{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_71393/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_71393","id":"gutenberg_71393","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71393","summary":null,"tags":["American essays -- 19th century","Category: American Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"LETTERS\n\n                          AND\n\n                      SOCIAL AIMS.\n\n\n\n\n                           BY\n\n                   RALPH WALDO EMERSON.\n\n\n\n\n                      [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n                          BOSTON:\n                JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,\n       LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.\n                           1876.\n\n\n\n\n                       COPYRIGHT, 1875.\n                BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.\n\n\n            UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,\n                          CAMBRIDGE.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n                              PAGE\n\n  POETRY AND IMAGINATION           1\n\n  SOCIAL AIMS                     69\n\n  ELOQUENCE                       97\n\n  RESOURCES                      119\n\n  THE COMIC                      137\n\n  QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY      155\n\n  PROGRESS OF CULTURE            183\n\n  PERSIAN POETRY                 211\n\n  INSPIRATION                    239\n\n  GREATNESS                      267\n\n  IMMORTALITY                    287\n\n\n\n\n                      POETRY AND IMAGINATION.\n\n\n\n\n\n                        POETRY AND IMAGINATION.\n\n\nTHE perception of matter is made the common-sense, and for cause. This\nwas the cradle, this the go-cart, of the human child. We must learn the\nhomely laws of fire and water; we must feed, wash, plant, build. These\nare ends of necessity, and first in the order of nature. Poverty, frost,\nfamine, disease, debt, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to\ncommon-sense. The intellect, yielded up to itself, cannot supersede this\ntyrannic necessity. The restraining grace of common-sense is the mark of\nall the valid minds,--of \u00c6sop, Aristotle, Alfred, Luther, Shakspeare,\nCervantes, Franklin, Napoleon. The common-sense which does not meddle\nwith the absolute, but takes things at their word,--things as they\nappear,--believes in the existence of matter, not because we can touch\nit, or conceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves, and the\nuniverse does not jest with us, but is in earnest,--is the house of\nhealth and life. In spite of all the joys of poets and the joys of\nsaints, the most imaginative and abstracted person never makes, with\nimpunity, the least mistake in this particular,--never tries to kindle\nhis oven with water, nor carries a torch into a powder-mill, nor seizes\nhis wild charger by the tail. We should not pardon the blunder in\nanother, nor endure it in ourselves.\n\nBut whilst we deal with this as finality, early hints are given that we\nare not to stay here; that we must be making ready to go;--a warning\nthat this magnificent hotel and conveniency we call Nature is not final.\nFirst innuendoes, then broad hints, then smart taps, are given,\nsuggesting that nothing stands still in nature but death; that the\ncreation is on wheels, in transit, always passing into something else,\nstreaming into something higher; that matter is not what it\nappears;--that chemistry can blow it all into gas. Faraday, the most\nexact of natural philosophers, taught that when we should arrive at the\nmonads, or primordial elements (the supposed little cubes or prisms of\nwhich all matter was built up), we should not find cubes, or prisms, or\natoms, at all, but spherules of force. It was whispered that the globes\nof the universe were precipitates of something more subtle; nay,\nsomewhat was murmured in our ear that dwindled astronomy into a\ntoy;--that too was no finality;--only provisional,--a makeshift;--that\nunder chemistry was power and purpose: power and purpose ride on matter\nto the last atom. It was steeped in thought,--did everywhere express\nthought; that, as great conquerors have burned their ships when once\nthey were landed on the wished-for shore, so the noble house of Nature\nwe inhabit has temporary uses, and we can afford to leave it one day.\nThe ends of all are moral, and therefore the beginnings are such. Thin\nor solid, everything is in flight. I believe this conviction makes the\ncharm of chemistry,--that we have the same avoirdupois matter in an\nalembic, without a vestige of the old form; and in animal transformation\nnot less, as in grub and fly, in egg and bird, in embryo and man;\neverything undressing and stealing away from its old into new form, and\nnothing fast but those invisible cords which we call laws, on which all\nis strung. Then we see that things wear different names and faces, but\nbelong to one family; that the secret cords, or laws, show their\nwell-known virtue through every variety,--be it animal, or plant, or\nplanet,--and the interest is gradually transferred from the forms to the\nlurking method.\n\nThis hint, however conveyed, upsets our politics, trade, customs,\nmarriages, nay, the common-sense side of religion and literature, which\nare all founded on low nature,--on the clearest and most economical mode\nof administering the material world, considered as final. The admission,\nnever so covertly, that this is a makeshift, sets the dullest brain in\nferment;--our little sir, from his first tottering steps,--as soon as he\ncan crow,--does not like to be practised upon, suspects that some one is\n\"doing\" him,--and, at this alarm, everything is compromised;--gunpowder\nis laid under every man's breakfast-table.\n\nBut whilst the man is startled by this closer inspection of the laws of\nmatter, his attention is called to the independent action of the\nmind,--its strange suggestions and laws,--a certain tyranny which\nsprings up in his own thoughts, which have an order, method, and beliefs\nof their own, very different from the order which this common-sense\nuses.\n\nSuppose there were in the ocean certain strong currents which drove a\nship, caught in them, with a force that no skill of sailing with the\nbest wind, and no strength of oars, or sails, or steam, could make any\nhead against, any more than against the current of Niagara: such\ncurrents--so tyrannical--exist in thoughts, those finest and subtilest\nof all waters,--that, as soon as once thought begins, it refuses to\nremember whose brain it belongs to,--what country, tradition, or\nreligion,--and goes whirling off--swim we merrily--in a direction\nself-chosen, by law of thought, and not by law of kitchen clock or\ncounty committee. It has its own polarity. One of these vortices or\nself-directions of thought is the impulse to search resemblance,\naffinity, identity, in all its objects, and hence our science, from its\nrudest to its most refined theories.\n\nThe electric word pronounced by John Hunter a hundred years\nago,--_arrested and progressive development_,--indicating the way upward\nfrom the invisible protoplasm to the highest organisms,--gave the poetic\nkey to Natural Science,--of which the theories of Geoffroy St. Hilaire,\nof Oken, of Goethe, of Agassiz, and Owen, and Darwin, in zo\u00f6logy and\nbotany, are the fruits,--a hint whose power is not yet exhausted,\nshowing unity and perfect order in physics.\n\nThe hardest chemist, the severest analyzer, scornful of all but dryest\nfact, is forced to keep the poetic curve of nature, and his result is\nlike a myth of Theocritus. All multiplicity rushes to be resolved into\nunity. Anatomy, osteology, exhibit arrested or progressive ascent in\neach kind; the lower pointing to the higher forms, the higher to the\nhighest, from the fluid in an elastic sack, from radiate, mollusk,\narticulate, vertebrate,--up to man; as if the whole animal world were\nonly a Hunterian museum to exhibit the genesis of mankind.\n\nIdentity of law, perfect order in physics, perfect parallelism between\nthe laws of Nature and the laws of thought exist. In botany we have the\nlike, the poetic perception of metamorphosis,--that the same vegetable\npoint or eye which is the unit of the plant can be transformed at\npleasure into every part, as bract, leaf, petal, stamen, pistil, or\nseed.\n\nIn geology, what a useful hint was given to the early inquirers on\nseeing in the possession of Professor Playfair a bough of a fossil tree\nwhich was perfect wood at one end, and perfect mineral coal at the\nother. Natural objects, if individually described, and out of\nconnection, are not yet known, since they are really parts of a\nsymmetrical universe, like words of a sentence; and if their true order\nis found, the poet can read their divine significance orderly as in a\nBible. Each animal or vegetable form remembers the next inferior, and\npredicts the next higher.\n\nThere is one animal, one plant, one matter, and one force. The laws of\nlight and of heat translate each other;--so do the laws of sound and of\ncolor; and so galvanism, electricity, and magnetism are varied forms of\nthe selfsame energy. While the student ponders this immense unity, he\nobserves that all things in nature, the animals, the mountain, the\nriver, the seasons, wood, iron, stone, vapor,--have a mysterious\nrelation to his thoughts and his life; their growths, decays, quality,\nand use so curiously resemble himself, in parts and in wholes, that he\nis compelled to speak by means of them. His words and his thoughts are\nframed by their help. Every noun is an image. Nature gives him,\nsometimes in a flattered likeness, sometimes in caricature, a copy of\nevery humor and shade in his character and mind. The world is an immense\npicture-book of every passage in human life. Every object he beholds is\nthe mask of a man.\n\n    \"The privates of man's heart\n    They speken and sound in his ear\n    As tho' they loud winds were\";\n\nfor the universe is full of their echoes.\n\nEvery correspondence we observe in mind and matter suggests a substance\nolder and deeper than either of these old nobilities. We see the law\ngleaming through, like the sense of a half-translated ode of Hafiz. The\npoet who plays with it with most boldness best justifies himself,--is\nmost profound and most devout. Passion adds eyes,--is a\nmagnifying-glass. Sonnets of lovers are mad enough, but are valuable to\nthe philosopher, as are prayers of saints, for their potent symbolism.\n\nScience was false by being unpoetical. It assumed to explain a reptile\nor mollusk, and isolated it,--which is hunting for life in graveyards.\nReptile or mollusk or man or angel only exists in system, in relation.\nThe metaphysician, the poet, only sees each animal form as an inevitable\nstep in the path of the creating mind. The Indian, the hunter, the boy\nwith his pets, have sweeter knowledge of these than the savant. We use\nsemblances of logic until experience puts us in possession of real\nlogic. The poet knows the missing link by the joy it gives. The poet\ngives us the eminent experiences only,--a god stepping from peak to\npeak, nor planting his foot but on a mountain.\n\nScience does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe\nthat a great naturalist could exist without this faculty. He was himself\nconscious of its help, which made him a prophet among the doctors. From\nthis vision he gave brave hints to the zo\u00f6logist, the botanist, and the\noptician.\n\n\n_Poetry._--The primary use of a fact is low: the secondary use, as it is\na figure or illustration of my thought, is the real worth. First, the\nfact; second, its impression, or what I think of it. Hence Nature was\ncalled \"a kind of adulterated reason.\" Seas, forests, metals, diamonds,\nand fossils interest the eye, but 'tis only with some preparatory or\npredicting charm. Their value to the intellect appears only when I hear\ntheir meaning made plain in the spiritual truth they cover. The mind,\npenetrated with its sentiment or its thought, projects it outward on\nwhatever it beholds. The lover sees reminders of his mistress in every\nbeautiful object; the saint, an argument for devotion in every natural\nprocess; and the facility with which Nature lends itself to the thoughts\nof man, the aptness with which a river, a flower, a bird, fire, day, or\nnight, can express his fortunes, is as if the world were only a\ndisguised man, and, with a change of form, rendered to him all his\nexperience. We cannot utter a sentence in sprightly conversation without\na similitude. Note our incessant use of the word _like_,--like fire,\nlike a rock, like thunder, like a bee, \"like a year without a spring.\"\nConversation is not permitted without tropes; nothing but great weight\nin things can afford a quite literal speech. It is ever enlivened by\ninversion and trope. God himself does not speak prose, but communicates\nwith us by hints, omens, inference, and dark resemblances in objects\nlying all around us.\n\nNothing so marks a man as imaginative expressions. A figurative\nstatement arrests attention, and is remembered and repeated. How often\nhas a phrase of this kind made a reputation. Pythagoras's Golden Sayings\nwere such, and Socrates's, and Mirabeau's, and Burke's, and Bonaparte's.\nGenius thus makes the transfer from one part of Nature to a remote part,\nand betrays the rhymes and echoes that pole makes with pole. Imaginative\nminds cling to their images, and do not wish them rashly rendered into\nprose reality, as children resent your showing them that their doll\nCinderella is nothing but pine wood and rags: and my young scholar does\nnot wish to know what the leopard, the wolf, or Lucia, signify in\nDante's Inferno, but prefers to keep their veils on. Mark the delight of\nan audience in an image. When some familiar truth or fact appears in a\nnew dress, mounted as on a fine horse, equipped with a grand pair of\nballooning wings, we cannot enough testify our surprise and pleasure. It\nis like the new virtue shown in some unprized old property, as when a\nboy finds that his pocket-knife will attract steel filings and take up a\nneedle; or when the old horse-block in the yard is found to be a Torso\nHercules of the Phidian age. Vivacity of expression may indicate this\nhigh gift, even when the thought is of no great scope, as when Michel\nAngelo, praising the _terra cottas_, said, \"If this earth were to become\nmarble, woe to the antiques!\" A happy symbol is a sort of evidence that\nyour thought is just. I had rather have a good symbol of my thought, or\na good analogy, than the suffrage of Kant or Plato. If you agree with\nme, or if Locke or Montesquieu agree, I may yet be wrong; but if the\nelm-tree thinks the same thing, if running water, if burning coal, if\ncrystals, if alkalies, in their several fashions, say what I say, it\nmust be true. Thus, a good symbol is the best argument, and is a\nmissionary to persuade thousands. The Vedas, the Edda, the Koran, are\neach remembered by their happiest figure. There is no more welcome gift\nto men than a new symbol. That satiates, transports, converts them. They\nassimilate themselves to it,--deal with it in all ways, and it will last\na hundred years. Then comes a new genius, and brings another. Thus the\nGreek mythology called the sea \"the tear of Saturn.\" The return of the\nsoul to God was described as \"a flask of water broken in the sea.\" Saint\nJohn gave us the Christian figure of \"souls washed in the blood of\nChrist.\" The aged Michel Angelo indicates his perpetual study as in\nboyhood,--\"I carry my satchel still.\" Machiavel described the papacy as\n\"a stone inserted in the body of Italy to keep the wound open.\" To the\nParliament debating how to tax America, Burke exclaimed, \"Shear the\nwolf.\" Our Kentuckian orator said of his dissent from his companion, \"I\nshowed him the back of my hand.\" And our proverb of the courteous\nsoldier reads: \"An iron hand in a velvet glove.\"\n\nThis belief that the higher use of the material world is to furnish us\ntypes or pictures to express the thoughts of the mind is carried to its\nlogical extreme by the Hindoos, who, following Buddha, have made it the\ncentral doctrine of their religion, that what we call Nature, the\nexternal world, has no real existence,--is only phenomenal. Youth, age,\nproperty, condition, events, persons,--self, even,--are successive\n_maias_ (deceptions) through which Vishnu mocks and instructs the soul.\nI think Hindoo books the best gymnastics for the mind, as showing\ntreatment. All European libraries might almost be read without the swing\nof this gigantic arm being suspected. But these Orientals deal with\nworlds and pebbles freely.\n\nFor the value of a trope is that the hearer is one; and indeed Nature\nitself is a vast trope, and all particular natures are tropes. As the\nbird alights on the bough,--then plunges into the air again, so the\nthoughts of God pause but for a moment in any form. All thinking is\nanalogizing, and 'tis the use of life to learn metonymy. The endless\npassing of one element into new forms, the incessant metamorphosis,\nexplains the rank which the imagination holds in our catalogue of mental\npowers. The imagination is the reader of these forms. The poet accounts\nall productions and changes of Nature as the nouns of language, uses\nthem representatively, too well pleased with their ulterior to value\nmuch their primary meaning. Every new object so seen gives a shock of\nagreeable surprise. The impressions on the imagination make the great\ndays of life: the book, the landscape, or the personality which did not\nstay on the surface of the eye or ear, but penetrated to the inward\nsense, agitates us, and is not forgotten. Walking, working, or talking,\nthe sole question is how many strokes vibrate on this mystic\nstring,--how many diameters are drawn quite through from matter to\nspirit; for, whenever you enunciate a natural law, you discover that you\nhave enunciated a law of the mind. Chemistry, geology, hydraulics, are\nsecondary science. The atomic theory is only an interior process\n_produced_, as geometers say, or the effect of a foregone metaphysical\ntheory. Swedenborg saw gravity to be only an external of the\nirresistible attractions of affection and faith. Mountains and oceans we\nthink we understand:--yes, so long as they are contented to be such, and\nare safe with the geologist,--but when they are melted in Promethean\nalembics, and come out men, and then, melted again, come out words,\nwithout any abatement, but with an exaltation of power!--\n\nIn poetry we say we require the miracle. The bee flies among the\nflowers, and gets mint and marjoram, and generates a new product, which\nis not mint and marjoram, but honey; the chemist mixes hydrogen and\noxygen to yield a new product, which is not these, but water; and the\npoet listens to conversation, and beholds all objects in nature, to give\nback, not them, but a new and transcendent whole.\n\nPoetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing, to\npass the brute body, and search the life and reason which causes it to\nexist;--to see that the object is always flowing away, whilst the spirit\nor necessity which causes it subsists. Its essential mark is that it\nbetrays in every word instant activity of mind, shown in new uses of\nevery fact and image,--in preternatural quickness or perception of\nrelations. All its words are poems. It is a presence of mind that gives\na miraculous command of all means of uttering the thought and feeling of\nthe moment. The poet squanders on the hour an amount of life that would\nmore than furnish the seventy years of the man that stands next him.\n\nThe term genius, when used with emphasis, implies imagination; use of\nsymbols, figurative speech. A deep insight will always, like Nature,\nultimate its thought in a thing. As soon as a man masters a principle,\nand sees his facts in relation to it, fields, waters, skies, offer to\nclothe his thoughts in images. Then all men understand him: Parthian,\nMede, Chinese, Spaniard, and Indian hear their own tongue. For he can\nnow find symbols of universal significance, which are readily rendered\ninto any dialect; as a painter, a sculptor, a musician, can in their\nseveral ways express the same sentiment of anger, or love, or religion.\n\nThe thoughts are few; the forms many; the large vocabulary or\nmany-colored coat of the indigent unity. The savans are chatty and\nvain,--but hold them hard to principle and definition, and they become\nmute and near-sighted. What is motion? what is beauty? what is matter?\nwhat is life? what is force? Push them hard, and they will not be\nloquacious. They will come to Plato, Proclus, and Swedenborg. The\ninvisible and imponderable is the sole fact. \"Why changes not the violet\nearth into musk?\" What is the term of the ever-flowing metamorphosis? I\ndo not know what are the stoppages, but I see that a devouring unity\nchanges all into that which changes not.\n\nThe act of imagination is ever attended by pure delight. It infuses a\ncertain volatility and intoxication into all nature. It has a flute\nwhich sets the atoms of our frame in a dance. Our indeterminate size is\na delicious secret which it reveals to us. The mountains begin to\ndislimn, and float in the air. In the presence and conversation of a\ntrue poet, teeming with images to express his enlarging thought, his\nperson, his form, grows larger to our fascinated eyes. And thus begins\nthat deification which all nations have made of their heroes in every\nkind,--saints, poets, lawgivers, and warriors.\n\n\n_Imagination._--Whilst common-sense looks at things or visible nature as\nreal and final facts, poetry, or the imagination which dictates it, is a\nsecond sight, looking through these, and using them as types or words\nfor thoughts which they signify. Or is this belief a metaphysical whim\nof modern times, and quite too refined? On the contrary, it is as old as\nthe human mind. Our best definition of poetry is one of the oldest\nsentences, and claims to come down to us from the Chald\u00e6an Zoroaster,\nwho wrote it thus: \"Poets are standing transporters, whose employment\nconsists in speaking to the Father and to matter; in producing apparent\nimitations of unapparent natures, and inscribing things unapparent in\nthe apparent fabrication of the world\"; in other words, the world exists\nfor thought: it is to make appear things which hide: mountains,\ncrystals, plants, animals, are seen; that which makes them is not seen:\nthese, then, are \"apparent copies of unapparent natures.\" Bacon\nexpressed the same sense in his definition, \"Poetry accommodates the\nshows of things to the desires of the mind\"; and Swedenborg, when he\nsaid, \"There is nothing existing in human thought, even though relating\nto the most mysterious tenet of faith, but has combined with it a\nnatural and sensuous image.\" And again: \"Names, countries, nations, and\nthe like are not at all known to those who are in heaven; they have no\nidea of such things, but of the realities signified thereby.\" A symbol\nalways stimulates the intellect; therefore is poetry ever the best\nreading. The very design of imagination is to domesticate us in another,\nin a celestial, nature.\n\nThis power is in the image because this power is in nature. It so\naffects, because it so is. All that is wondrous in Swedenborg is not his\ninvention, but his extraordinary perception;--that he was necessitated\nso to see. The world realizes the mind. Better than images is seen\nthrough them. The selection of the image is no more arbitrary than the\npower and significance of the image. The selection must follow fate.\nPoetry, if perfected, is the only verity; is the speech of man after the\nreal, and not after the apparent.\n\nOr, shall we say that the imagination exists by sharing the ethereal\ncurrents? The poet contemplates the central identity, sees it undulate\nand roll this way and that, with divine flowings, through remotest\nthings; and, following it, can detect essential resemblances in natures\nnever before compared. He can class them so audaciously, because he is\nsensible of the sweep of the celestial stream, from which nothing is\nexempt. His own body is a fleeing apparition,--his personality as\nfugitive as the trope he employs. In certain hours we can almost pass\nour hand through our own body. I think the use or value of poetry to be\nthe suggestion it affords of the flux or fugaciousness of the poet. The\nmind delights in measuring itself thus with matter, with history, and\nflouting both. A thought, any thought, pressed, followed, opened, dwarfs\nmatter, custom, and all but itself. But this second sight does not\nnecessarily impair the primary or common sense. Pindar and Dante, yes,\nand the gray and timeworn sentences of Zoroaster, may all be parsed,\nthough we do not parse them. The poet has a logic, though it be subtile.\nHe observes higher laws than he transgresses. \"Poetry must first be good\nsense, though it is something better.\"\n\nThis union of first and second sight reads nature to the end of delight\nand of moral use. Men are imaginative, but not overpowered by it to the\nextent of confounding its suggestions with external facts. We live in\nboth spheres, and must not mix them. Genius certifies its entire\npossession of its thought, by translating it into a fact which perfectly\nrepresents it, and is hereby education. Charles James Fox thought\n\"Poetry the great refreshment of the human mind,--the only thing, after\nall; that men first found out they had minds, by making and tasting\npoetry.\"\n\nMan runs about restless and in pain when his condition or the objects\nabout him do not fully match his thought. He wishes to be rich, to be\nold, to be young, that things may obey him. In the ocean, in fire, in\nthe sky, in the forest, he finds facts adequate and as large as he. As\nhis thoughts are deeper than he can fathom, so also are these. 'Tis\neasier to read Sanscrit, to decipher the arrowhead character, than to\ninterpret these familiar sights. 'Tis even much to name them. Thus\nThomson's \"Seasons\" and the best parts of many old and many new poets\nare simply enumerations by a person who felt the beauty of the common\nsights and sounds, without any attempt to draw a moral or affix a\nmeaning.\n\nThe poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value\nas symbols; that Nature is the immense shadow of man. A man's action is\nonly a picture-book of his creed. He does after what he believes. Your\ncondition, your employment, is the fable of _you_. The world is\nthoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body and\nmind of man, and taken his mould and form. Indeed, good poetry is always\npersonification, and heightens every species of force in nature by\ngiving it a human volition. We are advertised that there is nothing to\nwhich he is not related; that everything is convertible into every\nother. The staff in this hand is the _radius vector_ of the sun. The\nchemistry of this is the chemistry of that. Whatever one act we do,\nwhatever one thing we learn, we are doing and learning all\nthings,--marching in the direction of universal power. Every healthy\nmind is a true Alexander or Sesostris, building a universal monarchy.\n\nThe senses imprison us, and we help them with metres as limitary,--with\na pair of scales and a foot-rule, and a clock. How long it took to find\nout what a day was, or what this sun, that makes days! It cost thousands\nof years only to make the motion of the earth suspected. Slowly, by\ncomparing thousands of observations, there dawned on some mind a theory\nof the sun,--and we found the astronomical fact. But the astronomy is in\nthe mind: the senses affirm that the earth stands still and the sun\nmoves. The senses collect the surface facts of matter. The intellect\nacts on these brute reports, and obtains from them results which are the\nessence or intellectual form of the experiences. It compares,\ndistributes, generalizes, and uplifts them into its own sphere. It knows\nthat these transfigured results are not the brute experiences, just as\nsouls in heaven are not the red bodies they once animated. Many\ntransfigurations have befallen them. The atoms of the body were once\nnebul\u00e6, then rock, then loam, then corn, then chyme, then chyle, then\nblood; and now the beholding and co-energizing mind sees the same\nrefining and ascent to the third, the seventh, or the tenth power of the\ndaily accidents which the senses report, and which make the raw material\nof knowledge. It was sensation; when memory came, it was experience;\nwhen mind acted, it was knowledge; when mind acted on it as knowledge,\nit was thought.\n\nThis metonymy, or seeing the same sense in things so diverse, gives a\npure pleasure. Every one of a million times we find a charm in the\nmetamorphosis. It makes us dance and sing. All men are so far poets.\nWhen people tell me they do not relish poetry, and bring me Shelley, or\nAikin's Poets, or I know not what volumes of rhymed English, to show\nthat it has no charm, I am quite of their mind. But this dislike of the\nbooks only proves their liking of poetry. For they relish \u00c6sop,--cannot\nforget him, or not use him; bring them Homer's Iliad, and they like\nthat; or the Cid, and that rings well: read to them from Chaucer, and\nthey reckon him an honest fellow. \"Lear\" and \"Macbeth\" and \"Richard\nIII.\" they know pretty well without guide. Give them Robin Hood's\nballads, or \"Griselda,\" or \"Sir Andrew Barton,\" or \"Sir Patrick Spense,\"\nor \"Chevy Chase,\" or \"Tam O'Shanter,\" and they like these well enough.\nThey like to see statues; they like to name the stars; they like to talk\nand hear of Jove, Apollo, Minerva, Venus, and the Nine. See how\ntenacious we are of the old names. They like poetry without knowing it\nas such. They like to go to the theatre and be made to weep; to Faneuil\nHall, and be taught by Otis, Webster, or Kossuth, or Phillips, what\ngreat hearts they have, what tears, what new possible enlargements to\ntheir narrow horizons. They like to see sunsets on the hills or on a\nlake shore. Now, a cow does not gaze at the rainbow, or show or affect\nany interest in the landscape, or a peacock, or the song of thrushes.\n\nNature is the true idealist. When she serves us best, when, on rare\ndays, she speaks to the imagination, we feel that the huge heaven and\nearth are but a web drawn around us, that the light, skies, and\nmountains are but the painted vicissitudes of the soul. Who has heard\nour hymn in the churches without accepting the truth,--\n\n    \"As o'er our heads the seasons roll,\n    And soothe with _change of bliss_ the soul\"?\n\nOf course, when we describe man as poet, and credit him with the\ntriumphs of the art, we speak of the potential or ideal man,--not found\nnow in any one person. You must go through a city or a nation, and find\none faculty here, one there, to build the true poet withal. Yet all men\nknow the portrait when it is drawn, and it is part of religion to\nbelieve its possible incarnation.\n\nHe is the healthy, the wise, the fundamental, the manly man, seer of the\nsecret; against all the appearance, he sees and reports the truth,\nnamely, that the soul generates matter. And poetry is the only\nverity,--the expression of a sound mind speaking after the ideal, and\nnot after the apparent. As a power, it is the perception of the symbolic\ncharacter of things, and the treating them as representative: as a\ntalent, it is a magnetic tenaciousness of an image, and by the treatment\ndemonstrating that this pigment of thought is as palpable and objective\nto the poet as is the ground on which he stands, or the walls of houses\nabout him. And this power appears in Dante and Shakspeare. In some\nindividuals this insight, or second sight, has an extraordinary reach\nwhich compels our wonder, as in Behmen, Swedenborg, and William Blake,\nthe painter.\n\nWilliam Blake, whose abnormal genius, Wordsworth said, interested him\nmore than the conversation of Scott or of Byron, writes thus: \"He who\ndoes not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and\nbetter light than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at\nall. The painter of this work asserts that all his imaginations appear\nto him infinitely more perfect and more minutely organized, than\nanything seen by his mortal eye.... I assert for myself that I do not\nbehold the outward creation, and that to me it would be a hindrance, and\nnot action. I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would\nquestion a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with\nit.\"\n\n     *     *     *     *     *\n\n'Tis a problem of metaphysics to define the province of Fancy and\nImagination. The words are often used, and the things confounded.\nImagination respects the cause. It is the vision of an inspired soul\nreading arguments and affirmations in all nature of that which it is\ndriven to say. But as soon as this soul is released a little from its\npassion, and at leisure plays with the resemblances and types for\namusement, and not for its moral end, we call its action Fancy. Lear,\nmad with his affliction, thinks every man who suffers must have the like\ncause with his own. \"What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?\"\nBut when, his attention being diverted, his mind rests from this\nthought, he becomes fanciful with Tom, playing with the superficial\nresemblances of objects. Bunyan, in pain for his soul, wrote \"Pilgrim's\nProgress\"; Quarles, after he was quite cool, wrote \"Emblems.\"\n\nImagination is central; fancy, superficial. Fancy relates to surface, in\nwhich a great part of life lies. The lover is rightly said to fancy the\nhair, eyes, complexion of the maid. Fancy is a wilful, imagination a\nspontaneous act; fancy, a play as with dolls and puppets which we choose\nto call men and women; imagination, a perception and affirming of a real\nrelation between a thought and some material fact. Fancy amuses;\nimagination expands and exalts us. Imagination uses an organic\nclassification. Fancy joins by accidental resemblance, surprises and\namuses the idle, but is silent in the presence of great passion and\naction. Fancy aggregates; imagination animates. Fancy is related to\ncolor; imagination, to form. Fancy paints; imagination sculptures.\n\n\n_Veracity._--I do not wish, therefore, to find that my poet is not\npartaker of the feast he spreads, or that he would kindle or amuse me\nwith that which does not kindle or amuse him. He must believe in his\npoetry. Homer, Milton, Hafiz, Herbert, Swedenborg, Wordsworth, are\nheartily enamored of their sweet thoughts. Moreover, they know that this\ncorrespondence of things to thoughts is far deeper than they can\npenetrate,--defying adequate expression; that it is elemental, or in the\ncore of things. Veracity, therefore, is that which we require in\npoets,--that they shall say how it was with them, and not what might be\nsaid. And the fault of our popular poetry is that it is not sincere.\n\n\"What news?\" asks man of man everywhere. The only teller of news is the\npoet. When he sings, the world listens with the assurance that now a\nsecret of God is to be spoken. The right poetic mood is or makes a more\ncomplete sensibility,--piercing the outward fact to the meaning of the\nfact; shows a sharper insight: and the perception creates the strong\nexpression of it, as the man who sees his way walks in it.\n\n'Tis a rule in eloquence, that the moment the orator loses command of\nhis audience, the audience commands him. So, in poetry, the master\nrushes to deliver his thought, and the words and images fly to him to\nexpress it; whilst colder moods are forced to respect the ways of saying\nit, and insinuate, or, as it were, muffle the fact, to suit the poverty\nor caprice of their expression, so that they only hint the matter, or\nallude to it, being unable to fuse and mould their words and images to\nfluid obedience. See how Shakspeare grapples at once with the main\nproblem of the tragedy, as in \"Lear\" and \"Macbeth,\" and the opening of\n\"The Merchant of Venice.\"\n\nAll writings must be in a degree exoteric, written to a human _should_\nor _would_, instead of to the fatal _is_: this holds even of the bravest\nand sincerest writers. Every writer is a skater, and must go partly\nwhere he would, and partly where the skates carry him; or a sailor, who\ncan only land where sails can be blown. And yet it is to be added, that\nhigh poetry exceeds the fact, or nature itself, just as skates allow the\ngood skater far more grace than his best walking would show, or sails\nmore than riding. The poet writes from a real experience, the amateur\nfeigns one. Of course, one draws the bow with his fingers, and the other\nwith the strength of his body; one speaks with his lips, and the other\nwith a chest voice. Talent amuses, but if your verse has not a necessary\nand autobiographic basis, though under whatever gay poetic veils, it\nshall not waste my time.\n\nFor poetry is faith. To the poet the world is virgin soil: all is\npracticable; the men are ready for virtue; it is always time to do\nright. He is a true re-commencer, or Adam in the garden again. He\naffirms the applicability of the ideal law to this moment and the\npresent knot of affairs. Parties, lawyers, and men of the world will\ninvariably dispute such an application as romantic and dangerous: they\nadmit the general truth, but they and their affair always constitute a\ncase in bar of the statute. Free-trade, they concede, is very well as a\nprinciple, but it is never quite the time for its adoption without\nprejudicing actual interests. Chastity, they admit, is very well,--but\nthen think of Mirabeau's passion and temperament!--Eternal laws are very\nwell, which admit no violation,--but so extreme were the times and\nmanners of mankind, that you must admit miracles,--for the times\nconstituted a case. Of course, we know what you say, that legends are\nfound in all tribes,--but this legend is different. And so, throughout,\nthe poet affirms the laws; prose busies itself with exceptions,--with\nthe local and individual.\n\nI require that the poem should impress me, so that after I have shut the\nbook, it shall recall me to itself, or that passages should. And\ninestimable is the criticism of memory as a corrective to first\nimpressions. We are dazzled at first by new words and brilliancy of\ncolor, which occupy the fancy and deceive the judgment. But all this is\neasily forgotten. Later, the thought, the happy image which expressed\nit, and which was a true experience of the poet, recurs to mind, and\nsends me back in search of the book. And I wish that the poet should\nforesee this habit of readers, and omit all but the important passages.\nShakspeare is made up of important passages, like Damascus steel made up\nof old nails. Homer has his own,--\n\n    \"One omen is good, to die for one's country\";\n\nand again,--\n\n    \"They heal their griefs, for curable are the hearts of the noble.\"\n\nWrite, that I may know you. Style betrays you, as your eyes do. We\ndetect at once by it whether the writer has a firm grasp on his fact or\nthought,--exists at the moment for that alone, or whether he has one eye\napologizing, deprecatory, turned on his reader. In proportion always to\nhis possession of his thought is his defiance of his readers. There is\nno choice of words for him who clearly sees the truth. That provides him\nwith the best word.\n\nGreat design belongs to a poem, and is better than any skill of\nexecution,--but how rare! I find it in the poems of\nWordsworth,--\"Laodamia,\" and the \"Ode to Dion,\" and the plan of \"The\nRecluse.\" We want design, and do not forgive the bards if they have only\nthe art of enamelling. We want an architect, and they bring us an\nupholsterer.\n\nIf your subject do not appear to you the flower of the world at this\nmoment, you have not rightly chosen it. No matter what it is, grand or\ngay, national or private, if it has a natural prominence to you, work\naway until you come to the heart of it: then it will, though it were a\nsparrow or a spider-web, as fully represent the central law, and draw\nall tragic or joyful illustration, as if it were the book of Genesis or\nthe book of Doom. The subject--we must so often say it--is indifferent.\nAny word, every word in language, every circumstance, becomes poetic in\nthe hands of a higher thought.\n\nThe test or measure of poetic genius is the power to read the poetry of\naffairs,--to fuse the circumstance of to-day; not to use Scott's antique\nsuperstitions, or Shakspeare's, but to convert those of the nineteenth\ncentury, and of the existing nations, into universal symbols. 'Tis easy\nto repaint the mythology of the Greeks, or of the Catholic Church, the\nfeudal castle, the crusade, the martyrdoms of medi\u00e6val Europe; but to\npoint out where the same creative force is now working in our own houses\nand public assemblies, to convert the vivid energies acting at this\nhour, in New York and Chicago and San Francisco, into universal symbols,\nrequires a subtile and commanding thought. 'Tis boyish in Swedenborg to\ncumber himself with the dead scurf of Hebrew antiquity, as if the Divine\ncreative energy had fainted in his own century. American life storms\nabout us daily, and is slow to find a tongue. This contemporary insight\nis transubstantiation, the conversion of daily bread into the holiest\nsymbols; and every man would be a poet, if his intellectual digestion\nwere perfect. The test of the poet is the power to take the passing day,\nwith its news, its cares, its fears, as he shares them, and hold it up\nto a divine reason, till he sees it to have a purpose and beauty, and to\nbe related to astronomy and history, and the eternal order of the world.\nThen the dry twig blossoms in his hand. He is calmed and elevated.\n\nThe use of \"occasional poems\" is to give leave to originality. Every one\ndelights in the felicity frequently shown in our drawing-rooms. In a\ngame-party or picnic poem each writer is released from the solemn\nrhythmic traditions which alarm and suffocate his fancy, and the result\nis that one of the partners offers a poem in a new style that hints at a\nnew literature. Yet the writer holds it cheap, and could do the like all\nday. On the stage, the farce is commonly far better given than the\ntragedy, as the stock actors understand the farce, and do not understand\nthe tragedy. The writer in the parlor has more presence of mind, more\nwit and fancy, more play of thought, on the incidents that occur at\ntable, or about the house, than in the politics of Germany or Rome. Many\nof the fine poems of Herrick, Jonson, and their contemporaries had this\ncasual origin.\n\nI know there is entertainment and room for talent in the artist's\nselection of ancient or remote subjects; as when the poet goes to India,\nor to Rome, or Persia, for his fable. But I believe nobody knows better\nthan he, that herein he consults his ease, rather than his strength or\nhis desire. He is very well convinced that the great moments of life are\nthose in which his own house, his own body, the tritest and nearest ways\nand words and things, have been illuminated into prophets and teachers.\nWhat else is it to be a poet? What are his garland and singing robes?\nWhat but a sensibility so keen that the scent of an elder-blow, or the\ntimber-yard and corporation-works of a nest of pismires is event enough\nfor him,--all emblems and personal appeals to him. His wreath and robe\nis to do what he enjoys; emancipation from other men's questions, and\nglad study of his own; escape from the gossip and routine of society,\nand the allowed right and practice of making better. He does not give\nhis hand, but in sign of giving his heart; he is not affable with all,\nbut silent, uncommitted, or in love, as his heart leads him. There is no\nsubject that does not belong to him,--politics, economy, manufactures,\nand stock-brokerage, as much as sunsets and souls; only, these things,\nplaced in their true order, are poetry; displaced, or put in kitchen\norder, they are unpoetic. Malthus is the right organ of the English\nproprietors; but we shall never understand political economy, until\nBurns or B\u00e9ranger or some poet shall teach it in songs, and he will not\nteach Malthusianism.\n\nPoetry is the _gai science_. The trait and test of the poet is that he\nbuilds, adds, and affirms. The critic destroys: the poet says nothing\nbut what helps somebody; let others be distracted with cares, he is\nexempt. All their pleasures are tinged with pain. All his pains are\nedged with pleasure. The gladness he imparts he shares. As one of the\nold Minnesingers sung,--\n\n    \"Oft have I heard, and now believe it true,\n    Whom man delights in, God delights in too.\"\n\nPoetry is the consolation of mortal men. They live cabined, cribbed,\nconfined, in a narrow and trivial lot,--in wants, pains, anxieties, and\nsuperstitions, in profligate politics, in personal animosities, in mean\nemployments,--and victims of these; and the nobler powers untried,\nunknown. A poet comes, who lifts the veil; gives them glimpses of the\nlaws of the universe; shows them the circumstance as illusion; shows\nthat nature is only a language to express the laws, which are grand and\nbeautiful,--and lets them, by his songs, into some of the realities.\nSocrates; the Indian teachers of the Maia; the Bibles of the nations;\nShakspeare, Milton, Hafiz, Ossian, the Welsh Bards,--these all deal with\nnature and history as means and symbols, and not as ends. With such\nguides they begin to see that what they had called pictures are\nrealities, and the mean life is pictures. And this is achieved by words;\nfor it is a few oracles spoken by perceiving men that are the texts on\nwhich religions and states are founded. And this perception has at once\nits moral sequence. Ben Jonson said, \"The principal end of poetry is to\ninform men in the just reason of living.\"\n\n\n_Creation._--But there is a third step which poetry takes, and which\nseems higher than the others, namely, creation, or ideas taking forms of\ntheir own,--when the poet invents the fable, and invents the language\nwhich his heroes speak. He reads in the word or action of the man its\nyet untold results. His inspiration is power to carry out and complete\nthe metamorphosis, which, in the imperfect kinds, arrested for ages,--in\nthe perfecter, proceeds rapidly in the same individual. For poetry is\nscience, and the poet a truer logician. Men in the courts or in the\nstreet think themselves logical, and the poet whimsical. Do they think\nthere is chance or wilfulness in what he sees and tells? To be sure, we\ndemand of him what he demands of himself,--veracity, first of all. But\nwith that, he is the lawgiver, as being an exact reporter of the\nessential law. He knows that he did not make his thought,--no, his\nthought made him, and made the sun and the stars. Is the solar system\ngood art and architecture? The same wise achievement is in the human\nbrain also, can you only wile it from interference and marring. We\ncannot look at works of art but they teach us how near man is to\ncreating. Michel Angelo is largely filled with the Creator that made and\nmakes men. How much of the original craft remains in him, and he a\nmortal man! In him and the like perfecter brains the instinct is\nresistless, knows the right way, is melodious, and at all points divine.\nThe reason we set so high a value on any poetry,--as often on a line or\na phrase as on a poem,--is, that it is a new work of Nature, as a man\nis. It must be as new as foam and as old as the rock. But a new verse\ncomes once in a hundred years; therefore Pindar, Hafiz, Dante, speak so\nproudly of what seems to the clown a jingle.\n\nThe writer, like the priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His\nwork needs a frolic health; he must be at the top of his condition. In\nthat prosperity he is sometimes caught up into a perception of means and\nmaterials, of feats and fine arts, of fairy machineries and funds of\npower hitherto utterly unknown to him, whereby he can transfer his\nvisions to mortal canvas, or reduce them into iambic or trochaic, into\nlyric or heroic rhyme. These successes are not less admirable and\nastonishing to the poet than they are to his audience. He has seen\nsomething which all the mathematics and the best industry could never\nbring him unto. Now at this rare elevation above his usual sphere, he\nhas come into new circulations, the marrow of the world is in his bones,\nthe opulence of forms begins to pour into his intellect, and he is\npermitted to dip his brush into the old paint-pot with which birds,\nflowers, the human cheek, the living rock, the broad landscape, the\nocean, and the eternal sky were painted.\n\nThese fine fruits of judgment, poesy, and sentiment, when once their\nhour is struck, and the world is ripe for them, know as well as coarser\nhow to feed and replenish themselves, and maintain their stock alive,\nand multiply; for roses and violets renew their race like oaks, and\nflights of painted moths are as old as the Alleghanies. The balance of\nthe world is kept, and dewdrop and haze and the pencil of light are as\nlong-lived as chaos and darkness.\n\nOur science is always abreast of our self-knowledge. Poetry begins, or\nall becomes poetry, when we look from the centre outward, and are using\nall as if the mind made it. That only can we see which we are, and which\nwe make. The weaver sees gingham; the broker sees the stock-list; the\npolitician, the ward and county votes; the poet sees the horizon, and\nthe shores of matter lying on the sky, the interaction of the\nelements,--the large effect of laws which correspond to the inward laws\nwhich he knows, and so are but a kind of extension of himself. \"The\nattractions are proportional to the destinies.