Essays, Second Series ..........................................................................................................................................1

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired

pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are

beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual.

Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest

remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited

judgment of color or form, which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of

the doctrine of beauty as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the

instant dependence of form upon soul. There is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We were put into our

bodies, as fire is put into a pan to be carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and

the organ, much less is the latter the germination of the former. So in regard to other forms, the intellectual

men do not believe in any essential dependence of the material world on thought and volition. Theologians

think it a pretty aircastle to talk of the Spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they

prefer to come again to the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a civil

and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own

experience. But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or shall I

say the quadruple or the centuple or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact; Orpheus,

Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and

poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torchbearers, but children of the

fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted and at two or three removes, when we know least

about it. And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time and its creatures floweth are

intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the

man of Beauty; to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time.

The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the

complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common wealth. The young man reveres men of

genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives,

but they more. Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is

beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his contemporaries by truth and by his art, but

with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth and

stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is rare. I know not how it is that we need

an interpreter, but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of

their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. There is no man who does

not anticipate a supersensual utility in the sun and stars, earth and water. These stand and wait to render him a

peculiar service. But there is some obstruction or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does not

suffer them to yield the due effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every

touch should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist that he could report in conversation what had

befallen him. Yet, in our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the senses, but not

enough to reach the quick and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. The poet is the person in

whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others

dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest

For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system

of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or,

theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer, and the

Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These

three are equal. Each is that which he is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the

world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful

things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is

emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill

and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact that some

men, namely poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with

those whose province is action but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer's words are as costly and

admirable to Homer as Agamemnon's victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or the

sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the

others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the

studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate

into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but

we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.

The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though

imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable,

and must as much appear as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only

doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which

he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of

men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I took part in a conversation the

other day concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a musicbox

of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill and command of language, we could not sufficiently praise.

But when the question arose whether he was not only a lyrist but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is

plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man. He does not stand out of our low limitations, like a Chimborazo

under the line, running up from the torrid Base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage

of every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius is the landscapegarden of a modern house,

adorned with fountains and statues, with wellbred men and women standing and sitting in the walks and

terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the groundtone of conventional life. Our poets are men of

talents who sing, and not the children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of the verses is

For it is not metres, but a metremaking argument that makes a poem,a thought so passionate and alive

that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.

The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the

form. The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with

him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For the experience of each new age requires a new

confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet. I remember when I was young how much I was

moved one morning by tidings that genius had appeared in a youth who sat near me at table. He had left his

work and gone rambling none knew whither, and had written hundreds of lines, but could not tell whether

that which was in him was therein told; he could tell nothing but that all was changed,man, beast, heaven,

earth and sea. How gladly we listened! how credulous! Society seemed to be compromised. We sat in the

aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all the stars. Boston seemed to be at twice the distance it had the

night before, or was much farther than that. Rome,what was Rome? Plutarch and Shakspeare were in the

yellow leaf, and Homer no more should be heard of. It is much to know that poetry has been written this very

day, under this very roof, by your side. What! that wonderful spirit has not expired! These stony moments are

still sparkling and animated! I had fancied that the oracles were all silent, and nature had spent her fires; and

behold! all night, from every pore, these fine auroras have been streaming. Every one has some interest in the

advent of the poet, and no one knows how much it may concern him. We know that the secret of the world is

profound, but who or what shall be our interpreter, we know not. A mountain ramble, a new style of face, a

new person, may put the key into our hands. Of course the value of genius to us is in the veracity of its report.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds. Mankind in good earnest have availed so far in

understanding themselves and their work, that the foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is

the truest word ever spoken, and the phrase will be the fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the

All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology. Man, never

so often deceived, still watches for the arrival of a brother who can hold him steady to a truth until he has

made it his own. With what joy I begin to read a poem which I confide in as an inspiration! And now my

chains are to be broken; I shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs in which I live,opaque, though

they seem transparent, and from the heaven of truth I shall see and comprehend my relations. That will

reconcile me to life and renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know what I am doing.

Life will no more be a noise; now I shall see men and women, and know the signs by which they may be

discerned from fools and satans. This day shall be better than my birthday: then I became an animal; now I

am invited into the science of the real. Such is the hope, but the fruition is postponed. Oftener it falls that this

winged man, who will carry me into the heaven, whirls me into mists, then leaps and frisks about with me as

it were from cloud to cloud, still affirming that he is bound heavenward; and I, being myself a novice, am

slow in perceiving that he does not know the way into the heavens, and is merely bent that I should admire

his skill to rise like a fowl or a flying fish, a little way from the ground or the water; but the allpiercing,

allfeeding, and ocular air of heaven that man shall never inhabit. I tumble down again soon into my old

nooks, and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and have lost my faith in the possibility of any guide who

But, leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with new hope, observe how nature, by worthier impulses, has

ensured the poet's fidelity to his office of announcement and affirming, namely by the beauty of things, which

becomes a new and higher beauty when expressed. Nature offers all her creatures to him as a

picturelanguage. Being used as a type, a second wonderful value appears in the object, far better than its old

value; as the carpenter's stretched cord, if you hold your ear close enough, is musical in the breeze. "Things

more excellent than every image," says Jamblichus, "are expressed through images." Things admit of being

used as symbols because nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in every part. Every line we can draw in the

sand has expression; and there is no body without its spirit or genius. All form is an effect of character; all

condition, of the quality of the life; all harmony, of health; and for this reason a perception of beauty should

be sympathetic, or proper only to the good. The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary. The soul

Here we find ourselves suddenly not in a critical speculation but in a holy place, and should go very warily

and reverently. We stand before the secret of the world, there where Being passes into Appearance and Unity

The Universe is the externization of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our

science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we

sensually treat, as if they were selfexistent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have. "The mighty

heaven," said Proclus, "exhibits, in its transfigurations, clear images of the splendor of intellectual

perceptions; being moved in conjunction with the unapparent periods of intellectual natures." Therefore

science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or

the state of science is an index of our selfknowledge. Since everything in nature answers to a moral power,

if any phenomenon remains brute and dark it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet

No wonder then, if these waters be so deep, that we hover over them with a religious regard. The beauty of

the fable proves the importance of the sense; to the poet, and to all others; or, if you please, every man is so

far a poet as to be susceptible of these enchantments of nature; for all men have the thoughts whereof the

universe is the celebration. I find that the fascination resides in the symbol. Who loves nature? Who does not?

Is it only poets, and men of leisure and cultivation, who live with her? No; but also hunters, farmers, grooms,

and butchers, though they express their affection in their choice of life and not in their choice of words. The

writer wonders what the coachman or the hunter values in riding, in horses and dogs. It is not superficial

qualities. When you talk with him he holds these at as slight a rate as you. His worship is sympathetic; he has

no definitions, but he is commanded in nature, by the living power which he feels to be there present. No

imitation or playing of these things would content him; he loves the earnest of the north wind, of rain, of

stone, and wood, and iron. A beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It

is nature the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed by life which he worships with

The inwardness and mystery of this attachment drives men of every class to the use of emblems. The schools

of poets and philosophers are not more intoxicated with their symbols than the populace with theirs. In our

political parties, compute the power of badges and emblems. See the great ball which they roll from

Baltimore to Bunker hill! In the political processions, Lowell goes in a loom, and Lynn in a shoe, and Salem

in a ship. Witness the ciderbarrel, the logcabin, the hickorystick, the palmetto, and all the cognizances of

party. See the power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other

figure which came into credit God knows how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind on a fort at the

ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle under the rudest or the most conventional exterior. The people

Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of the divineness of this superior use of

things, whereby the world is a temple whose walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and commandments

of the Deity,in this, that there is no fact in nature which does not carry the whole sense of nature; and the

distinctions which we make in events and in affairs, of low and high, honest and base, disappear when nature

is used as a symbol. Thought makes everything fit for use. The vocabulary of an omniscient man would

embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What would be base, or even obscene, to the

obscene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connexion of thought. The piety of the Hebrew prophets

purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.

Small and mean things serve as well as great symbols. The meaner the type by which a law is expressed, the

more pungent it is, and the more lasting in the memories of men: just as we choose the smallest box or case in

which any needful utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and

excited mind; as it is related of Lord Chatham that he was accustomed to read in Bailey's Dictionary when he

was preparing to speak in Parliament. The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of

expressing thought. Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a

few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the

significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity. It does not

need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word. Also we

use defects and deformities to a sacred purpose, so expressing our sense that the evils of the world are such

only to the evil eye. In the old mythology, mythologists observe, defects are ascribed to divine natures, as

For as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God that makes things ugly, the poet, who reattaches

things to nature and the Whole, reattaching even artificial things and violations of nature, to nature, by a

deeper insight,disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts. Readers of poetry see the

factoryvillage and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these; for these

works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading; but the poet sees them fall within the great Order not less

than the beehive or the spider's geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the

gliding train of cars she loves like her own. Besides, in a centred mind, it signifies nothing how many

mechanical inventions you exhibit. Though you add millions, and never so surprising, the fact of mechanics

has not gained a grain's weight. The spiritual fact remains unalterable, by many or by few particulars; as no

mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. A shrewd countryboy goes to the city

for the first time, and the complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. It is not that he does not

see all the fine houses and know that he never saw such before, but he disposes of them as easily as the poet

finds place for the railway. The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the great and constant fact of Life,

which can dwarf any and every circumstance, and to which the belt of wampum and the commerce of

The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it. For though

life is great, and fascinates, and absorbs; and though all men are intelligent of the symbols through which it is

named; yet they cannot originally use them. We are symbols and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and tools,

words and things, birth and death, all are emblems; but we sympathize with the symbols, and being infatuated

with the economical uses of things, we do not know that they are thoughts. The poet, by an ulterior

intellectual perception, gives them a power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue

into every dumb and inanimate object. He perceives the independence of the thought on the symbol, the

stability of the thought, the accidency and fugacity of the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see

through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and

procession. For through that better perception he stands one step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or

metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform; that within the form of every creature is a force

impelling it to ascend into a higher form; and following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express

that life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of nature. All the facts of the animal economy, sex,

nutriment, gestation, birth, growth, are symbols of the passage of the world into the soul of man, to suffer

there a change and reappear a new and higher fact. He uses forms according to the life, and not according to

the form. This is true science. The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation and animation, for he

does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain or meadow of space was

strewn with these flowers we call suns and moons and stars; why the great deep is adorned with animals, with

men, and gods; for in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer or Languagemaker, naming things sometimes after their

appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby

rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore

language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin

of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because

for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the

deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the

continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes,

which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the poet names

the thing because he sees it, or comes one step nearer to it than any other. This expression or naming is not

art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What we call nature is a certain

selfregulated motion or change; and nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leave another to

baptize her but baptizes herself; and this through the metamorphosis again. I remember that a certain poet

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whether wholly or partly of a material and finite

kind. Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus; so she

shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new

billions of spores tomorrow or next day. The new agaric of this hour has a chance which the old one had

not. This atom of seed is thrown into a new place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed its parent two

rods off. She makes a man; and having brought him to ripe age, she will no longer run the risk of losing this

wonder at a blow, but she detaches from him a new self, that the kind may be safe from accidents to which

the individual is exposed. So when the soul of the poet has come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and

sends away from it its poems or songs,a fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed to the

accidents of the weary kingdom of time; a fearless, vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was the virtue

of the soul out of which they came) which carry them fast and far, and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts

of men. These wings are the beauty of the poet's soul. The songs, thus flying immortal from their mortal

parent, are pursued by clamorous flights of censures, which swarm in far greater numbers and threaten to

devour them; but these last are not winged. At the end of a very short leap they fall plump down and rot,

having received from the souls out of which they came no beautiful wings. But the melodies of the poet

So far the bard taught me, using his freer speech. But nature has a higher end, in the production of New

individuals, than security, namely ascension, or the passage of the soul into higher forms. I knew in my

younger days the sculptor who made the statue of the youth which stands in the public garden. He was, as I

remember, unable to tell directly, what made him happy or unhappy, but by wonderful indirections he could

tell. He rose one day, according to his habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as the

eternity out of which it came, and for many days after, he strove to express this tranquillity, and lo! his chisel

had fashioned out of marble the form of a beautiful youth, Phosphorus, whose aspect is such that it is said all

persons who look on it become silent. The poet also resigns himself to his mood, and that thought which

agitated him is expressed, but alter idem, in a manner totally new. The expression is organic, or the new type

which things themselves take when liberated. As, in the sun, objects paint their images on the retina of the

eye, so they, sharing the aspiration of the whole universe, tend to paint a far more delicate copy of their

essence in his mind. Like the metamorphosis of things into higher organic forms is their change into

melodies. Over everything stands its daemon or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so

the soul of the thing is reflected by a melody. The sea, the mountainridge, Niagara, and every flowerbed,

preexist, or superexist, in precantations, which sail like odors in the air, and when any man goes by with

an ear sufficiently fine, he overhears them and endeavors to write down the notes without diluting or

depraving them. And herein is the legitimation of criticism, in the mind's faith that the poems are a corrupt

version of some text in nature with which they ought to be made to tally. A rhyme in one of our sonnets

should not be less pleasing than the iterated nodes of a seashell, or the resembling difference of a group of

flowers. The pairing of the birds is an idyl, not tedious as our idyls are; a tempest is a rough ode, without

falsehood or rant; a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, and stored, is an epic song, subordinating how

many admirably executed parts. Why should not the symmetry and truth that modulate these, glide into our

This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does

not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees; by sharing the path or circuit of things

through forms, and so making them translucid to others. The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a

speaker to go with them? A spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the transcendency of their own

nature,him they will suffer. The condition of true naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning himself to the

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and

conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the

nature of things; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power on which

he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate

through him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and

his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately

then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect used as

an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial

life; or as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone but with the intellect

inebriated by nectar. As the traveller who has lost his way throws his reins on his horse's neck and trusts to

the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this

world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature; the

mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible.

This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the fumes of sandal wood and

tobacco, or whatever other procurers of animal exhilaration. All men avail themselves of such means as they

can, to add this extraordinary power to their normal powers; and to this end they prize conversation, music,

pictures, sculpture, dancing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming, politics, or love, or science, or

animal intoxication,which are several coarser or finer quasimechanical substitutes for the true nectar,

which is the ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the fact. These are auxiliaries to the centrifugal

tendency of a man, to his passage out into free space, and they help him to escape the custody of that body in

which he is pent up, and of that jailyard of individual relations in which he is enclosed. Hence a great

number of such as were professionally expressers of Beauty, as painters, poets, musicians, and actors, have

been more than others wont to lead a life of pleasure and indulgence; all but the few who received the true

nectar; and, as it was a spurious mode of attaining freedom, as it was an emancipation not into the heavens

but into the freedom of baser places, they were punished for that advantage they won, by a dissipation and

deterioration. But never can any advantage be taken of nature by a trick. The spirit of the world, the great

calm presence of the Creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. The sublime vision comes

to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. That is not an inspiration, which we owe to narcotics,

but some counterfeit excitement and fury. Milton says that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously,

but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden

bowl. For poetry is not 'Devil's wine,' but God's wine. It is with this as it is with toys. We fill the hands and

nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums, and horses; withdrawing their eyes from the plain

face and sufficing objects of nature, the sun, and moon, the animals, the water, and stones, which should be

their toys. So the poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should

delight him. His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice for his inspiration, and

he should be tipsy with water. That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from

every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pinestump and halfimbedded stone on which the dull March sun

shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple taste. If thou fill thy brain with Boston

and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French

coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods.

If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not inactive in other men. The metamorphosis excites in the

beholder an emotion of joy. The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all

men. We seem to be touched by a wand which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are

like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables,

oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods. Men have really got a new sense, and found

within their world another world, or nest of worlds; for, the metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it does

not stop. I will not now consider how much this makes the charm of algebra and the mathematics, which also

have their tropes, but it is felt in every definition; as when Aristotle defines space to be an immovable vessel

in which things are contained; or when Plato defines a line to be a flowing point; or figure to be a bound of

solid; and many the like. What a joyful sense of freedom we have when Vitruvius announces the old opinion

of artists that no architect can build any house well who does not know something of anatomy. When

Socrates, in Charmides, tells us that the soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations, and that these

incantations are beautiful reasons, from which temperance is generated in souls; when Plato calls the world

an animal; and Timaeus affirms that the plants also are animals; or affirms a man to be a heavenly tree,

growing with his root, which is his head, upward; and, as George Chapman, following him, writes,

when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as "that white flower which marks extreme old age;" when Proclus calls

the universe the statue of the intellect; when Chaucer, in his praise of 'Gentilesse,' compares good blood in

mean condition to fire, which, though carried to the darkest house betwixt this and the mount of Caucasus,

will yet hold its natural office and burn as bright as if twenty thousand men did it behold; when John saw, in

the Apocalypse, the ruin of the world through evil, and the stars fall from heaven as the figtree casteth her

untimely fruit; when Aesop reports the whole catalogue of common daily relations through the masquerade of

birds and beasts;we take the cheerful hint of the immortality of our essence and its versatile habit and

The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British bards had for the title of their order, "Those Who are

free throughout the world." They are free, and they make free. An imaginative book renders us much more

service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward when we arrive at the precise sense of the

author. I think nothing is of any value in books excepting the transcendental and extraordinary. If a man is

inflamed and carried away by his thought, to that degree that he forgets the authors and the public and heeds

only this one dream which holds him like an insanity, let me read his paper, and you may have all the

arguments and histories and criticism. All the value which attaches to Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Cornelius

Agrippa, Cardan, Kepler, Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other who introduces questionable facts into

his cosmogony, as angels, devils, magic, astrology, palmistry, mesmerism, and so on, is the certificate we

have of departure from routine, and that here is a new witness. That also is the best success in conversation,

the magic of liberty, which puts the world like a ball in our hands. How cheap even the liberty then seems;

how mean to study, when an emotion communicates to the intellect the power to sap and upheave nature;

how great the perspective! nations, times, systems, enter and disappear like threads in tapestry of large figure

and many colors; dream delivers us to dream, and while the drunkenness lasts we will sell our bed, our

There is good reason why we should prize this liberation. The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and

lost in the snowstorm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of

man. On the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying. The inaccessibleness of every

thought but that we are in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it; you are as remote when you are nearest

as when you are farthest. Every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. Therefore we love the

poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode or in an action or in looks and behavior has yielded us

This emancipation is dear to all men, and the power to impart it, as it must come from greater depth and

scope of thought, is a measure of intellect. Therefore all books of the imagination endure, all which ascend to

that truth that the writer sees nature beneath him, and uses it as his exponent. Every verse or sentence

possessing this virtue will take care of its own immortality. The religions of the world are the ejaculations of

But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. The poet did not stop at the color or the form,

but read their meaning; neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his

new thought. Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense,

which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false. For all symbols are fluxional; all

language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and

houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an

universal one. The morningredness happens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob Behmen, and

comes to stand to him for truth and faith; and, he believes, should stand for the same realities to every reader.

But the first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a mother and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a

jeweller polishing a gem. Either of these, or of a myriad more, are equally good to the person to whom they

are significant. Only they must be held lightly, and be very willingly translated into the equivalent terms

which others use. And the mystic must be steadily told,All that you say is just as true without the tedious

use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,universal signs,

instead of these village symbols,and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show

that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an

Swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands eminently for the translator of nature into thought. I do not

know the man in history to whom things stood so uniformly for words. Before him the metamorphosis

continually plays. Everything on which his eye rests, obeys the impulses of moral nature. The figs become

grapes whilst he eats them. When some of his angels affirmed a truth, the laurel twig which they held

blossomed in their hands. The noise which at a distance appeared like gnashing and thumping, on coming

nearer was found to be the voice of disputants. The men in one of his visions, seen in heavenly light,

appeared like dragons, and seemed in darkness; but to each other they appeared as men, and when the light

from heaven shone into their cabin, they complained of the darkness, and were compelled to shut the window

There was this perception in him which makes the poet or seer an object of awe and terror, namely that the

same man or society of men may wear one aspect to themselves and their companions, and a different aspect

to higher intelligences. Certain priests, whom he describes as conversing very learnedly together, appeared to

the children who were at some distance, like dead horses; and many the like misappearances. And instantly

the mind inquires whether these fishes under the bridge, yonder oxen in the pasture, those dogs in the yard,

are immutably fishes, oxen, and dogs, or only so appear to me, and perchance to themselves appear upright

men; and whether I appear as a man to all eyes. The Bramins and Pythagoras propounded the same question,

and if any poet has witnessed the transformation he doubtless found it in harmony with various experiences.

