:these require certain material conditions, human labor for food,clothes, house, tools, and, in short, plenty and ease,—since only socan certain finer and finest powers appear and expand. In a whole nationof Hottentots there shall not be one valuable man,—valuable out ofhis tribe. In every million of Europeans or of Americans there shall bethousands who would be valuable on any spot on the globe.

The consideration the rich possess in all societies is not withoutmeaning or right. It is the approval given by the human understanding tothe act of creating value by knowledge and labor. It is the sense ofevery human being, that man should have this dominion of nature, shouldarm himself with tools, and force the elements to drudge for him andgive him power. Every one must seek to secure his independence; but heneed not be rich. The old Confucius in China admitted the benefit, butstated the limitation: "If the search for riches were sure to besuccessful, though I should become a groom with whip in hand to get[Pg 89]them, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will followafter that which I love." There is in America a general conviction inthe minds of all mature men, that every young man of good faculty andgood habits can by perseverance attain to an adequate estate; if he havea turn for business, and a quick eye for the opportunities which arealways offering for investment, he can come to wealth, and in such goodseason as to enjoy as well as transmit it.

Every human society wants to be officered by a best class, who shall bemasters instructed in all the great arts of life; shall be wise,temperate, brave, public men, adorned with dignity and accomplishments.Every country wishes this, and each has taken its own method to securesuch service to the state. In Europe, ancient and modern, it has beenattempted to secure the existence of a superior class by hereditarynobility, with estates transmitted by primogeniture and entail. But inthe last age, this system has been on its trial and the verdict ofmankind is pretty nearly pronounced. That method secured permanence offamilies, firmness of customs, a certain external culture and goodtaste; gratified the ear with preserving historic names: but the heroicfather did not surely have heroic sons, and still less surely heroicgrandsons; wealth and ease corrupted the race.

In America, the necessity of clearing the forest, laying out town and[Pg 90]street, and building every house and barn and fence, then church andtown-house, exhausted such means as the Pilgrims brought, and made thewhole population poor; and the like necessity is still found in each newsettlement in the Territories. These needs gave their character to thepublic debates in every village and State. I have been often impressedat our country town meetings with the accumulated virility, in eachvillage, of five or six or eight or ten men, who speak so well, and soeasily handle the affairs of the town. I often hear the business of alittle town (with which I am most familiar) discussed with a clearnessand thoroughness, and with a generosity, too, that would have satisfiedme had it been in one of the larger capitals. I am sure each one of myreaders has a parallel experience. And every one knows that in everytown or city is always to be found a certain number of public-spiritedmen, who perform, unpaid, a great amount of hard work in the interest ofthe churches, of schools, of public grounds, works of taste andrefinement. And as in civil duties, so in social power and duties. Ourgentlemen of the old school, that is, of the school of Washington,Adams, and Hamilton, were bred after English types, and that style ofbreeding furnished fine examples in the last generation; but, thoughsome of us have seen such, I doubt they are all gone. But nature is not[Pg 91]poorer to-day. With all our haste, and slipshod ways, and flippantself-assertion, I have seen examples of new grace and power in addressthat honor the country. It was my fortune not long ago, with my eyesdirected on this subject, to fall in with an American to be proud of. Isaid never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action,combined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistentpreference for others. Wherever he moved he was the benefactor. It is ofcourse that he should ride well, shoot well, sail well, keep house well,administer affairs well, but he was the best talker, also, in thecompany: what with a perpetual practical wisdom, with an eye always tothe working of the thing, what with the multitude and distinction of hisfacts (and one detected continually that he had a hand in everythingthat has been done), and in the temperance with which he parried alloffence, and opened the eyes of the person he talked with withoutcontradicting him. Yet I said to myself, How little this man suspects,with his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientificpeople, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior tohimself. And I think this is a good country, that can bear such acreature as he is.

The young men in America at this moment take little thought of what menin England are thinking or doing. That is the point which decides the[Pg 92]welfare of a people;which way does it look? If to any otherpeople, it is not well with them. If occupied in its own affairs andthoughts and men, with a heat which excludes almost the notice of anyother people,—as the Jews, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans,the Arabians, the French, the English, at their best times havedone,—they are sublime; and we know that in this abstraction theyare executing excellent work. Amidst the calamities which war hasbrought on our country this one benefit has accrued,—that our eyesare withdrawn from England, withdrawn from France, and look homeward. Wehave come to feel that "by ourselves our safety must be bought"; to knowthe vast resources of the continent, the good-will that is in thepeople, their conviction of the great moral advantages of freedom,social equality, education, and religious culture, and theirdetermination to hold these fast, and, by them, to hold fast the countryand penetrate every square mile of it with this American civilization.

The consolation and happy moment of life, atoning for all short-comings,is sentiment; a flame of affection or delight in the heart, burning upsuddenly for its object,—as the love of the mother for her child; ofthe child for its mate; of the youth for his friend; of the scholar forhis pursuit; of the boy for sea-life, or for painting, or in the passionfor his country; or in the tender-hearted philanthropist to spend and be[Pg 93]spent for some romantic charity, as Howard for the prisoner, or JohnBrown for the slave. No matter what the object is, so it be good, thisflame of desire makes life sweet and tolerable. It reinforces the heartthat feels it, makes all its acts and words gracious and interesting.Now society in towns is infested by persons who, seeing that thesentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we callsentimentalists,—talkers who mistake the description for the thing,saying for having. They have, they tell you, an intense love of nature;poetry,—O, they adore poetry, and roses, and the moon, and thecavalry regiment, and the governor; they love liberty, "dear liberty!"they worship virtue, "dear virtue!" Yes, they adopt whatever merit is ingood repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer theirexpressions, the colder we feel; we shiver with cold. A littleexperience acquaints us with the unconvertibility of the sentimentalist,the soul that is lost by mimicking soul. Cure the drunkard, heal theinsane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons canbe devised for the debauchee of sentiment? Was ever one converted? Theinnocence and ignorance of the patient is the first difficulty: hebelieves his disease is blooming health. A rough realist, or a phalanxof realists, would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mendyour bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, famine, war, imprisonment,[Pg 94]might be tried. Another cure would be to fight fire with fire, to matcha sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. I think each might begin tosuspect that something was wrong.

Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whosedaily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our householdlife—we must learn to adorn every day with sacrifices. Good mannersare made up of petty sacrifices. Temperance, courage, love, are made up ofthe same jewels. Listen to every prompting of honor. "As soon assacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to the man, I see no limit to thehorizon which opens before me."[4]

Of course those people, and no others, interest us who believe in theirthought, who are absorbed, if you please to say so, in their own dream.They only can give the key and leading to better society: those whodelight in each other only because both delight in the eternal laws; whoforgive nothing to each other; who, by their joy and homage to these,are made incapable of conceit, which destroys almost all the fine wits.Any other affection between men than this geometric one of relation tothe same thing, is a mere mush of materialism.

These are the bases of civil and polite society; namely, manners,conversation, lucrative labor, and public action, whether political, orin the leading of social institutions. We have much to regret, much to[Pg 95]mend, in our society; but I believe that with all liberal and hopefulmen there is a firm faith in the beneficent results which we reallyenjoy; that intelligence, manly enterprise, good education, virtuouslife, and elegant manners have been and are found here, and, we hope, inthe next generation will still more abound.

[Pg 96]

[Pg 97]

ELOQUENCE.

I DO not know any kind of history, except the event of a battle, towhich people listen with more interest than to any anecdote ofeloquence; and the wise think it better than a battle. It is a triumphof pure power, and it has a beautiful and prodigious surprise in it. Forall can see and understand the means by which a battle is gained: theycount the armies, they see the cannon, the musketry, the cavalry, andthe character and advantages of the ground, so that the result is oftenpredicted by the observer with great certainty before the charge issounded. Not so in a court of law, or in a legislature. Who knows beforethe debate begins what the preparation, or what the means are of thecombatants? The facts, the reasons, the logic,—above all, the flameof passion and the continuous energy of will which is presently to be letloose on this bench of judges, or on this miscellaneous assemblygathered from the streets,—are all invisible and unknown. Indeed,[Pg 99]much power is to be exhibited which is not yet called into existence,but is to be suggested on the spot by the unexpected turn things maytake,—at the appearance of new evidence, or by the exhibition ofan unlooked-for bias in the judges, or in the audience. It is eminentlythe art which only flourishes in free countries. It is an old proverb,that "Every people has its prophet"; and every class of the people has.Our community runs through a long scale of mental power, from thehighest refinement to the borders of savage ignorance and rudeness.There are not only the wants of the intellectual and learned and poeticmen and women to be met, but also the vast interests of property, publicand private, of mining, of manufactures, of trade, of railroads, etc.These must have their advocates of each improvement and each interest.Then the political questions, which agitate millions, find or form aclass of men by nature and habit fit to discuss and deal with thesemeasures, and make them intelligible and acceptable to the electors. Soof education, of art, of philanthropy.

Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. There is one of whomwe took no note, but on a certain occasion it appears that he has a secretvirtue never suspected,—that he can paint what has occurred, andwhat must occur, with such clearness to a company, as if they saw itdone before their eyes. By leading their thought he leads their will,and can make them do gladly what an hour ago they would not believe that[Pg 100]they could be led to do at all: he makes them glad or angry or penitentat his pleasure; of enemies makes friends, and fills desponding men withhope and joy. After Sheridan's speech in the trial of Warren Hastings,Mr. Pitt moved an adjournment, that the House might recover from theoverpowering effect of Sheridan's oratory. Then recall the delight thatsudden eloquence gives,—the surprise that the moment is so rich. Theorator is the physician. Whether he speaks in the Capitol or on a cart,he is the benefactor that lifts men above themselves, and creates ahigher appetite than he satisfies. The orator is he whom every man isseeking when he goes into the courts, into the conventions, into anypopular assembly,—though often disappointed, yet never giving overthe hope. He finds himself perhaps in the Senate, when the forest has castout some wild, black-browed bantling to show the same energy in thecrowd of officials which he had learned in driving cattle to the hills,or in scrambling through thickets in a winter forest, or through theswamp and river for his game. In the folds of his brow, in the majestyof his mien, Nature has marked her son; and in that artificial andperhaps unworthy place and company shall remind you of the lessonstaught him in earlier days by the torrent in the gloom of thepine-woods, when he was the companion of the mountain cattle, of jaysand foxes, and a hunter of the bear. Or you may find him in some lowly[Pg 101]Bethel, by the seaside, where a hard-featured, scarred, and wrinkledMethodist becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst hepours out the abundant streams of his thought through a language allglittering and fiery with imagination,—a man who never knew thelooking-glass or the critic,—a man whom college drill or patronagenever made, and whom praise cannot spoil,—a man who conquers hisaudience by infusing his soul into them, and speaks by the right ofbeing the person in the assembly who has the most to say, and so makesall other speakers appear little and cowardly before his face. For thetime, his exceeding life throws all other gifts intoshade,—philosophy speculating on its own breath, taste, learning,and all,—and yet how every listener gladly consents to be nothingin his presence, and to share this surprising emanation, and be steepedand ennobled in the new wine of this eloquence! It instructs in thepower of man over men; that a man is a mover; to the extent of hisbeing, a power; and, in contrast with the efficiency he suggests, ouractual life and society appears a dormitory. Who can wonder at itsinfluence on young and ardent minds? Uncommon boys follow uncommon men;and I think every one of us can remember when our first experiences madeus for a time the victim and worshipper of the first master of this art[Pg 102]whom we happened to hear in the court-house or in the caucus. We reckonthe bar, the senate, journalism, and the pulpit, peaceful professions;but you cannot escape the demand for courage in these, and certainlythere is no true orator who is not a hero. His attitude in the rostrum,on the platform, requires that he counterbalance his auditory. He ischallenger, and must answer all comers. The orator must ever stand withforward foot, in the attitude of advancing. His speech must be justahead of the assembly,—ahead of the whole human race,—or itis superfluous. His speech is not to be distinguished from action. It isthe electricity of action. It is action, as the general's word ofcommand, or chart of battle, is action. I must feel that the speakercompromises himself to his auditory, comes for something,—it is acry on the perilous edge of the fight,—or let him be silent. Yougo to a town-meeting where the people are called to some disagreeableduty,—such as, for example, often occurred during the war, at theoccasion of a new draft. They come unwillingly: they have spent theirmoney once or twice very freely. They have sent their best men: theyoung and ardent, those of a martial temper, went at the first draft, orthe second, and it is not easy to see who else can be spared, or can beinduced to go. The silence and coldness after the meeting is opened, andthe purpose of it stated, are not encouraging. When a good man rises in[Pg 103]the cold and malicious assembly, you think, Well, sir, it would be moreprudent to be silent; why not rest, sir, on your good record? Nobodydoubts your talent and power; but for the present business, we know allabout it, and are tired of being pushed into patriotism by people whostay at home. But he, taking no counsel of past things, but only of theinspiration of his to-day's feeling, surprises them with his tidings,with his better knowledge, his larger view, his steady gaze at the newand future event, whereof they had not thought, and they are interested,like so many children, and carried off out of all recollection of theirmalignant considerations, and he gains his victory by prophecy, wherethey expected repetition. He knew very well beforehand that they werelooking behind and that he was looking ahead, and therefore it was wiseto speak. Then the observer says, What a godsend is this manner of manto a town! and he, what a faculty! He is put together like a Walthamwatch, or like a locomotive just finished at the Tredegar works.

No act indicates more universal health than eloquence. The specialingredients of this force are: clear perceptions; memory; power ofstatement; logic; imagination, or the skill to clothe your thought innatural images; passion, which is theheat; and then a grand will,which, when legitimate and abiding, we callcharacter, the height of[Pg 104]manhood. As soon as a man shows rare power of expression, like Chatham,Erskine, Patrick Henry, Webster, or Phillips, all the great interests,whether of state or of property, crowd to him to be their spokesman, sothat he is at once a potentate, a ruler of men. A worthy gentleman, Mr.Alexander, listening to the debates of the General Assembly of theScottish Kirk, in Edinburgh, and eager to speak to the questions, bututterly failing in his endeavors,—delighted with the talent shown byDr. Hugh Blair, went to him, and offered him one thousand poundssterling if he would teach him to speak with propriety in public. If theperformance of the advocate reaches any high success, it is paid inEngland with dignities in the professions, and in the state with seatsin the cabinet, earldoms, and woolsacks. And it is easy to see that thegreat and daily growing interests at stake in this country must payproportional prices to their spokesmen and defenders. It does notsurprise us, then, to learn from Plutarch what great sums were paid atAthens to the teachers of rhetoric; and if the pupils got what they paidfor, the lessons were cheap.

But this power which so fascinates and astonishes and commands is onlythe exaggeration of a talent which is universal. All men are competitorsin this art. We have all attended meetings called for some object inwhich no one had beforehand any warm interest. Every speaker rose[Pg 105]unwillingly, and even his speech was a bad excuse; but it is only thefirst plunge which is formidable, and deep interest or sympathy thawsthe ice, loosens the tongue, and will carry the cold and fearfulpresently into self-possession, and possession of the audience. Go intoan assembly well excited, some angry political meeting on the eve of acrisis. Then it appears that eloquence is as natural as swimming,—anart which all men might learn, though so few do. It only needs that theyshould be once well pushed off into the water, overhead, without corks,and, after a mad struggle or two, they find their poise and the use oftheir arms, and henceforward they possess this new and wonderfulelement.

The most hard-fisted, disagreeably restless, thought-paralyzingcompanion sometimes turns out in a public assembly to be a fluent,various, and effective orator. Now you find what all that excess ofpower which so chafed and fretted you in atête-à-tête withhim was for. What is peculiar in it is a certain creative heat, which, aman attains to perhaps only once in his life. Those whom weadmire—the great orators—have somehabit of heat,and, moreover, a certain control of it, an art of husbandingit,—as if their hand was on the organ-stop, and could now use ittemperately, and now let out all the length and breadth of the power. I[Pg 106]remember that Jenny Lind, when in this country, complained ofconcert-rooms and town-halls, that they did not give her room enough tounroll her voice, and exulted in the opportunity given her in the greathalls she found sometimes built over a railroad depot. And this is quiteas true of the action of the mind itself, that a man of this talentsometimes finds himself cold and slow in private company, and perhaps aheavy companion; but give him a commanding occasion, and the inspirationof a great multitude, and he surprises by new and unlooked-for powers.Before, he was out of place, and unfitted as a cannon in a parlor. To besure there are physical advantages,—some eminently leading to thisart. I mentioned Jenny Lind's voice. A good voice has a charm in speechas in song; sometimes of itself enchains attention, and indicates a raresensibility, especially when trained to wield all its powers. The voice,like the face, betrays the nature and disposition, and soon indicateswhat is the range of the speaker's mind. Many people have no ear formusic, but every one has an ear for skilful reading. Every one of us hasat some time been the victim of a well-toned and cunning voice, andperhaps been repelled once for all by a harsh, mechanical speaker. Thevoice, indeed, is a delicate index of the state of mind. I have heard aneminent preacher say, that he learns from the first tones of his voiceon a Sunday morning whether he is to have a successful day. A singer[Pg 107]cares little for the words of the song; he will make any words glorious.I think the like rule holds of the good reader. In the church I call himonly a good reader who can read sense and poetry into any hymn in thehymn-book. Plutarch, in his enumeration of the ten Greek orators, iscareful to mention their excellent voices, and the pains bestowed bysome of them in training these. What character, what infinite variety,belong to the voice! sometimes it is a flute, sometimes a trip-hammer;what range of force! In moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy,the voice will attain a music and penetration which surprises thespeaker as much as the auditor; he also is a sharer of the higher windthat blows over his strings. I believe that some orators go to theassembly as to a closet where to find their best thoughts. The Persianpoet Saadi tells us that a person with a disagreeable voice was readingthe Koran aloud, when a holy man, passing by, asked what was his monthlystipend. He answered, "Nothing at all." "But why then do you take somuch trouble?" He replied, "I read for the sake of God." The otherrejoined, "For God's sake, do not read; for if you read the Koran inthis manner you will destroy the splendor of Islamism." Then there arepersons of natural fascination, with certain frankness, winning manners,almost endearments in their style; like Bouillon, who could almostpersuade you that a quartan ague was wholesome; like Louis XI. of[Pg 108]France, whom Commines praises for "the gift of managing all minds by hisaccent and the caresses of his speech"; like Galiani, Voltaire, RobertBurns, Barclay, Fox, and Henry Clay. What must have been the discourseof St. Bernard, when mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands,companions their friends, lest they should be led by his eloquence tojoin the monastery.

It is said that one of the best readers in his time was the latePresident John Quincy Adams. I have heard that no man could read theBible with such powerful effect. I can easily believe it, though I neverheard him speak in public until his fine voice was much broken by age.But the wonders he could achieve with that cracked and disobedient organshowed what power might have belonged to it in early manhood. If"indignation makes good verses," as Horace says, it is not less truethat a good indignation makes an excellent speech. In the early years ofthis century, Mr. Adams, at that time a member of the United StatesSenate at Washington, was elected Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory inHarvard College. When he read his first lectures in 1806, not only thestudents heard him with delight, but the hall was crowded by theProfessors and by unusual visitors. I remember when, long after, Ientered college, hearing the story of the numbers of coaches in whichhis friends came from Boston to hear him. On his return in the winter to[Pg 109]the Senate at Washington, he took such ground in the debates of thefollowing session as to lose the sympathy of many of his constituents inBoston. When, on his return from Washington, he resumed his lectures inCambridge, his class attended, but the coaches from Boston did not come,and, indeed, many of his political friends deserted him. In 1809 he wasappointed Minister to Russia, and resigned his chair in the University.His last lecture, in taking leave of his class, contained some nervousallusions to the treatment he had received from his old friends, whichshowed how much it had stung him, and which made a profound impressionon the class. Here is the concluding paragraph, which long resounded inCambridge:—

"At no hour of your life will the love of letters ever oppress you as aburden, or fail you as a resource. In the vain and foolish exultation ofthe heart, which the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite,the pensive portress of Science shall call you to the sober pleasures ofher holy cell. In the mortifications of disappointment, her soothingvoice shall whisper serenity and peace. In social converse with themighty dead of ancient days, you will never smart under the gallingsense of dependence upon the mighty living of the present age. And inyour struggles with the world, should a crisis ever occur, when evenfriendship may deem it prudent to desert you, when even your country mayseem ready to abandon herself and you, when priest and Levite shall come[Pg 110]and look on you and pass by on the other side, seek refuge, myunfailing friends, and be assured you shall find it, in thefriendship of Lælius and Scipio, in the patriotism of Cicero,Demosthenes, and Burke, as well as in the precepts and example of Himwhose law is love, and who taught us to remember injuries only toforgive them."

The orator must command the whole scale of the language, from the mostelegant to the most low and vile. Every one has felt how superior inforce is the language of the street to that of the academy. The streetmust be one of his schools. Ought not the scholar to be able to conveyhis meaning in terms as short and strong as the porter or truckman usesto convey his? And Lord Chesterfield thought "that without beinginstructed in the dialect of theHalles no man could be a completemaster of French." The speech of the man in the street is invariablystrong, nor can you mend it by making it what you call parliamentary.You say, "if he could only express himself"; but he does already betterthan any one can for him,—can always get the ear of an audience tothe exclusion of everybody else. Well, this is an example in point. Thatsomething which each man was created to say and do, he only or he bestcan tell you, and has a right to supreme attention so far. The power oftheir speech is, that it is perfectly understood by all; and I believeit to be true, that when any orator at the bar or in the Senate rises in[Pg 111]his thought, he descends in his language,—that is, when he risesto any height of thought or of passion he comes down to a language levelwith the ear of all his audience. It is the merit of John Brown and ofAbraham Lincoln—one at Charlestown, one at Gettysburg—in thetwo best specimens of eloquence we have had in this country. And observethat all poetry is written in the oldest and simplest English words. Dr.Johnson said, "There is in every nation a style which never becomesobsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant to the analogy andprinciples of its respective language as to remain settled andunaltered. This style is to be sought in the common intercourse of lifeamong those who speak only to be understood, without ambition ofelegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and thelearned forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is aconversation above grossness and below refinement, where proprietyresides."

But all these are the gymnastics, the education of eloquence, and notitself. They cannot be too much considered and practised as preparation,but the powers are those I first named. If I should make the shortestlist of the qualifications of the orator, I should begin withmanliness; and perhaps it means here presence of mind. Men differ somuch in control of their faculties! You can find in many, and indeed inall, a certain fundamental equality. Fundamentally all feel alike and[Pg 112]think alike, and at a great heat they can all express themselves with analmost equal force. But it costs a great heat to enable a heavy man tocome up with those who have a quick sensibility. Thus we have all of usknown men who lose their talents, their wit, their fancy, at any suddencall. Some men, on such pressure, collapse, and cannot rally. If theyare to put a thing in proper shape, fit for the occasion and theaudience, their mind is a blank. Something which any boy would tell withcolor and vivacity they can only stammer out with hardliteralness,—say it in the very words they heard, and no other.This fault is very incident to men of study,—as if the more theyhad read the less they knew. Dr. Charles Chauncy was, a hundred yearsago, a man of marked ability among the clergy of New England. But whenonce going to preach the Thursday lecture in Boston (which in those dayspeople walked from Salem to hear), on going up the pulpit stairs he wasinformed that a little boy had fallen into Frog Pond on the Common, andwas drowned, and the doctor was requested to improve the sad occasion.The doctor was much distressed, and in his prayer he hesitated,—hetried to make soft approaches,—he prayed for Harvard College, heprayed for the schools, he implored the Divine Being "to-to-to bless tothem all the boy that was this morning drowned in Frog Pond." Now this[Pg 113]is not want of talent or learning, but of manliness. The doctor, nodoubt, shut up in his closet and his theology, had lost some naturalrelation to men, and quick application of his thought to the course ofevents. I should add what is told of him,—that he so disliked the"sensation" preaching of his time that he had once prayed that "he mightnever be eloquent"; and, it appears, his prayer was granted. On theother hand, it would be easy to point to many masters whose readiness issure; as the French say of Guizot, that "what Guizot learned thismorning he has the air of having known from all eternity." Thisunmanliness is so common a result of our half-education,—teachinga youth Latin and metaphysics and history, and neglecting to give himthe rough training of a boy,—allowing him to skulk from the gamesof ball and skates and coasting down the hills on his sled, and whateverelse would lead him and keep him on even terms with boys, so that he canmeet them as an equal, and lead in his turn,—that I wish hisguardians to consider that they are thus preparing him to play acontemptible part when he is full-grown. In England they send the mostdelicate and protected child from his luxurious home to learn to roughit with boys in the public schools. A few bruises and scratches will dohim no harm if he has thereby learned not to be afraid. It is this wise[Pg 114]mixture of good drill in Latin grammar with good drill in cricket, boating,and wrestling, that is the boast of English education, and of highimportance to the matter in hand.

Lord Ashley, in 1606, while the bill for regulating trials in cases ofhigh treason was pending, attempting to utter a premeditated speech inParliament in favor of that clause of the bill which allowed theprisoner the benefit of counsel, fell into such a disorder that he wasnot able to proceed; but, having recovered his spirits and the commandof his faculties, he drew such an argument from his own confusion asmore advantaged his cause than all the powers of eloquence could havedone. "For," said he, "if I, who had no personal concern in thequestion, was so overpowered with my own apprehensions that I could notfind words to express myself, what must be the case of one whose lifedepended on his own abilities to defend it?" This happy turn did greatservice in promoting that excellent bill.

