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NATURE 
 
 ADDRESSES AND LECTURES 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 NEW YORK: 46 East 14TH Strekt 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON: ic» Purchase Strkkt 
 
 Jl: 
 
<e^ 
 
s^t::!^. 
 
 g^ NATURE ADDRESSES ^g 
 AND LECTURES BY ^^ 
 R. W. E.WERSON . . 
 
 NEW YORK AND BOSTON 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL AND ^l<(ir'i 
 COMPANY ^ .36 ^ .jt ^ .^t \Ai^9l^ 
 
 1^ 
 
 ^^t 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction .7 
 
 Nature n 
 
 The American Scholar. An Oration before the 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 
 31. 1837 68 
 
 An Address to the Senior Class in Divinity Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, July 15, 1838 ... 96 
 
 Literary Ethics. An Address to the Literary 
 
 Societies in Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 . 122 
 
 The Method of Nature. An Address to the 
 Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, 
 Maine, August II, 1841 148 
 
 Man the Reformer. A Lecture read before the 
 Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association, 
 Boston, January 25, 1841 . . . -174 
 
 Introductory Lecture on the Times. Read in 
 
 the Masonic Temple, Boston, December 2, 1841, 198 
 
 The Conservative. A Lecture read in the Ma- 
 sonic Temple, Boston, December g, 1841 . . 224 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Transcendentalist. A Lecture read in the 
 
 Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842 . 249 
 
 The Young American. A lecture read to the 
 Mercantile Library Association, in Boston, Feb- 
 ruary 7, 1844 273 
 
NATURE. 
 
 A SUBTLE chain of countless rings 
 The next unto the farthest brings; 
 The eye reads omens where it goes. 
 And speaks all languages the rose; 
 And, striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 _QuR_age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres 
 of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and 
 criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God 
 and Nature face to face ; we, through their eyesV 
 Why should not we also enjoy/an original relatioij to 
 \ the universe? Why should not we have a poetry 
 and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a 
 religion by revelation to us, and not the history of 
 theirs? Embosomed for a season in Nature, whose 
 floods of life stream around and through us, and in- 
 vite us, by the powers they supply, to action propor- 
 tioned to Nature, \Yhy_ should we grope among the 
 dry bones of the past, or put the living generation 
 into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe. The sun 
 shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in 
 the fields. There are new lands, new men, new 
 thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws 
 and worship. 
 
 Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which 
 are unanswerable. ,^We must trust the perfection of 
 the creationjso far as to believe that whatever curi- 
 ' osity the of3er of things has awakenejln our minds, 
 \the order of things can satisfy. ; Every man's condi- 
 tion is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he 
 would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends 
 
 (7) 
 
is INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it as truth. In like manner. Nature is already, in its 
 forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let 
 us interrogate the great apparition that shines so 
 peacefully around us. Let us inquire, To what end 
 is Nature? 
 
 All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory 
 of Nature. We have theories of races and of func- 
 tions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea 
 of creation. We are now so far from the road to 
 truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each 
 other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and 
 frivolous. But to a sound judgment the most ab- 
 stract truth is tlie most practical. Whenever a true 
 theory appears, it vdll be its own evidence. Its test 
 is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many 
 are thought not only unexplained, but inexplicable ; 
 as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex. 
 
 Philosophically considered, the universe is com-"', 
 posed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking,- 
 therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Phi- 
 losophy distinguishes as the not me, that is, both 
 nature and art, all other men and my own body must 
 be ranked under this name. Nature. In enumerat- 
 ing the values of Nature and casting up their sum, I 
 shall use the word in both senses, —in its common 
 and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so gen- 
 eral as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material ; 
 no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the 
 common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man : 
 space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to 
 the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a 
 house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his opera- 
 
nVTR OD UCTION. 9 
 
 _tions taken together are so insignificant, a little chip- 
 ping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an im- 
 pression so grand as that of the world on the human 
 mind they do not vary the result. 
 
NATURE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as 
 mucli from liis chamber as from society. I am not 
 solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody 
 is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him 
 look at the stars. The rays that come from those 
 heavenly worlds will separate between him and what 
 he touches. One might think the atmosphere was 
 , made transparent with this design, to give man, in 
 the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the 
 sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great 
 they are ! If the stars should appear one night in a 
 thousand years, how would men believe and adore, 
 and preserve for many generations the remembrance 
 of the city of God which had been shown ! But 
 every night come out these envoys of beauty, and 
 light the universe with their admonishing smile. 
 
 The stars awaken a certain reverence, because 
 though always present, they are inaccessible ; but all 
 natural objects make a kindred impression when the 
 mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears 
 a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man 
 extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding 
 out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy 
 
1 2 NA TURK. 
 
 to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the 
 mountains, reflected the wisdom of Iiis best liour, as 
 much as they had delighted the simphcity of his 
 childhood. 
 
 When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have 
 a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We 
 mean the integrity of impression made by manifold 
 natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the 
 stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of 
 the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this 
 morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or 
 thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and 
 Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them 
 ( owns the landscape. There is a property in the 
 j horizon which no man has but he whose eye can 
 integrate all the parts ; that is, the poet. This is the 
 best part of these men's farms, yet to this their war- 
 ranty-deeds give no title. 
 
 ^To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. 
 Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have 
 a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only 
 the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the 
 heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose 
 inward and oijtward senses are still truly adjusted to 
 each other ;(,who has retained the spirit of infancy, 
 even into the era of manhood.; His intercourse 
 with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily 
 food. In the presence of Nature, a wild delight runs 
 through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature 
 says, he is my creature, and maugre all his imper- 
 tinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun 
 or the summer alone, but every hour and season 
 
NATURE. 13 
 
 yields its tribute of delight ; fQr_ every hour and 
 change corresponds to and authorizes a different state 
 of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest mid- 
 
 j4gfet- .Nature is. a settings that fits equally well a i 
 com ic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air 
 is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare 
 common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a 
 clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any 
 occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a 
 perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. 
 In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the 
 snake his slough, and, at what period soever of life, 
 js always a child. In the woods is perp,etual youth. 
 
 ■'.Within these plantations of God a ^ecorum and 
 
 (sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the 
 guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thou- 
 sand years. In the woods we return to /reason and 
 
 (faith, " There I feel that nothing can befall me in 
 life, — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my 
 eyes) , which Nature cannot (repair^ Standing on 
 the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, 
 and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism 
 vanishes. Cjjaecome a transparent eye-ball';' I am 
 nothing ; I see all ; the currents of the Universal 
 Being circulate through rne; I am part or particle 
 of God._ The name of the nearest friend sounds 
 
 ' then foreign and accidental ; to be brothers, to be 
 acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle 
 and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained \ 
 
 ; and immortal beauty. ~ In the wilderness I find 
 someliing more dear and connate than in streets or 
 villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in 
 
14 NATURE. 
 
 the distant line of the horizon, man beholds some- 
 what as beautiful as his own nature. 
 
 The greatest delight which the fields and woods 
 minister is the suggestion of lan occult relatioii Cbe-^ 
 tween man and the vegetable.' I am not alone and 
 unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to thern_. 
 The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me, 
 and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not 
 unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought 
 or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed 
 I was thinking justly or doing right. 
 
 Yet it is certain that the power to produce this 
 delight does not reside in Nature, but in man, or in 
 a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these 
 pleasures with great temperance. For Nature is not 
 always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene 
 which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as 
 for the fi-olic of the nymphs is overspread with 
 melancholy to-day. Nature always |wears the colors 
 of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the 
 heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there 
 is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him 
 who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is 
 less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the 
 population. 
 
COMMODITY. 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 COMMODITY. 
 
 Whoever considers the final cause of the world 
 will discern a multitude of uses that enter as parts 
 into that result. They all admit of being thrown 
 into one of the following classes : Commodity ; 
 Beauty ; Language ; and Discipline. 
 
 Under the general name of Commodity I rank 
 all those advantages which our senses owe to Nature. 
 This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and 
 mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. 
 Yet although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is 
 the only use of Nature which all men apprehend. 
 The misery of man appears like childish petulance, 
 when we explore the steady and ;prodigal provision 
 that has been made for his support and delight on 
 I this green ball which floats him through the heavens. 
 What angels invented these splendid ornaments, 
 these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, 
 this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth 
 between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping 
 clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold 
 year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. 
 The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his 
 playground, his garden, and his bed. 
 
 " More servants wait on man 
 Than he'll take notice of," 
 
ID COMMODITY. 
 
 Nature, Ijn its ministry to man, is not only the 
 material, but is also the process and the result. 
 All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands 
 for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed ; 
 the sun evaporates the sea ; the wind blows the 
 vapor to the field ; the ice on the other side of 
 the planet condenses rain on this ; the rain feeds 
 the plant ; the plant feeds the animal ; and thus the 
 endless circulations of the divine charity nourish 
 man. 
 
 The usefiil arts are reproductions or new combina- 
 tions, by the wit of man, of the same natural bene- 
 factors. He no longer waits for favoring gales, but 
 by means of steam he realizes the fable of .(bolus's 
 bag, and carries the two and thirty winds in the 
 boiler of his boat. To diminish friction, he paves 
 the road with iron bars, and, mounting a coach with 
 a ship-load of men, animals, and merchandise be- 
 hind him, he darts through the country, from town 
 to town, like an eagle or a swallow through the air. 
 By the aggregate of these aids, how is the face of 
 the world changed from the era of Noah to that of 
 Napoleon ! -The private poor man hath cities, ships, 
 canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post- 
 office, and the human race run on his errands ; to 
 the book-shop, and the human race read and write 
 of all that happens, for him ; to the court-house, 
 and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house 
 upon the road, and the human race go forth every 
 morning and shovel out the snow, and cut a path 
 for him. 
 
 But there is no need of specifying particulars in 
 
COMMODITY. 17 
 
 this dass of uses. The catalogue is endless, and 
 the examples so obvious, that I shall leave them to 
 the reader's reflection, with the general remark, 
 that this mercenary benefit is one which has respect 
 to a farther good. A man is fed, not that he may 
 be fed, but that he may work. 
 
t8 BEAUTY. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 A NOBLER want of man is served by Nature, 
 namely, the love of Beauty. 
 
 The ancient Greeks called the world Koafio^, beauty. 
 Such is the constitution of all things, or such the 
 plastic power of the human eye, that the primary 
 forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the ani- 
 mal, gives us a delight in and for themselves; a 
 pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and 
 grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. 
 The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual ac- 
 tion of its structure and of the laws of light, per- 
 spective is produced, which integrates every mass of 
 objects, of what character soever, into a well colored 
 and shaded globe, so that where the particular ob- 
 jects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which 
 they compose is round and symmetrical. And as 
 the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of 
 painters. There is no object so foul that intense 
 light wiU not make beautiful. And the stimulus it 
 affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which 
 it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. 
 Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides 
 this general grace diffused over Nature, almost all 
 the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is 
 proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as 
 the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, 
 
BEAUTY. 19 
 
 the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the 
 lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, 
 flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many 
 trees, as the palm. 
 
 For better consideration, we may distribute the 
 aspects of Beauty in a threefold manner : 
 
 I. First, the simple perception of natural forms 
 is a delight. The influence of the forms and ac- 
 tions in Nature is so needful to man, that, in its 
 lowest functions, it seems to lie on the confines of 
 commodity and beauty. To the body and mind 
 which have been cramped by noxious work or com- 
 pany. Nature is medicinal and restores their tone. 
 The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the din 
 and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the 
 woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm 
 he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to 
 demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as 
 we can see far enough. 
 
 But in other hours Nature satisfies by its loveli- 
 ness, and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. 
 I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over 
 against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with 
 emotions which an angel might share. The long 
 slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of 
 crimson light. From the earth as a shore, I look 
 out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid 
 transformations ; the active enchantment reaches my 
 dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning 
 wind. How does Nature defy us with a few and 
 cheap elements ! Give me health and a day, and I 
 I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The 
 
20 BEAUTY. 
 
 dawn IS my Assyria ; the sunset and moonrise my 
 Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie ; broad 
 noon shall be my England of the senses and the 
 understanding; the night shall be my Germany of 
 mystic philosophy and dreams. 
 
 Not less excellent, except for our less suscepti- 
 bility in the afternoon, was the charm, last evening, 
 of a January sunset. The western clouds divided 
 and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modu- 
 lated with tints of unspeakable softness; and the 
 air had so mueh life and sweetness, that it was a 
 pain to come within doors. What was it that Nat- 
 ure would say? Was there no meaning in the live 
 repose of the valley behind the mill, and which 
 Homer or Shakspeare could not reform for me in 
 ■ words? The leafless trees become spires of flame 
 in the sunset, with the blue east for their back- 
 ground, and the stars of the dead calices of flowers, 
 and every withered stem and stubble rimed with 
 frost, contribute something to the mute music. 
 
 The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country 
 landscape is pleasant only half the year. I please 
 myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and 
 believe that we are as much touched by it as by 
 the genial influences of summer. To the attentive 
 eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, 
 and in the same field it beholds, every hour, a 
 picture which was never seen before, and which 
 shall never be seen again. The heavens change 
 every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom on 
 the plains beneath. The state of the crop in the 
 surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth 
 
BEAUTY. 21 
 
 from week to week. The succession of native plants 
 in the pastvires and roadsides, which makes the 
 silent clock by which time tells the summer hours, 
 will make even the divisions of the day sensible to 
 a keen observer. The tribes of birds and insects, 
 like the plants punctual to their time, follow each 
 other, and the year has room for all. By water- 
 courses, the variety is greater. In July, the blue 
 pontederia or pickerel-weed blooms in large beds 
 in the shallow parts of our pleasant river, and 
 swarms with yeUow butterflies in continual motion. 
 Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold. In- 
 deed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each 
 month a new ornament. 
 
 But this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt 
 as beauty is ,the least part. The shows of day, the 
 dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in 
 blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, 
 and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows 
 merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out 
 of the house to see the moon, and 'tis mere tinsel ; 
 it will not please as when its light shines upon your 
 necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in 
 the yellow afternoons of October, who ever could 
 clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone : 'tis 
 only a mirage as you look from the windows of 
 diligence. 
 
 2. The presence of a higher, namely, of the 
 spiritual, element is essential to its perfection. The 
 high and divine beauty which can be loved without 
 effeminacy is that which is found in combination 
 \vith the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets 
 
22 BEAUTY. 
 
 upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every 
 heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and 
 the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great 
 actions that the universe is the property of every in- 
 dividual in it. Every rational creature has all Nature 
 for his dowry and estate. It is his. if he will. He 
 may divest himself of it ; he may creep into a corner, 
 and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he 
 is entitled to the world by his constitution. In pro- 
 portion to the energy of his thought and will, he 
 takes up the world into himself. " All those things 
 for which men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue," 
 said Sallust. " The winds and waves." said Gibbon, 
 " are always on the side of the ablest navigators." 
 So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. 
 When a noble act is done, perchance in a scene 
 of great natural beauty ; when Leonidas and his 
 three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, 
 and the sun and moon come each and look at them 
 once in the steep defile of Thermopylae ; when Arnold 
 Winkelried, in the high Alps, under the shadow of 
 the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian 
 spears to break the line for his comrades, — are not 
 these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene 
 to the beauty of the deed? When the bark of 
 Columbus nears the shore of America, before it 
 the beach lined with savages fleeing out of all their 
 huts of cane, the sea behind, and the purple moun- 
 tains of the Indian Archipelago around, — can we sep- 
 arate the man from the living picture? Does not the 
 New World clothe his form with her palm-groves and 
 savannahs as fit drapery? Ever does natural beauty 
 
BEAUTY. 23 
 
 steal in like air and envelope great actions. When 
 Sir Harry Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill, sit- 
 ting on a sled, to suffer death, as the champion of 
 the English laws, one of the multitude cried out to 
 him: — "You never sat on so glorious a seat." 
 Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of London, 
 caused the patriot Lord Russell to be drawn in an 
 open coach through the principal streets of the city 
 on his way to the scaffold. " But," his biographer 
 says, " the multitude imagined they saw Liberty and 
 Virtue sitting by his side. " In private places, among 
 sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at 
 once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun 
 as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to 
 embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal great- 
 ness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the 
 rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur 
 and grace to the decoration of her darling child. 
 Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the 
 frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in 
 unison with her works, and makes the central figure 
 of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, 
 Phocion, associate themselves fitly in our memory 
 with the geography and climate of Greece. The 
 visible heavens and earth s)Tnpathize with Jesus. 
 And in common life, whosoever has seen a person of 
 powerful character and happy genius, will have re- 
 marked how easily he took all things along with him, 
 — the persons, the opinions, and the day, and Nature 
 became ancillary to a man. 
 