We have all seen changes as considerable in wheat and caterpillars. He is the poet and shall draw us with love

and terror, who sees through the flowing vest the firm nature, and can declare it.

I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not with sufficient plainness or sufficient profoundness

address ourselves to life, nor dare we chaunt our own times and social circumstance. If we filled the day with

bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely

man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await. Dante's praise is that he dared to write his

autobiography in colossal cipher, or into universality. We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous

eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the

times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer; then in the Middle

Age; then in Calvinism. Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, Methodism and Unitarianism, are flat

and dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy and the temple of

Delphi, and are as swiftly passing away. Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our

Negroes and Indians, our boats and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues and the pusillanimity of honest men,

the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for

metres. If I have not found that excellent combination of gifts in my countrymen which I seek, neither could I

aid myself to fix the idea of the poet by reading now and then in Chalmers's collection of five centuries of

English poets. These are wits more than poets, though there have been poets among them. But when we

adhere to the ideal of the poet, we have our difficulties even with Milton and Homer. Milton is too literary,

But I am not wise enough for a national criticism, and must use the old largeness a little longer, to discharge

Art is the path of the creator to his work. The paths or methods are ideal and eternal, though few men ever see

them; not the artist himself for years, or for a lifetime, unless he come into the conditions. The painter, the

sculptor, the composer, the epic rhapsodist, the orator, all partake one desire, namely to express themselves

symmetrically and abundantly, not dwarfishly and fragmentarily. They found or put themselves in certain

conditions, as, the painter and sculptor before some impressive human figures; the orator, into the assembly

of the people; and the others in such scenes as each has found exciting to his intellect; and each presently

feels the new desire. He hears a voice, he sees a beckoning. Then he is apprised, with wonder, what herds of

daemons hem him in. He can no more rest; he says, with the old painter, "By God, it is in me and must go

forth of me." He pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies before him. The poet pours out verses in every

solitude. Most of the things he says are conventional, no doubt; but by and by he says something which is

original and beautiful. That charms him. He would say nothing else but such things. In our way of talking we

say 'That is yours, this is mine;' but the poet knows well that it is not his; that it is as strange and beautiful to

him as to you; he would fain hear the like eloquence at length. Once having tasted this immortal ichor, he

cannot have enough of it, and as an admirable creative power exists in these intellections, it is of the last

importance that these things get spoken. What a little of all we know is said! What drops of all the sea of our

science are baled up! and by what accident it is that these are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature!

Hence the necessity of speech and song; hence these throbs and heartbeatings in the orator, at the door of

the assembly, to the end namely that thought may be ejaculated as Logos, or Word.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and

stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dreampower which

every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man

is the conductor of the whole river of electricity. Nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, or exists, which must

not in turn arise and walk before him as exponent of his meaning. Comes he to that power, his genius is no

longer exhaustible. All the creatures by pairs and by tribes pour into his mind as into a Noah's ark, to come

forth again to people a new world. This is like the stock of air for our respiration or for the combustion of our

fireplace; not a measure of gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. And therefore the rich poets, as

Homer, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Raphael, have obviously no limits to their works except the limits of their

lifetime, and resemble a mirror carried through the street, ready to render an image of every created thing.

O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles or by the swordblade any

longer. The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the muse only. Thou shalt

not know any longer the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse.

For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are

counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou

abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy

gentlemen and shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do the great and resounding

actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange.

The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine: thou must pass for a fool and a churl

for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his wellbeloved flower, and thou

shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able

to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. And this is the

reward; that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain,

copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and

manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt

own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and boarders. Thou true landlord! sealord!

airlord! Wherever snow falls or water flows or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever

the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries,

wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love,there is Beauty, plenteous

as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a

THE lords of life, the lords of life, I saw them pass, In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim,

Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream, Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue,

And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name; Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched

from east to west: Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled

look: Him by the hand dear Nature took; Dearest Nature, strong and kind, Whispered, 'Darling, never

mind! Tomorrow they will wear another face, The founder thou! these are thy race!'

WHERE do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has

none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended;

there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which according to

the old belief stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales,

mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our

lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the firtree. All things swim and glitter. Our

life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our

place again. Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her

fire and so liberal of her earth that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have

health and reason, yet we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation? We have enough to live and bring the

year about, but not an ounce to impart or to invest. Ah that our Genius were a little more of a genius! We are

like millers on the lower levels of a stream, when the factories above them have exhausted the water. We too

If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know! We do not

know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards

discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while

they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry,

virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated

somewhere, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might be born. It is said all

martyrdoms looked mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.

Embark, and the romance quits our vessel and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial,

and we shun to record it. Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and

reference. 'Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,' says the

querulous farmer, 'only holds the world together.' I quote another man's saying; unluckily that other

withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me. 'Tis the trick of nature thus to degrade today; a good

deal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped magically in. Every roof is agreeable to the eye until it is lifted;

then we find tragedy and moaning women and hardeyed husbands and deluges of lethe, and the men ask,

'What's the news?' as if the old were so bad. How many individuals can we count in society? how many

actions? how many opinions? So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect,

that the pith of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours. The history of literaturetake the net

result of Tiraboschi, Warton, or Schlegel,is a sum of very few ideas and of very few original tales; all the

rest being variation of these. So in this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very

few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense. There are even few opinions, and these seem

What opium is instilled into all disaster! It shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough

rasping friction, but the most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought; Ate Dea is gentle,

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. There are moods in

which we court suffering, in the hope that here at least we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth.

But it turns out to be scenepainting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how

shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for

contact with which we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out

that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls never touch their objects. An innavigable sea washes with

silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the

death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,no more. I cannot get

it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my

property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found

me,neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me; something which I fancied

was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me nor enlarged without enriching me, falls

off from me and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one

step into real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse that the wind should not blow on him, nor water

flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summerrain, and we the Para coats

that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying There

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we

clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. Nature does not like to be observed, and

likes that we should be her fools and playmates. We may have the sphere for our cricketball, but not a berry

for our philosophy. Direct strokes she never gave us power to make; all our blows glance, all our hits are

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and

as we pass through them they prove to be manycolored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and

each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can,

and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood

of the man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always

genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on

structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune

or talent to a cold and defective nature? Who cares what sensibility or discrimination a man has at some time

shown, if he falls asleep in his chair? or if he laugh and giggle? or if he apologize? or is infected with

egotism? or thinks of his dollar? or cannot go by food? or has gotten a child in his boyhood? Of what use is

genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of

human life? Of what use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the man does not care enough for results to

stimulate him to experiment, and hold him up in it? or if the web is too finely woven, too irritable by pleasure

and pain, so that life stagnates from too much reception without due outlet? Of what use to make heroic vows

of amendment, if the same old lawbreaker is to keep them? What cheer can the religious sentiment yield,

when that is suspected to be secretly dependent on the seasons of the year and the state of the blood? I knew a

witty physician who found the creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease in the

liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian. Very mortifying is the

reluctant experience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility neutralizes the promise of genius. We see

young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt;

they die young and dodge the account; or if they live they lose themselves in the crowd.

Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions and shuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot

see. There is an optical illusion about every person we meet. In truth they are all creatures of given

temperament, which will appear in a given character, whose boundaries they will never pass: but we look at

them, they seem alive, and we presume there is impulse in them. In the moment it seems impulse; in the year,

in the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the musicbox must

play. Men resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it as the evening wears on, that temper prevails over

everything of time, place, and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of religion. Some modifications

the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the individual texture holds its dominion, if not to bias the moral

I thus express the law as it is read from the platform of ordinary life, but must not leave it without noticing

the capital exception. For temperament is a power which no man willingly hears any one praise but himself.

On the platform of physics we cannot resist the contracting influences of socalled science. Temperament

puts all divinity to rout. I know the mental proclivity of physicians. I hear the chuckle of the phrenologists.

Theoretic kidnappers and slavedrivers, they esteem each man the victim of another, who winds him round

his finger by knowing the law of his being; and by such cheap signboards as the color of his beard or the

slope of his occiput, reads the inventory of his fortunes and character. The grossest ignorance does not disgust

like this impudent knowingness. The physicians say they are not materialists; but they are:Spirit is matter

reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!But the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own

evidence. What notions do they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these

words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them. I saw a gracious gentleman who adapts

his conversation to the form of the head of the man he talks with! I had fancied that the value of life lay in its

inscrutable possibilities; in the fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may

befall me. I carry the keys of my castle in my hand, ready to throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever and

in what disguise soever he shall appear. I know he is in the neighborhood hidden among vagabonds. Shall I

preclude my future by taking a high seat and kindly adapting my conversation to the shape of heads? When I

come to that, the doctors shall buy me for a cent.'But, sir, medical history; the report to the Institute; the

proven facts!' I distrust the facts and the inferences. Temperament is the veto or limitationpower in the

constitution, very justly applied to restrain an opposite excess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as a

bar to original equity. When virtue is in presence, all subordinate powers sleep. On its own level, or in view

of nature, temperament is final. I see not, if one be once caught in this trap of socalled sciences, any escape

for the man from the links of the chain of physical necessity. Given such an embryo, such a history must

follow. On this platform one lives in a sty of sensualism, and would soon come to suicide. But it is

impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never

closed, through which the creator passes. The intellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover of absolute

good, intervenes for our succor, and at one whisper of these high powers we awake from ineffectual struggles

with this nightmare. We hurl it into its own hell, and cannot again contract ourselves to so base a state.

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor,

but the anchorage is quicksand. This onward trick of nature is too strong for us: Pero si muove. When at night

I look at the moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to hurry. Our love of the real draws us to

permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association.

We need change of objects. Dedication to one thought is quickly odious. We house with the insane, and must

humor them; then conversation dies out. Once I took such delight in Montaigne, that I thought I should not

need any other book; before that, in Shakspeare; then in Plutarch; then in Plotinus; at one time in Bacon;

afterwards in Goethe; even in Bettine; but now I turn the pages of either of them languidly, whilst I still

cherish their genius. So with pictures; each will bear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot retain,

though we fain would continue to be pleased in that manner. How strongly I have felt of pictures that when

you have seen one well, you must take your leave of it; you shall never see it again. I have had good lessons

from pictures which I have since seen without emotion or remark. A deduction must be made from the

opinion which even the wise express of a new book or occurrence. Their opinion gives me tidings of their

mood, and some vague guess at the new fact, but is nowise to be trusted as the lasting relation between that

intellect and that thing. The child asks, 'Mamma, why don't I like the story as well as when you told it me

yesterday?' Alas! child it is even so with the oldest cherubim of knowledge. But will it answer thy question to

say, Because thou wert born to a whole and this story is a particular? The reason of the pain this discovery

causes us (and we make it late in respect to works of art and intellect), is the plaint of tragedy which murmurs

That immobility and absence of elasticity which we find in the arts, we find with more pain in the artist.

There is no power of expansion in men. Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas

which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never

take the single step that would bring them there. A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as

you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There is

no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful

men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practised. We do

what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the

result which ensues. I cannot recall any form of man who is not superfluous sometimes. But is not this

Of course it needs the whole society to give the symmetry we seek. The partycolored wheel must revolve

very fast to appear white. Something is earned too by conversing with so much folly and defect. In fine,

whoever loses, we are always of the gaining party. Divinity is behind our failures and follies also. The plays

of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with

commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by

which he is to come by it. Like a bird which alights nowhere, but hops perpetually from bough to bough, is

the Power which abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for another

But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think,

in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and

written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have

got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the

nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. At EducationFarm, the noblest

theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would

not rake or pitch a ton of hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men and maidens it left pale and

hungry. A political orator wittily compared our party promises to western roads, which opened stately

enough, with planted trees on either side to tempt the traveller, but soon became narrow and narrower and

ended in a squirreltrack and ran up a tree. So does culture with us; it ends in headache. Unspeakably sad and

barren does life look to those who a few months ago were dazzled with the splendor of the promise of the

times. "There is now no longer any right course of action nor any selfdevotion left among the Iranis."

Objections and criticism we have had our fill of. There are objections to every course of life and action, and

the practical wisdom infers an indifferency, from the omnipresence of objection. The whole frame of things

preaches indifferency. Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere. Life is not

intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for wellmixed people who can enjoy what they find,

without question. Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her very sense when they say, "Children, eat

your victuals, and say no more of it." To fill the hour,that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice

for a repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them. Under

the oldest mouldiest conventions a man of native force prospers just as well as in the newest world, and that

by skill of handling and treatment. He can take hold anywhere. Life itself is a mixture of power and form, and

will not bear the least excess of either. To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the

road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of

mathematicians if you will, to say that the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so

short a duration we were sprawling in want or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband

them. Five minutes of today are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be

poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat the men and women well; treat them as if they were real;

perhaps they are. Men live in their fancy, like drunkards whose hands are too soft and tremulous for

successful labor. It is a tempest of fancies, and the only ballast I know is a respect to the present hour.

Without any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of shows and politics, I settle myself ever the firmer in the

creed that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we

deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious as the mystic

officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. If these are mean and malignant, their

contentment, which is the last victory of justice, is a more satisfying echo to the heart than the voice of poets

and the casual sympathy of admirable persons. I think that however a thoughtful man may suffer from the

defects and absurdities of his company, he cannot without affectation deny to any set of men and women a

sensibility to extraordinary merit. The coarse and frivolous have an instinct of superiority, if they have not a

The fine young people despise life, but in me, and in such as with me are free from dyspepsia, and to whom a

day is a sound and solid good, it is a great excess of politeness to look scornful and to cry for company. I am

grown by sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but leave me alone and I should relish every hour and what

it brought me, the potluck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the barroom. I am thankful for small

mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe and is disappointed

when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am

always full of thanks for moderate goods. I accept the clangor and jangle of contrary tendencies. I find my

account in sots and bores also. They give a reality to the circumjacent picture which such a vanishing

meteorous appearance can ill spare. In the morning I awake and find the old world, wife, babes, and mother,

Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the

good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis.

Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone. We may climb into

the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these

extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry,a narrow belt. Moreover, in popular

experience everything good is on the highway. A collector peeps into all the pictureshops of Europe for a

landscape of Poussin, a crayonsketch of Salvator; but the Transfiguration, the Last Judgment, the

Communion of St. Jerome, and what are as transcendent as these, are on the walls of the Vatican, the Uffizii,

or the Louvre, where every footman may see them; to say nothing of Nature's pictures in every street, of

sunsets and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the human body never absent. A collector recently

bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fiftyseven guineas, an autograph of Shakspeare;

but for nothing a schoolboy can read Hamlet and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished

therein. I think I will never read any but the commonest books,the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and

Milton. Then we are impatient of so public a life and planet, and run hither and thither for nooks and secrets.

The imagination delights in the woodcraft of Indians, trappers, and beehunters. We fancy that we are

strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wild beast and bird. But

the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and fourfooted man. Fox

and woodchuck, hawk and snipe and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than

man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy shows

astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside; it has no inside.

The midworld is best. Nature, as we know her, is no saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos,

and corneaters, she does not distinguish by any favor. She comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her

darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law; do not come out of the Sunday

School, nor weigh their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. If we will be strong with her strength

we must not harbor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other nations. We

must set up the strong present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come. So many things are

unsettled which it is of the first importance to settle;and, pending their settlement, we will do as we do.

Whilst the debate goes forward on the equity of commerce, and will not be closed for a century or two, New

and Old England may keep shop. Law of copyright and international copyright is to be discussed, and in the

interim we will sell our books for the most we can. Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness

of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou,

dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line. Right to hold

land, right of property, is disputed, and the conventions convene, and before the vote is taken, dig away in

your garden, and spend your earnings as a waif or godsend to all serene and beautiful purposes. Life itself is a

bubble and a skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and as much more as they will,but thou,

God's darling! heed thy private dream; thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and skepticism; there are

enough of them; stay there in thy closet and toil until the rest are agreed what to do about it. Thy sickness,

they say, and thy puny habit require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a

tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the

Human life is made up of the two elements, power and form, and the proportion must be invariably kept if we

would have it sweet and sound. Each of these elements in excess makes a mischief as hurtful as its defect.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed, and, to carry the danger to the edge of

ruin, nature causes each man's peculiarity to superabound. Here, among the farms, we adduce the scholars as

examples of this treachery. They are nature's victims of expression. You who see the artist, the orator, the

poet, too near, and find their life no more excellent than that of mechanics or farmers, and themselves victims

of partiality, very hollow and haggard, and pronounce them failures, not heroes, but quacks,conclude very

reasonably that these arts are not for man, but are disease. Yet nature will not bear you out. Irresistible nature

made men such, and makes legions more of such, every day. You love the boy reading in a book, gazing at a

drawing, or a cast; yet what are these millions who read and behold, but incipient writers and sculptors? Add

a little more of that quality which now reads and sees, and they will seize the pen and chisel. And if one

remembers how innocently he began to be an artist, he perceives that nature joined with his enemy. A man is

a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made

How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might keep forever these beautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, once

for all, to the perfect calculation of the kingdom of known cause and effect. In the street and in the

newspapers, life appears so plain a business that manly resolution and adherence to the multiplicationtable

through all weathers will insure success. But ah! presently comes a day, or is it only a halfhour, with its

angelwhispering, which discomfits the conclusions of nations and of years! Tomorrow again everything

looks real and angular, the habitual standards are reinstated, common sense is as rare as genius,is the basis

of genius, and experience is hands and feet to every enterprise;and yet, he who should do his business on

this understanding would be quickly bankrupt. Power keeps quite another road than the turnpikes of choice

and will; namely the subterranean and invisible tunnels and channels of life. It is ridiculous that we are

diplomatists, and doctors, and considerate people: there are no dupes like these. Life is a series of surprises,

and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from

us the past and the future. We would look about us, but with grand politeness he draws down before us an

impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky. 'You will not remember,' he seems to

say, `and you will not expect.' All good conversation, manners, and action, come from a spontaneity which

forgets usages and makes the moment great. Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and

impulsive. Man lives by pulses; our organic movements are such; and the chemical and ethereal agents are

undulatory and alternate; and the mind goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but by fits. We thrive by

casualties. Our chief experiences have been casual. The most attractive class of people are those who are

powerful obliquely and not by the direct stroke; men of genius, but not yet accredited; one gets the cheer of

their light without paying too great a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the bird or the morning light, and not of art.

In the thought of genius there is always a surprise; and the moral sentiment is well called "the newness," for it

is never other; as new to the oldest intelligence as to the young child;"the kingdom that cometh without

observation." In like manner, for practical success, there must not be too much design. A man will not be

observed in doing that which he can do best. There is a certain magic about his properest action which

stupefies your powers of observation, so that though it is done before you, you wist not of it. The art of life

has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every man is an impossibility until he is born; every thing

impossible until we see a success. The ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest skepticism,that nothing

is of us or our works,that all is of God. Nature will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. All writing

comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I would gladly be moral and keep due metes and

bounds, which I dearly love, and allow the most to the will of man; but I have set my heart on honesty in this

chapter, and I can see nothing at last, in success or failure, than more or less of vital force supplied from the

Eternal. The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never

know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many

things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlookedfor result. The individual is always mistaken. He

designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much,

and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat

The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the elements of human life to calculation, exalted Chance

into a divinity; but that is to stay too long at the spark, which glitters truly at one point, but the universe is

warm with the latency of the same fire. The miracle of life which will not be expounded but will remain a

miracle, introduces a new element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir Everard Home I think noticed that the

evolution was not from one central point, but coactive from three or more points. Life has no memory. That

which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper

cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency. So is it with us, now skeptical or without

unity, because immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yet hostile value, and now religious,

whilst in the reception of spiritual law. Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of the parts;

they will one day be members, and obey one will. On that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our

attention and hope. Life is hereby melted into an expectation or a religion. Underneath the inharmonious and

trivial particulars, is a musical perfection; the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or

seam. Do but observe the mode of our illumination. When I converse with a profound mind, or if at any time

being alone I have good thoughts, I do not at once arrive at satisfactions, as when, being thirsty, I drink water;

or go to the fire, being cold; no! but I am at first apprised of my vicinity to a new and excellent region of life.