These are ascending stairs,—a good voice, winning manners, plainspeech, chastened, however, by the schools into correctness; but we mustcome to the main matter, of power of statement,—know your fact; hugyour fact. For the essential thing is heat, and heat comes of sincerity.Speak what you do know and believe, and are personally in it, and areanswerable for every word. Eloquence isthe power to translate a truthinto language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.He who would convince the worthy Mr. Dunderhead of any truth which[Pg 115]Dunderhead does not see, must be a master of his art. Declamation iscommon; but such possession of thought as is here required, suchpractical chemistry as the conversion of a truth written in God'slanguage into a truth in Dunderhead's language, is one of the mostbeautiful and cogent weapons that is forged in the shop of the DivineArtificer.

It was said of Robespierre's audience, that though they understood notthe words, they understood a fury in the words, and caught thecontagion.

This leads us to the high class, the men of character who bring anoverpowering personality into court, and the cause they maintain borrowsimportance from an illustrious advocate. Absoluteness is required, andhe must have it or simulate it. If the cause be unfashionable, he willmake it fashionable. 'Tis the best man in the best training. If he doesnot know your fact, he will show that it is not worth the knowing.Indeed, as great generals do not fight many battles, but conquer bytactics, so all eloquence is a war of posts. What is said is the leastpart of the oration. It is the attitude taken, the unmistakable sign,never so casually given, in tone of voice, or manner, or word, that agreater spirit speaks from you than is spoken to in him.

But I say,provided your cause is really honest. There is always the[Pg 116]previous question: How came you on that side? Your argument isingenious, your language copious, your illustrations brilliant, but yourmajor proposition palpably absurd. Will you establish a lie? You are avery elegant writer, but you can't write up what gravitates down.

An ingenious metaphysical writer, Dr. Stirling of Edinburgh, has notedthat intellectual works in any department breed each other by what hecallszymosis, i.e. fermentation; thus in the Elizabethan Age therewas a dramaticzymosis, when all the genius ran in that direction,until it culminated in Shakspeare; so in Germany we have seen ametaphysicalzymosis culminating in Kant, Schelling, Schleiermacher,Schopenhauer, Hegel, and so ending. To this we might add the great erasnot only of painters but of orators. The historian Paterculus says ofCicero, that only in Cicero's lifetime was any great eloquence in Rome;so it was said that no member of either house of the British Parliamentwill be ranked among the orators whom Lord North did not see, or who didnot see Lord North. But I should rather say that when a great sentiment,as religion or liberty, makes itself deeply felt in any age or country,then great orators appear. As the Andes and Alleghanies indicate theline of the fissure in the crust of the earth along which they werelifted, so the great ideas that suddenly expand at some moment the mindof mankind indicate themselves by orators.[Pg 117]

If there ever was a country where eloquence was a power, it is in theUnited States. Here is room for every degree of it, on every one of itsascending stages,—that of useful speech, in our commercial,manufacturing, railroad, and educational conventions; that of politicaladvice and persuasion on the grandest theatre, reaching, as all good mentrust, into a vast future, and so compelling the best thought andnoblest administrative ability that the citizen can offer. And here arethe service of science, the demands of art, and the lessons of religionto be brought home to the instant practice of thirty millions of people.Is it not worth the ambition of every generous youth to train and armhis mind with all the resources of knowledge, of method, of grace, andof character, to serve such a constituency?[Pg 118]

[Pg 119]

RESOURCES.

MEN are made up of potences. We are magnets in an iron globe. We havekeys to all doors. We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage ofdiscovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is noduplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tensionwaiting to be struck; the earth sensitive as iodine to light; the mostplastic and impressionable medium, alive to every touch, and, whethersearched by the plough of Adam, the sword of Cæsar, the boat ofColumbus, the telescope of Galileo, or the surveyor's chain of Picard,or the submarine telegraph, to every one of these experiments it makes agracious response. I am benefited by every observation of a victory ofman over nature,—by seeing that wisdom is better than strength; byseeing that every healthy and resolute man is an organizer, a methodcoming into a confusion and drawing order out of it. We are touched andcheered by every such example. We like to see the inexhaustible richesof Nature, and the access of every soul to her magazines. These examples[Pg 121]wake an infinite hope, and call every man to emulation. A low, hopelessspirit puts out the eyes; scepticism is slow suicide. A philosophy whichsees only the worst; believes neither in virtue nor in genius; whichsays 'tis all of no use, life is eating us up, 'tis only question whoshall be last devoured,—dispirits us; the sky shuts down beforeus. A Schopenhauer, with logic and learning and wit, teachingpessimism,—teaching that this is the worst of all possible worlds,and inferring that sleep is better than waking, and death thansleep,—all the talent in the world cannot save him from beingodious. But if, instead of these negatives, you give meaffirmatives,—if you tell me that there is always life for theliving; that what man has done man can do; that this world belongs tothe energetic; that there is always a way to everything desirable; thatevery man is provided, in the new bias of his faculty, with a key tonature, and that man only rightly knows himself as far as he hasexperimented on things,—I am invigorated, put into genial andworking temper; the horizon opens, and we are full of good-will andgratitude to the Cause of Causes. I like the sentiment of the poor womanwho, coming from a wretched garret in an inland manufacturing town forthe first time to the sea-shore, gazing at the ocean, said "she was gladfor once in her life to see something which there was enough of."[Pg 122]

Our Copernican globe is a great factory or shop of power, with itsrotating constellations, times, and tides. The machine is of colossalsize; the diameter of the water-wheel, the arms of the levers, and thevolley of the battery, out of all mechanic measure; and it takes long tounderstand its parts and its workings. This pump never sucks; thesescrews are never loose; this machine is never out of gear. The vat, thepiston, the wheels and tires, never wear out, but are self-repairing. Isthere any load which water cannot lift? If there be, try steam; or ifnot that, try electricity. Is there any exhausting of these means?Measure by barrels the spending of the brook that runs through yourfield. Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. Sheshows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. What spaces!what durations! dealing with races as merely preparations of somewhat tofollow; or, in humanity, millions of lives of men to collect the firstobservations on which our astronomy is built; millions of lives to addonly sentiments and guesses, which at last, gathered in by an ear ofsensibility, make the furniture of the poet. See how children build up alanguage; how every traveller, every laborer, every impatient boss, whosharply shortens the phrase or the word to give his order quicker,reducing it to the lowest possible terms,—and there it muststay,—improves the national tongue. What power does Nature not owe to[Pg 123]her duration of amassing infinitesimals into cosmical forces!

The marked events in history, as the emigration of a colony to a new andmore delightful coast; the building of a large ship; the discovery ofthe mariner's compass, which perhaps the Phœnicians made; the arrivalamong an old stationary nation of a more instructed race, with new arts:each of these events electrifies the tribe to which it befalls; supplesthe tough barbarous sinew, and brings it into that state of sensibilitywhich makes the transition to civilization possible and sure. By hismachines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly likea hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of theuniverse like Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads aton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder;can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, andevery creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped ofits existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and itsinhabitants by his perception of laws of nature. Ah! what a plasticlittle creature he is! so shifty, so adaptive! his body a chest oftools, and he making himself comfortable in every climate, in everycondition.

Here in America are all the wealth of soil, of timber, of mines, and ofthe sea, put into the possession of a people who wield all these[Pg 124]wonderful machines, have the secret of steam, of electricity, and havethe power and habit of invention in their brain. We Americans have gotsuppled into the state of melioration. Life is always rapid here, butwhat acceleration to its pulse in ten years,—what in the four yearsof the war! We have seen the railroad and telegraph subdue our enormousgeography; we have seen the snowy deserts on the northwest, seats ofEsquimaux, become lands of promise. When our population, swarming west,had reached the boundary of arable land, as if to stimulate our energy,on the face of the sterile waste beyond, the land was suddenly in partsfound covered with gold and silver, floored with coal. It was thought afable, what Guthrie, a traveller in Persia, told us, that "in Taurida,in any piece of ground where springs of naphtha (or petroleum) obtain,by merely sticking an iron tube in the earth, and applying a light tothe upper end, the mineral oil will burn till the tube is decomposed, orfor a vast number of years." But we have found the Taurida inPennsylvania and Ohio. If they have not the lamp of Aladdin, they havethe Aladdin oil. Resources of America! why, one thinks of St. Simon'ssaying, "The Golden Age is not behind, but before you." Here is man inthe Garden of Eden; here the Genesis and the Exodus. We have seenslavery disappear like a painted scene in a theatre; we have seen the[Pg 125]most healthful revolution in the politics of the nation,—theConstitution not only amended, but construed in a new spirit. We haveseen China opened to European and American ambassadors and commerce; thelike in Japan: our arts and productions begin to penetrate both. As thewalls of a modern house are perforated with water-pipes, sound-pipes,gas-pipes, heat-pipes, so geography and geology are yielding to man'sconvenience, and we begin to perforate and mould the old ball, as acarpenter does with wood. All is ductile and plastic. We are working thenew Atlantic telegraph. American energy is overriding every venerablemaxim of political science. America is such a garden of plenty, such amagazine of power, that at her shores all the common rules of politicaleconomy utterly fail. Here is bread, and wealth, and power, andeducation for every man who has the heart to use his opportunity. Thecreation of power had never any parallel. It was thought that theimmense production of gold would make gold cheap as pewter. But theimmense expansion of trade has wanted every ounce of gold, and it hasnot lost its value.

See how nations of customers are formed. The disgust of California hasnot been able to drive nor kick the Chinaman back to his home; and nowit turns out that he has sent home to China American food and tools andluxuries, until he has taught his people to use them, and a new market[Pg 126]has grown up for our commerce. The emancipation has brought a wholenation of negroes as customers to buy all the articles which once theirfew masters bought, and every manufacturer and producer in the North hasan interest in protecting the negro as the consumer of his wares.

The whole history of our civil war is rich in a thousand anecdotesattesting the fertility of resource, the presence of mind, the skilledlabor of our people. At Annapolis a regiment, hastening to join thearmy, found the locomotives broken, the railroad destroyed, and norails. The commander called for men in the ranks who could rebuild theroad. Many men stepped forward, searched in the water, found the hiddenrails, laid the track, put the disabled engine together, and continuedtheir journey. The world belongs to the energetic man. His will giveshim new eyes. He sees expedients and means where we saw none. Theinvalid sits shivering in lamb's-wool and furs; the woodsman knows howto make warm garments out of cold and wet themselves. The Indian, thesailor, the hunter, only these know the power of the hands, feet, teeth,eyes, and ears. It is out of the obstacles to be encountered that theymake the means of destroying them. The sailor by his boat and sail makesa ford out of deepest waters. The hunter, the soldier, rolls himself inhis blanket, and the falling snow, which he did not have to bring in his[Pg 127]knapsack, is his eider-down, in which he sleeps warm till the morning.Nature herself gives the hint and the example, if we have wit to takeit. See how Nature keeps the lakes warm by tucking them up under ablanket of ice, and the ground under a cloak of snow. The old foresteris never far from shelter; no matter how remote from camp or city, hecarries Bangor with him. A sudden shower cannot wet him, if he cares tobe dry; he draws his boat ashore, turns it over in a twinkling againsta clump of alders, with cat-briers, which keep up the lee-side, crawlsunder it, with his comrade, and lies there till the shower is over,happy in his stout roof. The boat is full of water, and resists all yourstrength to drag it ashore and empty it. The fisherman looks about him,puts a round stick of wood underneath, and it rolls as on wheels atonce. Napoleon says, the Corsicans at the battle of Golo, not having hadtime to cut down the bridge, which was of stone, made use of the bodiesof their dead to form an intrenchment. Malus, known for his discoveriesin the polarization of light, was captain of a corps of engineers inBonaparte's Egyptian campaign, which was heinously unprovided andexposed. "Wanting a picket to which to attach my horse," he says, "Itied him to my leg. I slept, and dreamed peaceably of the pleasures ofEurope." M. Tissenet had learned among the Indians to understand theirlanguage, and, coming among a wild party of Illinois, he overheard them[Pg 128]say that they would scalp him. He said to them, "Will you scalp me? Hereis my scalp," and confounded them by lifting a little periwig he wore.He then explained to them that he was a great medicine-man, and thatthey did great wrong in wishing to harm him, who carried them all in hisheart. So he opened his shirt a little and showed to each of the savagesin turn the reflection of his own eyeball in a small pocket-mirror whichhe had hung next to his skin. He assured them that if they shouldprovoke him he would burn up their rivers and their forests; and, takingfrom his portmanteau a small phial of white brandy, he poured it into acup, and, lighting a straw at the fire in the wigwam, he kindled thebrandy (which they believed to be water), and burned it up before theireyes. Then taking up a chip of dry pine, he drew a burning-glass fromhis pocket and set the chip on fire.

What a new face courage puts on everything! A determined man, by hisvery attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a stop to defeat, andbegins to conquer. "For they can conquer who believe they can." Everyone hears gladly that cheerful voice. He reveals to us the enormouspower of one man over masses of men; that one man whose eye commands theend in view, and the means by which it can be attained, is not onlybetter than ten men or a hundred men, but victor over all mankind who do[Pg 129]not see the issue and the means. "When a man is once possessed withfear," said the old French Marshal Montluc, "and loses his judgment, asall men in a fright do, he knows not what he does. And it is theprincipal thing you are to beg at the hands of Almighty God, to preserveyour understanding entire; for what danger soever there may be, there isstill one way or other to get off, and perhaps to your honor. But whenfear has once possessed you, God ye good even! You think you are flyingtowards the poop when you are running towards the prow, and for oneenemy think you have ten before your eyes, as drunkards who see athousand candles at once."

Against the terrors of the mob, which, intoxicated with passion, andonce suffered to gain the ascendant, is diabolic and chaos come again,good sense has many arts of prevention and of relief. Disorganization itconfronts with organization, with police, with military force. But inearlier stages of the disorder it applies milder and nobler remedies.The natural offset of terror is ridicule. And we have noted examplesamong our orators, who have on conspicuous occasions handled andcontrolled, and, best of all, converted a malignant mob, by superiormanhood, and by a wit which disconcerted, and at last delighted theringleaders. What can a poor truckman who is hired to groan and to hissdo, when the orator shakes him into convulsions of laughter so that he[Pg 130]cannot throw his egg? If a good story will not answer, still milderremedies sometimes serve to disperse a mob. Try sending round thecontribution-box. Mr. Marshall, the eminent manufacturer at Leeds, wasto preside at a Free-Trade festival in that city; it was threatened thatthe operatives, who were in bad humor, would break up the meeting by amob. Mr. Marshall was a man of peace; he had the pipes laid from thewaterworks of his mill, with a stopcock by his chair from which he coulddischarge a stream that would knock down an ox, and sat down verypeacefully to his dinner, which was not disturbed.

See the dexterity of the good aunt in keeping the young people all theweary holiday busy and diverted without knowing it: the story, thepictures, the ballad, the game, the cuckoo-clock, the stereoscope, therabbits, the mino bird, the pop-corn, and Christmas hemlock spurting inthe fire. The children never suspect how much design goes to it, andthat this unfailing fertility has been rehearsed a hundred times, whenthe necessity came of finding for the little Asmodeus a rope of sand totwist. She relies on the same principle that makes the strength ofNewton,—alternation of employment. See how he refreshed himself,resting from the profound researches of the calculus by astronomy; fromastronomy by optics; from optics by chronology. 'Tis a law of chemistry[Pg 131]that every gas is a vacuum to every other gas; and when the mind hasexhausted its energies for one employment, it is still fresh and capableof a different task. We have not a toy or trinket for idle amusement,but somewhere it is the one thing needful for solid instruction or tosave the ship or army. In the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the torcheswhich each traveller carries make a dismal funeral procession, and serveno purpose but to see the ground. When now and then the vaulted roofrises high overhead, and hides all its possibilities in lofty depths,'tis but gloom on gloom. But the guide kindled a Roman candle, and heldit here and there shooting its fireballs successively into each crypt ofthe groined roof, disclosing its starry splendor, and showing for thefirst time what that plaything was good for.

Whether larger or less, these strokes and all exploits rest at last onthe wonderful structure of the mind. And we learn that our doctrine ofresources must be carried into higher application, namely, to theintellectual sphere. But every power in energy speedily arrives at itslimits, and requires to be husbanded; the law of light, which Newtonsaid proceeded by "fits of easy reflection and transmission"; thecome-and-go of the pendulum is the law of mind; alternation of labors isits rest. I should like to have the statistics of bold experimenting onthe husbandry of mental power.

In England men of letters drink wine; in Scotland, whiskey; in France,[Pg 132]light wines; in Germany, beer. In England everybody rides in the saddle;in France the theatre and the ball occupy the night. In this country wehave not learned how to repair the exhaustions of our climate. Is notthe seaside necessary in summer? Games, fishing, bowling, hunting,gymnastics, dancing,—are not these needful to you? The chapter ofpastimes is very long. There are better games than billiards and whist.'Twas a pleasing trait in Goethe's romance, that Makaria retires fromsociety "to astronomy and her correspondence."

I do not know that the treatise of Brillat Savarin on the Physiology ofTaste deserves its fame. I know its repute, and I have heard it calledthe France of France. But the subject is so large and exigent that a fewparticulars, and those the pleasures of the epicure, cannot satisfy. Iknow many men of taste whose single opinions and practice would interestmuch more. It should be extended to gardens and grounds, and mainly onething should be illustrated: that life in the country wants all thingson a low tone,—wants coarse clothes, old shoes, no fleet horse that aman cannot hold, but an old horse that will stand tied in a pasture halfa day without risk, so allowing the picnic-party the full freedom of thewoods. Natural history is, in the country, most attractive; at onceelegant, immortal, always opening new resorts. The first care of a man[Pg 133]settling in the country should be to open the face of the earth tohimself, by a little knowledge of nature, or a great deal, if he can, ofbirds, plants, rocks, astronomy; in short, the art of taking a walk.This will draw the sting out of frost, dreariness out of November andMarch, and the drowsiness out of August. To know the trees is, asSpenser says of "the ash, for nothing ill." Shells, too; how hungry Ifound myself, the other day, at Agassiz's Museum, for their names! Butthe uses of the woods are many, and some of them for the scholar highand peremptory. When his task requires the wiping out from memory

he must leave the house, the streets, and the club, and go to woodeduplands, to the clearing and the brook. Well for him if he can say withthe old minstrel, "I know where to find a new song."

If I go into the woods in winter, and am shown the thirteen or fourteenspecies of willow that grow in Massachusetts, I learn that they quietlyexpand in the warmer days, or when nobody is looking at them, and,though insignificant enough in the general bareness of the forest, yet agreat change takes place in them between fall and spring; in the firstrelentings of March they hasten, and long before anything else is ready,these osiers hang out their joyful flowers in contrast to all the woods.[Pg 134]You cannot tell when they do bud and blossom, these vivacious trees, soancient, for they are almost the oldest of all. Among fossil remains,the willow and the pine appear with the ferns. They bend all day toevery wind; the cart-wheel in the road may crush them; every passengermay strike off a twig with his cane; every boy cuts them for a whistle;the cow, the rabbit, the insect, bite the sweet and tender bark; yet, inspite of accident and enemy, their gentle persistency lives when the oakis shattered by storm, and grows in the night and snow and cold. When Isee in these brave plants this vigor and immortality in weakness, I finda sudden relief and pleasure in observing the mighty law of vegetation,and I think it more grateful and health-giving than any news I am likelyto find of man in the journals, and better than Washington politics.

It is easy to see that there is no limit to the chapter of Resources. Ihave not, in all these rambling sketches, gone beyond the beginning ofmy list. Resources of Man,—it is the inventory of the world, the rollof arts and sciences; it is the whole of memory, the whole of invention;it is all the power of passion, the majesty of virtue, and theomnipotence of will.

But the one fact that shines through all this plenitude of powers is,that, as is the receiver, so is the gift; that all these acquisitions[Pg 135]are victories of the good brain and brave heart; that the world belongsto the energetic, belongs to the wise. It is in vain to make a paradisebut for good men. The tropics are one vast garden; yet man is moremiserably fed and conditioned there than in the cold and stingy zones.The healthy, the civil, the industrious, the learned, the moralrace,—Nature herself only yields her secret to these. And theresources of America and its future will be immense only to wise andvirtuous men.[Pg 136]

[Pg 137]

THE COMIC.

A TASTE for fun is all but universal in our species, which is the onlyjoker in nature. The rocks, the plants, the beasts, the birds, neitherdo anything ridiculous, nor betray a perception of anything absurd donein their presence. And as the lower nature does not jest, neither doesthe highest. The Reason pronounces its omniscient yea and nay, butmeddles never with degrees or fractions; and it is in comparingfractions with essential integers or wholes that laughter begins.

Aristotle's definition of the ridiculous is, "what is out of time andplace, without danger." If there be pain and danger, it becomes tragic;if not, comic. I confess, this definition, though by an admirabledefiner, does not satisfy me, does not say all we know.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest orwell-intended halfness; a non-performance of what is pretended to beperformed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges ofperformance. The balking of the intellect, the frustrated expectation,[Pg 139]the break of continuity in the intellect, is comedy; and it announcesitself physically in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.

With the trifling exception of the stratagems of a few beasts and birds,there is no seeming, no halfness in nature, until the appearance of man.Unconscious creatures do the whole will of wisdom. An oak or a chestnutundertakes no function it cannot execute; or if there be phenomena inbotany which we call abortions, the abortion is also a function ofnature, and assumes to the intellect the like completeness with thefurther function, to which in different circumstances it had attained.The same rule holds true of the animals. Their activity is marked byunerring good-sense. But man, through his access to Reason, is capableof the perception of a whole and a part. Reason is the whole, andwhatsoever is not that is a part. The whole of nature is agreeable tothe whole of thought, or to the Reason; but separate any part of nature,and attempt to look at it as a whole by itself, and the feeling of theridiculous begins. The perpetual game of humor is to look withconsiderate good-nature at every object in existencealoof, as a manmight look at a mouse, comparing it with the eternal Whole; enjoying thefigure which each self-satisfied particular creature cuts in theunrespecting All, and dismissing it with a benison. Separate any object,as a particular bodily man, a horse, a turnip, a flour-barrel, an[Pg 140]umbrella, from the connection of things, and contemplate it alone,standing there in absolute nature, it becomes at once comic; no useful,no respectable qualities can rescue it from the ludicrous.

In virtue of man's access to Reason or the Whole, the human form is apledge of wholeness, suggests to our imagination the perfection of truthor goodness, and exposes by contrast any halfness or imperfection. Wehave a primary association between perfectness and this form. But thefacts that occur when actual men enter do not make good thisanticipation; a discrepancy which is at once detected by the intellect,and the outward sign is the muscular irritation of laughter.

Reason does not joke, and men of reason do not; a prophet, in whom themoral sentiment predominates, or a philosopher, in whom the love oftruth predominates, these do not joke, but they bring the standard, theideal whole, exposing all actual defect; and hence, the best of alljokes is the sympathetic contemplation of things by the understandingfrom the philosopher's point of view. There is no joke so true and deepin actual life, as when some pure idealist goes up and down among theinstitutions of society, attended by a man who knows the world, and who,sympathizing with the philosopher's scrutiny, sympathizes also with theconfusion and indignation of the detected skulking institutions. His[Pg 141]perception of disparity, his eye wandering perpetually from the rule tothe crooked, lying, thieving fact, makes the eyes run over withlaughter.

This is the radical joke of life and then of literature. The presence ofthe ideal of right and of truth in all action makes the yawningdelinquencies of practice remorseful to the conscience, tragic to theinterest, but droll to the intellect. The activity of our sympathies mayfor a time hinder our perceiving the fact intellectually, and soderiving mirth from it; but all falsehoods, all vices seen at sufficientdistance, seen from the point where our moral sympathies do notinterfere, become ludicrous. The comedy is in the intellect's perceptionof discrepancy. And whilst the presence of the ideal discovers thedifference, the comedy is enhanced whenever that ideal is embodiedvisibly in a man. Thus Falstaff, in Shakspeare, is a character of thebroadest comedy, giving himself unreservedly to his senses, coollyignoring the Reason, whilst he invokes its name, pretending topatriotism and to parental virtues, not with any intent to deceive, butonly to make the fun perfect by enjoying the confusion betwixt reasonand the negation of reason,—in other words, the rank rascaldom he iscalling by its name. Prince Hal stands by, as the acute understanding,who sees the Right and sympathizes with it, and in the heyday of youth[Pg 142]feels also the full attractions of pleasure, and is thus eminentlyqualified to enjoy the joke. At the same time he is to that degree underthe Reason, that it does not amuse him as much as it amuses anotherspectator.

If the essence of the comic be the contrast in the intellect between theidea and the false performance, there is good reason why we should beaffected by the exposure. We have no deeper interest than our integrity,and that we should be made aware by joke and by stroke, of any lie weentertain. Besides, a perception of the comic seems to be abalance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It appears to be anessential element in a fine character. Wherever the intellect isconstructive, it will be found. We feel the absence of it as a defect inthe noblest and most oracular soul. The perception of the comic is a tieof sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection fromthose perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellectssometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is stillconvertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little forhim.