 3. There is still another aspect under which the 
 beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it 
 
24 BEAUTY. 
 
 becomes an object of the intellect. Beside the rela- 
 tion of things to virtue, they have a relation to 
 thought. The intellect searches out the absolute 
 order of things as they stand in the mind of God, 
 and without the colors of affection. The intellects 
 ual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, 
 and the exclusive activity of the one generates the 
 exclusive activity of the other. There is something 
 unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the 
 alternate periods of feeding and working in animals : 
 each prepares and will be followed by the other. 
 Therefore does beauty, which, in relation to actions, 
 as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes be- 
 cause it is unsought, remain for the apprehension 
 and pursuit of the intellect ; and then again, in its 
 turn, of the active power. Nothing divine dies. All 
 good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature 
 re-forms itself in the mind, and not for barren con- 
 templation, but for new creation. 
 
 AH men are in some degree impressed by the face 
 of the world ; some men even to delight. This love 
 of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in 
 such excess, that, not content with admiring, they 
 seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of 
 beauty is Art. 
 
 The production of a work of art throws a light 
 upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an 
 abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or 
 expression of nature in miniature. For, although the 
 works of nature are innumerable and all different, 
 the result or the expression of them all is similar and 
 single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and 
 
BEA UTY. 25 
 
 even unique. A leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the 
 ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. 
 What is common to them all, — that perfectness 
 and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is 
 the entire circuit of natural forms, — the totality of 
 nature ; which the Italians expressed by defining 
 beauty " il piu neW uito." Nothing is quite beauti- 
 ful alone ; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A 
 single object is only so far beautifiil as it suggests 
 this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the 
 sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to 
 concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, 
 and each in his several work to satisfy the love of 
 beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is 
 Art a nature passed through the alembic of man. 
 Thus in Art does Nature work through the will of a 
 man filled with the beauty of her first works. 
 
 The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the de- 
 sire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. 
 No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks 
 .' beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, 
 j is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. 
 ' Truth, and goodness, and beauty are but different 
 faces of the same All. But beauty in Nature is not 
 ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal 
 beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. 
 It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or 
 highest expression of the final cause of Nature. 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LANGUAGE. 
 
 Language is a third use which Nature subserves 
 to man. Nature is the vehicle of thought, and in a 
 simple, double, and threefold degree. 
 
 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 
 
 2 . Particular natural facts are symbols of particular 
 spiritual facts. 
 
 3 . Nature is the symbol of spirit. 
 
 I. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of 
 natural history is to give us aid in supernatural 
 history ; the use of the outer creation, to give us lan- 
 guage for the beings and changes of the inward crea- 
 tion. Every word which is used to express a moral or 
 intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be 
 borrowed from some material appearance. Right 
 means straight ; wrong means iivisted. Spirit pri- 
 marily means wind ; trajisgression, the crossing of a 
 lijie ; supercilious, the raising of the eyebrow. We 
 say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote 
 thought ; and thought and emotion are words borrowed 
 from sensible things, and now appropriated to spirit- 
 ual nature. Most of the process by which this trans- 
 formation is made is hidden from us in the remote 
 time when language was framed ; but the same ten- 
 dency may be daily observed in children. Children 
 and savages use only nouns or names of things, which 
 
LANGUAGE. 27 
 
 they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous men- 
 tal acts. 
 
 2. But this origin of all words that convey a spirit- 
 ual import — so conspicuous a fact in the history of 
 language — is our least debt to Nature. It is not 
 words only that are emblematic; it is things which 
 are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of 
 some spiritual fact. Every appearance in Nature cor- 
 responds to some state of the mind, and that state of 
 the mind can only be described by presenting that 
 natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man 
 is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a 
 rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is inno- 
 cence, a snake is subtle spite, flowers express to us 
 the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our 
 familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance, 
 and heat for love. Visible distance behind and be- 
 fore us is respectively our image of memory and 
 hope. 
 
 Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and 
 is not reminded of the flux of all things ? Throw a 
 stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate 
 themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. 
 Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind 
 his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the 
 natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and 
 shine. This universal soul he calls Reason; it is 
 not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its ; we are its 
 property and men. And the blue sky in which the 
 private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, 
 and fiill of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. 
 That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, 
 
28 LANGUAGE. 
 
 considered in relation to Nature, we call Spirit. 
 Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And 
 man in all ages and countries embodies it in his lan- 
 guage, as the Father. 
 
 It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or ca- 
 pricious in these analogies, but that they are constant, 
 and pervade Nature. These are not the dreams of a 
 few poets here and there, but man is an analogist, 
 and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in 
 the centre of beings, and a ray of relation passes from 
 every other being to him. And neither can man be 
 understood without these objects, nor these objects 
 without man. All the facts in natural history taken 
 by themselves have no value, but are barren, like a 
 single sex. But marry it to human history, and it is 
 full of life. Whole Floras, all Linnzeus' and Buffon's 
 volumes, are dry catalogues of facts ; but the most 
 trivial of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, 
 or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illustra- 
 tion of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or in any 
 way associated to human nature, affects us in the 
 most lively and agreeable manner. The seed of a 
 plant, — to what affecting analogies in the nature of 
 man is that little fruit made use of, in all discourse, 
 up to the voice of Paul, who calls the human corpse 
 a seed, — " It is sown a natural body ; it is raised a 
 spiritual body." The motion of the earth round its 
 axis and round the sun makes the day and the year. 
 These are certain amounts of brute light and heat. 
 But is there no intent of an analogy between man's 
 life and the seasons? And do the seasons gain 
 no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? The in- 
 
LANGUAGE. 29 
 
 stincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered 
 as the ant's ; but the moment a ray of relation is seen 
 to extend from it to man, and the Uttle drudge is 
 seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty 
 heart, then all its habits, even that said to be re- 
 cently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime. 
 
 Because of this radical correspondence between 
 visible things and human thoughts, savages who have 
 only what is necessary, converse in figures. As we 
 go back in history, language becomes more pictur- 
 esque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry ; or all 
 spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. 
 The same symbols are found to make the original 
 elements of all languages. It has moreover been ob- 
 served that the idioms of all languages approach each 
 other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. 
 And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This 
 immediate dependence of language upon nature, this 
 conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of 
 somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect 
 us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the con- 
 versation of a strong-natured former or backwoods- 
 man which all men relish. 
 
 A man's power to connect his thought with its 
 proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the 
 simplicity of his character; that is, upon his love of 
 truth and his desire to communicate it without loss. 
 The corruption of man is followed by the corruption 
 of language. When simplicity of character and the 
 sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of 
 secondary desires, — the desire of riches, of pleasure, 
 of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood 
 
30 LANGUAGE. 
 
 take place of simplicity and truth, the power over 
 Nature, as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree 
 lost ; new imagery ceases to be created and old words 
 are perverted to stand for things which are not ; a 
 paper currency is employed when there is no bullion 
 in the vaults. In due time the fraud is manifest, and 
 words lose all power to stimulate the understanding 
 or the affections. Hundreds of writers may be found 
 in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time 
 beUeve, and make others believe, that they see and 
 utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one 
 thought in its natural garment, but who feed uncon- 
 sciously on the language created by the primary 
 writers of the country, those, namely, who hold 
 primarily on Nature. 
 
 But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten 
 words again to visible things ; so that picturesque 
 language is at once a commanding certificate that he 
 who employs it is a man in alliance with Truth and 
 God. The moment our discourse rises above the 
 ground line of familiar facts and is inflamed with 
 passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in 
 images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch 
 his intellectual processes, will find that a material 
 image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, 
 contemporaneous with every thought which furnishes 
 the vestment of the thought. Hence good writing 
 and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This 
 imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of e.\- 
 perience with the present action of the mind. It is 
 proper creation. It is the working of the Original 
 Cause through the instruments he has already made. 
 
LANGUAGE. 31 
 
 These facts may suggest the advantage which the 
 country-life possesses for a powerful mind over the 
 artificial and curtailed life of cities. We know more 
 from Nature than we can at will communicate. Its 
 light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its 
 presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, 
 whose senses have been nourished by their fair and 
 appeasing changes year after year, without design 
 and without heed, shall not lose their lesson alto- 
 gether in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. 
 Long hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in national 
 councils, in the hour of revolution, these solemn 
 images shall reappear in their morning lustre as fit 
 symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing 
 events shall awaken. At the call of a noble senti- 
 ment, again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the 
 river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the 
 mountains as he saw and heard them in his infancy. 
 And with these forms, the spells of persuasion, the 
 keys of power are put into his hands. 
 
 3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the 
 expression of particular meanings. But how great a 
 language to convey such pepper-corn informations ! 
 Did it need such noble races of creatures, this pro- 
 fusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish 
 man with the dictionary and grammar of his munici- 
 pal speech? Whilst we use this grand cipher to e.x- 
 padite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that 
 we have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. 
 We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano 
 to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always 
 stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot 
 
32 LANGUAGE. 
 
 avoid the question whether the characters are not 
 significant of themselves. Have mountains, and 
 waves, and skies no significance but what we con- 
 sciously give them when we employ them as emblems 
 of our thoughts ? The world is emblematic. Parts 
 of speech are metaphors, because the whole of Nature 
 is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of 
 moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face 
 in a glass. " The visible world and the relation of 
 its parts is the dial plate of the invisible." The 
 axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, 
 " the whole is greater than its part ; " " reaction is 
 equal to action ; " " the smallest weight may be made 
 to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being 
 compensated by time ; " and many the like proposi- 
 tions which have an ethical as well as physical sense. 
 These propositions have a much more extensive and 
 universal sense when applied to human life than when 
 confined to technical use. 
 
 In like manner the memorable words of history, 
 and the proverbs of nations, consist usually of a 
 natural fact, selected as a picture or parable of a 
 moral truth. Thus : A rolling stone gathers no moss ; 
 A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush ; A crip- 
 ple in the right way will beat a racer in the wrong ; 
 Make hay while the sun shines ; 'Tis hard to carry a 
 full cup even ; Vinegar is the son of wine ; The last 
 ounce broke the camel's back ; Long-lived trees make 
 roots first; and the like. In their primary sense 
 these are trivial facts, but we repeat them for the 
 value of their analogical import. What is true of 
 proverbs is true of all fables, parables, and allegories. 
 
LANGUAGE. 33 
 
 This relation between the mind and matter is not 
 fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, 
 and so is free to be known by all men. It appears 
 to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate 
 hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, 
 if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; 
 
 " Can these things be, 
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud 
 Without our special wonder? " 
 
 for the universe becomes transparent, and the light 
 of higher laws than its own shines through it. It is 
 the standing problem which has exercised the wonder 
 and the study of every fine genius since the world 
 began ; from the era of the Egjfptians and the Brah- 
 mins to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of 
 Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at 
 the roadside, and from age to age, as each prophet 
 comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. 
 There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest 
 itself in material forms ; and day and night, river and 
 storm, beast and bird, acid and allcali, preexist in 
 necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what 
 they are by virtue of preceding affections in the 
 world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of 
 spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the 
 circumference of the invisible world. " Material ob- 
 jects," said a French philosopher, " are necessarily 
 kinds of scoria of the substantial thoughts of the 
 Creator, which must always preserve an exact rela- 
 tion to their first origin; in other words, visible 
 Nature must have a spiritual and moral side." 
 
34 LANGUAGE. 
 
 This doctrine is abstrase, and though the images 
 of " garment," " scorise," " mirror," etc., may stimu- 
 late the fancy, we must summon the aid of subtler 
 and more vital expositors to make it plain. " Every 
 scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which 
 gave it forth," is the fundamental law of criticism. 
 A life in harmony with Nature, the love of truth and 
 of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her te.xt. 
 By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense 
 of the permanent objects of Nature, so that the world 
 shall be to us an open book, and every form signifi- 
 cant of its hidden life and final cause. 
 
 A new interest surprises us, whilst under the view 
 now suggested we contemplate the fearful extent 
 and multitude of objects, since " every object rightly 
 seen unlocks a new faculty of the soul." That 
 which was unconscious truth becomes, when inter- 
 preted and defined in an object, a part of the domain 
 of knowledge, — a new weapon in the magazine of 
 power. 
 
DISCIPLINE. 35 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 In view of the significance of Nature, we arrive 
 at once at a new fact, tliat Nature is a discipline. 
 This use of the world includes the preceding uses 
 as parts of itself. 
 
 Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomo- 
 tion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give us 
 sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning is 
 unlimited. They educate both the Understanding 
 and the Reason. Every property of matter is a 
 school for the understanding, — its solidity or re- 
 sistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its 
 divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, com- 
 bines, measures, and finds nutriment and room for 
 its activity in this worthy scene. iVIeantime, Reason 
 transfers all these lessons into its own world of 
 thought, by perceiving the analogy that marries 
 Matter and Mind. 
 
 I. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in 
 intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible olj- 
 jects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons 
 of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and 
 seeming, of progressive arrangement ; of ascent from 
 particular to general ; of combination to one end of 
 manifold forces. Proportioned to the importance of 
 th'j organ to be formed, is the extreme care with 
 
36 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 which its tuition is provided, — a. care pretermitted 
 in no single case. What tedious training, day after 
 day, year after year, never ending, to form the com- 
 mon sense ; what continual reproduction of annoy- 
 ances, inconveniences, dilemmas ; what rejoicing over 
 us of little men ; what disputing of prices, wliat 
 reckonings of interest, — and all to form the Hand 
 of the mind; — to instruct us that "good thoughts 
 are no better than good dreams, unless they be exe- 
 cuted " ! 
 
 The same good office is performed by Property 
 and its filial systems of debt and credit. Debt, 
 grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the or- 
 phan, and the sons of genius fear and hate ; debt, 
 which consumes so much time, which so cripples and 
 disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so 
 base, — is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be fore- 
 gone, and is needed most by those who suffer from 
 it most. Moreover, property, which has been well 
 compared to snow, — "if it fall level to-day, it will 
 be blown into drifts to-morrow," — is the surface 
 action of internal machinery, like the index on the 
 face of a clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of 
 the understanding, it is hiving in the foresight of the 
 spirit, experience in profounder laws. 
 
 The whole character and fortune of the individual 
 are affected by the least inequalities in the culture of 
 the understanding ; for example, in the perception of 
 differences. The refore is Space, and therefore Time, 
 that man may know tl^t things are not huddled and 
 lumped, but sundered and individual. A bell and a 
 plough have each their use, and neither can do the 
 
DISCTPLINE. 37 
 
 oflSce of the other. Water is good to drink, coal to 
 burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor 
 water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows 
 his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale 
 of creatures and of merits is as wide as Nature. The 
 foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose 
 every man is as every other man. What is not good 
 they call the worst, and what is not hateful they call 
 the best. 
 
 In like manner, what good heed Nature forms in 
 us ! She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and 
 her nay, nay. 
 
 The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zool- 
 ogy (those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, 
 and the sailor take) teach that Nature's dice are 
 always loaded ; that in her heaps and rubbish are 
 concealed sure and useful results. 
 
 How .calmly and genially the mind apprehends one 
 
 after another the laws of physics ! What noble 
 emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the 
 counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the 
 privilege to Be ! His insight refines him. The 
 beauty of Nature shines in his own breast. Man is 
 greater that he can see this, and the universe less, 
 because Time and Space relations vanish as laws 
 are known. 
 
 Here again we are impressed and even daunted by 
 the immense Universe to be explored. "What we 
 know is a point to what we do not know." Open 
 any recent journal of science, and weigh the prob- 
 lems suggested concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, 
 Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether 
 
38 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 the interest of natural science is likely to be soon 
 exhausted. 
 
 Passing by many particulars of the discipline of 
 Nature, we must not omit to specify two. 
 
 The exercise of the Will or the lesson of power 
 is taught in every event. From the child's succes- 
 sive possession of his several senses up to the hour 
 when he saith, " Thy will be done ! " fce is learning 
 ,the secret that he can reduce under his will,, not 
 only particular events, but great classes, nay, the 
 whole series of events, and so (conform all facts to 
 his character, j Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is 
 made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as 
 meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode. It 
 offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material 
 which he may mould into what is useful. Man is 
 never weary of working it up. He forges the subtile 
 and delicate air into wise and melodious words, and 
 gives them wing as angels of persuasion and com- 
 mand. One after another his victorious thought 
 comes up with and reduces all things, until the 
 world becomes, at last, only a realized will, — the 
 double of the man. 
 
 2. Sensible objects conform to the^premonitions 
 of Reason and reflect the conscience. _■ AH things are 
 moral,\and in their boundless changes (have an un- 
 ceasing reference to spiritual nature,' Therefore is 
 Nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that 
 every globe in the remotest heaven, every chemical 
 change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life, 
 every change of vegetation from the first principle of 
 growth in the eye of a leaf to the tropical forest and 
 
DISCIPLINE. 39 
 
 antediluvian coal-mine, every animal function from 
 the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to 
 man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten 
 ~Cofninandments. ' Therefore is Nature ever the ally 
 of Religion,, lends all her pomp and riches to the 
 religious sentiment.; Prophet and priest, David, 
 Isaiah, Jesus, have drawn deeply from this source, 
 /^his ;,ethical character' so penetrates the bone and 
 ' marrow of Nature, a^ to seem tlie end for which it 
 '^was made. Whatever private puipose is answered 
 Dy any member or part, this is itsj^public and univer- 
 ,sal function} and is never omitted. Nothing in Nat- 
 ure is exhausted in its first use. When a thing has 
 served an end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for 
 an ulterior service. In God, every end is converted 
 into a new means. Thus the use of commodity, re- 
 garded by itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to 
 the mind an education in the doctrine of Use, 
 namely, that a thing is good only so far as it 
 serves ; that a conspiring of parts and efforts to 
 the production of an end is essential to any being. 
 The first and gross manifestation of this truth is 
 our inevitable and hated training in values and 
 wants, in corn and meat. 
 