By persisting to read or to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden

discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds that covered it parted at intervals and showed

the approaching traveller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows spread at their base,

whereon flocks graze and shepherds pipe and dance. But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as

initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I make! O

no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement before the first opening to me of this august

magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright

Mecca of the desert. And what a future it opens! I feel a new heart beating with the love of the new beauty. I

am ready to die out of nature and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the

If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must now add that there is that in us which changes not and

which ranks all sensations and states of mind. The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which

identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite

degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not

what you have done or forborne, but at whose command you have done or forborne it.

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost,these are quaint names, too narrow to cover this unbounded

substance. The baffled intellect must still kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named, ineffable

cause, which every fine genius has essayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as, Thales by water,

Anaximenes by air, Anaxagoras by (Nous) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the moderns by love; and the

metaphor of each has become a national religion. The Chinese Mencius has not been the least successful in

his generalization. "I fully understand language," he said, "and nourish well my vastflowing vigor.""I beg

to ask what you call vastflowing vigor?"said his companion. "The explanation," replied Mencius, "is

difficult. This vigor is supremely great, and in the highest degree unbending. Nourish it correctly and do it no

injury, and it will fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth. This vigor accords with and assists justice

and reason, and leaves no hunger."In our more correct writing we give to this generalization the name of

Being, and thereby confess that we have arrived as far as we can go. Suffice it for the joy of the universe that

we have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems not present so much as prospective;

not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vastflowing vigor. Most of life seems to be

mere advertisement of faculty; information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap; that we are very great. So,

in particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in an action. It is for us to believe in the

rule, not in the exception. The noble are thus known from the ignoble. So in accepting the leading of the

sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul or the like, but the universal

impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance and is the principal fact in the history of the globe. Shall

we describe this cause as that which works directly? The spirit is not helpless or needful of mediate organs. It

has plentiful powers and direct effects. I am explained without explaining, I am felt without acting, and where

I am not. Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and

are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech

and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for

the influence of action is not to be measured by miles. Why should I fret myself because a circumstance has

occurred which hinders my presence where I was expected? If I am not at the meeting, my presence where I

am should be as useful to the commonwealth of friendship and wisdom, as would be my presence in that

place. I exert the same quality of power in all places. Thus journeys the mighty Ideal before us; it never was

known to fall into the rear. No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of

a better. Onward and onward! In liberated moments we know that a new picture of life and duty is already

possible; the elements already exist in many minds around you of a doctrine of life which shall transcend any

written record we have. The new statement will comprise the skepticisms as well as the faiths of society, and

out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of

the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in and make affirmations outside of them,

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made that we exist. That discovery is

called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see

directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we

are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subjectlenses have a creative power; perhaps

there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which

threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, objects, successively tumble

in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good

thing is a shadow which we cast. The street is full of humiliations to the proud. As the fop contrived to dress

his bailiffs in his livery and make them wait on his guests at table, so the chagrins which the bad heart gives

off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shopmen or barkeepers in hotels, and

threaten or insult whatever is threatenable and insultable in us. 'Tis the same with our idolatries. People forget

that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type

or representative of humanity, with the name of hero or saint. Jesus, the "providential man," is a good man on

whom many people are agreed that these optical laws shall take effect. By love on one part and by

forbearance to press objection on the other part, it is for a time settled, that we will look at him in the centre

of the horizon, and ascribe to him the properties that will attach to any man so seen. But the longest love or

aversion has a speedy term. The great and crescive self, rooted in absolute nature, supplants all relative

existence and ruins the kingdom of mortal friendship and love. Marriage (in what is called the spiritual

world) is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object. The subject is the

receiver of Godhead, and at every comparison must feel his being enhanced by that cryptic might. Though

not in energy, yet by presence, this magazine of substance cannot be otherwise than felt; nor can any force of

intellect attribute to the object the proper deity which sleeps or wakes forever in every subject. Never can

love make consciousness and ascription equal in force. There will be the same gulf between every me and

thee as between the original and the picture. The universe is the bride of the soul. All private sympathy is

partial. Two human beings are like globes, which can touch only in a point, and whilst they remain in contact,

all other points of each of the spheres are inert; their turn must also come, and the longer a particular union

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor doubled. Any invasion of its unity would be chaos. The soul is

not twinborn but the only begotten, and though revealing itself as child in time, child in appearance, is of a

fatal and universal power, admitting no colife. Every day, every act betrays the illconcealed deity. We

believe in ourselves as we do not believe in others. We permit all things to ourselves, and that which we call

sin in others is experiment for us. It is an instance of our faith in ourselves that men never speak of crime as

lightly as they think; or every man thinks a latitude safe for himself which is nowise to be indulged to

another. The act looks very differently on the inside and on the outside; in its quality and in its consequences.

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle

him or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated; but in its

sequel it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations. Especially the crimes that spring

from love seem right and fair from the actor's point of view, but when acted are found destructive of society.

No man at last believes that he can be lost, nor that the crime in him is as black as in the felon. Because the

intellect qualifies in our own case the moral judgments. For there is no crime to the intellect. That is

antinomian or hypernomian, and judges law as well as fact. "It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder," said

Napoleon, speaking the language of the intellect. To it, the world is a problem in mathematics or the science

of quantity, and it leaves out praise and blame and all weak emotions. All stealing is comparative. If you

come to absolutes, pray who does not steal? Saints are sad, because they behold sin (even when they

speculate), from the point of view of the conscience, and not of the intellect; a confusion of thought. Sin, seen

from the thought, is a diminution, or less: seen from the conscience or will, it is pravity or bad. The intellect

names it shade, absence of light, and no essence. The conscience must feel it as essence, essential evil. This it

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself.

The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what

language we will, we can never say anything but what we are; Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton,

Bonaparte, are the mind's ministers. Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat

the new comer like a travelling geologist who passes through our estate and shows us good slate, or

limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture. The partial action of each strong mind in one direction is a

telescope for the objects on which it is pointed. But every other part of knowledge is to be pushed to the same

extravagance, ere the soul attains her due sphericity. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If

you could look with her eyes you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex

dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of

fate,and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long before our masquerade will end its noise of

tambourines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance? A subject and an

object,it takes so much to make the galvanic circuit complete, but magnitude adds nothing. What imports it

whether it is Kepler and the sphere, Columbus and America, a reader and his book, or puss with her tail?

It is true that all the muses and love and religion hate these developments, and will find a way to punish the

chemist who publishes in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. And we cannot say too little of our

constitutional necessity of seeing things under private aspects, or saturated with our humors. And yet is the

God the native of these bleak rocks. That need makes in morals the capital virtue of selftrust. We must hold

hard to this poverty, however scandalous, and by more vigorous selfrecoveries, after the sallies of action,

possess our axis more firmly. The life of truth is cold and so far mournful; but it is not the slave of tears,

contritions and perturbations. It does not attempt another's work, nor adopt another's facts. It is a main lesson

of wisdom to know your own from another's. I have learned that I cannot dispose of other people's facts; but I

possess such a key to my own as persuades me, against all their denials, that they also have a key to theirs. A

sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if

he give so much as a leg or a finger they will drown him. They wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their

vices, but not from their vices. Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms. A wise and

In this our talking America we are ruined by our good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes

away the power of being greatly useful. A man should not be able to look other than directly and forthright. A

preoccupied attention is the only answer to the importunate frivolity of other people; an attention, and to an

aim which makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, and leaves no appeal and no hard thoughts.

In Flaxman's drawing of the Eumenides of Aeschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst the Furies sleep on

the threshold. The face of the god expresses a shade of regret and compassion, but is calm with the conviction

of the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. He is born into other politics, into the eternal and beautiful. The

man at his feet asks for his interest in turmoils of the earth, into which his nature cannot enter. And the

Eumenides there lying express pictorially this disparity. The god is surcharged with his divine destiny.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,these are threads on the

loom of time, these are the lords of life. I dare not assume to give their order, but I name them as I find them

in my way. I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I am a fragment, and this is a

fragment of me. I can very confidently announce one or another law, which throws itself into relief and form,

but I am too young yet by some ages to compile a code. I gossip for my hour concerning the eternal politics. I

have seen many fair pictures not in vain. A wonderful time I have lived in. I am not the novice I was fourteen,

nor yet seven years ago. Let who will ask Where is the fruit? I find a private fruit sufficient. This is a

fruit,that I should not ask for a rash effect from meditations, counsels and the hiving of truths. I should feel

it pitiful to demand a result on this town and county, an overt effect on the instant month and year. The effect

is deep and secular as the cause. It works on periods in which mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is reception; I

am and I have: but I do not get, and when I have fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not. I worship

with wonder the great Fortune. My reception has been so large, that I am not annoyed by receiving this or

that superabundantly. I say to the Genius, if he will pardon the proverb, In for a mill, in for a million. When I

receive a new gift, I do not macerate my body to make the account square, for if I should die I could not make

the account square. The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The

Also that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to me an apostasy. In good earnest I am willing to

spare this most unnecessary deal of doing. Life wears to me a visionary face. Hardest roughest action is

visionary also. It is but a choice between soft and turbulent dreams. People disparage knowing and the

intellectual life, and urge doing. I am very content with knowing, if only I could know. That is an august

entertainment, and would suffice me a great while. To know a little would be worth the expense of this world.

I hear always the law of Adrastia, "that every soul which had acquired any truth, should be safe from harm

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that

difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not

found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. Many eager persons

successively make an experiment in this way, and make themselves ridiculous. They acquire democratic

manners, they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse, I observe that in the history of mankind there is

never a solitary example of success,taking their own tests of success. I say this polemically, or in reply to

the inquiry, Why not realize your world? But far be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry

empiricism;since there never was a right endeavor but it succeeded. Patience and patience, we shall win at

the last. We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good deal of time to

eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which

becomes the light of our life. We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and

these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but, in the solitude to which every man is always

returning, he has a sanity and revelations which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never

mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat; up again, old heart!it seems to say,there is victory yet for all

justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into

I HAVE read that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than any

thing which he said. It has been complained of our brilliant English historian of the French Revolution that

when he has told all his facts about Mirabeau, they do not justify his estimate of his genius. The Gracchi,

Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir

Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, are men of great figure and of few deeds. We cannot

find the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington in the narrative of his exploits. The authority of

the name of Schiller is too great for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works or the anecdotes

is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is longer than the thunderclap, but somewhat resided in

these men which begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part of their power was

latent. This is that which we call Character,a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without

means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose impulses the man

is guided but whose counsels he cannot impart; which is company for him, so that such men are often

solitary, or if they chance to be social, do not need society but can entertain themselves very well alone. The

purest literary talent appears at one time great, at another time small, but character is of a stellar and

undiminishable greatness. What others effect by talent or by eloquence, this man accomplishes by some

magnetism. "Half his strength he put not forth." His victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by

crossing of bayonets. He conquers because his arrival alters the face of affairs. "O Iole! how did you know

that Hercules was a god?" "Because," answered Iole, "I was content the moment my eyes fell on him. When I

beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see him offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the chariotrace; but

Hercules did not wait for a contest; he conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever thing he

did." Man, ordinarily a pendant to events, only half attached, and that awkwardly, to the world he lives in, in

these examples appears to share the life of things, and to be an expression of the same laws which control the

But to use a more modest illustration and nearer home, I observe that in our political elections, where this

element, if it appears at all, can only occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently understand its incomparable

rate. The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely the power to

make his talent trusted. They cannot come at their ends by sending to Congress a learned, acute, and fluent

speaker, if he be not one who, before he was appointed by the people to represent them, was appointed by

Almighty God to stand for a fact, invincibly persuaded of that fact in himself,so that the most confident

and the most violent persons learn that here is resistance on which both impudence and terror are wasted,

namely faith in a fact. The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they

should say, but are themselves the country which they represent; nowhere are its emotions or opinions so

instant and true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion. The constituency at home hearkens to

their words, watches the color of their cheek, and therein, as in a glass, dresses its own. Our public assemblies

are pretty good tests of manly force. Our frank countrymen of the west and south have a taste for character,

and like to know whether the New Englander is a substantial man, or whether the hand can pass through him.

The same motive force appears in trade. There are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the State, or letters;

and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man; that is all anybody can tell

you about it. See him and you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if you see Napoleon, you would

comprehend his fortune. In the new objects we recognize the old game, the Habit of fronting the fact, and not

dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as

soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears not so much a private agent as her factor and Minister of

Commerce. His natural probity combines with his insight into the fabric of society to put him above tricks,

and he communicates to all his own faith that contracts are of no private interpretation. The habit of his mind

is a reference to standards of natural equity and public advantage; and he inspires respect and the wish to deal

with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectual pastime which the

spectacle of so much ability affords. This immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the Southern

Ocean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his familiar port, centres in his brain only; and nobody in the

universe can make his place good. In his parlor I see very well that he has been at hard work this morning,

with that knitted brow and that settled humor, which all his desire to be courteous cannot shake off. I see

plainly how many firm acts have been done; how many valiant noes have this day been spoken, when others

would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, with the pride of art and skill of masterly arithmetic and power of

remote combination, the consciousness of being an agent and playfellow of the original laws of the world. He

too believes that none can supply him, and that a man must be born to trade or he cannot learn it.

This virtue draws the mind more when it appears in action to ends not so mixed. It works with most energy in

the smallest companies and in private relations. In all cases it is an extraordinary and incomputable agent.

The excess of physical strength is paralyzed by it. Higher natures overpower lower ones by affecting them

with a certain sleep. The faculties are locked up, and offer no resistance. Perhaps that is the universal law.

When the high cannot bring up the low to itself, it benumbs it, as man charms down the resistance of the

lower animals. Men exert on each other a similar occult power. How often has the influence of a true master

realized all the tales of magic! A river of command seemed to run down from his eyes into all those who

beheld him, a torrent of strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, which pervaded them with his thoughts and

colored all events with the hue of his mind. "What means did you employ?" was the question asked of the

wife of Concini, in regard to her treatment of Mary of Medici; and the answer was, "Only that influence

which every strong mind has over a weak one." Cannot Caesar in irons shuffle off the irons and transfer them

to the person of Hippo or Thraso the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so immutable a bond? Suppose a slaver on

the coast of Guinea should take on board a gang of negroes which should contain persons of the stamp of

Toussaint L'Ouverture: or, let us fancy, under these swarthy masks he has a gang of Washingtons in chains.

When they arrive at Cuba, will the relative order of the ship's company be the same? Is there nothing but rope

and iron? Is there no love, no reverence? Is there never a glimpse of right in a poor slavecaptain's mind; and

cannot these be supposed available to break or elude or in any manner overmatch the tension of an inch or

This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooperates with it. The reason why we feel one

man's presence and do not feel another's is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being; justice is the

application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in

them. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures as water runs down from a higher into a

lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be withstood than any other natural force. We can drive a stone

upward for a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will forever fall; and whatever instances can

be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the

privilege of truth to make itself believed. Character is this moral order seen through the medium of an

individual nature. An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are

left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close or pound. All things exist in the man tinged with the

manners of his soul. With what quality is in him he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend to

lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, all his regards return into his own good at last. He

animates all he can, and he sees only what he animates. He encloses the world, as the patriot does his country,

as a material basis for his character, and a theatre for action. A healthy soul stands united with the Just and

the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole; so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent

object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is

thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. Thus, men of character are the

The natural measure of this power is the resistance of circumstances. Impure men consider life as it is

reflected in opinions, events, and persons. They cannot see the action until it is done. Yet its moral element

preexisted in the actor, and its quality as right or wrong it was easy to predict. Everything in nature is bipolar,

or has a positive and negative pole. There is a male and a female, a spirit and a fact, a north and a south.

Spirit is the positive, the event is the negative. Will is the north, action the south pole. Character may be

ranked as having its natural place in the north. It shares the magnetic currents of the system. The feeble souls

are drawn to the south or negative pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold a

principle until it is lodged in a person. They do not wish to be lovely, but to be loved. Men of character like to

hear of their faults; the other class do not like to hear of faults; they worship events; secure to them a fact, a

connection, a certain chain of circumstances, and they will ask no more. The hero sees that the event is

ancillary; it must follow him. A given order of events has no power to secure to him the satisfaction which

the imagination attaches to it; the soul of goodness escapes from any set of circumstances; whilst prosperity

belongs to a certain mind, and will introduce that power and victory which is its natural fruit, into any order

of events. No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character. We boast our emancipation from

many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols it is through a transfer of the idolatry. What have I

gained, that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble

before the Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic Judgmentday,if I quake at opinion,

the public opinion, as we call it; or at the threat of assault, or contumely, or bad neighbors, or poverty, or

mutilation, or at the rumor of revolution, or of murder? If I quake, what matters it what I quake at? Our

proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and,

if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors. The covetousness or the malignity which saddens me when

I ascribe it to society, is my own. I am always environed by myself. On the other part, rectitude is a perpetual

victory, celebrated not by cries of joy but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual. It is disgraceful to fly to

events for confirmation of our truth and worth. The capitalist does not run every hour to the broker to coin his

advantages into current money of the realm; he is satisfied to read in the quotations of the market that his

stocks have risen. The same transport which the occurrence of the best events in the best order would

occasion me, I must learn to taste purer in the perception that my position is every hour meliorated, and does

already command those events I desire. That exultation is only to be checked by the foresight of an order of

The face which character wears to me is self sufficingness. I revere the person who is riches; so that I

cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron, benefactor,

and beatified man. Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. A man should give

us a sense of mass. Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and

escapes. But if I go to see an ingenious man I shall think myself poorly entertained if he give me nimble

pieces of benevolence and etiquette; rather he shall stand stoutly in his place and let me apprehend if it were

only his resistance; know that I have encountered a new and positive quality;great refreshment for both of

us. It is much that he does not accept the conventional opinions and practices. That nonconformity will

remain a goad and remembrancer, and every inquirer will have to dispose of him, in the first place. There is

nothing real or useful that is not a seat of war. Our houses ring with laughter and personal and critical gossip,

but it helps little. But the uncivil, unavailable man, who is a problem and a threat to society, whom it cannot

let pass in silence but must either worship or hate,and to whom all parties feel related, both the leaders of

opinion and the obscure and eccentric,he helps; he puts America and Europe in the wrong, and destroys

the skepticism which says, 'man is a doll, let us eat and drink, 'tis the best we can do,' by illuminating the

untried and unknown. Acquiescence in the establishment and appeal to the public, indicate infirm faith, heads

which are not clear, and which must see a house built, before they can comprehend the plan of it. The wise

man not only leaves out of his thought the many, but leaves out the few. Fountains, the selfmoved, the

absorbed, the commander because he is commanded, the assured, the primary,they are good; for these

Our action should rest mathematically on our substance. In nature, there are no false valuations. A pound of

water in the oceantempest has no more gravity than in a midsummer pond. All things work exactly

according to their quality and according to their quantity; attempt nothing they cannot do, except man only.

He has pretension; he wishes and attempts things beyond his force. I read in a book of English memoirs, "Mr.

Fox (afterwards Lord Holland) said, he must have the Treasury; he had served up to it, and would have it."

Xenophon and his Ten Thousand were quite equal to what they attempted, and did it; so equal, that it was not

suspected to be a grand and inimitable exploit. Yet there stands that fact unrepeated, a highwater mark in

military history. Many have attempted it since, and not been equal to it. It is only on reality that any power of

action can be based. No institution will be better than the institutor. I knew an amiable and accomplished

person who undertook a practical reform, yet I was never able to find in him the enterprise of love he took in

hand. He adopted it by ear and by the understanding from the books he had been reading. All his action was

tentative, a piece of the city carried out into the fields, and was the city still, and no new fact, and could not

inspire enthusiasm. Had there been something latent in the man, a terrible undemonstrated genius agitating

and embarrassing his demeanor, we had watched for its advent. It is not enough that the intellect should see

the evils and their remedy. We shall still postpone our existence, nor take the ground to which we are entitled,

whilst it is only a thought and not a spirit that incites us. We have not yet served up to it.

These are properties of life, and another trait is the notice of incessant growth. Men should be intelligent and

earnest. They must also make us feel that they have a controlling happy future opening before them, whose

early twilights already kindle in the passing hour. The hero is misconceived and misreported; he cannot

therefore wait to unravel any man's blunders; he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to his

domain and new claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you if you have loitered about the old things and

have not kept your relation to him by adding to your wealth. New actions are the only apologies and

explanations of old ones which the noble can bear to offer or to receive. If your friend has displeased you,

you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his

power to serve you, and ere you can rise up again will burden you with blessings.