It is true the sensibility to the ludicrous may run into excess. Mencelebrate their perception of halfness and a latent lie by the peculiarexplosions of laughter. So painfully susceptible are some men to theseimpressions, that if a man of wit come into the room where they are, itseems to take them out of themselves with violent convulsions of the[Pg 143]face and sides, and obstreperous roarings of the throat. How often andwith what unfeigned compassion we have seen such a person receiving likea willing martyr the whispers into his ear of a man of wit. The victimwho has just received the discharge, if in a solemn company, has the airvery much of a stout vessel which has just shipped a heavy sea; andthough it does not split it, the poor bark is for the moment criticallystaggered. The peace of society and the decorum of tables seem torequire that next to a notable wit should always be posted a phlegmaticbolt-upright man, able to stand without movement of muscle wholebroadsides of this Greek fire. It is a true shaft of Apollo, andtraverses the universe, and unless it encounter a mystic or a dumpishsoul, goes everywhere heralded and harbingered by smiles and greetings.Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, nolearning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. Itis like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, canplead any immunity,—they must walk gingerly, according to the laws ofice, or down they must go, dignity and all. "Dost thou think, becausethou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Plutarchhappily expresses the value of the jest as a legitimate weapon of thephilosopher. "Men cannot exercise their rhetoric unless they speak, but[Pg 144]their philosophy even whilst they are silent or jest merrily; for as itis the highest degree of injustice not to be just and yet seem so, so itis the top of wisdom to philosophize yet not appear to do it, and inmirth to do the same with those that are serious and seem in earnest;for as in Euripides, the Bacchæ, though unprovided of iron weapons andunarmed, wounded their invaders with the boughs of trees, which theycarried, thus the very jests and merry talk of true philosophers movethose that are not altogether insensible, and unusually reform."

In all the parts of life, the occasion of laughter is some seeming, somekeeping of the word to the ear and eye, whilst it is broken to the soul.Thus, as the religious sentiment is the most vital and sublime of allour sentiments, and capable of the most prodigious effects, so is itabhorrent to our whole nature, when, in the absence of the sentiment,the act or word or officer volunteers to stand in its stead. To thesympathies this is shocking, and occasions grief. But to the intellectthe lack of the sentiment gives no pain; it compares incessantly thesublime idea with the bloated nothing which pretends to be it, and thesense of the disproportion is comedy. And as the religious sentiment isthe most real and earnest thing in nature, being a mere rapture, andexcluding, when it appears, all other considerations, the vitiating thisis the greatest lie. Therefore, the oldest gibe of literature is the[Pg 145]ridicule of false religion. This is the joke of jokes. In religion, thesentiment is all; the ritual or ceremony indifferent. But the inertia ofmen inclines them, when the sentiment sleeps, to imitate that thing itdid; it goes through the ceremony omitting only the will, makes themistake of the wig for the head, the clothes for the man. The older themistake and the more overgrown the particular form is, the moreridiculous to the intellect. Captain John Smith, the discoverer of NewEngland, was not wanting in humor. The Society in London which hadcontributed their means to convert the savages, hoping doubtless to seethe Keokuks, Black Hawks, Roaring Thunders, and Tustanuggees of that dayconverted into church-wardens and deacons at least, pestered the gallantrover with frequent solicitations out of England touching the conversionof the Indians, and the enlargement of the Church. Smith, in hisperplexity how to satisfy the Society, sent out a party into the swamp,caught an Indian, and sent him home in the first ship to London, tellingthe Society they might convert one themselves.

The satire reaches its climax when the actual Church is set in directcontradiction to the dictates of the religious sentiment, as in thesketch of our Puritan politics in Hudibras:—

In science the jest at pedantry is analogous to that in religion whichlies against superstition. A classification or nomenclature used by thescholar only as a memorandum of his last lesson in the laws of nature,and confessedly a makeshift, a bivouac for a night, and implying a marchand a conquest to-morrow, becomes through indolence a barrack and aprison, in which the man sits down immovably, and wishes to detainothers. The physiologist Camper, humorously confesses the effect of his[Pg 147]studies in dislocating his ordinary associations. "I have beenemployed," he says, "six months on theCetacea; I understand theosteology of the head of all these monsters, and have made thecombination with the human head so well, that everybody now appears tome narwhale, porpoise, or marsouins. Women, the prettiest in society,and those whom I find less comely, they are all either narwhales orporpoises to my eyes." I chanced the other day to fall in with an oddillustration of the remark I had heard, that the laws of disease are asbeautiful as the laws of health; I was hastening to visit an old andhonored friend, who, I was informed, was in a dying condition, when Imet his physician, who accosted me in great spirits, with joy sparklingin his eyes. "And how is my friend, the reverend Doctor?" I inquired."O, I saw him this morning; it is the most correct apoplexy I have everseen: face and hands livid, breathing stertorous, all the symptomsperfect." And he rubbed his hands with delight, for in the country wecannot find every day a case that agrees with the diagnosis of thebooks. I think there is malice in a very trifling story which goesabout, and which I should not take any notice of, did I not suspect itto contain some satire upon my brothers of the Natural History Society.It is of a boy who was learning his alphabet. "That letter is A," said[Pg 148]the teacher; "A," drawled the boy. "That is B," said the teacher; "B,"drawled the boy, and so on. "That is W," said the teacher. "The devil!"exclaimed the boy, "is that W?"

The pedantry of literature belongs to the same category. In both casesthere is a lie, when the mind, seizing a classification to help it to asincerer knowledge of the fact, stops in the classification; or learninglanguages, and reading books, to the end of a better acquaintance withman, stops in the languages and books: in both the learner seems to bewise, and is not.

The same falsehood, the same confusion of the sympathies because apretension is not made good, points the perpetual satire againstpoverty, since, according to Latin poetry and English doggerel,

In this instance the halfness lies in the pretension of the parties tosome consideration on account of their condition. If the man is notashamed of his poverty, there is no joke. The poorest man who stands onhis manhood destroys the jest. The poverty of the saint, of the raptphilosopher, of the naked Indian, is not comic. The lie is in thesurrender of the man to his appearance; as if a man should neglecthimself, and treat his shadow on the wall with marks of infiniterespect. It affects us oddly, as to see things turned upside down, or to[Pg 149]see a man in a high wind run after his hat, which is always droll. Therelation of the parties is inverted,—hat being for the moment master,the by-standers cheering the hat. The multiplication of artificial wantsand expenses in civilized life, and the exaggeration of all triflingforms, present innumerable occasions for this discrepancy to exposeitself. Such is the story told of the painter Astley, who, going out ofRome one day with a party for a ramble in the Campagna, and the weatherproving hot, refused to take off his coat when his companions threw offtheirs, but sweltered on; which, exciting remark, his comrades playfullyforced off his coat, and behold on the back of his waistcoat a gaycascade was thundering down the rocks with foam and rainbow, veryrefreshing in so sultry a day,—a picture of his own, with which thepoor painter had been fain to repair the shortcomings of his wardrobe.The same astonishment of the intellect at the disappearance of the manout of nature, through some superstition of his house or equipage, as iftruth and virtue should be bowed out of creation by the clothes theywore, is the secret of all the fun that circulates concerning eminentfops and fashionists, and, in like manner, of the gay Rameau of Diderot,who believes in nothing but hunger, and that the sole end of art,virtue, and poetry is to put something for mastication between the upperand lower mandibles.[Pg 150]

Alike in all these cases and in the instance of cowardice or fear of anysort, from the loss of life to the loss of spoons, the majesty of man isviolated. He, whom all things should serve, serves some one of his owntools. In fine pictures the head sheds on the limbs the expression ofthe face. In Raphael's Angel driving Heliodorus from the Temple, thecrest of the helmet is so remarkable, that but for the extraordinaryenergy of the face, it would draw the eye too much; but the countenanceof the celestial messenger subordinates it, and we see it not. In poorpictures the limbs and trunk degrade the face. So among the women in thestreet: you shall see one whose bonnet and dress are one thing, and thelady herself quite another, wearing withal an expression of meeksubmission to her bonnet and dress; and another whose dress obeys andheightens the expression of her form.

More food for the comic is afforded whenever the personal appearance,the face, form, and manners, are subjects of thought with the manhimself. No fashion is the best fashion for those matters which willtake care of themselves. This is the butt of those jokes of the Parisdrawing-rooms, which Napoleon reckoned so formidable, and which arecopiously recounted in the French Mémoires. A lady of high rank, but oflean figure, had given the Countess Dulauloy the nickname of "LeGrenadier tricolore," in allusion to her tall figure, as well as to her[Pg 151]republican opinions; the Countess retaliated by calling Madame "theVenus of the Père-la-Chaise," a compliment to her skeleton which didnot fail to circulate. "Lord C.," said the Countess of Gordon, "O, he isa perfect comb, all teeth and back." The Persians have a pleasant storyof Tamerlane which relates to the same particulars: "Timur was an uglyman; he had a blind eye and a lame foot. One day when Chodscha was withhim, Timur scratched his head, since the hour of the barber was come,and commanded that the barber should be called. Whilst he was shaven,the barber gave him a looking-glass in his hand. Timur saw himself inthe mirror and found his face quite too ugly. Therefore he began toweep; Chodscha also set himself to weep, and so they wept for two hours.On this, some courtiers began to comfort Timur, and entertained him withstrange stories in order to make him forget all about it. Timur ceasedweeping, but Chodscha ceased not, but began now first to weep amain, andin good earnest. At last said Timur to Chodscha, 'Hearken! I have lookedin the mirror, and seen myself ugly. Thereat I grieved, because,although I am Caliph, and have also much wealth, and many wives, yetstill I am so ugly; therefore have I wept. But thou, why weepest thouwithout ceasing?' Chodscha answered, 'If thou hast only seen thy faceonce, and at once seeing hast not been able to contain thyself, but hast[Pg 152]wept, what should we do,—we who see thy face every day and night? Ifwe weep not, who should weep? Therefore have I wept.' Timur almost splithis sides with laughing."

Politics also furnish the same mark for satire. What is nobler than theexpansive sentiment of patriotism, which would find brothers in a wholenation? But when this enthusiasm is perceived to end in the veryintelligible maxims of trade, so much for so much, the intellect feelsagain the half-man. Or what is fitter than that we should espouse andcarry a principle against all opposition? But when the men appear whoask our votes as representatives of this ideal, we are sadly out ofcountenance.

But there is no end to this analysis. We do nothing that is notlaughable whenever we quit our spontaneous sentiment. All our plans,managements, houses, poems, if compared with the wisdom and love whichman represents, are equally imperfect and ridiculous. But we cannotafford to part with any advantages. We must learn by laughter, as wellas by tears and terrors; explore the whole of nature,—the farce andbuffoonery in the yard below, as well as the lessons of poets andphilosophers upstairs, in the hall,—and get the rest and refreshmentof the shaking of the sides. But the comic also has its own speedy limits.Mirth quickly becomes intemperate, and the man would soon die of[Pg 153]inanition, as some persons have been tickled to death. The same scourgewhips the joker and the enjoyer of the joke. When Carlini was convulsingNaples with laughter, a patient waited on a physician in that city, toobtain some remedy for excessive melancholy, which was rapidly consuminghis life. The physician endeavored to cheer his spirits, and advised himto go to the theatre and see Carlini. He replied, "I am Carlini."[Pg 154]

[Pg 155]

QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY.

WHOEVER looks at the insect world, at flies, aphides, gnats, andinnumerable parasites, and even at the infant mammals, must haveremarked the extreme content they take in suction, which constitutes themain business of their life. If we go into a library or news-room, wesee the same function on a higher plane, performed with like ardor, withequal impatience of interruption, indicating the sweetness of the act.In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. Hewho has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource againstcalamity. Like Plato's disciple who has perceived a truth, "he ispreserved from harm until another period." In every man's memory, withthe hours when life culminated are usually associated certain bookswhich met his views. Of a large and powerful class we might ask withconfidence, What is the event they most desire? what gift? What but thebook that shall come, which they have sought through all libraries,through all languages, that shall be to their mature eyes what many a[Pg 157]tinsel-covered toy pamphlet was to their childhood, and shall speak tothe imagination? Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enoughof literature. If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should askhim what books he read. We expect a great man to be a good reader; or inproportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power.And though such are a more difficult and exacting class, they are notless eager. "He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding," saidBurke, "doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates hisown to the stature of that he contemplates."

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. Ourdebt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, ourprotest or private addition so rare and insignificant,—and thiscommonly on the ground of other reading or hearing,—that, in a largesense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Oldand new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread thatis not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and bydelight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts,sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses,tables and chairs by imitation. The Patent-Office Commissioner knowsthat all machines in use have been invented and re-invented over and[Pg 158]over; that the mariner's compass, the boat, the pendulum, glass, movabletypes, the kaleidoscope, the railway, the power-loom, etc., have beenmany times found and lost, from Egypt, China, and Pompeii down; and ifwe have arts which Rome wanted, so also Rome had arts which we havelost; that the invention of yesterday of making wood indestructible bymeans of vapor of coal-oil or paraffine was suggested by the Egyptianmethod which has preserved its mummy-cases four thousand years.

The highest statement of new philosophy complacently caps itself withsome prophetic maxim from the oldest learning. There is somethingmortifying in this perpetual circle. This extreme economy argues a verysmall capital of invention. The stream of affection flows broad andstrong; the practical activity is a river of supply; but the dearth ofdesign accuses the penury of intellect. How few thoughts! In a hundredyears, millions of men, and not a hundred lines of poetry, not a theoryof philosophy that offers a solution of the great problems, not an artof education that fulfils the conditions. In this delay and vacancy ofthought we must make the best amends we can by seeking the wisdom ofothers to fill the time.

If we confine ourselves to literature, 'tis easy to see that the debt isimmense to past thought. None escapes it. The originals are notoriginal. There is imitation, model, and suggestion, to the very[Pg 159]archangels, if we knew their history. The first book tyrannizes over thesecond. Read Tasso, and you think of Virgil; read Virgil, and you thinkof Homer; and Milton forces you to reflect how narrow are the limits ofhuman invention. The "Paradise Lost" had never existed but for theseprecursors; and if we find in India or Arabia a book out of our horizonof thought and tradition, we are soon taught by new researches in itsnative country to discover its foregoers, and its latent, but realconnection with our own Bibles.

Read in Plato, and you shall find Christian dogmas, and not only so, butstumble on our evangelical phrases. Hegel pre-exists in Proclus, and,long before, in Heraclitus and Parmenides. Whoso knows Plutarch, Lucian,Rabelais, Montaigne, and Bayle will have a key to many supposedoriginalities. Rabelais is the source of many a proverb, story, andjest, derived from him into all modern languages; and if we knewRabelais's reading, we should see the rill of the Rabelais river.Swedenborg, Behmen, Spinoza, will appear original to uninstructed and tothoughtless persons: their originality will disappear to such as areeither well-read or thoughtful; for scholars will recognize their dogmasas reappearing in men of a similar intellectual elevation throughouthistory. Albert, the "wonderful doctor," St. Buonaventura, the "seraphicdoctor," Thomas Aquinas, the "angelic doctor" of the thirteenth century,[Pg 160]whose books made the sufficient culture of these ages, Dante absorbedand he survives for us. "Renard the Fox," a German poem of thethirteenth century, was long supposed to be the original work, untilGrimm found fragments of another original a century older. M. Le Grandshowed that in the old Fabliaux were the originals of the tales ofMolière, La Fontaine, Boccaccio, and of Voltaire.

Mythology is no man's work; but, what we daily observe in regard to thebon-mots that circulate in society,—that every talker helpsa story in repeating it, until, at last, from the slenderest filament offact a good fable is constructed,—the same growth befallsmythology: the legend is tossed from believer to poet, from poet tobeliever, everybody adding a grace or dropping a fault or rounding theform, until it gets an ideal truth.

Religious literature, the psalms and liturgies of churches, are ofcourse of this slow growth,—a fagot of selections gathered throughages, leaving the worse, and saving the better, until it is at last thework of the whole communion of worshippers. The Bible itself is like anold Cremona; it has been played upon by the devotion of thousands ofyears, until every word and particle is public and tunable. And whateverundue reverence may have been claimed for it by the prestige of philonicinspiration, the stronger tendency we are describing is likely to undo.[Pg 161]What divines had assumed as the distinctive revelations of Christianity,theologic criticism has matched by exact parallelisms from the Stoicsand poets of Greece and Rome. Later, when Confucius and the Indianscriptures were made known, no claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom couldbe thought of; and the surprising results of the new researches into thehistory of Egypt have opened to us the deep debt of the churches of Romeand England to the Egyptian hierology.

The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity andstoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his inventionwhen his memory serves him with a word as good. What he quotes, he fillswith his own voice and humor, and the whole cyclopædia of histable-talk is presently believed to be his own. Thirty years ago, whenMr. Webster at the bar or in the Senate filled the eyes and minds ofyoung men, you might often hear cited as Mr. Webster's three rules:first, never to do to-day what he could defer till to-morrow; secondly,never to do himself what he could make another do for him; and, thirdly,never to pay any debt to-day. Well, they are none the worse for beingalready told, in the last generation, of Sheridan; and we find inGrimm'sMémoires that Sheridan got them from the witty D'Argenson;who, no doubt, if we could consult him, could tell of whom he firstheard them told. In our own college days we remember hearing other[Pg 162]pieces of Mr. Webster's advice to students,—among others, this: that,when he opened a new book, he turned to the table of contents, took apen, and sketched a sheet of matters and topics,—what he knew andwhat he thought,—before he read the book. But we find in Southey's"Commonplace Book" this said of the Earl of Strafford: "I learned onerule of him," says Sir G. Radcliffe, "which I think worthy to beremembered. When he met with a well-penned oration or tract upon anysubject, he framed a speech upon the same argument, inventing anddisposing what seemed fit to be said upon that subject, before he readthe book; then, reading, compared his own with the author's, and notedhis own defects and the author's art and fulness; whereby he drew allthat ran in the author more strictly, and might better judge of his ownwants to supply them." I remember to have heard Mr. Samuel Rogers, inLondon, relate, among other anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington, that alady having expressed in his presence a passionate wish to witness agreat victory, he replied: "Madam, there is nothing so dreadful as agreat victory,—excepting a great defeat." But this speech is alsoD'Argenson's, and is reported by Grimm. So the sarcasm attributed toLord Eldon upon Brougham, his predecessor on the woolsack, "What a[Pg 163]wonderful versatile mind has Brougham! he knows politics, Greek,history, science; if he only knew a little of law, he would know alittle of everything." You may find the original of this gibe in Grimm,who says that Louis XVI., going out of chapel after hearing a sermonfrom the Abbé Maury, said, "Si l'Abbé nous avait parlé un peu dereligion, il nous aurait parlé de tout." A pleasantry which ranthrough all the newspapers a few years since, taxing the eccentricitiesof a gifted family connection in New England, was only a theft of LadyMary Wortley Montagu'smot of a hundred years ago, that "the worldwas made up of men and women and Herveys."

Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity. Columbus'segg is claimed for Brunelleschi. Rabelais's dying words, "I am going tosee the great Perhaps" (le grand Peut-être), only repeats the "IF"inscribed on the portal of the temple at Delphi. Goethe's favoritephrase, "the open secret," translates Aristotle's answer to Alexander,"These books are published and not published." Madame de Staël's"Architecture is frozen music" is borrowed from Goethe's "dumb music,"which is Vitruvius's rule, that "the architect must not only understanddrawing, but music." Wordsworth's hero acting "on the plan which pleasedhis childish thought," is Schiller's "Tell him to reverence the dreamsof his youth," and earlier, Bacon's "Consilia juventutis plusdivinitatis habent."[Pg 164]

In romantic literature examples of this vamping abound. The fine versein the old Scotch ballad of "The Drowned Lovers,"

is a translation of Martial's epigram on Hero and Leander, where theprayer of Leander is the same:—

Hafiz furnished Burns with the song of "John Barleycorn," and furnishedMoore with the original of the piece,

There are many fables which, as they are found in every language, andbetray no sign of being borrowed, are said to be agreeable to the humanmind. Such are "The Seven Sleepers," "Gyges's Ring," "The TravellingCloak," "The Wandering Jew," "The Pied Piper," "Jack and his Beanstalk,"the "Lady Diving in the Lake and Rising in the Cave,"—whoseomnipresence only indicates how easily a good story crosses allfrontiers. The popular incident of Baron Munchausen, who hung his bugleup by the kitchen fire, and the frozen tune thawed out, is found inGreece in Plato's time. Antiphanes, one of Plato's friends, laughingly[Pg 165]compared his writings to a city where the words froze in the air as soonas they were pronounced, and the next summer, when they were warmed andmelted by the sun, the people heard what had been spoken in the winter.It is only within this century that England and America discovered thattheir nursery-tales were old German and Scandinavian stories; and now itappears that they came from India, and are the property of all thenations descended from the Aryan race, and have been warbled and babbledbetween nurses and children for unknown thousands of years.

If we observe the tenacity with which nations cling to their first typesof costume, of architecture, of tools and methods in tillage, and ofdecoration,—if we learn how old are the patterns of our shawls, thecapitals of our columns, the fret, the beads, and other ornaments on ourwalls, the alternate lotus-bud and leaf-stem of our iron fences,—weshall think very well of the first men, or ill of the latest.

Now shall we say that only the first men were well alive, and theexisting generation is invalided and degenerate? Is all literatureeavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and ourbody borrowed, like a beggar's dinner, from a hundred charities? A moresubtle and severe criticism might suggest that some dislocation hasbefallen the race; that men are off their centre; that multitudes of men[Pg 166]do not live with Nature, but behold it as exiles. People go out to lookat sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own quietly andhappily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, sotheyquote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs.Worse yet, they live as foreigners in the world of truth, and quotethoughts, and thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority. Inopening a new book we often discover, from the unguarded devotion withwhich the writer gives his motto or text, all we have to expect fromhim. If Lord Bacon appears already in the preface, I go and read the"Instauration" instead of the new book.

The mischief is quickly punished in general and in particular. Admirablemimics have nothing of their own. In every kind of parasite, when Naturehas finished an aphis, a teredo, or a vampire bat,—an excellentsucking-pipe to tap another animal, or a mistletoe or dodder amongplants,—the self-supplying organs wither and dwindle, as beingsuperfluous. In common prudence there is an early limit to this leaningon an original. In literature quotation is good only when the writerwhom I follow goes my way, and, being better mounted than I, gives me acast, as we say; but if I like the gay equipage so well as to go out ofmy road, I had better have gone afoot.

But it is necessary to remember there are certain considerations which[Pg 167]go far to qualify a reproach too grave. This vast mental indebtednesshas every variety that pecuniary debt has,—every variety of merit.The capitalist of either kind is as hungry to lend as the consumer toborrow; and the transaction no more indicates intellectual turpitude inthe borrower than the simple fact of debt involves bankruptcy. On thecontrary, in far the greater number of cases the transaction ishonorable to both. Can we not help ourselves as discreetly by the forceof two in literature? Certainly it only needs two well placed and welltempered for co-operation, to get somewhat far transcending any privateenterprise! Shall we converse as spies? Our very abstaining to repeatand credit the fine remark of our friend is thievish. Each man ofthought is surrounded by wiser men than he, if they cannot write aswell. Cannot he and they combine? Cannot they sink their jealousies inGod's love, and call their poem Beaumont and Fletcher, or the ThebanPhalanx's? The city will for nine days or nine years make differencesand sinister comparisons: there is a new and more excellent public thatwill bless the friends. Nay, it is an inevitable fruit of our socialnature. The child quotes his father, and the man quotes his friend. Eachman is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever hesays has an enhanced value. Whatever we think and say is wonderfully[Pg 168]better for our spirits and trust in another mouth. There is none soeminent and wise but he knows minds whose opinion confirms or qualifieshis own: and men of extraordinary genius acquire an almost absoluteascendant over their nearest companions. The Comte de Crillon said oneday to M. d'Allonville, with French vivacity, "If the universe and Iprofessed one opinion, and M. Necker expressed a contrary one, I shouldbe at once convinced that the universe and I were mistaken."