 It has already been illustrated that every natural 
 process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral 
 law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the 
 circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every 
 substance, every relation, and every process. All 
 things vnth which we deal, preach to us. What is a 
 farm but a mute gospel ? The chaff and the wheat, 
 weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, — it is a 
 
40 D/SCIPLTNE. 
 
 sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the 
 last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in 
 the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, 
 the merchant, in their several resorts, have each an 
 experience precisely parallel, and leading to the same 
 conclusion, because all organizations are radically 
 alike. Nor can it be doubted that this moral senti- 
 ment which thus scents the air, grows in the grain, 
 and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by 
 man and sinlcs into his soul. The moral influence of 
 Nature upon every individual is that amount of Truth 
 which it illustrates to him. Who can estimate this? 
 Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten 
 rock has taught the fisherman? how much tranquillity 
 has been reflected to man from the azure sky, over 
 whose unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive 
 flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no wrinkle or 
 stain? how much industry and providence and affec- 
 tion we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? 
 What a searching preacher of self-command is the 
 varying phenomenon of Health ! 
 
 Herein is especially apprehended the unity of 
 Nature, — the unity in variety, — which meets us 
 everywhere. All the endless variety of things make 
 an identical impression. Xenophanes complained in 
 his old age, that, look where he would, all things 
 hastened back to Unit}'. He was weary of seeing 
 the same entity in the tedious variety of forms. The 
 fable of Proteus has a cordial truth. A leaf, a drop, 
 a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, 
 and partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each 
 particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the 
 likeness of the world. 
 
DISCTPLINE. 41 
 
 Not only resemblances exist in things whose anal- 
 ogy is obvious, as when we detect the type of the 
 human hand in the flipper of the fossil saurus, but 
 also in objects wherein there is great superficial 
 unlikeness. Thus architecture is called "frozen 
 music " by De Stael and Goethe. Vitruvius thought 
 r.n architect should be a musician. " A Gothic 
 church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified religion." 
 Michael Angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a 
 knowledge of anatomy is essential. In Haydn's ora- 
 torios the notes present to the imagination not only 
 motions, as of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, 
 but colors also, as the green grass. The law of har- 
 monic sounds reappears in the harmonic colors. 
 The granite is differenced in its laws only by the 
 more or less of heat, from the river that wears it 
 away. The river, as it flows, resembles the air that 
 flows over it ; the air resembles the light which trav- 
 erses it with more subtile currents ; the light resem- 
 bles the heat which rides with it through Space. 
 Each creature is only a modification of the other; 
 the likeness in them is more than the difference, and 
 their radical law is one and the same. A rule of one 
 art or a law of one organization holds true throughout 
 Nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily 
 seen, it lies under the undermost garment of Nature, 
 and betrays its source in Universal Spirit. For it 
 pervades Tliought also. Every universal truth which 
 we express in words implies or supposes every other 
 truth. Omne verttm vera consonat. It is like a 
 great circle on a sphere, comprising all possible cir- 
 cles; which, however, may be drawn, and comprise 
 
42 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 it, in like manner. Every such truth is the absolute 
 Ens seen from one side. But it has innumerable 
 sides. 
 
 The central Unity is still more conspicuous in 
 actions. Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. 
 They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in Truth. 
 They break, chop, and impoverish it. An action is 
 the perfection and publication of thought. A right 
 action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all 
 Nature. "The wise man, in doing one thing, does 
 all ; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the 
 likeness of all which is done rightly." 
 
 Words and actions are not the attributes of brute 
 nature. They introduce us to the human form, of 
 which all other organizations appear to be degrada- 
 tions. When this appears among so many that sur- 
 round it, the spirit prefers it to all others. It says, 
 "From such as this have I drav/n joy and knowl- 
 edge ; in such as this have I found and beheld my- 
 self; I will speak to it; it can speak again; it can 
 yield me thought already formed and alive." In fact, 
 the eye — the mind — is always accompanied by 
 these forms, male and female ; and these are incom- 
 parably the richest informations of the power and 
 order that lie at the heart of things. Unfortunatelv, 
 every one of them bears the marks as of some injury ; 
 is marred and superficially defective. Nevertheless, 
 far different from the deaf and dumb nature around 
 them, these all rest like fountain-pipes on the unfath- 
 omed sea of thought and virtue whereto they alone, 
 of all organizations, are the entrances. 
 
 It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their 
 
DISCIPLINE. 43 
 
 ministry to our education; but where would it stop? 
 We are associated in adolescent and adult life with 
 some friends, who, like skies and waters, are coex- 
 tensive with our idea ; who, answering each to a cer- 
 tain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that 
 side ; whom we lack power to put at such focal dis- 
 tance from us, that we can mend or even analyze 
 them. We cannot choose but love them. When 
 much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with 
 a standard of excellence, and has increased our re- 
 spect for the resources of God who thus sends a real 
 person to outgo our ideal ; when he has, moreover, 
 become an object of thought, and, whilst his charac- 
 ter retains all its unconscious effect, is con\'erted in 
 the mind into solid and sweet vidsdom, — it is a sign 
 to us that his office is closing, and he is commonly 
 withdrawn from our sight in a short time. 
 
44 IDEALISM. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IDEALISM. 
 
 Thus is the unspeakable but intelligible and prac- 
 ticable meaning of the world conveyed to man, the 
 immortal pupil, in every object of sense. To this 
 one end of Discipline all parts of Nature conspire. 
 
 A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether 
 this end be not the Final Cause of the Universe, and 
 whether Nature outwardly exists. It is a sufficient 
 account of that Appearance we call the World, that 
 God will teach a human mind, and so makes it the 
 receiver of a certain number of congruent sensations, 
 which we call sun and moon, man and woman, house 
 and trade. In my utter impotence to test the au- 
 thenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether 
 the impressions they make on me correspond with 
 outlying objects, what difference does it make 
 whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god 
 paints the image in the firmament of the soul? The 
 relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining 
 the same, what is the difference whether land and 
 sea interact, and worlds revolve and intermingle with- 
 out number or end, — deep yawning under deep, and 
 galaxy balancing galaxy, throughout absolute space, 
 — or whether, without relations of time and space, 
 the same appearances are inscribed in the constant 
 faith of man? Whether Nature enjoy a substantia! 
 existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the 
 
IDEALISM. 45 
 
 mind, it is alike usefbl and alike venerable to me. Be 
 it what it may, it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot 
 try the accuracy of my senses. 
 
 The frivolous make themselves merry with the 
 Ideal theory, as if its consequences were burlesque ; 
 as if it affected the stability of Nature. It surely 
 does not. God never jests with us, and will not 
 compromise the end of Nature, by permitting any 
 inconsequence in its procession. Any distrust of the 
 permanence of laws would paralyze the faculties of 
 man. Their permanence is sacredly respected, and 
 his faith therein is perfect. The wheels and springs 
 of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence 
 of Nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, 
 but like a house to stand. It is a natural consequence 
 of the structure, that, so long as the active powers 
 predominate over the reflective, we resist with indig- 
 nation any hint that Nature is more short-lived or 
 mutable than spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, 
 the carpenter, the toll-man, are much displeased at 
 the intimation. 
 
 But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence 
 of natural laws, the question of the absolute existence 
 of Nature still remains open. It is the uniform effect of 
 culture on the human mind, not to shake our faith 
 in the stability of particular phenomena, as of heat, 
 water, azote ; but to lead us to regard Nature as a 
 phenomenon, not a substance ; to attribute necessary 
 existence to spirit; to esteem Nature as an accident 
 and an effect. 
 
 To the senses and the unrenewed understanding 
 belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the absolute 
 
46 IDEALISM. 
 
 existence of Nature. In tlieir view, Man and Nature 
 are indissolubly joined. Tilings are ultimates, and 
 they never look beyond their sphere. The presence 
 of Reason mars this faith. The first effort of thought 
 tends to rela.x this despotism of the senses, which 
 binds us to Nature as if we were a part of it, and 
 shows us Nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until 
 this higher agency intervened, the animal eye sees, 
 with wonderful accuracy, sharp outlines and colored 
 surfaces. When the eye of Reason opens, to outline 
 and surface are at once added grace and expression. 
 These proceed from imagination and affection, and 
 abate somewhat of the angular distinctness of ob- 
 jects. If the Reason be stimulated to more earnest 
 vision, outlines and surfaces become transparent, and 
 are no longer seen ; causes and spirits are seen 
 through them. The best moments of life are these 
 delicious awakenings of the higher powers, and the 
 reverential withdrawing of Nature before its God. 
 
 Let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture. 
 I . Our first institution in the Ideal philosophy is a 
 hint from Nature herself. 
 
 Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emanci- 
 pate us. Certain mechanical changes, a small altera- 
 tion in our local position, apprises us of a dualism. 
 We are strangely affected by seeing the shore from ii 
 moving ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of 
 an unusual sky. The least change in our point of 
 view gives the whole world a pictorial air. A man 
 who seldom rides, needs only to get into a coach and 
 traverse his own town, to turn the street into a pup- 
 pet-show. The men, the women, — talking, run- 
 
IDEALISM. 47 
 
 ning, bartering, fighting, — the earnest mechanic, 
 the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are un- 
 realized at once, or, at least, wholly detached from 
 all relation to the observer, and seen as apparent, 
 not substantial beings. What new thoughts are sug- 
 gested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in 
 the rapid movement of the railroad car ! Nay, the 
 most wonted objects (make a very slight change in 
 the point of vision) please us most. In a camera 
 obscura the butcher's cart and the figure of one of 
 our own family amuse us. So a portrait of a well- 
 known face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down, 
 by looking at the landscape through your legs, and 
 how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen 
 it any time these twenty years ! 
 
 In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested 
 the difference between the observer and the specta- 
 cle, — between Man and Nature. Hence arises a 
 pleasure mixed v/ith awe ; I may say, a low degree 
 of the sublime is felt from the fact, probably, that 
 Man is hereby apprised that, whilst the world is a 
 spectacle, something in himself is stable. 
 
 2. In a higher manner the poet communicates the 
 same pleasure. By a few strokes he delineates, as 
 on air, the sun, the mountain, the camp, the city, 
 the hero, the maiden, not different from what we 
 know them, but only lifted from the ground and 
 afloat before the eye. He unfixes the land and the 
 sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his 
 primary thought, and disposes them anew. Pos- 
 sessed himself by a heroic passion, he uses matter as 
 symbols of it. The sensual man conforms thoughts 
 
4t> IDEALISAf. 
 
 to things ; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. 
 The one esteems Nature as rooted and fast ; the other, 
 as fluid, and impresses his being tliereon. To him, 
 the refractory world is ductile and flexible ; he invests 
 dust and stones with humanit}', and makes them the 
 words of the Reason. The Imagination may be de- 
 fined to be the use wliich the Reason makes of the 
 material world. Shakspeare, beyond all poets, pos- 
 sesses the power of subordinating Nature for the 
 purposes of expression. His imperial muse tosses the 
 creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses 
 it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper- 
 most in his mind. The remotest spaces of Nature 
 are visited, and the farthest sundered things are 
 brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. 
 We are made aware that magnitude of material things 
 is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to 
 serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, 
 the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he 
 finds to be the shadow of his beloved ; time, which 
 keeps her from him, is his chest ; the suspicion she 
 has awakened is her ornament ; 
 
 "The ornament of beauty is Suspect, 
 A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air." 
 
 His passion is not the fruit of chance ; it swells, as 
 he speaks, to a city or a state. 
 
 " No, it was builded far from accident ; 
 It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls 
 Under the brow of thralling discontent ; 
 It fears not policy, that heretic, 
 That works on leases of short numbered hours. 
 But all alone stands hugely politic." 
 
IDEALISM. 49 
 
 In the strength of his constancy, the Pyramids 
 seem to liim recent and transitory. The freshness 
 of youth and love dazzles him with its resemblance 
 to morning. 
 
 " Take those lips away 
 Which so sweetly were forsworn ; 
 And those eyes, — the break of day. 
 Lights that do mislead the morn." 
 
 The wild beauty of this hj'perbole, I may say, in 
 passing, it would not be easy to match in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 This transfiguration wliich all material objects un- 
 dergo through the passion of the poet, this power 
 which he exerts to dwarf the great, to magnify the 
 small, — might be illustrated by a thousand examples 
 from his Plays. I have before me "The Tempest," 
 and will cite only these few lines : 
 
 " Ariel. The strong based promontory 
 Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up 
 The pine and cedar." 
 
 Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic Alonzo 
 and his companions : 
 
 "A solemn air, and the best comforter 
 To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains 
 Now useless, boiled within thy skull." 
 
 Again: 
 
 " The charm dissolves apace, 
 And, as the morning steals upon the night, 
 Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 
 Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle 
 Their clearer reason. 
 
50 IDEALISM. 
 
 Their understanding 
 Begins to swell : and the approaching tide 
 Will shortly fill the reasonable shores 
 That now lie foul and muddy." 
 
 The perception of real affinities between events 
 (that is to say, of ideal affinities, for those only are 
 real) enables the poet thus to make free with the 
 most imposing forms and phenomena of the world, 
 and to assert the pradominance of the soul. 
 
 3. Whilst thus the poet animates Nature with his 
 own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only 
 herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main 
 end; the other, Truth. But the philosopher, not less 
 than the poet, postpones the apparent order and re- 
 lations of things to the empire of thought. ' ' The 
 problem of philosophy," according to Plato, " is, 
 for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground un- 
 conditioned and absolute." It proceeds on the faith 
 that a law determines all phenomena, which being 
 known, the phenomena can be predicted. That law, 
 when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. 
 The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and 
 a beauty which is truth, and a truth which is beauty, 
 is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Pla- 
 to''s or Aristotle's definitions strictly like that of the 
 " Antigone " of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that 
 ti spiritual life has been imparted to Nature ; that the 
 solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and 
 dissolved by a thought ; that this feeble human being 
 has penetrated the vast masses of Nature with an in- 
 I forming soul, and recognized itself in their harmony, 
 that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is 
 
IDEALISM. 5 1 
 
 attained, the memory disburdens itself of its cum- 
 brous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries 
 of observation in a single formula. 
 
 Thus even in physics the material is degraded be- 
 fore the spiritual. The astronomer, the geometer, 
 rely on their irrefragable analysis and disdain the 
 results of observation. The sublime remark of 
 Euler on his law of arches, " This will be found con- 
 trary to all experience, yet is true," had already 
 transferred Nature into the mind and left matter like 
 an outcast corpse. 
 
 4. Intellectual science has been observed to beget 
 invariably a doubt of the existence of matter. Tur- 
 got said : — " He that has never doubted the existence 
 of matter may be assured he has no aptitude for 
 metaphysical inquiries." It fastens the attention 
 upon immortal necessary uncreated natures, that is, 
 upon Ideas ; and in their presence we feel that the 
 outward circumstance is a dream and a shade. Whilst 
 we wait in this Ol3Tnpus of gods we think of Nature 
 as an appendix to the soul. We ascend into their 
 region, and know that these are the thoughts of the 
 Supreme Being. " These are they who were set up 
 from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the 
 earth was. When he prepared the heavens, they 
 were there ; when he established the clouds above, 
 when he strengthened the fountains of the deep, 
 then they were by him as one brought up with him. 
 Of them took he counsel." 
 
 Their influence is proportionate. As objects of 
 science they are accessible to few men. Yet all men 
 are capable of being raised by piety or by passion 
 
52 IDEALISM. 
 
 into their region. And no man touches these divine 
 natures without becoming in some degree himself 
 divine. Like a new soul, they renew the body. We 
 become physically nimble and lightsome ; we tread 
 on air ; life is no longer irksome, and we think it will 
 never be so. No man fears age or misfortune or 
 death in their serene company, for he is transported 
 out of the district of change. Whilst we behold un- 
 veiled the nature of Justice aiid Truth, we learn the 
 difference between the absolute and the conditional 
 or relative. We apprehend the absolute. As it 
 were, for the first time, we exist. We become im- 
 mortal, for we learn that Time and Space are rela- 
 tions of matter ; that, with a perception of Truth or 
 a virtuous will, they have no affinity. 
 