\" Events or things are\nonly the fulfilment of the prediction of the faculties. Better men saw\nheavens and earths; saw noble instruments of noble souls. We see\nrailroads, mills, and banks, and we pity the poverty of these dreaming\nBuddhists. There was as much creative force then as now, but it made\nglobes, and astronomic heavens, instead of broadcloth and wine-glasses.\n\nThe poet is enamored of thoughts and laws. These know their way, and,\nguided by them, he is ascending from an interest in visible things to an\ninterest in that which they signify, and from the part of a spectator to\nthe part of a maker. And as everything streams and advances, as every\nfaculty and every desire is procreant, and every perception is a\ndestiny, there is no limit to his hope. \"Anything, child, that the mind\ncovets, from the milk of a cocoa to the throne of the three worlds, thou\nmayest obtain, by keeping the law of thy members and the law of thy\nmind.\" It suggests that there is higher poetry than we write or read.\n\nRightly, poetry is organic. We cannot know things by words and writing,\nbut only by taking a central position in the universe, and living in its\nforms. We sink to rise.\n\n    \"None any work can frame,\n    Unless himself become the same.\"\n\nAll the parts and forms of nature are the expression or production of\ndivine faculties, and the same are in us. And the fascination of genius\nfor us is this awful nearness to Nature's creations.\n\nI have heard that the Germans think the creator of Trim and Uncle Toby,\nthough he never wrote a verse, a greater poet than Cowper, and that\nGoldsmith's title to the name is not from his \"Deserted Village,\" but\nderived from the \"Vicar of Wakefield.\" Better examples are Shakspeare's\nAriel, his Caliban, and his fairies in the \"Midsummer Night's Dream.\"\nBarthold Niebuhr said well, \"There is little merit in inventing a happy\nidea, or attractive situation, so long as it is only the author's voice\nwhich we hear. As a being whom we have called into life by magic arts,\nas soon as it has received existence acts independently of the master's\nimpulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and relates\nwhat they do and say. Such creation is poetry, in the literal sense of\nthe term, and its possibility is an unfathomable enigma. The gushing\nfulness of speech belongs to the poet, and it flows from the lips of\neach of his magic beings in the thoughts and words peculiar to its\nnature.\"[1]\n\nThis force of representation so plants his figures before him that he\ntreats them as real; talks to them as if they were bodily there; puts\nwords in their mouth such as they should have spoken, and is affected by\nthem as by persons. Vast is the difference between writing clean verses\nfor magazines, and creating these new persons and situations,--new\nlanguage with emphasis and reality. The humor of Falstaff, the terror of\nMacbeth, have each their swarm of fit thoughts and images, as if\nShakspeare had known and reported the men, instead of inventing them at\nhis desk. This power appears not only in the outline or portrait of his\nactors, but also in the bearing and behavior and style of each\nindividual. Ben Jonson told Drummond \"that Sidney did not keep a decorum\nin making every one speak as well as himself.\"\n\nThis reminds me that we all have one key to this miracle of the poet,\nand the dunce has experiences that may explain Shakspeare to him,--one\nkey, namely, dreams. In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons\nof the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costume; they are\nperfect in their organs, attitude, manners: moreover, they speak after\ntheir own characters, not ours;--they speak to us, and we listen with\nsurprise to what they say. Indeed, I doubt if the best poet has yet\nwritten any five-act play that can compare in thoroughness of invention\nwith this unwritten play in fifty acts, composed by the dullest snorer\non the floor of the watch-house.\n\n\n_Melody, Rhyme, Form._--Music and rhyme are among the earliest pleasures\nof the child, and, in the history of literature, poetry precedes prose.\nEvery one may see, as he rides on the highway through an uninteresting\nlandscape, how a little water instantly relieves the monotony: no matter\nwhat objects are near it,--a gray rock, a grass-patch, an alder-bush, or\na stake,--they become beautiful by being reflected. It is rhyme to the\neye, and explains the charm of rhyme to the ear. Shadows please us as\nstill finer rhymes. Architecture gives the like pleasure by the\nrepetition of equal parts in a colonnade, in a row of windows, or in\nwings; gardens, by the symmetric contrasts of the beds and walks. In\nsociety, you have this figure in a bridal company, where a choir of\nwhite-robed maidens give the charm of living statues; in a funeral\nprocession, where all wear black; in a regiment of soldiers in uniform.\n\nThe universality of this taste is proved by our habit of casting our\nfacts into rhyme to remember them better, as so many proverbs may show.\nWho would hold the order of the almanac so fast but for the ding-dong,\n\n    \"Thirty days hath September,\" etc.;\n\nor of the Zodiac, but for\n\n    \"The Ram, the Bull, the heavenly Twins,\" etc.?\n\nWe are lovers of rhyme and return, period and musical reflection. The\nbabe is lulled to sleep by _yo-heave-o_. Soldiers can march better and\nfight better for the drum and trumpet. Metre begins with pulse-beat, and\nthe length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalation\nand exhalation of the lungs. If you hum or whistle the rhythm of the\ncommon English metres,--of the decasyllabic quatrain, or the\noctosyllabic with alternate sexisyllabic, or other rhythms, you can\neasily believe these metres to be organic, derived from the human pulse,\nand to be therefore not proper to one nation, but to mankind. I think\nyou will also find a charm heroic, plaintive, pathetic, in these\ncadences, and be at once set on searching for the words that can rightly\nfill these vacant beats. Young people like rhyme, drum-beat, tune,\nthings in pairs and alternatives; and, in higher degrees, we know the\ninstant power of music upon our temperaments to change our mood, and\ngive us its own: and human passion, seizing these constitutional tunes,\naims to fill them with appropriate words, or marry music to thought,\nbelieving, as we believe of all marriage, that matches are made in\nheaven, and that for every thought its proper melody or rhyme exists,\nthough the odds are immense against our finding it, and only genius can\nrightly say the banns.\n\nAnother form of rhyme is iterations of phrase, as the record of the\ndeath of Sisera:--\n\n  \"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he\n  fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.\"\n\nThe fact is made conspicuous, nay, colossal, by this simple rhetoric.\n\n  \"They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax\n  old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall\n  be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.\"\n\nMilton delights in these iterations:--\n\n            \"Though fallen on evil days,\n    On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues.\"\n\n    \"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud\n    Turn forth its silver lining on the night?\n    I did not err, there does a sable cloud\n    Turn forth its silver lining on the night.\"\n\n                                           _Comus._\n\n    \"A little onward lend thy guiding hand,\n    To these dark steps a little farther on.\"\n\n                                           _Samson._\n\nSo in our songs and ballads the refrain skilfully used, and deriving\nsome novelty or better sense in each of many verses:--\n\n    \"Busk thee, busk thee, my bonny bonny bride,\n    Busk thee, busk thee, my winsome marrow.\"\n\n                                           HAMILTON.\n\nOf course rhyme soars and refines with the growth of the mind. The boy\nliked the drum, the people liked an overpowering jewsharp tune. Later\nthey like to transfer that rhyme to life, and to detect a melody as\nprompt and perfect in their daily affairs. Omen and coincidence show the\nrhythmical structure of man; hence the taste for signs, sortilege,\nprophecy and fulfilment, anniversaries, etc. By and by, when they\napprehend real rhymes, namely, the correspondence of parts in\nnature,--acid and alkali, body and mind, man and maid, character and\nhistory, action and reaction,--they do not longer value rattles and\nding-dongs, or barbaric word-jingle. Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry,\nHydraulics and the elemental forces have their own periods and returns,\ntheir own grand strains of harmony not less exact, up to the primeval\napothegm \"that there is nothing on earth which is not in the heavens in\na heavenly form, and nothing in the heavens which is not on the earth in\nan earthly form.\" They furnish the poet with grander pairs and\nalternations, and will require an equal expansion in his metres.\n\nThere is under the seeming poverty of metres an infinite variety, as\nevery artist knows. A right ode (however nearly it may adopt\nconventional metre, as the Spenserian, or the heroic blank-verse, or one\nof the fixed lyric metres) will by any sprightliness be at once lifted\nout of conventionality, and will modify the metre. Every good poem that\nI know I recall by its rhythm also. Rhyme is a pretty good measure of\nthe latitude and opulence of a writer. If unskilful, he is at once\ndetected by the poverty of his chimes. A small, well-worn, sprucely\nbrushed vocabulary serves him. Now try Spenser, Marlow, Chapman, and see\nhow wide they fly for weapons, and how rich and lavish their profusion.\nIn their rhythm is no manufacture, but a vortex, or musical tornado,\nwhich falling on words and the experience of a learned mind, whirls\nthese materials into the same grand order as planets and moons obey, and\nseasons, and monsoons.\n\nThere are also prose poets. Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, for instance,\nis really a better man of imagination, a better poet, or perhaps I\nshould say a better feeder to a poet, than any man between Milton and\nWordsworth. Thomas Moore had the magnanimity to say, \"If Burke and Bacon\nwere not poets (measured lines not being necessary to constitute one),\nhe did not know what poetry meant.\" And every good reader will easily\nrecall expressions or passages in works of pure science which have given\nhim the same pleasure which he seeks in professed poets. Richard Owen,\nthe eminent paleontologist, said:--\n\n  \"All hitherto observed causes of extirpation point either to continuous\n  slowly operating geologic changes, or to no greater sudden cause than\n  the, so to speak, spectral appearance of mankind on a limited tract of\n  land not before inhabited.\"\n\nSt. Augustine complains to God of his friends offering him the books of\nthe philosophers:--\n\n  \"And these were the dishes in which they brought to me, being hungry,\n  the Sun and the Moon instead of Thee.\"\n\nIt would not be easy to refuse to Sir Thomas Browne's \"Fragment on\nMummies\" the claim of poetry:--\n\n  \"Of their living habitations they made little account, conceiving of\n  them but as _hospitia_, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of\n  the dead, and, planting thereon lasting bases, defied the crumbling\n  touches of time, and the misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all were\n  but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now\n  dominant, and sitteth upon a Sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and old\n  Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous on a pyramid,\n  gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning\n  old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The\n  traveller as he paceth through those deserts asketh of her, Who builded\n  them? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not.\"\n\nRhyme, being a kind of music, shares this advantage with music, that it\nhas a privilege of speaking truth which all Philistia is unable to\nchallenge. Music is the poor man's Parnassus. With the first note of the\nflute or horn, or the first strain of a song, we quit the world of\ncommon-sense, and launch on the sea of ideas and emotions: we pour\ncontempt on the prose you so magnify; yet the sturdiest Philistine is\nsilent. The like allowance is the prescriptive right of poetry. You\nshall not speak ideal truth in prose uncontradicted: you may in verse.\nThe best thoughts run into the best words; imaginative and affectionate\nthoughts into music and metre. We ask for food and fire, we talk of our\nwork, our tools, and material necessities in prose, that is, without any\nelevation or aim at beauty; but when we rise into the world of thought,\nand think of these things only for what they signify, speech refines\ninto order and harmony. I know what you say of medi\u00e6val barbarism and\nsleighbell-rhyme, but we have not done with music, no, nor with rhyme,\nnor must console ourselves with prose poets so long as boys whistle and\ngirls sing.\n\nLet Poetry then pass, if it will, into music and rhyme. That is the form\nwhich itself puts on. We do not enclose watches in wooden, but in\ncrystal cases, and rhyme is the transparent frame that allows almost the\npure architecture of thought to become visible to the mental eye.\nSubstance is much, but so are mode and form much. The poet, like a\ndelighted boy, brings you heaps of rainbow bubbles, opaline, air-borne,\nspherical as the world, instead of a few drops of soap and water. Victor\nHugo says well, \"An idea steeped in verse becomes suddenly more incisive\nand more brilliant: the iron becomes steel.\" Lord Bacon, we are told,\n\"loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical dactyls and\nspondees\"; and Ben Jonson said, \"that Donne, for not keeping of accent,\ndeserved hanging.\"\n\nPoetry being an attempt to express, not the common-sense, as the\navoirdupois of the hero, or his structure in feet and inches, but the\nbeauty and soul in his aspect as it shines to fancy and feeling,--and so\nof all other objects in nature,--runs into fable, personifies every\nfact:--\"the clouds clapped their hands,\"--\"the hills skipped,\"--\"the sky\nspoke.\" This is the substance, and this treatment always attempts a\nmetrical grace. Outside of the nursery the beginning of literature is\nthe prayers of a people, and they are always hymns, poetic,--the mind\nallowing itself range, and therewith is ever a corresponding freedom in\nthe style which becomes lyrical. The prayers of nations are\nrhythmic,--have iterations, and alliterations, like the marriage-service\nand burial-service in our liturgies.\n\nPoetry will never be a simple means, as when history or philosophy is\nrhymed, or laureate odes on state occasions are written. Itself must be\nits own end, or it is nothing. The difference between poetry and\nstock-poetry is this, that in the latter the rhythm is given, and the\nsense adapted to it; while in the former the sense dictates the rhythm.\nI might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, and\nimage themselves. Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not a\nvehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case: the verse\nmust be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man\ninspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by the\nmusic. In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; but\nin poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts, the\nexpression mounts. 'Tis cumulative also; the poem is made up of lines\neach of which filled the ear of the poet in its turn, so that mere\nsynthesis produces a work quite superhuman.\n\nIndeed, the masters sometimes rise above themselves to strains which\ncharm their readers, and which neither any competitor could outdo, nor\nthe bard himself again equal. Try this strain of Beaumont and\nFletcher:--\n\n    \"Hence, all ye vain delights,\n    As short as are the nights\n    In which you spend your folly!\n    There's naught in this life sweet,\n    If men were wise to see't,\n    But only melancholy.\n    Oh! sweetest melancholy!\n    Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes,\n    A sigh that piercing mortifies,\n    A look that's fastened to the ground,\n    A tongue chained up, without a sound;\n    Fountain-heads and pathless groves,\n    Places which pale Passion loves,\n    Midnight walks, when all the fowls\n    Are warmly housed, save bats and owls;\n    A midnight bell, a passing groan,\n    These are the sounds we feed upon,\n    Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley.\n    Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.\"\n\nKeats disclosed by certain lines in his \"Hyperion\" this inward skill;\nand Coleridge showed at least his love and appetency for it. It appears\nin Ben Jonson's songs, including certainly \"The faery beam upon you,\"\netc., Waller's \"Go, lovely rose!,\" Herbert's \"Virtue\" and \"Easter,\" and\nLovelace's lines \"To Althea\" and \"To Lucasta,\" and Collins's \"Ode, to\nEvening,\" all but the last verse, which is academical. Perhaps this\ndainty style of poetry is not producible to-day, any more than a right\nGothic cathedral. It belonged to a time and taste which is not in the\nworld.\n\nAs the imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health of\nevery man, so also is this joy of musical expression. I know the pride\nof mathematicians and materialists, but they cannot conceal from me\ntheir capital want. The critic, the philosopher, is a failed poet. Gray\navows \"that he thinks even a bad verse as good a thing or better than\nthe best observation that was ever made on it.\" I honor the naturalist;\nI honor the geometer, but he has before him higher power and happiness\nthan he knows. Yet we will leave to the masters their own forms. Newton\nmay be permitted to call Terence a play-book, and to wonder at the\nfrivolous taste for rhymers; he only predicts, one would say, a grander\npoetry: he only shows that he is not yet reached; that the poetry which\nsatisfies more youthful souls is not such to a mind like his, accustomed\nto grander harmonies;--this being a child's whistle to his ear; that the\nmusic must rise to a loftier strain, up to Handel, up to Beethoven, up\nto the thorough-bass of the sea-shore, up to the largeness of astronomy:\nat last that great heart will hear in the music beats like its own: the\nwaves of melody will wash and float him also, and set him into concert\nand harmony.\n\n\n_Bards and Trouveurs._--The metallic force of primitive words makes the\nsuperiority of the remains of the rude ages. It costs the early bard\nlittle talent to chant more impressively than the later, more cultivated\npoets. His advantage is that his words are things, each the lucky sound\nwhich described the fact, and we listen to him as we do to the Indian,\nor the hunter, or miner, each of whom represents his facts as accurately\nas the cry of the wolf or the eagle tells of the forest or the air they\ninhabit. The original force, the direct smell of the earth or the sea,\nis in these ancient poems, the Sagas of the North, the Niebelungen Lied,\nthe songs and ballads of the English and Scotch.\n\nI find or fancy more true poetry, the love of the vast and the ideal, in\nthe Welsh and bardic fragments of Taliessin and his successors than in\nmany volumes of British Classics. An intrepid magniloquence appears in\nall the bards, as:--\n\n    \"The whole ocean flamed as one wound.\"\n                             _King Regner Lodbook._\n\n    \"God himself cannot procure good for the wicked.\"\n                                           _Welsh Triad._\n\nA favorable specimen is Taliessin's \"Invocation of the Wind\" at the door\nof Castle Teganwy.\n\n    \"Discover thou what it is,--\n    The strong creature from before the flood,\n    Without flesh, without bone, without head, without feet,\n    It will neither be younger nor older than at the beginning;\n    It has no fear, nor the rude wants of created things.\n    Great God! how the sea whitens when it comes!\n    It is in the field, it is in the wood,\n    Without hand, without foot,\n    Without age, without season,\n    It is always of the same age with the ages of ages,\n    And of equal breadth with the surface of the earth.\n    It was not born, it sees not,\n    And is not seen; it does not come when desired;\n    It has no form, it bears no burden,\n    For it is void of sin.\n    It makes no perturbation in the place where God wills it,\n    On the sea, on the land.\"\n\nIn one of his poems he asks:--\n\n    \"Is there but one course to the wind?\n    But one to the water of the sea?\n    Is there but one spark in the fire of boundless energy?\"\n\nHe says of his hero, Cunedda,--\n\n  \"He will assimilate, he will agree with the deep and the shallow.\"\n\nTo another,--\n\n    \"When I lapse to a sinful word,\n    May neither you, nor others hear.\"\n\nOf an enemy,--\n\n  \"The caldron of the sea was bordered round by his land, but it would not\n  boil the food of a coward.\"\n\nTo an exile on an island he says,--\n\n  \"The heavy blue chain of the sea didst thou, O just man, endure.\"\n\nAnother bard in like tone says,--\n\n  \"I am possessed of songs such as no son of man can repeat; one of them\n  is called the 'Helper'; it will help thee at thy need in sickness,\n  grief, and all adversities. I know a song which I need only to sing when\n  men have loaded me with bonds: when I sing it, my chains fall in pieces\n  and I walk forth at liberty.\"\n\nThe Norsemen have no less faith in poetry and its power, when they\ndescribe it thus:--\n\n  \"Odin spoke everything in rhyme. He and his temple-gods were called\n  song-smiths. He could make his enemies in battle blind or deaf, and\n  their weapons so blunt that they could no more cut than a willow-twig.\n  Odin taught these arts in runes or songs, which are called\n  incantations.\"[2]\n\nThe Crusades brought out the genius of France, in the twelfth century,\nwhen Pierre d'Auvergne said,--\n\n  \"I will sing a new song which resounds in my breast: never was a song\n  good or beautiful which resembled any other.\"\n\nAnd Pons de Capdeuil declares,--\n\n  \"Since the air renews itself and softens, so must my heart renew itself,\n  and what buds in it buds and grows outside of it.\"\n\nThere is in every poem a height which attracts more than other parts,\nand is best remembered. Thus, in \"Morte d'Arthur,\" I remember nothing so\nwell as Sir Gawain's parley with Merlin in his wonderful prison:--\n\n  \"After the disappearance of Merlin from King Arthur's court he was\n  seriously missed, and many knights set out in search of him. Among\n  others was Sir Gawain, who pursued his search till it was time to return\n  to the court. He came into the forest of Broceliande, lamenting as he\n  went along. Presently, he heard the voice of one groaning on his right\n  hand; looking that way, he could see nothing save a kind of smoke which\n  seemed like air, and through which he could not pass; and this\n  impediment made him so wrathful that it deprived him of speech.\n  Presently he heard a voice which said, 'Gawain, Gawain, be not out of\n  heart, for everything which must happen will come to pass.' And when he\n  heard the voice which thus called him by his right name, he replied,\n  'Who can this be who hath spoken to me?' 'How,' said the voice, 'Sir\n  Gawain, know you me not? You were wont to know me well, but thus things\n  are interwoven and thus the proverb says true, \"Leave the court and the\n  court will leave you.\" So is it with me. Whilst I served King Arthur, I\n  was well known by you and by other barons, but because I have left the\n  court, I am known no longer, and put in forgetfulness, which I ought not\n  to be if faith reigned in the world.' When Sir Gawain heard the voice\n  which spoke to him thus, he thought it was Merlin, and he answered,\n  'Sir, certes I ought to know you well, for many times I have heard your\n  words. I pray you appear before me so that I may be able to recognize\n  you.' 'Ah, sir,' said Merlin, 'you will never see me more, and that\n  grieves me, but I cannot remedy it, and when you shall have departed\n  from this place, I shall nevermore speak to you nor to any other person,\n  save only my mistress; for never other person will be able to discover\n  this place for anything which may befall; neither shall I ever go out\n  from hence, for in the world there is no such strong tower as this\n  wherein I am confined; and it is neither of wood, nor of iron, nor of\n  stone, but of air, without anything else; and made by enchantment so\n  strong, that it can never be demolished while the world lasts, neither\n  can I go out, nor can any one come in, save she who hath enclosed me\n  here, and who keeps me company when it pleaseth her: she cometh when she\n  listeth, for her will is here.' 'How, Merlin, my good friend,' said Sir\n  Gawain, 'are you restrained so strongly that you cannot deliver yourself\n  nor make yourself visible unto me; how can this happen, seeing that you\n  are the wisest man in the world?' 'Rather,' said Merlin, 'the greatest\n  fool; for I well knew that all this would befall me, and I have been\n  fool enough to love another more than myself, for I taught my mistress\n  that whereby she hath imprisoned me in such manner that none can set me\n  free.' 'Certes, Merlin,' replied Sir Gawain, 'of that I am right\n  sorrowful, and so will King Arthur, my uncle, be, when he shall know it,\n  as one who is making search after you throughout all countries.' 'Well,'\n  said Merlin, 'it must be borne, for never will he see me, nor I him;\n  neither will any one speak with me again after you, it would be vain to\n  attempt it; for you yourself, when you have turned away, will never be\n  able to find the place: but salute for me the king and the queen, and\n  all the barons, and tell them of my condition. You will find the king at\n  Carduel in Wales; and when you arrive there you will find there all the\n  companions who departed with you, and who at this day will return. Now\n  then go in the name of God, who will protect and save the King Arthur,\n  and the realm of Logres, and you also, as the best knights who are in\n  the world.' With that Sir Gawain departed joyful and sorrowful; joyful\n  because of what Merlin had assured him should happen to him, and\n  sorrowful that Merlin had thus been lost.\"\n\n\n_Morals._--We are sometimes apprised that there is a mental power and\ncreation more excellent than anything which is commonly called\nphilosophy and literature; that the high poets,--that Homer, Milton,\nShakspeare, do not fully content us. How rarely they offer us the\nheavenly bread! The most they have done is to intoxicate us once and\nagain with its taste. They have touched this heaven and retain\nafterwards some sparkle of it: they betray their belief that such\ndiscourse is possible. There is something--our brothers on this or that\nside of the sea do not know it or own it; the eminent scholars of\nEngland, historians and reviewers, romancers and poets included, might\ndeny and blaspheme it--which is setting us and them aside and the whole\nworld also, and planting itself. To true poetry we shall sit down as the\nresult and justification of the age in which it appears, and think\nlightly of histories and statutes. None of your parlor or piano\nverse,--none of your carpet poets, who are content to amuse, will\nsatisfy us. Power, new power, is the good which the soul seeks. The\npoetic gift we want, as the health and supremacy of man,--not rhymes and\nsonneteering, not bookmaking and bookselling; surely not cold spying and\nauthorship.\n\nIs not poetry the little chamber in the brain where is generated the\nexplosive force which, by gentle shocks, sets in action the intellectual\nworld? Bring us the bards who shall sing all our old ideas out of our\nheads, and new ones in; men-making poets; poetry which, like the verses\ninscribed on Balder's columns in Breidablik, is capable of restoring the\ndead to life;--poetry like that verse of Saadi, which the angels\ntestified \"met the approbation of Allah in Heaven\";--poetry which finds\nits rhymes and cadences in the rhymes and iterations of nature, and is\nthe gift to men of new images and symbols, each the ensign and oracle of\nan age; that shall assimilate men to it, mould itself into religions and\nmythologies, and impart its quality to centuries;--poetry which tastes\nthe world and reports of it, upbuilding the world again in the thought;\n\n    \"Not with tickling rhymes,\n    But high and noble matter, such as flies\n    From brains entranced, and filled with ecstasies.\"\n\nPoetry must be affirmative. It is the piety of the intellect. \"Thus\nsaith the Lord,\" should begin the song. The poet who shall use nature as\nhis hieroglyphic must have an adequate message to convey thereby.\nTherefore, when we speak of the Poet in any high sense, we are driven to\nsuch examples as Zoroaster and Plato, St. John and Menu, with their\nmoral burdens. The Muse shall be the counterpart of Nature, and equally\nrich. I find her not often in books. We know Nature, and figure her\nexuberant, tranquil, magnificent in her fertility, coherent; so that\nevery creation is omen of every other. She is not proud of the sea, of\nthe stars, of space or time, or man or woman. All her kinds share the\nattributes of the selectest extremes. But in current literature I do not\nfind her. Literature warps away from life, though at first it seems to\nbind it. In the world of letters how few commanding oracles! Homer did\nwhat he could,--Pindar, \u00c6schylus, and the Greek Gnomic poets and the\ntragedians. Dante was faithful when not carried away by his fierce\nhatreds. But in so many alcoves of English poetry I can count only nine\nor ten authors who are still inspirers and lawgivers to their race.\n\nThe supreme value of poetry is to educate us to a height beyond itself,\nor which it rarely reaches;--the subduing mankind to order and virtue.\nHe is the true Orpheus who writes his ode, not with syllables, but men.\n\"In poetry,\" said Goethe, \"only the really great and pure advances us,\nand this exists as a second nature, either elevating us to itself, or\nrejecting us.\" The poet must let Humanity sit with the Muse in his head,\nas the charioteer sits with the hero in the Iliad. \"Show me,\" said\nSarona in the novel, \"one wicked man who has written poetry, and I will\nshow you where his poetry is not poetry; or rather, I will show you in\nhis poetry no poetry at all.\"[3]\n\nI have heard that there is a hope which precedes and must precede all\nscience of the visible or the invisible world; and that science is the\nrealization of that hope in either region. I count the genius of\nSwedenborg and Wordsworth as the agents of a reform in philosophy, the\nbringing poetry back to nature,--to the marrying of nature and mind,\nundoing the old divorce in which poetry had been famished and false, and\nnature had been suspected and pagan. The philosophy which a nation\nreceives, rules its religion, poetry, politics, arts, trades, and whole\nhistory. A good poem--say Shakspeare's \"Macbeth,\" or \"Hamlet,\" or the\n\"Tempest\"--goes about the world offering itself to reasonable men, who\nread it with joy and carry it to their reasonable neighbors. Thus it\ndraws to it the wise and generous souls, confirming their secret\nthoughts, and, through their sympathy, really publishing itself. It\naffects the characters of its readers by formulating their opinions and\nfeelings, and inevitably prompting their daily action. If they build\nships, they write \"Ariel\" or \"Prospero\" or \"Ophelia\" on the ship's\nstern, and impart a tenderness and mystery to matters of fact. The\nballad and romance work on the hearts of boys, who recite the rhymes to\ntheir hoops or their skates if alone, and these heroic songs or lines\nare remembered and determine many practical choices which they make\nlater. Do you think Burns has had no influence on the life of men and\nwomen in Scotland,--has opened no eyes and ears to the face of nature\nand the dignity of man and the charm and excellence of woman?\n\nWe are a little civil, it must be owned, to Homer and \u00c6schylus, to\nDante and Shakspeare, and give them the benefit of the largest\ninterpretation. We must be a little strict also, and ask whether, if we\nsit down at home, and do not go to Hamlet, Hamlet will come to us?\nwhether we shall find our tragedy written in his,--our hopes, wants,\npains, disgraces, described to the life,--and the way opened to the\nparadise which ever in the best hour beckons us? But our overpraise and\nidealization of famous masters is not in its origin a poor Boswellism,\nbut an impatience of mediocrity. The praise we now give to our heroes we\nshall unsay when we make larger demands. How fast we outgrow the books\nof the nursery,--then those that satisfied our youth. What we once\nadmired as poetry has long since come to be a sound of tin pans; and\nmany of our later books we have outgrown. Perhaps Homer and Milton will\nbe tin pans yet. Better not to be easily pleased. The poet should\nrejoice if he has taught us to despise his song; if he has so moved us\nas to lift us,--to open the eye of the intellect to see farther and\nbetter.\n\nIn proportion as a man's life comes into union with truth, his thoughts\napproach to a parallelism with the currents of natural laws, so that he\neasily expresses his meaning by natural symbols, or uses the ecstatic or\npoetic speech. By successive states of mind all the facts of nature are\nfor the first time interpreted. In proportion as his life departs from\nthis simplicity, he uses circumlocution,--by many words hoping to\nsuggest what he cannot say. Vexatious to find poets, who are by\nexcellence the thinking and feeling of the world, deficient in truth of\nintellect and of affection. Then is conscience unfaithful, and thought\nunwise. To know the merit of Shakspeare, read \"Faust.\" I find \"Faust\" a\nlittle too modern and intelligible. We can find such a fabric at several\nmills, though a little inferior. \"Faust\" abounds in the disagreeable.\nThe vice is prurient, learned, Parisian. In the presence of Jove,\nPriapus may be allowed as an offset, but here he is an equal hero. The\negotism, the wit, is calculated. The book is undeniably written by a\nmaster, and stands unhappily related to the whole modern world; but it\nis a very disagreeable chapter of literature, and accuses the author as\nwell as the times. Shakspeare could, no doubt, have been disagreeable,\nhad he less genius, and if ugliness had attracted him. In short, our\nEnglish nature and genius has made us the worst critics of Goethe,\n\n    \"We, who speak the tongue\n    That Shakspeare spake, the faith and manners hold\n    Which Milton held.\"\n\nIt is not style or rhymes, or a new image more or less, that imports,\nbut sanity; that life should not be mean; that life should be an image\nin every part beautiful; that the old forgotten splendors of the\nuniverse should glow again for us;--that we should lose our wit, but\ngain our reason. And when life is true to the poles of nature, the\nstreams of truth will roll through us in song.\n\n\n_Transcendency._--In a cotillon some persons dance and others await\ntheir turn when the music and the figure come to them. In the dance of\nGod there is not one of the chorus but can and will begin to spin,\nmonumental as he now looks, whenever the music and figure reach his\nplace and duty. O celestial Bacchus! drive them mad,--this multitude of\nvagabonds, hungry for eloquence, hungry for poetry, starving for\nsymbols, perishing for want of electricity to vitalize this too much\npasture, and in the long delay indemnifying themselves with the false\nwine of alcohol, of politics, or of money.\n\nEvery man may be, and at some time a man is, lifted to a platform whence\nhe looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth; and in that mood\ndeals sovereignly with matter, and strings worlds like beads upon his\nthought. The success with which this is done can alone determine how\ngenuine is the inspiration. The poet is rare because he must be\nexquisitely vital and sympathetic, and, at the same time, immovably\ncentred. In good society, nay, among the angels in heaven, is not\neverything spoken in fine parable, and not so servilely as it befell to\nthe sense? All is symbolized. Facts are not foreign, as they seem, but\nrelated. Wait a little and we see the return of the remote hyperbolic\ncurve. The solid men complain that the idealist leaves out the\nfundamental facts; the poet complains that the solid men leave out the\nsky. To every plant there are two powers; one shoots down as rootlet,\nand one upward as tree. You must have eyes of science to see in the seed\nits nodes; you must have the vivacity of the poet to perceive in the\nthought its futurities. The poet is representative,--whole man,\ndiamond-merchant, symbolizer, emancipator; in him the world projects a\nscribe's hand and writes the adequate genesis. The nature of things is\nflowing, a metamorphosis. The free spirit sympathizes not only with the\nactual form, but with the power or possible forms; but for obvious\nmunicipal or parietal uses, God has given us a bias or a rest on\nto-day's forms. Hence the shudder of joy with which in each clear moment\nwe recognize the metamorphosis, because it is always a conquest, a\nsurprise from the heart of things. One would say of the force in the\nworks of nature, all depends on the battery. If it give one shock, we\nshall get to the fish form, and stop; if two shocks, to the bird; if\nthree, to the quadruped; if four, to the man. Power of generalizing\ndifferences men. The number of successive saltations the nimble thought\ncan make, measures the difference between the highest and lowest of\nmankind. The habit of saliency, of not pausing but going on, is a sort\nof importation or domestication of the Divine effort in a man. After the\nlargest circle has been drawn, a larger can be drawn around it. The\nproblem of the poet is to unite freedom with precision; to give the\npleasure of color, and be not less the most powerful of sculptors. Music\nseems to you sufficient, or the subtle and delicate scent of lavender;\nbut Dante was free imagination,--all wings,--yet he wrote like Euclid.\nAnd mark the equality of Shakspeare to the comic, the tender and sweet,\nand to the grand and terrible. A little more or less skill in whistling\nis of no account. See those weary pentameter tales of Dryden and others.\nTurnpike is one thing and blue sky another. Let the poet, of all men,\nstop with his inspiration. The inexorable rule in the muses' court,\n_either inspiration or silence_, compels the bard to report only his\nsupreme moments. It teaches the enormous force of a few words and in\nproportion to the inspiration checks loquacity. Much that we call poetry\nis but polite verse. The high poetry which shall thrill and agitate\nmankind, restore youth and health, dissipate the dreams under which men\nreel and stagger, and bring in the new thoughts, the sanity and heroic\naims of nations, is deeper hid and longer postponed than was America or\nAustralia, or the finding of steam or of the galvanic battery. We must\nnot conclude against poetry from the defects of poets. They are, in our\nexperience, men of every degree of skill,--some of them only once or\ntwice receivers of an inspiration, and presently falling back on a low\nlife. The drop of _ichor_ that tingles in their veins has not yet\nrefined their blood, and cannot lift the whole man to the digestion and\nfunction of ichor,--that is, to godlike nature. Time will be when ichor\nshall be their blood, when what are now glimpses and aspirations shall\nbe the routine of the day. Yet even partial ascents to poetry and ideas\nare forerunners, and announce the dawn. In the mire of the sensual life,\ntheir religion, their poets, their admiration of heroes and benefactors,\neven their novel and newspaper, nay, their superstitions also, are hosts\nof ideals,--a cordage of ropes that hold them up out of the slough.\nPoetry is inestimable as a lonely faith, a lonely protest in the uproar\nof atheism.\n\nBut so many men are ill-born or ill-bred,--the brains are so marred, so\nimperfectly formed, unheroically,--brains of the sons of fallen\nmen,--that the doctrine is imperfectly received. One man sees a spark or\nshimmer of the truth, and reports it, and his saying becomes a legend or\ngolden proverb for ages, and other men report as much, but none wholly\nand well. Poems,--we have no poem. Whenever that angel shall be\norganized and appear on earth, the Iliad will be reckoned a poor\nballad-grinding. I doubt never the riches of nature, the gifts of the\nfuture, the immense wealth of the mind. O yes, poets we shall have,\nmythology, symbols, religion, of our own. We, too, shall know how to\ntake up all this industry and empire, this Western civilization, into\nthought, as easily as men did when arts were few; but not by holding it\nhigh, but by holding it low. The intellect uses and is not used,--uses\nLondon and Paris and Berlin, east and west, to its end. The only heart\nthat can help us is one that draws, not from our society, but from\nitself, a counterpoise to society. What if we find partiality and\nmeanness in us? The grandeur of our life exists in spite of us,--all\nover and under and within us, in what of us is inevitable and above our\ncontrol. Men are facts as well as persons, and the involuntary part of\ntheir life so much as to fill the mind and leave them no countenance to\nsay aught of what is so trivial as their selfish thinking and doing.\nSooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair\nand manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.\n\n[Footnote 1: Niebuhr, Letters, etc., Vol. III. p. 196.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Heimskringla, Vol. I. p. 221.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Miss Shepard's \"Counterparts,\" Vol. I. p. 67.]\n\n\n\n\n                        SOCIAL AIMS.\n\n\n\n\n                        SOCIAL AIMS.\n\n\nMUCH ill-natured criticism has been directed on American manners. I do\nnot think it is to be resented. Rather, if we are wise, we shall listen\nand mend. Our critics will then be our best friends, though they did not\nmean it. But in every sense the subject of manners has a constant\ninterest to thoughtful persons. Who does not delight in fine manners?\nTheir charm cannot be predicted or overstated. 'Tis perpetual promise of\nmore than can be fulfilled. It is music and sculpture and picture to\nmany who do not pretend to appreciation of those arts. It is even true\nthat grace is more beautiful than beauty. Yet how impossible to overcome\nthe obstacle of an unlucky temperament, and acquire good manners, unless\nby living with the well-bred from the start; and this makes the value of\nwise forethought to give ourselves and our children as much as possible\nthe habit of cultivated society.\n\n'Tis an inestimable hint that I owe to a few persons of fine manners,\nthat they make behavior the very first sign of force,--behavior, and not\nperformance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. Whilst almost everybody\nhas a supplicating eye turned on events and things and other persons, a\nfew natures are central and forever unfold, and these alone charm us. He\nwhose word or deed you cannot predict, who answers you without any\nsupplication in his eye, who draws his determination from within, and\ndraws it instantly,--that man rules.\n\nThe staple figure in novels is the man of _aplomb_, who sits, among the\nyoung aspirants and desperates, quite sure and compact, and, never\nsharing their affections or debilities, hurls his word like a bullet\nwhen occasion requires, knows his way, and carries his points. They may\nscream or applaud, he is never engaged or heated. Napoleon is the type\nof this class in modern history; Byron's heroes in poetry. But we, for\nthe most part, are all drawn into the _charivari_; we chide, lament,\ncavil, and recriminate.\n\nI think Hans Andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it\nwas invisible,--woven for the king's garment,--must mean manners, which\ndo really clothe a princely nature. Such a one can well go in a blanket,\nif he would. In the gymnasium or on the sea-beach his superiority does\nnot leave him. But he who has not this fine garment of behavior is\nstudious of dress, and then not less of house and furniture and pictures\nand gardens, in all which he hopes to lie _perdu_, and not be exposed.\n\n\"Manners are stronger than laws.\" Their vast convenience I must always\nadmire. The perfect defence and isolation which they effect makes an\ninsuperable protection. Though the person so clothed wrestle with you,\nor swim with you, lodge in the same chamber, eat at the same table, he\nis yet a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you.\nManners seem to say, _You are you, and I am I_. In the most delicate\nnatures, fine temperament and culture build this impassable wall. Balzac\nfinely said: \"Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of\ndistance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze.\"\n\nNature values manners. See how she has prepared for them. Who teaches\nmanners of majesty, of frankness, of grace, of humility,--who but the\nadoring aunts and cousins that surround a young child? The babe meets\nsuch courting and flattery as only kings receive when adult; and, trying\nexperiments, and at perfect leisure with these posture-masters and\nflatterers all day, he throws himself into all the attitudes that\ncorrespond to theirs. Are they humble? he is composed. Are they eager?\nhe is nonchalant. Are they encroaching? he is dignified and inexorable.\nAnd this scene is daily repeated in hovels as well as in high houses.\n\nNature is the best posture-master. An awkward man is graceful when\nasleep, or when hard at work, or agreeably amused. The attitudes of\nchildren are gentle, persuasive, royal, in their games and in their\nhouse-talk and in the street, before they have learned to cringe. 'Tis\nimpossible but thought disposes the limbs and the walk, and is masterly\nor secondary. No art can contravene it, or conceal it. Give me a\nthought, and my hands and legs and voice and face will all go right. And\nwe are awkward for want of thought. The inspiration is scanty, and does\nnot arrive at the extremities.\n\nIt is a commonplace of romances to show the ungainly manners of the\npedant who has lived too long in college. Intellectual men pass for\nvulgar, and are timid and heavy with the elegant. But, if the elegant\nare also intellectual, instantly the hesitating scholar is inspired,\ntransformed, and exhibits the best style of manners. An intellectual\nman, though of feeble spirit, is instantly reinforced by being put into\nthe company of scholars, and, to the surprise of everybody, becomes a\nlawgiver. We think a man unable and desponding. It is only that he is\nmisplaced. Put him with new companions, and they will find in him\nexcellent qualities, unsuspected accomplishments, and the joy of life.\n'Tis a great point in a gallery, how you hang pictures; and not less in\nsociety, how you seat your party. The circumstance of circumstance is\ntiming and placing. When a man meets his accurate mate, society begins,\nand life is delicious.\n\nWhat happiness they give,--what ties they form! Whilst one man by his\nmanners pins me to the wall, with another I walk among the stars. One\nman can, by his voice, lead the cheer of a regiment; another will have\nno following. Nature made us all intelligent of these signs, for our\nsafety and our happiness. Whilst certain faces are illumined with\nintelligence, decorated with invitation, others are marked with\nwarnings: certain voices are hoarse and truculent; sometimes they even\nbark. There is the same difference between heavy and genial manners as\nbetween the perceptions of octogenarians and those of young girls who\nsee everything in the twinkling of an eye.\n\nManners are the revealers of secrets, the betrayers of any disproportion\nor want of symmetry in mind and character. It is the law of our\nconstitution that every change in our experience instantly indicates\nitself on our countenance and carriage, as the lapse of time tells\nitself on the face of a clock. We may be too obtuse to read it, but the\nrecord is there. Some men may be obtuse to read it, but some men are not\nobtuse and do read it. In Borrow's \"Lavengro,\" the gypsy instantly\ndetects, by his companion's face and behavior, that some good fortune\nhas befallen him, and that he has money. We say, in these days, that\ncredit is to be abolished in trade: is it? When a stranger comes to buy\ngoods of you, do you not look in his face and answer according to what\nyou read there? Credit is to be abolished? Can't you abolish faces and\ncharacter, of which credit is the reflection? As long as men are born\nbabes they will live on credit for the first fourteen or eighteen years\nof their life. Every innocent man has in his countenance a promise to\npay, and hence credit. Less credit will there be? You are mistaken.\nThere will always be more and more. Character _must_ be trusted; and,\njust in proportion to the morality of a people, will be the expansion of\nthe credit system.\n\nThere is even a little rule of prudence for the young experimenter which\nDr. Franklin omitted to set down, yet which the youth may find\nuseful,--Do not go to ask your debtor the payment of a debt on the day\nwhen you have no other resource. He will learn by your air and tone how\nit is with you, and will treat you as a beggar. But work and starve a\nlittle longer. Wait till your affairs go better, and you have other\nmeans at hand; you will then ask in a different tone, and he will treat\nyour claim with entire respect.