We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence that is only measured by its works. Love is inexhaustible,

and if its estate is wasted, its granary emptied, still cheers and enriches, and the man, though he sleep, seems

to purify the air and his house to adorn the landscape and strengthen the laws. People always recognize this

difference. We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscription to

soupsocieties. It is only low merits that can be enumerated. Fear, when your friends say to you what you

have done well, and say it through; but when they stand with uncertain timid looks of respect and

halfdislike, and must suspend their judgment for years to come, you may begin to hope. Those who live to

the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present. Therefore it was droll in the good

Riemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, to make out a list of his donations and good deeds, as, so many

hundred thalers given to Stilling, to Hegel, to Tischbein; a lucrative place found for Professor Voss, a post

under the Grand Duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two professors recommended to foreign universities;

The longest list of specifications of benefit would look very short. A man is a poor creature if he is to be

measured so. For all these of course are exceptions, and the rule and hodiernal life of a good man is

benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to be inferred from the account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the way

in which he had spent his fortune. "Each bonmot of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half a million of my own

money, the fortune I inherited, my salary and the large income derived from my writings for fifty years back,

I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to enumerate traits of this simple and rapid power, and we are

painting the lightning with charcoal; but in these long nights and vacations I like to console myself so.

Nothing but itself can copy it. A word warm from the heart enriches me. I surrender at discretion. How

deathcold is literary genius before this fire of life! These are the touches that reanimate my heavy soul and

give it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, where I thought myself poor, there was I most rich. Thence

comes a new intellectual exaltation, to be again rebuked by some new exhibition of character. Strange

alternation of attraction and repulsion! Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into

thought, is published so, and then is ashamed before new flashes of moral worth.

Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no use to ape it or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of

resistance, and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation.

This masterpiece is best where no hands but nature's have been laid on it. Care is taken that the greatly

destined shall slip up into life in the shade, with no thousandeyed Athens to watch and blazon every new

thought, every blushing emotion of young genius. Two persons lately, very young children of the most high

God, have given me occasion for thought. When I explored the source of their sanctity and charm for the

imagination, it seemed as if each answered, 'From my nonconformity; I never listened to your people's law, or

to what they call their gospel, and wasted my time. I was content with the simple rural poverty of my own;

hence this sweetness; my work never reminds you of that;is pure of that.' And nature advertises me in such

persons that in democratic America she will not be democratized. How cloistered and constitutionally

sequestered from the market and from scandal! It was only this morning that I sent away some wild flowers

of these woodgods. They are a relief from literature,these fresh draughts from the sources of thought and

sentiment; as we read, in an age of polish and criticism, the first lines of written prose and verse of a nation.

How captivating is their devotion to their favorite books, whether Aeschylus, Dante, Shakspeare, or Scott, as

feeling that they have a stake in that book; who touches that, touches them;and especially the total solitude

of the critic, the Patmos of thought from which he writes, in unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever read

this writing. Could they dream on still, as angels, and not wake to comparisons, and to be flattered! Yet some

natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the

profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being

turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile. I remember the indignation of an eloquent

Methodist at the kind admonitions of a Doctor of Divinity,'My friend, a man can neither be praised nor

insulted.' But forgive the counsels; they are very natural. I remember the thought which occurred to me when

some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought

As I have said, Nature keeps these sovereignties in her own hands, and however pertly our sermons and

disciplines would divide some share of credit, and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she goes her own

gait and puts the wisest in the wrong. She makes very light of gospels and prophets, as one who has a great

many more to produce and no excess of time to spare on any one. There is a class of men, individuals of

which appear at long intervals, so eminently endowed with insight and virtue that they have been

unanimously saluted as divine, and who seem to be an accumulation of that power we consider. Divine

persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized. They are

usually received with illwill, because they are new and because they set a bound to the exaggeration that has

been made of the personality of the last divine person. Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men

alike. When we see a great man we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of

his character and fortune; a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his

character according to our prejudice, but only in his own high unprecedented way. Character wants room;

must not be crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs or on few

occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building. It may not, probably does not, form relations rapidly; and

we should not require rash explanation, either on the popular ethics, or on our own, of its action.

I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every

trait which the artist recorded in stone he had seen in life, and better than his copy. We have seen many

counterfeits, but we are born believers in great men. How easily we read in old books, when men were few,

of the smallest action of the patriarchs. We require that a man should be so large and columnar in the

landscape, that it should deserve to be recorded that he arose, and girded up his loins, and departed to such a

place. The most credible pictures are those of majestic men who prevailed at their entrance, and convinced

the senses; as happened to the eastern magian who was sent to test the merits of Zertusht or Zoroaster. When

the Yunani sage arrived at Balkh, the Persians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a day on which the Mobeds of

every country should assemble, and a golden chair was placed for the Yunani sage. Then the beloved of

Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht, advanced into the midst of the assembly. The Yunani sage, on seeing that

chief, said, "This form and this gait cannot lie, and nothing but truth can proceed from them." Plato said it

was impossible not to believe in the children of the gods, "though they should speak without probable or

necessary arguments." I should think myself very unhappy in my associates if I could not credit the best

things in history. "John Bradshaw," says Milton, "appears like a consul, from whom the fasces are not to

depart with the year; so that not on the tribunal only, but throughout his life, you would regard him as sitting

in judgment upon kings." I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know

heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world. "The virtuous prince confronts the

gods, without any misgiving. He waits a hundred ages till a sage comes, and does not doubt. He who

confronts the gods, without any misgiving, knows heaven; he who waits a hundred ages until a sage comes,

without doubting, knows men. Hence the virtuous prince moves, and for ages shows empire the way." But

there is no need to seek remote examples. He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the

reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry. The coldest precisian cannot go abroad without

encountering inexplicable influences. One man fastens an eye on him and the graves of the memory render up

their dead; the secrets that make him wretched either to keep or to betray must be yielded;another, and he

cannot speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their cartilages; the entrance of a friend adds grace,

boldness, and eloquence to him; and there are persons he cannot choose but remember, who gave a

What is so excellent as strict relations of amity, when they spring from this deep root? The sufficient reply to

the skeptic who doubts the power and the furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyful intercourse with

persons, which makes the faith and practice of all reasonable men. I know nothing which life has to offer so

satisfying as the profound good understanding which can subsist after much exchange of good offices,

between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which

postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap. For when men

shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with

accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the

sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at

one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of the character, the most solid

If it were possible to live in right relations with men!if we could abstain from asking anything of them,

from asking their praise, or help, or pity, and content us with compelling them through the virtue of the eldest

laws! Could we not deal with a few persons,with one person,after the unwritten statutes, and make an

experiment of their efficacy? Could we not pay our friend the compliment of truth, of silence, of forbearing?

Need we be so eager to seek him? If we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the ancient world that

no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which runs,

Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise:

Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods must seat themselves without seneschal in our Olympus,

and as they can instal themselves by seniority divine. Society is spoiled if pains are taken, if the associates are

brought a mile to meet. And if it be not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of

the best. All the greatness of each is kept back and every foible in painful activity, as if the Olympians should

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us.

But if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now

possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. The moment is all,

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart. Our beatitude waits for the

fulfilment of these two in one. The ages are opening this moral force. All force is the shadow or symbol of

that. Poetry is joyful and strong as it draws its inspiration thence. Men write their names on the world as they

are filled with this. History has been mean; our nations have been mobs; we have never seen a man: that

divine form we do not yet know, but only the dream and prophecy of such: we do not know the majestic

manners which belong to him, which appease and exalt the beholder. We shall one day see that the most

private is the most public energy, that quality atones for quantity, and grandeur of character acts in the dark,

and succors them who never saw it. What greatness has yet appeared is beginnings and encouragements to us

in this direction. The history of those gods and saints which the world has written and then worshipped, are

documents of character. The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth who owed nothing to fortune, and

who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the pure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendor

around the facts of his death which has transfigured every particular into an universal symbol for the eyes of

mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our highest fact. But the mind requires a victory to the senses; a force

of character which will convert judge, jury, soldier, and king; which will rule animal and mineral virtues, and

blend with the courses of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral agents.

If we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs, at least let us do them homage. In society, high advantages

are set down to the possessor as disadvantages. It requires the more wariness in our private estimates. I do not

forgive in my friends the failure to know a fine character and to entertain it with thankful hospitality. When at

last that which we have always longed for is arrived and shines on us with glad rays out of that far celestial

land, then to be coarse, then to be critical and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicion of the streets,

argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is confusion, this the right insanity, when the

soul no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due. Is there any religion but this, to

know that wherever in the wide desert of being the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it

blooms for me? if none sees it, I see it; I am aware, if I alone, of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I

will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom and my folly and jokes. Nature is indulged by the

presence of this guest. There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues;

there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love

which is allsuffering, allabstaining, allaspiring, which has vowed to itself that it will be a wretch and also

a fool in this world sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and

houses,only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it is to own it.

"HOW near to good is what is fair! Which we no sooner see, But with the lines and outward air Our senses

Again yourselves compose, And now put all the aptness on Of Figure, that Proportion Or Color can disclose;

That if those silent arts were lost, Design and Picture, they might boast From you a newer ground, Instructed

by the heightening sense Of dignity and reverence In their true motions found." BEN JONSON

HALF the world, it is said, knows not how the other half live. Our Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee

islanders getting their dinner off human bones; and they are said to eat their own wives and children. The

husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is philosophical to a fault. To set up

their housekeeping nothing is requisite but two or three earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, and a mat which

is the bed. The house, namely a tomb, is ready without rent or taxes. No rain can pass through the roof, and

there is no door, for there is no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the house do not please them, they

walk out and enter another, as there are several hundreds at their command. "It is somewhat singular," adds

Belzoni, to whom we owe this account, "to talk of happiness among people who live in sepulchres, among

the corpses and rags of an ancient nation which they know nothing of." In the deserts of Borgoo the

rockTibboos still dwell in caves, like cliffswallows, and the language of these negroes is compared by their

neighbors to the shrieking of bats and to the whistling of birds. Again, the Bornoos have no proper names;

individuals are called after their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and have nicknames merely.

But the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these horrible regions are visited, find their way into

countries where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in one race with these cannibals and

manstealers; countries where man serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk, and

wool; honors himself with architecture; writes laws, and contrives to execute his will through the hands of

many nations; and, especially, establishes a select society, running through all the countries of intelligent

men, a selfconstituted aristocracy, or fraternity of the best, which, without written law or exact usage of any

kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every newplanted island and adopts and makes its own whatever personal

What fact more conspicuous in modern history than the creation of the gentleman? Chivalry is that, and

loyalty is that, and, in English literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir

Walter Scott, paint this figure. The word gentleman, which, like the word Christian, must hereafter

characterize the present and the few preceding centuries by the importance attached to it, is a homage to

personal and incommunicable properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with the name,

but the steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed to the valuable properties which it designates. An

element which unites all the most forcible persons of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to

each other, and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack the masonic sign, cannot

be any casual product, but must be an average result of the character and faculties universally found in men.

It seems a certain permanent average; as the atmosphere is a permanent composition, whilst so many gases

are combined only to be decompounded. Comme il faut, is the Frenchman's description of good Society: as

we must be. It is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who have most vigor, who

take the lead in the world of this hour, and though far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and

highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more

than of the talent of men, and is a compound result into which every great force enters as an ingredient,

There is something equivocal in all the words in use to express the excellence of manners and social

cultivation, because the quantities are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the cause. The

word gentleman has not any correlative abstract to express the quality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is

obsolete. But we must keep alive in the vernacular the distinction between fashion, a word of narrow and

often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which the gentleman imports. The usual words, however,

must be respected; they will be found to contain the root of the matter. The point of distinction in all this class

of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the like, is that the flower and fruit, not the grain of the tree, are

contemplated. It is beauty which is the aim this time, and not worth. The result is now in question, although

our words intimate well enough the popular feeling that the appearance supposes a substance. The gentleman

is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner

dependent and servile, either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real force,

the word denotes goodnature or benevolence: manhood first, and then gentleness. The popular notion

certainly adds a condition of ease and fortune; but that is a natural result of personal force and love, that they

should possess and dispense the goods of the world. In times of violence, every eminent person must fall in

with many opportunities to approve his stoutness and worth; therefore every man's name that emerged at all

from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force never goes

out of fashion. That is still paramount today, and in the moving crowd of good society the men of valor and

reality are known and rise to their natural place. The competition is transferred from war to politics and trade,

Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers

and clerks. God knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in strictness and with

any emphasis, the name will be found to point at original energy. It describes a man standing in his own right

and working after untaught methods. In a good lord there must first be a good animal, at least to the extent of

yielding the incomparable advantage of animal spirits. The ruling class must have more, but they must have

these, giving in every company the sense of power, which makes things easy to be done which daunt the

wise. The society of the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage and of

attempts which intimidate the pale scholar. The courage which girls exhibit is like a battle of Lundy's Lane,

or a sea fight. The intellect relies on memory to make some supplies to face these extemporaneous

squadrons. But memory is a base mendicant with basket and badge, in the presence of these sudden masters.

The rulers of society must be up to the work of the world, and equal to their versatile office: men of the right

Caesarian pattern, who have great range of affinity. I am far from believing the timid maxim of Lord

Falkland ("that for ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go through the cunningest

forms"), and am of opinion that the gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are not to be broken through;

and only that plenteous nature is rightful master which is the complement of whatever person it converses

with. My gentleman gives the law where he is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the

field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates and good with academicians; so

that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I could as easily

exclude myself, as him. The famous gentlemen of Asia and Europe have been of this strong type; Saladin,

Sapor, the Cid, Julius Caesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They sat very

carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves, to value any condition at a high rate.

A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judgment, to the completion of this man of the

world; and it is a material deputy which walks through the dance which the first has led. Money is not

essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of clique and caste and makes itself felt by men

of all classes. If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles and not with truckmen, he will never be a

leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the

gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates,

and Epaminondas, are gentlemen of the best blood who have chosen the condition of poverty when that of

wealth was equally open to them. I use these old names, but the men I speak of are my contemporaries.

Fortune will not supply to every generation one of these well appointed knights, but every collection of men

furnishes some example of the class; and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town, are

controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy

The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by men of taste. The association of these

masters with each other and with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. The

good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. By swift consent everything

superfluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners show themselves formidable to the

uncultivated man. They are a subtler science of defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the skill

of the other party, they drop the point of the sword, points and fences disappear, and the youth finds

himself in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a

misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments and

bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation as a railway aids travelling, by getting

rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms

very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the more heed that it becomes a

badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the

most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.

There exists a strict relation between the class of power and the exclusive and polished circles. The last are

always filled or filling from the first. The strong men usually give some allowance even to the petulances of

fashion, for that affinity they find in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, never

ceased to court the Faubourg St. Germain; doubtless with the feeling that fashion is a homage to men of his

stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of

posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past. It

usually sets its face against the great of this hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls; they are absent in

the field: they are working, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their children; of those who through the

value and virtue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of cultivation

and generosity, and, in their physical organization a certain health and excellence which secures to them, if

not the highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power, the working heroes, the Cortez,

the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they; that fashion

is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar beaten out thin; that the brilliant names of fashion run

back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the

reapers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the possession of the harvest to new

competitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it

is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and

exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These mutual selections are indestructible. If they

provoke anger in the least favored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on the excluding

minority by the strong hand and kill them, at once a new class finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream

rises in a bowl of milk: and if the people should destroy class after class, until two men only were left, one of

these would be the leader and would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep this

minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the estates of the realm. I am the

more struck with this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the administration of such unimportant matters,

that we should not look for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men under some strong moral

influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a religious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man and

nature. We think all other distinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this of caste or fashion for example;

yet come from year to year and see how permanent that is, in this Boston or New York life of man, where too

it has not the least countenance from the law of the land. Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable

line. Here are associations whose ties go over and under and through it, a meeting of merchants, a military

corps, a college class, a fireclub, a professional association, a political, a religious convention;the persons

seem to draw inseparably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its members will not in the year meet

again. Each returns to his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen

earthen. The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of this union

and selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect graduation depends on

some symmetry in his structure or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of society. Its doors

unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own kind. A natural gentleman finds his way in, and will

keep the oldest patrician out who has lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; goodbreeding and

personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage

tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.

To say what good of fashion we can, it rests on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders; to exclude

and mystify pretenders and send them into everlasting 'Coventry,' is its delight. We contemn in turn every

other gift of men of the world; but the habit even in little and the least matters of not appealing to any but our

own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost no kind of selfreliance, so

it be sane and proportioned, which fashion does not occasionally adopt and give it the freedom of its saloons.

A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will

Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and find favor, as long as his head is not giddy

with the new circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and cotillons. For there is

nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at her

first ball, the country man at a city dinner, believes that there is a ritual according to which every act and

compliment must be performed, or the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later they learn that

good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it,

stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a

new and aboriginal way; and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that

fashion demands is composure and selfcontent. A circle of men perfectly wellbred would be a company of

sensible persons in which every man's native manners and character appeared. If the fashionist have not this

quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers of selfreliance that we excuse in a man many sins if he will show

us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion. But

any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world, forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an

underling: I have nothing to do with him; I will speak with his master. A man should not go where he cannot

carry his whole sphere or society with him,not bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically.

He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation which his daily

associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. "If you

could see Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on!" But Vich Ian Vohr must always carry his belongings in some

There will always be in society certain persons who are mercuries of its approbation, and whose glance will

at any time determine for the curious their standing in the world. These are the chamberlains of the lesser

gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege.

They are clear in their office, nor could they be thus formidable without their own merits. But do not measure

the importance of this class by their pretension, or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and

shame. They pass also at their just rate; for how can they otherwise, in circles which exist as a sort of herald's

As the first thing man requires of man is reality, so that appears in all the forms of society. We pointedly, and

by name, introduce the parties to each other. Know you before all heaven and earth, that this is Andrew, and

this is Gregory,they look each other in the eye; they grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each

other. It is a great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges; his eyes look straight forward, and he assures the

other party, first of all, that he has been met. For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and hospitalities? Is

it your draperies, pictures, and decorations? Or do we not insatiably ask, Was a man in the house? I may

easily go into a great household where there is much substance, excellent provision for comfort, luxury, and

taste, and yet not encounter there any Amphitryon who shall subordinate these appendages. I may go into a

cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I have come to see, and fronts me accordingly. It was

therefore a very natural point of old feudal etiquette that a gentleman who received a visit, though it were of

his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should wait his arrival at the door of his house. No house, though

it were the Tuileries or the Escurial, is good for anything without a master. And yet we are not often gratified

by this hospitality. Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory,

gardens, equipage and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not

seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to

front with his fellow? It were unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of

eminent convenience, whether the guest is too great or too little. We call together many friends who keep

each other in play, or by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the young people, and guard our retirement. Or if

perchance a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose eye we have no care to stand, then again we

run to our curtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice of the Lord God in the garden. Cardinal Caprara,

the Pope's legate at Paris, defended himself from the glances of Napoleon by an immense pair of green

spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally them off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn,

was not great enough with eight hundred thousand troops at his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but

fenced himself with etiquette and within triple barriers of reserve; and, as all the world knows from Madame

de Stael, was wont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face of all expression. But emperors

and rich men are by no means the most skilful masters of good manners. No rentroll nor armylist can

dignify skulking and dissimulation; and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as really all the forms

I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's translation, Montaigne's account of his journey into Italy, and am

struck with nothing more agreeably than the self respecting fashions of the time. His arrival in each place,

the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an event of some consequence. Wherever he goes he pays a visit to

whatever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty to himself and to civilization. When he

leaves any house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung up as a

The complement of this graceful selfrespect, and that of all the points of good breeding I most require and

insist upon, is deference. I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer a tendency to

stateliness to an excess of fellowship. Let the incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical

isolation of man teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have a man enter his

house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity

and selfpoise. We should meet each morning as from foreign countries, and, spending the day together,

should depart at night, as into foreign countries. In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let

us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this

religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers Should guard their strangeness. If they

forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness. It is easy to push this deference to a Chinese

etiquette; but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise; a

lady is serene. Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house with blast and running,

to secure some paltry convenience. Not less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbor's needs. Must

we have a good understanding with one another's palates? as foolish people who have lived long together

know when each wants salt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if

he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate as if I knew already. Every

natural function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry to slaves. The compliments

and ceremonies of our breeding should signify, however remotely, the recollection of the grandeur of our

The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if we dare to open another leaf and explore what

parts go to its conformation, we shall find also an intellectual quality. To the leaders of men, the brain as well

as the flesh and the heart must furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine

perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite

sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and independence. We imperatively require a perception of,

and a homage to beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the field and workyard, but a

certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with. I could better eat with one who did not respect

the truth or the laws than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at short

distances the senses are despotic. The same discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all

parts of life. The average spirit of the energetic class is good sense, acting under certain limitations and to

certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects everything which tends to unite

men. It delights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion. The person who

screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawingrooms to flight. If you

wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of

measure. This perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of the social instrument. Society will pardon

much to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it loves what is conventional, or what

belongs to coming together. That makes the good and bad of manners, namely what helps or hinders

fellowship. For fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense

entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary,

and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all

peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And besides the

general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine

The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must be tempered and shaded, or that will also offend.