 5. Final!)', religion and ethics, which may be fitly 
 called the practice of ideas or the introduction of 
 ideas into life, have an analogous effect with all 
 lower culture in degrading Nature and suggesting its 
 dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ 
 herein, that the one is the system of human duties 
 commencing from man ; the other, from God. Relig- 
 ion includes the personality of God ; Ethics does 
 not. They are one to our present design. They 
 both put Nature under foot. The first and last les- 
 son of religion is, "The things that are seen are 
 temporal ; the things that are unseen are eternal." 
 It puts an affront upon Nature. It does that for the 
 unschooled which philosophy does for Berkeley and 
 Viasa. The uniform language that may be heard in 
 the churches of the most ignorant sects is : — " Con- 
 temn the unsubstantial shows of the world ; they are 
 
IDEALISM. 53 
 
 vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities ; seek the re- 
 alities of religion." The devotee flouts Nature. Some 
 theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility and 
 indignation to^vards matter, as the Manichean and 
 Plotinus. They distrusted in themselves any looking 
 back to these flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus was 
 ashamed of his body. In short, they might all say 
 of matter what iVIichael Angelo said of external 
 beauty : — "It is the frail and weary weed in which 
 God dresses the soul which he has called into 
 time." 
 
 It appears that motion, poetry, physical and intel- 
 lectual science, and religion all tend to affect our 
 convictions of the reality of the external world. But 
 I own there is something ungrateful in e.xpanding too 
 curiously the particulars of the general proposition 
 that all culture tends to imbue us with idealism. I 
 have no hostility to Nature, but a child's love to it. 
 I expand and live in the warm day like corn and mel- 
 ons. Let us speak her fair. I do not wish to fling 
 stones at my beautiful mother nor soil my gentle 
 nest. I only wish to indicate the true position of 
 Nature in regard to Man, wherein to establish man all 
 right education tends ; as the ground which to attain 
 is the object of human life, that is, of Man's connec- 
 tion with Nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views 
 of Nature, and brings the mind to call that apparent 
 which it uses to call real, and that real which it uses 
 to call visionary. Children, it is true, believe in the 
 external world. The belief that it appears only, is 
 an afterthought, but with culture this faith will as 
 surely arise on the mind as did the first. 
 
54 IDEALISM. 
 
 'I'he advantage of the ideal theory over the popu- 
 lar faith is this, that it presents tlie world in pre- 
 cisely that view which is most desirable to the 
 mind. It is, in fact, the view which Reason, both 
 speculative and practical, that is, philosophy and 
 virtue, take. For, seen in the light of though',, 
 the world always is phenomenal ; and virtue subor 
 dinates it to the mind. Idealism sees the world in 
 God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and 
 things, of actions and events, of country and religion, 
 not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act 
 after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast 
 picture which God paints on the instant eternity for 
 the contemplation of the soul. Therefore the soul 
 holds itself off from a too trivial and microscopic 
 study of the universal tablet. It respects the end too 
 much to immerse itself in the means. It sees some- 
 thing more important in Christianity than the scan- 
 dals of ecclesiastical history or the niceties of 
 criticism ; and very incurious concerning persons or 
 miracles, and not at all disturbed by chasms of his- 
 torical evidence, it accepts from God the phenomenon 
 as it finds it as the pure and awful form of religion in 
 the world. It is not hot and passionate at the ap- 
 pearance of what it calls its own good or bad for- 
 tune, at the union or opposition of other persons. No 
 man is its enemy. It accepts whatsoever befalls as 
 part of its lesson. It is a watcher more than a doer, 
 and it is a doer, only that it may the better watch. 
 
SPIRIT. 55 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 It is essential to a true tlieory of Nature and 
 of Man that it should contain somewhat progres- 
 sive. Uses that are exhausted or that may be, and 
 facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that 
 is true of this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, 
 and wherein all his faculties find appropriate and end- 
 less exercise. And all the uses of Nature admit of 
 being summed in one, which yields the activity of 
 man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, 
 to the suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful 
 to the cause whence it had its origin. It always 
 speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a 
 perpetual effect. It is a great shadow pointing 
 always to the sun behind us. 
 
 The aspect of Nature is devout. Like the figure 
 of Jesus, she stands with bended head and hands 
 folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he 
 who learns from Nature the lesson of worship. 
 
 Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, 
 he_ that thinks most will say least. We can foresee 
 ) God in the coarse and, as it were, distant pheno- 
 mena of matter ; but when we try to define and 
 describe himself, both language and thought desert 
 us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. 
 That essence refuses to be recorded in propositions, 
 but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the 
 
56 SPIRIT. 
 
 noblest ministry_,,of. Nature, is to stand as the appari- 
 tion of God. It is tlie organ tlirough whicli the 
 
 I universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives 
 
 \ to lead back the individual to it. 
 
 When we consider Spirit, we see that the views 
 already presented do not include the whole circum- 
 ference of man. We must add some related 
 thoughts. 
 
 Three problems are put by Nature to the mind : 
 What is matter? Whence is it? and Whereto? 
 The first of these questions only, the ideal theory 
 answers. Idealism saitli : matter is a phenomenon, 
 not a substance. Idealism acquaints us with the 
 total disparity between the evidence of our own be- 
 ing and the evidence of the world's being. The 
 one is perfect, the other incapable of an)' assur- 
 ance ; the mind is a part of the nature of things ; 
 the world is a divine dream, from which we may 
 presently awake to the glories and certainties of 
 day. Idealism is an hypothesis to account for Nature 
 by otlier principles than those of carpentry and 
 chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence of 
 matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. 
 It leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the 
 splendid labyrinth of my preceptions, to wander 
 without end. Then the heart resists it, because it 
 balks the affections in denying substantive being to 
 men and women. ^Nature is so pervaded with human 
 life, that there is something of humanity in all and 
 in every particular. BTit this theory makes Nature 
 foreign to me, and does not account for that con- 
 sanguinity which we acknowledge to it. 
 
SPIRfT. 57 
 
 Let it stand, then, in the present state of our 
 knowledge, merely as a useful introductory hypothe- 
 sis, serving to apprise us of the eternal distinction 
 between the soul and the world. 
 
 But when, following the invisible steps of thought, 
 we come to inquire. Whence is matter? and 
 Whereto? many truths arise to us out of the re- 
 cesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest 
 is present to the soul of man, that the dread univer- 
 sal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, 
 or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that 
 for which all things exist, and that by which they 
 are ; that spirit creates ; that behind Nature, through- 
 out Nature, spirit is present ; one and not compound, 
 it does not act upon us from without, that is, in 
 space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves ; 
 therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, 
 does not build up Nature around us, but puts it forth 
 through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new 
 branches and leaves through the pores of the old. 
 As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the 
 bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing foun- 
 tains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. 
 Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man?. 
 Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold 
 the absolute natures of justice and truth, and we 
 learn that man has access to the entire mind of the 
 
 Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. This 
 
 jyiew, which admonishes me where the sources of 
 wisdom and power lie, and points to virtue as to 
 
 " The golden key 
 Which opes the palace of eternity," 
 
SS SPIRIT. 
 
 carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, 
 because it animates me to create my own world 
 through the puritication of my soul. 
 
 The world proceeds from the same spirit as the 
 ' body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarna- 
 '•-ion of God, a projection of God in the unconscious. 
 ' But it differs from the body in one important re- 
 1 spect. It is not, like that, now subjected to the 
 i,diuman will. Its serene order is inviolable by us. It 
 is, therefore, to us the present expositor of the divine 
 mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure 
 our departure. As we degenerate, the contrast be- 
 tween us and our house is more evident. We are as 
 much strangers in Nature as we are aliens from God. 
 We do not understand the notes of birds. The fo.x 
 and the deer run away from us ; the bear and tiger 
 rend us. We do not know the uses of more than 
 a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and 
 the ^^ne. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of 
 which hath a grandeur, a face of him ? Yet this may 
 show us what discord is between man and Nature, 
 for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape if 
 laborers are digging in the field hard by. The poet 
 finds something ridiculous in his delight, until he is 
 out of the sight of men. 
 
PROSPECTS. 59 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PROSPECTS. 
 
 In inquiries respecting the laws of the world and 
 the frame of things, the highest reason is always the 
 truest. That which seems faintly possible — it is so 
 refined — is often faint and dim because it is deepest 
 seated in the mind among the eternal verities. Em- 
 _pirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the 
 very knowledge of functions and processes, to be- 
 reave the student of the manly contemplation of the 
 whole. The savant becomes unpoetic. But the 
 best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout 
 attention to truth will see that there remains much 
 to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is 
 not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or 
 other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived 
 at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual 
 self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will per- 
 ceive that there are far more excellent qualities in 
 the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a 
 guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affir- 
 rnation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the 
 secret of Nature than a hundred concerted experi- 
 ments. 
 
 For the problems to be solved are precisely those 
 which the physiologist and the naturalist omit to 
 state. It is not so pertinent to man to know all the 
 individuals of the animal kingdom, as it is to know 
 
6o PROSPECTS. 
 
 whence and whereto is this tyrannizing unity in his 
 constitution, which evermore separates and classifies 
 things, endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to 
 one form. ( When I behold a rich landscape, it is 
 less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and 
 superposition of the strata, than to know why all 
 thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of 
 unity.; I cannot greatly honor minuteness in details, 
 so long as there is no hint to explain the relation be- 
 tween things and thoughts ; no ray upon the 77%eta- 
 physics of conchology, of botany, of the arts, to show 
 the relation of the forms of flowers, shells, animals, 
 architecture, to the mind, and build science upon 
 ideas. In a cabinet of natural history we become 
 sensible of a certain occult recogniiiou and sympathy 
 in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms 
 of beast, fish, and insect. The American who has 
 been confined, in his own country, to the sight of 
 buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised 
 on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome b}' 
 the feeling that these structures are imitations also, 
 — faint copies of an invisible archetype.. Nor has 
 science sufifipient humanity, so long as the naturalist 
 overlooks 'that wonderful congruity ' v/hich subsists 
 between man and the world ; of which he is lord, 
 not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but 
 because he is its head and heart, and(_finds some- 
 ' thing of himself in evjry great and small thing, in 
 every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, 
 fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which 
 observation or analysis lays open. A perception of 
 this mystery inspires the muse of George Herbert, 
 
PJiOSPECl'S. 6l 
 
 the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth century. 
 The following lines are part of his little poem on 
 Man: — 
 
 " Man is all symmetry, 
 Full of proportions, one limb to another. 
 
 And to all the world besides. 
 
 Each part may call the farthest, brother ; 
 For head with foot hath private amity. 
 
 And both mth moons and tides. 
 
 ' ' Nothing hath got so far 
 But man hath caught and kept it as his prey ; 
 
 His eyes dismount the highest star; 
 
 He is in Uttle all the sphere. 
 Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
 
 Find their acquaintance there. 
 
 " For us, the winds do blow, 
 The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow ; 
 
 Nothing we see, but means our good, 
 
 As our deUght, or as our treasure ; 
 The whole is either our cupboard of food, 
 
 Or cabinet of pleasure. 
 
 " The stars have us to bed ; 
 Night draws the curtain ; which the sun withdraws. 
 
 Music and light attend our head. 
 
 All things unto our flesh are kind. 
 In their descent and being ; to our mind. 
 
 In their ascent and cause. 
 
 *' More servants wait on man 
 Than he'll take notice of. In every path. 
 
 He treads down that which doth befriend him 
 
 When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
 Oh mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath 
 
 Another to attend hin»." 
 
62 PROSPECTS. 
 
 The perception of this class of truths makes the 
 attraction which draws men to science, but the end is 
 lost siglit of in attention to the means. In view of 
 tliis half-siglit of science, we accept the sentence of 
 Plato, that ' ' poetry conies nearer to vital truth than 
 history." Every surmise and vaticination of the 
 mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to 
 prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which con- 
 tain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which 
 have no one valuable suggestion. A wise writer will 
 feel that the ends of study and composition are best 
 answered by announcing undiscovered regions of 
 thought, and so communicating, through hope, new 
 activity to the torpid spirit. 
 
 I shall therefore conclude this essay with some 
 traditions of man and nature, which a certain poet 
 sang to me ; and which, as they have always been in 
 the world, and perhaps reappear to every bard, may 
 be both history and prophecy. 
 
 " The foundations of man are not in matter, but in 
 spirit. But the element of spirit is eternity. To it, 
 therefore, the longest series of events, the oldest 
 chronologies, are young and recent. In the cycle of 
 the universal man, from whom the known individuals 
 proceed, centuries are points, and all history is but 
 the epoch of one degradation. 
 
 " We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy 
 with Nature. We own and disown our relation to it 
 by turns. We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, 
 bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox. But 
 who can set limits in the remedial force of spirit ? 
 
 " A man is a god in ruins, j When men are inno- 
 
PROSPECTS. 63 
 
 cent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the im- 
 mortal, as gently as we awake from dreams. Now 
 the world would be insane and rabid if these dis- 
 organizations should last for hundreds of years. It 
 is kept in check by death and infancy. Infancy is the 
 perpetual Messiah, which comes into the amis of fallen 
 men, and pleads with them to return to paradise. 
 
 ' ' Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was per- 
 meated and dissolved by spirit. He filled Nature 
 with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang 
 the sun and moon : from man, the sun ; from woman, 
 the moon. The laws of his mind, the periods of his 
 aiidons extemized themselves into day and night, 
 into the year and the seasons. But having made for 
 himself this huge shell, his waters retired ; he no 
 longer fills the veins and veinlets ; he is shrunk to a 
 drop. He sees that the structure still fits him, but 
 fits him colossally. Say, rather, once it fitted him, 
 now it corresponds to him from far and on high. 
 He adores timidly his own work. Now is man the 
 follower of the sun, and woman the follower of the 
 moon. Yet sometimes he starts in his slumber, and 
 wonders at himself and his house, and muses 
 strangely at the resemblance betwixt him and it. 
 He perceives that if his law is still paramount, if still 
 he have elemental power, if his word is sterling yet 
 in Nature, it is not conscious power, it is not inferior 
 but superior to his will. It is Instinct." Thus my 
 Orphic poet sang. 
 
 At presentj man applies to Nature but half his 
 forcCj, He works on the world v.'ith his understand- 
 ing alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny- 
 
64 PROSPECTS. 
 
 wisdom ; and he that works most in it is but a half 
 man, and whilst his arras are strong and his digestion 
 good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish sav- 
 age. His relation to Nature, his power over it, is 
 through the understanding : as by manure ; the 
 economic use of fire, wind, water, and the mariner's 
 needle ; steam, coal, chemical agriculture ; the repairs 
 of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. 
 This is such a resumption of power, as if a banished 
 king should buy his territories inch by inch, instead 
 of vaulting at once into his throne. Meantime, in 
 the thicli darkness, there are not wanting gleams of 
 a better light, — occasional examples of the action of 
 man upon Nature with his entire force, — with reason 
 
 ( j as well as understanding. Such examples are : the 
 traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all 
 nations ; the history of Jesus Christ ; the achieve- 
 ments of a principle, as in religious and political 
 revolutions, and in the abolition of the slave-trade ; 
 the miracles of enthusiasm, as those reported of 
 Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers ; many 
 obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under 
 the name of Animal iVIagnetisra ; prayer ; eloquence ; 
 self-healing ; and the wisdom of children. These 
 are examples of Reason's momentary grasp of the 
 sceptre ; the exertions of a power which exists not 
 in time or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming 
 causing power. The difference between the actual 
 and the ideal force of man is happil}' figured by the 
 schoolmen, in saying that the knowledge of man is 
 , an evening knowledge, vespertina cogrtitio, but that 
 
 -. \ of God is a morning knovifledge, matutina cognitio. 
 
PROSPECTS. 65 
 
 The problem of restoring to the world original and 
 eternal Beauty is solved by the redemption of the 
 soul. The ruin or the blank, that we see when we 
 look at Nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision 
 is not coincident with the axis of things, and so they 
 appear not transparent but opaque. The reason why 
 .the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, 
 / is because man is disunited with himself. He can- 
 not be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands 
 jof the spirit. Love is as much its demand as per- 
 ception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the 
 other. In the uttermost meaning of the words, 
 thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep 
 calls unto deep. But in actual life the marriage is 
 not celebrated. There are innocent men who wor- 
 ship God after the tradition of their fathers, but their 
 sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all 
 their faculties. And there are patient naturalists, 
 but they freeze their subject under the wintry light 
 of the understanding. Is not prayer also a study of 
 ti'uth, — a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? 
 No man ever prayed heartily \vithout learning some- 
 thing. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to de- 
 tach every object from personal relations, and see it 
 in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, 
 kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, 
 then will God go forth anew into the creation. 
 
 It will not need, when the mind is prepared for 
 study, to search for objects. The invariable mark of 
 wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. 
 What is a day? What is a3'ear? What is summer? 
 What is woman? What is a child? What is sleep? 
 
66 PROSPECTS. 
 
 To our blindness, these things seem unaffecting. 
 We make fables to hide the baldness of the fact anft 
 conform it, as we say, to the higher law of the mind. 
 But when the fact is seen under the light of an idea, 
 the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We behold the 
 real higher law. To the wise, therefore, a fact is 
 true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. These 
 wonders are brought to our own door. You also are 
 a man. Man and woman, and their social life, pov- 
 erty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known to you. 
 Learn that none of these things is superficial, but 
 that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties 
 and affections of the mind. Whilst the abstract 
 question occupies your intellect. Nature brings it in 
 the concrete to be solved by your hands. It were a 
 wise inquiry for the closet to compare, point by 
 point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our 
 daily history, with the rise and progress of ideas in 
 the mind. 
 