\n\nNow, we all wish to be graceful, and do justice to ourselves by our\nmanners; but youth in America is wont to be poor and hurried, not at\nease, or not in society where high behavior could be taught. But the\nsentiment of honor and the wish to serve make all our pains superfluous.\nLife is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.\nSelf-command is the main elegance. \"Keep cool, and you command\neverybody,\" said St. Just; and the wily old Talleyrand would still say,\n_Surtout, messieurs, pas de z\u00eale_,--\"Above all, gentlemen, no heat.\"\n\nWhy have you statues in your hall, but to teach you that, when the\ndoor-bell rings, you shall sit like them. \"Eat at your table as you\nwould eat at the table of the king,\" said Confucius. It is an excellent\ncustom of the Quakers, if only for a school of manners,--the silent\nprayer before meals. It has the effect to stop mirth, and introduce a\nmoment of reflection. After the pause, all resume their usual\nintercourse from a vantage-ground. What a check to the violent manners\nwhich sometimes come to the table,--of wrath, and whining, and heat in\ntrifles!\n\n'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration. A lady loses as soon as\nshe admires too easily and too much. In man or woman, the face and the\nperson lose power when they are on the strain to express admiration. A\nman makes his inferiors his superiors by heat. Why need you, who are not\na gossip, talk as a gossip, and tell eagerly what the neighbors or the\njournals say? State your opinion without apology. The attitude is the\nmain point, assuring your companion that, come good news or come bad,\nyou remain in good heart and good mind, which is the best news you can\npossibly communicate. Self-control is the rule. You have in you there a\nnoisy, sensual savage which you are to keep down, and turn all his\nstrength to beauty. For example, what a seneschal and detective is\nlaughter! It seems to require several generations of education to train\na squeaking or a shouting habit out of a man. Sometimes, when in almost\nall expressions the Choctaw and the slave have been worked out of him, a\ncoarse nature still betrays itself in his contemptible squeals of joy.\nIt is necessary for the purification of drawing-rooms, that these\nentertaining explosions should be under strict control. Lord\nChesterfield had early made this discovery, for he says, \"I am sure that\nsince I had the use of my reason, no human being has ever heard me\nlaugh.\" I know that there go two to this game, and, in the presence of\ncertain formidable wits, savage nature must sometimes rush out in some\ndisorder.\n\nTo pass to an allied topic, one word or two in regard to dress, in which\nour civilization instantly shows itself. No nation is dressed with more\ngood sense than ours. And everybody sees certain moral benefit in it.\nWhen the young European emigrant, after a summer's labor, puts on for\nthe first time a new coat, he puts on much more. His good and becoming\nclothes put him on thinking that he must behave like people who are so\ndressed; and silently and steadily his behavior mends. But quite another\nclass of our own youth, I should remind, of dress in general, that some\npeople need it, and others need it not. Thus a king or a general does\nnot need a fine coat, and a commanding person may save himself all\nsolicitude on that point. There are always slovens in State Street or\nWall Street, who are not less considered. If a man have manners and\ntalent he may dress roughly and carelessly. It is only when mind and\ncharacter slumber that the dress can be seen. If the intellect were\nalways awake, and every noble sentiment, the man might go in huckaback\nor mats, and his dress would be admired and imitated. Remember George\nHerbert's maxim, \"This coat with my discretion will be brave.\" If,\nhowever, a man has not firm nerves, and has keen sensibility, it is\nperhaps a wise economy to go to a good shop and dress himself\nirreproachably. He can then dismiss all care from his mind, and may\neasily find that performance an addition of confidence, a fortification\nthat turns the scale in social encounters, and allows him to go gayly\ninto conversations where else he had been dry and embarrassed. I am not\nignorant,--I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the\nlady who declared \"that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives\na feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.\"\n\nThus much for manners: but we are not content with pantomime; we say,\nthis is only for the eyes. We want real relations of the mind and the\nheart; we want friendship; we want knowledge; we want virtue; a more\ninward existence to read the history of each other. Welfare requires one\nor two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life\nwith,--persons with whom we can speak a few reasonable words every day,\nby whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast to good\nsense and virtue; and these we are always in search of. He must be\ninestimable to us to whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves.\nYet now and then we say things to our mates, or hear things from them,\nwhich seem to put it out of the power of the parties to be strangers\nagain. \"Either death or a friend,\" is a Persian proverb. I suppose I\ngive the experience of many when I give my own. A few times in my life\nit has happened to me to meet persons of so good a nature and so good\nbreeding, that every topic was open and discussed without possibility of\noffence,--persons who could not be shocked. One of my friends said in\nspeaking of certain associates, \"There is not one of them but I can\noffend at any moment.\" But to the company I am now considering, were no\nterrors, no vulgarity. All topics were broached,--life, love, marriage,\nsex, hatred, suicide, magic, theism, art, poetry, religion, myself,\nthyself, all selves, and whatever else, with a security and vivacity\nwhich belonged to the nobility of the parties and to their brave truth.\nThe life of these persons was conducted in the same calm and affirmative\nmanner as their discourse. Life with them was an experiment continually\nvaried, full of results, full of grandeur, and by no means the hot and\nhurried business which passes in the world. The delight in good company,\nin pure, brilliant, social atmosphere; the incomparable satisfaction of\na society in which everything can be safely said, in which every member\nreturns a true echo, in which a wise freedom, an ideal republic of\nsense, simplicity, knowledge, and thorough good-meaning abide,--doubles\nthe value of life. It is this that justifies to each the jealousy with\nwhich the doors are kept. Do not look sourly at the set or the club\nwhich does not choose you. Every highly organized person knows the value\nof the social barriers, since the best society has often been spoiled to\nhim by the intrusion of bad companions. He of all men would keep the\nright of choice sacred, and feel that the exclusions are in the interest\nof the admissions, though they happen at this moment to thwart his\nwishes.\n\nThe hunger for company is keen, but it must be discriminating, and must\nbe economized. 'Tis a defect in our manners that they have not yet\nreached the prescribing a limit to visits. That every well-dressed lady\nor gentleman should be at liberty to exceed ten minutes in his or her\ncall on serious people, shows a civilization still rude. A universal\netiquette should fix an iron limit after which a moment should not be\nallowed without explicit leave granted on request of either the giver or\nreceiver of the visit. There is inconvenience in such strictness, but\nvast inconvenience in the want of it. To trespass on a public servant is\nto trespass on a nation's time. Yet presidents of the United States are\nafflicted by rude Western and Southern gossips (I hope it is only by\nthem) until the gossip's immeasurable legs are tired of sitting; then he\nstrides out and the nation is relieved.\n\nIt is very certain that sincere and happy conversation doubles our\npowers; that, in the effort to unfold our thought to a friend, we make\nit clearer to ourselves, and surround it with illustrations that help\nand delight us. It may happen that each hears from the other a better\nwisdom than any one else will ever hear from either. But these ties are\ntaken care of by Providence to each of us. A wise man once said to me\nthat \"all whom he knew, met\":--meaning that he need not take pains to\nintroduce the persons whom he valued to each other: they were sure to be\ndrawn together as by gravitation. The soul of a man must be the servant\nof another. The true friend must have an attraction to whatever virtue\nis in us. Our chief want in life,--is it not somebody who can make us do\nwhat we can? And we are easily great with the loved and honored\nassociate. We come out of our eggshell existence and see the great dome\narching over us; see the zenith above and the nadir under us.\n\nSpeech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to\nbring another out of his bad sense into your good sense. You are to be\nmissionary and carrier of all that is good and noble. Virtues speak to\nvirtues, vices to vices,--each to their own kind in the people with whom\nwe deal. If you are suspiciously and dryly on your guard, so is he or\nshe. If you rise to frankness and generosity, they will respect it now\nor later.\n\nIn this art of conversation, Woman, if not the queen and victor, is the\nlawgiver. If every one recalled his experiences, he might find the best\nin the speech of superior women,--which was better than song, and\ncarried ingenuity, character, wise counsel, and affection, as easily as\nthe wit with which it was adorned. They are not only wise themselves,\nthey make us wise. No one can be a master in conversation who has not\nlearned much from women; their presence and inspiration are essential to\nits success. Steele said of his mistress, that \"to have loved her was a\nliberal education.\" Shenstone gave no bad account of this influence in\nhis description of the French woman: \"There is a quality in which no\nwoman in the world can compete with her,--it is the power of\nintellectual irritation. She will draw wit out of a fool. She strikes\nwith such address the chords of self-love, that she gives unexpected\nvigor and agility to fancy, and electrifies a body that appeared\nnon-electric.\" Coleridge esteems cultivated women as the depositaries\nand guardians of \"English undefiled\"; and Luther commends that\naccomplishment of \"pure German speech\" of his wife.\n\nMadame de Sta\u00ebl, by the unanimous consent of all who knew her, was the\nmost extraordinary converser that was known in her time, and it was a\ntime full of eminent men and women; she knew all distinguished persons\nin letters or society, in England, Germany, and Italy, as well as in\nFrance, though she said, with characteristic nationality, \"Conversation,\nlike talent, exists only in France.\" Madame de Sta\u00ebl valued nothing but\nconversation. When they showed her the beautiful Lake Leman, she\nexclaimed, \"O for the gutter of the Rue de Bac!\" the street in Paris in\nwhich her house stood. And she said one day, seriously, to M. Mol\u00e9, \"If\nit were not for respect to human opinions, I would not open my window to\nsee the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundred\nleagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen.\" Ste. Beuve\ntells us of the privileged circle at Coppet, that, after making an\nexcursion one day, the party returned in two coaches from Chamb\u00e9ry to\nAix, on the way to Coppet. The first coach had many rueful accidents to\nrelate,--a terrific thunder-storm, shocking roads, and danger and gloom\nto the whole company. The party in the second coach, on arriving, heard\nthis story with surprise;--of thunder-storm, of steeps, of mud, of\ndanger, they knew nothing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed a\npurer air: such a conversation between Madame de Sta\u00ebl and Madame\nR\u00e9camier and Benjamin Constant and Schlegel! they were all in a state\nof delight. The intoxication of the conversation had made them\ninsensible to all notice of weather or rough roads. Madame de Tess\u00e9\nsaid, \"If I were Queen, I should command Madame de Sta\u00ebl to talk to me\nevery day.\" Conversation fills all gaps, supplies all deficiencies. What\na good trait is that recorded of Madame de Maintenon, that, during\ndinner, the servant slipped to her side, \"Please, madame, one anecdote\nmore, for there is no roast to-day.\"\n\nPolitics, war, party, luxury, avarice, fashion, are all asses with\nloaded panniers to serve the kitchen of Intellect, the king. There is\nnothing that does not pass into lever or weapon.\n\nAnd yet there are trials enough of nerve and character, brave choices\nenough of taking the part of truth and of the oppressed against the\noppressor, in privatest circles. A right speech is not well to be\ndistinguished from action. Courage to ask questions; courage to expose\nour ignorance. The great gain is, not to shine, not to conquer your\ncompanion,--then you learn nothing but conceit,--but to find a companion\nwho knows what you do not; to tilt with him and be overthrown, horse and\nfoot, with utter destruction of all your logic and learning. There is a\ndefeat that is useful. Then you can see the real and the counterfeit,\nand will never accept the counterfeit again. You will adopt the art of\nwar that has defeated you. You will ride to battle horsed on the very\nlogic which you found irresistible. You will accept the fertile truth,\ninstead of the solemn customary lie.\n\nLet nature bear the expense. The attitude, the tone, is all. Let our\neyes not look away, but meet. Let us not look east and west for\nmaterials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just\nfeeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more\ngrateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle,\nlest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk\neggs. Don't _say_ things. What you _are_ stands over you the while, and\nthunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of\nmy acquaintance said, \"I don't care so much for what they say as I do\nfor what makes them say it.\"\n\nThe main point is to throw yourself on the truth, and say with Newton,\n\"There's no contending against facts.\" When Molyneux fancied that the\nobservations of the nutation of the earth's axis destroyed Newton's\ntheory of gravitation, he tried to break it softly to Sir Isaac, who\nonly answered, \"It may be so; there's no arguing against facts and\nexperiments.\"\n\nBut there are people who cannot be cultivated,--people on whom speech\nmakes no impression,--swainish, morose people, who must be kept down and\nquieted as you would those who are a little tipsy; others, who are not\nonly swainish, but are prompt to take oath that swainishness is the only\nculture; and though their odd wit may have some salt for you, your\nfriends would not relish it. Bolt these out. And I have seen a man of\ngenius who made me think that if other men were like him co-operation\nwere impossible. Must we always talk for victory, and never once for\ntruth, for comfort, and joy? Here is centrality and penetration, strong\nunderstanding, and the higher gifts, the insight of the real, or from\nthe real, and the moral rectitude which belongs to it: but all this and\nall his resources of wit and invention are lost to me in every\nexperiment that I make to hold intercourse with his mind; always some\nweary, captious paradox to fight you with, and the time and temper\nwasted. And beware of jokes; too much temperance cannot be used:\ninestimable for sauce, but corrupting for food: we go away, hollow and\nashamed. As soon as the company give in to this enjoyment, we shall have\nno Olympus. True wit never made us laugh. Mahomet seems to have borrowed\nby anticipation of several centuries a leaf from the mind of Swedenborg,\nwhen he wrote in the Koran:--\n\n  \"On the day of resurrection, those who have indulged in ridicule will be\n  called to the door of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces when\n  they reach it. Again, on their turning back, they will be called to\n  another door, and again, on reaching it, will see it closed against\n  them; and so on, _ad infinitum_, without end.\"\n\nShun the negative side. Never worry people with your contritions, nor\nwith dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness; even if\nyou could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a\nvaletudinarian, who will soon give you your fill of it.\n\nThe law of the table is Beauty,--a respect to the common soul of all the\nguests. Everything is unseasonable which is private to two or three or\nany portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law;\nnever intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a\ntariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never \"talk\nshop\" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from\ninsults, whilst they sit in one parlor with common friends.\n\nStay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions. See how\nit lies there in you; and if there is no counsel, offer none. What we\nwant is, not your activity or interference with your mind, but your\ncontent to be a vehicle of the simple truth. The way to have large\noccasional views, as in a political or social crisis, is to have large\nhabitual views. When men consult you, it is not that they wish you to\nstand tiptoe, and pump your brains, but to apply your habitual view,\nyour wisdom, to the present question, forbearing all pedantries, and the\nvery name of argument; for in good conversation parties don't speak to\nthe words, but to the meanings of each other.\n\nManners first, then conversation. Later, we see that, as life was not in\nmanners, so it is not in talk. Manners are external; talk is occasional:\nthese require certain material conditions, human labor for food,\nclothes, house, tools, and, in short, plenty and ease,--since only so\ncan certain finer and finest powers appear and expand. In a whole nation\nof Hottentots there shall not be one valuable man,--valuable out of his\ntribe. In every million of Europeans or of Americans there shall be\nthousands who would be valuable on any spot on the globe.\n\nThe consideration the rich possess in all societies is not without\nmeaning or right. It is the approval given by the human understanding to\nthe act of creating value by knowledge and labor. It is the sense of\nevery human being, that man should have this dominion of nature, should\narm himself with tools, and force the elements to drudge for him and\ngive him power. Every one must seek to secure his independence; but he\nneed not be rich. The old Confucius in China admitted the benefit, but\nstated the limitation: \"If the search for riches were sure to be\nsuccessful, though I should become a groom with whip in hand to get\nthem, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will follow\nafter that which I love.\" There is in America a general conviction in\nthe minds of all mature men, that every young man of good faculty and\ngood habits can by perseverance attain to an adequate estate; if he have\na turn for business, and a quick eye for the opportunities which are\nalways offering for investment, he can come to wealth, and in such good\nseason as to enjoy as well as transmit it.\n\nEvery human society wants to be officered by a best class, who shall be\nmasters instructed in all the great arts of life; shall be wise,\ntemperate, brave, public men, adorned with dignity and accomplishments.\nEvery country wishes this, and each has taken its own method to secure\nsuch service to the state. In Europe, ancient and modern, it has been\nattempted to secure the existence of a superior class by hereditary\nnobility, with estates transmitted by primogeniture and entail. But in\nthe last age, this system has been on its trial and the verdict of\nmankind is pretty nearly pronounced. That method secured permanence of\nfamilies, firmness of customs, a certain external culture and good\ntaste; gratified the ear with preserving historic names: but the heroic\nfather did not surely have heroic sons, and still less surely heroic\ngrandsons; wealth and ease corrupted the race.\n\nIn America, the necessity of clearing the forest, laying out town and\nstreet, and building every house and barn and fence, then church and\ntown-house, exhausted such means as the Pilgrims brought, and made the\nwhole population poor; and the like necessity is still found in each new\nsettlement in the Territories. These needs gave their character to the\npublic debates in every village and State. I have been often impressed\nat our country town meetings with the accumulated virility, in each\nvillage, of five or six or eight or ten men, who speak so well, and so\neasily handle the affairs of the town. I often hear the business of a\nlittle town (with which I am most familiar) discussed with a clearness\nand thoroughness, and with a generosity, too, that would have satisfied\nme had it been in one of the larger capitals. I am sure each one of my\nreaders has a parallel experience. And every one knows that in every\ntown or city is always to be found a certain number of public-spirited\nmen, who perform, unpaid, a great amount of hard work in the interest of\nthe churches, of schools, of public grounds, works of taste and\nrefinement. And as in civil duties, so in social power and duties. Our\ngentlemen of the old school, that is, of the school of Washington,\nAdams, and Hamilton, were bred after English types, and that style of\nbreeding furnished fine examples in the last generation; but, though\nsome of us have seen such, I doubt they are all gone. But nature is not\npoorer to-day. With all our haste, and slipshod ways, and flippant\nself-assertion, I have seen examples of new grace and power in address\nthat honor the country. It was my fortune not long ago, with my eyes\ndirected on this subject, to fall in with an American to be proud of. I\nsaid never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action,\ncombined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent\npreference for others. Wherever he moved he was the benefactor. It is of\ncourse that he should ride well, shoot well, sail well, keep house well,\nadminister affairs well, but he was the best talker, also, in the\ncompany: what with a perpetual practical wisdom, with an eye always to\nthe working of the thing, what with the multitude and distinction of his\nfacts (and one detected continually that he had a hand in everything\nthat has been done), and in the temperance with which he parried all\noffence, and opened the eyes of the person he talked with without\ncontradicting him. Yet I said to myself, How little this man suspects,\nwith his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific\npeople, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior to\nhimself. And I think this is a good country, that can bear such a\ncreature as he is.\n\nThe young men in America at this moment take little thought of what men\nin England are thinking or doing. That is the point which decides the\nwelfare of a people; _which way does it look_? If to any other people,\nit is not well with them. If occupied in its own affairs and thoughts\nand men, with a heat which excludes almost the notice of any other\npeople,--as the Jews, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the\nArabians, the French, the English, at their best times have done,--they\nare sublime; and we know that in this abstraction they are executing\nexcellent work. Amidst the calamities which war has brought on our\ncountry this one benefit has accrued,--that our eyes are withdrawn from\nEngland, withdrawn from France, and look homeward. We have come to feel\nthat \"by ourselves our safety must be bought\"; to know the vast\nresources of the continent, the good-will that is in the people, their\nconviction of the great moral advantages of freedom, social equality,\neducation, and religious culture, and their determination to hold these\nfast, and, by them, to hold fast the country and penetrate every square\nmile of it with this American civilization.\n\nThe consolation and happy moment of life, atoning for all short-comings,\nis sentiment; a flame of affection or delight in the heart, burning up\nsuddenly for its object,--as the love of the mother for her child; of\nthe child for its mate; of the youth for his friend; of the scholar for\nhis pursuit; of the boy for sea-life, or for painting, or in the passion\nfor his country; or in the tender-hearted philanthropist to spend and be\nspent for some romantic charity, as Howard for the prisoner, or John\nBrown for the slave. No matter what the object is, so it be good, this\nflame of desire makes life sweet and tolerable. It reinforces the heart\nthat feels it, makes all its acts and words gracious and interesting.\nNow society in towns is infested by persons who, seeing that the\nsentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call\nsentimentalists,--talkers who mistake the description for the thing,\nsaying for having. They have, they tell you, an intense love of nature;\npoetry,--O, they adore poetry, and roses, and the moon, and the cavalry\nregiment, and the governor; they love liberty, \"dear liberty!\" they\nworship virtue, \"dear virtue!\" Yes, they adopt whatever merit is in good\nrepute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their\nexpressions, the colder we feel; we shiver with cold. A little\nexperience acquaints us with the unconvertibility of the sentimentalist,\nthe soul that is lost by mimicking soul. Cure the drunkard, heal the\ninsane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can\nbe devised for the debauchee of sentiment? Was ever one converted? The\ninnocence and ignorance of the patient is the first difficulty: he\nbelieves his disease is blooming health. A rough realist, or a phalanx\nof realists, would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mend\nyour bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, famine, war, imprisonment,\nmight be tried. Another cure would be to fight fire with fire, to match\na sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. I think each might begin to\nsuspect that something was wrong.\n\nWould we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose\ndaily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household\nlife--we must learn to adorn every day with sacrifices. Good manners are\nmade up of petty sacrifices. Temperance, courage, love, are made up of\nthe same jewels. Listen to every prompting of honor. \"As soon as\nsacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to the man, I see no limit to the\nhorizon which opens before me.\"[4]\n\nOf course those people, and no others, interest us who believe in their\nthought, who are absorbed, if you please to say so, in their own dream.\nThey only can give the key and leading to better society: those who\ndelight in each other only because both delight in the eternal laws; who\nforgive nothing to each other; who, by their joy and homage to these,\nare made incapable of conceit, which destroys almost all the fine wits.\nAny other affection between men than this geometric one of relation to\nthe same thing, is a mere mush of materialism.\n\nThese are the bases of civil and polite society; namely, manners,\nconversation, lucrative labor, and public action, whether political, or\nin the leading of social institutions. We have much to regret, much to\nmend, in our society; but I believe that with all liberal and hopeful\nmen there is a firm faith in the beneficent results which we really\nenjoy; that intelligence, manly enterprise, good education, virtuous\nlife, and elegant manners have been and are found here, and, we hope, in\nthe next generation will still more abound.\n\n\n[Footnote 4: Ernest Renan.]\n\n\n\n\n                        ELOQUENCE.\n\n\n\n\n                        ELOQUENCE.\n\n\nI DO not know any kind of history, except the event of a battle, to\nwhich people listen with more interest than to any anecdote of\neloquence; and the wise think it better than a battle. It is a triumph\nof pure power, and it has a beautiful and prodigious surprise in it. For\nall can see and understand the means by which a battle is gained: they\ncount the armies, they see the cannon, the musketry, the cavalry, and\nthe character and advantages of the ground, so that the result is often\npredicted by the observer with great certainty before the charge is\nsounded. Not so in a court of law, or in a legislature. Who knows before\nthe debate begins what the preparation, or what the means are of the\ncombatants? The facts, the reasons, the logic,--above all, the flame of\npassion and the continuous energy of will which is presently to be let\nloose on this bench of judges, or on this miscellaneous assembly\ngathered from the streets,--are all invisible and unknown. Indeed, much\npower is to be exhibited which is not yet called into existence, but is\nto be suggested on the spot by the unexpected turn things may take,--at\nthe appearance of new evidence, or by the exhibition of an unlooked-for\nbias in the judges, or in the audience. It is eminently the art which\nonly flourishes in free countries. It is an old proverb, that \"Every\npeople has its prophet\"; and every class of the people has. Our\ncommunity runs through a long scale of mental power, from the highest\nrefinement to the borders of savage ignorance and rudeness. There are\nnot only the wants of the intellectual and learned and poetic men and\nwomen to be met, but also the vast interests of property, public and\nprivate, of mining, of manufactures, of trade, of railroads, etc. These\nmust have their advocates of each improvement and each interest. Then\nthe political questions, which agitate millions, find or form a class of\nmen by nature and habit fit to discuss and deal with these measures, and\nmake them intelligible and acceptable to the electors. So of education,\nof art, of philanthropy.\n\nEloquence shows the power and possibility of man. There is one of whom\nwe took no note, but on a certain occasion it appears that he has a\nsecret virtue never suspected,--that he can paint what has occurred, and\nwhat must occur, with such clearness to a company, as if they saw it\ndone before their eyes. By leading their thought he leads their will,\nand can make them do gladly what an hour ago they would not believe that\nthey could be led to do at all: he makes them glad or angry or penitent\nat his pleasure; of enemies makes friends, and fills desponding men with\nhope and joy. After Sheridan's speech in the trial of Warren Hastings,\nMr. Pitt moved an adjournment, that the House might recover from the\noverpowering effect of Sheridan's oratory. Then recall the delight that\nsudden eloquence gives,--the surprise that the moment is so rich. The\norator is the physician. Whether he speaks in the Capitol or on a cart,\nhe is the benefactor that lifts men above themselves, and creates a\nhigher appetite than he satisfies. The orator is he whom every man is\nseeking when he goes into the courts, into the conventions, into any\npopular assembly,--though often disappointed, yet never giving over the\nhope. He finds himself perhaps in the Senate, when the forest has cast\nout some wild, black-browed bantling to show the same energy in the\ncrowd of officials which he had learned in driving cattle to the hills,\nor in scrambling through thickets in a winter forest, or through the\nswamp and river for his game. In the folds of his brow, in the majesty\nof his mien, Nature has marked her son; and in that artificial and\nperhaps unworthy place and company shall remind you of the lessons\ntaught him in earlier days by the torrent in the gloom of the\npine-woods, when he was the companion of the mountain cattle, of jays\nand foxes, and a hunter of the bear. Or you may find him in some lowly\nBethel, by the seaside, where a hard-featured, scarred, and wrinkled\nMethodist becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he\npours out the abundant streams of his thought through a language all\nglittering and fiery with imagination,--a man who never knew the\nlooking-glass or the critic,--a man whom college drill or patronage\nnever made, and whom praise cannot spoil,--a man who conquers his\naudience by infusing his soul into them, and speaks by the right of\nbeing the person in the assembly who has the most to say, and so makes\nall other speakers appear little and cowardly before his face. For the\ntime, his exceeding life throws all other gifts into shade,--philosophy\nspeculating on its own breath, taste, learning, and all,--and yet how\nevery listener gladly consents to be nothing in his presence, and to\nshare this surprising emanation, and be steeped and ennobled in the new\nwine of this eloquence! It instructs in the power of man over men; that\na man is a mover; to the extent of his being, a power; and, in contrast\nwith the efficiency he suggests, our actual life and society appears a\ndormitory. Who can wonder at its influence on young and ardent minds?\nUncommon boys follow uncommon men; and I think every one of us can\nremember when our first experiences made us for a time the victim and\nworshipper of the first master of this art whom we happened to hear in\nthe court-house or in the caucus. We reckon the bar, the senate,\njournalism, and the pulpit, peaceful professions; but you cannot escape\nthe demand for courage in these, and certainly there is no true orator\nwho is not a hero. His attitude in the rostrum, on the platform,\nrequires that he counterbalance his auditory. He is challenger, and must\nanswer all comers. The orator must ever stand with forward foot, in the\nattitude of advancing. His speech must be just ahead of the\nassembly,--ahead of the whole human race,--or it is superfluous. His\nspeech is not to be distinguished from action. It is the electricity of\naction. It is action, as the general's word of command, or chart of\nbattle, is action. I must feel that the speaker compromises himself to\nhis auditory, comes for something,--it is a cry on the perilous edge of\nthe fight,--or let him be silent. You go to a town-meeting where the\npeople are called to some disagreeable duty,--such as, for example,\noften occurred during the war, at the occasion of a new draft. They come\nunwillingly: they have spent their money once or twice very freely. They\nhave sent their best men: the young and ardent, those of a martial\ntemper, went at the first draft, or the second, and it is not easy to\nsee who else can be spared, or can be induced to go. The silence and\ncoldness after the meeting is opened, and the purpose of it stated, are\nnot encouraging. When a good man rises in the cold and malicious\nassembly, you think, Well, sir, it would be more prudent to be silent;\nwhy not rest, sir, on your good record? Nobody doubts your talent and\npower; but for the present business, we know all about it, and are tired\nof being pushed into patriotism by people who stay at home. But he,\ntaking no counsel of past things, but only of the inspiration of his\nto-day's feeling, surprises them with his tidings, with his better\nknowledge, his larger view, his steady gaze at the new and future event,\nwhereof they had not thought, and they are interested, like so many\nchildren, and carried off out of all recollection of their malignant\nconsiderations, and he gains his victory by prophecy, where they\nexpected repetition. He knew very well beforehand that they were looking\nbehind and that he was looking ahead, and therefore it was wise to\nspeak. Then the observer says, What a godsend is this manner of man to a\ntown! and he, what a faculty! He is put together like a Waltham watch,\nor like a locomotive just finished at the Tredegar works.\n\nNo act indicates more universal health than eloquence. The special\ningredients of this force are: clear perceptions; memory; power of\nstatement; logic; imagination, or the skill to clothe your thought in\nnatural images; passion, which is the _heat_; and then a grand will,\nwhich, when legitimate and abiding, we call _character_, the height of\nmanhood. As soon as a man shows rare power of expression, like Chatham,\nErskine, Patrick Henry, Webster, or Phillips, all the great interests,\nwhether of state or of property, crowd to him to be their spokesman, so\nthat he is at once a potentate, a ruler of men. A worthy gentleman, Mr.\nAlexander, listening to the debates of the General Assembly of the\nScottish Kirk, in Edinburgh, and eager to speak to the questions, but\nutterly failing in his endeavors,--delighted with the talent shown by\nDr. Hugh Blair, went to him, and offered him one thousand pounds\nsterling if he would teach him to speak with propriety in public. If the\nperformance of the advocate reaches any high success, it is paid in\nEngland with dignities in the professions, and in the state with seats\nin the cabinet, earldoms, and woolsacks. And it is easy to see that the\ngreat and daily growing interests at stake in this country must pay\nproportional prices to their spokesmen and defenders. It does not\nsurprise us, then, to learn from Plutarch what great sums were paid at\nAthens to the teachers of rhetoric; and if the pupils got what they paid\nfor, the lessons were cheap.\n\nBut this power which so fascinates and astonishes and commands is only\nthe exaggeration of a talent which is universal. All men are competitors\nin this art. We have all attended meetings called for some object in\nwhich no one had beforehand any warm interest. Every speaker rose\nunwillingly, and even his speech was a bad excuse; but it is only the\nfirst plunge which is formidable, and deep interest or sympathy thaws\nthe ice, loosens the tongue, and will carry the cold and fearful\npresently into self-possession, and possession of the audience. Go into\nan assembly well excited, some angry political meeting on the eve of a\ncrisis. Then it appears that eloquence is as natural as swimming,--an\nart which all men might learn, though so few do. It only needs that they\nshould be once well pushed off into the water, overhead, without corks,\nand, after a mad struggle or two, they find their poise and the use of\ntheir arms, and henceforward they possess this new and wonderful\nelement.\n\nThe most hard-fisted, disagreeably restless, thought-paralyzing\ncompanion sometimes turns out in a public assembly to be a fluent,\nvarious, and effective orator. Now you find what all that excess of\npower which so chafed and fretted you in a _t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate_ with him was\nfor. What is peculiar in it is a certain creative heat, which, a man\nattains to perhaps only once in his life. Those whom we admire--the\ngreat orators--have some _habit_ of heat, and, moreover, a certain\ncontrol of it, an art of husbanding it,--as if their hand was on the\norgan-stop, and could now use it temperately, and now let out all the\nlength and breadth of the power. I remember that Jenny Lind, when in\nthis country, complained of concert-rooms and town-halls, that they did\nnot give her room enough to unroll her voice, and exulted in the\nopportunity given her in the great halls she found sometimes built over\na railroad depot. And this is quite as true of the action of the mind\nitself, that a man of this talent sometimes finds himself cold and slow\nin private company, and perhaps a heavy companion; but give him a\ncommanding occasion, and the inspiration of a great multitude, and he\nsurprises by new and unlooked-for powers. Before, he was out of place,\nand unfitted as a cannon in a parlor. To be sure there are physical\nadvantages,--some eminently leading to this art. I mentioned Jenny\nLind's voice. A good voice has a charm in speech as in song; sometimes\nof itself enchains attention, and indicates a rare sensibility,\nespecially when trained to wield all its powers. The voice, like the\nface, betrays the nature and disposition, and soon indicates what is the\nrange of the speaker's mind. Many people have no ear for music, but\nevery one has an ear for skilful reading. Every one of us has at some\ntime been the victim of a well-toned and cunning voice, and perhaps been\nrepelled once for all by a harsh, mechanical speaker. The voice, indeed,\nis a delicate index of the state of mind. I have heard an eminent\npreacher say, that he learns from the first tones of his voice on a\nSunday morning whether he is to have a successful day. A singer cares\nlittle for the words of the song; he will make any words glorious. I\nthink the like rule holds of the good reader. In the church I call him\nonly a good reader who can read sense and poetry into any hymn in the\nhymn-book. Plutarch, in his enumeration of the ten Greek orators, is\ncareful to mention their excellent voices, and the pains bestowed by\nsome of them in training these. What character, what infinite variety,\nbelong to the voice! sometimes it is a flute, sometimes a trip-hammer;\nwhat range of force! In moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy,\nthe voice will attain a music and penetration which surprises the\nspeaker as much as the auditor; he also is a sharer of the higher wind\nthat blows over his strings. I believe that some orators go to the\nassembly as to a closet where to find their best thoughts. The Persian\npoet Saadi tells us that a person with a disagreeable voice was reading\nthe Koran aloud, when a holy man, passing by, asked what was his monthly\nstipend. He answered, \"Nothing at all.\" \"But why then do you take so\nmuch trouble?\" He replied, \"I read for the sake of God.\" The other\nrejoined, \"For God's sake, do not read; for if you read the Koran in\nthis manner you will destroy the splendor of Islamism.\" Then there are\npersons of natural fascination, with certain frankness, winning manners,\nalmost endearments in their style; like Bouillon, who could almost\npersuade you that a quartan ague was wholesome; like Louis XI. of\nFrance, whom Commines praises for \"the gift of managing all minds by his\naccent and the caresses of his speech\"; like Galiani, Voltaire, Robert\nBurns, Barclay, Fox, and Henry Clay. What must have been the discourse\nof St. Bernard, when mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands,\ncompanions their friends, lest they should be led by his eloquence to\njoin the monastery.\n\nIt is said that one of the best readers in his time was the late\nPresident John Quincy Adams. I have heard that no man could read the\nBible with such powerful effect. I can easily believe it, though I never\nheard him speak in public until his fine voice was much broken by age.\nBut the wonders he could achieve with that cracked and disobedient organ\nshowed what power might have belonged to it in early manhood. If\n\"indignation makes good verses,\" as Horace says, it is not less true\nthat a good indignation makes an excellent speech. In the early years of\nthis century, Mr. Adams, at that time a member of the United States\nSenate at Washington, was elected Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in\nHarvard College. When he read his first lectures in 1806, not only the\nstudents heard him with delight, but the hall was crowded by the\nProfessors and by unusual visitors. I remember when, long after, I\nentered college, hearing the story of the numbers of coaches in which\nhis friends came from Boston to hear him. On his return in the winter to\nthe Senate at Washington, he took such ground in the debates of the\nfollowing session as to lose the sympathy of many of his constituents in\nBoston. When, on his return from Washington, he resumed his lectures in\nCambridge, his class attended, but the coaches from Boston did not come,\nand, indeed, many of his political friends deserted him. In 1809 he was\nappointed Minister to Russia, and resigned his chair in the University.\nHis last lecture, in taking leave of his class, contained some nervous\nallusions to the treatment he had received from his old friends, which\nshowed how much it had stung him, and which made a profound impression\non the class. Here is the concluding paragraph, which long resounded in\nCambridge:--\n\n  \"At no hour of your life will the love of letters ever oppress you as a\n  burden, or fail you as a resource. In the vain and foolish exultation of\n  the heart, which the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite,\n  the pensive portress of Science shall call you to the sober pleasures of\n  her holy cell. In the mortifications of disappointment, her soothing\n  voice shall whisper serenity and peace. In social converse with the\n  mighty dead of ancient days, you will never smart under the galling\n  sense of dependence upon the mighty living of the present age. And in\n  your struggles with the world, should a crisis ever occur, when even\n  friendship may deem it prudent to desert you, when even your country may\n  seem ready to abandon herself and you, when priest and Levite shall come\n  and look on you and pass by on the other side, seek refuge, my\n  _un_failing friends, and be assured you shall find it, in the friendship\n  of L\u00e6lius and Scipio, in the patriotism of Cicero, Demosthenes, and\n  Burke, as well as in the precepts and example of Him whose law is love,\n  and who taught us to remember injuries only to forgive them.\"\n\nThe orator must command the whole scale of the language, from the most\nelegant to the most low and vile. Every one has felt how superior in\nforce is the language of the street to that of the academy. The street\nmust be one of his schools. Ought not the scholar to be able to convey\nhis meaning in terms as short and strong as the porter or truckman uses\nto convey his? And Lord Chesterfield thought \"that without being\ninstructed in the dialect of the _Halles_ no man could be a complete\nmaster of French.\" The speech of the man in the street is invariably\nstrong, nor can you mend it by making it what you call parliamentary.\nYou say, \"if he could only express himself\"; but he does already better\nthan any one can for him,--can always get the ear of an audience to the\nexclusion of everybody else. Well, this is an example in point. That\nsomething which each man was created to say and do, he only or he best\ncan tell you, and has a right to supreme attention so far. The power of\ntheir speech is, that it is perfectly understood by all; and I believe\nit to be true, that when any orator at the bar or in the Senate rises in\nhis thought, he descends in his language,--that is, when he rises to any\nheight of thought or of passion he comes down to a language level with\nthe ear of all his audience. It is the merit of John Brown and of\nAbraham Lincoln--one at Charlestown, one at Gettysburg--in the two best\nspecimens of eloquence we have had in this country. And observe that all\npoetry is written in the oldest and simplest English words. Dr. Johnson\nsaid, \"There is in every nation a style which never becomes obsolete, a\ncertain mode of phraseology so consonant to the analogy and principles\nof its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered. This\nstyle is to be sought in the common intercourse of life among those who\nspeak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite\nare always catching modish innovations, and the learned forsake the\nvulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above\ngrossness and below refinement, where propriety resides.\"\n\nBut all these are the gymnastics, the education of eloquence, and not\nitself. They cannot be too much considered and practised as preparation,\nbut the powers are those I first named. If I should make the shortest\nlist of the qualifications of the orator, I should begin with\n_manliness_; and perhaps it means here presence of mind. Men differ so\nmuch in control of their faculties! You can find in many, and indeed in\nall, a certain fundamental equality. Fundamentally all feel alike and\nthink alike, and at a great heat they can all express themselves with an\nalmost equal force. But it costs a great heat to enable a heavy man to\ncome up with those who have a quick sensibility. Thus we have all of us\nknown men who lose their talents, their wit, their fancy, at any sudden\ncall. Some men, on such pressure, collapse, and cannot rally. If they\nare to put a thing in proper shape, fit for the occasion and the\naudience, their mind is a blank. Something which any boy would tell with\ncolor and vivacity they can only stammer out with hard literalness,--say\nit in the very words they heard, and no other. This fault is very\nincident to men of study,--as if the more they had read the less they\nknew. Dr. Charles Chauncy was, a hundred years ago, a man of marked\nability among the clergy of New England. But when once going to preach\nthe Thursday lecture in Boston (which in those days people walked from\nSalem to hear), on going up the pulpit stairs he was informed that a\nlittle boy had fallen into Frog Pond on the Common, and was drowned, and\nthe doctor was requested to improve the sad occasion. The doctor was\nmuch distressed, and in his prayer he hesitated,--he tried to make soft\napproaches,--he prayed for Harvard College, he prayed for the schools,\nhe implored the Divine Being \"to-to-to bless to them all the boy that\nwas this morning drowned in Frog Pond.