Accuracy is essential to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick perceptions. One may

be too punctual and too precise. He must leave the omniscience of business at the door, when he comes into

the palace of beauty. Society loves creole natures, and sleepy languishing manners, so that they cover sense,

grace and goodwill: the air of drowsy strength, which disarms criticism; perhaps because such a person

seems to reserve himself for the best of the game, and not spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which

does not see the annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences that cloud the brow and smother the voice of the

Therefore besides personal force and so much perception as constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its

patrician class another element already intimated, which it significantly terms goodnature,expressing all

degrees of generosity, from the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity

and love. Insight we must have, or we shall run against one another and miss the way to our food; but

intellect is selfish and barren. The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man

who is not happy in the company cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. All his

information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation equally

lucky occasions for the introduction of that which he has to say. The favorites of society, and what it calls

whole souls, are able men and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly

fill the hour and the company; contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a jury, a water

party or a shootingmatch. England, which is rich in gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present

century, a good model of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added to his great abilities the

most social disposition and real love of men. Parliamentary history has few better passages than the debate in

which Burke and Fox separated in the House of Commons; when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of

old friendship with such tenderness that the house was moved to tears. Another anecdote is so close to my

matter, that I must hazard the story. A tradesman who had long dunned him for a note of three hundred

guineas, found him one day counting gold, and demanded payment: "No," said Fox, "I owe this money to

Sheridan; it is a debt of honor; if an accident should happen to me, he has nothing to show." "Then," said the

creditor, "I change my debt into a debt of honor," and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the man for his

confidence and paid him, saying, "his debt was of older standing, and Sheridan must wait." Lover of liberty,

friend of the Hindoo, friend of the African slave, he possessed a great personal popularity; and Napoleon said

of him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, "Mr. Fox will always hold the first place in an assembly

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, whenever we insist on benevolence as its

foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. But I will

neither be driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief that love is

the basis of courtesy. We must obtain that, if we can; but by all means we must affirm this. Life owes much

of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion, which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only

a ballroom code. Yet so long as it is the highest circle in the imagination of the best heads on the planet,

there is something necessary and excellent in it; for it is not to be supposed that men have agreed to be the

dupes of anything preposterous; and the respect which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan

characters, and the curiosity with which details of high life are read, betray the universality of the love of

cultivated manners. I know that a comic disparity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged 'first

circles' and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit to the individuals actually found

there. Monarchs and heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many classes and many

rules of probation and admission, and not the best alone. There is not only the right of conquest, which genius

pretends,the individual demonstrating his natural aristocracy best of the best; but less claims will pass

for the time; for Fashion loves lions, and points like Circe to her horned company. This gentleman is this

afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord Ride, who came yesterday from Bagdat; here is

Captain Friese, from Cape Turnagain; and Captain Symmes, from the interior of the earth; and Monsieur

Jovaire, who came down this morning in a balloon; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer; and Reverend Jul Bat, who

has converted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school; and Signor Torre del Greco, who extinguished

Vesuvius by pouring into it the Bay of Naples; Spahi, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the exiled

nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon.But these are monsters of one day, and tomorrow will be

dismissed to their holes and dens; for in these rooms every chair is waited for. The artist, the scholar, and, in

general, the clerisy, wins their way up into these places and get represented here, somewhat on this footing of

conquest. Another mode is to pass through all the degrees, spending a year and a day in St. Michael's Square,

being steeped in Cologne water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and properly grounded in all the

Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesque sculpture about the gates and offices of

temples. Let the creed and commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms of politeness

universally express benevolence in superlative degrees. What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and

used as means of selfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the true out Of the world? What if the

false gentleman contrives so to address his companion as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and

also to make them feel excluded? Real service will not lose its nobleness. All generosity is not merely French

and sentimental; nor is it to be concealed that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last distinguish

God's gentleman from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present

age: "Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend and persuaded his enemy: what his mouth ate, his hand

paid for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he

never forgot his children; and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his whole body." Even the line of

heroes is not utterly extinct. There is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf,

who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some absurd inventor of charities; some guide and

comforter of runaway slaves; some friend of Poland; some Philhellene; some fanatic who plants shadetrees

for the second and third generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some wellconcealed piety; some

just man happy in an ill fame; some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune and impatiently casting them on

other shoulders. And these are the centres of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses. These are the

creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are,

in the theory, the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and

Washington, and every pure and valiant heart who worshipped Beauty by word and by deed. The persons

who constitute the natural aristocracy are not found in the actual aristocracy, or only on its edge; as the

chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity

of the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign when he appears. The theory of society supposes the

existence and sovereignty of these. It divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods,

Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society there is a narrower and higher circle, concentration of its

light, and flower of courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and reference, as to its inner and

imperial court; the parliament of love and chivalry. And this is constituted of those persons in whom heroic

dispositions are native; with the love of beauty, the delight in society, and the power to embellish the passing

day. If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of

centuries, should pass in review, in such manner as that we could at leisure and critically inspect their

behavior, we might find no gentleman and no lady; for although excellent specimens of courtesy and

highbreeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars we should detect offence. Because

elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. There must be romance of character, or the most fastidious

exclusion of impertinencies will not avail. It must be genius which takes that direction: it must be not

courteous, but courtesy. High behavior is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. Scott is praised for the fidelity with

which he painted the demeanor and conversation of the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens, nobles

and great ladies, had some right to complain of the absurdity that had been put in their mouths before the days

of Waverley; but neither does Scott's dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epigramatic

speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the second reading: it is not warm with life.

In Shakspeare alone the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many

titles that of being the bestbred man in England and in Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are

permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their

nature, but whose character emanates freely in their word and gesture. A beautiful form is better than a

beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form: it gives a higher pleasure than statues or

pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by

the moral quality radiating from his countenance he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his

manners equal the majesty of the world. I have seen an individual whose manners, though wholly within the

conventions of elegant society, were never learned there, but were original and commanding and held out

protection and prosperity; one who did not need the aid of a courtsuit, but carried the holiday in his eye;

who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new modes of existence; who shook off the captivity

of etiquette, with happy, spirited bearing, goodnatured and free as Robin Hood; yet with the port of an

The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers are the places where Man executes his will; let

him yield or divide the sceptre at the door of the house. Woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly

detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, flowing, and

magnanimous deportment which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall. Our American institutions have

been friendly to her, and at this moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in women. A

certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men may give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of

Woman's Rights. Certainly let her be as much better placed in the laws and in social forms as the most

zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only

herself can show us how she shall be served. The wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at times

into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polymnia; and by the

firmness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest calculators that another road

exists than that which their feet know. But besides those who make good in our imagination the place of

muses and of Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that

the wine runs over and fills the house with perfume; who inspire us with courtesy; who unloose our tongues

and we speak; who anoint our eyes and we see? We say things we never thought to have said; for once, our

walls of habitual reserve vanished and left us at large; we were children playing with children in a wide field

of flowers. Steep us, we cried, in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets and will

write out in manycolored words the romance that you are. Was it Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his Persian

Lilla, She was an elemental force, and astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw her day after day

radiating, every instant, redundant joy and grace on all around her. She was a solvent powerful to reconcile

all heterogeneous persons into one society: like air or water, an element of such a great range of affinities that

it combines readily with a thousand substances. Where she is present all others will be more than they are

wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever she did, became her. She had too much sympathy and

desire to please, than that you could say her manners were marked with dignity, yet no princess could surpass

her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion. She did not study the Persian grammar, nor the books of the

seven poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to be written upon her. For though the bias of her nature

was not to thought, but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature as to meet intellectual persons

by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with

I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to those who look

at the contemporary facts for science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spectators. The

constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle to the ambitious youth who have not found their names

enrolled in its Golden Book, and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and privileges. They have yet

to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance; its proudest gates

will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For the present distress, however, of those who are

predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a

couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For the advantages

which fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets namely. Out of this

precinct they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial

society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.

But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. The worth of the thing signified must vindicate our

taste for the emblem. Everything that is called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before the cause and

fountain of honor, creator of titles and dignities, namely the heart of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire,

which, in all countries and contingencies, will work after its kind and conquer and expand all that approaches

it. This gives new meanings to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but its own.

What is rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody? to succor the unfashionable and the eccentric? rich

enough to make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper which commends him "To

the charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by

overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble

exception of your presence and your house from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that

they were greeted with a voice which made them both remember and hope? What is vulgar but to refuse the

claim on acute and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart and yours one

holiday from the national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of Schiraz could

not afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad and

deep that although his speech was so bold and free with the Koran as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was

there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or who had been

mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at once to him; that great heart lay there so

sunny and hospitable in the centre of the country, that it seemed as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to

his side. And the madness which he harbored he did not share. Is not this to be rich? this only to be rightly

But I shall hear without pain that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand. It

is easy to see, that what is called by distinction society and fashion has good laws as well as bad, has much

that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a

tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I overheard Jove, one day,' said

Silenus, 'talking of destroying the earth; he said it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from

bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other. Minerva said she hoped not; they were only ridiculous

little creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near;

if you called them bad, they would appear so; if you called them good, they would appear so; and there was

no one person or action among them, which would not puzzle her owl, much more all Olympus, to know

IT is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy; that the world owes the world more than the world can

pay, and ought to go into chancery and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, which involves in

some sort all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year and

other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay

debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing. If at any time it comes into my head that a present is due from

me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit

presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the

world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like

music heard out of a workhouse. Nature does not cocker us; we are children, not pets; she is not fond;

everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like

the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery even though we are not

deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. Something like that

pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable gifts,

because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. If a man

should send to me to come a hundred miles to visit him and should set before me a basket of fine

summerfruit, I should think there was some proportion between the labor and the reward.

For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and one is glad when an imperative

leaves him no option; since if the man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you could

procure him a paintbox. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat bread, or drink water, in the house or

out of doors, so it is always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity does everything well. In

our condition of universal dependence it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to

give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the

office of punishing him. I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies. Next to things

of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is that we might convey to some person

that which properly belonged to his character, and was easily associated with him in thought. But our tokens

of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for

gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the

shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the

girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its

primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an index of his

merit. But it is a cold lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something which does not

represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a

false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sinoffering, or

The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a

man to receive gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to be selfsustained. We do not quite forgive a

giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is

a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the

meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living by it:

We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society if it do not give us, besides earth and fire

He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are

unbecoming. Some violence I think is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am

sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the

act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read

my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the

giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to

him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil or this

flagon of wine when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the

fitness of beautiful, not useful things, for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the

beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all considering the value of the gift but

looking back to the greater store it was taken from,I rather sympathize with the beneficiary than with the

anger of my lord Timon. For the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total

insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heartburning from

one who has had the illluck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the

debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire in the

The reason of these discords I conceive to be that there is no commensurability between a man and any gift.

You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him he at once puts you in debt

by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish compared with the service he

knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also.

Compared with that goodwill I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.

Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random that we can seldom

hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and

humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have

the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit which is directly received. But rectitude scatters favors on every

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom

we must not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flowerleaves indifferently. There are persons

from whom we always expect fairytokens; let us not cease to expect them. This is prerogative, and not to be

limited by our municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. The best of

hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; you do not

need me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. No

services are of any value, but only likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it

proved an intellectual trick, no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them,

The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery: Though baffled seers cannot impart The

secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west.

Spirit that lurks each form within Beckons to spirit of its kin; Selfkindled every atom glows, And hints the

THERE are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its

perfection; when the air, the heavenly bodies and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her

offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the

happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives

sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These

halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather which we distinguish

by the name of the Indian summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide

fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem

quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of

great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes into

these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we

find Nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that

come to her. We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what

majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which render

them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to intrance us.

The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently

reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on

the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn

trifles. Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. How

easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures and by thoughts fast

succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory

obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature.

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us.

We come to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would

persuade us to despise. We never can part with it; the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is the

rock, the ground, to our eyes and hands and feet. It is firm water; it is cold flame; what health, what affinity!

Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this

honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our nonsense. Cities give not the human

senses room enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope,

just as we need water for our bath. There are all degrees of natural influence, from these quarantine powers of

nature, up to her dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagination and the soul. There is the bucket of cold

water from the spring, the woodfire to which the chilled traveller rushes for safety,and there is the

sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle in nature, and draw our living as parasites from her roots

and grains, and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude and foretell the

remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. I think if we should be rapt

away into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of

snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of

water, and over plains; the waving ryefield; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable

florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical

steaming odorous south wind, which converts all trees to windharps; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in

the flames, or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sittingroom,these are the music

and pictures of the most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt

of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leave

the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a

delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and

probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes are

bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, most heartrejoicing

festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant.

These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and

proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have

early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty. I am overinstructed for

my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and

sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance, but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He who

knows the most; he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens,

and how to come at these enchantments,is the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of the world

have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their

hanging gardens, villas, gardenhouses, islands, parks and preserves, to back their faulty personality with

these strong accessories. I do not wonder that the landed interest should be invincible in the State with these

dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe and invite; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these tender

and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We heard what the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his

grove, his wine and his company, but the provocation and point of the invitation came out of these beguiling

stars. In their soft glances I see what men strove to realize in some Versailles, or Paphos, or Ctesiphon.

Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon and the blue sky for the background which save all our works of

art, which were otherwise bawbles. When the rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they should

consider the effect of men reputed to be the possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. Ah! if the rich were

rich as the poor fancy riches! A boy hears a military band play on the field at night, and he has kings and

queens and famous chivalry palpably before him. He hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the Notch

Mountains, for example, which converts the mountains into an Aeolian harp,and this supernatural tiralira

restores to him the Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, and all divine hunters and huntresses. Can a musical

note be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! To the poor young poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society; he is

loyal; he respects the rich; they are rich for the sake of his imagination; how poor his fancy would be, if they

were not rich! That they have some highfenced grove which they call a park; that they live in larger and

bettergarnished saloons than he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant, to

wateringplaces and to distant cities,these make the groundwork from which he has delineated estates of

romance, compared with which their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks. The muse herself betrays

her son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and wellborn beauty by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, and

forests that skirt the road,a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a kind of

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily, may not be always found, but the material

landscape is never far off. We can find these enchantments without visiting the Como Lake, or the Madeira

Islands. We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In every landscape the point of astonishment is the

meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of the

Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common with all the spiritual

magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and

the colors of morning and evening will transfigure maples and alders. The difference between landscape and

landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any

particular landscape as the necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot be

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on this topic, which schoolmen called natura naturata, or

nature passive. One can hardly speak directly of it without excess. It is as easy to broach in mixed companies

what is called "the subject of religion." A susceptible person does not like to indulge his tastes in this kind

without the apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to see a woodlot, or to look at the crops, or to fetch a

plant or a mineral from a remote locality, or he carries a fowlingpiece or a fishingrod. I suppose this shame

must have a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than

his brother of Broadway. Men are naturally hunters and inquisitive of woodcraft, and I suppose that such a

gazetteer as woodcutters and Indians should furnish facts for, would take place in the most sumptuous

drawingrooms of all the "Wreaths" and "Flora's chaplets" of the bookshops; yet ordinarily, whether we are

too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall

into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to Pan, who ought to be represented in the mythology as the

most continent of gods. I would not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I

cannot renounce the right of returning often to this old topic. The multitude of false churches accredits the

true religion. Literature, poetry, science are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, concerning which

no sane man can affect an indifference or incuriosity. Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the

city of God, although, or rather because there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it:

it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human

figures that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the

king is in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and

gazers, that we turn from the people to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and

the architecture. The critics who complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of nature from the thing to be

done, must consider that our hunting of the picturesque is inseparable from our protest against false society.

Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of

the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and selfishness we are looking up to nature, but when we

are convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with compunction: if our own life

flowed with the right energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not

with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish

becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy

But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our homage to

the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause before which all forms flee as the driven snows; itself

secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus, a

shepherd,) and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spiculae

through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a

shock or a leap. A little heat, that is a little motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white and deadly

cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence, by reason of the

two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity of

nature, and taught us to disuse our dameschool measures, and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes

for her large style. We knew nothing rightly, for want of perspective. Now we learn what patient periods must

round themselves before the rock is formed; then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has

disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and

Pomona to come in. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! how inconceivably remote is

man! All duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to

Plato and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as the first atom has two

Motion or change and identity or rest are the first and second secrets of nature:Motion and Rest. The

whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. The whirling bubble on the

surface of a brook admits us to the secret of the mechanics of the sky. Every shell on the beach is a key to it.

A little water made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of the simpler shells; the addition of matter from

year to year, arrives at last at the most complex forms; and yet so poor is nature with all her craft, that from

the beginning to the end of the universe she has but one stuff, but one stuff with its two ends, to serve up

all her dreamlike variety. Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff,

Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to

transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and at the same time

she arms and equips another animal to destroy it. Space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of

a bird with a few feathers she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direction is forever onward, but the artist

still goes back for materials and begins again with the first elements on the most advanced stage: otherwise

all goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to catch a glance of a system in transition. Plants are the

young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees

are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice

and probationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, having tasted the first drop from the cup

of thought, are already dissipated: the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt when they come to

consciousness they too will curse and swear. Flowers so strictly belong to youth that we adult men soon come

to feel that their beautiful generations concern not us: we have had our day; now let the children have theirs.

Things are so strictly related, that according to the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts and

properties of any other may be predicted. If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would

certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the city. That identity makes us all one, and

reduces to nothing great intervals on our customary scale. We talk of deviations from natural life, as if

artificial life were not also natural. The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal

nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is directly related, there amid

essences and billetsdoux, to Himmaleh mountainchains and the axis of the globe. If we consider how much

we are nature's, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force did not find us

there also, and fashion cities. Nature, who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear too much of

rural influences. The cool disengaged air of natural objects makes them enviable to us, chafed and irritable

creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be

men instead of woodchucks and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on

This guiding identity runs through all the surprises and contrasts of the piece, and characterizes every law.

Man carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the

history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every

known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified. A

man does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions of nature: moon, plant,

gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers. Common sense knows its own, and recognizes the fact at

first sight in chemical experiment. The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davy and Black, is the same

If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action runs also into organization. The astronomers said,

'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have

matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the

centrifugal and centripetal forces. Once heave the ball from the hand, and we can show how all this mighty

order grew.''A very unreasonable postulate,' said the metaphysicians, 'and a plain begging of the question.

Could you not prevail to know the genesis of projection, as well as the continuation of it?' Nature,

meanwhile, had not waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed the impulse, and the balls rolled.