 So shall we come to look at the world with new 
 eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the 
 intellect. What is truth? and of the affections. 
 What is good? by yielding itself passive to the 
 educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my 
 poet said: — "Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit 
 alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or brute- 
 ness of nature is the absence of spirit ; to pure 
 spirit it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. 
 Every spirit builds itself a house ; and beyond 
 its house a world ; and beyond its world a heaven. 
 Know, then, that the world exists for you. For 
 you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are. 
 
PROSPECTS. 67 
 
 that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that 
 Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called 
 his house heaven and earth ; Caesar called his house 
 Rome ; you perhaps call yours a cobbler's trade, a 
 hundred acres of ploughed land, or a scholar's gar- 
 ret. Yet line for line and point for point, your 
 dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine 
 names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast 
 as 3'ou conform your life to the pure idea in your 
 mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A cor- 
 respondent revolution in things will attend the influx 
 of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, 
 swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad-houses, prisons, 
 enemies, vanish ; they are temporarj' and shall be no 
 more seen. The sordor and filths of nature the sun 
 shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the 
 summer comes from the south, the snow-banks 
 melt, and the_ face of the earth„becomes green before 
 it, so shall the advancing spirit icreate its ornaments 
 along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits 
 and the song which enchants it ; shall draw beautiful 
 faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts 
 around its way, until evil is no more seen. „,The 
 ' kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with 
 observation, — a dominion such as now is beyond 
 his dream of God, — he shall enter without more 
 wonder than the blind" man feels who is gradually 
 restored to perfect sight." 
 
68 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE PHI BETA 
 KAPPA SOCIETY, AT CAMBRIDGE, AUGUST 31, 
 ■S37- 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : I greet you 
 on the recommencement of our literary year. Our 
 anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough 
 of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or 
 skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and 
 odes, like the ancient Greeks ; for parliaments of love 
 and poesy, like the Troubadours ; nor for the advance- 
 ment of science, like our contemporaries in the British 
 and European capitals. Thus far our holiday has 
 been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love 
 of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters 
 any more. As such, it is precious as the sign of an 
 indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already 
 come when it ought to be, and will be, something 
 else ; when the sluggard intellect of this continent 
 will look from under its iron lids, and fill the post- 
 poned expectation of the world with something better 
 than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of 
 dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning 
 of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that 
 around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed 
 on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, 
 actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing them- 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 69 
 
 selves. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and 
 lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation 
 Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers 
 announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thou- 
 sand years? ,••;■- 
 
 In this hope I accept the topic which not only 
 usage, but tlie nature of our association, seem to pre- 
 scribe to this day, — the American Scholar. Year 
 by year we come up hither to read one more chapter 
 of his biography. Let us inquire what light new days 
 and events have thrown on his character and his 
 hopes. 
 
 It is one of those fables which, out of an un- 
 known antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, 
 that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into 
 men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just 
 as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to 
 answer its end. 
 
 The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sub- 
 lime ; that there is One Man, — present to all partic- 
 ular men only partially, or through one faculty ; and 
 that you must take the whole society to find the 
 whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an 
 engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, 
 and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the 
 divided or social state these ftinctions are parcelled 
 out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint 
 of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. 
 The fable implies that the individual, to possess him- 
 self, must sometimes return from his own labor to 
 embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, 
 this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so 
 
70 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely sub- 
 divided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops 
 and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one 
 in which the members have suffered amputation from 
 the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters 
 — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but 
 never a man. 
 
 Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into 
 many things. The planter, who is Man sent out 
 into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by 
 any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees 
 his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and 
 sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. 
 The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth 
 to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his 
 craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The 
 priest becomes a forai ; the attorney, a statute-book ; 
 the mechanic, a machine ; the sailor, a rope of a 
 ship. 
 
 In this distribution of functions the scholar is the 
 delegated intellect. In the right state, he is Man 
 Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim 
 of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, 
 still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking. 
 
 In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the theory 
 of his office is contained. Him Nature solicits with 
 all her placid, all her monitory pictures ; him the 
 past instructs ; him the future invites. Is not, indeed, 
 every man a student, and do not all things exist for 
 the student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true 
 scholar the only tme master? But the old oracle 
 said, " All things have two handles: beware of the 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 71 
 
 wrong one." In life, too often the scholar errs with 
 mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him 
 in his school, and consider him in reference to the 
 main influences he receives. 
 
 I. The first in time and the first in importance of 
 the influences upon the mind is that of Nature. Every 
 day, the sun ; and, after sunset, Night and her stars. 
 Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every 
 day, men and women, conversing, beholding and be- 
 holden. The scholar is he of all men whom this 
 spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in 
 his mind. What is Nature to him ? There is never a 
 beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable 
 continuity of this web of God, but always circular 
 power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his 
 own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never 
 can find, — so entire, so boundless. Far, too, as her 
 splendors shine, system on system shooting like rays, 
 upward, downward, without centre, without circum- 
 ference, — in the mass and in the particle. Nature 
 hastens to render account of herself to the mind. 
 Classification begins. To the young mind, every- 
 thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by 
 it finds how to join two things, and see in them one 
 nature ; then three, then three thousand ; and so 
 tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes 
 on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, dis- 
 covering roots running under ground, whereby con- 
 trary and remote things cohere, and flower out from 
 one stem. It presently learns that since the dawn 
 of history there has been a constant accumulation 
 
72 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 and classifying of facts. But what is classification 
 but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, 
 and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a 
 law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers 
 that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, 
 is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist 
 finds proportions and intelligible method throughout 
 matter ; and science is nothing but the finding of 
 analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. The 
 ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact ; 
 one after another reduces all strange constitutions, 
 all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes 
 on forever to animate the last fibre of organization, 
 the outskirts of nature, by insight. 
 
 Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending 
 dome of day, is suggested that he and it proceed from 
 one root ; one is leaf and one is flower ; relation, 
 sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that 
 Root? Is not that the soul of his soul? A thought 
 too bold, a dream too wild. Yet when this spirit- 
 ual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly 
 natures, when he has learned to worship the soul, 
 and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, 
 is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he 
 shall look forward to an ever-expanding knowledge as 
 to a becoming creator. He shall see that Nature is 
 the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. 
 One is seal and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty 
 of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own 
 mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of 
 his attainments. So much of Nature as he is igno- 
 rant of, so much of his own mind does he not yel 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 73 
 
 possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, " Know 
 thyself," and the modern precept, "Study Nature,'' 
 become at last one maxim. 
 
 II. The next great influence into the spirit of the 
 scholar is the mind of the Past — in whatever form, 
 whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind 
 is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influ- 
 ence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the 
 truth — learn the amount of this influence more 
 conveniently — by considering their value alone. 
 
 The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the 
 first age received into him the world around ; brooded 
 thereon ; gave it the new arrangement of his own 
 mind, and uttered it again. It came into him life; it 
 went out from him truth. It came to him short- 
 lived actions ; it went out from him immortal 
 thoughts. It came to him business ; it went from 
 him poetry. It was dead fact; now it is quick 
 thought. It can stand and it can go. It now en- 
 dures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in 
 proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, 
 so high does it soar, so long does it sing. 
 
 Or, I might say, it depends on how far the pro- 
 cess had gone of transmuting life into truth. In 
 proportion to the completeness of the distillation, so 
 will the purity and imperishableness of the product 
 be. But none is quite perfect. As no air-pump can 
 by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can 
 any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, 
 the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure 
 thought that shall be as efficient in all respects to a 
 
74 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to 
 the second age. Each age, it is found, must write 
 its own books ; or rather, each generation for the next 
 succeeding. The books of an older period will not 
 fit this. 
 
 Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacred- 
 ness which attaches to the act of creation — the act 
 of thought — is transferred to the record. The poet 
 chanting was felt to be a divine man : henceforth the 
 chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise 
 spirit : henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect ; 
 as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. 
 Instantly the book becomes noxious ; the guide is a 
 tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the 
 multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, 
 having once so opened, having once received this 
 book, stands upon it and makes an outcry if it is dis- 
 paraged. Colleges are built on it. Books are writ- 
 ten on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men 
 of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from 
 accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of princi- 
 ples. Meek young men grow up in libraries believ- 
 ing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, 
 which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that 
 Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in 
 libraries when they wrote these books. 
 
 Hence, instead of Man Thinking we have the 
 bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class who 
 value books as such ; not as related to Nature and the 
 human constitution, but as making a sort of Third 
 Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the 
 restorers of readings, the emendators, the biblio- 
 maniacs of all degrees. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 75 
 
 Books are the best of things, well used ; abused, 
 among the worst. What is the right use? What is 
 the one end, which all means go to effect? They 
 are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never 
 see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean 
 out of ray own orbit, and made a satellite instead of 
 a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is 
 the active soul. This every man is entitled to ; this 
 every man contains within him, although, in almost 
 all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul 
 active sees absolute truth ; and utters truth, or creates. 
 In this action it is genius ; not the privilege of here 
 and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every 
 man. In its essence it is progressive. The book, 
 the college, the school of art, the institution of any 
 kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This 
 is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin 
 me down. They look backward and not forward. 
 But genius looks forward ; the eyes of man are set in 
 his forehead, not in his hindhead ; man hopes ; genius 
 creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create 
 not, the pure efBux of the Deity is not his ; cinders 
 and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There 
 are creative manners, there are creative actions, and 
 creative words ; manners, actions, words, that is, in- 
 dicative of no custom or authority, but springing 
 spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and 
 fair. 
 
 On the other part, instead of being its own seer, 
 let it receive from another mind its truth, though it 
 were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, 
 inquest, and self-recovery, and a fatal disservice is 
 
76 THE AMERICAN' SCHOLAR. 
 
 done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of 
 genius by over-influence. The literature of every 
 nation bears me witness. The English dramatic 
 poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years. 
 
 Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it 
 be sternly subordinated- Man Thinking must not 
 be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the 
 scholar's idle times. When he can read God di- 
 rectly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other 
 men's transcripts of their readings. But when the 
 intervals of darkness come, as come they must, — 
 when the sun is hid, and the stars withdraw their 
 shining, — we repair to the lamps which were kindled 
 by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, 
 where the dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. 
 The Arabian proverb says, "A fig-tree, looking on 
 a fig-tree, becometh fruitful." 
 
 It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we 
 derive from the best books. They impress us with 
 the conviction that one nature wrote and the same 
 reads. We read the verses of one of the great Eng- 
 lish poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with 
 the most modern joy, — with a pleasure, I mean, 
 which is in great part caused by the abstraction of 
 all time from their verses. There is some awe 
 mixed with the joy of our surprise when this poet, 
 who lived in some past world two or three hundred 
 years ago, says that which lies close to my own 
 soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and 
 said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the 
 philosophical doctrine of the identity of all minds, 
 we should suppose some preestablished harmony, 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 77 
 
 some foresight of souls that were to be, and some 
 preparation of stores for their future wants, likethe 
 fact observed in insects, who lay up food before 
 death for the young grub they shall never see. 
 
 I would not be hurried by any love of system, by 
 any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. 
 We all know that as the human body can be nour- 
 ished on any food, though it were boiled grass and 
 the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed 
 by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have 
 existed who had almost no other information than 
 by the printed page. I only would say, that it needs 
 a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an 
 inventor to read well. As the proverb says, " He 
 that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, 
 must carry out the wealth of the Indies.'' There is 
 then creative reading as well as creative writing. 
 When the mind is braced by labor and invention, 
 the page of whatever book we read becomes lumi- 
 nous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is 
 doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as 
 broad as the world. We then see, what is always 
 true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and 
 rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, 
 perchance, the least part of his volume. The dis- 
 cerning will read, in his Plato or Shakspeare, onl}' 
 that least part, — onl}' the authentic utterances of 
 the oracle; all the rest he rejects, were it never so 
 many times Plato's and Shakspeare's. 
 
 Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indis- 
 pensable to a wise man. History and exact science 
 he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in 
 
78 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 like manner, have their indispensable ofBce, — to 
 teach elements. But they can only highly serve us 
 when they aim not to drill, but to create ; when 
 they gather from far every ray of various genius to 
 their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, 
 set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought 
 and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and 
 pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary 
 foundations, though of towns of gold, can never coun- 
 tervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget 
 this, and our American colleges will recede in their 
 public importance, whilst they grow richer ever}' 
 year. 
 
 III. There goes in the world a notion that the 
 scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as 
 unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a pen- 
 knife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" 
 sneer at speculative men, as if, because they specu- 
 late or see, they could do nothing. I have heard it 
 said that the clergy — who are always, more univer- 
 sally than any other class, the scholars of their 
 day — are addressed as women; that the rough, 
 spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, 
 but only a mincing and diluted speech. They are 
 often virtually disfranchised ; and, indeed, there are 
 advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true 
 of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. 
 Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is 
 essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without 
 it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the 
 world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 79 
 
 cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, 
 but thiere can be no sciiolar witliout tlie lieroic mind. 
 Tiie preamble of tliought, the transition tlirough 
 which it passes from the unconscious to the con- 
 scious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I 
 have lived. Instantly we know whose words are 
 loaded with life, and whose not. 
 
 The world — this shadow of the soul, or other me — 
 lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which 
 unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with 
 myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult. 
 I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my 
 place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an 
 instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with 
 speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear; I 
 dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. 
 So much only of life as I know by experience, so 
 much of the wilderness have I vanquished and 
 planted, or so far have I extended my being, my 
 dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, 
 for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any 
 action in which he can partake. It is pearls and 
 rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exas- 
 peration, want, are instructors in eloquence and 
 wisdom. The true scholar grudges every oppor- 
 tunity of action passed by, as a loss of power. 
 
 It is the raw material out of which the intellect 
 moulds her splendid products. A strange process 
 too, this, by which experience is converted into 
 thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin. 
 The manufacture goes forward at all hours. 
 
 The actions and events of our childhood and 
 
8o THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 youth are now matters of calmest observation. 
 They lie like fair pictures in the air. Not so with 
 our recent actions, — with the business which we 
 now have in hand. On tliis we are quite unable to 
 speculate. Our affections as yet circulate through it. 
 We no more feel or know it, than we feel the feet, 
 or the hand, or the brain of our body. The new 
 deed is yet a part of life, — remains for a time 
 immersed in our unconscious life. In some contem- 
 plative hour it detaches itself from the life like a 
 ripe fruit, to become a. thought of the mind. In- 
 stantly it is raised, transfigured ; the corruptible has 
 put on incorruption. Henceforth it is an object of 
 beauty, however base its origin and neighborhood. 
 Observe, too, the impossibility of antedating this 
 act. In its grub state, it cannot fly, it cannot shine, 
 it is a dull grub. But suddenly, without observation, 
 the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and is an 
 angel of vi^isdom. So is there no fact, no event, in 
 our private history which shall not, sooner or later, 
 lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soar- 
 ing from our body into the empyrean. Cradle and 
 infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, 
 and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and 
 berries, and many another fact that once filled the 
 whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, 
 profession and party, town and country, nation and 
 world, must also soar and sing. 
 
 Of course, he who has put forth his total strength 
 in fit actions has the richest return of wisdom. I 
 \vill not shut myself out of this globe of action, and 
 transplant an oak into a flower-pot, there to hunger 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 8 1 
 
 and pine ; nor trust the revenue of some single faculty, 
 and exhaust one vein of thought, much like those 
 Savoyards, who, getting their livelihood by carving 
 shepherds, shepherdesses, and smolcing Dutchmen for 
 all Europe, went out one day to the mountain to find 
 stock, and discovered that they had whittled up the 
 last of their pine-trees. Authors we have in num- 
 bers who have written out their vein, and who, 
 moved by a commendable prudence, sail for Greece 
 or Palestine, follow the trapper into the prairie, or 
 ramble round Algiers, to replenish their merchantable 
 stock. 
 
 If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would 
 be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years 
 are well spent in country labors ; in town, in the 
 insight into trades and manufactures ; in frank inter- 
 course with many men and women ; in science ; in 
 art, — to the one end of mastering in all their facts a 
 language by which to illustrate and embody our per- 
 ceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how 
 much he has already lived, through the poverty or the 
 splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the 
 quarry from whence we get tiles and cope-stones for 
 the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn 
 grammar. Colleges and books only copy the lan- 
 guage which the field and the work-yard made. 
 
 But the final value of action, like that of books, 
 and better than books, is, that it is a resource. 
 That great principle of Undulation in nature, that 
 shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the 
 breath ; in desire and satiety ; in the ebb and flow 
 of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; 
 
82 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 and as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and 
 every fluid, is known to us under the name of Po- 
 larity, — these " fits of easy transmission and reflec- 
 tion," as Newton called them, are the law of Naturt 
 because they are the law of spirit. 
 