Original power is usually accompanied with assimilating power, and wevalue in Coleridge his excellent knowledge and quotations perhaps asmuch, possibly more, than his original suggestions. If an author give usjust distinctions, inspiring lessons, or imaginative poetry, it is notso important to us whose they are. If we are fired and guided by these,we know him as a benefactor, and shall return to him as long as heserves us so well. We may like well to know what is Plato's and what isMontesquieu's or Goethe's part, and what thought was always dear to thewriter himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in theirradiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our factslike a charm. We respect ourselves the more that we know them.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon[Pg 169]as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west. Then thereare great ways of borrowing. Genius borrows nobly. When Shakspeare ischarged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was moreoriginal than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and broughtthem into life." And we must thank Karl Ottfried Müller for the justremark, "Poesy, drawing within its circle all that is glorious andinspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its flowersoriginally grew." So Voltaire usually imitated, but with suchsuperiority that Dubuc said: "He is like the false Amphitryon; althoughthe stranger, it is always he who has the air of being master of thehouse." Wordsworth, as soon as he heard a good thing, caught it up,meditated upon it, and very soon reproduced it in his conversation andwriting. If De Quincey said, "That is what I told you," he replied, "No:that is mine,—mine, and not yours." On the whole, we like the valorof it. 'Tis on Marmontel's principle, "I pounce on what is mine, wherever Ifind it"; and on Bacon's broader rule, "I take all knowledge to be myprovince." It betrays the consciousness that truth is the property of noindividual, but is the treasure of all men. And inasmuch as any writerhas ascended to a just view of man's condition, he has adopted thistone. In so far as the receiver's aim is on life, and not on literature,[Pg 170]will be his indifference to the source. The nobler the truth orsentiment, the less imports the question of authorship. It nevertroubles the simple seeker from whom he derived such or such asentiment. Whoever expresses to us a just thought makes ridiculous thepains of the critic who should tell him where such a word had been saidbefore. "It is no more according to Plato than according to me." Truthis always present: it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eyeto read its oracles. But the moment there is the purpose of display, thefraud is exposed. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate thethoughts of others, as it is to invent. Always some steep transition,some sudden alteration of temperature, of point or of view, betrays theforeign interpolation.

There is, besides, a new charm in such intellectual works as, passingthrough long time, have had a multitude of authors and improvers. Weadmire that poetry which no man wrote,—no poet less than thegenius of humanity itself,—which is to be read in a mythology, inthe effect of a fixed or national style of pictures, of sculptures, ordrama, or cities, or sciences, on us. Such a poem also is language.Every word in the language has once been used happily. The ear, caughtby that felicity, retains it, and it is used again and again, as if thecharm belonged to the word, and not to the life of thought which soenforced it. These profane uses, of course, kill it, and it is avoided.[Pg 171]But a quick wit can at any time reinforce it, and it comes into vogueagain. Then people quote so differently: one finding only what is gaudyand popular; another, the heart of the author, the report of his selectand happiest hour: and the reader sometimes giving more to the citationthan he owes to it. Most of the classical citations you shall hear orread in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from theoriginals, but from previous quotations in English books; and you caneasily pronounce, from the use and relevancy of the sentence, whether ithad not done duty many times before,—whether your jewel was gotfrom the mine or from an auctioneer. We are as much informed of awriter's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read thequotation with his eyes, and find a new and fervent sense; as a passagefrom one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from therendering. As the journals say, "the italics are ours." The profit ofbooks is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundestthought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heartfinds and publishes it. The passages of Shakspeare that we most prizewere never quoted until within this century; and Milton's prose, andBurke, even, have their best fame within it. Every one, too, remembershis friends by their favorite poetry or other reading.[Pg 172]

Observe, also, that a writer appears to more advantage in the pages ofanother book than in his own. In his own, he waits as a candidate foryour approbation; in another's, he is a lawgiver.

Then another's thoughts have a certain advantage with us simply becausethey are another's. There is an illusion in a new phrase. A man hears afine sentence out of Swedenborg, and wonders at the wisdom, and is verymerry at heart that he has now got so fine a thing. Translate it out ofthe new words into his own usual phrase, and he will wonder again at hisown simplicity, such tricks do fine words play with us.

'Tis curious what new interest an old author acquires by officialcanonization in Tiraboschi, or Dr. Johnson, or Von Hammer-Purgstall, orHallam, or other historian of literature. Their registration of hisbook, or citation of a passage, carries the sentimental value of acollege diploma. Hallam, though never profound, is a fair mind, able toappreciate poetry, unless it becomes deep, being always blind and deafto imaginative and analogy-loving souls, like the Platonists, likeGiordano Bruno, like Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan; and Hallamcites a sentence from Bacon or Sidney, and distinguishes a lyric ofEdwards or Vaux, and straightway it commends itself to us as if it hadreceived the Isthmian crown.

It is a familiar expedient of brilliant writers, and not less of witty[Pg 173]talkers, the device of ascribing their own sentence to an imaginaryperson, in order to give it weight,—as Cicero, Cowley, Swift,Landor, and Carlyle have done. And Cardinal de Retz, at a criticalmoment in the Parliament of Paris, described himself in an extemporaryLatin sentence, which he pretended to quote from a classic author, andwhich told admirably well. It is a curious reflex effect of thisenhancement of our thought by citing it from another, that many men canwrite better under a mask than for themselves,—as Chatterton inarchaic ballad, Le Sage in Spanish costume, Macpherson as"Ossian,"—and, I doubt not, many a young barrister in chambers inLondon, who forges good thunder for the "Times," but never works as wellunder his own name. This is a sort of dramatizing talent; as it is notrare to find great powers of recitation, without the least originaleloquence,—or people who copy drawings with admirable skill, butare incapable of any design.

In hours of high mental activity we sometimes do the book too muchhonor, reading out of it better things than the author wrote,—reading,as we say, between the lines. You have had the like experience inconversation: the wit was in what you heard, not in what the speakerssaid. Our best thought came from others. We heard in their words adeeper sense than the speakers put into them, and could expressourselves in other people's phrases to finer purpose than they knew. In[Pg 174]Moore's Diary, Mr. Hallam is reported as mentioning at dinner one of hisfriends who had said, "I don't know how it is, a thing that falls flatfrom me seems quite an excellent joke when given at second-hand bySheridan. I never like my ownbon-mots until he adopts them." Dumontwas exalted by being used by Mirabeau, by Bentham, and by Sir PhilipFrancis, who, again, was less than his own "Junius"; and James Hogg(except in his poems "Kilmeny" and "The Witch of Fife") is but athird-rate author, owing his fame to his effigy colossalized through thelens of John Wilson,—who, again, writes better under the domino of"Christopher North" than in his proper clothes. The bold theory of DeliaBacon, that Shakspeare's plays were written by a society of wits,—bySir Walter Raleigh, Lord Bacon, and others around the Earl ofSouthampton,—had plainly for her the charm of the superior meaningthey would acquire when read under this light; this idea of the authorshipcontrolling our appreciation of the works themselves. We once knew a manoverjoyed at the notice of his pamphlet in a leading newspaper. Whatrange he gave his imagination! Who could have written it? Was it notColonel Carbine, or Senator Tonitrus, or, at the least, ProfessorMaximilian? Yes, he could detect in the style that fine Roman hand. Howit seemed the very voice of the refined and discerning public, inviting[Pg 175]merit at last to consent to fame, and come up and take place in thereserved and authentic chairs! He carried the journal with haste to thesympathizing Cousin Matilda, who is so proud of all we do. But whatdismay, when the good Matilda, pleased with his pleasure, confessed shehad written the criticism, and carried it with her own hands to thepost-office! "Mr. Wordsworth," said Charles Lamb, "allow me to introduceto you my only admirer."

Swedenborg threw a formidable theory into the world, that every soulexisted in a society of souls, from which all its thoughts passed intoit, as the blood of the mother circulates in her unborn child; and henoticed that, when in his bed,—alternately sleeping andwaking,—sleeping, he was surrounded by persons disputing and offeringopinions on the one side and on the other side of a proposition; waking,the like suggestions occurred for and against the proposition as his ownthoughts; sleeping again, he saw and heard the speakers as before: andthis as often as he slept or waked. And if we expand the image, does itnot look as if we men were thinking and talking out of an enormousantiquity, as if we stood, not in a coterie of prompters that filled asitting-room, but in a circle of intelligences that reached through allthinkers, poets, inventors, and wits, men and women, English, German,Celt, Aryan, Ninevite, Copt,—back to the first geometer, bard, mason,[Pg 176]carpenter, planter, shepherd,—back to the first negro, who, with morehealth or better perception, gave a shriller sound or name for the thinghe saw and dealt with? Our benefactors are as many as the children whoinvented speech, word by word. Language is a city, to the building ofwhich every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to becredited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to thecoral reef which is the basis of the continent.

Πάντα ῥεῖ: all things are in flux. It is inevitable that youare indebted to the past. You are fed and formed by it. The old forestis decomposed for the composition of the new forest. The old animalshave given their bodies to the earth to furnish through chemistry theforming race, and every individual is only a momentary fixation of whatwas yesterday another's, is to-day his, and will belong to a thirdto-morrow. So it is in thought. Our knowledge is the amassed thought andexperience of innumerable minds: our language, our science, ourreligion, our opinions, our fancies we inherited. Our country, customs,laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair,—all these wenever made; we found them ready-made; we but quote them. Goethe franklysaid, "What would remain to me if this art of appropriation werederogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to meby a thousand different persons, a thousand things: wise and foolish[Pg 177]have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts,faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings takenfrom the whole of nature; it bears the name of Goethe."

But there remains the indefeasible persistency of the individual to behimself. One leaf, one blade of grass, one meridian, does not resembleanother. Every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the morepronounced is that difference. He must draw the elements into him forfood, and, if they be granite and silex, will prefer them cooked by sunand rain, by time and art, to his hand. But, however received, theseelements pass into the substance of his constitution, will beassimilated, and tend always to form, not a partisan, but a possessor oftruth. To all that can be said of the preponderance of the Past, thesingle word Genius is a sufficient reply. The divine resides in the new.The divine never quotes, but is, and creates. The profound apprehensionof the Present is Genius, which makes the Past forgotten. Geniusbelieves its faintest presentiment against the testimony of all history;for it knows that facts are not ultimates, but that a state of mind isthe ancestor of everything. And what is Originality? It is being, beingone's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are. Genius is, inthe first instance, sensibility, the capacity of receiving just[Pg 178]impressions from the external world, and the power of co-ordinatingthese after the laws of thought. It implies Will, or original force, fortheir right distribution and expression. If to this the sentiment ofpiety be added, if the thinker feels that the thought most strictly hisown is not his own, and recognizes the perpetual suggestion of theSupreme Intellect, the oldest thoughts become new and fertile whilst hespeaks them.

Originals never lose their value. There is always in them a style andweight of speech, which the immanence of the oracle bestowed, and whichcannot be counterfeited. Hence the permanence of the high poets. Plato,Cicero, and Plutarch cite the poets in the manner in which Scripture isquoted in our churches. A phrase or a single word is adduced, withhonoring emphasis, from Pindar, Hesiod, or Euripides, as precluding allargument, because thus had they said: importing that the bard spoke nothis own, but the words of some god. True poets have always ascended tothis lofty platform, and met this expectation. Shakspeare, Milton,Wordsworth, were very conscious of their responsibilities. When a manthinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. Allspontaneous thought is irrespective of all else. Pindar uses thishaughty defiance, as if it were impossible to find his sources: "Thereare many swift darts within my quiver, which have a voice for those withunderstanding; but to the crowd they need interpreters. He is gifted[Pg 179]with genius who knoweth much by natural talent."

Our pleasure in seeing each mind take the subject to which it has aproper right is seen in mere fitness in time. He that comes second mustneeds quote him that comes first. The earliest describers of savagelife, as Captain Cook's account of the Society Islands, or AlexanderHenry's travels among our Indian tribes, have a charm of truth and justpoint of view. Landsmen and sailors freshly come from the most civilizedcountries, and with no false expectation, no sentimentality yet about wildlife, healthily receive and report what they saw,—seeing what theymust, and using no choice; and no man suspects the superior merit of thedescription, until Chateaubriand, or Moore, or Campbell, or Byron, orthe artists arrive, and mix so much art with their picture that theincomparable advantage of the first narrative appears. For the samereason we dislike that the poet should choose an antique or far-fetchedsubject for his muse, as if he avowed want of insight. The great dealalways with the nearest. Only as braveries of too prodigal power can wepardon it, when the life of genius is so redundant that out of petulanceit flings its fire into some old mummy, and, lo! it walks and blushesagain here in the street.

We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supremeclaim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become[Pg 180]ours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how toborrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamperwith the organic motion of the soul. 'Tis certain that thought has itsown proper motion, and the hints which flash from it, the wordsoverheard at unawares by the free mind, are trustworthy and fertile,when obeyed, and not perverted to low and selfish account. This vastmemory is only raw material. The divine gift is ever the instant life,which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in theomnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest forrecomposition.[Pg 181]

[Pg 183]

PROGRESS OF CULTURE.

ADDRESS READ BEFORE THE Φ Β Κ SOCIETY AT CAMBRIDGE,
JULY 18, 1867.

WE meet to-day under happy omens to our ancient society, to thecommonwealth of letters, to the country, and to mankind. No good citizenbut shares the wonderful prosperity of the Federal Union. The heartstill beats with the public pulse of joy, that the country has withstoodthe rude trial which threatened its existence, and thrills with the vastaugmentation of strength which it draws from this proof. The storm whichhas been resisted is a crown of honor and a pledge of strength to theship. We may be well contented with our fair inheritance. Was ever suchcoincidence of advantages in time and place as in America to-day?—thefusion of races and religions; the hungry cry for men which goes up fromthe wide continent; the answering facility of immigration, permittingevery wanderer to choose his climate and government. Men come hither by[Pg 185]nations. Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology, to fly withthem over the sea, and to send their messages under it. They come fromcrowded, antiquated kingdoms to the easy sharing of our simple forms.Land without price is offered to the settler, cheap education to hischildren. The temper of our people delights in this whirl of life. Whowould live in the stone age, or the bronze, or the iron, or thelacustrine? Who does not prefer the age of steel, of gold, of coal,petroleum, cotton, steam, electricity, and the spectroscope?

"Prisca juvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor."

All this activity has added to the value of life, and to the scope ofthe intellect. I will not say that American institutions have given anew enlargement to our idea of a finished man, but they have addedimportant features to the sketch.

Observe the marked ethical quality of the innovations urged or adopted.The new claim of woman to a political status is itself an honorabletestimony to the civilization which has given her a civil status new inhistory. Now that, by the increased humanity of law she controls herproperty, she inevitably takes the next step to her share in power. Thewar gave us the abolition of slavery, the success of the SanitaryCommission and of the Freedmen's Bureau. Add to these the new scope ofsocial science; the abolition of capital punishment and of imprisonmentfor debt; the improvement of prisons; the efforts for the suppression of[Pg 186]intemperance; the search for just rules affecting labor; theco-operative societies; the insurance of life and limb; the free-tradeleague; the improved alms-houses; the enlarged scale of charities torelieve local famine, or burned towns, or the suffering Greeks; theincipient series of international congresses,—all, one may say, in ahigh degree revolutionary,—teaching nations the taking of governmentinto their own hands, and superseding kings.

The spirit is new. A silent revolution has impelled, step by step, allthis activity. A great many full-blown conceits have burst. The coxcombgoes to the wall. To his astonishment he has found that this country andthis age belong to the most liberal persuasion; that the day of ruling byscorn and sneers is past; that good sense is now in power, andthatresting on a vast constituency of intelligent labor, and, better yet, onperceptions less and less dim of laws the most sublime. Men are now tobe astonished by seeing acts of good-nature, common civility, andChristian charity proposed by statesmen, and executed by justices of thepeace,—by policemen and the constable. The fop is unable to cut thepatriot in the street; nay, he lies at his mercy in the ballot of theclub.

Mark, too, the large resources of a statesman, of a socialist, of ascholar, in this age. When classes are exasperated against each other,the peace of the world is always kept by striking a new note. Instantly[Pg 187]the units part, and form in a new order, and those who were opposed arenow side by side. In this country the prodigious mass of work that mustbe done has either made new divisions of labor or created newprofessions. Consider, at this time, what variety of issues, ofenterprises public and private, what genius of science, what ofadministration, what of practical skill, what masters, each in hisseveral province, the railroad, the telegraph, the mines, the inland andmarine explorations, the novel and powerful philanthropies, as well asagriculture, the foreign trade and the home trade (whose circuits inthis country are as spacious as the foreign), manufactures, the veryinventions, all on a national scale too, have evoked!—all implyingthe appearance of gifted men, the rapid addition to our society of a classof true nobles, by which the self-respect of each town and State isenriched.

Take as a type the boundless freedom here in Massachusetts. People havein all countries been burned and stoned for saying things which arecommonplaces at all our breakfast-tables. Every one who was in Italytwenty-five years ago will remember the caution with which his host orguest, in any house looked around him, if a political topic werebroached. Here the tongue is free, and the hand; and the freedom ofaction goes to the brink, if not over the brink, of license.[Pg 188]

A controlling influence of the times has been the wide and successfulstudy of Natural Science. Steffens said, "The religious opinions of menrest on their views of nature." Great strides have been made within thepresent century. Geology, astronomy, chemistry, optics, have yieldedgrand results. The correlation of forces and the polarization of lighthave carried us to sublime generalizations,—have affected animaginative race like poetic inspirations. We have been taught to treadfamiliarly on giddy heights of thought, and to wont ourselves to daringconjectures. The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity.The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of theobservatory, and a new and healthful air regenerates the human mind, andimparts a sympathetic enlargement to its inventions and method. Thatcosmical west-wind which, meteorologists tell us, constitutes, by therevolution of the globe, the upper current, is alone broad enough tocarry to every city and suburb—to the farmer's house, the miner'sshanty, and the fisher's boat—the inspirations of this new hope ofmankind. Now, if any one say we have had enough of these boastfulrecitals, then I say, Happy is the land wherein benefits like these havegrown trite and commonplace.

We confess that in America everything looks new and recent. Our townsare still rude,—the make-shifts of emigrants,—and the whole[Pg 189]architecture tent-like, when compared with the monumental solidity ofmediæval and primeval remains in Europe and Asia. But geology haseffaced these distinctions. Geology, a science of forty or fiftysummers, has had the effect to throw an air of novelty and mushroom speedover entire history. The oldest empires,—what we called venerableantiquity,—now that we have true measures of duration, show likecreations of yesterday. 'Tis yet quite too early to draw soundconclusions. The old six thousand years of chronology become a kitchenclock,—no more a measure of time than an hour-glass or anegg-glass,—since the duration of geologic periods has come into view.Geology itself is only chemistry with the element of time added; and therocks of Nahant or the dikes of the White Hills disclose that the worldis a crystal, and the soil of the valleys and plains a continualdecomposition and recomposition. Nothing is old but the mind.

But I find not only this equality between new and old countries, as seenby the eye of science, but also a certain equivalence of the ages ofhistory; and as the child is in his playthings working incessantly atproblems of natural philosophy,—working as hard and assuccessfully as Newton,—so it were ignorance not to see that each[Pg 190]nation and period has done its full part to make up the result ofexisting civility. We are all agreed that we have not on the instantbetter men to show than Plutarch's heroes. The world is always equal toitself. We cannot yet afford to drop Homer, nor Æschylus, nor Plato,nor Aristotle, nor Archimedes. Later, each European nation, after thebreaking up of the Roman Empire, had its romantic era, and theproductions of that era in each rose to about the same height. Take foran example in literature theRomance of Arthur, in Britain, or inthe opposite province of Brittany; theChansons de Roland, inFrance; the Chronicle of the Cid, in Spain; theNiebelungen Lied,in Germany; the Norse Sagas, in Scandinavia; and, I may add, the ArabianNights, on the African coast. But if these works still survive andmultiply, what shall we say of names more distant, or hidden throughtheir very superiority to their coevals,—names of men who haveleft remains that certify a height of genius in their several directionsnot since surpassed, and which men in proportion to their wisdom stillcherish,—as Zoroaster, Confucius, and the grand scriptures, onlyrecently known to Western nations, of the Indian Vedas, the Institutesof Menu, the Puranas, the poems of the Mahabarat and the Ramayana?

In modern Europe, the Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages. Who daresto call them so now? They are seen to be the feet on which we walk, the[Pg 191]eyes with which we see. 'Tis one of our triumphs to have reinstatedthem. Their Dante and Alfred and Wickliffe and Abelard and Bacon; theirMagna Charta, decimal numbers, mariner's compass, gunpowder, glass,paper, and clocks; chemistry, algebra, astronomy; their Gothicarchitecture, their painting,—are the delight and tuition of ours.Six hundred years ago Roger Bacon explained the precession of theequinoxes, and the necessity of reform in the calendar; looking over howmany horizons as far as into Liverpool and New York, he announced thatmachines can be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than a wholegalley of rowers could do, nor would they need anything but a pilot tosteer; carriages, to move with incredible speed, without aid of animals;and machines to fly into the air like birds. Even the races that westill call savage or semi-savage, and which preserve their arts fromimmemorial traditions, vindicate their faculty by the skill with whichthey make their yam-cloths, pipes, bows, boats, and carved war-clubs.The war-proa of the Malays in the Japanese waters struck Commodore Perryby its close resemblance to the yacht "America."

As we find thus a certain equivalence in the ages, there is also anequipollence of individual genius to the nation which it represents. Itis a curious fact, that a certain enormity of culture makes a maninvisible to his contemporaries. 'Tis always hard to go beyond your[Pg 192]public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will noteasily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it, youwill aspire and burn until you achieve it. But, from time to time, inhistory, men are born a whole age too soon. The founders of nations, thewise men and inventors, who shine afterwards as their gods, wereprobably martyrs in their own time. All the transcendent writers andartists of the world,—'tis doubtful who they were,—they arelifted so fast into mythology,—Homer, Menu, Viasa, Dædalus,Hermes, Zoroaster, even Swedenborg and Shakspeare. The early names aretoo typical,—Homer, orblind man; Menu, orman;Viasa,compiler; Dædalus,cunning; Hermes,interpreter; and so on. Probably, the men were so great, soself-fed, that the recognition of them by others was not necessary tothem. And every one has heard the remark (too often, I fear, politelymade), that the philosopher was above his audience. I think I have seentwo or three great men who, for that reason, were of no account amongscholars.

But Jove is in his reserves. The truth, the hope of any time, mustalways be sought in the minorities. Michel Angelo was the conscience ofItaly. We grow free with his name, and find it ornamental now; but inhis own days, his friends were few; and you would need to hunt him in aconventicle with the Methodists of the era, namely, Savonarola, Vittoria[Pg 193]Colonna, Contarini, Pole, Occhino,—superior souls, the religious ofthat day, drawn to each other, and under some cloud with the rest of theworld,—reformers, the radicals of the hour, banded against thecorruptions of Rome, and as lonely and as hated as Dante before them.

I find the single mind equipollent to a multitude of minds, say to anation of minds, as a drop of water balances the sea; and under thisview the problem of culture assumes wonderful interest. Culture impliesall which gives the mind possession of its own powers; as languages tothe critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture alters the politicalstatus of an individual. It raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 'Tisking against king. It is ever the romance of history in alldynasties,—the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect.It creates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, andto which he must often succumb. If a man know the laws of nature betterthan other men, his nation cannot spare him; nor if he know the power ofnumbers, the secret of geometry, of algebra, on which the computationsof astronomy, of navigation, of machinery, rest. If he can conversebetter than any other, he rules the minds of men wherever he goes; if hehas imagination, he intoxicates men. If he has wit, he tempers despotismby epigrams: a song, a satire, a sentence, has played its part in greatevents. Eloquence a hundred times has turned the scale of war and peace[Pg 194]at will. The history of Greece is at one time reduced to twopersons,—Philip, or the successor of Philip, on one side, andDemosthenes, a private citizen, on the other. If he has a militarygenius, like Belisarius, or administrative faculty, like Chatham orBismarck, he is the king's king. If a theologian of deep convictions andstrong understanding carries his country with him, like Luther, thestate becomes Lutheran, in spite of the Emperor, as Thomas à Becketoverpowered the English Henry. Wit has a great charter. Popes and kingsand Councils of Ten are very sharp with their censorships andinquisitions, but it is on dull people. Some Dante or Angelo, Rabelais,Hafiz, Cervantes, Erasmus, Béranger, Bettine von Arnim, or whatevergenuine wit of the old inimitable class, is always allowed. Kings feelthat this is that which they themselves represent; this is nored-kerchiefed, red-shirted rebel, but loyalty, kingship. This is realkingship, and their own only titular. Even manners are a distinction,which, we sometimes see, are not to be overborne by rank or officialpower, or even by other eminent talents, since they too proceed from acertain deep innate perception of fit and fair.

It is too plain that a cultivated laborer is worth many untaughtlaborers; that a scientific engineer, with instruments and steam, isworth many hundred men, many thousands; that Archimedes or Napoleon is[Pg 195]worth for labor a thousand thousands; and that in every wise and genialsoul we have England, Greece, Italy, walking, and can dispense withpopulations ofnavvies.

Literary history and all history is a record of the power of minorities,and of minorities of one. Every book is written with a constant secretreference to the few intelligent persons whom the writer believes toexist in the million. The artist has always the masters in his eye,though he affect to flout them. Michel Angelo is thinking of Da Vinci,and Raffaele is thinking of Michel Angelo. Tennyson would give his famefor a verdict in his favor from Wordsworth. Agassiz and Owen and Huxleyaffect to address the American and English people, but are reallywriting to each other. Everett dreamed of Webster. McKay, theshipbuilder, thinks of George Steers; and Steers, of Pook, the navalconstructor. The names of the masters at the head of each department ofscience, art, or function are often little known to the world, but arealways known to the adepts; as Robert Brown in botany, and Gauss inmathematics. Often the master is a hidden man, but not to the truestudent; invisible to all the rest, resplendent to him. All his own workand culture form the eye to see the master. In politics, mark theimportance of minorities of one, as of Phocion, Cato, Lafayette, Arago.[Pg 196]The importance of the one person who has the truth over nations who haveit not, is because power obeys reality, and not appearance; according toquality, and not quantity. How much more are men than nations! the wiseand good souls, the stoics in Greece and Rome, Socrates in Athens, thesaints in Judæa, Alfred the king, Shakspeare the poet, Newton thephilosopher, the perceiver, and obeyer of truth,—than the foolish andsensual millions around them! so that, wherever a true man appears,everything usually reckoned great dwarfs itself; he is the only greatevent, and it is easy to lift him into a mythological personage.