It was no great affair, a mere push, but the astronomers were right in making much of it, for there is no end to

the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system,

and through every atom of every ball; through all the races of creatures, and through the history and

performances of every individual. Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man

into the world without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add

the impulse; so to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it

on its way; in every instance a slight generosity, a drop too much. Without electricity the air would rot, and

without this violence of direction which men and women have, without a spice of bigot and fanatic, no

excitement, no efficiency. We aim above the mark to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of

exaggeration in it. And when now and then comes along some sad, sharp eyed man, who sees how paltry a

game is played, and refuses to play, but blabs the secret;how then? Is the bird flown? O no, the wary

Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths, with a little more excess of direction to hold

them fast to their several aim; makes them a little wrongheaded in that direction in which they are rightest,

and on goes the game again with new whirl, for a generation or two more. The child with his sweet pranks,

the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his

sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon or a gingerbreaddog, individualizing

everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the

fatigue which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with

the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the

bodily frame by all these attitudes and exertions, an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted

to any care less perfect than her own. This glitter, this opaline lustre plays round the top of every toy to his

eye to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We are made alive and kept alive by the same arts.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and

the appetite is keen. The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single

seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant

themselves; that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that at least one may replace the

parent. All things betray the same calculated profusion. The excess of fear with which the animal frame is

hedged round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight of a snake, or at a sudden noise, protects us, through a

multitude of groundless alarms, from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks in marriage his private

felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own end, namely,

But the craft with which the world is made, runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite

sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of

holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to heart. Great causes are never tried on their

merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the contention is ever

hottest on minor matters. Not less remarkable is the overfaith of each man in the importance of what he has to

do or say. The poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets

spoken. The strong, selfcomplacent Luther declares with an emphasis not to be mistaken, that "God himself

cannot do without wise men." Jacob Behmen and George Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their

controversial tracts, and James Naylor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the Christ. Each prophet

comes presently to identify himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. However this

may discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, and

publicity to their words. A similar experience is not infrequent in private life. Each young and ardent person

writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages thus

written are to him burning and fragrant; he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the morning star; he

wets them with his tears; they are sacred; too good for the world, and hardly yet to be shown to the dearest

friend. This is the manchild that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. The umbilical

cord has not yet been cut. After some time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed

experience, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his eyes?

The friend coldly turns them over, and passes from the writing to conversation, with easy transition, which

strikes the other party with astonishment and vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself. Days and nights

of fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness and of light have engraved their shadowy characters on

that tearstained book. He suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. Is there then no friend? He

cannot yet credit that one may have impressive experience and yet may not know how to put his private fact

into literature; and perhaps the discovery that wisdom has other tongues and ministers than we, that though

we should hold our peace the truth would not the less be spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our

zeal. A man can only speak so long as he does not feel his speech to be partial and inadequate. It is partial,

but he does not see it to be so whilst he utters it. As soon as he is released from the instinctive and particular

and sees its partiality, he shuts his mouth in disgust. For no man can write anything who does not think that

what he writes is for the time the history of the world; or do anything well who does not esteem his work to

be of importance. My work may be of none, but I must not think it of none, or I shall not do it with impunity.

In like manner, there is throughout nature something mocking, something that leads us on and on, but arrives

nowhere; keeps no faith with us. All promise outruns the performance. We live in a system of

approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final

success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated. Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to

drink; but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is

full. It is the same with all our arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, our language itself are not

satisfactions, but suggestions. The hunger for wealth, which reduces the planet to a garden, fools the eager

pursuer. What is the end sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good sense and beauty, from the intrusion of

deformity or vulgarity of any kind. But what an operose method! What a train of means to secure a little

conversation! This palace of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen, these stables, horses and equipage,

this bankstock and file of mortgages; trade to all the world, countryhouse and cottage by the waterside, all

for a little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual! Could it not be had as well by beggars on the highway? No,

all these things came from successive efforts of these beggars to remove friction from the wheels of life, and

give opportunity. Conversation, character, were the avowed ends; wealth was good as it appeased the animal

cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door, brought friends together in a warm and quiet

room, and kept the children and the dinnertable in a different apartment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the

ends; but it was known that men of thought and virtue sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or could lose

good time whilst the room was getting warm in winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove

these inconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost sight of,

and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna,

and now the governments generally of the world are cities and governments of the rich; and the masses are

not men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with

pains and sweat and fury nowhere; when all is done, it is for nothing. They are like one who has interrupted

the conversation of a company to make his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say. The

appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of aimless nations. Were the ends of nature so

Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be expected, a similar effect on the eye from the face

of external nature. There is in woods and waters a certain enticement and flattery, together with a failure to

yield a present satisfaction. This disappointment is felt in every landscape. I have seen the softness and

beauty of the summer clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege of

motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to some

pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy, but the poet finds himself not near enough to

his object. The pinetree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still

elsewhere. This or this is but outskirt and faroff reflection and echo of the triumph that has passed by and is

now at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field,

then in the adjacent woods. The present object shall give you this sense of stillness that follows a pageant

which has just gone by. What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sunset!

But who can go where they are, or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world

forever and ever. It is the same among the men and women as among the silent trees; always a referred

existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction. Is it that beauty can never be grasped? in persons

and in landscape is equally inaccessible? The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his

maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star: she cannot be heaven if she

What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that first projectile impulse, of this flattery and balking

of so many wellmeaning creatures? Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe a slight treachery and

derision? Are we not engaged to a serious resentment of this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, and

fools of nature? One look at the face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser

convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained.

Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus arrives; he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain.

Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like

the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it and report of the

return of the curve. But it also appears that our actions are seconded and disposed to greater conclusions than

we designed. We are escorted on every hand through life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in

wait for us. We cannot bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons. If we measure our

individual forces against hers we may easily feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. But if,

instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we

shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and

chemistry, and, over them, of life, preexisting within us in their highest form.

The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results from

looking too much at one condition of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from the wheel.

Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest or Identity insinuates its compensation. All over the wide fields of

earth grows the prunella or selfheal. After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours;

and though we are always engaged with particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every

experiment the innate universal laws. These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature

forever embodied, a present sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. Our servitude to particulars

betrays into a hundred foolish expectations. We anticipate a new era from the invention of a locomotive, or a

balloon; the new engine brings with it the old checks. They say that by electromagnetism your salad shall be

grown from the seed whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner; it is a symbol of our modern aims and endeavors,

of our condensation and acceleration of objects;but nothing is gained; nature cannot be cheated; man's life

is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow. In these checks and impossibilities however we

find our advantage, not less than in the impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are on that side. And

the knowledge that we traverse the whole scale of being, from the centre to the poles of nature, and have

some stake in every possibility, lends that sublime lustre to death, which philosophy and religion have too

outwardly and literally striven to express in the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The reality is

more excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball. The divine circulations never

rest nor linger. Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and

gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free

thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of natural objects, whether inorganic or

organized. Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated. That power

which does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and the particle its equal channel, delegates its smile

to the morning, and distils its essence into every drop of rain. Every moment instructs, and every object: for

wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us

as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its

Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin

wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft, and Avarice

Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust, Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish

must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard

boughs Fended from the heat, Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat; When the Church is social

worth, When the statehouse is the hearth, Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home.

In dealing with the State we ought to remember that its institution are not aboriginal, though they existed

before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a

single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all

alterable; we may make as good, we may make better. Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before

him in rigid repose, with certain names, men and institutions rooted like oaktrees to the centre, round which

all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such

roots and centres, but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement and compel the system

to gyrate round it; as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man

of truth, like Plato or Paul, does forever. But politics rest on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated

with levity. Republics abound in young civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that grave

modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce,

education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed

on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is

a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and

progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for

eternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the

population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We are superstitious, and esteem the statute

somewhat: so much life as it has in the character of living men is its force. The statute stands there to say,

Yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article today? Our statute is a currency which we stamp

with our own portrait: it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time will return to the mint. Nature

is not democratic, nor limitedmonarchical, but despotic, and will not be fooled or abated of any jot of her

authority by the pertest of her sons; and as fast as the public mind is opened to more intelligence, the code is

seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks not articulately, and must be made to. Meantime the education of

the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth

dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions

of public bodies; then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall

be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place in turn to new prayers and

pictures. The history of the State sketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance

The theory of politics which has possessed the mind of men, and which they have expressed the best they

could in their laws and in their revolutions, considers persons and property as the two objects for whose

protection government exists. Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of being identical in nature. This

interest of course with its whole power demands a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in

virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and

another owns a county. This accident, depending primarily on the skill and virtue of the parties, of which

there is every degree, and secondarily on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights of course are unequal.

Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census; property

demands a government framed on the ratio of owners and of owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds,

wishes them looked after by an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off; and pays a tax

to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds and no fear of the Midianites, and pays no tax to the officer. It

seemed fit that Laban and Jacob should have equal rights to elect the officer who is to defend their persons,

but that Laban and not Jacob should elect the officer who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And if question

arise whether additional officers or watchtowers should be provided, must not Laban and Isaac, and those

who must sell part of their herds to buy protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than

Jacob, who, because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his own?

In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in the

direct way, no other opinion would arise in any equitable community than that property should make the law

But property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not create it. Gift, in one case, makes it

as really the new owner's, as labor made it the first owner's: in the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an

ownership which will be valid in each man's view according to the estimate which he sets on the public

It was not however found easy to embody the readily admitted principle that property should make law for

property, and persons for persons; since persons and property mixed themselves in every transaction. At last

it seemed settled that the rightful distinction was that the proprietors should have more elective franchise than

nonproprietors, on the Spartan principle of "calling that which is just, equal; not that which is equal, just."

That principle no longer looks so selfevident as it appeared in former times, partly, because doubts have

arisen whether too much weight had not been allowed in the laws to property, and such a structure given to

our usages as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them poor; but mainly because there is an

instinctive sense, however obscure and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution of property, on its present

tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly the only interest for

the consideration of the State is persons; that property will always follow persons; that the highest end of

government is the culture of men; and if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement

If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is less when we take note of our natural

defences. We are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect. Society

always consists in greatest part of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy

of courts and statesmen, die and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their

fathers did at their age. With such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that

there are limitations beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws, as

well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with. Property will be protected. Corn will not grow unless it is

planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it unless the chances are a hundred to one that he

will cut and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert

their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and

subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound; it will always attract and resist

other matter by the full virtue of one pound weight:and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral

energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force,if not overtly, then

covertly; if not for the law, then against it; if not wholesomely, then poisonously; with right, or by might.

The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or supernatural

force. Under the dominion of an idea which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the

religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men

unanimously bent on freedom or conquest can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve

extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the

In like manner to every particle of property belongs its own attraction. A cent is the representative of a certain

quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth,

so much bread, so much water, so much land. The law may do what it will with the owner of property; its just

power will still attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say that all shall have power except the owners

of property; they shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write

every statute that respects property. The nonproprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners

wish to do, the whole power of property will do, either through the law or else in defiance of it. Of course I

speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it

is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns something, if it is only a

The same necessity which secures the rights of person and property against the malignity or folly of the

magistrate, determines the form and methods of governing, which are proper to each nation and to its habit of

thought, and nowise transferable to other states of society. In this country we are very vain of our political

institutions, which are singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men, from the character

and condition of the people, which they still express with sufficient fidelity, and we ostentatiously prefer

them to any other in history. They are not better, but only fitter for us. We may be wise in asserting the

advantage in modern times of the democratic form, but to other states of society, in which religion

consecrated the monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is better for us, because the

religious sentiment of the present time accords better with it. Born democrats, we are nowise qualified to

judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living in the monarchical idea, was also relatively right. But our

institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the practical

defects which have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws

too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which

The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in the parties, into which each State divides

itself, of opponents and defenders of the administration of the government. Parties are also founded on

instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders. They have

nothing perverse in their origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting relation. We might as wisely reprove

the east wind or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of

their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves. Our quarrel with

them begins when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and obeying personal

considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance and defence of points nowise belonging to their

system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty,

we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal of the

masses which they direct. Ordinarily our parties are parties of circumstance, and not of principle; as the

planting interest in conflict with the commercial; the party of capitalists and that of operatives; parties which

are identical in their moral character, and which can easily change ground with each other in the support of

many of their measures. Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party of freetrade, of universal

suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of abolition of capital punishment,degenerate into personalities, or would

inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our leading parties in this country (which may be cited as a fair specimen of

these societies of opinion) is that they do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to which

they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying of some local and momentary

measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth. Of the two great parties which at this hour almost share the

nation between them, I should say that one has the best cause, and the other contains the best men. The

philosopher, the poet, or the religious man will of course wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for

freetrade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every

manner the access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and power. But he can rarely accept the

persons whom the socalled popular party propose to him as representatives of these liberalities. They have

not at heart the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our

American radicalism is destructive and aimless: it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends, but is

destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the

most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It

vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy; it does not

build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor

emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither party, when in

power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the

I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance. In the

strife of ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cherished; as the children of the convicts at

Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. Citizens of feudal states are

alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy, and the older and more cautious among ourselves

are learning from Europeans to look with some terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of

construing the Constitution, and in the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor; and one foreign

observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has

found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a

monarchy and a republic, saying that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes

strike on a rock and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet

are always in water. No forms can have any dangerous importance whilst we are befriended by the laws of

things. It makes no difference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the same

pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment the mass a thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as

reaction is equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and

each force by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by

strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 'Lynchlaw' prevails only where there is greater

hardihood and selfsubsistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency; everybody's interest requires

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses

itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads; and an abstract of the codes of nations

would be a transcript of the common conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.

Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other. There is a middle measure which

satisfies all parties, be they never so many or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a sanction for his

simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness. In these decisions

all the citizens find a perfect agreement, and only in these; not in what is good to eat, good to wear, good use

of time, or what amount of land or of public aid, each is entitled to claim. This truth and justice men presently

endeavor to make application of to the measuring of land, the apportionment of service, the protection of life

and property. Their first endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward. Yet absolute right is the first governor; or,

every government is an impure theocracy. The idea after which each community is aiming to make and mend

its law, is the will of the wise man. The wise man it cannot find in nature, and it makes awkward but earnest

efforts to secure his government by contrivance; as by causing the entire people to give their voices on every

measure; or by a double choice to get the representation of the whole; or, by a selection of the best citizens;

or to secure the advantages of efficiency and internal peace by confiding the government to one, who may

himself select his agents. All forms of government symbolize an immortal government, common to all

dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is only one man.

Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my

wrong is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my

neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find

my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth,

and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he that he cannot express

adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot

maintain the assumption; it must be executed by a practical lie, namely by force. This undertaking for another

is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in

numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my

setting myself down to a self control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views; but when a

quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the

circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore all public ends look vague and

quixotic beside private ones. For any laws but those which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put

myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought and see that things are thus or thus, that

perception is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I

look over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. This is the

history of governments,one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be

acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that

whimsical end,not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts men are least

willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's

Hence the less government we have the better, the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote

to this abuse of formal Government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the

appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing

government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe; which freedom,

cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of Nature, to reach

unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the

wise man the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the

State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends

to him; no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no

church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he

is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes.

He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him needs

not husband and educate a few to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his

We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cockcrowing and the morning star. In

our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who

is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit

it; the Annual Register is silent; in the Conversations' Lexicon it is not set down; the President's Message, the

Queen's Speech, have not mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which genius and piety

throw into the world, alters the world. The gladiators in the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of

force and simulation, the presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and ambition are confession of this

divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor amends, the figleaf with which the shamed soul attempts

to hide its nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is because we know how much is due

from us that we are impatient to show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a

conscience of this right to grandeur of character, and are false to it. But each of us has some talent, can do

somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an apology to others

and to ourselves for not reaching the mark of a good and equal life. But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust

it on the notice of our companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, or

give us the tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of

expiation, and we are constrained to reflect on our splendid moment with a certain humiliation, as somewhat

too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression of our permanent energy. Most persons of ability

meet in society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, 'I am not all here.' Senators and presidents have

climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for

real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to

themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of forest

animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail; climb they must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich

natured that he could enter into strict relations with the best persons and make life serene around him by the

dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press,

and covet relations so hollow and pompous as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a charlatan who

The tendencies of the times favor the idea of selfgovernment, and leave the individual, for all code, to the

rewards and penalties of his own constitution; which work with more energy than we believe whilst we

depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much

has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters;

for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the

individual from all party, and unites him at the same time to the race. It promises a recognition of higher

rights than those of personal freedom, or the security of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be

trusted, to be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must

not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his

part in certain social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor

secured, when the government of force is at an end. Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is

hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most

conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet and the system of force. For,

according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a

government of force where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force they

will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the postoffice, of the highway, of commerce and the

exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science can be answered.

We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force. There is

not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the

moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained

without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable and a

good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man

sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the

principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have

admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind a single human being who has

steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full of

genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as air pictures. If the individual who

exhibits them dare to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent and

women of superior sentiments cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of

youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men,if indeed I can speak in the plural

number,more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse

experience will make it for a moment appear impossible that thousands of human beings might exercise

towards each other the grandest and simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.

I CANNOT often enough say that a man is only a relative and representative nature. Each is a hint of the

truth, but far enough from being that truth which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it

in him I shall not find it. Could any man conduct into me the pure stream of that which he pretends to be!

Long afterwards I find that quality elsewhere which he promised me. The genius of the Platonists is

intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can I detach from all their books. The man

momentarily stands for the thought, but will not bear examination; and a society of men will cursorily

represent well enough a certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry or beauty of manners; but separate

them and there is no gentleman and no lady in the group. The least hint sets us on the pursuit of a character

which no man realizes. We have such exorbitant eyes that on seeing the smallest arc we complete the curve,

and when the curtain is lifted from the diagram which it seemed to veil, we are vexed to find that no more

was drawn than just that fragment of an arc which we first beheld. We are greatly too liberal in our

construction of each other's faculty and promise. Exactly what the parties have already done they shall do

again; but that which we inferred from their nature and inception, they will not do. That is in nature, but not

in them. That happens in the world, which we often witness in a public debate. Each of the speakers

expresses himself imperfectly; no one of them hears much that another says, such is the preoccupation of

mind of each; and the audience, who have only to hear and not to speak, judge very wisely and superiorly

how wrongheaded and unskilful is each of the debaters to his own affair. Great men or men of great gifts you

shall easily find, but symmetrical men never. When I meet a pure intellectual force or a generosity of

affection, I believe here then is man; and am presently mortified by the discovery that this individual is no

more available to his own or to the general ends than his companions; because the power which drew my

respect is not supported by the total symphony of his talents. All persons exist to society by some shining trait

of beauty or utility which they have. We borrow the proportions of the man from that one fine feature, and

finish the portrait symmetrically; which is false, for the rest of his body is small or deformed. I observe a

person who makes a good public appearance, and conclude thence the perfection of his private character, on

which this is based; but he has no private character. He is a graceful cloak or layfigure for holidays. All our

poets, heroes, and saints, fail utterly in some one or in many parts to satisfy our idea, fail to draw our

spontaneous interest, and so leave us without any hope of realization but in our own future. Our exaggeration

of all fine characters arises from the fact that we identify each in turn with the soul. But there are no such men

as we fable; no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor Washington, such as we have made. We

consecrate a great deal of nonsense because it was allowed by great men. There is none without his foible. I

verily believe if an angel should come to chant the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too much

gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious atrocity. It is bad enough that our

geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. He is

admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple. The men of fine parts protect

themselves by solitude, or by courtesy, or by satire, or by an acid worldly manner, each concealing as he best

can his incapacity for useful association, but they want either love or selfreliance.

Our native love of reality joins with this experience to teach us a little reserve, and to dissuade a too sudden

surrender to the brilliant qualities of persons. Young people admire talents or particular excellences; as we

grow older we value total powers and effects, as the impression, the quality, the spirit of men and things. The

genius is all. The man,it is his system: we do not try a solitary word or act, but his habit. The acts which

you praise, I praise not, since they are departures from his faith, and are mere compliances. The magnetism

which arranges tribes and races in one polarity is alone to be respected; the men are steel filings. Yet we

unjustly select a particle, and say, 'O steelfiling number one! what heartdrawings I feel to thee! what

prodigious virtues are these of thine! how constitutional to thee, and incommunicable.' Whilst we speak the

loadstone is withdrawn; down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our mummery to the

wretched shaving. Let us go for universals; for the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and its persons

are poor empirical pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis fatuus. If they say it is great, it is great; if they

say it is small, it is small; you see it, and you see it not, by turns; it borrows all its size from the momentary

estimation of the speakers: the Willofthewisp vanishes if you go too near, vanishes if you go too far, and

only blazes at one angle. Who can tell if Washington be a great man or no? Who can tell if Franklin be? Yes,

or any but the twelve, or six, or three great gods of fame? And they too loom and fade before the eternal.