 The mind now thinks, now acts; and each fit 
 reproduces the other. When the artist has ex- 
 hausted his materials, when the fancy no longer 
 paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, 
 and books are a weariness, — he has always the 
 resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. 
 Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. 
 The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will 
 be strong to live, as well as strong to think. Does 
 he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? He 
 can still fall back on this elemental force of living 
 them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial 
 act. Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. 
 Let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. 
 Those " far from fame," who dwell and act with 
 him, will feel the force of his constitution in the 
 doings and passages of the day better than it can 
 be measured by any public and designed display. 
 Time shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour 
 which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred 
 germ of hi;; instinct, screened from influence. What 
 is lost in seemliness is gained in strength. Not out 
 of those, on whom systems of education have ex- 
 hausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to 
 destroy the old or to build the new, but out of un- 
 handselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and 
 berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakspeare. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 83 
 
 I hear, therefore, with joy whatever is begirfning to 
 be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every 
 citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the 
 spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. 
 And labor is everywhere welcome ; always we are 
 invited to work ; only be this limitation observed, 
 that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity 
 sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and 
 modes of action. 
 
 I have now spoken of the education of the scholar 
 by Nature, by books, and by action. It remains to 
 say somewhat of his duties. 
 
 They are such as become Man Thinking. They 
 may all be comprised in self- trust. The office of the 
 scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by 
 showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies 
 the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. 
 Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed observato- 
 ries, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all 
 men, and, the results being splendid and useful, 
 honor is sure. But he, in his private observatory, 
 cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human 
 mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, 
 — watching days and months, sometimes, for a few 
 facts ; correcting still his old records, — must re- 
 linquish display and immediate fame. In the long 
 period of his preparation he must betray often an 
 ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring 
 the disdain of the able, who shoulder him aside. 
 Long he must stammer in his speech ; often forego 
 the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept 
 
84 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 — how often ! — poverty and solitude. For the ease 
 and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the 
 fashions, the education, the religion of society, he 
 takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the 
 self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncer- 
 tainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and 
 tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self- 
 directed ; and the state of virtual hostility in which 
 he seems to stand to society, and especially to edu- 
 cated society. For all this loss and scorn, what off- 
 set? He is to find consolation in exercising the 
 highest functions of human nature. He is one who 
 raises himself from private considerations, and 
 breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. 
 He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. He 
 is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades 
 ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicat- 
 ing heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious 
 verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever 
 oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in all 
 solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the 
 world of actions, — these he shall receive and im- 
 part. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her 
 inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and 
 events of to-day, — this he shall hear and promul- 
 gate. 
 
 These being his fvmctions, it becomes him to feel 
 all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the 
 popular cry. He and he only knows the world. 
 The world of any moment is the merest appearance. 
 Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, 
 some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 85 
 
 by half mankind and cried down by the other half, 
 as if all depended on this particular up or down. 
 The odds are that the whole question is not worth 
 the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in 
 listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his 
 belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient 
 and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the craclc 
 of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe ab- 
 straction, let him hold by himself; add observation 
 to observation, patient of neglect, patient of re- 
 proach ; and bide his own time, — happy enough if 
 he can satisfy himself alone, that this day he has 
 seen something truly. Success treads on every right 
 step. For the instinct is sure that prompts him to 
 tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns 
 that in going down into the secrets of his own mind 
 he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He 
 learns that he who has mastered any law in his 
 private thoughts is master to that extent of all men 
 whose language he speaks, and of all into whose 
 language his own can be translated. The poet, in 
 utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts 
 and recording them, is found to have recorded that 
 which men in crowded cities find true for them also. 
 The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank 
 confessions, — his want of knowledge of the persons 
 he addresses, — until he finds that he is the comple- 
 ment of his hearers ; that they drink his words 
 because he fulfils for them their own nature ; the 
 deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presenti- 
 ment, to his wonder he finds this is the most 
 acceptable, most public, and universally true. The 
 
86 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 people delight in it ; the better part of every man 
 feels. This is my music; this is myself. 
 
 In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. 
 Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. Free 
 even to the definition of freedom, " without any 
 hindrance that does not arise out of his own consti- 
 tution."' Brave ; for fear is a thing which a scholar 
 by his ver}' function puts behind him. Fear always 
 springs from ignorance. It is a shame to him if his 
 tranquillity, amid dangerous times, arise from the 
 presumption that, like children and women, his is a 
 protected class ; or if he seek a temporary peace by 
 the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed 
 questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the 
 flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and 
 turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his 
 courage up. So is the danger a danger still ; so is 
 the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. 
 Let him look into its eye and search its nature, in- 
 spect its origin, — see the whelping of this lion, 
 which lies no great way back ; he will then find in 
 himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and 
 extent ; he will have made his hands meet on the 
 other side, and can henceforth defy it, and pass on 
 superior. The world is his, who can see through its 
 pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind cus- 
 tom, what overgrown en"or you behold, is there only 
 by sufferance, — by your sufferance. See it to be a 
 lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow. 
 
 Yes, we are the cowed — we the trustless. It is 
 a mischievous notion that we are come late into 
 Nature ; that the world was finished a long time ago. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. S7 
 
 As the world was plastic and fluid in Uie hands of 
 God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we 
 bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They 
 adapt themselves to it as they may ; but in propor- 
 tion as a man has anything in him divine, the firma- 
 ment flows before him and talces his signet and form. 
 Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who 
 can alter my state of mind. They are the kings of 
 the world who give the color of their present 
 thought to all nature and all art, and persuade 
 men by the cheerful serenity of their carrying 
 the matter, that this thing which they do is the 
 apple which the ages have desired to pluck, now 
 at last ripe, and inviting nations to the harvest. 
 The great man makes the great thing. Wherever 
 Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table. 
 Linnseus makes botany the most alluring of studies, 
 and wins it from the farmer and the herb-woman ; 
 Davy, chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The day is 
 always his, who works in it with serenity and great 
 aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him 
 whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped 
 waves of the Atlantic follow the moon. 
 
 For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can 
 be fathomed, darker than can be enlightened. I 
 might not carry with me the feeling of my audience 
 in stating my own belief. But I have already shown 
 the ground of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine 
 that man is one. I believe man has been wronged ; 
 he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the 
 light that can lead him back to his prerogatives. Men 
 are become of no account. Men in history, men in 
 
88 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are 
 called "the mass" and "the herd." In a century, 
 in a millennium, one or two men ; that is to say, 
 one or two approximations to the right state of every 
 man. All the rest behold in the hero or the poet 
 their own green and crude being, — ripened ; yes, 
 and are content to be less, so that may attain to its 
 full stature. What a testimony, full of grandeur, full 
 of pity, is borne to the demands of his own nat- 
 ure by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who re- 
 joices in the glory of his chief. The poor and the low 
 find some amends to their immense moral capacity for 
 their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority. 
 They are content to be brushed like flies from the 
 path of a great person, so that justice shall be done 
 by him to that common nature which it is the dearest 
 desire of all to see enlarged and glorified. They 
 sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it 
 to be their own element. They cast the dignity of 
 man from their downtrod selves upon the shoulders 
 of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood to 
 make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat 
 and conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him. 
 
 Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or 
 power ; and power because it is as good as money, 
 — the "spoils," so called, "of office.'' And why 
 not? for they aspire to the highest, and this, in their 
 sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them, 
 and they shall quit the false good, and leap to the 
 true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. 
 This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual 
 domestication of the idea of Culture. The main en- 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 89 
 
 terprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the 
 upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strewn 
 along the ground. The private life of one man shall 
 be a more illustrious monarchy, — more formidable 
 to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence 
 to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a 
 man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular 
 natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, 
 each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, 
 what one day I can do for myself. The books 
 which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, 
 we have quite exhausted. What is that but saying 
 that we have come up with the point of view which 
 the universal mind took through the eyes of one 
 scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on. 
 First one, then another, we drain all cisterns, and, 
 waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better 
 and more abundant food. The man has never lived 
 that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be 
 enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any 
 one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire. It 
 is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips 
 of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily ; and now out 
 of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and 
 vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams 
 out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which ani- 
 mates all men. 
 
 But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this ab- 
 straction of the Scholar. I ought not to delay longer 
 to add what I have to say of nearer reference to the 
 time and to this country. 
 
9© THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 Historically there is thought to be a difference in 
 the ideas which predominate over successive epochs, 
 and there are data for marking the genius of the 
 Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the Reflective or 
 Philosophical age. With the views I have intimated 
 of the oneness or the identity of the mind through 
 all individuals, I do not much dwell on these differ- 
 ences. In fact, I believe each individual passes 
 through all three. The boy is a Greek ; the youth, 
 romantic ; the adult, reflective. I deny not, however, 
 that a revolution in the leading idea may be distinctly 
 enough traced. 
 
 Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. 
 Must that needs be evil.' We, it seems, are critical; 
 we are embarrassed with second thoughts ; we can- 
 not enjoy anything for hankering to know whereof 
 the pleasure consists ; we are lined \vith eyes ; we 
 see with our feet ; the time is infected with Hamlet's 
 unhappiness, — 
 
 ** Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. 
 
 Is it so bad then.'' Sight is the last thing to be 
 pitied. Would we be blind? Do we fear lest we 
 should outsee Nature and God, and drink truth dry? 
 I look upon the discontent of the literary class as a 
 mere announcement of the fact that they find them- 
 selves not in the state of mind of their fathers, and 
 regret the coming state as untried ; as a boy dreads 
 the water before he has learned that he can swim. 
 If there is any period one would desire to be born in, 
 is it not the age of Revolution ; when the old and 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 91 
 
 the new stand side by side, and admit of being com- 
 pared ; when the energies of all men are searched by 
 fear and by hope ; when the historic glories of the 
 old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of 
 the new era? This time, like all times, is a very 
 good one, if we but know what to do with it. 
 
 I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the 
 coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry 
 and art, through philosophy and science, through 
 church and state. 
 
 One of these signs is the fact that the same move- 
 ment which affected the elevation of what was called 
 the lowest class in the state, assumed in literature a 
 very marked and as benign an aspect. Instead of 
 the sublime and beautiful ; the near, the low, the 
 common, was explored and poetized. That which 
 had been negligently trodden under foot by those 
 who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for 
 long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to 
 be richer than all foreign parts. The literature of 
 the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy 
 of the street, the meaning of household life, are the 
 topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign, 
 is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are 
 made active, when currents of warm life run into the 
 hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the re- 
 mote, the romantic ; what is doing in Italy or Arabia ; 
 what is Greek art or Proven9al minstrelsy ; I em- 
 brace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of 
 the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, 
 and you may have the antique and future worlds. 
 What would we really know the meaning of? The 
 
92 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 meal in the firkin, the milk in the pan, the ballad 
 in the street, the news of the boat, the glance of 
 the eye, the form and the gait of the body, — show 
 me the ultimate reason of these matters ; show me 
 the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause 
 lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and 
 extremities of nature ; let me see every trifle bris- 
 tling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an 
 eternal law ; and the shop, the plough, and the 
 ledger, referred to the like cause by which light un- 
 dulates and poets sing ; — and the world lies no 
 longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has 
 form and order ; there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, 
 but one design unites and animates the farthest pin- 
 nacle and the lowest trench. 
 
 This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, 
 Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, 
 Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea they have dif- 
 ferently followed and with various success. In con- 
 trast with their writing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, 
 of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing is 
 blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things 
 near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things 
 remote. The dear explains the far. The drop is a 
 small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This 
 perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in 
 discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most 
 modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever 
 did, the genius of the ancients. 
 
 There is one man of genius who has done much 
 for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has 
 never yet been rightly estimated ; I mean Emanuel 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 93 
 
 Swedenborg. The most imaginative of men, yet 
 writing with the precision of a mathematician, he en- 
 deavored to engraft a purely philosophical Ethics on 
 the popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt, 
 of course, must have difficulty which no genius could 
 surmount. But he saw and showed the connection 
 between nature and the affections of the soul. He 
 pierced the emblematic or spiritual character of the 
 visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his 
 shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower 
 parts of nature ; he showed the mysterious bond that 
 allies moral evil to the foul material forms, and has 
 given in epical parables a theory of insanity, of beasts, 
 of unclean and fearfiil things. 
 
 Another sign of our times, also marked by an anal- 
 ogous political movement, is the new importance 
 given to the single person. Everjrthing that tends 
 to insulate the individual — to surround him with 
 barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall 
 feel the world is his and man shall treat with man as 
 a sovereign state with a sovereign state — tends to 
 true union as well as greatness. " I learned," said 
 the melancholy Pestalozzi, " that no man in God's 
 wide earth is either willing or able to help any other 
 man." Help must come from the bosom alone. The 
 scholar is that man who must take up into himself all 
 the ability of the time, all the contributions of the 
 past, all the hopes of the future. He must be a 
 university of knowledges. If there be one lesson 
 more than another which should pierce his ear, it is, 
 The world is nothing, the man is all ; in yourself is 
 the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a 
 
94 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 globule of sap ascends ; in yourself slumbers the 
 whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for 
 you to dare all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this 
 confidence in tlie unsearched might of man belongs, 
 by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, 
 to the American Scholar. We have listened too long 
 to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the 
 American freeman is already suspected to be timid, 
 imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make 
 the air we breathe tliick and fat. The scholar is 
 decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the 
 tragic consequence. The mind of this country, 
 taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. 
 There is no work for any but the decorous and the 
 complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, 
 who begin life upon our shores, inflated by 
 the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars 
 of God, find the earth below not in unison with 
 these, but are hindered from action by the disgust 
 which the principles on which business is managed 
 inspire, and turn drudges or die of disgust — some 
 of them suicides. What is the remedy? They did 
 not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful 
 now crowding to the barriers for the career do not 
 yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomi- 
 tably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge 
 world will come round to him. Patience, patience ; 
 with the shades of all the good and great for com- 
 pany; and for solace, the perspective of your own 
 infinite life ; and for work, the study and the com- 
 munication of principles, the making those instincts 
 prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not the 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 95 
 
 chief disgrace in tlie world not to be a unit, not 
 to be reckoned one character, not to yield that 
 peculiar fruit ; which each man was created to bear ; 
 but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or 
 the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we 
 belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, 
 as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and 
 friends — please God, ours shall not be so. We will 
 walk on our own feet ; we will work with our own 
 hands ; we will speak our own minds. The study of 
 letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, 
 and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and 
 the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a 
 wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will for 
 the first time exist, because each believes himself 
 inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all 
 men. 
 
96 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE SENIOR CLASS IN 
 DIVINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, SUNDAY 
 EVENING, JULY 15, 183S. 
 
 In this refulgent summer it has been a luxury to 
 draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds 
 burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in 
 the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet 
 with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and 
 the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart 
 with its welcome shade. Through the transparent 
 darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. 
 Man under them seems a young child, and his huge 
 globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as 
 with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crim- 
 son dawn. The mystery of nature was never dis- 
 played more happily. The corn and the wine have 
 been fireely dealt to all creatures, and the never- 
 broken silence with which the old bounty goes for- 
 ward has not yielded yet one word of explanation. 
 One is constrained to respect the perfection of this 
 world, in which our senses converse. How wide, 
 how rich, what invitation from every property it gives 
 to every faculty of man ! In its fruitful soils ; in its 
 navigable sea ; in its mountains of metal and stone ; 
 in its forests of all woods; in its animals; in its 
 chemical ingredients ; in the powers and path of light, 
 
AN ADDRESS. p^ 
 
 heat, attraction, and life, — it is well worth the pith 
 and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. The 
 planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the astrono- 
 mers, the builders of cities and the captains, history 
 delights to honor. 
 
 But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws 
 which traverse the universe, and make things what 
 they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a 
 mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am 
 1 ? and What is ? asks the human spirit with a curi- 
 osity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. Behold 
 these outrunning laws, which our imperfect apprehen- 
 sion can see tend this way and that, but not come 
 full circle. Behold these infinite relations, so like, 
 so unlike ; many, yet one. I would study, I would 
 know, I would admire forever. These works of 
 thought have been the entertainments of the human 
 spirit in all ages. 
 
 A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty ap- 
 pears to man when his heart and mind open to the 
 sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what 
 is above him. He learns that his being is without 
 bound ; that to the good, to the perfect, he is bom, 
 low as he now lies in evil and weakness. That 
 which he venerates is still his ovm, though he has 
 not realized it yet. He ought. He knows the sense 
 of that grand word, though his analysis fails entirely 
 to render account of it. When in innocency, or 
 when by intellectual perception, he attains to say: — 
 " I love the Right ; Truth is beautiful within and with- 
 out forevermore. Virtue, I am thine ; save me ; use 
 me; thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in 
 
98 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue ; " — 
 then is the end of the creation answered, and God is 
 ■well pleased. 
 