\" Now this is not want of talent\nor learning, but of manliness. The doctor, no doubt, shut up in his\ncloset and his theology, had lost some natural relation to men, and\nquick application of his thought to the course of events. I should add\nwhat is told of him,--that he so disliked the \"sensation\" preaching of\nhis time that he had once prayed that \"he might never be eloquent\"; and,\nit appears, his prayer was granted. On the other hand, it would be easy\nto point to many masters whose readiness is sure; as the French say of\nGuizot, that \"what Guizot learned this morning he has the air of having\nknown from all eternity.\" This unmanliness is so common a result of our\nhalf-education,--teaching a youth Latin and metaphysics and history, and\nneglecting to give him the rough training of a boy,--allowing him to\nskulk from the games of ball and skates and coasting down the hills on\nhis sled, and whatever else would lead him and keep him on even terms\nwith boys, so that he can meet them as an equal, and lead in his\nturn,--that I wish his guardians to consider that they are thus\npreparing him to play a contemptible part when he is full-grown. In\nEngland they send the most delicate and protected child from his\nluxurious home to learn to rough it with boys in the public schools. A\nfew bruises and scratches will do him no harm if he has thereby learned\nnot to be afraid. It is this wise mixture of good drill in Latin grammar\nwith good drill in cricket, boating, and wrestling, that is the boast of\nEnglish education, and of high importance to the matter in hand.\n\nLord Ashley, in 1606, while the bill for regulating trials in cases of\nhigh treason was pending, attempting to utter a premeditated speech in\nParliament in favor of that clause of the bill which allowed the\nprisoner the benefit of counsel, fell into such a disorder that he was\nnot able to proceed; but, having recovered his spirits and the command\nof his faculties, he drew such an argument from his own confusion as\nmore advantaged his cause than all the powers of eloquence could have\ndone. \"For,\" said he, \"if I, who had no personal concern in the\nquestion, was so overpowered with my own apprehensions that I could not\nfind words to express myself, what must be the case of one whose life\ndepended on his own abilities to defend it?\" This happy turn did great\nservice in promoting that excellent bill.\n\nThese are ascending stairs,--a good voice, winning manners, plain\nspeech, chastened, however, by the schools into correctness; but we must\ncome to the main matter, of power of statement,--know your fact; hug\nyour fact. For the essential thing is heat, and heat comes of sincerity.\nSpeak what you do know and believe, and are personally in it, and are\nanswerable for every word. Eloquence is _the power to translate a truth\ninto language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak_.\nHe who would convince the worthy Mr. Dunderhead of any truth which\nDunderhead does not see, must be a master of his art. Declamation is\ncommon; but such possession of thought as is here required, such\npractical chemistry as the conversion of a truth written in God's\nlanguage into a truth in Dunderhead's language, is one of the most\nbeautiful and cogent weapons that is forged in the shop of the Divine\nArtificer.\n\nIt was said of Robespierre's audience, that though they understood not\nthe words, they understood a fury in the words, and caught the\ncontagion.\n\nThis leads us to the high class, the men of character who bring an\noverpowering personality into court, and the cause they maintain borrows\nimportance from an illustrious advocate. Absoluteness is required, and\nhe must have it or simulate it. If the cause be unfashionable, he will\nmake it fashionable. 'Tis the best man in the best training. If he does\nnot know your fact, he will show that it is not worth the knowing.\nIndeed, as great generals do not fight many battles, but conquer by\ntactics, so all eloquence is a war of posts. What is said is the least\npart of the oration. It is the attitude taken, the unmistakable sign,\nnever so casually given, in tone of voice, or manner, or word, that a\ngreater spirit speaks from you than is spoken to in him.\n\nBut I say, _provided your cause is really honest_. There is always the\nprevious question: How came you on that side? Your argument is\ningenious, your language copious, your illustrations brilliant, but your\nmajor proposition palpably absurd. Will you establish a lie? You are a\nvery elegant writer, but you can't write up what gravitates down.\n\nAn ingenious metaphysical writer, Dr. Stirling of Edinburgh, has noted\nthat intellectual works in any department breed each other by what he\ncalls _zymosis_, i.e. fermentation; thus in the Elizabethan Age there\nwas a dramatic _zymosis_, when all the genius ran in that direction,\nuntil it culminated in Shakspeare; so in Germany we have seen a\nmetaphysical _zymosis_ culminating in Kant, Schelling, Schleiermacher,\nSchopenhauer, Hegel, and so ending. To this we might add the great eras\nnot only of painters but of orators. The historian Paterculus says of\nCicero, that only in Cicero's lifetime was any great eloquence in Rome;\nso it was said that no member of either house of the British Parliament\nwill be ranked among the orators whom Lord North did not see, or who did\nnot see Lord North. But I should rather say that when a great sentiment,\nas religion or liberty, makes itself deeply felt in any age or country,\nthen great orators appear. As the Andes and Alleghanies indicate the\nline of the fissure in the crust of the earth along which they were\nlifted, so the great ideas that suddenly expand at some moment the mind\nof mankind indicate themselves by orators.\n\nIf there ever was a country where eloquence was a power, it is in the\nUnited States. Here is room for every degree of it, on every one of its\nascending stages,--that of useful speech, in our commercial,\nmanufacturing, railroad, and educational conventions; that of political\nadvice and persuasion on the grandest theatre, reaching, as all good men\ntrust, into a vast future, and so compelling the best thought and\nnoblest administrative ability that the citizen can offer. And here are\nthe service of science, the demands of art, and the lessons of religion\nto be brought home to the instant practice of thirty millions of people.\nIs it not worth the ambition of every generous youth to train and arm\nhis mind with all the resources of knowledge, of method, of grace, and\nof character, to serve such a constituency?\n\n\n\n\n                        RESOURCES.\n\n\n\n\n                        RESOURCES.\n\n\nMEN are made up of potences. We are magnets in an iron globe. We have\nkeys to all doors. We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of\ndiscovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no\nduplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension\nwaiting to be struck; the earth sensitive as iodine to light; the most\nplastic and impressionable medium, alive to every touch, and, whether\nsearched by the plough of Adam, the sword of C\u00e6sar, the boat of\nColumbus, the telescope of Galileo, or the surveyor's chain of Picard,\nor the submarine telegraph, to every one of these experiments it makes a\ngracious response. I am benefited by every observation of a victory of\nman over nature,--by seeing that wisdom is better than strength; by\nseeing that every healthy and resolute man is an organizer, a method\ncoming into a confusion and drawing order out of it. We are touched and\ncheered by every such example. We like to see the inexhaustible riches\nof Nature, and the access of every soul to her magazines. These examples\nwake an infinite hope, and call every man to emulation. A low, hopeless\nspirit puts out the eyes; scepticism is slow suicide. A philosophy which\nsees only the worst; believes neither in virtue nor in genius; which\nsays 'tis all of no use, life is eating us up, 'tis only question who\nshall be last devoured,--dispirits us; the sky shuts down before us. A\nSchopenhauer, with logic and learning and wit, teaching\npessimism,--teaching that this is the worst of all possible worlds, and\ninferring that sleep is better than waking, and death than sleep,--all\nthe talent in the world cannot save him from being odious. But if,\ninstead of these negatives, you give me affirmatives,--if you tell me\nthat there is always life for the living; that what man has done man can\ndo; that this world belongs to the energetic; that there is always a way\nto everything desirable; that every man is provided, in the new bias of\nhis faculty, with a key to nature, and that man only rightly knows\nhimself as far as he has experimented on things,--I am invigorated, put\ninto genial and working temper; the horizon opens, and we are full of\ngood-will and gratitude to the Cause of Causes. I like the sentiment of\nthe poor woman who, coming from a wretched garret in an inland\nmanufacturing town for the first time to the sea-shore, gazing at the\nocean, said \"she was glad for once in her life to see something which\nthere was enough of.\"\n\nOur Copernican globe is a great factory or shop of power, with its\nrotating constellations, times, and tides. The machine is of colossal\nsize; the diameter of the water-wheel, the arms of the levers, and the\nvolley of the battery, out of all mechanic measure; and it takes long to\nunderstand its parts and its workings. This pump never sucks; these\nscrews are never loose; this machine is never out of gear. The vat, the\npiston, the wheels and tires, never wear out, but are self-repairing. Is\nthere any load which water cannot lift? If there be, try steam; or if\nnot that, try electricity. Is there any exhausting of these means?\nMeasure by barrels the spending of the brook that runs through your\nfield. Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She\nshows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. What spaces!\nwhat durations! dealing with races as merely preparations of somewhat to\nfollow; or, in humanity, millions of lives of men to collect the first\nobservations on which our astronomy is built; millions of lives to add\nonly sentiments and guesses, which at last, gathered in by an ear of\nsensibility, make the furniture of the poet. See how children build up a\nlanguage; how every traveller, every laborer, every impatient boss, who\nsharply shortens the phrase or the word to give his order quicker,\nreducing it to the lowest possible terms,--and there it must\nstay,--improves the national tongue. What power does Nature not owe to\nher duration of amassing infinitesimals into cosmical forces!\n\nThe marked events in history, as the emigration of a colony to a new and\nmore delightful coast; the building of a large ship; the discovery of\nthe mariner's compass, which perhaps the Ph\u0153nicians made; the arrival\namong an old stationary nation of a more instructed race, with new arts:\neach of these events electrifies the tribe to which it befalls; supples\nthe tough barbarous sinew, and brings it into that state of sensibility\nwhich makes the transition to civilization possible and sure. By his\nmachines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like\na hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the\nuniverse like Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a\nton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder;\ncan recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and\nevery creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of\nits existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its\ninhabitants by his perception of laws of nature. Ah! what a plastic\nlittle creature he is! so shifty, so adaptive! his body a chest of\ntools, and he making himself comfortable in every climate, in every\ncondition.\n\nHere in America are all the wealth of soil, of timber, of mines, and of\nthe sea, put into the possession of a people who wield all these\nwonderful machines, have the secret of steam, of electricity, and have\nthe power and habit of invention in their brain. We Americans have got\nsuppled into the state of melioration. Life is always rapid here, but\nwhat acceleration to its pulse in ten years,--what in the four years of\nthe war! We have seen the railroad and telegraph subdue our enormous\ngeography; we have seen the snowy deserts on the northwest, seats of\nEsquimaux, become lands of promise. When our population, swarming west,\nhad reached the boundary of arable land, as if to stimulate our energy,\non the face of the sterile waste beyond, the land was suddenly in parts\nfound covered with gold and silver, floored with coal. It was thought a\nfable, what Guthrie, a traveller in Persia, told us, that \"in Taurida,\nin any piece of ground where springs of naphtha (or petroleum) obtain,\nby merely sticking an iron tube in the earth, and applying a light to\nthe upper end, the mineral oil will burn till the tube is decomposed, or\nfor a vast number of years.\" But we have found the Taurida in\nPennsylvania and Ohio. If they have not the lamp of Aladdin, they have\nthe Aladdin oil. Resources of America! why, one thinks of St. Simon's\nsaying, \"The Golden Age is not behind, but before you.\" Here is man in\nthe Garden of Eden; here the Genesis and the Exodus. We have seen\nslavery disappear like a painted scene in a theatre; we have seen the\nmost healthful revolution in the politics of the nation,--the\nConstitution not only amended, but construed in a new spirit. We have\nseen China opened to European and American ambassadors and commerce; the\nlike in Japan: our arts and productions begin to penetrate both. As the\nwalls of a modern house are perforated with water-pipes, sound-pipes,\ngas-pipes, heat-pipes, so geography and geology are yielding to man's\nconvenience, and we begin to perforate and mould the old ball, as a\ncarpenter does with wood. All is ductile and plastic. We are working the\nnew Atlantic telegraph. American energy is overriding every venerable\nmaxim of political science. America is such a garden of plenty, such a\nmagazine of power, that at her shores all the common rules of political\neconomy utterly fail. Here is bread, and wealth, and power, and\neducation for every man who has the heart to use his opportunity. The\ncreation of power had never any parallel. It was thought that the\nimmense production of gold would make gold cheap as pewter. But the\nimmense expansion of trade has wanted every ounce of gold, and it has\nnot lost its value.\n\nSee how nations of customers are formed. The disgust of California has\nnot been able to drive nor kick the Chinaman back to his home; and now\nit turns out that he has sent home to China American food and tools and\nluxuries, until he has taught his people to use them, and a new market\nhas grown up for our commerce. The emancipation has brought a whole\nnation of negroes as customers to buy all the articles which once their\nfew masters bought, and every manufacturer and producer in the North has\nan interest in protecting the negro as the consumer of his wares.\n\nThe whole history of our civil war is rich in a thousand anecdotes\nattesting the fertility of resource, the presence of mind, the skilled\nlabor of our people. At Annapolis a regiment, hastening to join the\narmy, found the locomotives broken, the railroad destroyed, and no\nrails. The commander called for men in the ranks who could rebuild the\nroad. Many men stepped forward, searched in the water, found the hidden\nrails, laid the track, put the disabled engine together, and continued\ntheir journey. The world belongs to the energetic man. His will gives\nhim new eyes. He sees expedients and means where we saw none. The\ninvalid sits shivering in lamb's-wool and furs; the woodsman knows how\nto make warm garments out of cold and wet themselves. The Indian, the\nsailor, the hunter, only these know the power of the hands, feet, teeth,\neyes, and ears. It is out of the obstacles to be encountered that they\nmake the means of destroying them. The sailor by his boat and sail makes\na ford out of deepest waters. The hunter, the soldier, rolls himself in\nhis blanket, and the falling snow, which he did not have to bring in his\nknapsack, is his eider-down, in which he sleeps warm till the morning.\nNature herself gives the hint and the example, if we have wit to take\nit. See how Nature keeps the lakes warm by tucking them up under a\nblanket of ice, and the ground under a cloak of snow. The old forester\nis never far from shelter; no matter how remote from camp or city, he\ncarries Bangor with him. A sudden shower cannot wet him, if he cares to\nbe dry; he draws his boat ashore, turns it over in a twinkling against\na clump of alders, with cat-briers, which keep up the lee-side, crawls\nunder it, with his comrade, and lies there till the shower is over,\nhappy in his stout roof. The boat is full of water, and resists all your\nstrength to drag it ashore and empty it. The fisherman looks about him,\nputs a round stick of wood underneath, and it rolls as on wheels at\nonce. Napoleon says, the Corsicans at the battle of Golo, not having had\ntime to cut down the bridge, which was of stone, made use of the bodies\nof their dead to form an intrenchment. Malus, known for his discoveries\nin the polarization of light, was captain of a corps of engineers in\nBonaparte's Egyptian campaign, which was heinously unprovided and\nexposed. \"Wanting a picket to which to attach my horse,\" he says, \"I\ntied him to my leg. I slept, and dreamed peaceably of the pleasures of\nEurope.\" M. Tissenet had learned among the Indians to understand their\nlanguage, and, coming among a wild party of Illinois, he overheard them\nsay that they would scalp him. He said to them, \"Will you scalp me? Here\nis my scalp,\" and confounded them by lifting a little periwig he wore.\nHe then explained to them that he was a great medicine-man, and that\nthey did great wrong in wishing to harm him, who carried them all in his\nheart. So he opened his shirt a little and showed to each of the savages\nin turn the reflection of his own eyeball in a small pocket-mirror which\nhe had hung next to his skin. He assured them that if they should\nprovoke him he would burn up their rivers and their forests; and, taking\nfrom his portmanteau a small phial of white brandy, he poured it into a\ncup, and, lighting a straw at the fire in the wigwam, he kindled the\nbrandy (which they believed to be water), and burned it up before their\neyes. Then taking up a chip of dry pine, he drew a burning-glass from\nhis pocket and set the chip on fire.\n\nWhat a new face courage puts on everything! A determined man, by his\nvery attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a stop to defeat, and\nbegins to conquer. \"For they can conquer who believe they can.\" Every\none hears gladly that cheerful voice. He reveals to us the enormous\npower of one man over masses of men; that one man whose eye commands the\nend in view, and the means by which it can be attained, is not only\nbetter than ten men or a hundred men, but victor over all mankind who do\nnot see the issue and the means. \"When a man is once possessed with\nfear,\" said the old French Marshal Montluc, \"and loses his judgment, as\nall men in a fright do, he knows not what he does. And it is the\nprincipal thing you are to beg at the hands of Almighty God, to preserve\nyour understanding entire; for what danger soever there may be, there is\nstill one way or other to get off, and perhaps to your honor. But when\nfear has once possessed you, God ye good even! You think you are flying\ntowards the poop when you are running towards the prow, and for one\nenemy think you have ten before your eyes, as drunkards who see a\nthousand candles at once.\"\n\nAgainst the terrors of the mob, which, intoxicated with passion, and\nonce suffered to gain the ascendant, is diabolic and chaos come again,\ngood sense has many arts of prevention and of relief. Disorganization it\nconfronts with organization, with police, with military force. But in\nearlier stages of the disorder it applies milder and nobler remedies.\nThe natural offset of terror is ridicule. And we have noted examples\namong our orators, who have on conspicuous occasions handled and\ncontrolled, and, best of all, converted a malignant mob, by superior\nmanhood, and by a wit which disconcerted, and at last delighted the\nringleaders. What can a poor truckman who is hired to groan and to hiss\ndo, when the orator shakes him into convulsions of laughter so that he\ncannot throw his egg? If a good story will not answer, still milder\nremedies sometimes serve to disperse a mob. Try sending round the\ncontribution-box. Mr. Marshall, the eminent manufacturer at Leeds, was\nto preside at a Free-Trade festival in that city; it was threatened that\nthe operatives, who were in bad humor, would break up the meeting by a\nmob. Mr. Marshall was a man of peace; he had the pipes laid from the\nwaterworks of his mill, with a stopcock by his chair from which he could\ndischarge a stream that would knock down an ox, and sat down very\npeacefully to his dinner, which was not disturbed.\n\nSee the dexterity of the good aunt in keeping the young people all the\nweary holiday busy and diverted without knowing it: the story, the\npictures, the ballad, the game, the cuckoo-clock, the stereoscope, the\nrabbits, the mino bird, the pop-corn, and Christmas hemlock spurting in\nthe fire. The children never suspect how much design goes to it, and\nthat this unfailing fertility has been rehearsed a hundred times, when\nthe necessity came of finding for the little Asmodeus a rope of sand to\ntwist. She relies on the same principle that makes the strength of\nNewton,--alternation of employment. See how he refreshed himself,\nresting from the profound researches of the calculus by astronomy; from\nastronomy by optics; from optics by chronology. 'Tis a law of chemistry\nthat every gas is a vacuum to every other gas; and when the mind has\nexhausted its energies for one employment, it is still fresh and capable\nof a different task. We have not a toy or trinket for idle amusement,\nbut somewhere it is the one thing needful for solid instruction or to\nsave the ship or army. In the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the torches\nwhich each traveller carries make a dismal funeral procession, and serve\nno purpose but to see the ground. When now and then the vaulted roof\nrises high overhead, and hides all its possibilities in lofty depths,\n'tis but gloom on gloom. But the guide kindled a Roman candle, and held\nit here and there shooting its fireballs successively into each crypt of\nthe groined roof, disclosing its starry splendor, and showing for the\nfirst time what that plaything was good for.\n\nWhether larger or less, these strokes and all exploits rest at last on\nthe wonderful structure of the mind. And we learn that our doctrine of\nresources must be carried into higher application, namely, to the\nintellectual sphere. But every power in energy speedily arrives at its\nlimits, and requires to be husbanded; the law of light, which Newton\nsaid proceeded by \"fits of easy reflection and transmission\"; the\ncome-and-go of the pendulum is the law of mind; alternation of labors is\nits rest. I should like to have the statistics of bold experimenting on\nthe husbandry of mental power.\n\nIn England men of letters drink wine; in Scotland, whiskey; in France,\nlight wines; in Germany, beer. In England everybody rides in the saddle;\nin France the theatre and the ball occupy the night. In this country we\nhave not learned how to repair the exhaustions of our climate. Is not\nthe seaside necessary in summer? Games, fishing, bowling, hunting,\ngymnastics, dancing,--are not these needful to you? The chapter of\npastimes is very long. There are better games than billiards and whist.\n'Twas a pleasing trait in Goethe's romance, that Makaria retires from\nsociety \"to astronomy and her correspondence.\"\n\nI do not know that the treatise of Brillat Savarin on the Physiology of\nTaste deserves its fame. I know its repute, and I have heard it called\nthe France of France. But the subject is so large and exigent that a few\nparticulars, and those the pleasures of the epicure, cannot satisfy. I\nknow many men of taste whose single opinions and practice would interest\nmuch more. It should be extended to gardens and grounds, and mainly one\nthing should be illustrated: that life in the country wants all things\non a low tone,--wants coarse clothes, old shoes, no fleet horse that a\nman cannot hold, but an old horse that will stand tied in a pasture half\na day without risk, so allowing the picnic-party the full freedom of the\nwoods. Natural history is, in the country, most attractive; at once\nelegant, immortal, always opening new resorts. The first care of a man\nsettling in the country should be to open the face of the earth to\nhimself, by a little knowledge of nature, or a great deal, if he can, of\nbirds, plants, rocks, astronomy; in short, the art of taking a walk.\nThis will draw the sting out of frost, dreariness out of November and\nMarch, and the drowsiness out of August. To know the trees is, as\nSpenser says of \"the ash, for nothing ill.\" Shells, too; how hungry I\nfound myself, the other day, at Agassiz's Museum, for their names! But\nthe uses of the woods are many, and some of them for the scholar high\nand peremptory. When his task requires the wiping out from memory\n\n                \"all trivial fond records\n    That youth and observation copied there,\"\n\nhe must leave the house, the streets, and the club, and go to wooded\nuplands, to the clearing and the brook. Well for him if he can say with\nthe old minstrel, \"I know where to find a new song.\"\n\nIf I go into the woods in winter, and am shown the thirteen or fourteen\nspecies of willow that grow in Massachusetts, I learn that they quietly\nexpand in the warmer days, or when nobody is looking at them, and,\nthough insignificant enough in the general bareness of the forest, yet a\ngreat change takes place in them between fall and spring; in the first\nrelentings of March they hasten, and long before anything else is ready,\nthese osiers hang out their joyful flowers in contrast to all the woods.\nYou cannot tell when they do bud and blossom, these vivacious trees, so\nancient, for they are almost the oldest of all. Among fossil remains,\nthe willow and the pine appear with the ferns. They bend all day to\nevery wind; the cart-wheel in the road may crush them; every passenger\nmay strike off a twig with his cane; every boy cuts them for a whistle;\nthe cow, the rabbit, the insect, bite the sweet and tender bark; yet, in\nspite of accident and enemy, their gentle persistency lives when the oak\nis shattered by storm, and grows in the night and snow and cold. When I\nsee in these brave plants this vigor and immortality in weakness, I find\na sudden relief and pleasure in observing the mighty law of vegetation,\nand I think it more grateful and health-giving than any news I am likely\nto find of man in the journals, and better than Washington politics.\n\n\nIt is easy to see that there is no limit to the chapter of Resources. I\nhave not, in all these rambling sketches, gone beyond the beginning of\nmy list. Resources of Man,--it is the inventory of the world, the roll\nof arts and sciences; it is the whole of memory, the whole of invention;\nit is all the power of passion, the majesty of virtue, and the\nomnipotence of will.\n\nBut the one fact that shines through all this plenitude of powers is,\nthat, as is the receiver, so is the gift; that all these acquisitions\nare victories of the good brain and brave heart; that the world belongs\nto the energetic, belongs to the wise. It is in vain to make a paradise\nbut for good men. The tropics are one vast garden; yet man is more\nmiserably fed and conditioned there than in the cold and stingy zones.\nThe healthy, the civil, the industrious, the learned, the moral\nrace,--Nature herself only yields her secret to these. And the resources\nof America and its future will be immense only to wise and virtuous men.\n\n\n\n\n                        THE COMIC.\n\n\n\n\n                        THE COMIC.\n\n\nA TASTE for fun is all but universal in our species, which is the only\njoker in nature. The rocks, the plants, the beasts, the birds, neither\ndo anything ridiculous, nor betray a perception of anything absurd done\nin their presence. And as the lower nature does not jest, neither does\nthe highest. The Reason pronounces its omniscient yea and nay, but\nmeddles never with degrees or fractions; and it is in comparing\nfractions with essential integers or wholes that laughter begins.\n\nAristotle's definition of the ridiculous is, \"what is out of time and\nplace, without danger.\" If there be pain and danger, it becomes tragic;\nif not, comic. I confess, this definition, though by an admirable\ndefiner, does not satisfy me, does not say all we know.\n\nThe essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or\nwell-intended halfness; a non-performance of what is pretended to be\nperformed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of\nperformance. The balking of the intellect, the frustrated expectation,\nthe break of continuity in the intellect, is comedy; and it announces\nitself physically in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.\n\nWith the trifling exception of the stratagems of a few beasts and birds,\nthere is no seeming, no halfness in nature, until the appearance of man.\nUnconscious creatures do the whole will of wisdom. An oak or a chestnut\nundertakes no function it cannot execute; or if there be phenomena in\nbotany which we call abortions, the abortion is also a function of\nnature, and assumes to the intellect the like completeness with the\nfurther function, to which in different circumstances it had attained.\nThe same rule holds true of the animals. Their activity is marked by\nunerring good-sense. But man, through his access to Reason, is capable\nof the perception of a whole and a part. Reason is the whole, and\nwhatsoever is not that is a part. The whole of nature is agreeable to\nthe whole of thought, or to the Reason; but separate any part of nature,\nand attempt to look at it as a whole by itself, and the feeling of the\nridiculous begins. The perpetual game of humor is to look with\nconsiderate good-nature at every object in existence _aloof_, as a man\nmight look at a mouse, comparing it with the eternal Whole; enjoying the\nfigure which each self-satisfied particular creature cuts in the\nunrespecting All, and dismissing it with a benison. Separate any object,\nas a particular bodily man, a horse, a turnip, a flour-barrel, an\numbrella, from the connection of things, and contemplate it alone,\nstanding there in absolute nature, it becomes at once comic; no useful,\nno respectable qualities can rescue it from the ludicrous.\n\nIn virtue of man's access to Reason or the Whole, the human form is a\npledge of wholeness, suggests to our imagination the perfection of truth\nor goodness, and exposes by contrast any halfness or imperfection. We\nhave a primary association between perfectness and this form. But the\nfacts that occur when actual men enter do not make good this\nanticipation; a discrepancy which is at once detected by the intellect,\nand the outward sign is the muscular irritation of laughter.\n\nReason does not joke, and men of reason do not; a prophet, in whom the\nmoral sentiment predominates, or a philosopher, in whom the love of\ntruth predominates, these do not joke, but they bring the standard, the\nideal whole, exposing all actual defect; and hence, the best of all\njokes is the sympathetic contemplation of things by the understanding\nfrom the philosopher's point of view. There is no joke so true and deep\nin actual life, as when some pure idealist goes up and down among the\ninstitutions of society, attended by a man who knows the world, and who,\nsympathizing with the philosopher's scrutiny, sympathizes also with the\nconfusion and indignation of the detected skulking institutions. His\nperception of disparity, his eye wandering perpetually from the rule to\nthe crooked, lying, thieving fact, makes the eyes run over with\nlaughter.\n\nThis is the radical joke of life and then of literature. The presence of\nthe ideal of right and of truth in all action makes the yawning\ndelinquencies of practice remorseful to the conscience, tragic to the\ninterest, but droll to the intellect. The activity of our sympathies may\nfor a time hinder our perceiving the fact intellectually, and so\nderiving mirth from it; but all falsehoods, all vices seen at sufficient\ndistance, seen from the point where our moral sympathies do not\ninterfere, become ludicrous. The comedy is in the intellect's perception\nof discrepancy. And whilst the presence of the ideal discovers the\ndifference, the comedy is enhanced whenever that ideal is embodied\nvisibly in a man. Thus Falstaff, in Shakspeare, is a character of the\nbroadest comedy, giving himself unreservedly to his senses, coolly\nignoring the Reason, whilst he invokes its name, pretending to\npatriotism and to parental virtues, not with any intent to deceive, but\nonly to make the fun perfect by enjoying the confusion betwixt reason\nand the negation of reason,--in other words, the rank rascaldom he is\ncalling by its name. Prince Hal stands by, as the acute understanding,\nwho sees the Right and sympathizes with it, and in the heyday of youth\nfeels also the full attractions of pleasure, and is thus eminently\nqualified to enjoy the joke. At the same time he is to that degree under\nthe Reason, that it does not amuse him as much as it amuses another\nspectator.\n\nIf the essence of the comic be the contrast in the intellect between the\nidea and the false performance, there is good reason why we should be\naffected by the exposure. We have no deeper interest than our integrity,\nand that we should be made aware by joke and by stroke, of any lie we\nentertain. Besides, a perception of the comic seems to be a\nbalance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It appears to be an\nessential element in a fine character. Wherever the intellect is\nconstructive, it will be found. We feel the absence of it as a defect in\nthe noblest and most oracular soul. The perception of the comic is a tie\nof sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from\nthose perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects\nsometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still\nconvertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for\nhim.\n\nIt is true the sensibility to the ludicrous may run into excess. Men\ncelebrate their perception of halfness and a latent lie by the peculiar\nexplosions of laughter. So painfully susceptible are some men to these\nimpressions, that if a man of wit come into the room where they are, it\nseems to take them out of themselves with violent convulsions of the\nface and sides, and obstreperous roarings of the throat. How often and\nwith what unfeigned compassion we have seen such a person receiving like\na willing martyr the whispers into his ear of a man of wit. The victim\nwho has just received the discharge, if in a solemn company, has the air\nvery much of a stout vessel which has just shipped a heavy sea; and\nthough it does not split it, the poor bark is for the moment critically\nstaggered. The peace of society and the decorum of tables seem to\nrequire that next to a notable wit should always be posted a phlegmatic\nbolt-upright man, able to stand without movement of muscle whole\nbroadsides of this Greek fire. It is a true shaft of Apollo, and\ntraverses the universe, and unless it encounter a mystic or a dumpish\nsoul, goes everywhere heralded and harbingered by smiles and greetings.\nWit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no\nlearning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It\nis like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can\nplead any immunity,--they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of\nice, or down they must go, dignity and all. \"Dost thou think, because\nthou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?\" Plutarch\nhappily expresses the value of the jest as a legitimate weapon of the\nphilosopher. \"Men cannot exercise their rhetoric unless they speak, but\ntheir philosophy even whilst they are silent or jest merrily; for as it\nis the highest degree of injustice not to be just and yet seem so, so it\nis the top of wisdom to philosophize yet not appear to do it, and in\nmirth to do the same with those that are serious and seem in earnest;\nfor as in Euripides, the Bacch\u00e6, though unprovided of iron weapons and\nunarmed, wounded their invaders with the boughs of trees, which they\ncarried, thus the very jests and merry talk of true philosophers move\nthose that are not altogether insensible, and unusually reform.\"\n\nIn all the parts of life, the occasion of laughter is some seeming, some\nkeeping of the word to the ear and eye, whilst it is broken to the soul.\nThus, as the religious sentiment is the most vital and sublime of all\nour sentiments, and capable of the most prodigious effects, so is it\nabhorrent to our whole nature, when, in the absence of the sentiment,\nthe act or word or officer volunteers to stand in its stead. To the\nsympathies this is shocking, and occasions grief. But to the intellect\nthe lack of the sentiment gives no pain; it compares incessantly the\nsublime idea with the bloated nothing which pretends to be it, and the\nsense of the disproportion is comedy. And as the religious sentiment is\nthe most real and earnest thing in nature, being a mere rapture, and\nexcluding, when it appears, all other considerations, the vitiating this\nis the greatest lie. Therefore, the oldest gibe of literature is the\nridicule of false religion. This is the joke of jokes. In religion, the\nsentiment is all; the ritual or ceremony indifferent. But the inertia of\nmen inclines them, when the sentiment sleeps, to imitate that thing it\ndid; it goes through the ceremony omitting only the will, makes the\nmistake of the wig for the head, the clothes for the man. The older the\nmistake and the more overgrown the particular form is, the more\nridiculous to the intellect. Captain John Smith, the discoverer of New\nEngland, was not wanting in humor. The Society in London which had\ncontributed their means to convert the savages, hoping doubtless to see\nthe Keokuks, Black Hawks, Roaring Thunders, and Tustanuggees of that day\nconverted into church-wardens and deacons at least, pestered the gallant\nrover with frequent solicitations out of England touching the conversion\nof the Indians, and the enlargement of the Church. Smith, in his\nperplexity how to satisfy the Society, sent out a party into the swamp,\ncaught an Indian, and sent him home in the first ship to London, telling\nthe Society they might convert one themselves.\n\nThe satire reaches its climax when the actual Church is set in direct\ncontradiction to the dictates of the religious sentiment, as in the\nsketch of our Puritan politics in Hudibras:--\n\n    \"Our brethren of New England use\n    Choice malefactors to excuse,\n    And hang the guiltless in their stead,\n    Of whom the churches have less need;\n    As lately happened, in a town\n    Where lived a cobbler, and but one,\n    That out of doctrine could cut use,\n    And mend men's lives as well as shoes.\n    This precious brother having slain,\n    In times of peace, an Indian,\n    Not out of malice, but mere zeal\n    (Because he was an infidel),\n    The mighty Tottipottymoy\n    Sent to our elders an envoy,\n    Complaining loudly of the breach\n    Of league held forth by Brother Patch,\n    Against the articles in force\n    Between both churches, his and ours,\n    For which he craved the saints to render\n    Into his hands, or hang the offender;\n    But they, maturely having weighed\n    They had no more but him o' th' trade\n    (A man that served them in the double\n    Capacity to teach and cobble),\n    Resolved to spare him; yet to do\n    The Indian Hoghan Moghan too\n    Impartial justice, in his stead did\n    Hang an old weaver that was bedrid.\"\n\nIn science the jest at pedantry is analogous to that in religion which\nlies against superstition. A classification or nomenclature used by the\nscholar only as a memorandum of his last lesson in the laws of nature,\nand confessedly a makeshift, a bivouac for a night, and implying a march\nand a conquest to-morrow, becomes through indolence a barrack and a\nprison, in which the man sits down immovably, and wishes to detain\nothers. The physiologist Camper, humorously confesses the effect of his\nstudies in dislocating his ordinary associations. \"I have been\nemployed,\" he says, \"six months on the _Cetacea_; I understand the\nosteology of the head of all these monsters, and have made the\ncombination with the human head so well, that everybody now appears to\nme narwhale, porpoise, or marsouins. Women, the prettiest in society,\nand those whom I find less comely, they are all either narwhales or\nporpoises to my eyes.\" I chanced the other day to fall in with an odd\nillustration of the remark I had heard, that the laws of disease are as\nbeautiful as the laws of health; I was hastening to visit an old and\nhonored friend, who, I was informed, was in a dying condition, when I\nmet his physician, who accosted me in great spirits, with joy sparkling\nin his eyes. \"And how is my friend, the reverend Doctor?\" I inquired.\n\"O, I saw him this morning; it is the most correct apoplexy I have ever\nseen: face and hands livid, breathing stertorous, all the symptoms\nperfect.\" And he rubbed his hands with delight, for in the country we\ncannot find every day a case that agrees with the diagnosis of the\nbooks. I think there is malice in a very trifling story which goes\nabout, and which I should not take any notice of, did I not suspect it\nto contain some satire upon my brothers of the Natural History Society.\nIt is of a boy who was learning his alphabet. \"That letter is A,\" said\nthe teacher; \"A,\" drawled the boy. \"That is B,\" said the teacher; \"B,\"\ndrawled the boy, and so on. \"That is W,\" said the teacher. \"The devil!\"\nexclaimed the boy, \"is that W?\"\n\nThe pedantry of literature belongs to the same category. In both cases\nthere is a lie, when the mind, seizing a classification to help it to a\nsincerer knowledge of the fact, stops in the classification; or learning\nlanguages, and reading books, to the end of a better acquaintance with\nman, stops in the languages and books: in both the learner seems to be\nwise, and is not.\n\nThe same falsehood, the same confusion of the sympathies because a\npretension is not made good, points the perpetual satire against\npoverty, since, according to Latin poetry and English doggerel,\n\n    Poverty does nothing worse\n    Than to make man ridiculous.\n\nIn this instance the halfness lies in the pretension of the parties to\nsome consideration on account of their condition. If the man is not\nashamed of his poverty, there is no joke. The poorest man who stands on\nhis manhood destroys the jest. The poverty of the saint, of the rapt\nphilosopher, of the naked Indian, is not comic. The lie is in the\nsurrender of the man to his appearance; as if a man should neglect\nhimself, and treat his shadow on the wall with marks of infinite\nrespect. It affects us oddly, as to see things turned upside down, or to\nsee a man in a high wind run after his hat, which is always droll. The\nrelation of the parties is inverted,--hat being for the moment master,\nthe by-standers cheering the hat. The multiplication of artificial wants\nand expenses in civilized life, and the exaggeration of all trifling\nforms, present innumerable occasions for this discrepancy to expose\nitself. Such is the story told of the painter Astley, who, going out of\nRome one day with a party for a ramble in the Campagna, and the weather\nproving hot, refused to take off his coat when his companions threw off\ntheirs, but sweltered on; which, exciting remark, his comrades playfully\nforced off his coat, and behold on the back of his waistcoat a gay\ncascade was thundering down the rocks with foam and rainbow, very\nrefreshing in so sultry a day,--a picture of his own, with which the\npoor painter had been fain to repair the shortcomings of his wardrobe.\nThe same astonishment of the intellect at the disappearance of the man\nout of nature, through some superstition of his house or equipage, as if\ntruth and virtue should be bowed out of creation by the clothes they\nwore, is the secret of all the fun that circulates concerning eminent\nfops and fashionists, and, in like manner, of the gay Rameau of Diderot,\nwho believes in nothing but hunger, and that the sole end of art,\nvirtue, and poetry is to put something for mastication between the upper\nand lower mandibles.\n\nAlike in all these cases and in the instance of cowardice or fear of any\nsort, from the loss of life to the loss of spoons, the majesty of man is\nviolated. He, whom all things should serve, serves some one of his own\ntools. In fine pictures the head sheds on the limbs the expression of\nthe face. In Raphael's Angel driving Heliodorus from the Temple, the\ncrest of the helmet is so remarkable, that but for the extraordinary\nenergy of the face, it would draw the eye too much; but the countenance\nof the celestial messenger subordinates it, and we see it not. In poor\npictures the limbs and trunk degrade the face. So among the women in the\nstreet: you shall see one whose bonnet and dress are one thing, and the\nlady herself quite another, wearing withal an expression of meek\nsubmission to her bonnet and dress; and another whose dress obeys and\nheightens the expression of her form.\n\nMore food for the comic is afforded whenever the personal appearance,\nthe face, form, and manners, are subjects of thought with the man\nhimself. No fashion is the best fashion for those matters which will\ntake care of themselves. This is the butt of those jokes of the Paris\ndrawing-rooms, which Napoleon reckoned so formidable, and which are\ncopiously recounted in the French M\u00e9moires. A lady of high rank, but of\nlean figure, had given the Countess Dulauloy the nickname of \"Le\nGrenadier tricolore,\" in allusion to her tall figure, as well as to her\nrepublican opinions; the Countess retaliated by calling Madame \"the\nVenus of the P\u00e8re-la-Chaise,\" a compliment to her skeleton which did\nnot fail to circulate. \"Lord C.,\" said the Countess of Gordon, \"O, he is\na perfect comb, all teeth and back.\" The Persians have a pleasant story\nof Tamerlane which relates to the same particulars: \"Timur was an ugly\nman; he had a blind eye and a lame foot. One day when Chodscha was with\nhim, Timur scratched his head, since the hour of the barber was come,\nand commanded that the barber should be called. Whilst he was shaven,\nthe barber gave him a looking-glass in his hand. Timur saw himself in\nthe mirror and found his face quite too ugly. Therefore he began to\nweep; Chodscha also set himself to weep, and so they wept for two hours.\nOn this, some courtiers began to comfort Timur, and entertained him with\nstrange stories in order to make him forget all about it. Timur ceased\nweeping, but Chodscha ceased not, but began now first to weep amain, and\nin good earnest. At last said Timur to Chodscha, 'Hearken! I have looked\nin the mirror, and seen myself ugly. Thereat I grieved, because,\nalthough I am Caliph, and have also much wealth, and many wives, yet\nstill I am so ugly; therefore have I wept. But thou, why weepest thou\nwithout ceasing?' Chodscha answered, 'If thou hast only seen thy face\nonce, and at once seeing hast not been able to contain thyself, but hast\nwept, what should we do,--we who see thy face every day and night? If we\nweep not, who should weep? Therefore have I wept.' Timur almost split\nhis sides with laughing.\"\n\nPolitics also furnish the same mark for satire. What is nobler than the\nexpansive sentiment of patriotism, which would find brothers in a whole\nnation? But when this enthusiasm is perceived to end in the very\nintelligible maxims of trade, so much for so much, the intellect feels\nagain the half-man. Or what is fitter than that we should espouse and\ncarry a principle against all opposition? But when the men appear who\nask our votes as representatives of this ideal, we are sadly out of\ncountenance.\n\nBut there is no end to this analysis. We do nothing that is not\nlaughable whenever we quit our spontaneous sentiment. All our plans,\nmanagements, houses, poems, if compared with the wisdom and love which\nman represents, are equally imperfect and ridiculous. But we cannot\nafford to part with any advantages. We must learn by laughter, as well\nas by tears and terrors; explore the whole of nature,--the farce and\nbuffoonery in the yard below, as well as the lessons of poets and\nphilosophers upstairs, in the hall,--and get the rest and refreshment of\nthe shaking of the sides. But the comic also has its own speedy limits.\nMirth quickly becomes intemperate, and the man would soon die of\ninanition, as some persons have been tickled to death. The same scourge\nwhips the joker and the enjoyer of the joke. When Carlini was convulsing\nNaples with laughter, a patient waited on a physician in that city, to\nobtain some remedy for excessive melancholy, which was rapidly consuming\nhis life. The physician endeavored to cheer his spirits, and advised him\nto go to the theatre and see Carlini. He replied, \"I am Carlini.\"\n\n\n\n\n                        QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY.\n\n\n\n\n                        QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY.\n\n\nWHOEVER looks at the insect world, at flies, aphides, gnats, and\ninnumerable parasites, and even at the infant mammals, must have\nremarked the extreme content they take in suction, which constitutes the\nmain business of their life. If we go into a library or news-room, we\nsee the same function on a higher plane, performed with like ardor, with\nequal impatience of interruption, indicating the sweetness of the act.\nIn the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. He\nwho has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against\ncalamity. Like Plato's disciple who has perceived a truth, \"he is\npreserved from harm until another period.\" In every man's memory, with\nthe hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books\nwhich met his views. Of a large and powerful class we might ask with\nconfidence, What is the event they most desire? what gift? What but the\nbook that shall come, which they have sought through all libraries,\nthrough all languages, that shall be to their mature eyes what many a\ntinsel-covered toy pamphlet was to their childhood, and shall speak to\nthe imagination? Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough\nof literature. If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask\nhim what books he read. We expect a great man to be a good reader; or in\nproportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power.\nAnd though such are a more difficult and exacting class, they are not\nless eager. \"He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding,\" said\nBurke, \"doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his\nown to the stature of that he contemplates.\"\n\nWe prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. Our\ndebt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our\nprotest or private addition so rare and insignificant,--and this\ncommonly on the ground of other reading or hearing,--that, in a large\nsense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old\nand new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that\nis not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by\ndelight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts,\nsciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses,\ntables and chairs by imitation. The Patent-Office Commissioner knows\nthat all machines in use have been invented and re-invented over and\nover; that the mariner's compass, the boat, the pendulum, glass, movable\ntypes, the kaleidoscope, the railway, the power-loom, etc., have been\nmany times found and lost, from Egypt, China, and Pompeii down; and if\nwe have arts which Rome wanted, so also Rome had arts which we have\nlost; that the invention of yesterday of making wood indestructible by\nmeans of vapor of coal-oil or paraffine was suggested by the Egyptian\nmethod which has preserved its mummy-cases four thousand years.\n\nThe highest statement of new philosophy complacently caps itself with\nsome prophetic maxim from the oldest learning. There is something\nmortifying in this perpetual circle. This extreme economy argues a very\nsmall capital of invention. The stream of affection flows broad and\nstrong; the practical activity is a river of supply; but the dearth of\ndesign accuses the penury of intellect. How few thoughts! In a hundred\nyears, millions of men, and not a hundred lines of poetry, not a theory\nof philosophy that offers a solution of the great problems, not an art\nof education that fulfils the conditions. In this delay and vacancy of\nthought we must make the best amends we can by seeking the wisdom of\nothers to fill the time.\n\nIf we confine ourselves to literature, 'tis easy to see that the debt is\nimmense to past thought. None escapes it. The originals are not\noriginal. There is imitation, model, and suggestion, to the very\narchangels, if we knew their history. The first book tyrannizes over the\nsecond. Read Tasso, and you think of Virgil; read Virgil, and you think\nof Homer; and Milton forces you to reflect how narrow are the limits of\nhuman invention. The \"Paradise Lost\" had never existed but for these\nprecursors; and if we find in India or Arabia a book out of our horizon\nof thought and tradition, we are soon taught by new researches in its\nnative country to discover its foregoers, and its latent, but real\nconnection with our own Bibles.\n\nRead in Plato, and you shall find Christian dogmas, and not only so, but\nstumble on our evangelical phrases. Hegel pre-exists in Proclus, and,\nlong before, in Heraclitus and Parmenides. Whoso knows Plutarch, Lucian,\nRabelais, Montaigne, and Bayle will have a key to many supposed\noriginalities. Rabelais is the source of many a proverb, story, and\njest, derived from him into all modern languages; and if we knew\nRabelais's reading, we should see the rill of the Rabelais river.\nSwedenborg, Behmen, Spinoza, will appear original to uninstructed and to\nthoughtless persons: their originality will disappear to such as are\neither well-read or thoughtful; for scholars will recognize their dogmas\nas reappearing in men of a similar intellectual elevation throughout\nhistory. Albert, the \"wonderful doctor,\" St. Buonaventura, the \"seraphic\ndoctor,\" Thomas Aquinas, the \"angelic doctor\" of the thirteenth century,\nwhose books made the sufficient culture of these ages, Dante absorbed\nand he survives for us. \"Renard the Fox,\" a German poem of the\nthirteenth century, was long supposed to be the original work, until\nGrimm found fragments of another original a century older. M. Le Grand\nshowed that in the old Fabliaux were the originals of the tales of\nMoli\u00e8re, La Fontaine, Boccaccio, and of Voltaire.\n\nMythology is no man's work; but, what we daily observe in regard to the\n_bon-mots_ that circulate in society,--that every talker helps a story\nin repeating it, until, at last, from the slenderest filament of fact a\ngood fable is constructed,--the same growth befalls mythology: the\nlegend is tossed from believer to poet, from poet to believer, everybody\nadding a grace or dropping a fault or rounding the form, until it gets\nan ideal truth.\n\nReligious literature, the psalms and liturgies of churches, are of\ncourse of this slow growth,--a fagot of selections gathered through\nages, leaving the worse, and saving the better, until it is at last the\nwork of the whole communion of worshippers. The Bible itself is like an\nold Cremona; it has been played upon by the devotion of thousands of\nyears, until every word and particle is public and tunable. And whatever\nundue reverence may have been claimed for it by the prestige of philonic\ninspiration, the stronger tendency we are describing is likely to undo.\nWhat divines had assumed as the distinctive revelations of Christianity,\ntheologic criticism has matched by exact parallelisms from the Stoics\nand poets of Greece and Rome. Later, when Confucius and the Indian\nscriptures were made known, no claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom could\nbe thought of; and the surprising results of the new researches into the\nhistory of Egypt have opened to us the deep debt of the churches of Rome\nand England to the Egyptian hierology.\n\nThe borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and\nstoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention\nwhen his memory serves him with a word as good. What he quotes, he fills\nwith his own voice and humor, and the whole cyclop\u00e6dia of his\ntable-talk is presently believed to be his own. Thirty years ago, when\nMr. Webster at the bar or in the Senate filled the eyes and minds of\nyoung men, you might often hear cited as Mr. Webster's three rules:\nfirst, never to do to-day what he could defer till to-morrow; secondly,\nnever to do himself what he could make another do for him; and, thirdly,\nnever to pay any debt to-day. Well, they are none the worse for being\nalready told, in the last generation, of Sheridan; and we find in\nGrimm's _M\u00e9moires_ that Sheridan got them from the witty D'Argenson;\nwho, no doubt, if we could consult him, could tell of whom he first\nheard them told. In our own college days we remember hearing other\npieces of Mr. Webster's advice to students,--among others, this: that,\nwhen he opened a new book, he turned to the table of contents, took a\npen, and sketched a sheet of matters and topics,--what he knew and what\nhe thought,--before he read the book. But we find in Southey's\n\"Commonplace Book\" this said of the Earl of Strafford: \"I learned one\nrule of him,\" says Sir G. Radcliffe, \"which I think worthy to be\nremembered. When he met with a well-penned oration or tract upon any\nsubject, he framed a speech upon the same argument, inventing and\ndisposing what seemed fit to be said upon that subject, before he read\nthe book; then, reading, compared his own with the author's, and noted\nhis own defects and the author's art and fulness; whereby he drew all\nthat ran in the author more strictly, and might better judge of his own\nwants to supply them.\" I remember to have heard Mr. Samuel Rogers, in\nLondon, relate, among other anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington, that a\nlady having expressed in his presence a passionate wish to witness a\ngreat victory, he replied: \"Madam, there is nothing so dreadful as a\ngreat victory,--excepting a great defeat.\" But this speech is also\nD'Argenson's, and is reported by Grimm. So the sarcasm attributed to\nLord Eldon upon Brougham, his predecessor on the woolsack, \"What a\nwonderful versatile mind has Brougham! he knows politics, Greek,\nhistory, science; if he only knew a little of law, he would know a\nlittle of everything.\" You may find the original of this gibe in Grimm,\nwho says that Louis XVI., going out of chapel after hearing a sermon\nfrom the Abb\u00e9 Maury, said, \"_Si l'Abb\u00e9 nous avait parl\u00e9 un peu de\nreligion, il nous aurait parl\u00e9 de tout_.\" A pleasantry which ran\nthrough all the newspapers a few years since, taxing the eccentricities\nof a gifted family connection in New England, was only a theft of Lady\nMary Wortley Montagu's _mot_ of a hundred years ago, that \"the world was\nmade up of men and women and Herveys.\"\n\nMany of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity. Columbus's\negg is claimed for Brunelleschi. Rabelais's dying words, \"I am going to\nsee the great Perhaps\" (_le grand Peut-\u00eatre_), only repeats the \"IF\"\ninscribed on the portal of the temple at Delphi. Goethe's favorite\nphrase, \"the open secret,\" translates Aristotle's answer to Alexander,\n\"These books are published and not published.\" Madame de Sta\u00ebl's\n\"Architecture is frozen music\" is borrowed from Goethe's \"dumb music,\"\nwhich is Vitruvius's rule, that \"the architect must not only understand\ndrawing, but music.\" Wordsworth's hero acting \"on the plan which pleased\nhis childish thought,\" is Schiller's \"Tell him to reverence the dreams\nof his youth,\" and earlier, Bacon's \"_Consilia juventutis plus\ndivinitatis habent_.\"\n\nIn romantic literature examples of this vamping abound. The fine verse\nin the old Scotch ballad of \"The Drowned Lovers,\"\n\n    \"Thou art roaring ower loud, Clyde water,\n      Thy streams are ower strang;\n    Make me thy wrack when I come back,\n      But spare me when I gang,\"\n\nis a translation of Martial's epigram on Hero and Leander, where the\nprayer of Leander is the same:--\n\n    \"Parcite dum propero, mergite dum redeo.\"\n\nHafiz furnished Burns with the song of \"John Barleycorn,\" and furnished\nMoore with the original of the piece,\n\n    \"When in death I shall calm recline,\n    Oh, bear my heart to my mistress dear,\" etc.\n\nThere are many fables which, as they are found in every language, and\nbetray no sign of being borrowed, are said to be agreeable to the human\nmind. Such are \"The Seven Sleepers,\" \"Gyges's Ring,\" \"The Travelling\nCloak,\" \"The Wandering Jew,\" \"The Pied Piper,\" \"Jack and his Beanstalk,\"\nthe \"Lady Diving in the Lake and Rising in the Cave,\"--whose\nomnipresence only indicates how easily a good story crosses all\nfrontiers. The popular incident of Baron Munchausen, who hung his bugle\nup by the kitchen fire, and the frozen tune thawed out, is found in\nGreece in Plato's time. Antiphanes, one of Plato's friends, laughingly\ncompared his writings to a city where the words froze in the air as soon\nas they were pronounced, and the next summer, when they were warmed and\nmelted by the sun, the people heard what had been spoken in the winter.\nIt is only within this century that England and America discovered that\ntheir nursery-tales were old German and Scandinavian stories; and now it\nappears that they came from India, and are the property of all the\nnations descended from the Aryan race, and have been warbled and babbled\nbetween nurses and children for unknown thousands of years.\n\nIf we observe the tenacity with which nations cling to their first types\nof costume, of architecture, of tools and methods in tillage, and of\ndecoration,--if we learn how old are the patterns of our shawls, the\ncapitals of our columns, the fret, the beads, and other ornaments on our\nwalls, the alternate lotus-bud and leaf-stem of our iron fences,--we\nshall think very well of the first men, or ill of the latest.\n\nNow shall we say that only the first men were well alive, and the\nexisting generation is invalided and degenerate? Is all literature\neavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our\nbody borrowed, like a beggar's dinner, from a hundred charities? A more\nsubtle and severe criticism might suggest that some dislocation has\nbefallen the race; that men are off their centre; that multitudes of men\ndo not live with Nature, but behold it as exiles. People go out to look\nat sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own quietly and\nhappily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, so\nthey _quote_ the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. Worse\nyet, they live as foreigners in the world of truth, and quote thoughts,\nand thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority. In opening a new\nbook we often discover, from the unguarded devotion with which the\nwriter gives his motto or text, all we have to expect from him. If Lord\nBacon appears already in the preface, I go and read the \"Instauration\"\ninstead of the new book.\n\nThe mischief is quickly punished in general and in particular. Admirable\nmimics have nothing of their own. In every kind of parasite, when Nature\nhas finished an aphis, a teredo, or a vampire bat,--an excellent\nsucking-pipe to tap another animal, or a mistletoe or dodder among\nplants,--the self-supplying organs wither and dwindle, as being\nsuperfluous. In common prudence there is an early limit to this leaning\non an original. In literature quotation is good only when the writer\nwhom I follow goes my way, and, being better mounted than I, gives me a\ncast, as we say; but if I like the gay equipage so well as to go out of\nmy road, I had better have gone afoot.\n\nBut it is necessary to remember there are certain considerations which\ngo far to qualify a reproach too grave. This vast mental indebtedness\nhas every variety that pecuniary debt has,--every variety of merit. The\ncapitalist of either kind is as hungry to lend as the consumer to\nborrow; and the transaction no more indicates intellectual turpitude in\nthe borrower than the simple fact of debt involves bankruptcy. On the\ncontrary, in far the greater number of cases the transaction is\nhonorable to both. Can we not help ourselves as discreetly by the force\nof two in literature? Certainly it only needs two well placed and well\ntempered for co-operation, to get somewhat far transcending any private\nenterprise! Shall we converse as spies? Our very abstaining to repeat\nand credit the fine remark of our friend is thievish. Each man of\nthought is surrounded by wiser men than he, if they cannot write as\nwell. Cannot he and they combine? Cannot they sink their jealousies in\nGod's love, and call their poem Beaumont and Fletcher, or the Theban\nPhalanx's? The city will for nine days or nine years make differences\nand sinister comparisons: there is a new and more excellent public that\nwill bless the friends. Nay, it is an inevitable fruit of our social\nnature. The child quotes his father, and the man quotes his friend. Each\nman is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he\nsays has an enhanced value. Whatever we think and say is wonderfully\nbetter for our spirits and trust in another mouth. There is none so\neminent and wise but he knows minds whose opinion confirms or qualifies\nhis own: and men of extraordinary genius acquire an almost absolute\nascendant over their nearest companions. The Comte de Crillon said one\nday to M. d'Allonville, with French vivacity, \"If the universe and I\nprofessed one opinion, and M. Necker expressed a contrary one, I should\nbe at once convinced that the universe and I were mistaken.\"\n\nOriginal power is usually accompanied with assimilating power, and we\nvalue in Coleridge his excellent knowledge and quotations perhaps as\nmuch, possibly more, than his original suggestions. If an author give us\njust distinctions, inspiring lessons, or imaginative poetry, it is not\nso important to us whose they are. If we are fired and guided by these,\nwe know him as a benefactor, and shall return to him as long as he\nserves us so well. We may like well to know what is Plato's and what is\nMontesquieu's or Goethe's part, and what thought was always dear to the\nwriter himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their\nradiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our facts\nlike a charm. We respect ourselves the more that we know them.\n\nNext to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.\nMany will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon\nas he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west. Then there\nare great ways of borrowing. Genius borrows nobly. When Shakspeare is\ncharged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: \"Yet he was more\noriginal than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought\nthem into life.\" And we must thank Karl Ottfried M\u00fcller for the just\nremark, \"Poesy, drawing within its circle all that is glorious and\ninspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its flowers\noriginally grew.\" So Voltaire usually imitated, but with such\nsuperiority that Dubuc said: \"He is like the false Amphitryon; although\nthe stranger, it is always he who has the air of being master of the\nhouse.\" Wordsworth, as soon as he heard a good thing, caught it up,\nmeditated upon it, and very soon reproduced it in his conversation and\nwriting. If De Quincey said, \"That is what I told you,\" he replied, \"No:\nthat is mine,--mine, and not yours.\" On the whole, we like the valor of\nit. 'Tis on Marmontel's principle, \"I pounce on what is mine, wherever I\nfind it\"; and on Bacon's broader rule, \"I take all knowledge to be my\nprovince.\" It betrays the consciousness that truth is the property of no\nindividual, but is the treasure of all men. And inasmuch as any writer\nhas ascended to a just view of man's condition, he has adopted this\ntone. In so far as the receiver's aim is on life, and not on literature,\nwill be his indifference to the source. The nobler the truth or\nsentiment, the less imports the question of authorship. It never\ntroubles the simple seeker from whom he derived such or such a\nsentiment. Whoever expresses to us a just thought makes ridiculous the\npains of the critic who should tell him where such a word had been said\nbefore. \"It is no more according to Plato than according to me.\" Truth\nis always present: it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye\nto read its oracles. But the moment there is the purpose of display, the\nfraud is exposed. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the\nthoughts of others, as it is to invent. Always some steep transition,\nsome sudden alteration of temperature, of point or of view, betrays the\nforeign interpolation.\n\nThere is, besides, a new charm in such intellectual works as, passing\nthrough long time, have had a multitude of authors and improvers. We\nadmire that poetry which no man wrote,--no poet less than the genius of\nhumanity itself,--which is to be read in a mythology, in the effect of a\nfixed or national style of pictures, of sculptures, or drama, or cities,\nor sciences, on us. Such a poem also is language. Every word in the\nlanguage has once been used happily. The ear, caught by that felicity,\nretains it, and it is used again and again, as if the charm belonged to\nthe word, and not to the life of thought which so enforced it. These\nprofane uses, of course, kill it, and it is avoided. But a quick wit can\nat any time reinforce it, and it comes into vogue again. Then people\nquote so differently: one finding only what is gaudy and popular;\nanother, the heart of the author, the report of his select and happiest\nhour: and the reader sometimes giving more to the citation than he owes\nto it. Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the\ncurrent journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from\nprevious quotations in English books; and you can easily pronounce, from\nthe use and relevancy of the sentence, whether it had not done duty many\ntimes before,--whether your jewel was got from the mine or from an\nauctioneer. We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he\nselects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes,\nand find a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets,\nwell recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals\nsay, \"the italics are ours.\" The profit of books is according to the\nsensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as\nin a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. The\npassages of Shakspeare that we most prize were never quoted until within\nthis century; and Milton's prose, and Burke, even, have their best fame\nwithin it. Every one, too, remembers his friends by their favorite\npoetry or other reading.\n\nObserve, also, that a writer appears to more advantage in the pages of\nanother book than in his own. In his own, he waits as a candidate for\nyour approbation; in another's, he is a lawgiver.\n\nThen another's thoughts have a certain advantage with us simply because\nthey are another's. There is an illusion in a new phrase. A man hears a\nfine sentence out of Swedenborg, and wonders at the wisdom, and is very\nmerry at heart that he has now got so fine a thing. Translate it out of\nthe new words into his own usual phrase, and he will wonder again at his\nown simplicity, such tricks do fine words play with us.\n\n'Tis curious what new interest an old author acquires by official\ncanonization in Tiraboschi, or Dr. Johnson, or Von Hammer-Purgstall, or\nHallam, or other historian of literature. Their registration of his\nbook, or citation of a passage, carries the sentimental value of a\ncollege diploma. Hallam, though never profound, is a fair mind, able to\nappreciate poetry, unless it becomes deep, being always blind and deaf\nto imaginative and analogy-loving souls, like the Platonists, like\nGiordano Bruno, like Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan; and Hallam\ncites a sentence from Bacon or Sidney, and distinguishes a lyric of\nEdwards or Vaux, and straightway it commends itself to us as if it had\nreceived the Isthmian crown.\n\nIt is a familiar expedient of brilliant writers, and not less of witty\ntalkers, the device of ascribing their own sentence to an imaginary\nperson, in order to give it weight,--as Cicero, Cowley, Swift, Landor,\nand Carlyle have done. And Cardinal de Retz, at a critical moment in the\nParliament of Paris, described himself in an extemporary Latin sentence,\nwhich he pretended to quote from a classic author, and which told\nadmirably well. It is a curious reflex effect of this enhancement of our\nthought by citing it from another, that many men can write better under\na mask than for themselves,--as Chatterton in archaic ballad, Le Sage in\nSpanish costume, Macpherson as \"Ossian,\"--and, I doubt not, many a young\nbarrister in chambers in London, who forges good thunder for the\n\"Times,\" but never works as well under his own name. This is a sort of\ndramatizing talent; as it is not rare to find great powers of\nrecitation, without the least original eloquence,--or people who copy\ndrawings with admirable skill, but are incapable of any design.\n\nIn hours of high mental activity we sometimes do the book too much\nhonor, reading out of it better things than the author wrote,--reading,\nas we say, between the lines. You have had the like experience in\nconversation: the wit was in what you heard, not in what the speakers\nsaid. Our best thought came from others. We heard in their words a\ndeeper sense than the speakers put into them, and could express\nourselves in other people's phrases to finer purpose than they knew. In\nMoore's Diary, Mr. Hallam is reported as mentioning at dinner one of his\nfriends who had said, \"I don't know how it is, a thing that falls flat\nfrom me seems quite an excellent joke when given at second-hand by\nSheridan. I never like my own _bon-mots_ until he adopts them.\" Dumont\nwas exalted by being used by Mirabeau, by Bentham, and by Sir Philip\nFrancis, who, again, was less than his own \"Junius\"; and James Hogg\n(except in his poems \"Kilmeny\" and \"The Witch of Fife\") is but a\nthird-rate author, owing his fame to his effigy colossalized through the\nlens of John Wilson,--who, again, writes better under the domino of\n\"Christopher North\" than in his proper clothes. The bold theory of Delia\nBacon, that Shakspeare's plays were written by a society of wits,--by\nSir Walter Raleigh, Lord Bacon, and others around the Earl of\nSouthampton,--had plainly for her the charm of the superior meaning they\nwould acquire when read under this light; this idea of the authorship\ncontrolling our appreciation of the works themselves. We once knew a man\noverjoyed at the notice of his pamphlet in a leading newspaper. What\nrange he gave his imagination! Who could have written it? Was it not\nColonel Carbine, or Senator Tonitrus, or, at the least, Professor\nMaximilian? Yes, he could detect in the style that fine Roman hand. How\nit seemed the very voice of the refined and discerning public, inviting\nmerit at last to consent to fame, and come up and take place in the\nreserved and authentic chairs! He carried the journal with haste to the\nsympathizing Cousin Matilda, who is so proud of all we do. But what\ndismay, when the good Matilda, pleased with his pleasure, confessed she\nhad written the criticism, and carried it with her own hands to the\npost-office! \"Mr. Wordsworth,\" said Charles Lamb, \"allow me to introduce\nto you my only admirer.\"\n\nSwedenborg threw a formidable theory into the world, that every soul\nexisted in a society of souls, from which all its thoughts passed into\nit, as the blood of the mother circulates in her unborn child; and he\nnoticed that, when in his bed,--alternately sleeping and\nwaking,--sleeping, he was surrounded by persons disputing and offering\nopinions on the one side and on the other side of a proposition; waking,\nthe like suggestions occurred for and against the proposition as his own\nthoughts; sleeping again, he saw and heard the speakers as before: and\nthis as often as he slept or waked. And if we expand the image, does it\nnot look as if we men were thinking and talking out of an enormous\nantiquity, as if we stood, not in a coterie of prompters that filled a\nsitting-room, but in a circle of intelligences that reached through all\nthinkers, poets, inventors, and wits, men and women, English, German,\nCelt, Aryan, Ninevite, Copt,--back to the first geometer, bard, mason,\ncarpenter, planter, shepherd,--back to the first negro, who, with more\nhealth or better perception, gave a shriller sound or name for the thing\nhe saw and dealt with? Our benefactors are as many as the children who\ninvented speech, word by word. Language is a city, to the building of\nwhich every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be\ncredited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the\ncoral reef which is the basis of the continent.\n\n\u03a0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u1fe5\u03b5\u1fd6: all things are in flux. It is inevitable that you\nare indebted to the past. You are fed and formed by it. The old forest\nis decomposed for the composition of the new forest. The old animals\nhave given their bodies to the earth to furnish through chemistry the\nforming race, and every individual is only a momentary fixation of what\nwas yesterday another's, is to-day his, and will belong to a third\nto-morrow. So it is in thought. Our knowledge is the amassed thought and\nexperience of innumerable minds: our language, our science, our\nreligion, our opinions, our fancies we inherited. Our country, customs,\nlaws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair,--all these we\nnever made; we found them ready-made; we but quote them. Goethe frankly\nsaid, \"What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were\nderogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me\nby a thousand different persons, a thousand things: wise and foolish\nhave brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts,\nfaculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken\nfrom the whole of nature; it bears the name of Goethe.\"\n\nBut there remains the indefeasible persistency of the individual to be\nhimself. One leaf, one blade of grass, one meridian, does not resemble\nanother. Every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the more\npronounced is that difference. He must draw the elements into him for\nfood, and, if they be granite and silex, will prefer them cooked by sun\nand rain, by time and art, to his hand. But, however received, these\nelements pass into the substance of his constitution, will be\nassimilated, and tend always to form, not a partisan, but a possessor of\ntruth. To all that can be said of the preponderance of the Past, the\nsingle word Genius is a sufficient reply. The divine resides in the new.\nThe divine never quotes, but is, and creates. The profound apprehension\nof the Present is Genius, which makes the Past forgotten. Genius\nbelieves its faintest presentiment against the testimony of all history;\nfor it knows that facts are not ultimates, but that a state of mind is\nthe ancestor of everything. And what is Originality? It is being, being\none's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are. Genius is, in\nthe first instance, sensibility, the capacity of receiving just\nimpressions from the external world, and the power of co-ordinating\nthese after the laws of thought. It implies Will, or original force, for\ntheir right distribution and expression. If to this the sentiment of\npiety be added, if the thinker feels that the thought most strictly his\nown is not his own, and recognizes the perpetual suggestion of the\nSupreme Intellect, the oldest thoughts become new and fertile whilst he\nspeaks them.\n\nOriginals never lose their value. There is always in them a style and\nweight of speech, which the immanence of the oracle bestowed, and which\ncannot be counterfeited. Hence the permanence of the high poets. Plato,\nCicero, and Plutarch cite the poets in the manner in which Scripture is\nquoted in our churches. A phrase or a single word is adduced, with\nhonoring emphasis, from Pindar, Hesiod, or Euripides, as precluding all\nargument, because thus had they said: importing that the bard spoke not\nhis own, but the words of some god. True poets have always ascended to\nthis lofty platform, and met this expectation. Shakspeare, Milton,\nWordsworth, were very conscious of their responsibilities. When a man\nthinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All\nspontaneous thought is irrespective of all else. Pindar uses this\nhaughty defiance, as if it were impossible to find his sources: \"There\nare many swift darts within my quiver, which have a voice for those with\nunderstanding; but to the crowd they need interpreters. He is gifted\nwith genius who knoweth much by natural talent.\"\n\nOur pleasure in seeing each mind take the subject to which it has a\nproper right is seen in mere fitness in time. He that comes second must\nneeds quote him that comes first. The earliest describers of savage\nlife, as Captain Cook's account of the Society Islands, or Alexander\nHenry's travels among our Indian tribes, have a charm of truth and just\npoint of view. Landsmen and sailors freshly come from the most civilized\ncountries, and with no false expectation, no sentimentality yet about\nwild life, healthily receive and report what they saw,--seeing what they\nmust, and using no choice; and no man suspects the superior merit of the\ndescription, until Chateaubriand, or Moore, or Campbell, or Byron, or\nthe artists arrive, and mix so much art with their picture that the\nincomparable advantage of the first narrative appears. For the same\nreason we dislike that the poet should choose an antique or far-fetched\nsubject for his muse, as if he avowed want of insight. The great deal\nalways with the nearest. Only as braveries of too prodigal power can we\npardon it, when the life of genius is so redundant that out of petulance\nit flings its fire into some old mummy, and, lo! it walks and blushes\nagain here in the street.\n\nWe cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme\nclaim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become\nours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to\nborrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper\nwith the organic motion of the soul. 'Tis certain that thought has its\nown proper motion, and the hints which flash from it, the words\noverheard at unawares by the free mind, are trustworthy and fertile,\nwhen obeyed, and not perverted to low and selfish account. This vast\nmemory is only raw material. The divine gift is ever the instant life,\nwhich receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the\nomnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest for\nrecomposition.\n\n\n\n\n                        PROGRESS OF CULTURE.\n\n\n\n\n                        PROGRESS OF CULTURE.\n\n\n    ADDRESS READ BEFORE THE \u03a6 \u0392 \u039a SOCIETY AT CAMBRIDGE,\n                        JULY 18, 1867.\n\n\nWE meet to-day under happy omens to our ancient society, to the\ncommonwealth of letters, to the country, and to mankind. No good citizen\nbut shares the wonderful prosperity of the Federal Union. The heart\nstill beats with the public pulse of joy, that the country has withstood\nthe rude trial which threatened its existence, and thrills with the vast\naugmentation of strength which it draws from this proof. The storm which\nhas been resisted is a crown of honor and a pledge of strength to the\nship. We may be well contented with our fair inheritance. Was ever such\ncoincidence of advantages in time and place as in America to-day?--the\nfusion of races and religions; the hungry cry for men which goes up from\nthe wide continent; the answering facility of immigration, permitting\nevery wanderer to choose his climate and government. Men come hither by\nnations. Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology, to fly with\nthem over the sea, and to send their messages under it. They come from\ncrowded, antiquated kingdoms to the easy sharing of our simple forms.\nLand without price is offered to the settler, cheap education to his\nchildren. The temper of our people delights in this whirl of life. Who\nwould live in the stone age, or the bronze, or the iron, or the\nlacustrine? Who does not prefer the age of steel, of gold, of coal,\npetroleum, cotton, steam, electricity, and the spectroscope?\n\n  \"Prisca juvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor.\"\n\nAll this activity has added to the value of life, and to the scope of\nthe intellect. I will not say that American institutions have given a\nnew enlargement to our idea of a finished man, but they have added\nimportant features to the sketch.\n\nObserve the marked ethical quality of the innovations urged or adopted.\nThe new claim of woman to a political status is itself an honorable\ntestimony to the civilization which has given her a civil status new in\nhistory. Now that, by the increased humanity of law she controls her\nproperty, she inevitably takes the next step to her share in power. The\nwar gave us the abolition of slavery, the success of the Sanitary\nCommission and of the Freedmen's Bureau. Add to these the new scope of\nsocial science; the abolition of capital punishment and of imprisonment\nfor debt; the improvement of prisons; the efforts for the suppression of\nintemperance; the search for just rules affecting labor; the\nco-operative societies; the insurance of life and limb; the free-trade\nleague; the improved alms-houses; the enlarged scale of charities to\nrelieve local famine, or burned towns, or the suffering Greeks; the\nincipient series of international congresses,--all, one may say, in a\nhigh degree revolutionary,--teaching nations the taking of government\ninto their own hands, and superseding kings.\n\nThe spirit is new. A silent revolution has impelled, step by step, all\nthis activity. A great many full-blown conceits have burst. The coxcomb\ngoes to the wall. To his astonishment he has found that this country and\nthis age belong to the most liberal persuasion; that the day of ruling\nby scorn and sneers is past; that good sense is now in power, and _that_\nresting on a vast constituency of intelligent labor, and, better yet, on\nperceptions less and less dim of laws the most sublime. Men are now to\nbe astonished by seeing acts of good-nature, common civility, and\nChristian charity proposed by statesmen, and executed by justices of the\npeace,--by policemen and the constable. The fop is unable to cut the\npatriot in the street; nay, he lies at his mercy in the ballot of the\nclub.\n\nMark, too, the large resources of a statesman, of a socialist, of a\nscholar, in this age. When classes are exasperated against each other,\nthe peace of the world is always kept by striking a new note. Instantly\nthe units part, and form in a new order, and those who were opposed are\nnow side by side. In this country the prodigious mass of work that must\nbe done has either made new divisions of labor or created new\nprofessions. Consider, at this time, what variety of issues, of\nenterprises public and private, what genius of science, what of\nadministration, what of practical skill, what masters, each in his\nseveral province, the railroad, the telegraph, the mines, the inland and\nmarine explorations, the novel and powerful philanthropies, as well as\nagriculture, the foreign trade and the home trade (whose circuits in\nthis country are as spacious as the foreign), manufactures, the very\ninventions, all on a national scale too, have evoked!--all implying the\nappearance of gifted men, the rapid addition to our society of a class\nof true nobles, by which the self-respect of each town and State is\nenriched.\n\nTake as a type the boundless freedom here in Massachusetts. People have\nin all countries been burned and stoned for saying things which are\ncommonplaces at all our breakfast-tables. Every one who was in Italy\ntwenty-five years ago will remember the caution with which his host or\nguest, in any house looked around him, if a political topic were\nbroached. Here the tongue is free, and the hand; and the freedom of\naction goes to the brink, if not over the brink, of license.\n\nA controlling influence of the times has been the wide and successful\nstudy of Natural Science. Steffens said, \"The religious opinions of men\nrest on their views of nature.\" Great strides have been made within the\npresent century. Geology, astronomy, chemistry, optics, have yielded\ngrand results. The correlation of forces and the polarization of light\nhave carried us to sublime generalizations,--have affected an\nimaginative race like poetic inspirations. We have been taught to tread\nfamiliarly on giddy heights of thought, and to wont ourselves to daring\nconjectures. The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity.\nThe creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the\nobservatory, and a new and healthful air regenerates the human mind, and\nimparts a sympathetic enlargement to its inventions and method. That\ncosmical west-wind which, meteorologists tell us, constitutes, by the\nrevolution of the globe, the upper current, is alone broad enough to\ncarry to every city and suburb--to the farmer's house, the miner's\nshanty, and the fisher's boat--the inspirations of this new hope of\nmankind. Now, if any one say we have had enough of these boastful\nrecitals, then I say, Happy is the land wherein benefits like these have\ngrown trite and commonplace.\n\nWe confess that in America everything looks new and recent. Our towns\nare still rude,--the make-shifts of emigrants,--and the whole\narchitecture tent-like, when compared with the monumental solidity of\nmedi\u00e6val and primeval remains in Europe and Asia. But geology has\neffaced these distinctions. Geology, a science of forty or fifty\nsummers, has had the effect to throw an air of novelty and mushroom\nspeed over entire history. The oldest empires,--what we called venerable\nantiquity,--now that we have true measures of duration, show like\ncreations of yesterday. 'Tis yet quite too early to draw sound\nconclusions. The old six thousand years of chronology become a kitchen\nclock,--no more a measure of time than an hour-glass or an\negg-glass,--since the duration of geologic periods has come into view.\nGeology itself is only chemistry with the element of time added; and the\nrocks of Nahant or the dikes of the White Hills disclose that the world\nis a crystal, and the soil of the valleys and plains a continual\ndecomposition and recomposition. Nothing is old but the mind.\n\nBut I find not only this equality between new and old countries, as seen\nby the eye of science, but also a certain equivalence of the ages of\nhistory; and as the child is in his playthings working incessantly at\nproblems of natural philosophy,--working as hard and as successfully as\nNewton,--so it were ignorance not to see that each nation and period has\ndone its full part to make up the result of existing civility. We are\nall agreed that we have not on the instant better men to show than\nPlutarch's heroes. The world is always equal to itself. We cannot yet\nafford to drop Homer, nor \u00c6schylus, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor\nArchimedes. Later, each European nation, after the breaking up of the\nRoman Empire, had its romantic era, and the productions of that era in\neach rose to about the same height. Take for an example in literature\nthe _Romance of Arthur_, in Britain, or in the opposite province of\nBrittany; the _Chansons de Roland_, in France; the Chronicle of the Cid,\nin Spain; the _Niebelungen Lied_, in Germany; the Norse Sagas, in\nScandinavia; and, I may add, the Arabian Nights, on the African coast.\nBut if these works still survive and multiply, what shall we say of\nnames more distant, or hidden through their very superiority to their\ncoevals,--names of men who have left remains that certify a height of\ngenius in their several directions not since surpassed, and which men in\nproportion to their wisdom still cherish,--as Zoroaster, Confucius, and\nthe grand scriptures, only recently known to Western nations, of the\nIndian Vedas, the Institutes of Menu, the Puranas, the poems of the\nMahabarat and the Ramayana?\n\nIn modern Europe, the Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages. Who dares\nto call them so now? They are seen to be the feet on which we walk, the\neyes with which we see. 'Tis one of our triumphs to have reinstated\nthem. Their Dante and Alfred and Wickliffe and Abelard and Bacon; their\nMagna Charta, decimal numbers, mariner's compass, gunpowder, glass,\npaper, and clocks; chemistry, algebra, astronomy; their Gothic\narchitecture, their painting,--are the delight and tuition of ours. Six\nhundred years ago Roger Bacon explained the precession of the equinoxes,\nand the necessity of reform in the calendar; looking over how many\nhorizons as far as into Liverpool and New York, he announced that\nmachines can be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than a whole\ngalley of rowers could do, nor would they need anything but a pilot to\nsteer; carriages, to move with incredible speed, without aid of animals;\nand machines to fly into the air like birds. Even the races that we\nstill call savage or semi-savage, and which preserve their arts from\nimmemorial traditions, vindicate their faculty by the skill with which\nthey make their yam-cloths, pipes, bows, boats, and carved war-clubs.\nThe war-proa of the Malays in the Japanese waters struck Commodore Perry\nby its close resemblance to the yacht \"America.\"\n\nAs we find thus a certain equivalence in the ages, there is also an\nequipollence of individual genius to the nation which it represents. It\nis a curious fact, that a certain enormity of culture makes a man\ninvisible to his contemporaries. 'Tis always hard to go beyond your\npublic. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not\neasily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it, you\nwill aspire and burn until you achieve it. But, from time to time, in\nhistory, men are born a whole age too soon. The founders of nations, the\nwise men and inventors, who shine afterwards as their gods, were\nprobably martyrs in their own time. All the transcendent writers and\nartists of the world,--'tis doubtful who they were,--they are lifted so\nfast into mythology,--Homer, Menu, Viasa, D\u00e6dalus, Hermes, Zoroaster,\neven Swedenborg and Shakspeare. The early names are too typical,--Homer,\nor _blind man_; Menu, or _man_; Viasa, _compiler_; D\u00e6dalus, _cunning_;\nHermes, _interpreter_; and so on. Probably, the men were so great, so\nself-fed, that the recognition of them by others was not necessary to\nthem. And every one has heard the remark (too often, I fear, politely\nmade), that the philosopher was above his audience. I think I have seen\ntwo or three great men who, for that reason, were of no account among\nscholars.\n\nBut Jove is in his reserves. The truth, the hope of any time, must\nalways be sought in the minorities. Michel Angelo was the conscience of\nItaly. We grow free with his name, and find it ornamental now; but in\nhis own days, his friends were few; and you would need to hunt him in a\nconventicle with the Methodists of the era, namely, Savonarola, Vittoria\nColonna, Contarini, Pole, Occhino,--superior souls, the religious of\nthat day, drawn to each other, and under some cloud with the rest of the\nworld,--reformers, the radicals of the hour, banded against the\ncorruptions of Rome, and as lonely and as hated as Dante before them.\n\nI find the single mind equipollent to a multitude of minds, say to a\nnation of minds, as a drop of water balances the sea; and under this\nview the problem of culture assumes wonderful interest. Culture implies\nall which gives the mind possession of its own powers; as languages to\nthe critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture alters the political\nstatus of an individual. It raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 'Tis\nking against king. It is ever the romance of history in all\ndynasties,--the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect. It\ncreates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, and\nto which he must often succumb. If a man know the laws of nature better\nthan other men, his nation cannot spare him; nor if he know the power of\nnumbers, the secret of geometry, of algebra, on which the computations\nof astronomy, of navigation, of machinery, rest. If he can converse\nbetter than any other, he rules the minds of men wherever he goes; if he\nhas imagination, he intoxicates men. If he has wit, he tempers despotism\nby epigrams: a song, a satire, a sentence, has played its part in great\nevents. Eloquence a hundred times has turned the scale of war and peace\nat will. The history of Greece is at one time reduced to two\npersons,--Philip, or the successor of Philip, on one side, and\nDemosthenes, a private citizen, on the other. If he has a military\ngenius, like Belisarius, or administrative faculty, like Chatham or\nBismarck, he is the king's king. If a theologian of deep convictions and\nstrong understanding carries his country with him, like Luther, the\nstate becomes Lutheran, in spite of the Emperor, as Thomas \u00e0 Becket\noverpowered the English Henry. Wit has a great charter. Popes and kings\nand Councils of Ten are very sharp with their censorships and\ninquisitions, but it is on dull people. Some Dante or Angelo, Rabelais,\nHafiz, Cervantes, Erasmus, B\u00e9ranger, Bettine von Arnim, or whatever\ngenuine wit of the old inimitable class, is always allowed. Kings feel\nthat this is that which they themselves represent; this is no\nred-kerchiefed, red-shirted rebel, but loyalty, kingship. This is real\nkingship, and their own only titular. Even manners are a distinction,\nwhich, we sometimes see, are not to be overborne by rank or official\npower, or even by other eminent talents, since they too proceed from a\ncertain deep innate perception of fit and fair.\n\nIt is too plain that a cultivated laborer is worth many untaught\nlaborers; that a scientific engineer, with instruments and steam, is\nworth many hundred men, many thousands; that Archimedes or Napoleon is\nworth for labor a thousand thousands; and that in every wise and genial\nsoul we have England, Greece, Italy, walking, and can dispense with\npopulations of _navvies_.