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the

catholic. We adjust our instrument for general observation, and sweep the heavens as easily as we pick out a

single figure in the terrestrial landscape. We are practically skilful in detecting elements for which we have

no place in our theory, and no name. Thus we are very sensible of an atmospheric influence in men and in

bodies of men, not accounted for in an arithmetical addition of all their measurable properties. There is a

genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.

England, strong, punctual, practical, wellspoken England I should not find if I should go to the island to

seek it. In the parliament, in the playhouse, at dinnertables, I might see a great number of rich, ignorant,

bookread, conventional, proud men,many old women,and not anywhere the Englishman who made the

good speeches, combined the accurate engines, and did the bold and nervous deeds. It is even worse in

America, where, from the intellectual quickness of the race, the genius of the country is more splendid in its

promise and more slight in its performance. Webster cannot do the work of Webster. We conceive distinctly

enough the French, the Spanish, the German genius, and it is not the less real that perhaps we should not meet

in either of those nations a single individual who corresponded with the type. We infer the spirit of the nation

in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument to which each forcible individual in a

course of many hundred years has contributed a stone. And, universally, a good example of this social force

is the veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. In any controversy concerning morals, an appeal

may be made with safety to the sentiments which the language of the people expresses. Proverbs, words, and

grammarinflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision than the wisest individual.

In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had a good deal of reason. General ideas are

essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living. Our proclivity

to details cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry. The daylaborer is reckoned as standing at the

foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the hours; morning

and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy and all the lovely accidents of nature play through his

mind. Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology,

is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. Property keeps the accounts of the world, and is always moral.

The property will be found where the labor, the wisdom, and the virtue have been in nations, in classes, and

(the whole lifetime considered, with the compensations) in the individual also. How wise the world appears,

when the laws and usages of nations are largely detailed, and the completeness of the municipal system is

considered! Nothing is left out. If you go into the markets and the customhouses, the insurers' and notaries'

offices, the offices of sealers of weights and measures, of inspection of provisions, it will appear as if one

man had made it all. Wherever you go, a wit like your own has been before you, and has realized its thought.

The Eleusinian mysteries, the Egyptian architecture, the Indian astronomy, the Greek sculpture, show that

there always were seeing and knowing men in the planet. The world is full of masonic ties, of guilds, of

secret and public legions of honor; that of scholars, for example; and that of gentlemen, fraternizing with the

I am very much struck in literature by the appearance that one person wrote all the books; as if the editor of a

journal planted his body of reporters in different parts of the field of action, and relieved some by others from

time to time; but there is such equality and identity both of judgment and point of view in the narrative that it

is plainly the work of one all seeing, allhearing gentleman. I looked into Pope's Odyssey yesterday: it is as

correct and elegant after our canon of today as if it were newly written. The modernness of all good books

seems to give me an existence as wide as man. What is well done I feel as if I did; what is ill done I reck not

of. Shakspeare's passages of passion (for example, in Lear and Hamlet) are in the very dialect of the present

year. I am faithful again to the whole over the members in my use of books. I find the most pleasure in

reading a book in a manner least flattering to the author. I read Proclus, and sometimes Plato, as I might read

a dictionary, for a mechanical help to the fancy and the imagination. I read for the lustres, as if one should use

a fine picture in a chromatic experiment, for its rich colors. 'Tis not Proclus, but a piece of nature and fate that

I explore. It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself. A higher pleasure of the same kind I

found lately at a concert, where I went to hear Handel's Messiah. As the master overpowered the littleness

and incapableness of the performers and made them conductors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe

what efforts nature was making, through so many hoarse, wooden, and imperfect persons, to produce

beautiful voices, fluid and soul guided men and women. The genius of nature was paramount at the oratorio.

This preference of the genius to the parts is the secret of that deification of art, which is found in all superior

minds. Art, in the artist, is proportion, or a habitual respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details.

And the wonder and charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes. Proportion is almost impossible to

human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with

personality, and talk too much. In modern sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous; the

artist works here and there and at all points, adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought.

Beautiful details we must have, or no artist; but they must be means and never other. The eye must not lose

sight for a moment of the purpose. Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and the cool reader finds nothing

We obey the same intellectual integrity when we study in exceptions the law of the world. Anomalous facts,

as the never quite obsolete rumors of magic and demonology, and the new allegations of phrenologists and

neurologists, are of ideal use. They are good indications. Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing,

but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time. So with Mesmerism,

Swedenborgism, Fourierism, and the Millennial Church; they are poor pretensions enough, but good criticism

on the science, philosophy, and preaching of the day. For these abnormal insights of the adepts ought to be

All things show us that on every side we are very near to the best. It seems not worth while to execute with

too much pains some one intellectual, or aesthetical, or civil feat, when presently the dream will scatter, and

we shall burst into universal power. The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst

we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.

Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the agents with which we deal are subalterns, which we can well

afford to let pass, and life will be simpler when we live at the centre and flout the surfaces. I wish to speak

with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake and preserve the due decorum.

They melt so fast into each other that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as

individuals. Though the uninspired man certainly finds persons a conveniency in household matters, the

divine man does not respect them; he sees them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives

over the surface of the water. But this is flat rebellion. Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing,

and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million of fresh particulars. It is all idle talking: as much

as a man is a whole, so is he also a part; and it were partial not to see it. What you say in your pompous

distribution only distributes you into your class and section. You have not got rid of parts by denying them,

but are the more partial. You are one thing, but Nature is one thing and the other thing, in the same moment.

She will not remain orbed in a thought, but rushes into persons; and when each person, inflamed to a fury of

personality, would conquer all things to his poor crotchet, she raises up against him another person, and by

many persons incarnates again a sort of whole. She will have all. Nick Bottom cannot play all the parts, work

it how he may; there will be somebody else, and the world will be round. Everything must have its flower or

effort at the beautiful, coarser or finer according to its stuff. They relieve and recommend each other, and the

sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities. She punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an

induction which is rare and casual. We like to come to a height of land and see the landscape, just as we value

a general remark in conversation. But it is not the intention of Nature that we should live by general views.

We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made

and mended, and are the victims of these details; and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational

moment. If we were not thus infatuated, if we saw the real from hour to hour, we should not be here to write

and to read, but should have been burned or frozen long ago. She would never get anything done, if she

suffered admirable Crichtons and universal geniuses. She loves better a wheelwright who dreams all night of

wheels, and a groom who is part of his horse; for she is full of work, and these are her hands. As the frugal

farmer takes care that his cattle shall eat down the rowen, and swine shall eat the waste of his house, and

poultry shall pick the crumbs,so our economical mother dispatches a new genius and habit of mind into

every district and condition of existence, plants an eye wherever a new ray of light can fall, and gathering up

into some man every property in the universe, establishes thousandfold occult mutual attractions among her

Great dangers undoubtedly accrue from this incarnation and distribution of the godhead, and hence Nature

has her maligners, as if she were Circe; and Alphonso of Castille fancied he could have given useful advice.

But she does not go unprovided; she has hellebore at the bottom of the cup. Solitude would ripen a plentiful

crop of despots. The recluse thinks of men as having his manner, or as not having his manner; and as having

degrees of it, more and less. But when he comes into a public assembly he sees that men have very different

manners from his own, and in their way admirable. In his childhood and youth he has had many checks and

censures, and thinks modestly enough of his own endowment. When afterwards he comes to unfold it in

propitious circumstance, it seems the only talent; he is delighted with his success, and accounts himself

already the fellow of the great. But he goes into a mob, into a banking house, into a mechanic's shop, into a

mill, into a laboratory, into a ship, into a camp, and in each new place he is no better than an idiot; other

talents take place, and rule the hour. The rotation which whirls every leaf and pebble to the meridian, reaches

For Nature, who abhors mannerism, has set her heart on breaking up all styles and tricks, and it is so much

easier to do what one has done before than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual tendency to a set mode.

In every conversation, even the highest, there is a certain trick, which may be soon learned by an acute person

and then that particular style continued indefinitely. Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would

impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesus would absorb the race; but Tom Paine

or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power. Hence the immense benefit

of party in politics, as it reveals faults of character in a chief, which the intellectual force of the persons, with

ordinary opportunity and not hurled into aphelion by hatred, could not have seen. Since we are all so stupid,

what benefit that there should be two stupidities! It is like that brute advantage so essential to astronomy, of

having the diameter of the earth's orbit for a base of its triangles. Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy,

but in the State and in the schools it is indispensable to resist the consolidation of all men into a few men. If

John was perfect, why are you and I alive? As long as any man exists, there is some need of him; let him fight

for his own. A new poet has appeared; a new character approached us; why should we refuse to eat bread

until we have found his regiment and section in our old armyfiles? Why not a new man? Here is a new

enterprise of Brook Farm, of Skeneateles, of Northampton: why so impatient to baptize them Essenes, or

PortRoyalists, or Shakers, or by any known and effete name? Let it be a new way of living. Why have only

two or three ways of life, and not thousands? Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. We came

this time for condiments, not for corn. We want the great genius only for joy; for one star more in our

constellation, for one tree more in our grove. But he thinks we wish to belong to him, as he wishes to occupy

us. He greatly mistakes us. I think I have done well if I have acquired a new word from a good author; and

my business with him is to find my own, though it were only to melt him down into an epithet or an image

To embroil the confusion, and make it impossible to arrive at any general statement,when we have insisted

on the imperfection of individuals, our affections and our experience urge that every individual is entitled to

honor, and a very generous treatment is sure to be repaid. A recluse sees only two or three persons, and

allows them all their room; they spread themselves at large. The statesman looks at many, and compares the

few habitually with others, and these look less. Yet are they not entitled to this generosity of reception? and is

not munificence the means of insight? For though gamesters say that the cards beat all the players, though

they were never so skilful, yet in the contest we are now considering, the players are also the game, and share

the power of the cards. If you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and

instead of the poet, are censuring your own caricature of him. For there is somewhat spheral and infinite in

every man, especially in every genius, which, if you can come very near him, sports with all your limitations.

For rightly every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I

was censuring or rather terminating my own soul. After taxing Goethe as a courtier, artificial, unbelieving,

worldly,I took up this book of Helena, and found him an Indian of the wilderness, a piece of pure nature

like an apple or an oak, large as morning or night, and virtuous as a brierrose.

But care is taken that the whole tune shall be played. If we were not kept among surfaces, every thing would

be large and universal; now the excluded attributes burst in on us with the more brightness that they have

been excluded. "Your turn now, my turn next," is the rule of the game. The universality being hindered in its

primary form, comes in the secondary form of all sides; the points come in succession to the meridian, and by

the speed of rotation a new whole is formed. Nature keeps herself whole and her representation complete in

the experience of each mind. She suffers no seat to be vacant in her college. It is the secret of the world that

all things subsist and do not die but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Whatever does

not concern us is concealed from us. As soon as a person is no longer related to our present wellbeing, he is

concealed, or dies, as we say. Really, all things and persons are related to us, but according to our nature they

act on us not at once but in succession, and we are made aware of their presence one at a time. All persons,

all things which we have known, are here present, and many more than we see; the world is full. As the

ancient said, the world is a plenum or solid; and if we saw all things that really surround us we should be

imprisoned and unable to move. For though nothing is impassable to the soul, but all things are pervious to it

and like highways, yet this is only whilst the soul does not see them. As soon as the soul sees any object, it

stops before that object. Therefore, the divine Providence which keeps the universe open in every direction to

the soul, conceals all the furniture and all the persons that do not concern a particular soul, from the senses of

that individual. Through solidest eternal things the man finds his road as if they did not subsist, and does not

once suspect their being. As soon as he needs a new object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer attempts to

pass through it, but takes another way. When he has exhausted for the time the nourishment to be drawn from

any one person or thing, that object is withdrawn from his observation, and though still in his immediate

neighborhood, he does not suspect its presence. Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure

mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in

some new and strange disguise. Jesus is not dead; he is very well alive: nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor

Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go.

If we cannot make voluntary and conscious steps in the admirable science of universals, let us see the parts

wisely, and infer the genius of nature from the best particulars with a becoming charity. What is best in each

kind is an index of what should be the average of that thing. Love shows me the opulence of nature, by

disclosing to me in my friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal depth of good in every other direction. It

is commonly said by farmers that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear than a poor one; so

I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.

The end and the means, the gamester and the game, life is made up of the intermixture and reaction of

these two amicable powers, whose marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies and tends to

abolish the other. We must reconcile the contradictions as we can, but their discord and their concord

introduce wild absurdities into our thinking and speech. No sentence will hold the whole truth, and the only

way in which we can be just, is by giving ourselves the lie; Speech is better than silence; silence is better than

speech;All things are in contact; every atom has a sphere of repulsion;Things are, and are not, at the

same time;and the like. All the universe over, there is but one thing, this old TwoFace, creatorcreature,

mindmatter, rightwrong, of which any proposition may be affirmed or denied. Very fitly therefore I assert

that every man is a partialist, that nature secures him as an instrument by selfconceit, preventing the

tendencies to religion and science; and now further assert, that, each man's genius being nearly and

affectionately explored, he is justified in his individuality, as his nature is found to be immense; and now I

add that every man is a universalist also, and, as our earth, whilst it spins on its own axis, spins all the time

around the sun through the celestial spaces, so the least of its rational children, the most dedicated to his

private affair, works out, though as it were under a disguise, the universal problem. We fancy men are

individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

The rabid democrat, as soon as he is senator and rich man, has ripened beyond possibility of sincere

radicalism, and unless he can resist the sun, he must be conservative the remainder of his days. Lord Eldon

said in his old age that "if he were to begin life again, he would be damned but he would begin as agitator."

We hide this universality if we can, but it appears at all points. We are as ungrateful as children. There is

nothing we cherish and strive to draw to us but in some hour we turn and rend it. We keep a running fire of

sarcasm at ignorance and the life of the senses; then goes by, perchance, a fair girl, a piece of life, gay and

happy, and making the commonest offices beautiful by the energy and heart with which she does them; and

seeing this we admire and love her and them, and say, 'Lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth, not dissipated

or too early ripened by books, philosophy, religion, society, or care!' insinuating a treachery and contempt for

If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and

the hearer who is ready to sell all and join the crusade could have any certificate that tomorrow his prophet

shall not unsay his testimony! But the Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and never interposes an

adamantine syllable; and the most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if the ark of God were carried

forward some furlongs, and planted there for the succor of the world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside

by the same speaker, as morbid; "I thought I was right, but I was not,"and the same immeasurable credulity

demanded for new audacities. If we were not of all opinions! if we did not in any moment shift the platform

on which we stand, and look and speak from another! if there could be any regulation, any 'one hourrule,'

that a man should never leave his point of view without sound of trumpet. I am always insincere, as always

How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet

unsaid, from the incapacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the same words! My

companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation

until all is said which words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious

assumption. Is it that every man believes every other to be an incurable partialist, and himself a universalist? I

talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers; I endeavored to show my good men that I love everything by

turns and nothing long; that I loved the centre, but doated on the superficies; that I loved man, if men seemed

to me mice and rats; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground and died

hard; that I was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not live in their arms. Could they but once

understand that I loved to know that they existed, and heartily wished them Godspeed, yet, out of my

poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when they came to see me, and could well

consent to their living in Oregon, for any claim I felt on them,it would be a great satisfaction.

In the suburb, in the town, On the railway, in the square, Came a beam of goodness down Doubling daylight

everywhere: Peace now each for malice takes, Beauty for his sinful weeks, For the angel Hope aye makes

WHOEVER has had opportunity of acquaintance with society in New England during the last twentyfive

years, with those middle and with those leading sections that may constitute any just representation of the

character and aim of the community, will have been struck with the great activity of thought and

experimenting. His attention must be commanded by the signs that the Church, or religious party, is falling

from the Church nominal, and is appearing in temperance and nonresistance societies; in movements of

abolitionists and of socialists; and in very significant assemblies called Sabbath and Bible Conventions;

composed of ultraists, of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent, and meeting to call in question the

authority of the Sabbath, of the priesthood, and of the Church. In these movements nothing was more

remarkable than the discontent they begot in the movers. The spirit of protest and of detachment drove the

members of these Conventions to bear testimony against the Church, and immediately afterward, to declare

their discontent with these Conventions, their independence of their colleagues, and their impatience of the

methods whereby they were working. They defied each other, like a congress of kings, each of whom had a

realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable. What a fertility of projects for the

salvation of the world! One apostle thought all men should go to farming, and another that no man should

buy or sell, that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat

and drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to fermentation. It was in

vain urged by the housewife that God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as

he loves vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more

palatable and more digestible. No; they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment. Stop, dear

nature, these incessant advances of thine; let us scotch these everrolling wheels! Others attacked the system

of agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming, and the tyranny of man over brute nature; these abuses

polluted his food. The ox must be taken from the plough and the horse from the cart, the hundred acres of the

farm must be spaded, and the man must walk, wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the

insect world was to be defended,that had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection of

groundworms, slugs, and mosquitos was to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the adepts

of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their wonderful theories of the Christian

miracles! Others assailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer,

of the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the institution of marriage as the fountain of social evils.

Others devoted themselves to the worrying of churches and meetings for public worship; and the fertile forms

of antinomianism among the elder puritans seemed to have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of

With this din of opinion and debate there was a keener scrutiny of institutions and domestic life than any we

had known; there was sincere protesting against existing evils, and there were changes of employment

dictated by conscience. No doubt there was plentiful vaporing, and cases of backsliding might occur. But in

each of these movements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an

assertion of the sufficiency of the private man. Thus it was directly in the spirit and genius of the age, what

happened in one instance when a church censured and threatened to excommunicate one of its members on

account of the somewhat hostile part to the church which his conscience led him to take in the antislavery

business; the threatened individual immediately excommunicated the church in a public and formal process.

This has been several times repeated: it was excellent when it was done the first time, but of course loses all

value when it is copied. Every project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising, is good

when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution, but very dull and suspicious when adopted from

another. It is right and beautiful in any man to say, 'I will take this coat, or this book, or this measure of corn

of yours,'in whom we see the act to be original, and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him; for then

that taking will have a giving as free and divine; but we are very easily disposed to resist the same generosity

There was in all the practical activities of New England for the last quarter of a century, a gradual withdrawal

of tender consciences from the social organizations. There is observable throughout, the contest between

mechanical and spiritual methods, but with a steady tendency of the thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief

In politics for example it is easy to see the progress of dissent. The country is full of rebellion; the country is

full of kings. Hands off! let there be no control and no interference in the administration of the affairs of this

kingdom of me. Hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party of Free Trade, and the willingness to try

that experiment, in the face of what appear incontestable facts. I confess, the motto of the Globe newspaper is

so attractive to me that I can seldom find much appetite to read what is below it in its columns: "The world is

governed too much." So the country is frequently affording solitary examples of resistance to the

government, solitary nullifiers, who throw themselves on their reserved rights; nay, who have reserved all

their rights; who reply to the assessor and to the clerk of court that they do not know the State, and embarrass

the courts of law by nonjuring and the commanderinchief of the militia by nonresistance.

The same disposition to scrutiny and dissent appeared in civil, festive, neighborly, and domestic society. A

restless, prying, conscientious criticism broke out in unexpected quarters. Who gave me the money with

which I bought my coat? Why should professional labor and that of the countinghouse be paid so

disproportionately to the labor of the porter and woodsawyer? This whole business of Trade gives me to

pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself

relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person whom I pay with money; whereas if I

had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a

benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which

each asked of the other. Am I not too protected a person? is there not a wide disparity between the lot of me

and the lot of thee, my poor brother, my poor sister? Am I not defrauded of my best culture in the loss of

those gymnastics which manual labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute? I find nothing healthful or

exalting in the smooth conventions of society; I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself

to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.

The same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts for the reform of Education. The popular education

has been taxed with a want of truth and nature. It was complained that an education to things was not given.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitationrooms, for ten or fifteen

years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use

our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell

our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid

of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of a spider. The Roman rule was to teach a boy nothing that he

could not learn standing. The old English rule was, 'All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.' And

it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all

events, and not be painful to his friends and fellowmen. The lessons of science should be experimental also.

The sight of the planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric

spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano,

One of the traits of the new spirit is the inquisition it fixed on our scholastic devotion to the dead languages.