 The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight 
 in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives 
 that this homely game of life we play, covers, under 
 what seem foolish details, principles that astonish. 
 The child amidst his baubles is learning the action 
 of light, motion, gravity, muscular force ; and in the 
 game of human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, 
 and God interact. These laws refuse to be ade- 
 quately stated. They will not be written out on paper, 
 or spoken by the tongue. They elude our persever- 
 ing thought ; yet we read them hourly in each other's 
 faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse. 
 The moral traits which are all globed into every 
 virtuous act and thought, — in speech, we must sever, 
 and describe or suggest by painful enumeration of 
 many particulars. Yet, as this sentiment is the 
 essence of aU religion, let me guide your eye to the 
 precise objects of the sentiment, by an enumeration 
 of some of those classes of facts in which this ele- 
 ment is conspicuous. 
 
 The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight 
 of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These 
 laws execute themselves. Thej' are out of time, out 
 of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus, in 
 the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions 
 are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is 
 instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by 
 the action itself contracted. He who puts off impur- 
 ity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just. 
 
AN ADDRESS. 99 
 
 then in so far is he God ; the safety of God, the im- 
 mortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into 
 that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, 
 he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance 
 with his own being. A man in the view of absolute 
 goodness adores with total humility. Every step 
 so downward is a step upward. The man who re- 
 nounces himself comes to himself. 
 
 See how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh every- 
 where, righting wrongs, correcting appearances, and 
 bringing up facts to a harmony with thoughts. Its 
 operation in life, though slow to the senses, is, at 
 last, as sure as in the soul. By it, a man is made 
 the Providence to himself, dispensing good to his 
 goodness, and evil to his sin. Character is always 
 known. Thefts never enrich ; alms never impover- 
 ish ; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least 
 admixture of a lie — for example, the taint of vanity, 
 the least attempt to make a good impression, a favor- 
 able appearance — will instantly vitiate the effect. 
 But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits 
 help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the 
 truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and 
 the very roots of the grass underground there do 
 seem to stir and move to bear you witness. See 
 again the perfection of the Law as it applies itself to 
 the affections, and becomes the law of society-. As 
 we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek 
 the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of 
 their own volition souls proceed into heaven, into 
 hell. 
 
 These facts have always suggested to man the sub- 
 
lOO AN ADDRESS. 
 
 lime creed, that the world is not the product of man- 
 ifold power, but of one will, of one mind ; and that 
 one mind is every^vhere active, in each ray of the 
 star, in each wavelet of the pool ; and whatever 
 opposes that will is everywhere balked and bafHed, 
 because things are made so, and not otherwise. Good 
 is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute : 
 it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All 
 evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is 
 absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man 
 hath, so much life hath he. For all things proceed 
 out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, 
 justice, temperance, in its different applications, just 
 as the ocean receives different names on tlie several 
 shores which it washes. All things proceed out of 
 the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. 
 Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the 
 whole strength of Nature. In so far as he roves from 
 these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxil- 
 iaries ; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, 
 he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until ab- 
 solute badness is absolute death. 
 
 The perception of this law of laws awakens in 
 the mind a sentiment which we call the religious 
 sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. 
 Wonderful is its power to charm and to com- 
 mand. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer 
 of the world. It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine 
 and rosemary. It makes the sky and the hills sub- 
 lime, and the silent song of the stars is it. By it is 
 the universe made safe and habitable, not by science 
 or power. Thought may work cold and intransitive 
 
AN ADDRESS. lOI 
 
 in things, and find no end or unity ; but the dawn 
 of the sentiment of virtue on the heart gives and is 
 the assurance that Law is sovereign over all natures ; 
 and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to 
 break out into joy. 
 
 This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the 
 beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. Through 
 it the soul first knows itself. It corrects the capital 
 mistake of the infant man, who seeks to be great by 
 following the great, and hopes to derive advantages 
 frojn another, by showing the fountain of all good 
 to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, 
 is an inlet into the deeps of Reason. When he says, 
 " I ought ; " when love warns him ; when he chooses, 
 warned from on high, the good and great deed, — 
 then deep melodies wander through his soul from 
 Supreme Wisdom. Then he can worship, and be 
 enlarged by his worship ; for he can never go behind 
 this sentiment. In the sublimest flights of the soul, 
 rectitude is never surmounted, love is never out- 
 grown. 
 
 This sentiment lies at the foundation of society, 
 and successively creates all forms of worship. The 
 principle of veneration never dies out. Man fallen 
 into superstition, into sensuality, is never quite with- 
 out the visions of the moral sentiment. In like man- 
 ner all the expressions of this sentiment are sacred 
 and permanent in proportion to their purity. The 
 expressions of this sentiment affect us more than all 
 other compositions. The sentences of the oldest 
 time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and 
 fragrant. This thought dwelled always deepest in 
 
I02 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 the minds of men in the devout and contemplative 
 East ; not alone in Palestine, where it reached its 
 purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India, 
 in China. Europe has always owed to Oriental 
 genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards 
 said, all sane men found agreeable and true. And 
 the unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose 
 name is not so much written as ploughed into the 
 history of this v/orld, is proof of the subtle virtue of 
 this infusion. 
 
 Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand 
 open, night and day, before every man, and the ora- 
 cles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one 
 stern condition ; this, namely, it is an intuition. It 
 cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, 
 it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can re- 
 ceive from another soul. What he announces, I 
 must find true in me, or wholly reject ; and on his 
 word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can ac- 
 cept nothing. On the contrary, the absence of this 
 primary faith is the presence of degradation. As is 
 the flood, so is the ebb. Let this faith depart, and 
 the very words it spake, and the things it made, be- 
 come false and hurtful. Then falls the church, the 
 state, art, letters, life. The doctrine of the divine 
 nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs 
 the constitution. Once man was all ; now he is an 
 appendage, a nuisance. And because the indwelling 
 Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doc- 
 trine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine 
 nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied 
 to all the rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine 
 
AN ADDRESS. 103 
 
 of inspiration is lost ; the base doctrine of the major- 
 ity of voices usurps the place of the doctrine of the 
 soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry ; the ideal life, the 
 holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are 
 not in the belief nor in the aspiration of society; 
 but, when suggested, seem ridiculous. Life is comic 
 or pitiful as soon as the high ends of baing fade out 
 of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only 
 attend to what addresses the senses. 
 
 These general views, which, whilst they are gen- 
 eral, none will contest, find abundant illustration in 
 the history of religion, and especially in the history 
 of the Christian church. In that, all of us have had 
 our birth and nurture. The truth contained in that, 
 you, my young friends, are now setting forth to teach. 
 As the Cultus, or established worship of the civilized 
 world, it has great historical interest for us. Of its 
 blessed words, which have been the consolation of 
 humanity, you need not that I should speak. I shall 
 endeavor to discharge my duty to you, on this occa- 
 sion, by pointing out two errors in its administra- 
 tion, which daily appear more gross from the point 
 of view we have just now taken. 
 
 Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. 
 He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. 
 Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its 
 beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. 
 Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of 
 man. One man was true to what was in you and 
 me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, 
 and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of 
 his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emo- 
 
I04 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 tion : — "I am divine. Through me, God acts; 
 through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me ; 
 or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think." 
 But what a distortion did his doctrine and memor)' 
 suffer in the same, in the next, and the following 
 ages ! There is no doctrine of the Reason which 
 will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The 
 understanding caught this high chant from the poet's 
 lips, and said, in the next age : — " This was Jehovah 
 come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say 
 he was a man." The idioms of his language and 
 the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the place of 
 his truth ; and churches are not built on his prin- 
 ciples, but on his tropes. Christianity became a 
 Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of 
 Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles ; for he felt 
 that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, 
 and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the 
 character ascends. But the word " miracle," as pro- 
 nounced by Christian churches, gives a false impres- 
 sion ; it is " monster." It is not one with the blowing 
 clover and the falling rain. 
 
 He felt respect for Moses and the prophets ; but 
 no unfit tenderness at postponing their initial revela- 
 tions to the hour and the man that now is, to the 
 eternal revelation in the heart. Thus was he a true 
 man. Having seen that the law in us is command- 
 ing, he would not suffer it to be commanded. Boldlj', 
 with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was 
 God. Thus is he, as I think, the only soul in his- 
 tory who has appreciated the worth of a man. 
 
 I . In this point of view we become very sensible 
 
AN ADDRESS. 105 
 
 of the first defect of historical Christianity. Histori- 
 cal Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts .' 
 all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears 
 to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the ' 
 doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the per- 
 sonal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it 
 dwells, with no.xious exaggeration about the pcrsoji 
 of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites 
 every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, 
 and will have no preferences but those of spon- 
 taneous love. But by this Eastern monarchy of a 
 Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, 
 the friend of man is made the injurer of man. The 
 manner in which his name is surrounded with ex- 
 pressions, which were once sallies of admiration and 
 love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all 
 generous sympathy and liking. All who hear me, 
 feel that the language that describes Christ to 
 Europe and America is not the style of friendship 
 and enthusiasm to a good and noble heart, but is 
 appropriated and formal, — paints a demigod, as the 
 Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or 
 Apollo. Accept the injurious impositions of our 
 early catechetical instruction, and even honesty and 
 self-denial "were but splendid sins if they did not 
 wear the Christian name. One would rather be 
 
 " A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn," 
 
 than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming 
 into nature, and finding not names and places, not 
 land and professions, but even virtue and truth, fore- 
 
Io6 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 closed and monopolized. You shall not be a man 
 even. You shall not own the world ; you shall not 
 dare, and live after the infinite Law that is in you, 
 and in company with the infinite Beauty which 
 heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms ; 
 but you must subordinate your nature to Christ's 
 nature, you must accept our interpretations, and 
 take his portrait as the vulgar draw it. 
 
 That is always best which gives me to myself. 
 The sublime is excited in rae by the great stoical 
 doctrine. Obey thyself. That which shows God in 
 me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of rae, 
 makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a 
 necessary reason for my being. Already the long 
 shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I 
 shall decease forever. 
 
 The divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of 
 my intellect, of my strength. They admonish me 
 that the gleams which flash across my mind are not 
 mine, but God's ; that they had the like, and were 
 not disobedient to the heavenly vision. So I love 
 them. Noble provocations go out from them, in- 
 viting me to resist evil, to subdue the world, and to 
 Be. And thus by his holy thoughts Jesus serves 
 us, and thus only. To aim to convert a man by 
 miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true con- 
 version, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made 
 by the reception of beautiful sentiments. It is true 
 that a great and rich soul, like his, falling among 
 the simple, does so preponderate, that, as his did, it 
 names the world. The world seems to them to exist 
 for him, and they have not yet drunk so deeply of 
 
AN ADDRESS. lo/ 
 
 his sense as to see that only by coming again to 
 themselves, or to God in themselves, can they grow 
 forevermore. It is a low benefit to give me some- 
 thing ; it is a high benefit to enable me to do some- 
 what of myself. The time is coming when all men 
 will see that the gift of God to the soul is not a 
 vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but a 
 sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and 
 mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and 
 to grow. 
 
 The injustice of the vulgar tone of preaching is not 
 less flagrant to Jesus than to the souls which it pro- 
 fanes. The preachers do not see that they make 
 his gospel not glad, and shear him of the locks of 
 beauty and the attributes of heaven. When I see 
 a majestic Epaminondas or Washington ; when I see 
 among my contemporaries a true orator, an upright 
 judge, a dear friend; when I vibrate to the melody 
 and fancy of a poem, — I see beauty that is to be de- 
 sired. And so lovely, and with yet more entire con- 
 sent of my human being, sounds in my ear the severe 
 music of the bards that have sung of the true God in 
 all ages. Now, do not degrade the life and dialogues 
 of Christ out of the circle of this charm, by insula- 
 tion and peculiarity. Let them lie as they befell, 
 alive and warm, part of human life, and of the land- 
 scape, and of the cheerful day. 
 
 2. The second defect of the traditionary and 
 limited ^vay of using the mind of Christ is a conse- 
 quence of the first ; this, namely, that the Moral 
 Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations intro- 
 duce greatness, yea, God himself, into the open 
 
Io8 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 soul, is not explored as the fountain of the estab- 
 lished teaching in society. Men have come to speak 
 of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and 
 done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith 
 throttles the preacher, and the goodliest of institu- 
 tions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice. 
 
 It is very certain that it is the effect of conversa- 
 tion with the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire 
 and need to impart to others the knowledge and love. 
 If utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden 
 on the man. Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow 
 his dream is told ; somehow he publishes it with 
 solemn joy ; sometimes with pencil on canvas ; some- 
 times with chisel on stone ; sometimes in towers 
 and aisles of granite his soul's worship is builded; 
 sometimes in athems of indefinite music ; but clearest 
 and most permanent, in words. 
 
 The man enamored of this excellency becomes its 
 priest or poet. The office is coeval vifith the world. 
 But observe the condition, the spiritual limitation of 
 the office. The^pirit only can teach. Not any pro- 
 fane man, not any sensual, not ahyliar, not an}' slave 
 can teach, but only he can give, who has ; he only \ 
 can create, who is. The man on whom the soul 
 descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can 
 teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach ; 
 and every man can open his door to these angels, 
 and they shall bring him the gift of tongues. But 
 the man who aims to speak as books enable, as 
 synods use, as the fashion guides, and as interest 
 commands, babbles. Let him hush. 
 
 To this holy office you propose to devote your- 
 
AN ADDRESS. 109 
 
 selves. I wish you may feel your call in throbs of 
 desire and hope. The office is the first in the world. 
 It is of that reality, that it cannot suffer the deduc- 
 tion of any falsehood. And it is my duty to say to 
 you, that the need was never greater of new revela- 
 tion than now. From the views I have already ex- 
 pressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which I 
 share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay 
 and now almost death of faith in society. The soul 
 is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its 
 fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion any 
 complaisance would be criminal which told you, 
 whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith 
 of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached. 
 
 It is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of all 
 thoughtful men against the famine of our churches ; 
 this moaning of the heart because it is bereaved of 
 the consolation, the hope, the grandeur, that come 
 alone out of the culture of the moral nature, — should 
 be heard through the sleep of indolence and over the 
 din of routine. This great and perpetual office of 
 the preacher is not discharged. Preaching is the 
 expression of the moral sentiment in application to 
 the duties of life. In how many churches, by how 
 many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that 
 he is an infinite soul ; that the earth and heavens are 
 passing into his mind ; that he is drinking forever 
 the soul of God? Where now sounds the persua- 
 sion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, 
 and so affirms its own origin in heaven? Where 
 shall I hear words such as in elder ages drew men to 
 leave all and follow, — father and mother, house and 
 
no AN ADDRESS. 
 
 land, wife and child? Where shall I hear these au~ 
 gust laws of moral being so pronounced as to fill my 
 ear, and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost 
 action and passion? The test of the true faith, cer- 
 tainly, should be its power to charm and command 
 the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of 
 the hands, — so commanding that we find pleasure 
 and honor in obeying. The faith should blend with 
 the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying 
 cloud, the singing bird, and the breath of flowers. 
 But now the priest's Sabbath has lost the splendor of 
 nature ; it is unlovely ; we are glad when it is done ; 
 we can make, we do make, even sitting in our pews, 
 a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves. 
 
 Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, 
 then is the worshipper defrauded and disconso- 
 late. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, 
 which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. 
 We are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and 
 secure, as best we can, a solitude that hears not. 
 I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me 
 to say I would go to church no more. Men go, 
 thought I, where they are wont to go, else had 
 no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A 
 snow-storm was falling around us. The snow-storm 
 was real ; the preacher merely spectral ; and the eye 
 felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out 
 of the window behind him, into tlie beautiful meteor 
 of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one 
 Avord intimating that he had laughed or wept, was 
 married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, 
 or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we 
 
AN ADDRESS. m 
 
 were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of 
 his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he 
 had not learned. Not one fact in all his experience 
 had he yet imported into his doctrine. This man had 
 ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and 
 sold ; he had read books ; he had eaten and drunken ; 
 his head aches ; his heart throbs ; he smiles and 
 suffers ; yet was there not a surmise, a hint, in all 
 the discourse, that he had ever lived at all. Not a 
 line did he draw out of real history. The true 
 preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to 
 the people his life, — life passed through the fire of 
 thought. But of the bad preacher, it could not be 
 told from his sermon what age of the world he 
 fell in ; whether he had a father or a child ; whether 
 he was a freeholder or a pauper ; virhether he was 
 a citizen or a countryman; or any other fact 
 of his biography. It seemed strange that the people 
 should come to church. It seemed as if their houses 
 were very unentertaining, that thej' should prefer 
 this thoughtless clamor. It shows that there is a 
 commanding attraction in the moral sentiment that 
 can lend a faint tint of light to dulness and ignorance, 
 coming in its name and place. The good hearer is 
 sure he has been touched sometimes ; is sure there 
 is somewhat to be reached, and some word that can 
 reach it. When he listens to these vain words, he 
 comforts himself by their relation to his remembrance 
 of better hours, and so they clatter and echo un- 
 challenged. 
 