Then the next step in the series is the equivalence of the soul tonature. I said that one of the distinctions of our century has been thedevotion of cultivated men to natural science. The benefits thencederived to the arts and to civilization are signal and immense. They arefelt in navigation, in agriculture, in manufactures, in astronomy, inmining, and in war. But over all their utilities, I must hold theirchief value to be metaphysical. The chief value is not the useful powershe obtained, but the test it has been of the scholar. He has accostedthis immeasurable nature, and got clear answers. He understood what heread. He found agreement with himself. It taught him anew the reach ofthe human mind, and that it was citizen of the universe.[Pg 197]

The first quality we know in matter is centrality,—we call itgravity,—which holds the universe together, which remains pure andindestructible in each mote, as in masses and planets, and from eachatom rays out illimitable influence. To this material essence answersTruth, in the intellectual world,—Truth, whose centre is everywhere,and its circumference nowhere, whose existence we cannotdisimagine,—the soundness and health of things, against which no blowcan be struck but it recoils on the striker,—Truth, on whose side wealways heartily are. And the first measure of a mind is its centrality,its capacity of truth, and its adhesion to it.

When the correlation of the sciences was announced by Oersted and hiscolleagues, it was no surprise; we were found already prepared for it.The fact stated accorded with the auguries or divinations of the humanmind. Thus, if we should analyze Newton's discovery, we should say thatif it had not been anticipated by him, it would not have been found. Weare told that, in posting his books, after the French had measured onthe earth a degree of the meridian, when he saw that his theoreticresults were approximating that empirical one, his hand shook, thefigures danced, and he was so agitated that he was forced to call in anassistant to finish the computation. Why agitated?—but because, when[Pg 198]he saw, in the fall of an apple to the ground, the fall of the earth tothe sun, of the sun and of all suns to the centre, that perception wasaccompanied by the spasm of delight by which the intellect greets a factmore immense still, a fact really universal,—holding in intellectas in matter, in morals as in intellect,—that atom draws to atomthroughout nature, and truth to truth throughout spirit? His law wasonly a particular of the more universal law of centrality. Every law innature, as gravity, centripetence, repulsion, polarity, undulation, hasa counterpart in the intellect. The laws above are sisters of the lawsbelow. Shall we study the mathematics of the sphere, and not its causalessence also? Nature is a fable, whose moral blazes through it. There isno use in Copernicus, if the robust periodicity of the solar system doesnot show its equal perfection in the mental sphere,—theperiodicity, the compensatory errors, the grand reactions. I shall neverbelieve that centrifugence and centripetence balance, unless mind heatsand meliorates, as well as the surface and soil of the globe.

On this power, this all-dissolving unity, the emphasis of heaven andearth is laid. Nature is brute but as this soul quickens it; Naturealways the effect, mind the flowing cause. Nature, we find, is ever asis our sensibility; it is hostile to ignorance;—plastic, transparent,delightful, to knowledge. Mind carries the law; history is the slow and[Pg 199]atomic unfolding. All things admit of this extended sense, and theuniverse at last is only prophetic, or, shall we say, symptomatic, ofvaster interpretation and results. Nature an enormous system, but inmass and in particle curiously available to the humblest need of thelittle creature that walks on the earth! The immeasurableness of Natureis not more astounding than his power to gather all her omnipotence intoa manageable rod or wedge, bringing it to a hair-point for the eye andhand of the philosopher.

Here stretches out of sight, out of conception even, this vast Nature,daunting, bewildering, but all penetrable, all self-similar,—anunbroken unity,—and the mind of man is a key to the whole. Hefinds that the universe, as Newton said, "was made at one cast"; themass is like the atom,—the same chemistry, gravity, andconditions. The asteroids are the chips of an old star, and a meteoricstone is a chip of an asteroid. As language is in the alphabet, so isentire Nature—the play of all its laws—in one atom. The goodwit finds the law from a single observation,—the law, and itslimitations, and its correspondences,—as the farmer finds hiscattle by a footprint. "State the sun, and you state the planets, andconversely."

Whilst its power is offered to his hand, its laws to his science, notless its beauty speaks to his taste, imagination, and sentiment. Natureis sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle[Pg 200]of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morningdew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions,yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. Look outinto the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame whichflashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of themeadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormousage,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.And time and space,—what are they? Our first problems, which weponder all our lives through, and leave where we found them; whoseoutrunning immensity, the old Greeks believed, astonished the godsthemselves; of whose dizzy vastitudes all the worlds of God are a meredot on the margin; impossible to deny, impossible to believe. Yet themoral element in man counterpoises this dismaying immensity, andbereaves it of terror. The highest flight to which the muse of Horaceascended was in that triplet of lines in which he described the soulswhich can calmly confront the sublimity of nature:—

The sublime point of experience is the value of a sufficient man. Cubethis value by the meeting of two such,—of two or more such,—who[Pg 201]understand and support each other, and you have organized victory. Atany time, it only needs the contemporaneous appearance of a few superiorand attractive men to give a new and noble turn to the public mind.

The benefactors we have indicated were exceptional men, and greatbecause exceptional. The question which the present age urges withincreasing emphasis, day by day, is, whether the high qualities whichdistinguished them can be imparted? The poet Wordsworth asked, "What oneis, why may not millions be?" Why not? Knowledge exists to be imparted.Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret. The inquisitiveness of thechild to hear runs to meet the eagerness of the parent to explain. Theair does not rush to fill a vacuum with such speed as the mind to catchthe expected fact. Every artist was first an amateur. The ear outgrowsthe tongue, is sooner ripe and perfect; but the tongue is alwayslearning to say what the ear has taught it, and the hand obeys the samelesson.

There is anything but humiliation in the homage men pay to a great man;it is sympathy, love of the same things, effort to reach them,—theexpression of their hope of what they shall become, when theobstructions of their mal-formation and mal-education shall be trainedaway. Great men shall not impoverish, but enrich us. Great men,—the[Pg 202]age goes on their credit; but all the rest, when their wires are continued,and not cut, can do as signal things, and in new parts of nature. "Noangel in his heart acknowledges any one superior to himself but the Lordalone." There is not a person here present to whom omens that shouldastonish have not predicted his future, have not uncovered his past. Thedreams of the night supplement by their divination the imperfectexperiments of the day. Every soliciting instinct is only a hint of acoming fact, as the air and water that hang invisibly around us hastento become solid in the oak and the animal. But the recurrence to highsources is rare. In our daily intercourse, we go with the crowd, lendourselves to low fears and hopes, become the victims of our own arts andimplements, and disuse our resort to the Divine oracle. It is only inthe sleep of the soul that we help ourselves by so many ingeniouscrutches and machineries. What is the use of telegraphs? What ofnewspapers? To know in each social crisis how men feel in Kansas, inCalifornia, the wise man waits for no mails, reads no telegrams. He askshis own heart. If they are made as he is, if they breathe the like air,eat of the same wheat, have wives and children, he knows that their joyor resentment rises to the same point as his own. The inviolate soul isin perpetual telegraphic communication with the Source of events, has[Pg 203]earlier information, a private despatch, which relieves him of theterror which presses on the rest of the community.

The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moralsentiment. This is the fountain of power, preserves its eternal newness,draws its own rent out of every novelty in science. Science corrects theold creeds; sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantilecatechisms; and necessitates a faith commensurate with the granderorbits and universal laws which it discloses. Yet it does not surprisethe moral sentiment. That was older, and awaited expectant these largerinsights.

The affections are the wings by which the intellect launches on thevoid, and is borne across it. Great love is the inventor and expander ofthe frozen powers, the feathers frozen to our sides. It was theconviction of Plato, of Van Helmont, of Pascal, of Swedenborg, thatpiety is an essential condition of science, that great thoughts comefrom the heart. It happens sometimes that poets do not believe their ownpoetry; they are so much the less poets. But great men are sincere.Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any materialforce, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is thebeginning of its own fulfilment. Every generalization shows the way to alarger. Men say, Ah! if a man could impart his talent, instead of his[Pg 204]performance, what mountains of guineas would be paid! Yes, but in themeasure of his absolute veracity he does impart it. When he does notplay a part, does not wish to shine, when he talks to men with theunrestrained frankness which children use with each other, hecommunicates himself, and not his vanity. All vigor is contagious, andwhen we see creation we also begin to create. Depth of character, heightof genius, can only find nourishment in this soil. The miracles ofgenius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by thehorse-power of the understanding. Hope never spreads her golden wingsbut on unfathomable seas. The same law holds for the intellect as forthe will. When the will is absolutely surrendered to the moralsentiment, that is virtue; when the wit is surrendered to intellectualtruth, that is genius. Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show.Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts thepossessor to new power as a benefactor. I know well to what assembly ofeducated, reflecting, successful, and powerful persons I speak. Yours isthe part of those who have received much. It is an old legend of justmen,Noblesse oblige; or, superior advantages bind you to largergenerosity. Now I conceive that, in this economical world, where everydrop and every crumb is husbanded, the transcendent powers of mind werenot meant to be misused. The Divine Nature carries on its administration[Pg 205]by good men. Here you are set down, scholars and idealists, as in abarbarous age; amidst insanity, to calm and guide it; amidst fools andblind, to see the right done; among violent proprietors, to checkself-interest, stone-blind and stone-deaf, by considerations of humanityto the workman and to his child; amongst angry politicians swelling withself-esteem, pledged to parties, pledged to clients, you are to makevalid the large considerations of equity and good sense; under badgovernments, to force on them, by your persistence, good laws. Aroundthat immovable persistency of yours, statesmen, legislatures, mustrevolve, denying you, but not less forced to obey.

We wish to put the ideal rules into practice, to offer liberty insteadof chains, and see whether liberty will not disclose its proper checks;believing that a free press will prove safer than the censorship; toordain free trade, and believe that it will not bankrupt us; universalsuffrage, believing that it will not carry us to mobs, or back to kingsagain. I believe that the checks are as sure as the springs. It isthereby that men are great, and have great allies. And who are theallies? Rude opposition, apathy, slander,—even these. Difficultiesexist to be surmounted. The great heart will no more complain of theobstructions that make success hard, than of the iron walls of the gunwhich hinder the shot from scattering. It was walled round with iron[Pg 206]tube with that purpose, to give it irresistible force in one direction.A strenuous soul hates cheap successes. It is the ardor of the assailantthat makes the vigor of the defender. The great are not tender at beingobscure, despised, insulted. Such only feel themselves in adversefortune. Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times, which search tillthey find resistance and bottom. They wish, as Pindar said, "to treadthe floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron." Periodicity,reaction, are laws of mind as well as of matter. Bad kings and governorshelp us, if only they are bad enough. In England, it was the game lawswhich exasperated the farmers to carry the Reform Bill. It was what wecallplantation manners which drove peaceable, forgiving New Englandto emancipation without phrase. In the Rebellion, who were our bestallies? Always the enemy. The community of scholars do not know theirown power, and dishearten each other by tolerating political baseness intheir members. Now, nobody doubts the power of manners, or that whereverhigh society exists, it is very well able to exclude pretenders. Theintruder finds himself uncomfortable, and quickly departs to his owngang. It has been our misfortune that the politics of America have beenoften immoral. It has had the worst effect on character. We are acomplaisant, forgiving people, presuming, perhaps, on a feeling of[Pg 207]strength. But it is not by easy virtue, where the public is concerned,that heroic results are obtained. We have suffered our young men ofambition to play the game of politics and take the immoral side withoutloss of caste,—to come and go without rebuke. But that kind of looseassociation does not leave a man his own master. He cannot go from thegood to the evil at pleasure, and then back again to the good. There isa text in Swedenborg, which tells in figure the plain truth. He saw invision the angels and the devils; but these two companies stood not faceto face and hand in hand, but foot to foot,—these perpendicular up,and those perpendicular down.

Brothers, I draw new hope from the atmosphere we breathe to-day, fromthe healthy sentiment of the American people, and from the avowed aimsand tendencies of the educated class. The age has new convictions. Weknow that in certain historic periods there have been times ofnegation,—a decay of thought, and a consequent national decline; thatin France, at one time, there was almost a repudiation of the moralsentiment, in what is called, by distinction, society,—not a believerwithin the Church, and almost not a theist out of it. In England, thelike spiritual disease affected the upper class in the time of CharlesII., and down into the reign of the Georges. But it honorablydistinguishes the educated class here, that they believe in the succor[Pg 208]which the heart yields to the intellect, and draw greatness from itsinspirations. And when I say the educated class, I know what a benignantbreadth that word has,—new in the world,—reaching millionsinstead of hundreds. And more, when I look around me, and consider thesound material of which the cultivated class here is made up,—whathigh personal worth, what love of men, what hope, is joined with richinformation and practical power, and that the most distinguished bygenius and culture are in this class of benefactors,—I cannotdistrust this great knighthood of virtue, or doubt that the interests ofscience, of letters, of politics and humanity, are safe. I think theirhands are strong enough to hold up the Republic. I read the promise ofbetter times and of greater men.[Pg 209]

[Pg 211]

PERSIAN POETRY.

TO Baron von Hammer Purgstall, who died in Vienna in 1856, we owe ourbest knowledge of the Persians. He has translated into German, besidesthe "Divan" of Hafiz, specimens of two hundred poets, who wrote during aperiod of five and a half centuries, from A. D. 1050 to 1600. The sevenmasters of the Persian Parnassus—Firdousi, Enweri, Nisami,Dschelaleddin, Saadi, Hafiz, and Dschami—have ceased to be emptynames; and others, like Ferideddin Attar and Omar Chiam, promise to risein Western estimation. That for which mainly books exist is communicatedin these rich extracts. Many qualities go to make a goodtelescope,—as the largeness of the field, facility of sweeping themeridian, achromatic purity of lenses, and so forth,—but the oneeminent value is the space-penetrating power; and there are many virtuesin books,—but the essential value is the adding of knowledge toour stock, by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record ofintuitions, which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersedeall histories.[Pg 213]

Oriental life and society, especially in the Southern nations, stand inviolent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability,and the vast average of comfort of the Western nations. Life in the Eastis fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. Its elements are few andsimple, not exhibiting the long range and undulation of Europeanexistence, but rapidly reaching the best and the worst. The rich feed onfruits and game,—the poor, on a watermelon's peel. All or nothing isthe genius of Oriental life. Favor of the Sultan, or his displeasure, isa question of Fate. A war is undertaken for an epigram or a distich, asin Europe for a duchy. The prolific sun, and the sudden and rank plentywhich his heat engenders, make subsistence easy. On the other side, thedesert, the simoom, the mirage, the lion, and the plague endanger it,and life hangs on the contingency of a skin of water more or less. Thevery geography of old Persia showed these contrasts. "My father'sempire," said Cyrus to Xenophon, "is so large, that people perish withcold, at one extremity, whilst they are suffocated with heat, at theother." The temperament of the people agrees with this life in extremes.Religion and poetry are all their civilization. The religion teaches aninexorable Destiny. It distinguishes only two days in each man'shistory,—his birthday, calledthe Day of the Lot, and the Dayof Judgment. Courage and absolute submission to what is appointed him are[Pg 214]his virtues.

The favor of the climate, making subsistence easy, and encouraging anoutdoor life, allows to the Eastern nations a highly intellectualorganization,—leaving out of view, at present, the genius of theHindoos (more Oriental in every sense), whom no people have surpassed inthe grandeur of their ethical statement. The Persians and the Arabs,with great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to thepleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect whichtheimprovvisatori produced on the children of the desert. "When thebard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement wasalmost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved bythese rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wildtribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by theirself-taught poets, or by the girls of their encampment, will drivewarriors to the combat, fearless of death, or prove an ample reward, ontheir return from the dangers of theghazon, or the fight. Theexcitement they produce exceeds that of the grape. He who wouldunderstand the influence of the Homeric ballads in the heroic agesshould witness the effect which similar compositions have upon the wildnomads of the East." Elsewhere he adds, "Poetry and flowers are the wine[Pg 215]and spirits of the Arab; a couplet is equal to a bottle, and a rose to adram, without the evil effect of either."

The Persian poetry rests on a mythology whose few legends are connectedwith the Jewish history, and the anterior traditions of the Pentateuch.The principal figure in the allusions of Eastern poetry is Solomon.Solomon had three talismans: first, the signet-ring, by which hecommanded the spirits, on the stone of which was engraven the name ofGod; second, the glass, in which he saw the secrets of his enemies, andthe causes of all things, figured; the third, the east-wind, which washis horse. His counsellor was Simorg, king of birds, the all-wise fowl,who had lived ever since the beginning of the world, and now lives aloneon the highest summit of Mount Kaf. No fowler has taken him, and nonenow living has seen him. By him Solomon was taught the language ofbirds, so that he heard secrets whenever he went into his gardens. WhenSolomon travelled, his throne was placed on a carpet of green silk, of alength and breadth sufficient for all his army to stand upon,—menplacing themselves on his right hand, and the spirits on his left. Whenall were in order, the east-wind, at his command, took up the carpet andtransported it, with all that were upon it, whither he pleased,—thearmy of birds at the same time flying overhead, and forming a canopy toshade them from the sun. It is related, that, when the Queen of Sheba[Pg 216]came to visit Solomon, he had built, against her arrival, a palace, ofwhich the floor or pavement was of glass, laid over running water, inwhich fish were swimming. The Queen of Sheba was deceived thereby, andraised her robes, thinking she was to pass through the water. On theoccasion of Solomon's marriage, all the beasts, laden with presents,appeared before his throne. Behind them all came the ant with a blade ofgrass: Solomon did not despise the gift of the ant. Asaph, the vizier,at a certain time, lost the seal of Solomon, which one of the Dews, orevil spirits, found, and, governing in the name of Solomon, deceived thepeople.

Firdousi, the Persian Homer, has written in theShah Nameh theannals of the fabulous and heroic kings of the country: of Karun (thePersian Crœsus), the immeasurably rich gold-maker, who, with all histreasures, lies buried not far from the Pyramids, in the sea which bearshis name; of Jamschid, the binder of demons, whose reign lasted sevenhundred years; of Kai Kaus, in whose palace, built by demons on Alberz,gold and silver and precious stones were used so lavishly, that in thebrilliancy produced by their combined effect, night and day appeared thesame; of Afrasiyab, strong as an elephant, whose shadow extended formiles, whose heart was bounteous as the ocean, and his hands like theclouds when rain falls to gladden the earth. The crocodile in the[Pg 217]rolling stream had no safety from Afrasiyab. Yet when he came to fightagainst the generals of Kaus, he was but an insect in the grasp ofRustem, who seized him by the girdle, and dragged him from his horse.Rustem felt such anger at the arrogance of the King of Mazinderan, thatevery hair on his body started up like a spear. The gripe of his handcracked the sinews of an enemy.

These legends,—with Chiser, the fountain of life, Tuba, the treeof life,—the romances of the loves of Leila and Medschun, ofChosru and Schirin, and those of the nightingale for therose,—pearl-diving, and the virtues of gems,—the cohol, acosmetic by which pearls and eyebrows are indelibly stainedblack,—the bladder in which musk is brought,—the down of thelip, the mole on the cheek, the eyelash,—lilies, roses, tulips,and jasmines,—make the staple imagery of Persian odes.

The Persians have epics and tales, but, for the most part, they affectshort poems and epigrams. Gnomic verses, rules of life conveyed in alively image, especially in an image addressed to the eye, and containedin a single stanza, were always current in the East; and if the poem islong, it is only a string of unconnected verses. They use aninconsecutiveness quite alarming to Western logic, and the connectionbetween the stanzas of their longer odes is much like that between therefrain of our old English ballads,[Pg 218]

or

and the main story.

Take, as specimens of these gnomic verses, the following:—

Or this of Omar Chiam:—

Here is a poem on a melon, by Adsched of Meru:—

Hafiz is the prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary giftsadds to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Burnsthe insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance atNature than belongs to either of these bards. He accosts all topics withan easy audacity. "He only," he says, "is fit for company, who knows howto prize earthly happiness at the value of a night-cap. Our father Adamsold Paradise for two kernels of wheat; then blame me not, if I hold it[Pg 219]dear at one grapestone." He says to the Shah, "Thou who rulest afterwords and thoughts which no ear has heard and no mind has thought, abidefirm until thy young destiny tears off his blue coat from the oldgraybeard of the sky." He says,—

The rapidity of his turns is always surprising us:—

After the manner of his nation, he abounds in pregnant sentences whichmight be engraved on a sword-blade and almost on a ring.

"In honor dies he to whom the great seems ever wonderful."

"Here is the sum, that, when one door opens, another shuts."

"On every side is an ambush laid by the robber-troops of circumstance;hence it is that the horseman of life urges on his courser at headlongspeed."

"The earth is a host who murders his guests."

"Good is what goes on the road of Nature. On the straight way thetraveller never misses."

[Pg 220]

Harems and wine-shops only give him a new ground of observation, whenceto draw sometimes a deeper moral than regulated sober lifeaffords,—and this is foreseen:—

Riot, he thinks, can snatch from the deeply hidden lot the veil thatcovers it:—

That hardihood and self-equality of every sound nature, which resultfrom the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as theworld, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him anobject of interest, and his every phrase and syllable significant, arein Hafiz, and abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone.

His was the fluent mind in which every thought and feeling came readilyto the lips. "Loose the knots of the heart," he says. We absorb elementsenough, but have not leaves and lungs for healthy perspiration andgrowth. An air of sterility, of incompetence to their proper aims,belongs to many who have both experience and wisdom. But a largeutterance, a river that makes its own shores, quick perception andcorresponding expression, a constitution to which every morrow is a newday, which is equal to the needs of life, at once tender and bold, withgreat arteries,—this generosity of ebb and flow satisfies, and weshould be willing to die when our time comes, having had our swing andgratification. The difference is not so much in the quality of men's[Pg 222]thoughts as in the power of uttering them. What is pent and smoulderedin the dumb actor is not pent in the poet, but passes over into newform, at once relief and creation.

The other merit of Hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is acertificate of profound thought. We accept the religions and politicsinto which we fall; and it is only a few delicate spirits who aresufficient to see that the whole web of convention is the imbecility ofthose whom it entangles,—that the mind suffers no religion and noempire but its own. It indicates this respect to absolute truth by theuse it makes of the symbols that are most stable and reverend, andtherefore is always provoking the accusation of irreligion.

Hypocrisy is the perpetual butt of his arrows.

He tells his mistress, that not the dervis, or the monk, but the lover,has in his heart the spirit which makes the ascetic and the saint; andcertainly not their cowls and mummeries, but her glances, can impart tohim the fire and virtue needful for such self-denial. Wrong shall not bewrong to Hafiz, for the name's sake. A law or statute is to him what afence is to a nimble school-boy,—a temptation for a jump. "We woulddo nothing but good, else would shame come to us on the day when the soulmust hie hence; and should they then deny us Paradise, the Houris[Pg 223]themselves would forsake that, and come out to us."

His complete intellectual emancipation he communicates to the reader.There is no example of such facility of allusion, such use of allmaterials. Nothing is too high, nothing too low, for his occasion. Hefears nothing, he stops for nothing. Love is a leveller, and Allahbecomes a groom, and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns to hismistress or to his cupbearer. This boundless charter is the right ofgenius.

We do not wish to strew sugar on bottled spiders, or try to makemystical divinity out of the Song of Solomon, much less out of theerotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz. Hafiz himself is determined todefy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban andthrows it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass afterthe turban. But the love or the wine of Hafiz is not to be confoundedwith vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in which the song is written thatimports, and not the topics. Hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys,birds, mornings, and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity andsympathy with every form of beauty and joy; and lays the emphasis onthese to mark his scorn of sanctimony and base prudence. These are thenatural topics and language of his wit and perception. But it is theplay of wit and the joy of song that he loves; and if you mistake him[Pg 224]for a low rioter, he turns short on you with verses which express thepoverty of sensual joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the mostunpalatable affirmations of heroic sentiment and contempt for the world.Sometimes it is a glance from the height of thought, as thus:—

"Bring wine; for, in the audience-hall of the soul's independence, whatis sentinel or Sultan? what is the wise man or the intoxicated?"

And sometimes his feast, feasters, and world are only one pebble more inthe eternal vortex and revolution of Fate:—

A saint might lend an ear to the riotous fun of Falstaff; for it is notcreated to excite the animal appetites, but to vent the joy of asupernal intelligence. In all poetry, Pindar's ruleholds,—συνετοῖς φωνεί it speaks to the intelligent; andHafiz is a poet for poets, whether he write, as sometimes, with aparrot's, or, as at other times, with an eagle's quill.