\n\nLiterary history and all history is a record of the power of minorities,\nand of minorities of one. Every book is written with a constant secret\nreference to the few intelligent persons whom the writer believes to\nexist in the million. The artist has always the masters in his eye,\nthough he affect to flout them. Michel Angelo is thinking of Da Vinci,\nand Raffaele is thinking of Michel Angelo. Tennyson would give his fame\nfor a verdict in his favor from Wordsworth. Agassiz and Owen and Huxley\naffect to address the American and English people, but are really\nwriting to each other. Everett dreamed of Webster. McKay, the\nshipbuilder, thinks of George Steers; and Steers, of Pook, the naval\nconstructor. The names of the masters at the head of each department of\nscience, art, or function are often little known to the world, but are\nalways known to the adepts; as Robert Brown in botany, and Gauss in\nmathematics. Often the master is a hidden man, but not to the true\nstudent; invisible to all the rest, resplendent to him. All his own work\nand culture form the eye to see the master. In politics, mark the\nimportance of minorities of one, as of Phocion, Cato, Lafayette, Arago.\nThe importance of the one person who has the truth over nations who have\nit not, is because power obeys reality, and not appearance; according to\nquality, and not quantity. How much more are men than nations! the wise\nand good souls, the stoics in Greece and Rome, Socrates in Athens, the\nsaints in Jud\u00e6a, Alfred the king, Shakspeare the poet, Newton the\nphilosopher, the perceiver, and obeyer of truth,--than the foolish and\nsensual millions around them! so that, wherever a true man appears,\neverything usually reckoned great dwarfs itself; he is the only great\nevent, and it is easy to lift him into a mythological personage.\n\nThen the next step in the series is the equivalence of the soul to\nnature. I said that one of the distinctions of our century has been the\ndevotion of cultivated men to natural science. The benefits thence\nderived to the arts and to civilization are signal and immense. They are\nfelt in navigation, in agriculture, in manufactures, in astronomy, in\nmining, and in war. But over all their utilities, I must hold their\nchief value to be metaphysical. The chief value is not the useful powers\nhe obtained, but the test it has been of the scholar. He has accosted\nthis immeasurable nature, and got clear answers. He understood what he\nread. He found agreement with himself. It taught him anew the reach of\nthe human mind, and that it was citizen of the universe.\n\nThe first quality we know in matter is centrality,--we call it\ngravity,--which holds the universe together, which remains pure and\nindestructible in each mote, as in masses and planets, and from each\natom rays out illimitable influence. To this material essence answers\nTruth, in the intellectual world,--Truth, whose centre is everywhere,\nand its circumference nowhere, whose existence we cannot\ndisimagine,--the soundness and health of things, against which no blow\ncan be struck but it recoils on the striker,--Truth, on whose side we\nalways heartily are. And the first measure of a mind is its centrality,\nits capacity of truth, and its adhesion to it.\n\nWhen the correlation of the sciences was announced by Oersted and his\ncolleagues, it was no surprise; we were found already prepared for it.\nThe fact stated accorded with the auguries or divinations of the human\nmind. Thus, if we should analyze Newton's discovery, we should say that\nif it had not been anticipated by him, it would not have been found. We\nare told that, in posting his books, after the French had measured on\nthe earth a degree of the meridian, when he saw that his theoretic\nresults were approximating that empirical one, his hand shook, the\nfigures danced, and he was so agitated that he was forced to call in an\nassistant to finish the computation. Why agitated?--but because, when he\nsaw, in the fall of an apple to the ground, the fall of the earth to the\nsun, of the sun and of all suns to the centre, that perception was\naccompanied by the spasm of delight by which the intellect greets a fact\nmore immense still, a fact really universal,--holding in intellect as in\nmatter, in morals as in intellect,--that atom draws to atom throughout\nnature, and truth to truth throughout spirit? His law was only a\nparticular of the more universal law of centrality. Every law in nature,\nas gravity, centripetence, repulsion, polarity, undulation, has a\ncounterpart in the intellect. The laws above are sisters of the laws\nbelow. Shall we study the mathematics of the sphere, and not its causal\nessence also? Nature is a fable, whose moral blazes through it. There is\nno use in Copernicus, if the robust periodicity of the solar system does\nnot show its equal perfection in the mental sphere,--the periodicity,\nthe compensatory errors, the grand reactions. I shall never believe that\ncentrifugence and centripetence balance, unless mind heats and\nmeliorates, as well as the surface and soil of the globe.\n\nOn this power, this all-dissolving unity, the emphasis of heaven and\nearth is laid. Nature is brute but as this soul quickens it; Nature\nalways the effect, mind the flowing cause. Nature, we find, is ever as\nis our sensibility; it is hostile to ignorance;--plastic, transparent,\ndelightful, to knowledge. Mind carries the law; history is the slow and\natomic unfolding. All things admit of this extended sense, and the\nuniverse at last is only prophetic, or, shall we say, symptomatic, of\nvaster interpretation and results. Nature an enormous system, but in\nmass and in particle curiously available to the humblest need of the\nlittle creature that walks on the earth! The immeasurableness of Nature\nis not more astounding than his power to gather all her omnipotence into\na manageable rod or wedge, bringing it to a hair-point for the eye and\nhand of the philosopher.\n\nHere stretches out of sight, out of conception even, this vast Nature,\ndaunting, bewildering, but all penetrable, all self-similar,--an\nunbroken unity,--and the mind of man is a key to the whole. He finds\nthat the universe, as Newton said, \"was made at one cast\"; the mass is\nlike the atom,--the same chemistry, gravity, and conditions. The\nasteroids are the chips of an old star, and a meteoric stone is a chip\nof an asteroid. As language is in the alphabet, so is entire Nature--the\nplay of all its laws--in one atom. The good wit finds the law from a\nsingle observation,--the law, and its limitations, and its\ncorrespondences,--as the farmer finds his cattle by a footprint. \"State\nthe sun, and you state the planets, and conversely.\"\n\nWhilst its power is offered to his hand, its laws to his science, not\nless its beauty speaks to his taste, imagination, and sentiment. Nature\nis sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle\nof her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning\ndew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions,\nyet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. Look out\ninto the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which\nflashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the\nmeadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous\nage,--lasting as space and time,--embosomed in time and space. And time\nand space,--what are they? Our first problems, which we ponder all our\nlives through, and leave where we found them; whose outrunning\nimmensity, the old Greeks believed, astonished the gods themselves; of\nwhose dizzy vastitudes all the worlds of God are a mere dot on the\nmargin; impossible to deny, impossible to believe. Yet the moral element\nin man counterpoises this dismaying immensity, and bereaves it of\nterror. The highest flight to which the muse of Horace ascended was in\nthat triplet of lines in which he described the souls which can calmly\nconfront the sublimity of nature:--\n\n    \"Hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis\n    Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla\n    Imbuti spectant.\"\n\nThe sublime point of experience is the value of a sufficient man. Cube\nthis value by the meeting of two such,--of two or more such,--who\nunderstand and support each other, and you have organized victory. At\nany time, it only needs the contemporaneous appearance of a few superior\nand attractive men to give a new and noble turn to the public mind.\n\nThe benefactors we have indicated were exceptional men, and great\nbecause exceptional. The question which the present age urges with\nincreasing emphasis, day by day, is, whether the high qualities which\ndistinguished them can be imparted? The poet Wordsworth asked, \"What one\nis, why may not millions be?\" Why not? Knowledge exists to be imparted.\nCuriosity is lying in wait for every secret. The inquisitiveness of the\nchild to hear runs to meet the eagerness of the parent to explain. The\nair does not rush to fill a vacuum with such speed as the mind to catch\nthe expected fact. Every artist was first an amateur. The ear outgrows\nthe tongue, is sooner ripe and perfect; but the tongue is always\nlearning to say what the ear has taught it, and the hand obeys the same\nlesson.\n\nThere is anything but humiliation in the homage men pay to a great man;\nit is sympathy, love of the same things, effort to reach them,--the\nexpression of their hope of what they shall become, when the\nobstructions of their mal-formation and mal-education shall be trained\naway. Great men shall not impoverish, but enrich us. Great men,--the age\ngoes on their credit; but all the rest, when their wires are continued,\nand not cut, can do as signal things, and in new parts of nature. \"No\nangel in his heart acknowledges any one superior to himself but the Lord\nalone.\" There is not a person here present to whom omens that should\nastonish have not predicted his future, have not uncovered his past. The\ndreams of the night supplement by their divination the imperfect\nexperiments of the day. Every soliciting instinct is only a hint of a\ncoming fact, as the air and water that hang invisibly around us hasten\nto become solid in the oak and the animal. But the recurrence to high\nsources is rare. In our daily intercourse, we go with the crowd, lend\nourselves to low fears and hopes, become the victims of our own arts and\nimplements, and disuse our resort to the Divine oracle. It is only in\nthe sleep of the soul that we help ourselves by so many ingenious\ncrutches and machineries. What is the use of telegraphs? What of\nnewspapers? To know in each social crisis how men feel in Kansas, in\nCalifornia, the wise man waits for no mails, reads no telegrams. He asks\nhis own heart. If they are made as he is, if they breathe the like air,\neat of the same wheat, have wives and children, he knows that their joy\nor resentment rises to the same point as his own. The inviolate soul is\nin perpetual telegraphic communication with the Source of events, has\nearlier information, a private despatch, which relieves him of the\nterror which presses on the rest of the community.\n\nThe foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral\nsentiment. This is the fountain of power, preserves its eternal newness,\ndraws its own rent out of every novelty in science. Science corrects the\nold creeds; sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile\ncatechisms; and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander\norbits and universal laws which it discloses. Yet it does not surprise\nthe moral sentiment. That was older, and awaited expectant these larger\ninsights.\n\nThe affections are the wings by which the intellect launches on the\nvoid, and is borne across it. Great love is the inventor and expander of\nthe frozen powers, the feathers frozen to our sides. It was the\nconviction of Plato, of Van Helmont, of Pascal, of Swedenborg, that\npiety is an essential condition of science, that great thoughts come\nfrom the heart. It happens sometimes that poets do not believe their own\npoetry; they are so much the less poets. But great men are sincere.\nGreat men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material\nforce, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the\nbeginning of its own fulfilment. Every generalization shows the way to a\nlarger. Men say, Ah! if a man could impart his talent, instead of his\nperformance, what mountains of guineas would be paid! Yes, but in the\nmeasure of his absolute veracity he does impart it. When he does not\nplay a part, does not wish to shine, when he talks to men with the\nunrestrained frankness which children use with each other, he\ncommunicates himself, and not his vanity. All vigor is contagious, and\nwhen we see creation we also begin to create. Depth of character, height\nof genius, can only find nourishment in this soil. The miracles of\ngenius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.\nEnthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the\nhorse-power of the understanding. Hope never spreads her golden wings\nbut on unfathomable seas. The same law holds for the intellect as for\nthe will. When the will is absolutely surrendered to the moral\nsentiment, that is virtue; when the wit is surrendered to intellectual\ntruth, that is genius. Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show.\nTalent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the\npossessor to new power as a benefactor. I know well to what assembly of\neducated, reflecting, successful, and powerful persons I speak. Yours is\nthe part of those who have received much. It is an old legend of just\nmen, _Noblesse oblige_; or, superior advantages bind you to larger\ngenerosity. Now I conceive that, in this economical world, where every\ndrop and every crumb is husbanded, the transcendent powers of mind were\nnot meant to be misused. The Divine Nature carries on its administration\nby good men. Here you are set down, scholars and idealists, as in a\nbarbarous age; amidst insanity, to calm and guide it; amidst fools and\nblind, to see the right done; among violent proprietors, to check\nself-interest, stone-blind and stone-deaf, by considerations of humanity\nto the workman and to his child; amongst angry politicians swelling with\nself-esteem, pledged to parties, pledged to clients, you are to make\nvalid the large considerations of equity and good sense; under bad\ngovernments, to force on them, by your persistence, good laws. Around\nthat immovable persistency of yours, statesmen, legislatures, must\nrevolve, denying you, but not less forced to obey.\n\nWe wish to put the ideal rules into practice, to offer liberty instead\nof chains, and see whether liberty will not disclose its proper checks;\nbelieving that a free press will prove safer than the censorship; to\nordain free trade, and believe that it will not bankrupt us; universal\nsuffrage, believing that it will not carry us to mobs, or back to kings\nagain. I believe that the checks are as sure as the springs. It is\nthereby that men are great, and have great allies. And who are the\nallies? Rude opposition, apathy, slander,--even these. Difficulties\nexist to be surmounted. The great heart will no more complain of the\nobstructions that make success hard, than of the iron walls of the gun\nwhich hinder the shot from scattering. It was walled round with iron\ntube with that purpose, to give it irresistible force in one direction.\nA strenuous soul hates cheap successes. It is the ardor of the assailant\nthat makes the vigor of the defender. The great are not tender at being\nobscure, despised, insulted. Such only feel themselves in adverse\nfortune. Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times, which search till\nthey find resistance and bottom. They wish, as Pindar said, \"to tread\nthe floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.\" Periodicity,\nreaction, are laws of mind as well as of matter. Bad kings and governors\nhelp us, if only they are bad enough. In England, it was the game laws\nwhich exasperated the farmers to carry the Reform Bill. It was what we\ncall _plantation manners_ which drove peaceable, forgiving New England\nto emancipation without phrase. In the Rebellion, who were our best\nallies? Always the enemy. The community of scholars do not know their\nown power, and dishearten each other by tolerating political baseness in\ntheir members. Now, nobody doubts the power of manners, or that wherever\nhigh society exists, it is very well able to exclude pretenders. The\nintruder finds himself uncomfortable, and quickly departs to his own\ngang. It has been our misfortune that the politics of America have been\noften immoral. It has had the worst effect on character. We are a\ncomplaisant, forgiving people, presuming, perhaps, on a feeling of\nstrength. But it is not by easy virtue, where the public is concerned,\nthat heroic results are obtained. We have suffered our young men of\nambition to play the game of politics and take the immoral side without\nloss of caste,--to come and go without rebuke. But that kind of loose\nassociation does not leave a man his own master. He cannot go from the\ngood to the evil at pleasure, and then back again to the good. There is\na text in Swedenborg, which tells in figure the plain truth. He saw in\nvision the angels and the devils; but these two companies stood not face\nto face and hand in hand, but foot to foot,--these perpendicular up, and\nthose perpendicular down.\n\nBrothers, I draw new hope from the atmosphere we breathe to-day, from\nthe healthy sentiment of the American people, and from the avowed aims\nand tendencies of the educated class. The age has new convictions. We\nknow that in certain historic periods there have been times of\nnegation,--a decay of thought, and a consequent national decline; that\nin France, at one time, there was almost a repudiation of the moral\nsentiment, in what is called, by distinction, society,--not a believer\nwithin the Church, and almost not a theist out of it. In England, the\nlike spiritual disease affected the upper class in the time of Charles\nII., and down into the reign of the Georges. But it honorably\ndistinguishes the educated class here, that they believe in the succor\nwhich the heart yields to the intellect, and draw greatness from its\ninspirations. And when I say the educated class, I know what a benignant\nbreadth that word has,--new in the world,--reaching millions instead of\nhundreds. And more, when I look around me, and consider the sound\nmaterial of which the cultivated class here is made up,--what high\npersonal worth, what love of men, what hope, is joined with rich\ninformation and practical power, and that the most distinguished by\ngenius and culture are in this class of benefactors,--I cannot distrust\nthis great knighthood of virtue, or doubt that the interests of science,\nof letters, of politics and humanity, are safe. I think their hands are\nstrong enough to hold up the Republic. I read the promise of better\ntimes and of greater men.\n\n\n\n\n                        PERSIAN POETRY.\n\n\n\n\n                        PERSIAN POETRY.\n\n\nTO Baron von Hammer Purgstall, who died in Vienna in 1856, we owe our\nbest knowledge of the Persians. He has translated into German, besides\nthe \"Divan\" of Hafiz, specimens of two hundred poets, who wrote during a\nperiod of five and a half centuries, from A. D. 1050 to 1600. The seven\nmasters of the Persian Parnassus--Firdousi, Enweri, Nisami,\nDschelaleddin, Saadi, Hafiz, and Dschami--have ceased to be empty names;\nand others, like Ferideddin Attar and Omar Chiam, promise to rise in\nWestern estimation. That for which mainly books exist is communicated in\nthese rich extracts. Many qualities go to make a good telescope,--as the\nlargeness of the field, facility of sweeping the meridian, achromatic\npurity of lenses, and so forth,--but the one eminent value is the\nspace-penetrating power; and there are many virtues in books,--but the\nessential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock, by the record\nof new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions, which distribute\nfacts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.\n\nOriental life and society, especially in the Southern nations, stand in\nviolent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability,\nand the vast average of comfort of the Western nations. Life in the East\nis fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. Its elements are few and\nsimple, not exhibiting the long range and undulation of European\nexistence, but rapidly reaching the best and the worst. The rich feed on\nfruits and game,--the poor, on a watermelon's peel. All or nothing is\nthe genius of Oriental life. Favor of the Sultan, or his displeasure, is\na question of Fate. A war is undertaken for an epigram or a distich, as\nin Europe for a duchy. The prolific sun, and the sudden and rank plenty\nwhich his heat engenders, make subsistence easy. On the other side, the\ndesert, the simoom, the mirage, the lion, and the plague endanger it,\nand life hangs on the contingency of a skin of water more or less. The\nvery geography of old Persia showed these contrasts. \"My father's\nempire,\" said Cyrus to Xenophon, \"is so large, that people perish with\ncold, at one extremity, whilst they are suffocated with heat, at the\nother.\" The temperament of the people agrees with this life in extremes.\nReligion and poetry are all their civilization. The religion teaches an\ninexorable Destiny. It distinguishes only two days in each man's\nhistory,--his birthday, called _the Day of the Lot_, and the Day of\nJudgment. Courage and absolute submission to what is appointed him are\nhis virtues.\n\nThe favor of the climate, making subsistence easy, and encouraging an\noutdoor life, allows to the Eastern nations a highly intellectual\norganization,--leaving out of view, at present, the genius of the\nHindoos (more Oriental in every sense), whom no people have surpassed in\nthe grandeur of their ethical statement. The Persians and the Arabs,\nwith great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the\npleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which\nthe _improvvisatori_ produced on the children of the desert. \"When the\nbard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement was\nalmost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by\nthese rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild\ntribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by their\nself-taught poets, or by the girls of their encampment, will drive\nwarriors to the combat, fearless of death, or prove an ample reward, on\ntheir return from the dangers of the _ghazon_, or the fight. The\nexcitement they produce exceeds that of the grape. He who would\nunderstand the influence of the Homeric ballads in the heroic ages\nshould witness the effect which similar compositions have upon the wild\nnomads of the East.\" Elsewhere he adds, \"Poetry and flowers are the wine\nand spirits of the Arab; a couplet is equal to a bottle, and a rose to a\ndram, without the evil effect of either.\"\n\nThe Persian poetry rests on a mythology whose few legends are connected\nwith the Jewish history, and the anterior traditions of the Pentateuch.\nThe principal figure in the allusions of Eastern poetry is Solomon.\nSolomon had three talismans: first, the signet-ring, by which he\ncommanded the spirits, on the stone of which was engraven the name of\nGod; second, the glass, in which he saw the secrets of his enemies, and\nthe causes of all things, figured; the third, the east-wind, which was\nhis horse. His counsellor was Simorg, king of birds, the all-wise fowl,\nwho had lived ever since the beginning of the world, and now lives alone\non the highest summit of Mount Kaf. No fowler has taken him, and none\nnow living has seen him. By him Solomon was taught the language of\nbirds, so that he heard secrets whenever he went into his gardens. When\nSolomon travelled, his throne was placed on a carpet of green silk, of a\nlength and breadth sufficient for all his army to stand upon,--men\nplacing themselves on his right hand, and the spirits on his left. When\nall were in order, the east-wind, at his command, took up the carpet and\ntransported it, with all that were upon it, whither he pleased,--the\narmy of birds at the same time flying overhead, and forming a canopy to\nshade them from the sun. It is related, that, when the Queen of Sheba\ncame to visit Solomon, he had built, against her arrival, a palace, of\nwhich the floor or pavement was of glass, laid over running water, in\nwhich fish were swimming. The Queen of Sheba was deceived thereby, and\nraised her robes, thinking she was to pass through the water. On the\noccasion of Solomon's marriage, all the beasts, laden with presents,\nappeared before his throne. Behind them all came the ant with a blade of\ngrass: Solomon did not despise the gift of the ant. Asaph, the vizier,\nat a certain time, lost the seal of Solomon, which one of the Dews, or\nevil spirits, found, and, governing in the name of Solomon, deceived the\npeople.\n\nFirdousi, the Persian Homer, has written in the _Shah Nameh_ the annals\nof the fabulous and heroic kings of the country: of Karun (the Persian\nCr\u0153sus), the immeasurably rich gold-maker, who, with all his treasures,\nlies buried not far from the Pyramids, in the sea which bears his name;\nof Jamschid, the binder of demons, whose reign lasted seven hundred\nyears; of Kai Kaus, in whose palace, built by demons on Alberz, gold and\nsilver and precious stones were used so lavishly, that in the brilliancy\nproduced by their combined effect, night and day appeared the same; of\nAfrasiyab, strong as an elephant, whose shadow extended for miles, whose\nheart was bounteous as the ocean, and his hands like the clouds when\nrain falls to gladden the earth. The crocodile in the rolling stream had\nno safety from Afrasiyab. Yet when he came to fight against the generals\nof Kaus, he was but an insect in the grasp of Rustem, who seized him by\nthe girdle, and dragged him from his horse. Rustem felt such anger at\nthe arrogance of the King of Mazinderan, that every hair on his body\nstarted up like a spear. The gripe of his hand cracked the sinews of an\nenemy.\n\nThese legends,--with Chiser, the fountain of life, Tuba, the tree of\nlife,--the romances of the loves of Leila and Medschun, of Chosru and\nSchirin, and those of the nightingale for the rose,--pearl-diving, and\nthe virtues of gems,--the cohol, a cosmetic by which pearls and eyebrows\nare indelibly stained black,--the bladder in which musk is brought,--the\ndown of the lip, the mole on the cheek, the eyelash,--lilies, roses,\ntulips, and jasmines,--make the staple imagery of Persian odes.\n\nThe Persians have epics and tales, but, for the most part, they affect\nshort poems and epigrams. Gnomic verses, rules of life conveyed in a\nlively image, especially in an image addressed to the eye, and contained\nin a single stanza, were always current in the East; and if the poem is\nlong, it is only a string of unconnected verses. They use an\ninconsecutiveness quite alarming to Western logic, and the connection\nbetween the stanzas of their longer odes is much like that between the\nrefrain of our old English ballads,\n\n    \"The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,\"\n\nor\n\n    \"The rain it raineth every day,\"\n\nand the main story.\n\nTake, as specimens of these gnomic verses, the following:--\n\n   \"The secret that should not be blown\n      Not one of thy nation must know;\n    You may padlock the gate of a town,\n      But never the mouth of a foe.\"\n\nOr this of Omar Chiam:--\n\n    \"On earth's wide thoroughfares below\n    Two only men contented go:\n    Who knows what's right and what's forbid,\n    And he from whom is knowledge hid.\"\n\nHere is a poem on a melon, by Adsched of Meru:--\n\n    \"Color, taste, and smell, smaragdus, sugar, and musk,--\n    Amber for the tongue, for the eye a picture rare,--\n    If you cut the fruit in slices, every slice a crescent fair,--\n    If you leave it whole, the full harvest moon is there.\"\n\nHafiz is the prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary gifts\nadds to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Burns\nthe insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at\nNature than belongs to either of these bards. He accosts all topics with\nan easy audacity. \"He only,\" he says, \"is fit for company, who knows how\nto prize earthly happiness at the value of a night-cap. Our father Adam\nsold Paradise for two kernels of wheat; then blame me not, if I hold it\ndear at one grapestone.\" He says to the Shah, \"Thou who rulest after\nwords and thoughts which no ear has heard and no mind has thought, abide\nfirm until thy young destiny tears off his blue coat from the old\ngraybeard of the sky.\" He says,--\n\n   \"I batter the wheel of heaven\n      When it rolls not rightly by;\n    I am not one of the snivellers\n      Who fall thereon and die.\"\n\nThe rapidity of his turns is always surprising us:--\n\n    \"See how the roses burn!\n      Bring wine to quench the fire!\n    Alas! the flames come up with us,--\n      We perish with desire.\"\n\nAfter the manner of his nation, he abounds in pregnant sentences which\nmight be engraved on a sword-blade and almost on a ring.\n\n  \"In honor dies he to whom the great seems ever wonderful.\"\n\n  \"Here is the sum, that, when one door opens, another shuts.\"\n\n  \"On every side is an ambush laid by the robber-troops of circumstance;\n  hence it is that the horseman of life urges on his courser at headlong\n  speed.\"\n\n  \"The earth is a host who murders his guests.\"\n\n  \"Good is what goes on the road of Nature. On the straight way the\n  traveller never misses.\"\n\n    \"Alas! till now I had not known\n    My guide and Fortune's guide are one.\"\n\n    \"The understanding's copper coin\n    Counts not with the gold of love.\"\n\n    \"'Tis writ on Paradise's gate,\n    'Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!'\"\n\n    \"The world is a bride superbly dressed;--\n    Who weds her for dowry must pay his soul.\"\n\n    \"Loose the knots of the heart; never think on thy fate:\n    No Euclid has yet disentangled that snarl.\"\n\n    \"There resides in the grieving\n      A poison to kill;\n    Beware to go near them\n      'Tis pestilent still.\"\n\nHarems and wine-shops only give him a new ground of observation, whence\nto draw sometimes a deeper moral than regulated sober life affords,--and\nthis is foreseen:--\n\n    \"I will be drunk and down with wine;\n    Treasures we find in a ruined house.\"\n\nRiot, he thinks, can snatch from the deeply hidden lot the veil that\ncovers it:--\n\n    \"To be wise the dull brain so earnestly throbs,\n    Bring bands of wine for the stupid head.\"\n\n    \"The Builder of heaven\n      Hath sundered the earth,\n    So that no footway\n      Leads out of it forth.\n\n    \"On turnpikes of wonder\n      Wine leads the mind forth,\n    Straight, sidewise, and upward,\n      West, southward, and north.\n\n    \"Stands the vault adamantine\n      Until the Doomsday;\n    The wine-cup shall ferry\n      Thee o'er it away.\"\n\nThat hardihood and self-equality of every sound nature, which result\nfrom the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as the\nworld, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him an\nobject of interest, and his every phrase and syllable significant, are\nin Hafiz, and abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone.\n\nHis was the fluent mind in which every thought and feeling came readily\nto the lips. \"Loose the knots of the heart,\" he says. We absorb elements\nenough, but have not leaves and lungs for healthy perspiration and\ngrowth. An air of sterility, of incompetence to their proper aims,\nbelongs to many who have both experience and wisdom. But a large\nutterance, a river that makes its own shores, quick perception and\ncorresponding expression, a constitution to which every morrow is a new\nday, which is equal to the needs of life, at once tender and bold, with\ngreat arteries,--this generosity of ebb and flow satisfies, and we\nshould be willing to die when our time comes, having had our swing and\ngratification. The difference is not so much in the quality of men's\nthoughts as in the power of uttering them. What is pent and smouldered\nin the dumb actor is not pent in the poet, but passes over into new\nform, at once relief and creation.\n\nThe other merit of Hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is a\ncertificate of profound thought. We accept the religions and politics\ninto which we fall; and it is only a few delicate spirits who are\nsufficient to see that the whole web of convention is the imbecility of\nthose whom it entangles,--that the mind suffers no religion and no\nempire but its own. It indicates this respect to absolute truth by the\nuse it makes of the symbols that are most stable and reverend, and\ntherefore is always provoking the accusation of irreligion.\n\nHypocrisy is the perpetual butt of his arrows.\n\n    \"Let us draw the cowl through the brook of wine.\"\n\nHe tells his mistress, that not the dervis, or the monk, but the lover,\nhas in his heart the spirit which makes the ascetic and the saint; and\ncertainly not their cowls and mummeries, but her glances, can impart to\nhim the fire and virtue needful for such self-denial. Wrong shall not be\nwrong to Hafiz, for the name's sake. A law or statute is to him what a\nfence is to a nimble school-boy,--a temptation for a jump. \"We would do\nnothing but good, else would shame come to us on the day when the soul\nmust hie hence; and should they then deny us Paradise, the Houris\nthemselves would forsake that, and come out to us.\"\n\nHis complete intellectual emancipation he communicates to the reader.\nThere is no example of such facility of allusion, such use of all\nmaterials. Nothing is too high, nothing too low, for his occasion. He\nfears nothing, he stops for nothing. Love is a leveller, and Allah\nbecomes a groom, and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns to his\nmistress or to his cupbearer. This boundless charter is the right of\ngenius.\n\nWe do not wish to strew sugar on bottled spiders, or try to make\nmystical divinity out of the Song of Solomon, much less out of the\nerotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz. Hafiz himself is determined to\ndefy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and\nthrows it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after\nthe turban. But the love or the wine of Hafiz is not to be confounded\nwith vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in which the song is written that\nimports, and not the topics. Hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys,\nbirds, mornings, and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and\nsympathy with every form of beauty and joy; and lays the emphasis on\nthese to mark his scorn of sanctimony and base prudence. These are the\nnatural topics and language of his wit and perception. But it is the\nplay of wit and the joy of song that he loves; and if you mistake him\nfor a low rioter, he turns short on you with verses which express the\npoverty of sensual joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the most\nunpalatable affirmations of heroic sentiment and contempt for the world.\nSometimes it is a glance from the height of thought, as thus:--\n\n  \"Bring wine; for, in the audience-hall of the soul's independence, what\n  is sentinel or Sultan? what is the wise man or the intoxicated?\"\n\nAnd sometimes his feast, feasters, and world are only one pebble more in\nthe eternal vortex and revolution of Fate:--\n\n    \"I am: what I am\n    My dust will be again.\"\n\nA saint might lend an ear to the riotous fun of Falstaff; for it is not\ncreated to excite the animal appetites, but to vent the joy of a\nsupernal intelligence. In all poetry, Pindar's rule\nholds,--\u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u03b5\u03af it speaks to the intelligent; and\nHafiz is a poet for poets, whether he write, as sometimes, with a\nparrot's, or, as at other times, with an eagle's quill.\n\nEvery song of Hafiz affords new proof of the unimportance of your\nsubject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general,\nwhat is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to\ngrandees? Yet in the \"Divan\" you would not skip them, since his muse\nseldom supports him better.\n\n    \"What lovelier forms things wear,\n    Now that the Shah comes back!\"\n\nAnd again:--\n\n    \"Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down,\n    Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear.\"\n\nIt is told of Hafiz, that, when he had written a compliment to a\nhandsome youth,--\n\n    \"Take my heart in thy hand, O beautiful boy of Shiraz!\n    I would give for the mole on thy cheek Samarcand and\n           Buchara!\"--\n\nthe verses came to the ears of Timour in his palace. Timour taxed Hafiz\nwith treating disrespectfully his two cities, to raise and adorn which\nhe had conquered nations. Hafiz replied, \"Alas, my lord, if I had not\nbeen so prodigal, I had not been so poor!\"\n\nThe Persians had a mode of establishing copyright the most secure of any\ncontrivance with which we are acquainted. The law of the _ghaselle_, or\nshorter ode, requires that the poet insert his name in the last stanza.\nAlmost every one of several hundreds of poems of Hafiz contains his name\nthus interwoven more or less closely with the subject of the piece. It\nis itself a test of skill, as this self-naming is not quite easy. We\nremember but two or three examples in English poetry: that of Chaucer,\nin the \"House of Fame\"; Jonson's epitaph on his son,--\n\n    \"Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry\";\n\nand Cowley's,--\n\n    \"The melancholy Cowley lay.\"\n\nBut it is easy to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the most\nplayful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun\nof Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, \"The angels\nin heaven were lately learning his last pieces.\" He says, \"The fishes\nshed their pearls, out of desire and longing as soon as the ship of\nHafiz swims the deep.\"\n\n    \"Out of the East, and out of the West, no man understands me;\n    O, the happier I, who confide to none but the wind!\n    This morning heard I how the lyre of the stars resounded,\n   'Sweeter tones have we heard from Hafiz!'\"\n\nAgain,--\n\n  \"I heard the harp of the planet Venus, and it said in the early morning,\n  'I am the disciple of the sweet-voiced Hafiz!'\"\n\nAnd again,--\n\n  \"When Hafiz sings, the angels hearken, and Anaitis, the leader of the\n  starry host, calls even the Messiah in heaven out to the dance.\"\n\n  \"No one has unvailed thoughts like Hafiz, since the locks of the\n  Word-bride were first curled.\"\n\n  \"Only he despises the verse of Hafiz who is not himself by nature\n  noble.\"\n\nBut we must try to give some of these poetic flourishes the metrical\nform which they seem to require:--\n\n    \"Fit for the Pleiads' azure chord\n    The songs I sung, the pearls I bored.\"\n\nAnother:--\n\n    \"I have no hoarded treasure,\n      Yet have I rich content;\n    The first from Allah to the Shah,\n      The last to Hafiz went.\"\n\nAnother:--\n\n    \"High heart, O Hafiz! though not thine\n      Fine gold and silver ore;\n    More worth to thee the gift of song,\n      And the clear insight more.\"\n\nAgain:--\n\n    \"O Hafiz! speak not of thy need;\n      Are not these verses thine?\n    Then all the poets are agreed,\n      No man can less repine.\"\n\nHe asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. To the\nvizier returning from Mecca he says,--\n\n  \"Boast not rashly, prince of pilgrims, of thy fortune. Thou hast indeed\n  seen the temple; but I, the Lord of the temple. Nor has any man inhaled\n  from the musk-bladder of the merchant, or from the musky morning-wind,\n  that sweet air which I am permitted to breathe every hour of the day.\"\n\nAnd with still more vigor in the following lines:--\n\n    \"Oft have I said, I say it once more,\n    I, a wanderer, do not stray from myself.\n    I am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me;\n    What the Eternal says, I stammering say again.\n    Give me what you will; I eat thistles as roses,\n    And according to my food I grow and I give.\n    Scorn me not, but know I have the pearl,\n    And am only seeking one to receive it.\"\n\nAnd his claim has been admitted from the first. The muleteers and\ncamel-drivers, on their way through the desert, sing snatches of his\nsongs, not so much for the thought, as for their joyful temper and tone;\nand the cultivated Persians know his poems by heart. Yet Hafiz does not\nappear to have set any great value on his songs, since his scholars\ncollected them for the first time after his death.\n\nIn the following poem the soul is figured as the Ph\u0153nix alighting on\nTuba, the Tree of Life:--\n\n    \"My ph\u0153nix long ago secured\n      His nest in the sky-vault's cope;\n    In the body's cage immured,\n      He was weary of life's hope.\n\n    \"Round and round this heap of ashes\n      Now flies the bird amain,\n    But in that odorous niche of heaven\n      Nestles the bird again.\n\n    \"Once flies he upward, he will perch\n      On Tuba's golden bough;\n    His home is on that fruited arch\n      Which cools the blest below.\n\n    \"If over this world of ours\n      His wings my ph\u0153nix spread,\n    How gracious falls on land and sea\n      The soul-refreshing shade!\n\n    \"Either world inhabits he,\n      Sees oft below him planets roll;\n    His body is all of air compact,\n      Of Allah's love his soul.\"\n\nHere is an ode which is said to be a favorite with all educated\nPersians:--\n\n    \"Come!--the palace of heaven rests on a\u00ebry pillars,--\n    Come, and bring me wine; our days are wind.\n    I declare myself the slave of that masculine soul\n    Which ties and alliance on earth once forever renounces.\n    Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of heaven\n    Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy?\n    O high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch;\n    This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest.\n    Hearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven;\n    I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net.\n    I, too, have a counsel for thee; O, mark it and keep it,\n    Since I received the same from the Master above:\n    Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls;\n    A thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride.\n    Cumber thee not for the world, and this my precept forget not,\n    'Tis but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart has left us.\n    Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks;\n    Never to me nor to thee was option imparted;\n    Neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose.\n    The loving nightingale mourns;--cause enow for mourning;--\n    Why envies the bird the streaming verses of Hafiz?\n    Know that a god bestowed on him eloquent speech.\"\n\nThe cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, the birds\nthat inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in these\nmusky verses, and are always named with effect. \"The willows,\" he says,\n\"bow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness.\"\nWe may open anywhere on a floral catalogue.\n\n    \"By breath of beds of roses drawn,\n      I found the grove in the morning pure,\n    In the concert of the nightingales\n      My drunken brain to cure.\n\n    \"With unrelated glance\n      I looked the rose in the eye:\n    The rose in the hour of gloaming\n      Flamed like a lamp hard-by.\n\n    \"She was of her beauty proud,\n      And prouder of her youth,\n    The while unto her flaming heart\n      The bulbul gave his truth.\n\n    \"The sweet narcissus closed\n      Its eye, with passion pressed;\n    The tulips out of envy burned\n      Moles in their scarlet breast.\n\n    \"The lilies white prolonged\n      Their sworded tongue to the smell;\n    The clustering anemones\n      Their pretty secrets tell.\"\n\nPresently we have,--\n\n             \"All day the rain\n    Bathed the dark hyacinths in vain,\n    The flood may pour from morn till night\n    Nor wash the pretty Indians white.\"\n\nAnd so onward, through many a page.\n\nThis picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri, seems to belong\nto Hafiz:--\n\n    \"O'er the garden water goes the wind alone\n      To rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave;\n    The fire is quenched on the dear hearthstone,\n      But it burns again on the tulips brave.\"\n\nFriendship is a favorite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have\nmatched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.\n\nHafiz says,--\n\n  \"Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship; since to the\n  unsound no heavenly knowledge enters.\"\n\nIbn Jemin writes thus:--\n\n    \"Whilst I disdain the populace,\n    I find no peer in higher place.\n    Friend is a word of royal tone,\n    Friend is a poem all alone.\n    Wisdom is like the elephant,\n    Lofty and rare inhabitant:\n    He dwells in deserts or in courts;\n    With hucksters he has no resorts.\"\n\nDschami says,--\n\n    \"A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe,\n      So much the kindlier shows him than before;\n    Throw stones at him, or ruder javelins throw,\n      He builds with stone and steel a firmer floor.\"\n\nOf the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations,\nthough it forms the staple of the \"Divan.\" He has run through the whole\ngamut of passion,--from the sacred to the borders, and over the borders,\nof the profane. The same confusion of high and low, the celerity of\nflight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him.\nFrom the plain text,--\n\n    \"The chemist of love\n      Will this perishing mould,\n    Were it made out of mire,\n      Transmute into gold,\"--\n\nhe proceeds to the celebration of his passion; and nothing in his\nreligious or in his scientific traditions is too sacred or too remote to\nafford a token of his mistress. The Moon thought she knew her own orbit\nwell enough; but when she saw the curve on Zuleika's cheek, she was at a\nloss:--\n\n    \"And since round lines are drawn\n      My darling's lips about,\n    The very Moon looks puzzled on,\n      And hesitates in doubt\n    If the sweet curve that rounds thy mouth\n    Be not her true way to the South.\"\n\nHis ingenuity never sleeps:--\n\n    \"Ah, could I hide me in my song,\n    To kiss thy lips from which it flows!\"\n\nand plays in a thousand pretty courtesies:--\n\n    \"Fair fall thy soft heart!\n      A good work wilt thou do?\n    O, pray for the dead\n      Whom thine eyelashes slew!\"\n\nAnd what a nest has he found for his bonny bird to take up her abode\nin!--\n\n    \"They strew in the path of kings and czars\n      Jewels and gems of price:\n    But for thy head I will pluck down stars,\n      And pave thy way with eyes.\n\n    \"I have sought for thee a costlier dome\n      Than Mahmoud's palace high,\n    And thou, returning, find thy home\n      In the apple of Love's eye.\"\n\nThen we have all degrees of passionate abandonment:--\n\n    \"I know this perilous love-lane\n      No whither the traveller leads,\n    Yet my fancy the sweet scent of\n      Thy tangled tresses feeds.\n\n    \"In the midnight of thy locks,\n      I renounce the day;\n    In the ring of thy rose-lips,\n      My heart forgets to pray.\"\n\nAnd sometimes his love rises to a religious sentiment:--\n\n    \"Plunge in yon angry waves,\n      Renouncing doubt and care;\n    The flowing of the seven broad seas\n      Shall never wet thy hair.\n\n    \"Is Allah's face on thee\n      Bending with love benign,\n    And thou not less on Allah's eye\n      O fairest! turnest thine.\"\n\nWe add to these fragments of Hafiz a few specimens from other poets.\n\n              NISAMI.\n\n   \"While roses bloomed along the plain,\n    The nightingale to the falcon said,\n    'Why, of all birds, must thou be dumb?\n    With closed mouth thou utterest,\n    Though dying, no last word to man.\n    Yet sitt'st thou on the hand of princes,\n    And feedest on the grouse's breast,\n    Whilst I, who hundred thousand jewels\n    Squander in a single tone,\n    Lo! I feed myself with worms,\n    And my dwelling is the thorn.'--\n    The falcon answered, 'Be all ear:\n    I, experienced in affairs,\n    See fifty things, say never one;\n    But thee the people prizes not.\n    Who, doing nothing, say'st a thousand.\n    To me, appointed to the chase,\n    The king's hand gives the grouse's breast;\n    Whilst a chatterer like thee\n    Must gnaw worms in the thorn. Farewell!'\"\n\nThe following passages exhibit the strong tendency of the Persian poets\nto contemplative and religious poetry and to allegory.\n\n              ENWERI.\n\n           BODY AND SOUL.\n\n    \"A painter in China once painted a hall;--\n    Such a web never hung on an emperor's wall;--\n    One half from his brush with rich colors did run,\n    The other he touched with a beam of the sun;\n    So that all which delighted the eye in one side,\n    The same, point for point, in the other replied.\n\n    \"In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found;\n    Thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground:\n    Is one half depicted with colors less bright?\n    Beware that the counterpart blazes with light!\"\n\n              IBN JEMIN.