The ancient languages, with great beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of genius, which draw, and

always will draw, certain likeminded men, Greek men, and Roman men,in all countries, to their study;

but by a wonderful drowsiness of usage they had exacted the study of all men. Once (say two centuries ago),

Latin and Greek had a strict relation to all the science and culture there was in Europe, and the Mathematics

had a momentary importance at some era of activity in physical science. These things became stereotyped as

education, as the manner of men is. But the Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and

boys were now drilled in Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high and dry on the

beach, and was now creating and feeding other matters at other ends of the world. But in a hundred high

schools and colleges this warfare against common sense still goes on. Four, or six, or ten years, the pupil is

parsing Greek and Latin, and as soon as he leaves the University, as it is ludicrously called, he shuts those

books for the last time. Some thousands of young men are graduated at our colleges in this country every

year, and the persons who, at forty years, still read Greek, can all be counted on your hand. I never met with

But is not this absurd, that the whole liberal talent of this country should be directed in its best years on

studies which lead to nothing? What was the consequence? Some intelligent persons said or thought, 'Is that

Greek and Latin some spell to conjure with, and not words of reason? If the physician, the lawyer, the divine,

never use it to come at their ends, I need never learn it to come at mine. Conjuring is gone out of fashion, and

I will omit this conjugating, and go straight to affairs.' So they jumped the Greek and Latin, and read law,

medicine, or sermons, without it. To the astonishment of all, the selfmade men took even ground at once

with the oldest of the regular graduates, and in a few months the most conservative circles of Boston and

New York had quite forgotten who of their gownsmen was collegebred, and who was not.

One tendency appears alike in the philosophical speculation and in the rudest democratical movements,

through all the petulance and all the puerility, the wish, namely, to cast aside the superfluous and arrive at

short methods; urged, as I suppose, by an intuition that the human spirit is equal to all emergencies, alone,

I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and the indication of growing trust in the private

selfsupplied powers of the individual, to be the affirmative principle of the recent philosophy, and that it is

feeling its own profound truth and is reaching forward at this very hour to the happiest conclusions. I readily

concede that in this, as in every period of intellectual activity, there has been a noise of denial and protest;

much was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those who were reared in the old, before they could

begin to affirm and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish; and that makes the

offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose their way;

in the assault on the kingdom of darkness they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their

sanity and power of benefit. It is of little moment that one or two or twenty errors of our social system be

The criticism and attack on institutions, which we have witnessed, has made one thing plain, that society

gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him: he has become

tediously good in some particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best

manner, than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total

regeneration. Do not be so vain of your one objection. Do you think there is only one? Alas! my good friend,

there is no part of society or of life better than any other part. All our things are right and wrong together. The

wave of evil washes all our institutions alike. Do you complain of our Marriage? Our marriage is no worse

than our education, our diet, our trade, our social customs. Do you complain of the laws of Property? It is a

pedantry to give such importance to them. Can we not play the game of life with these counters, as well as

with those? in the institution of property, as well as out of it? Let into it the new and renewing principle of

love, and property will be universality. No one gives the impression of superiority to the institution, which he

must give who will reform it. It makes no difference what you say, you must make me feel that you are aloof

from it; by your natural and supernatural advantages do easily see to the end of it,do see how man can do

without it. Now all men are on one side. No man deserves to be heard against property. Only Love, only an

I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all my time in attacks. If I should go out of church

whenever I hear a false sentiment I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? the street is as

false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from

the lie. When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him,

What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is virtue piecemeal? This is a jewel amidst the rags of a beggar.

In another way the right will be vindicated. In the midst of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false

churches, alike in one place and in another,wherever, namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself, there it

will do what is next at hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth it shall abrogate that old

If partiality was one fault of the movement party, the other defect was their reliance on Association. Doubts

such as those I have intimated drove many good persons to agitate the questions of social reform. But the

revolt against the spirit of commerce, the spirit of aristocracy, and the inveterate abuses of cities, did not

appear possible to individuals; and to do battle against numbers they armed themselves with numbers, and

Following or advancing beyond the ideas of St. Simon, of Fourier, and of Owen, three communities have

already been formed in Massachusetts on kindred plans, and many more in the country at large. They aim to

give every member a share in the manual labor, to give an equal reward to labor and to talent, and to unite a

liberal culture with an education to labor. The scheme offers, by the economies of associated labor and

expense, to make every member rich, on the same amount of property, that, in separate families, would leave

every member poor. These new associations are composed of men and women of superior talents and

sentiments; yet it may easily be questioned whether such a community will draw, except in its beginnings, the

able and the good; whether those who have energy will not prefer their chance of superiority and power in the

world, to the humble certainties of the association; whether such a retreat does not promise to become an

asylum to those who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the strong; and whether the members will not

necessarily be fractions of men, because each finds that he cannot enter it, without some compromise.

Friendship and association are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of the human race, banded for

some catholic object; yes, excellent; but remember that no society can ever be so large as one man. He, in his

friendship, in his natural and momentary associations, doubles or multiplies himself; but in the hour in which

he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one.

But the men of less faith could not thus believe, and to such, concert appears the sole specific of strength. I

have failed, and you have failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. Our housekeeping is not satisfactory

to us, but perhaps a phalanx, a community, might be. Many of us have differed in opinion, and we could find

no man who could make the truth plain, but possibly a college, or an ecclesiastical council might. I have not

been able either to persuade my brother or to prevail on myself, to disuse the traffic or the potation of brandy,

but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence might effectually restrain us. The candidate my party votes for is not

to be trusted with a dollar, but he will be honest in the Senate, for we can bring public opinion to bear on him.

Thus concert was the specific in all cases. But concert is neither better nor worse, neither more nor less potent

than individual force. All the men in the world cannot make a statue walk and speak, cannot make a drop of

blood, or a blade of grass, any more than one man can. But let there be one man, let there be truth in two men,

in ten men, then is concert for the first time possible; because the force which moves the world is a new

quality, and can never be furnished by adding whatever quantities of a different kind. What is the use of the

concert of the false and the disunited? There can be no concert in two, where there is no concert in one. When

the individual is not individual, but is dual; when his thoughts look one way and his actions another; when his

faith is traversed by his habits; when his will, enlightened by reason, is warped by his sense; when with one

I do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire. The world is awaking to the idea of union, and these

experiments show what it is thinking of. It is and will be magic. Men will live and communicate, and plough,

and reap, and govern, as by added ethereal power, when once they are united; as in a celebrated experiment,

by expiration and respiration exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man from the ground by the little

finger only, and without sense of weight. But this union must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is to

be reached by a reverse of the methods they use. The union is only perfect when all the uniters are isolated. It

is the union of friends who live in different streets or towns. Each man, if he attempts to join himself to

others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union the smaller and the

more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul; he will go up and

down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert,

though no man spoke. Government will be adamantine without any governor. The union must be ideal in

I pass to the indication in some particulars of that faith in man, which the heart is preaching to us in these

days, and which engages the more regard, from the consideration that the speculations of one generation are

In alluding just now to our system of education, I spoke of the deadness of its details. But it is open to graver

criticism than the palsy of its members: it is a system of despair. The disease with which the human mind

now labors is want of faith. Men do not believe in a power of education. We do not think we can speak to

divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the defects of so

many perverse and so many frivolous people who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of

incurables. A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often

as he went there, said to me that "he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public

amusements go on." I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of

the tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too that the ground on

which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear; 'This country is filling up with

thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.' We do not

believe that any education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight

to a superficial mind. Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure

alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body

with inoffensive and comely manners. So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of limitation and inner death we

cannot avert. Is it strange that society should be devoured by a secret melancholy which breaks through all its

But even one step farther our infidelity has gone. It appears that some doubt is felt by good and wise men

whether really the happiness and probity of men is increased by the culture of the mind in those disciplines to

which we give the name of education. Unhappily too the doubt comes from scholars, from persons who have

tried these methods. In their experience the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he

dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts to a

marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be

independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the

result was monstrous. A canine appetite for knowledge was generated, which must still be fed but was never

satisfied, and this knowledge, not being directed on action, never took the character of substantial, humane

truth, blessing those whom it entered. It gave the scholar certain powers of expression, the power of speech,

the power of poetry, of literary art, but it did not bring him to peace or to beneficence.

When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and

sensualized by unbelief. What remedy? Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to a higher

platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there, the whole aspect of things changes. I resist the

skepticism of our education and of our educated men. I do not believe that the differences of opinion and

character in men are organic. I do not recognize, beside the class of the good and the wise, a permanent class

of skeptics, or a class of conservatives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do not believe in two classes.

You remember the story of the poor woman who importuned King Philip of Macedon to grant her justice,

which Philip refused: the woman exclaimed, "I appeal:" the king, astonished, asked to whom she appealed:

the woman replied, "From Philip drunk to Philip sober." The text will suit me very well. I believe not in two

classes of men, but in man in two moods, in Philip drunk and Philip sober. I think, according to the

goodhearted word of Plato, "Unwillingly the soul is deprived of truth." Iron conservative, miser, or thief, no

man is but by a supposed necessity which he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of sight. The soul lets no man

go without some visitations and holydays of a diviner presence. It would be easy to show, by a narrow

scanning of any man's biography, that we are not so wedded to our paltry performances of every kind but that

every man has at intervals the grace to scorn his performances, in comparing them with his belief of what he

should do; that he puts himself on the side of his enemies, listening gladly to what they say of him, and

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its

miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed. The Iliad, the Hamlet, the Doric column, the Roman

arch, the Gothic minster, the German anthem, when they are ended, the master casts behind him. How sinks

the song in the waves of melody which the universe pours over his soul! Before that gracious Infinite out of

which he drew these few strokes, how mean they look, though the praises of the world attend them. From the

triumphs of his art he turns with desire to this greater defeat. Let those admire who will. With silent joy he

sees himself to be capable of a beauty that eclipses all which his hands have done; all which human hands

Well, we are all the children of genius, the children of virtue,and feel their inspirations in our happier

hours. Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous,

or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they

are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear

music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals. In the circle of the rankest tories that could be collected in

England, Old or New, let a powerful and stimulating intellect, a man of great heart and mind, act on them,

and very quickly these frozen conservators will yield to the friendly influence, these hopeless will begin to

hope, these haters will begin to love, these immovable statues will begin to spin and revolve. I cannot help

recalling the fine anecdote which Warton relates of Bishop Berkeley, when he was preparing to leave

England with his plan of planting the gospel among the American savages. "Lord Bathurst told me that the

members of the Scriblerus club being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also

his guest, on his scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to the many lively things they had to say,

begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of

eloquence and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and, after some pause, rose up all together with

earnestness, exclaiming, 'Let us set out with him immediately.'" Men in all ways are better than they seem.

They like flattery for the moment, but they know the truth for their own. It is a foolish cowardice which keeps

us from trusting them and speaking to them rude truth. They resent your honesty for an instant, they will

thank you for it always. What is it we heartily wish of each other? Is it to be pleased and flattered? No, but to

be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts

and phantoms. We are weary of gliding ghostlike through the world, which is itself so slight and unreal. We

crave a sense of reality, though it come in strokes of pain. I explain so,by this manlike love of

truth,those excesses and errors into which souls of great vigor, but not equal insight, often fall. They feel

the poverty at the bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world. They know the speed with which they

come straight through the thin masquerade, and conceive a disgust at the indigence of nature: Rousseau,

Mirabeau, Charles Fox, Napoleon, Byron, and I could easily add names nearer home, of raging riders, who

drive their steeds so hard, in the violence of living to forget its illusion: they would know the worst, and tread

the floors of hell. The heroes of ancient and modern fame, Cimon, Themistocles, Alcibiades, Alexander,

Caesar, have treated life and fortune as a game to be well and skilfully played, but the stake not to be so

valued but that any time it could be held as a trifle light as air, and thrown up. Caesar, just before the battle of

Pharsalia, discourses with the Egyptian priest concerning the fountains of the Nile, and offers to quit the

The same magnanimity shows itself in our social relations, in the preference, namely, which each man gives

to the society of superiors over that of his equals. All that a man has will he give for right relations with his

mates. All that he has will he give for an erect demeanor in every company and on each occasion. He aims at

such things as his neighbors prize, and gives his days and nights, his talents and his heart, to strike a good

stroke, to acquit himself in all men's sight as a man. The consideration of an eminent citizen, of a noted

merchant, of a man of mark in his profession; a naval and military honor, a general's commission, a marshal's

baton, a ducal coronet, the laurel of poets, and, anyhow procured, the acknowledgment of eminent merit,

have this lustre for each candidate that they enable him to walk erect and unashamed in the presence of

some persons before whom he felt himself inferior. Having raised himself to this rank, having established his

equality with class after class of those with whom he would live well, he still finds certain others before

whom he cannot possess himself, because they have somewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat purer,

which extorts homage of him. Is his ambition pure? then will his laurels and his possessions seem worthless:

instead of avoiding these men who make his fine gold dim, he will cast all behind him and seek their society

only, woo and embrace this his humiliation and mortification, until he shall know why his eye sinks, his

voice is husky, and his brilliant talents are paralyzed in this presence. He is sure that the soul which gives the

lie to all things will tell none. His constitution will not mislead him. If it cannot carry itself as it ought, high

and unmatchable in the presence of any man; if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the sweetness and

dignity of his life do here withdraw and accompany him no longer,it is time to undervalue what he has

valued, to dispossess himself of what he has acquired, and with Caesar to take in his hand the army, the

empire, and Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish, if you will show me the fountains of the Nile."

Dear to us are those who love us; the swift moments we spend with them are a compensation for a great deal

of misery; they enlarge our life;but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life:

they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the

As every man at heart wishes the best and not inferior society, wishes to be convicted of his error and to

come to himself,so he wishes that the same healing should not stop in his thought, but should penetrate his

will or active power. The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness

withholds some important benefit. What he most wishes is to be lifted to some higher platform, that he may

see beyond his present fear the transalpine good, so that his fear, his coldness, his custom may be broken up

like fragments of ice, melted and carried away in the great stream of good will. Do you ask my aid? I also

wish to be a benefactor. I wish more to be a benefactor and servant than you wish to be served by me; and

surely the greatest good fortune that could befall me is precisely to be so moved by you that I should say,

'Take me and all mine, and use me and mine freely to your ends'! for I could not say it otherwise than because

a great enlargement had come to my heart and mind, which made me superior to my fortunes. Here we are

paralyzed with fear; we hold on to our little properties, house and land, office and money, for the bread which

they have in our experience yielded us, although we confess that our being does not flow through them. We

desire to be made great; we desire to be touched with that fire which shall command this ice to stream, and

make our existence a benefit. If therefore we start objections to your project, O friend of the slave, or friend

of the poor, or of the race, understand well that it is because we wish to drive you to drive us into your

measures. We wish to hear ourselves confuted. We are haunted with a belief that you have a secret which it

would highliest advantage us to learn, and we would force you to impart it to us, though it should bring us to

Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure

malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation.

There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople

the planet. It has had a name to live in some dogmatic theology, but each man's innocence and his real liking

of his neighbor have kept it a dead letter. I remember standing at the polls one day when the anger of the

political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the independent electors, and a good man at my side,

looking on the people, remarked, "I am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on either side, mean to

vote right." I suppose considerate observers, looking at the masses of men in their blameless and in their

equivocal actions, will assent, that in spite of selfishness and frivolity, the general purpose in the great

number of persons is fidelity. The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your

benevolent design, is in you: he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you

have it, he feels that you have it not. You have not given him the authentic sign.

If it were worth while to run into details this general doctrine of the latent but ever soliciting Spirit, it would

be easy to adduce illustration in particulars of a man's equality to the Church, of his equality to the State, and

of his equality to every other man. It is yet in all men's memory that, a few years ago, the liberal churches

complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was

confession: a religious church would not complain. A religious man like Behmen, Fox, or Swedenborg is not

irritated by wanting the sanction of the Church, but the Church feels the accusation of his presence and belief.

It only needs that a just man should walk in our streets to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial a

contrivance is our legislation. The man whose part is taken and who does not wait for society in anything, has

a power which society cannot choose but feel. The familiar experiment called the hydrostatic paradox, in

which a capillary column of water balances the ocean, is a symbol of the relation of one man to the whole

family of men. The wise Dandamis, on hearing the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes read, "judged

them to be great men every way, excepting, that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws,

which to second and authorize, true virtue must abate very much of its original vigor."

And as a man is equal to the Church and equal to the State, so he is equal to every other man. The disparities

of power in men are superficial; and all frank and searching conversation, in which a man lays himself open

to his brother, apprises each of their radical unity. When two persons sit and converse in a thoroughly good

understanding, the remark is sure to be made, See how we have disputed about words! Let a clear,

apprehensive mind, such as every man knows among his friends, converse with the most commanding poetic

genius, I think it would appear that there was no inequality such as men fancy, between them; that a perfect

understanding, a like receiving, a like perceiving, abolished differences; and the poet would confess that his

creative imagination gave him no deep advantage, but only the superficial one that he could express himself

and the other could not; that his advantage was a knack, which might impose on indolent men but could not

impose on lovers of truth; for they know the tax of talent, or what a price of greatness the power of

expression too often pays. I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man

does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in

other directions has added to his fitness for his own work. Each seems to have some compensation yielded to

him by his infirmity, and every hindrance operates as a concentration of his force.

These and the like experiences intimate that man stands in strict connection with a higher fact never yet

manifested. There is power over and behind us, and we are the channels of its communications. We seek to

say thus and so, and over our head some spirit sits which contradicts what we say. We would persuade our

fellow to this or that; another self within our eyes dissuades him. That which we keep back, this reveals. In

vain we compose our faces and our words; it holds uncontrollable communication with the enemy, and he

answers civilly to us, but believes the spirit. We exclaim, 'There's a traitor in the house!' but at last it appears

that he is the true man, and I am the traitor. This open channel to the highest life is the first and last reality, so

subtle, so quiet, yet so tenacious, that although I have never expressed the truth, and although I have never

heard the expression of it from any other, I know that the whole truth is here for me. What if I cannot answer

your questions? I am not pained that I cannot frame a reply to the question, What is the operation we call

Providence? There lies the unspoken thing, present, omnipresent. Every time we converse we seek to

translate it into speech, but whether we hit or whether we miss, we have the fact. Every discourse is an

approximate answer: but it is of small consequence that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides

If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall make themselves good in time, the man who shall be born,

whose advent men and events prepare and foreshow, is one who shall enjoy his connection with a higher life,

with the man within man; shall destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his native but forgotten methods, shall

not take counsel of flesh and blood, but shall rely on the Law alive and beautiful which works over our heads

and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our success when we obey it, and of our ruin when we

contravene it. Men are all secret believers in it, else the word justice would have no meaning: they believe

that the best is the true; that right is done at last; or chaos would come. It rewards actions after their nature,

and not after the design of the agent. 'Work,' it saith to man, 'in every hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou

work, and thou canst not escape the reward: whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing

epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as

to the thought: no matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done, is to

As soon as a man is wonted to look beyond surfaces, and to see how this high will prevails without an

exception or an interval, he settles himself into serenity. He can already rely on the laws of gravity, that every

stone will fall where it is due; the good globe is faithful, and carries us securely through the celestial spaces,

anxious or resigned, we need not interfere to help it on: and he will learn one day the mild lesson they teach,

that our own orbit is all our task, and we need not assist the administration of the universe. Do not be so

impatient to set the town right concerning the unfounded pretensions and the false reputation of certain men

of standing. They are laboring harder to set the town right concerning themselves, and will certainly succeed.

Suppress for a few days your criticism on the insufficiency of this or that teacher or experimenter, and he will

have demonstrated his insufficiency to all men's eyes. In like manner, let a man fall into the divine circuits,

and he is enlarged. Obedience to his genius is the only liberating influence. We wish to escape from

subjection and a sense of inferiority, and we make selfdenying ordinances, we drink water, we eat grass, we

refuse the laws, we go to jail: it is all in vain; only by obedience to his genius, only by the freest activity in

the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise before a man and lead him by the hand out of all

That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the

endeavor to realize our aspirations. The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conducted

will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction. All around us what powers are wrapped up under the

coarse mattings of custom, and all wonder prevented. It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see

without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that it is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and

that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise

man wonders at the usual. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives?

May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently and taught it so much, secure