Every song of Hafiz affords new proof of the unimportance of yoursubject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general,what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed tograndees? Yet in the "Divan" you would not skip them, since his museseldom supports him better.[Pg 225]

And again:—

It is told of Hafiz, that, when he had written a compliment to ahandsome youth,—

the verses came to the ears of Timour in his palace. Timour taxed Hafizwith treating disrespectfully his two cities, to raise and adorn whichhe had conquered nations. Hafiz replied, "Alas, my lord, if I had notbeen so prodigal, I had not been so poor!"

The Persians had a mode of establishing copyright the most secure of anycontrivance with which we are acquainted. The law of theghaselle,or shorter ode, requires that the poet insert his name in the last stanza.Almost every one of several hundreds of poems of Hafiz contains his namethus interwoven more or less closely with the subject of the piece. Itis itself a test of skill, as this self-naming is not quite easy. Weremember but two or three examples in English poetry: that of Chaucer,in the "House of Fame"; Jonson's epitaph on his son,—

[Pg 226]

and Cowley's,—

But it is easy to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the mostplayful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the funof Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, "The angelsin heaven were lately learning his last pieces." He says, "The fishesshed their pearls, out of desire and longing as soon as the ship ofHafiz swims the deep."

Again,—

"I heard the harp of the planet Venus, and it said in the early morning,'I am the disciple of the sweet-voiced Hafiz!'"

And again,—

"When Hafiz sings, the angels hearken, and Anaitis, the leader of thestarry host, calls even the Messiah in heaven out to the dance."

"No one has unvailed thoughts like Hafiz, since the locks of theWord-bride were first curled."

"Only he despises the verse of Hafiz who is not himself by naturenoble."

But we must try to give some of these poetic flourishes the metrical[Pg 227]form which they seem to require:—

Another:—

Another:—

Again:—

He asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. To thevizier returning from Mecca he says,—

"Boast not rashly, prince of pilgrims, of thy fortune. Thou hast indeedseen the temple; but I, the Lord of the temple. Nor has any man inhaledfrom the musk-bladder of the merchant, or from the musky morning-wind,that sweet air which I am permitted to breathe every hour of the day."

And with still more vigor in the following lines:—

And his claim has been admitted from the first. The muleteers andcamel-drivers, on their way through the desert, sing snatches of hissongs, not so much for the thought, as for their joyful temper and tone;and the cultivated Persians know his poems by heart. Yet Hafiz does notappear to have set any great value on his songs, since his scholarscollected them for the first time after his death.

In the following poem the soul is figured as the Phœnix alighting onTuba, the Tree of Life:—

Here is an ode which is said to be a favorite with all educatedPersians:—

The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, the birdsthat inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in thesemusky verses, and are always named with effect. "The willows," he says,[Pg 230]"bow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness."We may open anywhere on a floral catalogue.

Presently we have,—

And so onward, through many a page.[Pg 231]

This picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri, seems to belongto Hafiz:—

Friendship is a favorite topic of the Eastern poets, and they havematched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.

Hafiz says,—

"Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship; since to theunsound no heavenly knowledge enters."

Ibn Jemin writes thus:—

Dschami says,—

Of the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations,though it forms the staple of the "Divan." He has run through the whole[Pg 232]gamut of passion,—from the sacred to the borders, and over theborders, of the profane. The same confusion of high and low, the celerityof flight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him.From the plain text,—

he proceeds to the celebration of his passion; and nothing in hisreligious or in his scientific traditions is too sacred or too remote toafford a token of his mistress. The Moon thought she knew her own orbitwell enough; but when she saw the curve on Zuleika's cheek, she was at aloss:—

His ingenuity never sleeps:—

and plays in a thousand pretty courtesies:—

[Pg 233]

And what a nest has he found for his bonny bird to take up her abodein!—

Then we have all degrees of passionate abandonment:—

And sometimes his love rises to a religious sentiment:—

We add to these fragments of Hafiz a few specimens from other poets.[Pg 234]

The following passages exhibit the strong tendency of the Persian poetsto contemplative and religious poetry and to allegory.

"What need," cries the mystic Feisi, "of palaces and tapestry? What needeven of a bed?"

Ferideddin Attar wrote the "Bird Conversations," a mystical tale, inwhich the birds, coming together to choose their king, resolve on apilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. From thispoem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, asa proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods. The tone is quitemodern. In the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length anddifficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out. Three onlypersevered, and arrived before the throne of the Simorg.[Pg 236]

[Pg 238]

[Pg 239]

INSPIRATION.

IT was Watt who told King George III. that he dealt in an article ofwhich kings were said to be fond,—Power. 'Tis certain that the onething we wish to know is, where power is to be bought. But we want afiner kind than that of commerce; and every reasonable man would giveany price of house and land, and future provision, for condensation,concentration, and the recalling at will of high mental energy. Ourmoney is only a second best. We would jump to buy power with it, thatis, intellectual perception moving the will. That is first best. But wedon't know where the shop is. If Watt knew, he forgot to tell us thenumber of the street. There are times when the intellect is so activethat everything seems to run to meet it. Its supplies are found withoutmuch thought as to studies. Knowledge runs to the man, and the man runsto knowledge. In spring, when the snow melts, the maple-trees flow withsugar, and you cannot get tubs fast enough; but it is only for a fewdays. The hunter on the prairie, at the right season, has no need of[Pg 241]choosing his ground; east, west, by the river, by the timber, he iseverywhere near his game. But the favorable conditions are rather theexception than the rule.

The aboriginal man in geology, and in the dim lights of Darwin'smicroscope, is not an engaging figure. We are very glad that he ate hisfishes and snails and marrow-bones out of our sight and hearing, andthat his doleful experiences were got through with so very long ago.They combed his mane, they pared his nails, cut off his tail, set him onend, sent him to school, and made him pay taxes, before he could beginto write his sad story for the compassion or the repudiation of hisdescendants, who are all but unanimous to disown him. We must take himas we find him,—pretty well on in his education, and, in allour knowledge of him, an interesting creature, with a will, aninvention, an imagination, a conscience, and an inextinguishable hope.

The Hunterian law ofarrested development is not confined tovegetable and animal structure, but reaches the human intellect also. Inthe savage man, thought is infantile; and in the civilized, unequal, andranging up and down a long scale. In the best races it is rare andimperfect. In happy moments it is reinforced, and carries out what wererude suggestions to larger scope, and to clear and grand conclusions.The poet cannot see a natural phenomenon which does not express to him a[Pg 242]correspondent fact in his mental experience; he is made aware of a powerto carry on and complete the metamorphosis of natural into spiritualfacts. Everything which we hear for the first time was expected by themind; the newest discovery was expected. In the mind we call thisenlarged power Inspiration. I believe that nothing great and lasting canbe done except by inspiration, by leaning on the secret augury. Theman's insight and power are interrupted and occasional; he can see anddo this or that cheap task at will, but it steads him not beyond. He isfain to make the ulterior step by mechanical means. It cannot so bedone. That ulterior step is to be also by inspiration; if not throughhim, then by another man. Every real step is by what a poet called"lyrical glances," by lyrical facility, and never by main strength andignorance. Years of mechanic toil will only seem to do it; it will notso be done.

Inspiration is like yeast. 'Tis no matter in which of half a dozen waysyou procure the infection; you can apply one or the other equally wellto your purpose, and get your loaf of bread. And every earnest workman,in whatever kind, knows some favorable conditions for his task. When Iwish to write on any topic, 'tis of no consequence what kind of book orman gives me a hint or a motion, nor how far off that is from my topic.[Pg 243]

Power is the first good. Rarey can tame a wild horse; but if he couldgive speed to a dull horse, were not that better? The toper finds,without asking, the road to the tavern, but the poet does not know thepitcher that holds his nectar. Every youth should know the way toprophecy as surely as the miller understands how to let on the water orthe engineer the steam. A rush of thoughts is the only conceivableprosperity that can come to us. Fine clothes, equipages, villa, park,social consideration, cannot cover up real poverty and insignificancefrom my own eyes, or from others like mine.

Thoughts let us into realities. Neither miracle, nor magic, nor anyreligious tradition, not the immortality of the private soul, isincredible, after we have experienced an insight, a thought. I think itcomes to some men but once in their life, sometimes a religious impulse,sometimes an intellectual insight. But what we want is consecutiveness.'Tis with us a flash of light, then a long darkness, then a flash again.The separation of our days by sleep almost destroys identity. Could webut turn these fugitive sparkles into an astronomy of Copernican worlds!With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-daytogether. Their house and trade and families serve them as ropes to givea coarse continuity. But they have forgotten the thoughts of yesterday;they say to-day what occurs to them, and something else to-morrow. This[Pg 244]insecurity of possession, this quick ebb of power,—as if life were athunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and thencannot see your hand,—tantalizes us. We cannot make the inspirationconsecutive. A glimpse, a point of view that by its brightness excludesthe purview, is granted, but no panorama. A fuller inspiration shouldcause the point to flow and become a line, should bend the line andcomplete the circle. To-day the electric machine will not work, no sparkwill pass; then presently the world is all a cat's back, all sparkle andshock. Sometimes there is no sea-fire, and again the sea is aglow to thehorizon. Sometimes the Æolian harp is dumb all day in the window, andagain it is garrulous, and tells all the secrets of the world. In Junethe morning is noisy with birds; in August they are already getting oldand silent.

Hence arises the question, Are these moods in any degree within control?If we knew how to command them! But where is the Franklin with kite orrod for this fluid?—a Franklin who can draw off electricity from Jovehimself, and convey it into the arts of life, inspire men, take them offtheir feet, withdraw them from the life of trifles and gain and comfort,and make the world transparent, so that they can read the symbols ofnature? What metaphysician has undertaken to enumerate the tonics of the[Pg 245]torpid mind, the rules for the recovery of inspiration? That is leastwithin control which is best in them. Of themodus of inspiration wehave no knowledge. But in the experience of meditative men there is acertain agreement as to the conditions of reception. Plato, in hisseventh Epistle, notes that the perception is only accomplished by longfamiliarity with the objects of intellect, and a life according to thethings themselves. "Then a light, as if leaping from a fire, will on asudden be enkindled in the soul, and will then itself nourish itself."

He said again, "The man who is his own master knocks in vain at thedoors of poetry." The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like thebees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. What is a mangood for without enthusiasm? and what is enthusiasm but this daring ofruin for its object? There are thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls;we are not the less drawn to them. The moth flies into the flame of thelamp; and Swedenborg must solve the problems that haunt him, though hebe crazed or killed.

There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine offaith over works. The raptures of goodness are as old as history and newwith this morning's sun. The legends of Arabia, Persia, and India are ofthe same complexion as the Christian. Socrates, Menu, Confucius,Zertusht,—we recognize in all of them this ardor to solve the hintsof thought.[Pg 246]

I hold that ecstasy will be found normal, or only an example on a higherplane of the same gentle gravitation by which stones fall and riversrun. Experience identifies. Shakspeare seems to you miraculous; but thewonderful juxtapositions, parallelisms, transfers, which his geniuseffected were all to him locked together as links of a chain, and themode precisely as conceivable and familiar to higher intelligence as theindex-making of the literary hack. The result of the hack isinconceivable to the type-setter who waits for it.

We must prize our own youth. Later, we want heat to execute our plans:the good-will, the knowledge, the whole armory of means, are allpresent; but a certain heat that once used not to fail refuses itsoffice, and all is vain until this capricious fuel is supplied. It seemsa semi-animal heat; as if tea, or wine, or sea-air, or mountains, or agenial companion, or a new thought suggested in book or conversation,could fire the train, wake the fancy, and the clear perception.Pit-coal,—where to find it? 'Tis of no use that your engine is madelike a watch,—that you are a good workman, and know how to drive it,if there is no coal. We are waiting until some tyrannous idea emerging outof heaven shall seize and bereave us of this liberty with which we arefalling abroad. Well, we have the same hint or suggestion, day by day."I am not," says the man, "at the top of my condition to-day, but the[Pg 247]favorable hour will come when I can command all my powers, and when thatwill be easy to do which is at this moment impossible." See how thepassions augment our force,—anger, love, ambition! sometimessympathy, and the expectation of men. Garrick said, that on the stagehis great paroxysms surprised himself as much as his audience. If thisis true on this low plane, it is true on the higher. Swedenborg's geniuswas the perception of the doctrine "that the Lord flows into the spiritsof angels and of men"; and all poets have signalized their consciousnessof rare moments when they were superior to themselves,—when alight, a freedom, a power came to them, which lifted them toperformances far better than they could reach at other times; so that areligious poet once told me that "he valued his poems, not because theywere his, but because they were not." He thought the angels brought themto him.

Jacob Behmen said: "Art has not wrote here, nor was there any time toconsider how to set it punctually down according to the rightunderstanding of the letters, but all was ordered according to thedirection of the spirit, which often went on haste,—so that thepenman's hand, by reason he was not accustomed to it, did often shake.And, though I could have written in a more accurate, fair, and plainmanner, the burning fire often forced forward with speed, and the handand pen must hasten directly after it, for it comes and goes as a sudden[Pg 248]shower. In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more, than if I hadbeen many years together at an university."

The depth of the notes which we accidentally sound on the strings ofnature is out of all proportion to our taught and ascertained faculty,and might teach us what strangers and novices we are, vagabond in thisuniverse of pure power, to which we have only the smallest key. Herricksaid:—

Bonaparte said: "There is no man more pusillanimous than I, when I makea military plan. I magnify all the dangers, and all the possiblemischances. I am in an agitation utterly painful. That does not preventme from appearing quite serene to the persons who surround me. I am likea woman with child, and when my resolution is taken, all is forgot,except whatever can make it succeed."[Pg 249]

There are, to be sure, certain risks in this presentiment of thedecisive perception, as in the use of ether or alcohol.

Aristotle said: "No great genius was ever without some mixture ofmadness, nor can anything grand or superior to the voice of commonmortals be spoken except by the agitated soul." We might say of thesememorable moments of life, that we were in them, not they in us. Wefound ourselves by happy fortune in an illuminated portion or meteorouszone, and passed out of it again, so aloof was it from any will of ours."'Tis a principle of war," said Napoleon, "that when you can use thelightning, 'tis better than cannon."

How many sources of inspiration can we count? As many as our affinities.But to a practical purpose we may reckon a few of these.

1. Health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air,landscape, and bodily exercise on the mind. The Arabs say that "Allahdoes not count from life the days spent in the chase," that is, thoseare thrown in. Plato thought "exercise would almost cure a guiltyconscience." Sydney Smith said: "You will never break down in a speechon the day when you have walked twelve miles."

I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health.[Pg 250]Sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally alsoby dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped. Lifeis in short cycles or periods; we are quickly tired, but we have rapidrallies. A man is spent by his work, starved, prostrate; he will notlift his hand to save his life; he can never think more. He sinks intodeep sleep and wakes with renewed youth, with hope, courage, fertile inresources, and keen for daring adventure.

A man must be able to escape from his cares and fears, as well as fromhunger and want of sleep; so that another Arabian proverb has its coarsetruth: "When the belly is full, it says to the head, Sing, fellow!" Theperfection of writing is when mind and body are both in key; when themind finds perfect obedience in the body. And wine, no doubt, and allfine food, as of delicate fruits, furnish some elemental wisdom. And thefire, too, as it burns in the chimney; for I fancy that my logs, which[Pg 251]have grown so long in sun and wind by Walden, are a kind of muses. So ofall the particulars of health and exercise, and fit nutriment, andtonics. Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry andfine sentiment in a chest of tea.

2. The experience of writing letters is one of the keys to themodusof inspiration. When we have ceased for a long time to have any fulnessof thoughts that once made a diary a joy as well as a necessity, andhave come to believe that an image or a happy turn of expression is nolonger at our command, in writing a letter to a friend we may find thatwe rise to thought and to a cordial power of expression that costs noeffort, and it seems to us that this facility may be indefinitelyapplied and resumed. The wealth of the mind in this respect of seeing islike that of a looking-glass, which is never tired or worn by anymultitude of objects which it reflects. You may carry it all round theworld, it is ready and perfect as ever for new millions.

3. Another consideration, though it will not so much interest young men,will cheer the heart of older scholars, namely, that there is diurnaland secular rest. As there is this daily renovation of sensibility, soit sometimes, if rarely, happens that after a season of decay oreclipse, darkening months or years, the faculties revive to theirfullest force. One of the best facts I know in metaphysical science is[Pg 252]Niebuhr's joyful record that, after his genius for interpreting historyhad failed him for several years, this divination returned to him. Asthis rejoiced me, so does Herbert's poem "The Flower." His health hadbroken down early, he had lost his muse, and in this poem he says:—

His poem called "The Forerunners" also has supreme interest. Iunderstand "The Harbingers" to refer to the signs of age and decay whichhe detects in himself, not only in his constitution, but in his fancyand his facility and grace in writing verse; and he signalizes hisdelight in this skill, and his pain that the Herricks, Lovelaces, andMarlows, or whoever else, should use the like genius in language tosensual purpose, and consoles himself that his own faith and the divinelife in him remain to him unchanged, unharmed.

4. The power of the will is sometimes sublime; and what is will for, ifit cannot help us in emergencies? Seneca says of an almost fatalsickness that befell him, "The thought of my father, who could not havesustained such a blow as my death, restrained me; I commanded myself to[Pg 253]live." Goethe said to Eckermann, "I work more easily when the barometeris high than when it is low. Since I know this, I endeavor, when thebarometer is low, to counteract the injurious effect by greaterexertion, and my attempt is successful."

"To the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift." Yes, forthey know how to give you in one moment the solution of the riddle youhave pondered for months. "Had I not lived with Mirabeau," says Dumont,"I never should have known all that can be done in one day, or, rather,in an interval of twelve hours. A day to him was of more value than aweek or a month to others. To-morrow to him was not the same impostor asto most others."

5. Plutarch affirms that "souls are naturally endowed with the facultyof prediction, and the chief cause that excites this faculty and virtueis a certain temperature of air and winds." My anchorite thought it "sadthat atmospheric influences should bring to our dust the communion ofthe soul with the Infinite." But I am glad that the atmosphere should bean excitant, glad to find the dull rock itself to be deluged withDeity,—to be theist, Christian, poetic. The fine influences of themorning few can explain, but all will admit. Goethe acknowledges them inthe poem in which he dislodges the nightingale from her place as Leaderof the Muses.[Pg 254]

The French have a proverb to the effect that not the day only, but allthings have their morning,—"Il n'y a que le matin en touteschoses." And it is a primal rule to defend your morning, to keep allits dews on, and with fine foresight to relieve it from any jangle ofaffairs, even from the question, Which task? I remember a capitalprudence of old President Quincy, who told me that he never went to bedat night until he had laid out the studies for the next morning. Ibelieve that in our good days a well-ordered mind has a new thoughtawaiting it every morning. And hence, eminently thoughtful men, from thetime of Pythagoras down, have insisted on an hour of solitude every dayto meet their own mind, and learn what oracle it has to impart. If a newview of life or mind gives us joy, so does new arrangement. I don't knowbut we take as much delight in finding the right place for an oldobservation, as in a new thought.[Pg 256]

6. Solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet anddreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, thesummer dawns, the October woods! I confide that my reader knows thesedelicious secrets, has perhaps

Are you poetical, impatient of trade, tired of labor and affairs? Do youwant Monadnoc, Agiocochook,—or Helvellyn, or Plinlimmon, dear toEnglish song, in your closet? Caerleon, Provence, Ossian, and Cadwallon?Tie a couple of strings across a board and set it in your window, andyou have an instrument which no artist's harp can rival. It needs noinstructed ear; if you have sensibility, it admits you to sacredinteriors; it has the sadness of nature, yet, at the changes, tones oftriumph and festal notes ringing out all measures of loftiness. "Did younever observe," says Gray, "'while rocking winds are piping loud,' thatpause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in ashrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Æolian harp? I doassure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit."Perhaps you can recall a delight like it, which spoke to the eye, whenyou have stood by a lake in the woods, in summer, and saw where littleflaws of wind whip spots or patches of still water into fleets ofripples, so sudden, so slight, so spiritual, that it was more like the[Pg 257]rippling of the Aurora Borealis, at night, than any spectacle of day.

7. But the solitude of nature is not so essential as solitude of habit.I have found my advantage in going in summer to a country inn, in winterto a city hotel, with a task which would not prosper at home. I thussecured a more absolute seclusion; for it is almost impossible for ahousekeeper, who is in the country a small farmer, to excludeinterruptions, and even necessary orders, though I bar out by system allI can, and resolutely omit, to my constant damage, all that can beomitted. At home, the day is cut into short strips. In the hotel, I haveno hours to keep, no visits to make or receive, and I command anastronomic leisure. I forget rain, wind, cold, and heat. At home, Iremember in my library the wants of the farm, and have all too muchsympathy. I envy the abstraction of some scholars I have known, whocould sit on a curbstone in State Street, put up their back, and solvetheir problem. I have more womanly eyes. All the conditions must beright for my success, slight as that is. What untunes is as bad as whatcripples or stuns me. Novelty, surprise, change of scene, refresh theartist,—"break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms," asHafiz said. The sea-shore, and the taste of two metals in contact, andour enlarged powers in the presence, or rather at the approach and atthe departure of a friend, and the mixture of lie in truth, and the[Pg 258]experience of poetic creativeness which is not found in staying at home,nor yet in travelling, but in transitions from one to the other, whichmust therefore be adroitly managed to present as much transitionalsurface as possible,—these are the types or conditions of this power."A ride near the sea, a sail near the shore," said the ancient. SoMontaigne travelled with his books, but did not read in them. "LaNature aime les croisements," says Fourier.

I know there is room for whims here; but in regard to some apparenttrifles there is great agreement as to their annoyance. And the machinewith which we are dealing is of such an inconceivable delicacy thatwhims also must be respected. Fire must lend its aid. We not only wanttime, but warm time. George Sand says, "I have no enthusiasm for naturewhich the slightest chill will not instantly destroy." And I rememberthat Thoreau, with his robust will, yet found certain trifles disturbingthe delicacy of that health which composition exacted,—namely, theslightest irregularity, even to the drinking too much water on thepreceding day. Even a steel pen is a nuisance to some writers. Some ofus may remember, years ago, in the English journals, the petition,signed by Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, and other writers inLondon, against the license of the organ-grinders, who infested thestreets near their houses, to levy on them blackmail.[Pg 259]

Certain localities, as mountain-tops, the sea-side, the shores of riversand rapid brooks, natural parks of oak and pine, where the ground issmooth and unencumbered, are excitants of the muse. Every artist knowswell some favorite retirement. And yet the experience of some goodartists has taught them to prefer the smallest and plainest chamber,with one chair and table, and with no outlook, to these picturesqueliberties. William Blake said, "Natural objects always did and doweaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me." And Sir JoshuaReynolds had no pleasure in Richmond; he used to say "the human face washis landscape." These indulgences are to be used with great caution.Allston rarely left his studio by day. An old friend took him, one fineafternoon, a spacious circuit into the country, and he painted two orthree pictures as the fruits of that drive. But he made it a rule not togo to the city on two consecutive days. One was rest; more was losttime. The times of force must be well husbanded, and the wise studentwill remember the prudence of Sir Tristram inMorte d'Arthur, who,having received from the fairy an enchantment of six hours of growingstrength every day, took care to fight in the hours when his strengthincreased; since from noon to night his strength abated. What prudence,again, does every artist, every scholar, need in the security of hiseasel or his desk! These must be remote from the work of the house, and[Pg 260]from all knowledge of the feet that come and go therein. Allston, it issaid, had two or three rooms in different parts of Boston, where hecould not be found. For the delicate muses lose their head, if theirattention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad intalking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your book-shelfand your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publishsome commandment, it makes you odious to men, and men odious to you, andyou shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to thelamp, and you must solve those questions though you die.

8. Conversation, which, when it is best, is a series of intoxications.Not Aristotle, not Kant or Hegel, but conversation, is the rightmetaphysical professor. This is the true school of philosophy,—thisthe college where you learn what thoughts are, what powers lurk in thosefugitive gleams, and what becomes of them; how they make history. A wiseman goes to this game to play upon others, and to be played upon, and atleast as curious to know what can be drawn from himself as what can bedrawn from them. For, in discourse with a friend, our thought, hithertowrapped in our consciousness, detaches itself, and allows itself to beseen as a thought, in a manner as new and entertaining to us as to ourcompanions. For provocation of thought, we use ourselves and use each[Pg 261]other. Some perceptions—I think the best—are granted to thesingle soul; they come from the depth, and go to the depth, and are thepermanent and controlling ones. Others it takes two to find. We must bewarmed by the fire of sympathy to be brought into the right conditionsand angles of vision. Conversation; for intellectual activity iscontagious. We are emulous. If the tone of the companion is higher thanours, we delight in rising to it. 'Tis a historic observation that awriter must find an audience up to his thought, or he will no longercare to impart it, but will sink to their level, or be silent. Homersaid, "When two come together, one apprehends before the other"; but itis because one thought well that the other thinks better: and two men ofgood mind will excite each other's activity, each attempting still tocap the other's thought. In enlarged conversation we have suggestionsthat require new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts andsciences. By sympathy, each opens to the eloquence, and begins to seewith the eyes of his mind. We were all lonely, thoughtless; and now aprinciple appears to all: we see new relations, many truths; every mindseizes them as they pass; each catches by the mane one of these strongcoursers like horses of the prairie, and rides up and down in the worldof the intellect. We live day by day under the illusion that it is the[Pg 262]fact or event that imports, whilst really it is not that whichsignifies, but the use we put it to, or what we think of it. We esteemnations important, until we discover that a few individuals much moreconcern us; then, later, that it is not at last a few individuals, orany sacred heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, the large equalityto truth, of a single mind,—as if in the narrow walls of a humanheart the whole realm of truth, the world of morals, the tribunal by whichthe universe is judged, found room to exist.