\n\n    \"I read on the porch of a palace bold\n      In a purple tablet letters cast,--\n    'A house though a million winters old,\n      A house of earth comes down at last;\n    Then quarry thy stones from the crystal All,\n    And build the dome that shall not fall.'\"\n\n\n\"What need,\" cries the mystic Feisi, \"of palaces and tapestry? What need\neven of a bed?\"\n\n    \"The eternal Watcher, who doth wake\n      All night in the body's earthen chest,\n    Will of thine arms a pillow make,\n      And a bolster of thy breast.\"\n\nFerideddin Attar wrote the \"Bird Conversations,\" a mystical tale, in\nwhich the birds, coming together to choose their king, resolve on a\npilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. From this\npoem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as\na proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods. The tone is quite\nmodern. In the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length and\ndifficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out. Three only\npersevered, and arrived before the throne of the Simorg.\n\n    \"The bird-soul was ashamed;\n    Their body was quite annihilated;\n    They had cleaned themselves from the dust,\n    And were by the light ensouled.\n    What was, and was not,--the Past,--\n    Was wiped out from their breast.\n    The sun from near-by beamed\n    Clearest light into their soul;\n    The resplendence of the Simorg beamed\n    As one back from all three.\n    They knew not, amazed, if they\n    Were either this or that.\n    They saw themselves all as Simorg,\n    Themselves in the eternal Simorg.\n    When to the Simorg up they looked,\n    They beheld him among themselves;\n    And when they looked on each other,\n    They saw themselves in the Simorg.\n    A single look grouped the two parties,\n    The Simorg emerged, the Simorg vanished,\n    This in that, and that in this,\n    As the world has never heard.\n    So remained they, sunk in wonder,\n    Thoughtless in deepest thinking,\n    And quite unconscious of themselves.\n    Speechless prayed they to the Highest\n    To open this secret,\n    And to unlock _Thou_ and _We_.\n    There came an answer without tongue.--\n    'The Highest is a sun-mirror;\n    Who comes to Him sees himself therein,\n    Sees body and soul, and soul and body;\n    When you came to the Simorg,\n    Three therein appeared to you,\n    And, had fifty of you come,\n    So had you seen yourselves as many.\n    Him has none of us yet seen.\n    Ants see not the Pleiades.\n    Can the gnat grasp with his teeth\n    The body of the elephant?\n    What you see is He not;\n    What you hear is He not.\n    The valleys which you traverse,\n    The actions which you perform,\n    They lie under our treatment\n    And among our properties.\n    You as three birds are amazed,\n    Impatient, heartless, confused:\n    Far over you am I raised,\n    Since I am in act Simorg.\n    Ye blot out my highest being,\n    That ye may find yourselves on my throne;\n    Forever ye blot out yourselves,\n    As shadows in the sun. Farewell!'\"\n\n\n\n\n                        INSPIRATION.\n\n\n\n\n                        INSPIRATION.\n\n\nIT was Watt who told King George III. that he dealt in an article of\nwhich kings were said to be fond,--Power. 'Tis certain that the one\nthing we wish to know is, where power is to be bought. But we want a\nfiner kind than that of commerce; and every reasonable man would give\nany price of house and land, and future provision, for condensation,\nconcentration, and the recalling at will of high mental energy. Our\nmoney is only a second best. We would jump to buy power with it, that\nis, intellectual perception moving the will. That is first best. But we\ndon't know where the shop is. If Watt knew, he forgot to tell us the\nnumber of the street. There are times when the intellect is so active\nthat everything seems to run to meet it. Its supplies are found without\nmuch thought as to studies. Knowledge runs to the man, and the man runs\nto knowledge. In spring, when the snow melts, the maple-trees flow with\nsugar, and you cannot get tubs fast enough; but it is only for a few\ndays. The hunter on the prairie, at the right season, has no need of\nchoosing his ground; east, west, by the river, by the timber, he is\neverywhere near his game. But the favorable conditions are rather the\nexception than the rule.\n\nThe aboriginal man in geology, and in the dim lights of Darwin's\nmicroscope, is not an engaging figure. We are very glad that he ate his\nfishes and snails and marrow-bones out of our sight and hearing, and\nthat his doleful experiences were got through with so very long ago.\nThey combed his mane, they pared his nails, cut off his tail, set him on\nend, sent him to school, and made him pay taxes, before he could begin\nto write his sad story for the compassion or the repudiation of his\ndescendants, who are all but unanimous to disown him. We must take him\nas we find him,--pretty well on in his education, and, in all _our_\nknowledge of him, an interesting creature, with a will, an invention, an\nimagination, a conscience, and an inextinguishable hope.\n\nThe Hunterian law of _arrested development_ is not confined to vegetable\nand animal structure, but reaches the human intellect also. In the\nsavage man, thought is infantile; and in the civilized, unequal, and\nranging up and down a long scale. In the best races it is rare and\nimperfect. In happy moments it is reinforced, and carries out what were\nrude suggestions to larger scope, and to clear and grand conclusions.\nThe poet cannot see a natural phenomenon which does not express to him a\ncorrespondent fact in his mental experience; he is made aware of a power\nto carry on and complete the metamorphosis of natural into spiritual\nfacts. Everything which we hear for the first time was expected by the\nmind; the newest discovery was expected. In the mind we call this\nenlarged power Inspiration. I believe that nothing great and lasting can\nbe done except by inspiration, by leaning on the secret augury. The\nman's insight and power are interrupted and occasional; he can see and\ndo this or that cheap task at will, but it steads him not beyond. He is\nfain to make the ulterior step by mechanical means. It cannot so be\ndone. That ulterior step is to be also by inspiration; if not through\nhim, then by another man. Every real step is by what a poet called\n\"lyrical glances,\" by lyrical facility, and never by main strength and\nignorance. Years of mechanic toil will only seem to do it; it will not\nso be done.\n\nInspiration is like yeast. 'Tis no matter in which of half a dozen ways\nyou procure the infection; you can apply one or the other equally well\nto your purpose, and get your loaf of bread. And every earnest workman,\nin whatever kind, knows some favorable conditions for his task. When I\nwish to write on any topic, 'tis of no consequence what kind of book or\nman gives me a hint or a motion, nor how far off that is from my topic.\n\nPower is the first good. Rarey can tame a wild horse; but if he could\ngive speed to a dull horse, were not that better? The toper finds,\nwithout asking, the road to the tavern, but the poet does not know the\npitcher that holds his nectar. Every youth should know the way to\nprophecy as surely as the miller understands how to let on the water or\nthe engineer the steam. A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable\nprosperity that can come to us. Fine clothes, equipages, villa, park,\nsocial consideration, cannot cover up real poverty and insignificance\nfrom my own eyes, or from others like mine.\n\nThoughts let us into realities. Neither miracle, nor magic, nor any\nreligious tradition, not the immortality of the private soul, is\nincredible, after we have experienced an insight, a thought. I think it\ncomes to some men but once in their life, sometimes a religious impulse,\nsometimes an intellectual insight. But what we want is consecutiveness.\n'Tis with us a flash of light, then a long darkness, then a flash again.\nThe separation of our days by sleep almost destroys identity. Could we\nbut turn these fugitive sparkles into an astronomy of Copernican worlds!\nWith most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day\ntogether. Their house and trade and families serve them as ropes to give\na coarse continuity. But they have forgotten the thoughts of yesterday;\nthey say to-day what occurs to them, and something else to-morrow. This\ninsecurity of possession, this quick ebb of power,--as if life were a\nthunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then\ncannot see your hand,--tantalizes us. We cannot make the inspiration\nconsecutive. A glimpse, a point of view that by its brightness excludes\nthe purview, is granted, but no panorama. A fuller inspiration should\ncause the point to flow and become a line, should bend the line and\ncomplete the circle. To-day the electric machine will not work, no spark\nwill pass; then presently the world is all a cat's back, all sparkle and\nshock. Sometimes there is no sea-fire, and again the sea is aglow to the\nhorizon. Sometimes the \u00c6olian harp is dumb all day in the window, and\nagain it is garrulous, and tells all the secrets of the world. In June\nthe morning is noisy with birds; in August they are already getting old\nand silent.\n\nHence arises the question, Are these moods in any degree within control?\nIf we knew how to command them! But where is the Franklin with kite or\nrod for this fluid?--a Franklin who can draw off electricity from Jove\nhimself, and convey it into the arts of life, inspire men, take them off\ntheir feet, withdraw them from the life of trifles and gain and comfort,\nand make the world transparent, so that they can read the symbols of\nnature? What metaphysician has undertaken to enumerate the tonics of the\ntorpid mind, the rules for the recovery of inspiration? That is least\nwithin control which is best in them. Of the _modus_ of inspiration we\nhave no knowledge. But in the experience of meditative men there is a\ncertain agreement as to the conditions of reception. Plato, in his\nseventh Epistle, notes that the perception is only accomplished by long\nfamiliarity with the objects of intellect, and a life according to the\nthings themselves. \"Then a light, as if leaping from a fire, will on a\nsudden be enkindled in the soul, and will then itself nourish itself.\"\n\nHe said again, \"The man who is his own master knocks in vain at the\ndoors of poetry.\" The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the\nbees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. What is a man\ngood for without enthusiasm? and what is enthusiasm but this daring of\nruin for its object? There are thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls;\nwe are not the less drawn to them. The moth flies into the flame of the\nlamp; and Swedenborg must solve the problems that haunt him, though he\nbe crazed or killed.\n\nThere is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of\nfaith over works. The raptures of goodness are as old as history and new\nwith this morning's sun. The legends of Arabia, Persia, and India are of\nthe same complexion as the Christian. Socrates, Menu, Confucius,\nZertusht,--we recognize in all of them this ardor to solve the hints of\nthought.\n\nI hold that ecstasy will be found normal, or only an example on a higher\nplane of the same gentle gravitation by which stones fall and rivers\nrun. Experience identifies. Shakspeare seems to you miraculous; but the\nwonderful juxtapositions, parallelisms, transfers, which his genius\neffected were all to him locked together as links of a chain, and the\nmode precisely as conceivable and familiar to higher intelligence as the\nindex-making of the literary hack. The result of the hack is\ninconceivable to the type-setter who waits for it.\n\nWe must prize our own youth. Later, we want heat to execute our plans:\nthe good-will, the knowledge, the whole armory of means, are all\npresent; but a certain heat that once used not to fail refuses its\noffice, and all is vain until this capricious fuel is supplied. It seems\na semi-animal heat; as if tea, or wine, or sea-air, or mountains, or a\ngenial companion, or a new thought suggested in book or conversation,\ncould fire the train, wake the fancy, and the clear perception.\nPit-coal,--where to find it? 'Tis of no use that your engine is made\nlike a watch,--that you are a good workman, and know how to drive it, if\nthere is no coal. We are waiting until some tyrannous idea emerging out\nof heaven shall seize and bereave us of this liberty with which we are\nfalling abroad. Well, we have the same hint or suggestion, day by day.\n\"I am not,\" says the man, \"at the top of my condition to-day, but the\nfavorable hour will come when I can command all my powers, and when that\nwill be easy to do which is at this moment impossible.\" See how the\npassions augment our force,--anger, love, ambition! sometimes sympathy,\nand the expectation of men. Garrick said, that on the stage his great\nparoxysms surprised himself as much as his audience. If this is true on\nthis low plane, it is true on the higher. Swedenborg's genius was the\nperception of the doctrine \"that the Lord flows into the spirits of\nangels and of men\"; and all poets have signalized their consciousness of\nrare moments when they were superior to themselves,--when a light, a\nfreedom, a power came to them, which lifted them to performances far\nbetter than they could reach at other times; so that a religious poet\nonce told me that \"he valued his poems, not because they were his, but\nbecause they were not.\" He thought the angels brought them to him.\n\nJacob Behmen said: \"Art has not wrote here, nor was there any time to\nconsider how to set it punctually down according to the right\nunderstanding of the letters, but all was ordered according to the\ndirection of the spirit, which often went on haste,--so that the\npenman's hand, by reason he was not accustomed to it, did often shake.\nAnd, though I could have written in a more accurate, fair, and plain\nmanner, the burning fire often forced forward with speed, and the hand\nand pen must hasten directly after it, for it comes and goes as a sudden\nshower. In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more, than if I had\nbeen many years together at an university.\"\n\nThe depth of the notes which we accidentally sound on the strings of\nnature is out of all proportion to our taught and ascertained faculty,\nand might teach us what strangers and novices we are, vagabond in this\nuniverse of pure power, to which we have only the smallest key. Herrick\nsaid:--\n\n    \"'Tis not every day that I\n    Fitted am to prophesy;\n    No, but when the spirit fills\n    The fantastic panicles,\n    Full of fire, then I write\n    As the Goddess doth indite.\n    Thus, enraged, my lines are hurled,\n    Like the Sibyl's, through the world:\n    Look how next the holy fire\n    Either slakes, or doth retire;\n    So the fancy cools,--till when\n    That brave spirit comes again.\"\n\nBonaparte said: \"There is no man more pusillanimous than I, when I make\na military plan. I magnify all the dangers, and all the possible\nmischances. I am in an agitation utterly painful. That does not prevent\nme from appearing quite serene to the persons who surround me. I am like\na woman with child, and when my resolution is taken, all is forgot,\nexcept whatever can make it succeed.\"\n\nThere are, to be sure, certain risks in this presentiment of the\ndecisive perception, as in the use of ether or alcohol.\n\n    \"Great wits to madness nearly are allied;\n    Both serve to make our poverty our pride.\"\n\nAristotle said: \"No great genius was ever without some mixture of\nmadness, nor can anything grand or superior to the voice of common\nmortals be spoken except by the agitated soul.\" We might say of these\nmemorable moments of life, that we were in them, not they in us. We\nfound ourselves by happy fortune in an illuminated portion or meteorous\nzone, and passed out of it again, so aloof was it from any will of ours.\n\"'Tis a principle of war,\" said Napoleon, \"that when you can use the\nlightning, 'tis better than cannon.\"\n\nHow many sources of inspiration can we count? As many as our affinities.\nBut to a practical purpose we may reckon a few of these.\n\n1. Health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air,\nlandscape, and bodily exercise on the mind. The Arabs say that \"Allah\ndoes not count from life the days spent in the chase,\" that is, those\nare thrown in. Plato thought \"exercise would almost cure a guilty\nconscience.\" Sydney Smith said: \"You will never break down in a speech\non the day when you have walked twelve miles.\"\n\nI honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health.\nSleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also\nby dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped. Life\nis in short cycles or periods; we are quickly tired, but we have rapid\nrallies. A man is spent by his work, starved, prostrate; he will not\nlift his hand to save his life; he can never think more. He sinks into\ndeep sleep and wakes with renewed youth, with hope, courage, fertile in\nresources, and keen for daring adventure.\n\n    \"Sleep is like death, and after sleep\n      The world seems new begun;\n    White thoughts stand luminous and firm,\n      Like statues in the sun;\n    Refreshed from supersensuous founts,\n    The soul to clearer vision mounts.\"[5]\n\nA man must be able to escape from his cares and fears, as well as from\nhunger and want of sleep; so that another Arabian proverb has its coarse\ntruth: \"When the belly is full, it says to the head, Sing, fellow!\" The\nperfection of writing is when mind and body are both in key; when the\nmind finds perfect obedience in the body. And wine, no doubt, and all\nfine food, as of delicate fruits, furnish some elemental wisdom. And the\nfire, too, as it burns in the chimney; for I fancy that my logs, which\nhave grown so long in sun and wind by Walden, are a kind of muses. So of\nall the particulars of health and exercise, and fit nutriment, and\ntonics. Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and\nfine sentiment in a chest of tea.\n\n2. The experience of writing letters is one of the keys to the _modus_\nof inspiration. When we have ceased for a long time to have any fulness\nof thoughts that once made a diary a joy as well as a necessity, and\nhave come to believe that an image or a happy turn of expression is no\nlonger at our command, in writing a letter to a friend we may find that\nwe rise to thought and to a cordial power of expression that costs no\neffort, and it seems to us that this facility may be indefinitely\napplied and resumed. The wealth of the mind in this respect of seeing is\nlike that of a looking-glass, which is never tired or worn by any\nmultitude of objects which it reflects. You may carry it all round the\nworld, it is ready and perfect as ever for new millions.\n\n3. Another consideration, though it will not so much interest young men,\nwill cheer the heart of older scholars, namely, that there is diurnal\nand secular rest. As there is this daily renovation of sensibility, so\nit sometimes, if rarely, happens that after a season of decay or\neclipse, darkening months or years, the faculties revive to their\nfullest force. One of the best facts I know in metaphysical science is\nNiebuhr's joyful record that, after his genius for interpreting history\nhad failed him for several years, this divination returned to him. As\nthis rejoiced me, so does Herbert's poem \"The Flower.\" His health had\nbroken down early, he had lost his muse, and in this poem he says:--\n\n    \"And now in age I bud again,\n    After so many deaths I live and write;\n    I once more smell the dew and rain,\n    And relish versing: O my only light,\n          It cannot be\n          That I am he\n    On whom thy tempests fell all night.\"\n\nHis poem called \"The Forerunners\" also has supreme interest. I\nunderstand \"The Harbingers\" to refer to the signs of age and decay which\nhe detects in himself, not only in his constitution, but in his fancy\nand his facility and grace in writing verse; and he signalizes his\ndelight in this skill, and his pain that the Herricks, Lovelaces, and\nMarlows, or whoever else, should use the like genius in language to\nsensual purpose, and consoles himself that his own faith and the divine\nlife in him remain to him unchanged, unharmed.\n\n4. The power of the will is sometimes sublime; and what is will for, if\nit cannot help us in emergencies? Seneca says of an almost fatal\nsickness that befell him, \"The thought of my father, who could not have\nsustained such a blow as my death, restrained me; I commanded myself to\nlive.\" Goethe said to Eckermann, \"I work more easily when the barometer\nis high than when it is low. Since I know this, I endeavor, when the\nbarometer is low, to counteract the injurious effect by greater\nexertion, and my attempt is successful.\"\n\n\"To the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift.\" Yes, for\nthey know how to give you in one moment the solution of the riddle you\nhave pondered for months. \"Had I not lived with Mirabeau,\" says Dumont,\n\"I never should have known all that can be done in one day, or, rather,\nin an interval of twelve hours. A day to him was of more value than a\nweek or a month to others. To-morrow to him was not the same impostor as\nto most others.\"\n\n5. Plutarch affirms that \"souls are naturally endowed with the faculty\nof prediction, and the chief cause that excites this faculty and virtue\nis a certain temperature of air and winds.\" My anchorite thought it \"sad\nthat atmospheric influences should bring to our dust the communion of\nthe soul with the Infinite.\" But I am glad that the atmosphere should be\nan excitant, glad to find the dull rock itself to be deluged with\nDeity,--to be theist, Christian, poetic. The fine influences of the\nmorning few can explain, but all will admit. Goethe acknowledges them in\nthe poem in which he dislodges the nightingale from her place as Leader\nof the Muses.\n\n\n              MUSAGETES.\n\n    \"Often in deep midnights\n    I called on the sweet muses.\n    No dawn shines,\n    And no day will appear:\n    But at the right hour\n    The lamp brings me pious light,\n    That it, instead of Aurora or Ph\u0153bus,\n    May enliven my quiet industry.\n    But they left me lying in sleep\n    Dull, and not to be enlivened,\n    And after every late morning\n    Followed unprofitable days.\n\n    \"When now the Spring stirred,\n    I said to the nightingales:\n    'Dear nightingales, trill\n    Early, O, early before my lattice,\n    Wake me out of the deep sleep\n    Which mightily chains the young man.'\n    But the love-filled singers\n    Poured by night before my window\n    Their sweet melodies,--\n    Kept awake my dear soul,\n    Roused tender new longings\n    In my lately touched bosom,\n    And so the night passed,\n    And Aurora found me sleeping;\n    Yea, hardly did the sun wake me.\n    At last it has become summer,\n    And at the first glimpse of morning\n    The busy early fly stings me\n    Out of my sweet slumber.\n    Unmerciful she returns again:\n    When often the half-awake victim\n    Impatiently drives her off,\n    She calls hither the unscrupulous sisters.\n    And from my eyelids\n    Sweet sleep must depart.\n    Vigorous, I spring from my couch,\n    Seek the beloved Muses,\n    Find them in the beech grove,\n    Pleased to receive me;\n    And I thank the annoying insect\n    For many a golden hour.\n    Stand, then, for me, ye tormenting creatures,\n    Highly praised by the poet\n    As the true Musagetes.\"\n\nThe French have a proverb to the effect that not the day only, but all\nthings have their morning,--\"_Il n'y a que le matin en toutes choses_.\"\nAnd it is a primal rule to defend your morning, to keep all its dews on,\nand with fine foresight to relieve it from any jangle of affairs, even\nfrom the question, Which task? I remember a capital prudence of old\nPresident Quincy, who told me that he never went to bed at night until\nhe had laid out the studies for the next morning. I believe that in our\ngood days a well-ordered mind has a new thought awaiting it every\nmorning. And hence, eminently thoughtful men, from the time of\nPythagoras down, have insisted on an hour of solitude every day to meet\ntheir own mind, and learn what oracle it has to impart. If a new view of\nlife or mind gives us joy, so does new arrangement. I don't know but we\ntake as much delight in finding the right place for an old observation,\nas in a new thought.\n\n6. Solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and\ndreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the\nsummer dawns, the October woods! I confide that my reader knows these\ndelicious secrets, has perhaps\n\n                       \"Slighted Minerva's learned tongue,\n    But leaped with joy when on the wind the shell of Clio rung.\"\n\nAre you poetical, impatient of trade, tired of labor and affairs? Do you\nwant Monadnoc, Agiocochook,--or Helvellyn, or Plinlimmon, dear to\nEnglish song, in your closet? Caerleon, Provence, Ossian, and Cadwallon?\nTie a couple of strings across a board and set it in your window, and\nyou have an instrument which no artist's harp can rival. It needs no\ninstructed ear; if you have sensibility, it admits you to sacred\ninteriors; it has the sadness of nature, yet, at the changes, tones of\ntriumph and festal notes ringing out all measures of loftiness. \"Did you\nnever observe,\" says Gray, \"'while rocking winds are piping loud,' that\npause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a\nshrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an \u00c6olian harp? I do\nassure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit.\"\nPerhaps you can recall a delight like it, which spoke to the eye, when\nyou have stood by a lake in the woods, in summer, and saw where little\nflaws of wind whip spots or patches of still water into fleets of\nripples, so sudden, so slight, so spiritual, that it was more like the\nrippling of the Aurora Borealis, at night, than any spectacle of day.\n\n7. But the solitude of nature is not so essential as solitude of habit.\nI have found my advantage in going in summer to a country inn, in winter\nto a city hotel, with a task which would not prosper at home. I thus\nsecured a more absolute seclusion; for it is almost impossible for a\nhousekeeper, who is in the country a small farmer, to exclude\ninterruptions, and even necessary orders, though I bar out by system all\nI can, and resolutely omit, to my constant damage, all that can be\nomitted. At home, the day is cut into short strips. In the hotel, I have\nno hours to keep, no visits to make or receive, and I command an\nastronomic leisure. I forget rain, wind, cold, and heat. At home, I\nremember in my library the wants of the farm, and have all too much\nsympathy. I envy the abstraction of some scholars I have known, who\ncould sit on a curbstone in State Street, put up their back, and solve\ntheir problem. I have more womanly eyes. All the conditions must be\nright for my success, slight as that is. What untunes is as bad as what\ncripples or stuns me. Novelty, surprise, change of scene, refresh the\nartist,--\"break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms,\" as\nHafiz said. The sea-shore, and the taste of two metals in contact, and\nour enlarged powers in the presence, or rather at the approach and at\nthe departure of a friend, and the mixture of lie in truth, and the\nexperience of poetic creativeness which is not found in staying at home,\nnor yet in travelling, but in transitions from one to the other, which\nmust therefore be adroitly managed to present as much transitional\nsurface as possible,--these are the types or conditions of this power.\n\"A ride near the sea, a sail near the shore,\" said the ancient. So\nMontaigne travelled with his books, but did not read in them. \"_La\nNature aime les croisements_,\" says Fourier.\n\nI know there is room for whims here; but in regard to some apparent\ntrifles there is great agreement as to their annoyance. And the machine\nwith which we are dealing is of such an inconceivable delicacy that\nwhims also must be respected. Fire must lend its aid. We not only want\ntime, but warm time. George Sand says, \"I have no enthusiasm for nature\nwhich the slightest chill will not instantly destroy.\" And I remember\nthat Thoreau, with his robust will, yet found certain trifles disturbing\nthe delicacy of that health which composition exacted,--namely, the\nslightest irregularity, even to the drinking too much water on the\npreceding day. Even a steel pen is a nuisance to some writers. Some of\nus may remember, years ago, in the English journals, the petition,\nsigned by Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, and other writers in\nLondon, against the license of the organ-grinders, who infested the\nstreets near their houses, to levy on them blackmail.\n\nCertain localities, as mountain-tops, the sea-side, the shores of rivers\nand rapid brooks, natural parks of oak and pine, where the ground is\nsmooth and unencumbered, are excitants of the muse. Every artist knows\nwell some favorite retirement. And yet the experience of some good\nartists has taught them to prefer the smallest and plainest chamber,\nwith one chair and table, and with no outlook, to these picturesque\nliberties. William Blake said, \"Natural objects always did and do\nweaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me.\" And Sir Joshua\nReynolds had no pleasure in Richmond; he used to say \"the human face was\nhis landscape.\" These indulgences are to be used with great caution.\nAllston rarely left his studio by day. An old friend took him, one fine\nafternoon, a spacious circuit into the country, and he painted two or\nthree pictures as the fruits of that drive. But he made it a rule not to\ngo to the city on two consecutive days. One was rest; more was lost\ntime. The times of force must be well husbanded, and the wise student\nwill remember the prudence of Sir Tristram in _Morte d'Arthur_, who,\nhaving received from the fairy an enchantment of six hours of growing\nstrength every day, took care to fight in the hours when his strength\nincreased; since from noon to night his strength abated. What prudence,\nagain, does every artist, every scholar, need in the security of his\neasel or his desk! These must be remote from the work of the house, and\nfrom all knowledge of the feet that come and go therein. Allston, it is\nsaid, had two or three rooms in different parts of Boston, where he\ncould not be found. For the delicate muses lose their head, if their\nattention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad in\ntalking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your book-shelf\nand your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish\nsome commandment, it makes you odious to men, and men odious to you, and\nyou shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the\nlamp, and you must solve those questions though you die.\n\n8. Conversation, which, when it is best, is a series of intoxications.\nNot Aristotle, not Kant or Hegel, but conversation, is the right\nmetaphysical professor. This is the true school of philosophy,--this the\ncollege where you learn what thoughts are, what powers lurk in those\nfugitive gleams, and what becomes of them; how they make history. A wise\nman goes to this game to play upon others, and to be played upon, and at\nleast as curious to know what can be drawn from himself as what can be\ndrawn from them. For, in discourse with a friend, our thought, hitherto\nwrapped in our consciousness, detaches itself, and allows itself to be\nseen as a thought, in a manner as new and entertaining to us as to our\ncompanions. For provocation of thought, we use ourselves and use each\nother. Some perceptions--I think the best--are granted to the single\nsoul; they come from the depth, and go to the depth, and are the\npermanent and controlling ones. Others it takes two to find. We must be\nwarmed by the fire of sympathy to be brought into the right conditions\nand angles of vision. Conversation; for intellectual activity is\ncontagious. We are emulous. If the tone of the companion is higher than\nours, we delight in rising to it. 'Tis a historic observation that a\nwriter must find an audience up to his thought, or he will no longer\ncare to impart it, but will sink to their level, or be silent. Homer\nsaid, \"When two come together, one apprehends before the other\"; but it\nis because one thought well that the other thinks better: and two men of\ngood mind will excite each other's activity, each attempting still to\ncap the other's thought. In enlarged conversation we have suggestions\nthat require new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and\nsciences. By sympathy, each opens to the eloquence, and begins to see\nwith the eyes of his mind. We were all lonely, thoughtless; and now a\nprinciple appears to all: we see new relations, many truths; every mind\nseizes them as they pass; each catches by the mane one of these strong\ncoursers like horses of the prairie, and rides up and down in the world\nof the intellect. We live day by day under the illusion that it is the\nfact or event that imports, whilst really it is not that which\nsignifies, but the use we put it to, or what we think of it. We esteem\nnations important, until we discover that a few individuals much more\nconcern us; then, later, that it is not at last a few individuals, or\nany sacred heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, the large equality\nto truth, of a single mind,--as if in the narrow walls of a human heart\nthe whole realm of truth, the world of morals, the tribunal by which the\nuniverse is judged, found room to exist.\n\n9. New poetry; by which I mean chiefly, old poetry that is new to the\nreader. I have heard from persons who had practice in rhyming, that it\nwas sufficient to set them on writing verses, to read any original\npoetry. What is best in literature is the affirming, prophesying,\nspermatic words of men-making poets. Only that is poetry which cleanses\nand mans me.\n\nWords used in a new sense, and figuratively, dart a delightful lustre;\nand _every_ word admits a new use, and hints ulterior meanings. We have\nnot learned the law of the mind,--cannot control and domesticate at will\nthe high states of contemplation and continuous thought. \"Neither by sea\nnor by land,\" said Pindar, \"canst thou find the way to the\nHyperboreans\"; neither by idle wishing, nor by rule of three or rule of\nthumb. Yet I find a mitigation or solace by providing always a good book\nfor my journeys, as Horace or Martial or Goethe,--some book which lifts\nme quite out of prosaic surroundings, and from which I draw some lasting\nknowledge. A Greek epigram out of the anthology, a verse of Herrick or\nLovelace, are in harmony both with sense and spirit.\n\nYou shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels, nor Montaigne,\nnor the newest French book. You may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus,\nHindoo mythology, and ethics. You may read Chaucer, Shakspeare, Ben\nJonson, Milton,--and Milton's prose as his verse; read Collins and Gray;\nread Hafiz and the Trouveurs; nay, Welsh and British mythology of\nArthur, and (in your ear) Ossian; fact-books, which all geniuses prize\nas raw material, and as antidote to verbiage and false poetry.\nFact-books, if the facts be well and thoroughly told, are much more\nnearly allied to poetry than many books are that are written in rhyme.\nOnly our newest knowledge works as a source of inspiration and thought,\nas only the outmost layer of _liber_ on the tree. Books of natural\nscience, especially those written by the ancients,--geography, botany,\nagriculture, explorations of the sea, of meteors, of astronomy,--all the\nbetter if written without literary aim or ambition. Every book is good\nto read which sets the reader in a working mood. The deep book, no\nmatter how remote the subject, helps us best.\n\nNeither are these all the sources, nor can I name all. The receptivity\nis rare. The occasions or predisposing circumstances I could never\ntabulate; but now one, now another landscape, form, color, or companion,\nor perhaps one kind of sounding word or syllable, \"strikes the electric\nchain with which we are darkly bound,\" and it is impossible to detect\nand wilfully repeat the fine conditions to which we have owed our\nhappiest frames of mind. The day is good in which we have had the most\nperceptions. The analysis is the more difficult, because poppy-leaves\nare strewn when a generalization is made; for I can never remember the\ncircumstances to which I owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or put\nmyself in the conditions.\n\n    \"'Tis the most difficult of tasks to keep\n    Heights which the soul is competent to gain.\"\n\nI value literary biography for the hints it furnishes from so many\nscholars, in so many countries, of what hygiene, what ascetic, what\ngymnastic, what social practices their experience suggested and\napproved. They are, for the most part, men who needed only a little\nwealth. Large estates, political relations, great hospitalities, would\nhave been impediments to them. They are men whom a book could entertain,\na new thought intoxicate, and hold them prisoners for years perhaps.\nAubrey and Burton and Wood tell me incidents which I find not\ninsignificant.\n\nThese are some hints towards what is in all education a chief necessity,\nthe right government, or, shall I not say, the right obedience to the\npowers of the human soul. Itself is the dictator; the mind itself the\nawful oracle. All our power, all our happiness, consists in our\nreception of its hints, which ever become clearer and grander as they\nare obeyed.\n\n[Footnote 5: Allingham.]\n\n\n\n\n                        GREATNESS.\n\n\n\n\n                        GREATNESS.\n\n\nTHERE is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power and\ngoodness we have, so much more the energy of that aim. Every human being\nhas a right to it, and in the pursuit we do not stand in each other's\nway. For it has a long scale of degrees, a wide variety of views, and\nevery aspirant, by his success in the pursuit, does not hinder but helps\nhis competitors. I might call it completeness, but that is\nlater,--perhaps adjourned for ages. I prefer to call it Greatness. It is\nthe fulfilment of a natural tendency in each man. It is a fruitful\nstudy. It is the best tonic to the young soul. And no man is unrelated;\ntherefore we admire eminent men, not for themselves, but as\nrepresentatives. It is very certain that we ought not to be, and shall\nnot be contented with any goal we have reached. Our aim is no less than\ngreatness; that which invites all, belongs to us all,--to which we are\nall sometimes untrue, cowardly, faithless, but of which we never quite\ndespair, and which, in every sane moment, we resolve to make our own. It\nis also the only platform on which all men can meet. What anecdotes of\nany man do we wish to hear or read? Only the best. Certainly not those\nin which he was degraded to the level of dulness or vice, but those in\nwhich he rose above all competition by obeying a light that shone to him\nalone. This is the worthiest history of the world.\n\nGreatness,--what is it? Is there not some injury to us, some insult in\nthe word? What we commonly call greatness is only such in our barbarous\nor infant experience. 'Tis not the soldier, not Alexander or Bonaparte\nor Count Moltke surely, who represent the highest force of mankind; not\nthe strong hand, but wisdom and civility, the creation of laws,\ninstitutions, letters, and art. These we call by distinction the\n_humanities_; these, and not the strong arm and brave heart, which are\nalso indispensable to their defence. For the scholars represent the\nintellect, by which man is man; the intellect and the moral\nsentiment,--which in the last analysis can never be separated. Who can\ndoubt the potency of an individual mind, who sees the shock given to\ntorpid races--torpid for ages--by Mahomet; a vibration propagated over\nAsia and Africa? What of Menu? what of Buddha? of Shakspeare? of Newton?\nof Franklin?\n\nThere are certain points of identity in which these masters agree.\nSelf-respect is the early form in which greatness appears. The man in\nthe tavern maintains his opinion, though the whole crowd takes the other\nside; we are at once drawn to him. The porter or truckman refuses a\nreward for finding your purse, or for pulling you drowning out of the\nriver. Thereby, with the service, you have got a moral lift. You say of\nsome new person, That man will go far,--for you see in his manners that\nthe recognition of him by others is not necessary to him. And what a\nbitter-sweet sensation when we have gone to pour out our acknowledgment\nof a man's nobleness, and found him quite indifferent to our good\nopinion! They may well fear Fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim;\nbut he who rests on what he is, has a destiny above destiny, and can\nmake mouths at Fortune. If a man's centrality is incomprehensible to us,\nwe may as well snub the sun. There is something in Archimedes or in\nLuther or Samuel Johnson that needs no protection. There is somewhat in\nthe true scholar which he cannot be laughed out of, nor be terrified or\nbought off from. Stick to your own; don't inculpate yourself in the\nlocal, social, or national crime, but follow the path your genius traces\nlike the galaxy of heaven, for you to walk in.\n\nA sensible person will soon see the folly and wickedness of thinking to\nplease. Sensible men are very rare. A sensible man does not brag, avoids\nintroducing the names of his creditable companions, omits himself as\nhabitually as another man obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is\ncontent with putting his fact or theme simply on its ground. You shall\nnot tell me that your commercial house, your partners, or yourself are\nof importance; you shall not tell me that you have learned to know men;\nyou shall make me feel that; your saying so unsays it. You shall not\nenumerate your brilliant acquaintances, nor tell me by their titles what\nbooks you have read. I am to infer that you keep good company by your\nbetter information and manners, and to infer your reading from the\nwealth and accuracy of your conversation.\n\nYoung men think that the manly character requires that they should go to\nCalifornia, or to India, or into the army. When they have learned that\nthe parlor and the college and the counting-room demand as much courage\nas the sea or the camp, they will be willing to consult their own\nstrength and education in their choice of place.\n\nThere are to each function and department of nature supplementary men:\nto geology, sinewy, out-of-doors men, with a taste for mountains and\nrocks, a quick eye for differences and for chemical changes. Give such,\nfirst, a course in chemistry, and then a geological survey. Others find\na charm and a profession in the natural history of man and the mammalia,\nor related animals; others in ornithology, or fishes, or insects; others\nin plants; others in the elements of which the whole world is made.\nThese lately have stimulus to their study through the extraordinary\nrevelations of the spectroscope that the sun and the planets are made in\npart or in whole of the same elements as the earth is. Then there is the\nboy who is born with a taste for the sea, and must go thither if he has\nto run away from his father's house to the forecastle; another longs for\ntravel in foreign lands; another will be a lawyer; another, an\nastronomer; another, a painter, sculptor, architect, or engineer. Thus\nthere is not a piece of nature in any kind, but a man is born, who, as\nhis genius opens, aims slower or faster to dedicate himself to that.\nThen there is the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the orator, the\nclergyman, the physician. 'Tis gratifying to see this adaptation of man\nto the world, and to every part and particle of it.\n\nMany readers remember that Sir Humphry Davy said, when he was praised\nfor his important discoveries, \"My best discovery was Michael Faraday.\"\nIn 1848 I had the privilege of hearing Professor Faraday deliver, in the\nRoyal Institution in London, a lecture on what he called\nDiamagnetism,--by which he meant _cross-magnetism_; and he showed us\nvarious experiments on certain gases, to prove that whilst, ordinarily,\nmagnetism of steel is from north to south, in other substances, gases,\nit acts from east to west. And further experiments led him to the theory\nthat every chemical substance would be found to have its own, and a\ndifferent, polarity. I do not know how far his experiments and others\nhave been pushed in this matter, but one fact is clear to me, that\ndiamagnetism is a law of the _mind_, to the full extent of Faraday's\nidea; namely, that every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new\ndirection of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other\nmind;--as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a new\ncountenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character.\nWhilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral\nsentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him\nin a new path, and, the more it is trusted, separates and signalizes\nhim, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We call\nthis specialty the _bias_ of each individual. And none of us will ever\naccomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to\nthis whisper which is heard by him alone. Swedenborg called it the\n_proprium_,--not a thought shared with others, but constitutional to the\nman. A point of education that I can never too much insist upon is this\ntenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and that\nit is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and\nattains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle,\nwhich points always in one direction to his proper path, with more or\nless variation from any other man's. He is never happy nor strong until\nhe finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to\nwatch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have the\nentire assurance of his own mind. And in this self-respect, or\nhearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may say, or\nneed never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect,\ngenius; in practice, talent;--not to imitate or surpass a particular man\nin _his_ way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method,\nstyle, wit, eloquence. 'Tis easy for a commander to command. Clinging to\nNature, or to that province of nature which he knows, he makes no\nmistakes, but works after her laws and at her own pace, so that his\ndoing, which is perfectly natural, appears miraculous to dull people.\nMontluc, the great Marshal of France, says of the Genoese admiral,\nAndrew Doria, \"It seemed as if the sea stood in awe of this man.\" And a\nkindred genius, Nelson, said, \"I feel that I am fitter to do the action\nthan to describe it.\" Therefore I will say that another trait of\ngreatness is facility.\n\nThis necessity of resting on the real, of speaking _your_ private\nthought and experience, few young men apprehend. Set ten men to write\ntheir journal for one day, and nine of them will leave out their\nthought, or proper result,--that is, their net experience,--and lose\nthemselves in misreporting the supposed experience of other people.\nIndeed, I think it an essential caution to young writers, that they\nshall not in their discourse leave out the one thing which the discourse\nwas written to say. Let that belief which you hold alone, have free\ncourse. I have observed that, in all public speaking, the rule of the\norator begins, not in the array of his facts, but when his deep\nconviction, and the right and necessity he feels to convey that\nconviction to his audience,--when these shine and burn in his address;\nwhen the thought which he stands for gives its own authority to\nhim,--adds to him a grander personality, gives him valor, breadth, and\nnew intellectual power, so that not he, but mankind, seems to speak\nthrough his lips. There is a certain transfiguration; all great orators\nhave it, and men who wish to be orators simulate it.\n\nIf we should ask ourselves what is this self-respect,--it would carry us\nto the highest problems. It is our practical perception of the Deity in\nman. It has its deep foundations in religion. If you have ever known a\ngood mind among the Quakers, you will have found _that_ is the element\nof their faith. As they express it, it might be thus: \"I do not pretend\nto any commandment or large revelation, but if at any time I form some\nplan, propose a journey, or a course of conduct, I perhaps find a silent\nobstacle in my mind that I cannot account for. Very well,--I let it lie,\nthinking it may pass away, but if it do not pass away, I yield to it,\nobey it. You ask me to describe it. I cannot describe it. It is not an\noracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, nor a law; it is too simple to be\ndescribed, it is but a grain of mustard-seed, but such as it is, it is\nsomething which the contradiction of all mankind could not shake, and\nwhich the consent of all mankind could not confirm.\"\n\nYou are rightly fond of certain books or men that you have found to\nexcite your reverence and emulation. But none of these can compare with\nthe greatness of that counsel which is open to you in happy solitude. I\nmean that there is for you the following of an inward leader,--a slow\ndiscrimination that there is for each a Best Counsel which enjoins the\nfit word and the fit act for every moment. And the path of each pursued\nleads to greatness. How grateful to find in man or woman a new emphasis\nof their own.