9. New poetry; by which I mean chiefly, old poetry that is new to thereader. I have heard from persons who had practice in rhyming, that itwas sufficient to set them on writing verses, to read any originalpoetry. What is best in literature is the affirming, prophesying,spermatic words of men-making poets. Only that is poetry which cleansesand mans me.

Words used in a new sense, and figuratively, dart a delightful lustre;andevery word admits a new use, and hints ulterior meanings. Wehave not learned the law of the mind,—cannot control anddomesticate at will the high states of contemplation and continuousthought. "Neither by sea nor by land," said Pindar, "canst thou find theway to the Hyperboreans"; neither by idle wishing, nor by rule of threeor rule of thumb. Yet I find a mitigation or solace by providing always[Pg 263]a good book for my journeys, as Horace or Martial or Goethe,—somebook which lifts me quite out of prosaic surroundings, and from which Idraw some lasting knowledge. A Greek epigram out of the anthology, a verseof Herrick or Lovelace, are in harmony both with sense and spirit.

You shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels, nor Montaigne,nor the newest French book. You may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus,Hindoo mythology, and ethics. You may read Chaucer, Shakspeare, BenJonson, Milton,—and Milton's prose as his verse; read Collins andGray; read Hafiz and the Trouveurs; nay, Welsh and British mythology ofArthur, and (in your ear) Ossian; fact-books, which all geniuses prizeas raw material, and as antidote to verbiage and false poetry.Fact-books, if the facts be well and thoroughly told, are much morenearly allied to poetry than many books are that are written in rhyme.Only our newest knowledge works as a source of inspiration and thought,as only the outmost layer ofliber on the tree. Books of naturalscience, especially those written by the ancients,—geography, botany,agriculture, explorations of the sea, of meteors, of astronomy,—allthe better if written without literary aim or ambition. Every book is goodto read which sets the reader in a working mood. The deep book, nomatter how remote the subject, helps us best.[Pg 264]

Neither are these all the sources, nor can I name all. The receptivityis rare. The occasions or predisposing circumstances I could nevertabulate; but now one, now another landscape, form, color, or companion,or perhaps one kind of sounding word or syllable, "strikes the electricchain with which we are darkly bound," and it is impossible to detectand wilfully repeat the fine conditions to which we have owed ourhappiest frames of mind. The day is good in which we have had the mostperceptions. The analysis is the more difficult, because poppy-leavesare strewn when a generalization is made; for I can never remember thecircumstances to which I owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or putmyself in the conditions.

I value literary biography for the hints it furnishes from so manyscholars, in so many countries, of what hygiene, what ascetic, whatgymnastic, what social practices their experience suggested andapproved. They are, for the most part, men who needed only a littlewealth. Large estates, political relations, great hospitalities, wouldhave been impediments to them. They are men whom a book could entertain,a new thought intoxicate, and hold them prisoners for years perhaps.Aubrey and Burton and Wood tell me incidents which I find notinsignificant.[Pg 265]

These are some hints towards what is in all education a chief necessity,the right government, or, shall I not say, the right obedience to thepowers of the human soul. Itself is the dictator; the mind itself theawful oracle. All our power, all our happiness, consists in ourreception of its hints, which ever become clearer and grander as theyare obeyed.

[Pg 266]

[Pg 267]

GREATNESS.

THERE is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power andgoodness we have, so much more the energy of that aim. Every human beinghas a right to it, and in the pursuit we do not stand in each other'sway. For it has a long scale of degrees, a wide variety of views, andevery aspirant, by his success in the pursuit, does not hinder but helpshis competitors. I might call it completeness, but that islater,—perhaps adjourned for ages. I prefer to call it Greatness. Itis the fulfilment of a natural tendency in each man. It is a fruitfulstudy. It is the best tonic to the young soul. And no man is unrelated;therefore we admire eminent men, not for themselves, but asrepresentatives. It is very certain that we ought not to be, and shallnot be contented with any goal we have reached. Our aim is no less thangreatness; that which invites all, belongs to us all,—to which we areall sometimes untrue, cowardly, faithless, but of which we never quitedespair, and which, in every sane moment, we resolve to make our own. Itis also the only platform on which all men can meet. What anecdotes of[Pg 269]any man do we wish to hear or read? Only the best. Certainly not thosein which he was degraded to the level of dulness or vice, but those inwhich he rose above all competition by obeying a light that shone to himalone. This is the worthiest history of the world.

Greatness,—what is it? Is there not some injury to us, some insult inthe word? What we commonly call greatness is only such in our barbarousor infant experience. 'Tis not the soldier, not Alexander or Bonaparteor Count Moltke surely, who represent the highest force of mankind; notthe strong hand, but wisdom and civility, the creation of laws,institutions, letters, and art. These we call by distinction thehumanities; these, and not the strong arm and brave heart, which arealso indispensable to their defence. For the scholars represent theintellect, by which man is man; the intellect and the moralsentiment,—which in the last analysis can never be separated. Who candoubt the potency of an individual mind, who sees the shock given totorpid races—torpid for ages—by Mahomet; a vibration propagatedover Asia and Africa? What of Menu? what of Buddha? of Shakspeare? ofNewton? of Franklin?

There are certain points of identity in which these masters agree.Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears. The man in[Pg 270]the tavern maintains his opinion, though the whole crowd takes the otherside; we are at once drawn to him. The porter or truckman refuses areward for finding your purse, or for pulling you drowning out of theriver. Thereby, with the service, you have got a moral lift. You say ofsome new person, That man will go far,—for you see in his mannersthat the recognition of him by others is not necessary to him. And what abitter-sweet sensation when we have gone to pour out our acknowledgmentof a man's nobleness, and found him quite indifferent to our goodopinion! They may well fear Fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim;but he who rests on what he is, has a destiny above destiny, and canmake mouths at Fortune. If a man's centrality is incomprehensible to us,we may as well snub the sun. There is something in Archimedes or inLuther or Samuel Johnson that needs no protection. There is somewhat inthe true scholar which he cannot be laughed out of, nor be terrified orbought off from. Stick to your own; don't inculpate yourself in thelocal, social, or national crime, but follow the path your genius traceslike the galaxy of heaven, for you to walk in.

A sensible person will soon see the folly and wickedness of thinking toplease. Sensible men are very rare. A sensible man does not brag, avoidsintroducing the names of his creditable companions, omits himself ashabitually as another man obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is[Pg 271]content with putting his fact or theme simply on its ground. You shallnot tell me that your commercial house, your partners, or yourself areof importance; you shall not tell me that you have learned to know men;you shall make me feel that; your saying so unsays it. You shall notenumerate your brilliant acquaintances, nor tell me by their titles whatbooks you have read. I am to infer that you keep good company by yourbetter information and manners, and to infer your reading from thewealth and accuracy of your conversation.

Young men think that the manly character requires that they should go toCalifornia, or to India, or into the army. When they have learned thatthe parlor and the college and the counting-room demand as much courageas the sea or the camp, they will be willing to consult their ownstrength and education in their choice of place.

There are to each function and department of nature supplementary men:to geology, sinewy, out-of-doors men, with a taste for mountains androcks, a quick eye for differences and for chemical changes. Give such,first, a course in chemistry, and then a geological survey. Others finda charm and a profession in the natural history of man and the mammalia,or related animals; others in ornithology, or fishes, or insects; othersin plants; others in the elements of which the whole world is made.[Pg 272]These lately have stimulus to their study through the extraordinaryrevelations of the spectroscope that the sun and the planets are made inpart or in whole of the same elements as the earth is. Then there is theboy who is born with a taste for the sea, and must go thither if he hasto run away from his father's house to the forecastle; another longs fortravel in foreign lands; another will be a lawyer; another, anastronomer; another, a painter, sculptor, architect, or engineer. Thusthere is not a piece of nature in any kind, but a man is born, who, ashis genius opens, aims slower or faster to dedicate himself to that.Then there is the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the orator, theclergyman, the physician. 'Tis gratifying to see this adaptation of manto the world, and to every part and particle of it.

Many readers remember that Sir Humphry Davy said, when he was praisedfor his important discoveries, "My best discovery was Michael Faraday."In 1848 I had the privilege of hearing Professor Faraday deliver, in theRoyal Institution in London, a lecture on what he calledDiamagnetism,—by which he meantcross-magnetism; and he showedus various experiments on certain gases, to prove that whilst, ordinarily,magnetism of steel is from north to south, in other substances, gases,it acts from east to west. And further experiments led him to the theory[Pg 273]that every chemical substance would be found to have its own, and adifferent, polarity. I do not know how far his experiments and othershave been pushed in this matter, but one fact is clear to me, thatdiamagnetism is a law of themind, to the full extent of Faraday'sidea; namely, that every mind has a new compass, a new north, a newdirection of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every othermind;—as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a newcountenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character.Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moralsentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading himin a new path, and, the more it is trusted, separates and signalizeshim, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We callthis specialty thebias of each individual. And none of us will everaccomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens tothis whisper which is heard by him alone. Swedenborg called it theproprium,—not a thought shared with others, but constitutionalto the man. A point of education that I can never too much insist upon isthis tenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, andthat it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops andattains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle,which points always in one direction to his proper path, with more or[Pg 274]less variation from any other man's. He is never happy nor strong untilhe finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns towatch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have theentire assurance of his own mind. And in this self-respect, orhearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may say, orneed never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect,genius; in practice, talent;—not to imitate or surpass aparticular man inhis way, but to bring out your own new way; toeach his own method, style, wit, eloquence. 'Tis easy for a commander tocommand. Clinging to Nature, or to that province of nature which heknows, he makes no mistakes, but works after her laws and at her ownpace, so that his doing, which is perfectly natural, appears miraculousto dull people. Montluc, the great Marshal of France, says of theGenoese admiral, Andrew Doria, "It seemed as if the sea stood in awe ofthis man." And a kindred genius, Nelson, said, "I feel that I am fitterto do the action than to describe it." Therefore I will say that anothertrait of greatness is facility.

This necessity of resting on the real, of speakingyour privatethought and experience, few young men apprehend. Set ten men to writetheir journal for one day, and nine of them will leave out their thought,or proper result,—that is, their net experience,—and lose[Pg 275]themselves in misreporting the supposed experience of other people.Indeed, I think it an essential caution to young writers, that theyshall not in their discourse leave out the one thing which the discoursewas written to say. Let that belief which you hold alone, have freecourse. I have observed that, in all public speaking, the rule of theorator begins, not in the array of his facts, but when his deepconviction, and the right and necessity he feels to convey thatconviction to his audience,—when these shine and burn in his address;when the thought which he stands for gives its own authority tohim,—adds to him a grander personality, gives him valor, breadth, andnew intellectual power, so that not he, but mankind, seems to speakthrough his lips. There is a certain transfiguration; all great oratorshave it, and men who wish to be orators simulate it.

If we should ask ourselves what is this self-respect,—it would carryus to the highest problems. It is our practical perception of the Deity inman. It has its deep foundations in religion. If you have ever known agood mind among the Quakers, you will have foundthat is the elementof their faith. As they express it, it might be thus: "I do not pretendto any commandment or large revelation, but if at any time I form someplan, propose a journey, or a course of conduct, I perhaps find a silentobstacle in my mind that I cannot account for. Very well,—I let it[Pg 276]lie, thinking it may pass away, but if it do not pass away, I yield to it,obey it. You ask me to describe it. I cannot describe it. It is not anoracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, nor a law; it is too simple to bedescribed, it is but a grain of mustard-seed, but such as it is, it issomething which the contradiction of all mankind could not shake, andwhich the consent of all mankind could not confirm."

You are rightly fond of certain books or men that you have found toexcite your reverence and emulation. But none of these can compare withthe greatness of that counsel which is open to you in happy solitude. Imean that there is for you the following of an inward leader,—a slowdiscrimination that there is for each a Best Counsel which enjoins thefit word and the fit act for every moment. And the path of each pursuedleads to greatness. How grateful to find in man or woman a new emphasisof their own.

But if the first rule is to obey your native bias, to accept that workfor which you were inwardly formed, the second rule is concentration,which doubles its force. Thus if you are a scholar, be that. The samelaws hold for you as for the laborer. The shoemaker makes a good shoebecause he makes nothing else. Let the student mind his own charge;sedulously wait every morning for the news concerning the structure ofthe world which the spirit will give him.[Pg 277]

No way has been found for making heroism easy, even for the scholar.Labor, iron labor, is for him. The world was created as an audience forhim; the atoms of which it is made are opportunities. Read theperformance of Bentley, of Gibbon, of Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hilaire,Laplace. "He can toil terribly," said Cecil of Sir Walter Raleigh. Thesefew words sting and bite and lash us when we are frivolous. Let us getout of the way of their blows, by making them true of ourselves. Thereis so much to be done that we ought to begin quickly to bestirourselves. This day-labor of ours, we confess, has hitherto a certainemblematic air, like the annual ploughing and sowing of the Emperor ofChina. Let us make it an honest sweat. Let the scholar measure his valorby his power to cope with intellectual giants. Leave others to countvotes and calculate stocks. His courage is to weigh Plato, judgeLaplace, know Newton, Faraday, judge of Darwin, criticise Kant andSwedenborg, and on all these arouse the central courage of insight. Thescholar's courage should be as terrible as the Cid's, though it grow outof spiritual nature, not out of brawn. Nature, when she adds difficulty,adds brain.

With this respect to the bias of the individual mind, add, what isconsistent with it, the most catholic receptivity for the genius ofothers. The day will come when no badge, uniform, or medal will be worn;[Pg 278]when the eye, which carries in it planetary influences from all thestars, will indicate rank fast enough by exerting power. For it is truethat the stratification of crusts in geology is not more precise thanthe degrees of rank in minds. A man will say: 'I am born to thisposition; I must take it, and neither you nor I can help or hinder me.Surely, then, I need not fret myself to guard my own dignity.' The greatman loves the conversation or the book that convicts him, not that whichsoothes or flatters him. He makes himself of no reputation; he concealshis learning, conceals his charity. For the highest wisdom does notconcern itself with particular men, but with man enamored with the lawand the Eternal Source. Say with Antoninus, "If the picture is good, whocares who made it? What matters it by whom the good is done, by yourselfor another?" If it is the truth, what matters who said it? If it wasright, what signifies who did it? All greatness is in degree, and thereis more above than below. Where were your own intellect, if greater hadnot lived? And do you know what the right meaning of Fame is? 'Tis thatsympathy, rather that fine element by which the good become partners ofthe greatness of their superiors.

Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness ofhumility. No aristocrat, no prince born to the purple, can begin to[Pg 279]compare with the self-respect of the saint. Why is he so lowly, but thathe knows that he can well afford it, resting on the largeness of God inhim? I have read in an old book that Barcena, the Jesuit, confessed toanother of his order that when the Devil appeared to him in his cell,one night, out of his profound humility he rose up to meet him, andprayed him to sit down in his chair, for he was more worthy to sit therethan himself.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man Imeet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. Thepopulace will say, with Horne Tooke, "If you would be powerful, pretendto be powerful." I prefer to say, with the old Hebrew prophet, "Seekestthou great things?—seek them not"; or, what was said of the Spanishprince, "The more you took from him, the greater he appeared,"Plus onlui ôte, plus il est grand.

Scintillations of greatness appear here and there in men of unequalcharacter, and are by no means confined to the cultivated and so-calledmoral class. 'Tis easy to draw traits from Napoleon, who was notgenerous nor just, but was intellectual, and knew the law of things.Napoleon commands our respect by his enormous self-trust,—the habitof seeing with his own eyes, never the surface, but to the heart of the[Pg 280]matter, whether it was a road, a cannon, a character, an officer, or aking,—and by the speed and security of his action in the premises,always new. He has left a library of manuscripts, a multitude ofsayings, every one of widest application. He was a man who always fellon his feet. When one of his favorite schemes missed, he had the facultyof taking up his genius, as he said, and of carrying it somewhere else."Whatever they may tell you, believe that one fights with cannon as withfists; when once the fire is begun, the least want of ammunition renderswhat you have done already useless." I find it easy to translate all histechnics into all of mine, and his official advices are to me moreliterary and philosophical than the memoirs of the Academy. His adviceto his brother, King Joseph of Spain, was: "I have only one counsel foryou,—Be Master." Depth of intellect relieves even the inkof crime with a fringe of light. We perhaps look on its crimes asexperiments of a universal student; as he may read any book who readsall books, and as the English judge in old times, when learning wasrare, forgave a culprit who could read and write. 'Tis difficult to findgreatness pure. Well, I please myself with its diffusion,—to finda spark of true fire amid much corruption. It is some guaranty, I hope,for the health of the soul which has this generous blood. How many men,detested in contemporary hostile history, of whom, now that the mists[Pg 281]have rolled away, we have learned to correct our old estimates, and tosee them as, on the whole, instruments of great benefit. Diderot was nomodel, but unclean as the society in which he lived; yet was he thebest-natured man in France, and would help any wretch at a pinch. Hishumanity knew no bounds. A poor scribbler who had written a lampoonagainst him, and wished to dedicate it to a pious Duc d'Orleans, camewith it in his poverty to Diderot, and Diderot, pitying the creature,wrote the dedication for him, and so raised five-and-twenty louis tosave his famishing lampooner alive.

Meantime we hate snivelling. I do not wish you to surpass others in anynarrow or professional or monkish way. We like the natural greatness ofhealth and wild power. I confess that I am as much taken by it in boys,and sometimes in people not normal, nor educated, nor presentable, norchurch-members,—even in persons open to the suspicion of irregularand immoral living,—in Bohemians,—as in more orderlyexamples. For we must remember that in the lives of soldiers, sailors,and men of large adventure, many of the stays and guards of ourhousehold life are wanting, and yet the opportunities and incentives tosublime daring and performance are often close at hand. We must havesome charity for the sense of the people which admires natural power,[Pg 282]and will elect it over virtuous men who have less. It has this excuse,that natural is really allied to moral power, and may always be expectedto approach it by its own instincts. Intellect at least is not stupid,and will see the force of morals over men, if it does not itself obey.Henry VII. of England was a wise king. When Gerald, Earl of Kildare, whowas in rebellion against him, was brought to London, and examined beforethe Privy Council, one said, "All Ireland cannot govern this Earl.""Then let this Earl govern all Ireland," replied the King.

'Tis noted of some scholars, like Swift, and Gibbon and Donne, that theypretended to vices which they had not, so much did they hate hypocrisy.William Blake, the artist, frankly says, "I never knew a bad man in whomthere was not something very good." Bret Harte has pleased himself withnoting and recording the sudden virtue blazing in the wild reprobates ofthe ranches and mines of California.

Men are ennobled by morals and by intellect; but those two elements knoweach other and always beckon to each other, until at last they meet inthe man, if he is to be truly great. The man who sells you a lamp showsyou that the flame of oil, which contented you before, casts a strongshade in the path of the petroleum which he lights behind it; and thisagain casts a shadow in the path of the electric light. So does[Pg 283]intellect when brought into the presence of character; character putsout that light. Goethe, in his correspondence with his Grand Duke ofWeimar, does not shine. We can see that the Prince had the advantage ofthe Olympian genius. It is more plainly seen in the correspondencebetween Voltaire and Frederick of Prussia. Voltaire is brilliant,nimble, and various, but Frederick has the superior tone. But it iscurious that Byronwrites down to Scott; Scott writes up to him. TheGreeks surpass all men till they face the Romans, when Roman characterprevails over Greek genius. Whilst degrees of intellect interest onlyclasses of men who pursue the same studies, as chemists or astronomers,mathematicians or linguists, and have no attraction for the crowd, thereare always men who have a more catholic genius, are really great as men,and inspire universal enthusiasm. A great style of hero draws equallyall classes, all the extremes of society, till we say the very dogsbelieve in him. We have had such examples in this country, in DanielWebster, Henry Clay, and the seamen's preacher, Father Taylor; inEngland, Charles James Fox; in Scotland, Robert Burns; and in France,though it is less intelligible to us, Voltaire. Abraham Lincoln is perhapsthe most remarkable example of this class that we have seen,—aman who was at home and welcome with the humblest, and with a spirit anda practical vein in the times of terror that commanded the admiration of[Pg 284]the wisest. His heart was as great as the world, but there was no roomin it to hold the memory of a wrong.

These may serve as local examples to indicate a magnetism which isprobably known better and finer to each scholar in the little Olympus ofhis own favorites, and which makes him require geniality and humanity inhis heroes. What are these but the promise and the preparation of a daywhen the air of the world shall be purified by nobler society; when themeasure of greatness shall be usefulness in the highestsense,—greatness consisting in truth, reverence, and good-will?

Life is made of illusions, and a very common one is the opinion you hearexpressed in every village: 'O yes, if I lived in New York orPhiladelphia, Cambridge or New Haven or Boston or Andover there might befit society; but it happens that there are no fine young men, nosuperior women in my town.' You may hear this every day; but it is ashallow remark. Ah! have you yet to learn that the eye altering altersall; "that the world is an echo which returns to each of us what wesay"? 'Tis not examples of greatness, but sensibility to see them, thatis wanting. The good botanist will find flowers between the streetpavements, and any man filled with an idea or a purpose will findexamples and illustrations and coadjutors wherever he goes. Wit is amagnet to find wit, and character to find character. Do you not know[Pg 285]that people are as those with whom they converse? And if all or any areheavy to me, that fact accuses me. Why complain, as if a man's debt tohis inferiors were not at least equal to his debt to his superiors? Ifmen were equals, the waters would not move; but the difference of levelwhich makes Niagara a cataract, makes eloquence, indignation, poetry, inhim who finds there is much to communicate. With self-respect, then,there must be in the aspirant the strong fellow-feeling, the humanity,which makes men of all classes warm to him as their leader andrepresentative.

We are thus forced to express our instinct of the truth, by exposing thefailures of experience. The man whom we have not seen, in whom no regardof self degraded the adorer of the laws,—who by governing himselfgoverned others; sportive in manner, but inexorable in act; who seeslongevity in his cause; whose aim is always distinct to him; who issuffered to be himself in society; who carries fate in his eye;—he itis whom we seek, encouraged in every good hour that here or hereafter heshall be found.[Pg 286]

[Pg 287]

IMMORTALITY.

IN the year 626 of our era, when Edwin, the Anglo-Saxon king, wasdeliberating on receiving the Christian missionaries, one of his noblessaid to him: "The present life of man, O king, compared with that spaceof time beyond, of which we have no certainty, reminds me of one of yourwinter feasts, where you sit with your generals and ministers. Thehearth blazes in the middle and a grateful heat is spread around, whilestorms of rain and snow are raging without. Driven by the chillingtempest, a little sparrow enters at one door and flies delighted aroundus till it departs through the other. Whilst it stays in our mansion itfeels not the winter storm; but when this short moment of happiness hasbeen enjoyed, it is forced again into the same dreary tempest from whichit had escaped, and we behold it no more. Such is the life of man, andwe are as ignorant of the state which preceded our present existence asof that which will follow it. Things being so I feel that if this newfaith can give us more certainty, it deserves to be received."[Pg 289]

In the first records of a nation in any degree thoughtful andcultivated, some belief in the life beyond life would of course besuggested. The Egyptian people furnish us the earliest details of anestablished civilization, and I read, in the second book of Herodotus,this memorable sentence: "The Egyptians are the first of mankind whohave affirmed the immortality of the soul." Nor do I read it with lessinterest, that the historian connects it presently with the doctrine ofmetempsychosis; for I know well that, where this belief once existed, itwould necessarily take a base form for the savage and a pure form forthe wise;—so that I only look on the counterfeit as a proof that thegenuine faith had been there. The credence of men, more than race orclimate, makes their manners and customs; and the history of religionmay be read in the forms of sepulture. There never was a time when thedoctrine of a future life was not held. Morals must be enjoined, butamong rude men moral judgments were rudely figured under the forms ofdogs and whips, or of an easier and more plentiful life after death. Andas the savage could not detach in his mind the life of the soul from thebody, he took great care for his body. Thus the whole life of man in thefirst ages was ponderously determined on death; and, as we know, thepolity of the Egyptians, the by-laws of towns, of streets and houses,respected burial. It made every man an undertaker, and the priesthood a[Pg 290]senate of sextons. Every palace was a door to a pyramid; a king or richman was apyramidaire. The labor of races was spent on theexcavation of catacombs. The chief end of man being to be buried well, thearts most in request were masonry and embalming, to give imperishability tothe corpse.

The Greek, with his perfect senses and perceptions, had quite anotherphilosophy. He loved life and delighted in beauty. He set his wit andtaste, like elastic gas, under these mountains of stone, and liftedthem. He drove away the embalmers; he built no more of those dolefulmountainous tombs. He adorned death, brought wreaths of parsley andlaurel; made it bright with games of strength and skill, andchariot-races. He looked at death only as the distributor ofimperishable glory. Nothing can excel the beauty of his sarcophagus. Hecarried his arts to Rome, and built his beautiful tombs at Pompeii. Thepoet Shelley says of these delicately carved white marble cells, "theyseem not so much tombs, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits." Inthe same spirit the modern Greeks, in their songs, ask that they may beburied where the sun can see them, and that a little window may be cutin the sepulchre, from which the swallow might be seen when it comesback in the spring.

Christianity brought a new wisdom. But learning depends on the learner.[Pg 291]No more truth can be conveyed than the popular mind can bear; and thebarbarians who received the cross took the doctrine of the resurrectionas the Egyptians took it. It was an affair of the body, and narrowedagain by the fury of sect; so that grounds were sprinkled with holywater to receive only orthodox dust; and to keep the body still moresacredly safe for resurrection, it was put into the walls of the church:and the churches of Europe are really sepulchres. I read at MelroseAbbey the inscription on the ruined gate:—

Meantime the true disciples saw through the letter the doctrine ofeternity which dissolved the poor corpse and nature also, and gavegrandeur to the passing hour. The most remarkable step in the religioushistory of recent ages is that made by the genius of Swedenborg, whodescribed the moral faculties and affections of man, with the hardrealism of an astronomer describing the suns and planets of our system,and explained his opinion of the history and destiny of souls in anarrative form, as of one who had gone in a trance into the society ofother worlds. Swedenborg described an intelligible heaven, by continuingthe like employments in the like circumstances as those we know,—men[Pg 292]in societies, in houses, towns, trades,entertainments,—continuations of our earthly experience. We shallpass to the future existence as we enter into an agreeable dream. Allnature will accompany us there. Milton anticipated the leading thoughtof Swedenborg, when he wrote, in "Paradise Lost,"—

Swedenborg had a vast genius, and announced many things true andadmirable, though always clothed in somewhat sad and Stygian colors.These truths, passing out of his system into general circulation, arenow met with every day, qualifying the views and creeds of all churches,and of men of no church. And I think we are all aware of a revolution inopinion. Sixty years ago, the books read, the sermons and prayers heard,the habits of thought of religious persons, were all directed on death.All were under the shadow of Calvinism and of the Roman Catholicpurgatory, and death was dreadful. The emphasis of all the good booksgiven to young people was on death. We were all taught that we were bornto die; and over that, all the terrors that theology could gather fromsavage nations were added to increase the gloom. A great change hasoccurred. Death is seen as a natural event, and is met with firmness. A[Pg 293]wise man in our time caused to be written on his tomb, "Think onliving." That inscription describes a progress in opinion. Cease fromthis antedating of your experience. Sufficient to to-day are the dutiesof to-day. Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on thework before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour'sduties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that followit.

A man of thought is willing to die, willing to live; I suppose, becausehe has seen the thread on which the beads are strung, and perceived thatit reaches up and down, existing quite independently of the presentillusions. A man of affairs is afraid to die, is pestered with terrors,because he has not this vision, and is the victim of those who havemoulded the religious doctrines into some neat and plausible system, asCalvinism, Romanism, or Swedenborgism, for household use. It is the fearof the young bird to trust its wings. The experiences of the soul willfast outgrow this alarm. The saying of Marcus Antoninus it were hard tomend: "It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there benone." I think all sound minds rest on a certain preliminary conviction,namely, that if it be best that conscious personal life shall continue,it will continue; if not best, then it will not: and we, if we saw the[Pg 294]whole, should of course see that it was better so. Schiller said, "Whatis so universal as death, must be benefit." A friend of Michel Angelosaying to him that his constant labor for art must make him think ofdeath with regret, "By no means," he said; "for if life be a pleasure,yet since death also is sent by the hand of the same Master, neithershould that displease us." Plutarch, in Greece, has a deep faith thatthe doctrine of the Divine Providence and that of the immortality of thesoul rest on one and the same basis. Hear the opinion of Montesquieu:"If the immortality of the soul were an error, I should be sorry not tobelieve it. I avow that I am not so humble as the atheist; I know nothow they think, but for me, I do not wish to exchange the idea ofimmortality against that of the beatitude of one day. I delight inbelieving myself as immortal as God himself. Independently of revealedideas, metaphysical ideas give me a vigorous hope of my eternalwell-being, which I would never renounce."[6]

I was lately told of young children who feel a certain terror at theassurance of life without end. "What! will it never stop?" the child said;"what! never die?never, never? It makes me feel so tired." AndI have in mind the expression of an older believer, who once said to me,"The thought that this frail being is never to end is so overwhelming[Pg 295]that my only shelter is God's presence." This disquietude only marks thetransition. The healthy state of mind is the love of life. What is sogood, let it endure.

I find that what is called great and powerful life,—theadministration of large affairs, in commerce, in the courts, in thestate,—is prone to develop narrow and special talent; but, unlesscombined with a certain contemplative turn, a taste for abstract truth,for the moral laws,—does not build up faith, or lead to content.There is a profound melancholy at the base of men of active and powerfultalent, seldom suspected. Many years ago, there were two men in theUnited States Senate, both of whom are now dead. I have seen them both;one of them I personally knew. Both were men of distinction, and took anactive part in the politics of their day and generation. They were menof intellect, and one of them, at a later period, gave to a friend thisanecdote: He said that when he entered the Senate he became in a shorttime intimate with one of his colleagues, and, though attentive enoughto the routine of public duty, they daily returned to each other, andspent much time in conversation on the immortality of the soul, andother intellectual questions, and cared for little else. When my friendat last left Congress, they parted, his colleague remaining there, and,as their homes were widely distant from each other, it chanced that he[Pg 296]never met him again, until, twenty-five years afterwards, they saw eachother, through open doors, at a distance, in a crowded reception at thePresident's house in Washington. Slowly they advanced towards eachother, as they could, through the brilliant company, and at lastmet,—said nothing, but shook hands long and cordially. At last hisfriend said, "Any light, Albert?" "None," replied Albert. "Any light,Lewis?" "None," replied he. They looked in each other's eyes silently,gave one more shake each to the hand he held, and thus parted for thelast time. Now I should say that the impulse which drew these minds tothis inquiry through so many years was a better affirmative evidencethan their failure to find a confirmation was negative. I ought to addthat, though men of good minds, they were both pretty strongmaterialists in their daily aims and way of life. I admit that you shallfind a good deal of scepticism in the streets and hotels and places ofcoarse amusement. But that is only to say that the practical facultiesare faster developed than the spiritual. Where there is depravity thereis a slaughter-house style of thinking. One argument of future life isthe recoil of the mind in such company,—our pain at everysceptical statement. The sceptic affirms that the universe is a nest ofboxes with nothing in the last box. All laughter at man is bitter, andputs us out of good activity. When Bonaparte insisted that the heart is[Pg 297]one of the entrails; that it is the pit of the stomach that moves theworld;—do we thank him for the gracious instruction? Our disgustis the protest of human nature against a lie.

The ground of hope is in the infinity of the world, which infinityreappears in every particle; the powers of all society in everyindividual, and of all mind in every mind. I know against allappearances that the universe can receive no detriment; that there is aremedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul. Here is thiswonderful thought. But whence came it? Who put it in the mind? It wasnot I, it was not you; it is elemental,—belongs to thought andvirtue, and whenever we have either, we see the beams of this light.When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government heimpresses his will in the structure of minds.

But proceeding to the enumeration of the few simple elements of thenatural faith, the first fact that strikes us is our delight inpermanence. All great natures are lovers of stability and permanence, asthe type of the Eternal. After science begins, belief of permanence mustfollow in a healthy mind. Things so attractive, designs so wise, thesecret workman so transcendently skilful that it tasks successivegenerations of observers only to find out, part with part, the delicatecontrivance and adjustment of a weed, of a moss, to its wants, growth,[Pg 298]and perpetuation, all these adjustments becoming perfectly intelligibleto our study,—and the contriver of it all forever hidden! To breathe,to sleep, is wonderful. But never to know the Cause, the Giver, andinfer his character and will! Of what import this vacant sky, thesepuffing elements, these insignificant lives full of selfish loves andquarrels and ennui? Everything is prospective, and man is to livehereafter. That the world is for his education is the only sane solutionof the enigma. And I think that the naturalist works not for himself,but for the believing mind, which turns his discoveries to revelations,receives them as private tokens of the grand good-will of the Creator.

The mind delights in immense time; delights in rocks, in metals, inmountain-chains, and in the evidence of vast geologic periods whichthese give; in the age of trees, say of the Sequoias, a few of whichwill span the whole history of mankind; in the noble toughness andimperishableness of the palm-tree, which thrives under abuse; delightsin architecture, whose building lasts so long,—"a house," saysRuskin, "is not in its prime until it is five hundred yearsold,"—and here are the Pyramids, which have as many thousands, andcromlechs and earth-mounds much older than these.

We delight in stability, and really are interested in nothing that ends.What lasts a century pleases us in comparison with what lasts an hour.[Pg 299]But a century, when we have once made it familiar and compared it with atrue antiquity, looks dwarfish and recent; and it does not help thematter adding numbers, if we see that it has an end, which it will reachjust as surely as the shortest. A candle a mile long or a hundred mileslong does not help the imagination; only a self-feeding fire, aninextinguishable lamp, like the sun and the star, that we have not yetfound date and origin for. But the nebular theory threatens theirduration also, bereaves them of this glory, and will make a shift to ekeout a sort of eternity by succession, as plants and animals do.

And what are these delights in the vast and permanent and strong, butapproximations and resemblances of what is entire and sufficing,creative and self-sustaining life? For the Creator keeps his word withus. These long-lived or long-enduring objects are to us, as we see them,only symbols of somewhat in us far longer-lived. Our passions, ourendeavors, have something ridiculous and mocking, if we come to so hastyan end. If not tobe, how like the bells of a fool is the trump offame! Nature does not, like the Empress Anne of Russia, call togetherall the architectural genius of the Empire to build and finish andfurnish a palace of snow, to melt again to water in the first thaw. Willyou, with vast cost and pains, educate your children to be adepts in[Pg 300]their several arts, and, as soon as they are ready to produce amasterpiece, call out a file of soldiers to shoot them down? We mustinfer our destiny from the preparation. We are driven by instinct tohive innumerable experiences, which are of no visible value, and whichwe may revolve through many lives before we shall assimilate or exhaustthem. Now there is nothing in nature capricious, or whimsical, oraccidental, or unsupported. Nature never moves by jumps, but always insteady and supported advances. The implanting of a desire indicates thatthe gratification of that desire is in the constitution of the creaturethat feels it; the wish for food, the wish for motion, the wish forsleep, for society, for knowledge, are not random whims, but grounded inthe structure of the creature, and meant to be satisfied by food, bymotion, by sleep, by society, by knowledge. If there is the desire tolive, and in larger sphere, with more knowledge and power, it is becauselife and knowledge and power are good for us, and we are the naturaldepositaries of these gifts. The love of life is out of all proportionto the value set on a single day, and seems to indicate, like all ourother experiences, a conviction of immense resources and possibilitiesproper to us, on which we have never drawn.

All the comfort I have found teaches me to confide that I shall not haveless in times and places that I do not yet know. I have known admirable[Pg 301]persons, without feeling that they exhaust the possibilities of virtueand talent. I have seen what glories of climate, of summer mornings andevenings, of midnight sky,—I have enjoyed the benefits of all thiscomplex machinery of arts and civilization, and its results of comfort.The good Power can easily provide me millions more as good. Shall I holdon with both hands to every paltry possession? All I have seen teachesme to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. Whatever it be whichthe great Providence prepares for us, it must be something large andgenerous, and in the great style of his works. The future must be up tothe style of our faculties,—of memory, of hope, of imagination, ofreason. I have a house, a closet which holds my books, a table, agarden, a field: are these, any or all, a reason for refusing the angelwho beckons me away,—as if there were no room or skill elsewhere thatcould reproduce for me as my like or my enlarging wants may require? Wewish to live for what is great, not for what is mean. I do not wish tolive for the sake of my warm house, my orchard, or my pictures. I do notwish to live to wear out my boots.

As a hint of endless being, we may rank that novelty which perpetuallyattends life. The soul does not age with the body. On the borders of thegrave, the wise man looks forward with equal elasticity of mind, or[Pg 302]hope; and why not, after millions of years, on the verge of still newerexistence?—for it is the nature of intelligent beings to be forevernew to life. Most men are insolvent, or promise by their countenance andconversation and by their early endeavor much more than they everperform,—suggesting a design still to be carried out; the man musthave new motives, new companions, new condition, and another term. Franklinsaid, "Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life. A manis not completely born until he has passed through death." Every reallyable man, in whatever direction he work,—a man of large affairs, aninventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,—if you talksincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as farshort of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, butthe perpetual promise of his Creator?

The fable of the Wandering Jew is agreeable to men, because they wantmore time and land in which to execute their thoughts. But a higherpoetic use must be made of the legend. Take us as we are, with ourexperience, and transfer us to a new planet, and let us digest for itsinhabitants what we could of the wisdom of this. After we have found ourdepth there, and assimilated what we could of the new experience,transfer us to a new scene. In each transfer we shall have acquired, by[Pg 303]seeing them at a distance, a new mastery of the old thoughts, in whichwe were too much immersed. In short, all our intellectual action, notpromises, but bestows a feeling of absolute existence. We are taken outof time and breathe a purer air. I know not whence we draw the assuranceof prolonged life, of a life which shoots that gulf we call death, andtakes hold of what is real and abiding, by so many claims as from ourintellectual history. Salt is a good preserver; cold is: but a truthcures the taint of mortality better, and "preserves from harm untilanother period." A sort of absoluteness attends all perception oftruth,—no smell of age, no hint of corruption. It is self-sufficing,sound, entire.

Lord Bacon said: "Some of the philosophers who were least divine deniedgenerally the immortality of the soul, yet came to this point, thatwhatsoever motions the spirit of man could act and perform without theorgans of the body might remain after death, which were only those ofthe understanding, and not of the affections; so immortal andincorruptible a thing did knowledge seem to them to be." And VanHelmont, the philosopher of Holland, drew his sufficient proof purelyfrom the action of the intellect. "It is my greatest desire," he said,"that it might be granted unto atheists to have tasted, at least but oneonly moment, what it is intellectually to understand; whereby they may[Pg 304]feel the immortality of the mind, as it were, by touching." A farmer, alaborer, a mechanic, is driven by his work all day, but it ends atnight; it has an end. But, as far as the mechanic or farmer is also ascholar or thinker, his work has no end. That which he has learned isthat there is much more to be learned. The wiser he is, he feels onlythe more his incompetence. "What we know is a point to what we do notknow." A thousand years,—tenfold, a hundred-fold his faculties, wouldnot suffice. The demands of his task are such that it becomesomnipresent. He studies in his walking, at his meals, in his amusements,even in his sleep. Montesquieu said, "The love of study is in us almostthe only eternal passion. All the others quit us in proportion as thismiserable machine which holds them approaches its ruin." "Art is long,"says the thinker, "and life is short." He is but as a fly or a worm tothis mountain, this continent, which his thoughts inhabit. It is aperception that comes by the activity of the intellect; never to thelazy or rusty mind. Courage comes naturally to those who have the habitof facing labor and danger, and who therefore know the power of theirarms and bodies; and courage or confidence in the mind comes to thosewho know by use its wonderful forces and inspirations and returns.Belief in its future is a reward kept only for those who use it. "Tome," said Goethe, "the eternal existence of my soul is proved from my[Pg 305]idea of activity. If I work incessantly till my death, nature is boundto give me another form of existence, when the present can no longersustain my spirit."

It is a proverb of the world that good-will makes intelligence, thatgoodness itself is an eye; and the one doctrine in which all religionsagree, is that new light is added to the mind in proportion as it usesthat which it has. "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever."

Ignorant people confound reverence for the intuitions with egotism.There is no confusion in the things themselves. Health of mind consistsin the perception of law. Its dignity consists in being under the law.Its goodness is the most generous extension of our private interests tothe dignity and generosity of ideas. Nothing seems to me so excellent asa belief in the laws. It communicates nobleness, and, as it were, anasylum in temples to the loyal soul.

I confess that everything connected with our personality fails. Naturenever spares the individual. We are always balked of a complete success.No prosperity is promised tothat. We have our indemnity only in thesuccess of that to which we belong.That is immortal and we onlythrough that.

The soul stipulates for no private good. That which is private I see notto be good. "If truth live, I live; if justice live, I live," said one[Pg 306]of the old saints, "and these by any man's suffering are enlarged andenthroned."

The moral sentiment measures itself by sacrifice. It risks or ruinsproperty, health, life itself, without hesitation, for its thought, andall men justify the man by their praise for this act. And Mahomet in thesame mind declared, "Not dead but living ye are to account all those whoare slain in the way of God."

On these grounds I think that wherever man ripens, this audacious beliefpresently appears,—in the savage, savagely; in the good, purely. Assoon as thought is exercised, this belief is inevitable; as soon asvirtue glows, this belief confirms itself. It is a kind of summary orcompletion of man. It cannot rest on a legend; it cannot be quoted fromone to another; it must have the assurance of a man's faculties thatthey can fill a larger theatre and a longer term than nature here allowshim. Goethe said: "It is to a thinking being quite impossible to thinkhimself non-existent, ceasing to think and live; so far does every onecarry in himself the proof of immortality, and quite spontaneously. Butso soon as the man will be objective and go out of himself, so soon ashe dogmatically will grasp a personal duration to bolster up in cockneyfashion that inward assurance, he is lost in contradiction." Thedoctrine is not sentimental, but is grounded in the necessities and[Pg 307]forces we possess. Nothing will hold but that which we must be and mustdo.

The revelation that is true is written on the palms of the hands, thethought of our mind, the desire of our heart, or nowhere. My idea ofheaven is that there is no melodrama in it at all; that it is whollyreal. Here is the emphasis of conscience and experience; this is nospeculation, but the most practical of doctrines. Do you think that theeternal chain of cause and effect which pervades nature, which threadsthe globes as beads on a string, leaves this out of itscircuit,—leaves out this desire of God and men as a waif and acaprice, altogether cheap and common, and falling without reason ormerit?

We live by desire to live; we live by choices; by will, by thought, byvirtue, by the vivacity of the laws which we obey, and obeying sharetheir life,—or we die by sloth, by disobedience, by losing hold oflife, which ebbs out of us. But whilst I find the signatures, the hintsand suggestions, noble and wholesome,—whilst I find that all theways of virtuous living lead upward and not downward,—yet it isnot my duty to prove to myself the immortality of the soul. Thatknowledge is hidden very cunningly. Perhaps the archangels cannot find[Pg 308]the secret of their existence, as the eye cannot see itself; but, endingor endless, to live whilst I live.

There is a drawback to the value of all statements of the doctrine; andI think that one abstains from writing or printing on the immortality ofthe soul, because, when he comes to the end of his statement, the hungryeyes that run through it will close disappointed; the listeners say,That is not here which we desire,—and I shall be as much wronged bytheir hasty conclusion, as they feel themselves wronged by my omissions.I mean that I am a better believer, and all serious souls are betterbelievers, in the immortality than we can give grounds for. The realevidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down inpropositions, and therefore Wordsworth's "Ode" is the best modern essayon the subject.

We cannot prove our faith by syllogisms. The argument refuses to form inthe mind. A conclusion, an inference, a grand augury, is ever hovering;but attempt to ground it, and the reasons are all vanishing andinadequate. You cannot make a written theory or demonstration of this asyou can an orrery of the Copernican astronomy. It must be sacredlytreated. Speak of the mount in the mount. Not by literature or theology,but only by rare integrity, by a man permeated and perfumed with airs ofheaven,—with manliest or womanliest enduring love,—can the[Pg 309]vision be clear to a use the most sublime. And hence the fact that inthe minds of men the testimony of a few inspired souls has had suchweight and penetration. You shall not say, "O my bishop, O my pastor, isthere any resurrection? What do you think? Did Dr. Channing believe thatwe should know each other? did Wesley? did Butler? did Fenelon?" Whatquestions are these! Go read Milton, Shakspeare, or any truly idealpoet. Read Plato, or any seer of the interior realities. Read St.Augustine, Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant. Let any master simply recite toyou the substantial laws of the intellect, and in the presence of thelaws themselves you will never ask such primary-school questions.

Is immortality only an intellectual quality, or, shall I say, only anenergy, there being no passive? He has it, and he alone, who gives lifeto all names, persons, things, where he comes. No religion, not thewildest mythology, dies for him; no art is lost. He vivifies what hetouches. Future state is an illusion for the ever-present state. It isnot length of life, but depth of life. It is not duration, but a takingof the soul out of time, as all high action of the mind does: when weare living in the sentiments we ask no questions about time. Thespiritual world takes place;—that which is always the same. But see[Pg 310]how the sentiment is wise. Jesus explained nothing, but the influence ofhim took people out of time, and they felt eternal. A great integrity makesus immortal; an admiration, a deep love, a strong will, arms us abovefear. It makes a day memorable. We say we lived years in that hour. Itis strange that Jesus is esteemed by mankind the bringer of the doctrineof immortality. He is never once weak or sentimental; he is veryabstemious of explanation, he never preaches the personal immortality;whilst Plato and Cicero had both allowed themselves to overstep thestern limits of the spirit, and gratify the people with that picture.

How ill agrees this majestical immortality of our religion with thefrivolous population! Will you build magnificently for mice? Will youoffer empires to such as cannot set a house or private affairs in order?Here are people who cannot dispose of a day; an hour hangs heavy ontheir hands; and will you offer them rolling ages without end? But thisis the way we rise. Within every man's thought is a higherthought,—within the character he exhibits to-day, a higher character.The youth puts off the illusions of the child, the man puts off theignorance and tumultuous passions of youth; proceeding thence puts offthe egotism of manhood, and becomes at last a public and universal soul.He is rising to greater heights, but also rising to realities; the outerrelations and circumstances dying out, he entering deeper into God, God[Pg 311]into him, until the last garment of egotism falls, and he is withGod,—shares the will and the immensity of the First Cause.

It is curious to find the selfsame feeling, that it is not immortality,but eternity,—not duration, but a state of abandonment to theHighest, and so the sharing of His perfection,—appearing in thefarthest east and west. The human mind takes no account of geography,language, or legends, but in all utters the same instinct.

Yama, the lord of Death, promised Nachiketas, the son of Gautama, togrant him three boons at his own choice. Nachiketas, knowing that hisfather Gautama was offended with him, said, "O Death! let Gautama beappeased in mind, and forget his anger against me: this I choose for thefirst boon." Yama said, "Through my favor, Gautama will remember theewith love as before." For the second boon, Nachiketas asks that the fireby which heaven is gained be made known to him; which also Yama allows,and says, "Choose the third boon, O Nachiketas!" Nachiketas said, thereis this inquiry. Some say the soul exists after the death of man; otherssay it does not exist. This I should like to know, instructed by thee.Such is the third of the boons. Yama said, "For this question, it wasinquired of old, even by the gods; for it is not easy to understand it.Subtle is its nature. Choose another boon, O Nachiketas! Do not compel[Pg 312]me to this." Nachiketas said, "Even by the gods was it inquired. And asto what thou sayest, O Death, that it is not easy to understand it,there is no other speaker to be found like thee. There is no other boonlike this." Yama said, "Choose sons and grandsons who may live a hundredyears; choose herds of cattle; choose elephants and gold and horses;choose the wide expanded earth, and live thyself as many years as thoulisteth. Or, if thou knowest a boon like this, choose it, together withwealth and far-extending life. Be a king, O Nachiketas! On the wideearth I will make thee the enjoyer of all desires. All those desiresthat are difficult to gain in the world of mortals, all those ask thou atthy pleasure;—those fair nymphs of heaven with their chariots, withtheir musical instruments; for the like of them are not to be gained bymen. I will give them to thee, but do not ask the question of the stateof the soul after death." Nachiketas said, "All those enjoyments are ofyesterday. With thee remain thy horses and elephants, with thee thedance and song. If we should obtain wealth, we live only as long as thoupleasest. The boon which I choose I have said." Yama said, "One thing isgood, another is pleasant. Blessed is he who takes the good, but he whochooses the pleasant loses the object of man. But thou, considering theobjects of desire, hast abandoned them. These two, ignorance (whose[Pg 313]object is what is pleasant) and knowledge (whose object is what isgood), are known to be far asunder, and to lead to different goals.Believing this world exists, and not the other, the careless youth issubject to my sway. That knowledge for which thou hast asked is not tobe obtained by argument. I know worldly happiness is transient, for thatfirm one is not to be obtained by what is not firm. The wise, by meansof the union of the intellect with the soul, thinking him whom it ishard to behold, leaves both grief and joy. Thee, O Nachiketas! I believea house whose door is open to Brahma. Brahma the supreme, whoever knowshim, obtains whatever he wishes. The soul is not born; it does not die;it was not produced from any one. Nor was any produced from it. Unborn,eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain; subtler than what issubtle, greater than what is great, sitting it goes far, sleeping itgoes everywhere. Thinking the soul as unbodily among bodies, firm amongfleeting things, the wise man casts off all grief. The soul cannot begained by knowledge, not by understanding, not by manifold science. Itcan be obtained by the soul by which it is desired. It reveals its owntruths."

THE END.

Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.[Pg 314]