\n\nBut if the first rule is to obey your native bias, to accept that work\nfor which you were inwardly formed, the second rule is concentration,\nwhich doubles its force. Thus if you are a scholar, be that. The same\nlaws hold for you as for the laborer. The shoemaker makes a good shoe\nbecause he makes nothing else. Let the student mind his own charge;\nsedulously wait every morning for the news concerning the structure of\nthe world which the spirit will give him.\n\nNo way has been found for making heroism easy, even for the scholar.\nLabor, iron labor, is for him. The world was created as an audience for\nhim; the atoms of which it is made are opportunities. Read the\nperformance of Bentley, of Gibbon, of Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hilaire,\nLaplace. \"He can toil terribly,\" said Cecil of Sir Walter Raleigh. These\nfew words sting and bite and lash us when we are frivolous. Let us get\nout of the way of their blows, by making them true of ourselves. There\nis so much to be done that we ought to begin quickly to bestir\nourselves. This day-labor of ours, we confess, has hitherto a certain\nemblematic air, like the annual ploughing and sowing of the Emperor of\nChina. Let us make it an honest sweat. Let the scholar measure his valor\nby his power to cope with intellectual giants. Leave others to count\nvotes and calculate stocks. His courage is to weigh Plato, judge\nLaplace, know Newton, Faraday, judge of Darwin, criticise Kant and\nSwedenborg, and on all these arouse the central courage of insight. The\nscholar's courage should be as terrible as the Cid's, though it grow out\nof spiritual nature, not out of brawn. Nature, when she adds difficulty,\nadds brain.\n\nWith this respect to the bias of the individual mind, add, what is\nconsistent with it, the most catholic receptivity for the genius of\nothers. The day will come when no badge, uniform, or medal will be worn;\nwhen the eye, which carries in it planetary influences from all the\nstars, will indicate rank fast enough by exerting power. For it is true\nthat the stratification of crusts in geology is not more precise than\nthe degrees of rank in minds. A man will say: 'I am born to this\nposition; I must take it, and neither you nor I can help or hinder me.\nSurely, then, I need not fret myself to guard my own dignity.' The great\nman loves the conversation or the book that convicts him, not that which\nsoothes or flatters him. He makes himself of no reputation; he conceals\nhis learning, conceals his charity. For the highest wisdom does not\nconcern itself with particular men, but with man enamored with the law\nand the Eternal Source. Say with Antoninus, \"If the picture is good, who\ncares who made it? What matters it by whom the good is done, by yourself\nor another?\" If it is the truth, what matters who said it? If it was\nright, what signifies who did it? All greatness is in degree, and there\nis more above than below. Where were your own intellect, if greater had\nnot lived? And do you know what the right meaning of Fame is? 'Tis that\nsympathy, rather that fine element by which the good become partners of\nthe greatness of their superiors.\n\nExtremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of\nhumility. No aristocrat, no prince born to the purple, can begin to\ncompare with the self-respect of the saint. Why is he so lowly, but that\nhe knows that he can well afford it, resting on the largeness of God in\nhim? I have read in an old book that Barcena, the Jesuit, confessed to\nanother of his order that when the Devil appeared to him in his cell,\none night, out of his profound humility he rose up to meet him, and\nprayed him to sit down in his chair, for he was more worthy to sit there\nthan himself.\n\nShall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I\nmeet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. The\npopulace will say, with Horne Tooke, \"If you would be powerful, pretend\nto be powerful.\" I prefer to say, with the old Hebrew prophet, \"Seekest\nthou great things?--seek them not\"; or, what was said of the Spanish\nprince, \"The more you took from him, the greater he appeared,\" _Plus on\nlui \u00f4te, plus il est grand_.\n\nScintillations of greatness appear here and there in men of unequal\ncharacter, and are by no means confined to the cultivated and so-called\nmoral class. 'Tis easy to draw traits from Napoleon, who was not\ngenerous nor just, but was intellectual, and knew the law of things.\nNapoleon commands our respect by his enormous self-trust,--the habit of\nseeing with his own eyes, never the surface, but to the heart of the\nmatter, whether it was a road, a cannon, a character, an officer, or a\nking,--and by the speed and security of his action in the premises,\nalways new. He has left a library of manuscripts, a multitude of\nsayings, every one of widest application. He was a man who always fell\non his feet. When one of his favorite schemes missed, he had the faculty\nof taking up his genius, as he said, and of carrying it somewhere else.\n\"Whatever they may tell you, believe that one fights with cannon as with\nfists; when once the fire is begun, the least want of ammunition renders\nwhat you have done already useless.\" I find it easy to translate all his\ntechnics into all of mine, and his official advices are to me more\nliterary and philosophical than the memoirs of the Academy. His advice\nto his brother, King Joseph of Spain, was: \"I have only one counsel for\nyou,--_Be Master_.\" Depth of intellect relieves even the ink of crime\nwith a fringe of light. We perhaps look on its crimes as experiments of\na universal student; as he may read any book who reads all books, and as\nthe English judge in old times, when learning was rare, forgave a\nculprit who could read and write. 'Tis difficult to find greatness pure.\nWell, I please myself with its diffusion,--to find a spark of true fire\namid much corruption. It is some guaranty, I hope, for the health of the\nsoul which has this generous blood. How many men, detested in\ncontemporary hostile history, of whom, now that the mists have rolled\naway, we have learned to correct our old estimates, and to see them as,\non the whole, instruments of great benefit. Diderot was no model, but\nunclean as the society in which he lived; yet was he the best-natured\nman in France, and would help any wretch at a pinch. His humanity knew\nno bounds. A poor scribbler who had written a lampoon against him, and\nwished to dedicate it to a pious Duc d'Orleans, came with it in his\npoverty to Diderot, and Diderot, pitying the creature, wrote the\ndedication for him, and so raised five-and-twenty louis to save his\nfamishing lampooner alive.\n\nMeantime we hate snivelling. I do not wish you to surpass others in any\nnarrow or professional or monkish way. We like the natural greatness of\nhealth and wild power. I confess that I am as much taken by it in boys,\nand sometimes in people not normal, nor educated, nor presentable, nor\nchurch-members,--even in persons open to the suspicion of irregular and\nimmoral living,--in Bohemians,--as in more orderly examples. For we must\nremember that in the lives of soldiers, sailors, and men of large\nadventure, many of the stays and guards of our household life are\nwanting, and yet the opportunities and incentives to sublime daring and\nperformance are often close at hand. We must have some charity for the\nsense of the people which admires natural power, and will elect it over\nvirtuous men who have less. It has this excuse, that natural is really\nallied to moral power, and may always be expected to approach it by its\nown instincts. Intellect at least is not stupid, and will see the force\nof morals over men, if it does not itself obey. Henry VII. of England\nwas a wise king. When Gerald, Earl of Kildare, who was in rebellion\nagainst him, was brought to London, and examined before the Privy\nCouncil, one said, \"All Ireland cannot govern this Earl.\" \"Then let this\nEarl govern all Ireland,\" replied the King.\n\n'Tis noted of some scholars, like Swift, and Gibbon and Donne, that they\npretended to vices which they had not, so much did they hate hypocrisy.\nWilliam Blake, the artist, frankly says, \"I never knew a bad man in whom\nthere was not something very good.\" Bret Harte has pleased himself with\nnoting and recording the sudden virtue blazing in the wild reprobates of\nthe ranches and mines of California.\n\nMen are ennobled by morals and by intellect; but those two elements know\neach other and always beckon to each other, until at last they meet in\nthe man, if he is to be truly great. The man who sells you a lamp shows\nyou that the flame of oil, which contented you before, casts a strong\nshade in the path of the petroleum which he lights behind it; and this\nagain casts a shadow in the path of the electric light. So does\nintellect when brought into the presence of character; character puts\nout that light. Goethe, in his correspondence with his Grand Duke of\nWeimar, does not shine. We can see that the Prince had the advantage of\nthe Olympian genius. It is more plainly seen in the correspondence\nbetween Voltaire and Frederick of Prussia. Voltaire is brilliant,\nnimble, and various, but Frederick has the superior tone. But it is\ncurious that Byron _writes down_ to Scott; Scott writes up to him. The\nGreeks surpass all men till they face the Romans, when Roman character\nprevails over Greek genius. Whilst degrees of intellect interest only\nclasses of men who pursue the same studies, as chemists or astronomers,\nmathematicians or linguists, and have no attraction for the crowd, there\nare always men who have a more catholic genius, are really great as men,\nand inspire universal enthusiasm. A great style of hero draws equally\nall classes, all the extremes of society, till we say the very dogs\nbelieve in him. We have had such examples in this country, in Daniel\nWebster, Henry Clay, and the seamen's preacher, Father Taylor; in\nEngland, Charles James Fox; in Scotland, Robert Burns; and in France,\nthough it is less intelligible to us, Voltaire. Abraham Lincoln is\nperhaps the most remarkable example of this class that we have seen,--a\nman who was at home and welcome with the humblest, and with a spirit and\na practical vein in the times of terror that commanded the admiration of\nthe wisest. His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room\nin it to hold the memory of a wrong.\n\nThese may serve as local examples to indicate a magnetism which is\nprobably known better and finer to each scholar in the little Olympus of\nhis own favorites, and which makes him require geniality and humanity in\nhis heroes. What are these but the promise and the preparation of a day\nwhen the air of the world shall be purified by nobler society; when the\nmeasure of greatness shall be usefulness in the highest\nsense,--greatness consisting in truth, reverence, and good-will?\n\nLife is made of illusions, and a very common one is the opinion you hear\nexpressed in every village: 'O yes, if I lived in New York or\nPhiladelphia, Cambridge or New Haven or Boston or Andover there might be\nfit society; but it happens that there are no fine young men, no\nsuperior women in my town.' You may hear this every day; but it is a\nshallow remark. Ah! have you yet to learn that the eye altering alters\nall; \"that the world is an echo which returns to each of us what we\nsay\"? 'Tis not examples of greatness, but sensibility to see them, that\nis wanting. The good botanist will find flowers between the street\npavements, and any man filled with an idea or a purpose will find\nexamples and illustrations and coadjutors wherever he goes. Wit is a\nmagnet to find wit, and character to find character. Do you not know\nthat people are as those with whom they converse? And if all or any are\nheavy to me, that fact accuses me. Why complain, as if a man's debt to\nhis inferiors were not at least equal to his debt to his superiors? If\nmen were equals, the waters would not move; but the difference of level\nwhich makes Niagara a cataract, makes eloquence, indignation, poetry, in\nhim who finds there is much to communicate. With self-respect, then,\nthere must be in the aspirant the strong fellow-feeling, the humanity,\nwhich makes men of all classes warm to him as their leader and\nrepresentative.\n\nWe are thus forced to express our instinct of the truth, by exposing the\nfailures of experience. The man whom we have not seen, in whom no regard\nof self degraded the adorer of the laws,--who by governing himself\ngoverned others; sportive in manner, but inexorable in act; who sees\nlongevity in his cause; whose aim is always distinct to him; who is\nsuffered to be himself in society; who carries fate in his eye;--he it\nis whom we seek, encouraged in every good hour that here or hereafter he\nshall be found.\n\n\n\n\n                        IMMORTALITY.\n\n\n\n\n                        IMMORTALITY.\n\n\nIN the year 626 of our era, when Edwin, the Anglo-Saxon king, was\ndeliberating on receiving the Christian missionaries, one of his nobles\nsaid to him: \"The present life of man, O king, compared with that space\nof time beyond, of which we have no certainty, reminds me of one of your\nwinter feasts, where you sit with your generals and ministers. The\nhearth blazes in the middle and a grateful heat is spread around, while\nstorms of rain and snow are raging without. Driven by the chilling\ntempest, a little sparrow enters at one door and flies delighted around\nus till it departs through the other. Whilst it stays in our mansion it\nfeels not the winter storm; but when this short moment of happiness has\nbeen enjoyed, it is forced again into the same dreary tempest from which\nit had escaped, and we behold it no more. Such is the life of man, and\nwe are as ignorant of the state which preceded our present existence as\nof that which will follow it. Things being so I feel that if this new\nfaith can give us more certainty, it deserves to be received.\"\n\nIn the first records of a nation in any degree thoughtful and\ncultivated, some belief in the life beyond life would of course be\nsuggested. The Egyptian people furnish us the earliest details of an\nestablished civilization, and I read, in the second book of Herodotus,\nthis memorable sentence: \"The Egyptians are the first of mankind who\nhave affirmed the immortality of the soul.\" Nor do I read it with less\ninterest, that the historian connects it presently with the doctrine of\nmetempsychosis; for I know well that, where this belief once existed, it\nwould necessarily take a base form for the savage and a pure form for\nthe wise;--so that I only look on the counterfeit as a proof that the\ngenuine faith had been there. The credence of men, more than race or\nclimate, makes their manners and customs; and the history of religion\nmay be read in the forms of sepulture. There never was a time when the\ndoctrine of a future life was not held. Morals must be enjoined, but\namong rude men moral judgments were rudely figured under the forms of\ndogs and whips, or of an easier and more plentiful life after death. And\nas the savage could not detach in his mind the life of the soul from the\nbody, he took great care for his body. Thus the whole life of man in the\nfirst ages was ponderously determined on death; and, as we know, the\npolity of the Egyptians, the by-laws of towns, of streets and houses,\nrespected burial. It made every man an undertaker, and the priesthood a\nsenate of sextons. Every palace was a door to a pyramid; a king or rich\nman was a _pyramidaire_. The labor of races was spent on the excavation\nof catacombs. The chief end of man being to be buried well, the arts\nmost in request were masonry and embalming, to give imperishability to\nthe corpse.\n\nThe Greek, with his perfect senses and perceptions, had quite another\nphilosophy. He loved life and delighted in beauty. He set his wit and\ntaste, like elastic gas, under these mountains of stone, and lifted\nthem. He drove away the embalmers; he built no more of those doleful\nmountainous tombs. He adorned death, brought wreaths of parsley and\nlaurel; made it bright with games of strength and skill, and\nchariot-races. He looked at death only as the distributor of\nimperishable glory. Nothing can excel the beauty of his sarcophagus. He\ncarried his arts to Rome, and built his beautiful tombs at Pompeii. The\npoet Shelley says of these delicately carved white marble cells, \"they\nseem not so much tombs, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits.\" In\nthe same spirit the modern Greeks, in their songs, ask that they may be\nburied where the sun can see them, and that a little window may be cut\nin the sepulchre, from which the swallow might be seen when it comes\nback in the spring.\n\nChristianity brought a new wisdom. But learning depends on the learner.\nNo more truth can be conveyed than the popular mind can bear; and the\nbarbarians who received the cross took the doctrine of the resurrection\nas the Egyptians took it. It was an affair of the body, and narrowed\nagain by the fury of sect; so that grounds were sprinkled with holy\nwater to receive only orthodox dust; and to keep the body still more\nsacredly safe for resurrection, it was put into the walls of the church:\nand the churches of Europe are really sepulchres. I read at Melrose\nAbbey the inscription on the ruined gate:--\n\n    \"The Earth goes on the Earth glittering with gold;\n    The Earth goes to the Earth sooner than it should;\n    The Earth builds on the Earth castles and towers;\n    The Earth says to the Earth, All this is ours.\"\n\nMeantime the true disciples saw through the letter the doctrine of\neternity which dissolved the poor corpse and nature also, and gave\ngrandeur to the passing hour. The most remarkable step in the religious\nhistory of recent ages is that made by the genius of Swedenborg, who\ndescribed the moral faculties and affections of man, with the hard\nrealism of an astronomer describing the suns and planets of our system,\nand explained his opinion of the history and destiny of souls in a\nnarrative form, as of one who had gone in a trance into the society of\nother worlds. Swedenborg described an intelligible heaven, by continuing\nthe like employments in the like circumstances as those we know,--men in\nsocieties, in houses, towns, trades, entertainments,--continuations of\nour earthly experience. We shall pass to the future existence as we\nenter into an agreeable dream. All nature will accompany us there.\nMilton anticipated the leading thought of Swedenborg, when he wrote, in\n\"Paradise Lost,\"--\n\n                                    \"What if Earth\n    Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein\n    Each to the other like more than on earth is thought?\"\n\nSwedenborg had a vast genius, and announced many things true and\nadmirable, though always clothed in somewhat sad and Stygian colors.\nThese truths, passing out of his system into general circulation, are\nnow met with every day, qualifying the views and creeds of all churches,\nand of men of no church. And I think we are all aware of a revolution in\nopinion. Sixty years ago, the books read, the sermons and prayers heard,\nthe habits of thought of religious persons, were all directed on death.\nAll were under the shadow of Calvinism and of the Roman Catholic\npurgatory, and death was dreadful. The emphasis of all the good books\ngiven to young people was on death. We were all taught that we were born\nto die; and over that, all the terrors that theology could gather from\nsavage nations were added to increase the gloom. A great change has\noccurred. Death is seen as a natural event, and is met with firmness. A\nwise man in our time caused to be written on his tomb, \"Think on\nliving.\" That inscription describes a progress in opinion. Cease from\nthis antedating of your experience. Sufficient to to-day are the duties\nof to-day. Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the\nwork before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's\nduties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow\nit.\n\n    \"The name of death was never terrible\n    To him that knew to live.\"\n\nA man of thought is willing to die, willing to live; I suppose, because\nhe has seen the thread on which the beads are strung, and perceived that\nit reaches up and down, existing quite independently of the present\nillusions. A man of affairs is afraid to die, is pestered with terrors,\nbecause he has not this vision, and is the victim of those who have\nmoulded the religious doctrines into some neat and plausible system, as\nCalvinism, Romanism, or Swedenborgism, for household use. It is the fear\nof the young bird to trust its wings. The experiences of the soul will\nfast outgrow this alarm. The saying of Marcus Antoninus it were hard to\nmend: \"It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be\nnone.\" I think all sound minds rest on a certain preliminary conviction,\nnamely, that if it be best that conscious personal life shall continue,\nit will continue; if not best, then it will not: and we, if we saw the\nwhole, should of course see that it was better so. Schiller said, \"What\nis so universal as death, must be benefit.\" A friend of Michel Angelo\nsaying to him that his constant labor for art must make him think of\ndeath with regret, \"By no means,\" he said; \"for if life be a pleasure,\nyet since death also is sent by the hand of the same Master, neither\nshould that displease us.\" Plutarch, in Greece, has a deep faith that\nthe doctrine of the Divine Providence and that of the immortality of the\nsoul rest on one and the same basis. Hear the opinion of Montesquieu:\n\"If the immortality of the soul were an error, I should be sorry not to\nbelieve it. I avow that I am not so humble as the atheist; I know not\nhow they think, but for me, I do not wish to exchange the idea of\nimmortality against that of the beatitude of one day. I delight in\nbelieving myself as immortal as God himself. Independently of revealed\nideas, metaphysical ideas give me a vigorous hope of my eternal\nwell-being, which I would never renounce.\"[6]\n\nI was lately told of young children who feel a certain terror at the\nassurance of life without end. \"What! will it never stop?\" the child\nsaid; \"what! never die? _never_, never? It makes me feel so tired.\" And\nI have in mind the expression of an older believer, who once said to me,\n\"The thought that this frail being is never to end is so overwhelming\nthat my only shelter is God's presence.\" This disquietude only marks the\ntransition. The healthy state of mind is the love of life. What is so\ngood, let it endure.\n\nI find that what is called great and powerful life,--the administration\nof large affairs, in commerce, in the courts, in the state,--is prone to\ndevelop narrow and special talent; but, unless combined with a certain\ncontemplative turn, a taste for abstract truth, for the moral\nlaws,--does not build up faith, or lead to content. There is a profound\nmelancholy at the base of men of active and powerful talent, seldom\nsuspected. Many years ago, there were two men in the United States\nSenate, both of whom are now dead. I have seen them both; one of them I\npersonally knew. Both were men of distinction, and took an active part\nin the politics of their day and generation. They were men of intellect,\nand one of them, at a later period, gave to a friend this anecdote: He\nsaid that when he entered the Senate he became in a short time intimate\nwith one of his colleagues, and, though attentive enough to the routine\nof public duty, they daily returned to each other, and spent much time\nin conversation on the immortality of the soul, and other intellectual\nquestions, and cared for little else. When my friend at last left\nCongress, they parted, his colleague remaining there, and, as their\nhomes were widely distant from each other, it chanced that he never met\nhim again, until, twenty-five years afterwards, they saw each other,\nthrough open doors, at a distance, in a crowded reception at the\nPresident's house in Washington. Slowly they advanced towards each\nother, as they could, through the brilliant company, and at last\nmet,--said nothing, but shook hands long and cordially. At last his\nfriend said, \"Any light, Albert?\" \"None,\" replied Albert. \"Any light,\nLewis?\" \"None,\" replied he. They looked in each other's eyes silently,\ngave one more shake each to the hand he held, and thus parted for the\nlast time. Now I should say that the impulse which drew these minds to\nthis inquiry through so many years was a better affirmative evidence\nthan their failure to find a confirmation was negative. I ought to add\nthat, though men of good minds, they were both pretty strong\nmaterialists in their daily aims and way of life. I admit that you shall\nfind a good deal of scepticism in the streets and hotels and places of\ncoarse amusement. But that is only to say that the practical faculties\nare faster developed than the spiritual. Where there is depravity there\nis a slaughter-house style of thinking. One argument of future life is\nthe recoil of the mind in such company,--our pain at every sceptical\nstatement. The sceptic affirms that the universe is a nest of boxes with\nnothing in the last box. All laughter at man is bitter, and puts us out\nof good activity. When Bonaparte insisted that the heart is one of the\nentrails; that it is the pit of the stomach that moves the world;--do we\nthank him for the gracious instruction? Our disgust is the protest of\nhuman nature against a lie.\n\nThe ground of hope is in the infinity of the world, which infinity\nreappears in every particle; the powers of all society in every\nindividual, and of all mind in every mind. I know against all\nappearances that the universe can receive no detriment; that there is a\nremedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul. Here is this\nwonderful thought. But whence came it? Who put it in the mind? It was\nnot I, it was not you; it is elemental,--belongs to thought and virtue,\nand whenever we have either, we see the beams of this light. When the\nMaster of the universe has points to carry in his government he\nimpresses his will in the structure of minds.\n\nBut proceeding to the enumeration of the few simple elements of the\nnatural faith, the first fact that strikes us is our delight in\npermanence. All great natures are lovers of stability and permanence, as\nthe type of the Eternal. After science begins, belief of permanence must\nfollow in a healthy mind. Things so attractive, designs so wise, the\nsecret workman so transcendently skilful that it tasks successive\ngenerations of observers only to find out, part with part, the delicate\ncontrivance and adjustment of a weed, of a moss, to its wants, growth,\nand perpetuation, all these adjustments becoming perfectly intelligible\nto our study,--and the contriver of it all forever hidden! To breathe,\nto sleep, is wonderful. But never to know the Cause, the Giver, and\ninfer his character and will! Of what import this vacant sky, these\npuffing elements, these insignificant lives full of selfish loves and\nquarrels and ennui? Everything is prospective, and man is to live\nhereafter. That the world is for his education is the only sane solution\nof the enigma. And I think that the naturalist works not for himself,\nbut for the believing mind, which turns his discoveries to revelations,\nreceives them as private tokens of the grand good-will of the Creator.\n\nThe mind delights in immense time; delights in rocks, in metals, in\nmountain-chains, and in the evidence of vast geologic periods which\nthese give; in the age of trees, say of the Sequoias, a few of which\nwill span the whole history of mankind; in the noble toughness and\nimperishableness of the palm-tree, which thrives under abuse; delights\nin architecture, whose building lasts so long,--\"a house,\" says Ruskin,\n\"is not in its prime until it is five hundred years old,\"--and here are\nthe Pyramids, which have as many thousands, and cromlechs and\nearth-mounds much older than these.\n\nWe delight in stability, and really are interested in nothing that ends.\nWhat lasts a century pleases us in comparison with what lasts an hour.\nBut a century, when we have once made it familiar and compared it with a\ntrue antiquity, looks dwarfish and recent; and it does not help the\nmatter adding numbers, if we see that it has an end, which it will reach\njust as surely as the shortest. A candle a mile long or a hundred miles\nlong does not help the imagination; only a self-feeding fire, an\ninextinguishable lamp, like the sun and the star, that we have not yet\nfound date and origin for. But the nebular theory threatens their\nduration also, bereaves them of this glory, and will make a shift to eke\nout a sort of eternity by succession, as plants and animals do.\n\nAnd what are these delights in the vast and permanent and strong, but\napproximations and resemblances of what is entire and sufficing,\ncreative and self-sustaining life? For the Creator keeps his word with\nus. These long-lived or long-enduring objects are to us, as we see them,\nonly symbols of somewhat in us far longer-lived. Our passions, our\nendeavors, have something ridiculous and mocking, if we come to so hasty\nan end. If not to _be_, how like the bells of a fool is the trump of\nfame! Nature does not, like the Empress Anne of Russia, call together\nall the architectural genius of the Empire to build and finish and\nfurnish a palace of snow, to melt again to water in the first thaw. Will\nyou, with vast cost and pains, educate your children to be adepts in\ntheir several arts, and, as soon as they are ready to produce a\nmasterpiece, call out a file of soldiers to shoot them down? We must\ninfer our destiny from the preparation. We are driven by instinct to\nhive innumerable experiences, which are of no visible value, and which\nwe may revolve through many lives before we shall assimilate or exhaust\nthem. Now there is nothing in nature capricious, or whimsical, or\naccidental, or unsupported. Nature never moves by jumps, but always in\nsteady and supported advances. The implanting of a desire indicates that\nthe gratification of that desire is in the constitution of the creature\nthat feels it; the wish for food, the wish for motion, the wish for\nsleep, for society, for knowledge, are not random whims, but grounded in\nthe structure of the creature, and meant to be satisfied by food, by\nmotion, by sleep, by society, by knowledge. If there is the desire to\nlive, and in larger sphere, with more knowledge and power, it is because\nlife and knowledge and power are good for us, and we are the natural\ndepositaries of these gifts. The love of life is out of all proportion\nto the value set on a single day, and seems to indicate, like all our\nother experiences, a conviction of immense resources and possibilities\nproper to us, on which we have never drawn.\n\nAll the comfort I have found teaches me to confide that I shall not have\nless in times and places that I do not yet know. I have known admirable\npersons, without feeling that they exhaust the possibilities of virtue\nand talent. I have seen what glories of climate, of summer mornings and\nevenings, of midnight sky,--I have enjoyed the benefits of all this\ncomplex machinery of arts and civilization, and its results of comfort.\nThe good Power can easily provide me millions more as good. Shall I hold\non with both hands to every paltry possession? All I have seen teaches\nme to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. Whatever it be which\nthe great Providence prepares for us, it must be something large and\ngenerous, and in the great style of his works. The future must be up to\nthe style of our faculties,--of memory, of hope, of imagination, of\nreason. I have a house, a closet which holds my books, a table, a\ngarden, a field: are these, any or all, a reason for refusing the angel\nwho beckons me away,--as if there were no room or skill elsewhere that\ncould reproduce for me as my like or my enlarging wants may require? We\nwish to live for what is great, not for what is mean. I do not wish to\nlive for the sake of my warm house, my orchard, or my pictures. I do not\nwish to live to wear out my boots.\n\nAs a hint of endless being, we may rank that novelty which perpetually\nattends life. The soul does not age with the body. On the borders of the\ngrave, the wise man looks forward with equal elasticity of mind, or\nhope; and why not, after millions of years, on the verge of still newer\nexistence?--for it is the nature of intelligent beings to be forever new\nto life. Most men are insolvent, or promise by their countenance and\nconversation and by their early endeavor much more than they ever\nperform,--suggesting a design still to be carried out; the man must have\nnew motives, new companions, new condition, and another term. Franklin\nsaid, \"Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life. A man\nis not completely born until he has passed through death.\" Every really\nable man, in whatever direction he work,--a man of large affairs, an\ninventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,--if you talk\nsincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far\nshort of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but\nthe perpetual promise of his Creator?\n\nThe fable of the Wandering Jew is agreeable to men, because they want\nmore time and land in which to execute their thoughts. But a higher\npoetic use must be made of the legend. Take us as we are, with our\nexperience, and transfer us to a new planet, and let us digest for its\ninhabitants what we could of the wisdom of this. After we have found our\ndepth there, and assimilated what we could of the new experience,\ntransfer us to a new scene. In each transfer we shall have acquired, by\nseeing them at a distance, a new mastery of the old thoughts, in which\nwe were too much immersed. In short, all our intellectual action, not\npromises, but bestows a feeling of absolute existence. We are taken out\nof time and breathe a purer air. I know not whence we draw the assurance\nof prolonged life, of a life which shoots that gulf we call death, and\ntakes hold of what is real and abiding, by so many claims as from our\nintellectual history. Salt is a good preserver; cold is: but a truth\ncures the taint of mortality better, and \"preserves from harm until\nanother period.\" A sort of absoluteness attends all perception of\ntruth,--no smell of age, no hint of corruption. It is self-sufficing,\nsound, entire.\n\nLord Bacon said: \"Some of the philosophers who were least divine denied\ngenerally the immortality of the soul, yet came to this point, that\nwhatsoever motions the spirit of man could act and perform without the\norgans of the body might remain after death, which were only those of\nthe understanding, and not of the affections; so immortal and\nincorruptible a thing did knowledge seem to them to be.\" And Van\nHelmont, the philosopher of Holland, drew his sufficient proof purely\nfrom the action of the intellect. \"It is my greatest desire,\" he said,\n\"that it might be granted unto atheists to have tasted, at least but one\nonly moment, what it is intellectually to understand; whereby they may\nfeel the immortality of the mind, as it were, by touching.\" A farmer, a\nlaborer, a mechanic, is driven by his work all day, but it ends at\nnight; it has an end. But, as far as the mechanic or farmer is also a\nscholar or thinker, his work has no end. That which he has learned is\nthat there is much more to be learned. The wiser he is, he feels only\nthe more his incompetence. \"What we know is a point to what we do not\nknow.\" A thousand years,--tenfold, a hundred-fold his faculties, would\nnot suffice. The demands of his task are such that it becomes\nomnipresent. He studies in his walking, at his meals, in his amusements,\neven in his sleep. Montesquieu said, \"The love of study is in us almost\nthe only eternal passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this\nmiserable machine which holds them approaches its ruin.\" \"Art is long,\"\nsays the thinker, \"and life is short.\" He is but as a fly or a worm to\nthis mountain, this continent, which his thoughts inhabit. It is a\nperception that comes by the activity of the intellect; never to the\nlazy or rusty mind. Courage comes naturally to those who have the habit\nof facing labor and danger, and who therefore know the power of their\narms and bodies; and courage or confidence in the mind comes to those\nwho know by use its wonderful forces and inspirations and returns.\nBelief in its future is a reward kept only for those who use it. \"To\nme,\" said Goethe, \"the eternal existence of my soul is proved from my\nidea of activity. If I work incessantly till my death, nature is bound\nto give me another form of existence, when the present can no longer\nsustain my spirit.\"\n\nIt is a proverb of the world that good-will makes intelligence, that\ngoodness itself is an eye; and the one doctrine in which all religions\nagree, is that new light is added to the mind in proportion as it uses\nthat which it has. \"He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.\"\n\nIgnorant people confound reverence for the intuitions with egotism.\nThere is no confusion in the things themselves. Health of mind consists\nin the perception of law. Its dignity consists in being under the law.\nIts goodness is the most generous extension of our private interests to\nthe dignity and generosity of ideas. Nothing seems to me so excellent as\na belief in the laws. It communicates nobleness, and, as it were, an\nasylum in temples to the loyal soul.\n\nI confess that everything connected with our personality fails. Nature\nnever spares the individual. We are always balked of a complete success.\nNo prosperity is promised to _that_. We have our indemnity only in the\nsuccess of that to which we belong. _That_ is immortal and we only\nthrough that.\n\nThe soul stipulates for no private good. That which is private I see not\nto be good. \"If truth live, I live; if justice live, I live,\" said one\nof the old saints, \"and these by any man's suffering are enlarged and\nenthroned.\"\n\nThe moral sentiment measures itself by sacrifice. It risks or ruins\nproperty, health, life itself, without hesitation, for its thought, and\nall men justify the man by their praise for this act. And Mahomet in the\nsame mind declared, \"Not dead but living ye are to account all those who\nare slain in the way of God.\"\n\nOn these grounds I think that wherever man ripens, this audacious belief\npresently appears,--in the savage, savagely; in the good, purely. As\nsoon as thought is exercised, this belief is inevitable; as soon as\nvirtue glows, this belief confirms itself. It is a kind of summary or\ncompletion of man. It cannot rest on a legend; it cannot be quoted from\none to another; it must have the assurance of a man's faculties that\nthey can fill a larger theatre and a longer term than nature here allows\nhim. Goethe said: \"It is to a thinking being quite impossible to think\nhimself non-existent, ceasing to think and live; so far does every one\ncarry in himself the proof of immortality, and quite spontaneously. But\nso soon as the man will be objective and go out of himself, so soon as\nhe dogmatically will grasp a personal duration to bolster up in cockney\nfashion that inward assurance, he is lost in contradiction.\" The\ndoctrine is not sentimental, but is grounded in the necessities and\nforces we possess. Nothing will hold but that which we must be and must\ndo.\n\n\n    \"Man's heart the Almighty to the Future set\n    By secret but inviolate springs.\"\n\n\nThe revelation that is true is written on the palms of the hands, the\nthought of our mind, the desire of our heart, or nowhere. My idea of\nheaven is that there is no melodrama in it at all; that it is wholly\nreal. Here is the emphasis of conscience and experience; this is no\nspeculation, but the most practical of doctrines. Do you think that the\neternal chain of cause and effect which pervades nature, which threads\nthe globes as beads on a string, leaves this out of its circuit,--leaves\nout this desire of God and men as a waif and a caprice, altogether cheap\nand common, and falling without reason or merit?\n\nWe live by desire to live; we live by choices; by will, by thought, by\nvirtue, by the vivacity of the laws which we obey, and obeying share\ntheir life,--or we die by sloth, by disobedience, by losing hold of\nlife, which ebbs out of us. But whilst I find the signatures, the hints\nand suggestions, noble and wholesome,--whilst I find that all the ways\nof virtuous living lead upward and not downward,--yet it is not my duty\nto prove to myself the immortality of the soul. That knowledge is hidden\nvery cunningly. Perhaps the archangels cannot find the secret of their\nexistence, as the eye cannot see itself; but, ending or endless, to live\nwhilst I live.\n\nThere is a drawback to the value of all statements of the doctrine; and\nI think that one abstains from writing or printing on the immortality of\nthe soul, because, when he comes to the end of his statement, the hungry\neyes that run through it will close disappointed; the listeners say,\nThat is not here which we desire,--and I shall be as much wronged by\ntheir hasty conclusion, as they feel themselves wronged by my omissions.\nI mean that I am a better believer, and all serious souls are better\nbelievers, in the immortality than we can give grounds for. The real\nevidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down in\npropositions, and therefore Wordsworth's \"Ode\" is the best modern essay\non the subject.\n\nWe cannot prove our faith by syllogisms. The argument refuses to form in\nthe mind. A conclusion, an inference, a grand augury, is ever hovering;\nbut attempt to ground it, and the reasons are all vanishing and\ninadequate. You cannot make a written theory or demonstration of this as\nyou can an orrery of the Copernican astronomy. It must be sacredly\ntreated. Speak of the mount in the mount. Not by literature or theology,\nbut only by rare integrity, by a man permeated and perfumed with airs of\nheaven,--with manliest or womanliest enduring love,--can the vision be\nclear to a use the most sublime. And hence the fact that in the minds of\nmen the testimony of a few inspired souls has had such weight and\npenetration. You shall not say, \"O my bishop, O my pastor, is there any\nresurrection? What do you think? Did Dr. Channing believe that we should\nknow each other? did Wesley? did Butler? did Fenelon?\" What questions\nare these! Go read Milton, Shakspeare, or any truly ideal poet. Read\nPlato, or any seer of the interior realities. Read St. Augustine,\nSwedenborg, Immanuel Kant. Let any master simply recite to you the\nsubstantial laws of the intellect, and in the presence of the laws\nthemselves you will never ask such primary-school questions.\n\nIs immortality only an intellectual quality, or, shall I say, only an\nenergy, there being no passive? He has it, and he alone, who gives life\nto all names, persons, things, where he comes. No religion, not the\nwildest mythology, dies for him; no art is lost. He vivifies what he\ntouches. Future state is an illusion for the ever-present state. It is\nnot length of life, but depth of life. It is not duration, but a taking\nof the soul out of time, as all high action of the mind does: when we\nare living in the sentiments we ask no questions about time. The\nspiritual world takes place;--that which is always the same. But see how\nthe sentiment is wise. Jesus explained nothing, but the influence of him\ntook people out of time, and they felt eternal. A great integrity makes\nus immortal; an admiration, a deep love, a strong will, arms us above\nfear. It makes a day memorable. We say we lived years in that hour. It\nis strange that Jesus is esteemed by mankind the bringer of the doctrine\nof immortality. He is never once weak or sentimental; he is very\nabstemious of explanation, he never preaches the personal immortality;\nwhilst Plato and Cicero had both allowed themselves to overstep the\nstern limits of the spirit, and gratify the people with that picture.\n\nHow ill agrees this majestical immortality of our religion with the\nfrivolous population! Will you build magnificently for mice? Will you\noffer empires to such as cannot set a house or private affairs in order?\nHere are people who cannot dispose of a day; an hour hangs heavy on\ntheir hands; and will you offer them rolling ages without end? But this\nis the way we rise. Within every man's thought is a higher\nthought,--within the character he exhibits to-day, a higher character.\nThe youth puts off the illusions of the child, the man puts off the\nignorance and tumultuous passions of youth; proceeding thence puts off\nthe egotism of manhood, and becomes at last a public and universal soul.\nHe is rising to greater heights, but also rising to realities; the outer\nrelations and circumstances dying out, he entering deeper into God, God\ninto him, until the last garment of egotism falls, and he is with\nGod,--shares the will and the immensity of the First Cause.\n\nIt is curious to find the selfsame feeling, that it is not immortality,\nbut eternity,--not duration, but a state of abandonment to the Highest,\nand so the sharing of His perfection,--appearing in the farthest east\nand west. The human mind takes no account of geography, language, or\nlegends, but in all utters the same instinct.\n\nYama, the lord of Death, promised Nachiketas, the son of Gautama, to\ngrant him three boons at his own choice. Nachiketas, knowing that his\nfather Gautama was offended with him, said, \"O Death! let Gautama be\nappeased in mind, and forget his anger against me: this I choose for the\nfirst boon.\" Yama said, \"Through my favor, Gautama will remember thee\nwith love as before.\" For the second boon, Nachiketas asks that the fire\nby which heaven is gained be made known to him; which also Yama allows,\nand says, \"Choose the third boon, O Nachiketas!\" Nachiketas said, there\nis this inquiry. Some say the soul exists after the death of man; others\nsay it does not exist. This I should like to know, instructed by thee.\nSuch is the third of the boons. Yama said, \"For this question, it was\ninquired of old, even by the gods; for it is not easy to understand it.\nSubtle is its nature. Choose another boon, O Nachiketas! Do not compel\nme to this.\" Nachiketas said, \"Even by the gods was it inquired. And as\nto what thou sayest, O Death, that it is not easy to understand it,\nthere is no other speaker to be found like thee. There is no other boon\nlike this.\" Yama said, \"Choose sons and grandsons who may live a hundred\nyears; choose herds of cattle; choose elephants and gold and horses;\nchoose the wide expanded earth, and live thyself as many years as thou\nlisteth. Or, if thou knowest a boon like this, choose it, together with\nwealth and far-extending life. Be a king, O Nachiketas! On the wide\nearth I will make thee the enjoyer of all desires. All those desires\nthat are difficult to gain in the world of mortals, all those ask thou\nat thy pleasure;--those fair nymphs of heaven with their chariots, with\ntheir musical instruments; for the like of them are not to be gained by\nmen. I will give them to thee, but do not ask the question of the state\nof the soul after death.\" Nachiketas said, \"All those enjoyments are of\nyesterday. With thee remain thy horses and elephants, with thee the\ndance and song. If we should obtain wealth, we live only as long as thou\npleasest. The boon which I choose I have said.\" Yama said, \"One thing is\ngood, another is pleasant. Blessed is he who takes the good, but he who\nchooses the pleasant loses the object of man. But thou, considering the\nobjects of desire, hast abandoned them. These two, ignorance (whose\nobject is what is pleasant) and knowledge (whose object is what is\ngood), are known to be far asunder, and to lead to different goals.\nBelieving this world exists, and not the other, the careless youth is\nsubject to my sway. That knowledge for which thou hast asked is not to\nbe obtained by argument. I know worldly happiness is transient, for that\nfirm one is not to be obtained by what is not firm. The wise, by means\nof the union of the intellect with the soul, thinking him whom it is\nhard to behold, leaves both grief and joy. Thee, O Nachiketas! I believe\na house whose door is open to Brahma. Brahma the supreme, whoever knows\nhim, obtains whatever he wishes. The soul is not born; it does not die;\nit was not produced from any one. Nor was any produced from it. Unborn,\neternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain; subtler than what is\nsubtle, greater than what is great, sitting it goes far, sleeping it\ngoes everywhere. Thinking the soul as unbodily among bodies, firm among\nfleeting things, the wise man casts off all grief. The soul cannot be\ngained by knowledge, not by understanding, not by manifold science. It\ncan be obtained by the soul by which it is desired. It reveals its own\ntruths.\"\n\n[Footnote 6: Pens\u00e9es Diverses, p. 223.]\n\n\n\n\n                                 THE END.\n\n\n  Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.\n\n\n\n                            TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE\n\nObvious typographical errors have been silently changed.","title":"Letters and social aims","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":68723}