 I am not ignorant that when we preach unworthily, 
 it is not always quite in vain. There is a good ear, 
 
113 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of 
 very indifferent nutriment, Tiiere is poetic truth 
 concealed in all the commonplaces of prayer and of 
 sermons, and though foolishly spoken, they may be 
 wisely heard ; for each is some select expression 
 that broke out in a moment of piety from some 
 stricken or jubilant soul, and its excellency made it 
 remembered. The prayers and even the dogmas of 
 our church are like the zodiac of Denderah, and the 
 astronomical monuments of the Hindoos, wholly 
 insulated from anything now extant in the life and 
 business of the people. They mark the height to 
 which the waters once rose. But this docility is a 
 check upon the mischief from the good and devout. 
 In a large portion of the community, the religious 
 service gives rise to quite other thoughts and emo- 
 tions. We need not chide the negligent servant. 
 We are struck with pity, rather, at the swift retribu- 
 tion of his sloth. Alas for the unhappy man that is 
 called to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of 
 life ! Everything that befalls, accuses him. Would 
 he ask contributions for the missions, foreign or 
 domestic? Instantly his face is suffused with shame, 
 to propose to his parish that they should send money 
 a hundred or a thousand miles, to furnish such poor 
 fare as they have at home, and would do well to go 
 the hundred or the thousand miles to escape. Would 
 he urge people to a godly way of living ; and can 
 he ask a fellow-creature to come to Sabbath meetings, 
 when he and they all know what is the poor utter- 
 most they can hope for therein.'' Will he invite them 
 privately to the Lord's Supper.' He dares not. If 
 
AN ADDRESS. 113 
 
 no heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking 
 formality is too plain, than that he can face a man of 
 wit and energy, and put the invitation without terror. 
 In the street, what has he to say to the bold village 
 blasphemer? The village blasphemer sees fear in 
 the fece, form, and gait of the minister. 
 
 Let me not taint the sincerity of this plea by any 
 oversight of the claims of good men. I know and 
 honor the purity and strict conscience of numbers 
 of the clergy. What life the public worship retains, 
 it owes to the scattered company of pious men who 
 minister here and there in the churches, and who, 
 sometimes accepting with too great tenderness the 
 tenet of the elders, have not accepted from others, 
 but from their own heart, the genuine impulses ol 
 virtue, and so still command our love and awe, to the 
 sanctity of character. Moreover, the exceptions are 
 not so much to be found in a few eminent preachers, 
 as in the better hours, the truer inspirations of all, — 
 nay, in the sincere moments of every man. But 
 with whatever exception, it is still true that tradition 
 chai-acterizes the preaching of this country ; that it 
 comes out of the memory and not out of the soul ; 
 that it aims at what is usual and not at what is nec- 
 essary and eternal ; that thus historical Christianity 
 destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it 
 from the exploration of the moral nature of man, 
 where the sublime is, where are the resources of 
 astonishment and power. What a cruel injustice it 
 is to that Law, the joy of the whole earth, which 
 alone can make thought dear and rich ; that Law 
 whose fatal sureness the astronomical orbits poorly 
 
114 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 emulate, that it is travestied and depreciated, that it 
 is behooted and behowled, and not a trait, not a 
 word of it articulated. The pulpit in losing sight of 
 this Law loses its reason, and gropes after it knows 
 not what. And for want of this culture the soul of 
 the community is sick and faithless. It wants noth- 
 ing so much as a stern, high, stoical. Christian 
 discipline, to make it know itself and the divinity 
 that speaks through it. Now man is ashamed of 
 himself; he skulks and sneaks through the world, 
 to be tolerated, to be pitied, and scarcely in a thou- 
 sand years does any man dare to be wise and good, 
 and so draw after him the tears and blessings of his 
 kind. 
 
 Certainly there have been periods when, from the 
 inactivity of the intellect on certain truths, a greater 
 faith was possible in names and persons. The Puri- 
 tans in England and America found in the Christ of 
 the Catholic Church, and in tire dogmas inherited 
 from Rome, scope for their austere piety and their 
 longings for civil freedom. But their creed is pass- 
 ing away, and none arises in its room. I think no 
 man can go with his thoughts about him into one of 
 our churches, without feeling that what hold the 
 public worship had on men is gone, or going. It 
 has lost its grasp on the affection of the good and 
 the fear of the bad. In the country, neighborhoods, 
 half parishes are signing off, — to use the local term. 
 It is already beginning to indicate character and re- 
 ligion to withdraw from the religious meetings. I 
 have heard a devout person who prized the Sabbath 
 say in bitterness of heart: — "On Sundays it seems 
 
AN ADDRESS. 1 15 
 
 wicked to go to church.'" And the motive that 
 holds the best there, is now only a hope and a wait- 
 ing. What was once a mere circumstance, that the 
 best and the worst men in the parish, the poor and 
 the rich, the learned and the ignorant, young and 
 old, should meet one day as fellows in one house, in 
 sign of an equal right in the soul, — has come to be 
 a paramount motive for going thither. 
 
 My friends, in these two errors I think I find the 
 causes of a decaying church and a wasting unbelief. 
 And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation 
 than the loss of worship? Then all things go to 
 decay. Genius leaves the temple, to haunt the sen- 
 ate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. 
 Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by 
 the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. 
 Society lives to trifles, and when men die we do not 
 mention them. 
 
 And now, my brothers, you will ask. What in these 
 desponding days can be done by us? The remedy 
 is already declared in the giound of our complaint 
 of the Church. We have contrasted the Church with 
 the Soul. In the Soul, then, let the redemption be 
 sought. Wherever a man comes, there comes revo- 
 lution. The old is for slaves. When a man comes, 
 all books are legible, all things transparent, all re- 
 ligions are forms. He is religious. Man is the 
 wonderworker. He is seen amid miracles. All men 
 bless and curse. He saith yea and nay, only. The 
 stationariness of religion ; the assumption that the 
 age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed ; 
 the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by rep- 
 
Il6 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 resenting him as a man, — indicate with sufficient clear- 
 ness tlie falsehood of our theology. It is the office 
 of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was ; 
 that He speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity 
 — a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man — is 
 lost. None believeth in the soul of man, but only 
 in some man or person old and departed. Ah me ! 
 no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this 
 saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in 
 secret. They cannot see in secret ; they love to be 
 blind in public. They think society wiser than their 
 soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is 
 wiser than the whole world. See how nations and 
 races flit by on the sea of time, and leave no ripple 
 to tell where they floated or sunk, and one good soul 
 shall make the name of Moses, or of Zeno, or of Zo- 
 roaster reverend forever. None essayeth the stern 
 ambition to be the Self of the nation and of Nature, 
 but each would be an easy secondary to some Chris- 
 tian scheme, or sectarian connection, or some emi- 
 nent man. Once leave your own knowledge of God, 
 your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, 
 as St. Paul's, or George Fox's, or Swedenborg's, and 
 you get wide from God with every year this secondary 
 form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries, — the chasm 
 yawns to that breadth, that men can scarcely be con- 
 vinced there is in them anything divine. 
 
 Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone ; to 
 refuse the good models, even those which are sacred 
 in the imagination of men, and dare to love God 
 without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall 
 find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and 
 
AN ADDRESS. 117 
 
 Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for 
 these good men, but say, " I also am a man." Imi- 
 tation cannot go above its model. The imitator 
 dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor 
 did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him 
 it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is 
 natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, 
 to come short of another man's. 
 
 Yourself a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost, — 
 cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at 
 first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only, 
 that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money 
 are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your 
 eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privi- 
 lege of the immeasvirable mind. Not too anxious to 
 visit periodically all families and each family in your 
 parish connection, — when you meet one of these 
 men or women, be to them a divine man ; be to 
 them thought or virtue ; let their timid aspirations 
 find in you a friend ; let their trampled instincts be 
 genially tempted out in your atmosphere ; let their 
 doubts know that you have doubted, and their won- 
 der feel that you have wondered. By trusting your 
 own heart, you shall gain more confidence in other 
 men. For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-de- 
 stroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that 
 all men have sublime thoughts ; that all men value the 
 few real hours of life ; they love to be heard ; they 
 love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We 
 mark with light in the memory the few interviews 
 we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of 
 sin, with souls that made our souls wiser ; that spoke 
 
llS AN ADDRESS. 
 
 what we thought ; that told us what we knew ; that 
 gave us leave to be what we inly were. Discharge 
 to men the priestly office, and, present or absent, 
 you shall be followed with their love as by an angel. 
 
 And to this end let us not aim at common de- 
 grees of merit. Can we not leave to such as love it 
 the virtue that gUtters for the commendation of so- 
 ciety, and ourselves pierce the deep solitudes of 
 absolute ability and worth ? We easily come up to 
 the standard of goodness in society. Society's 
 praise can be cheaply secured, and almost all men 
 are content \vith those easy merits ; but the instant 
 effect of conversing with God will be to put them 
 away. There are persons who are not actors, not 
 speakers, but influences ; persons too great for fame, 
 for display ; who disdain eloquence ; to whom all we 
 call art and artist seems too nearly allied to show 
 and by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite and 
 selfish, and loss of the universal. The orators, the 
 poets, the commanders encroach on us only as fair 
 women do, by our allowance and homage. Slight 
 them by preoccupation of mind, slight them as you 
 can well afford to do, by high and universal aims, 
 and they instantly feel that you have right, and that 
 it is in lower places that they must shine. They 
 also feel your right ; for they with you are open to 
 the influx of the all-knowing Spirit, which anniliilates 
 before its broad noon the little shades and gradations 
 of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and 
 wisest. 
 
 In such high communion let us study the grand 
 strokes of rectitude : a bold benevolence, an inde- 
 
AN ADDRESS. 1^9 
 
 pendence of friends, so that not the unjust wishes of 
 those who love us shall impair our freedom, but we 
 shall resist for truth's sake the freest flow of kind- 
 ness, and appeal to sympathies far in advance ; and 
 — what is the highest form in which we know this 
 beautiful element — a certain solidity of merit, that 
 has nothing to do with opinion, and which is so 
 essentially and manifestly virtue, that it is taken for 
 granted that the right, the brave, the generous step 
 will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending 
 it. You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good 
 act, but you would not praise an angel. The silence 
 that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the 
 world is the highest applause. Such souls, when 
 they appear, are the Imperial Guard of Virtue, the 
 perpetual reserve, the dictators of fortune. One 
 needs not praise their courage, — they are the heart 
 and soul of nature. Oh my friends, there are re- 
 sources in us on which we have not drawn. There 
 are men who rise refreshed on hearing a threat ; men 
 to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the 
 majority — demanding not the faculties of prudence 
 and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the 
 readiness of sacrifice — comes graceful and beloved 
 as a bride. Napoleon said of Massena, that he was 
 not himself until the battle began to go against him ; 
 then, when the dead began to fell in ranks around 
 him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put 
 on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged 
 crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which 
 put sjrmpathy out of question, that the angel is 
 shown. But these are heights that we can scarce 
 
I20 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 remember and look up to, without contrition and 
 shame. Let us thank God that such things exist. 
 And now let us do what we can to rekindle the 
 smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. The 
 evils of the Church that now is are manifest. The 
 question returns, What shall we do? I confess, all 
 attempts to project and establish a Cultus Avith new 
 rites and forms seem to -me vain. Faith makes us, 
 and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All 
 attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new 
 worship introduced by the French to the goddess of 
 Reason, — to-day, pasteboard and filigree, and end- 
 ing to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather let 
 the breath of new life be breathed by you through the 
 forms already existing. For, if once you are alive, 
 you shall find they shall become plastic and new. 
 The remedy to their deformity is, first. Soul, and 
 second. Soul, and evermore. Soul. A whole popedom 
 of forms one pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify. 
 Two inestimable advantages Christianity has given 
 us : first, the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole 
 world ; whose light dawns welcome alike into the 
 closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and 
 into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to 
 the vile, the dignity of spiritual being. Let it stand 
 forevermore a temple, which new love, new faith, 
 new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor 
 to mankind. And secondly, the institution of preach- 
 ing, — ^ the speech of man to men, — essentially the 
 most flexible of aU organs, of all forms. What 
 hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture- 
 rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation 
 
AN ADDRESS. I2I 
 
 of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak 
 the very truth, as your Ufe and conscience teach it, 
 and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with 
 new hope and new revelation? 
 
 I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty 
 which ravished the souls of those Eastern men, and 
 chiefly of those Hebrews, and tlirough their lips 
 spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West 
 also. Tlie Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain 
 immortal sentences that have been bread of life to 
 millions. But they have no epical integrity ; are 
 fragmentary ; are not shown in their order to the 
 intellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall 
 follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see 
 them come full circle ; shall see their rounding com- 
 plete grace ; shall see the world to be the mirror of 
 the soul ; shall see the identity of the law of gravita- 
 tion with purity of heart ; and shall show that the 
 Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with 
 Beauty, and with Joy. 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE LIT- 
 ERARY SOCIETIES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, 
 JULY 24, 1S3S. 
 
 Gentlemen: The invitation to address you this 
 day, with whicli you have honored me, was a call so 
 welcome, that I made haste to obey it. A summons 
 to celebrate with scholars a literary festival is so al- 
 luring to me as to overcome the doubts I might well 
 entertain of my ability to bring you any thought 
 worthy of your attention. 1 have reached the middle 
 age of man ; yet I believe I am not less glad or san- 
 guine at the meeting of scholars than when, a boy, 
 I first saw the graduates of my own college assembled 
 at their anniversary. Neither years nor books have 
 yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in 
 me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and 
 earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of 
 men. His duties lead him directly into the holy 
 ground where other men's aspirations only point. 
 His successes are occasions of the purest joy to all 
 men. Eyes is he to the blind ; feet is he to the 
 lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to 
 higher advantages. And because the scholar, by 
 every thought he thinks, extends his dominion into 
 the general mind of men, he is not one, but many. 
 The few scholars in each country whose genius I 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. I23 
 
 know seem to me not individuals, but societies ; 
 and when events occur of great import I count over 
 these representatives of opinion, whom they will 
 affect, as if I were counting nations. And even if 
 his results were incommunicable, if they abode in 
 his own spirit, the intellect hath somewhat so sacred 
 in its possessions, that the fact of his existence and 
 pursuits would be a happy omen. 
 
 Meantime I know that a very different estimate of 
 the scholar's profession prevails in this country, and 
 the importunity with which society presses its claim 
 upon young men tends to pervert the views of the 
 youth in respect to the culture of the intellect. 
 Hence the historical failure on which Europe and 
 America have so freely commented. This country 
 has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expec- 
 tation of mankind. Men looked, when all feudal 
 straps and bandages were snapped asunder, that 
 Nature, too long the mother of dwarfs, should reim- 
 burse itself by a brood of Titans, who should laugh 
 and leap in the continent, and run up the mountains 
 of the West mth the errand of genius and of love. 
 But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpt- 
 ure, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be 
 a certain grace without grandeur, and itself not new, 
 but derivative ; a vase of fair outline, but empty, — 
 which whoso sees may fiU with what wit and charac- 
 ter is in him, but which does not, like the charged 
 cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit light- 
 nings on all beholders. 
 
 I will not lose myself in the desultory questions, 
 what are the limitations, and what the causes of the 
 
124 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 fact. It suffices me to say, in general, that the diffi- 
 dence of mankind in the soul has crept over the 
 American mind ; that men here, as elsewhere, are 
 indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, 
 any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to 
 the unproductive service of thought. 
 
 Yet in every sane hour the service of thought ap- 
 pears reasonable, the despotism of the senses insane. 
 The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, 
 and become a pedant ; but when he comprehends 
 his duties, he above all men is a realist, and con- 
 verses with things. For tlie scholar is the student 
 of the world ; and of what v/orth the world is, and 
 with what emphasis it accosts the soul of man, such 
 is the worth, such the call of the scholar. 
 
 The want of the times and the propriety of this 
 anniversary concur to draw attention to the doctrine 
 of Literary Ethics. What I have to say on that doc- 
 trine distributes itself under the topics of the re- 
 sources, the subject, and the discipline of the scholar. 
 
 I. The resources of the scholar are proportioned 
 to his confidence in the attributes of the Intellect. 
 The resources of the scholar are coextensive with 
 nature and truth, yet can never be his, unless 
 claimed by him with an equal greatness of mind. 
 He cannot know them until he has beheld with awe 
 the infinitude and impersonality of the intellectual 
 power. When he has seen that it is not his, nor 
 any man's, but that it is the Soul which made the 
 world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will 
 know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 125 
 
 all things subordinate and answerable to it. A 
 divine pilgrim in nature, all things attend his steps. 
 Over him stream the flying constellations ; over him 
 streams Time, as they, scarcely divided into months 
 and years. He inhales the year as a vapor: its 
 fragrant midsummer breath, its sparkling January 
 heaven. And so pass into his mind, in bright trans- 
 figuration, the grand events of history, to take a new 
 order and scale from him. He is the world ; and 
 the epochs and heroes of chronology are pictorial 
 images, in which his thoughts are told. There is no 
 event but sprung somewhere fi-om the soul of man ; 
 and therefore there is none but the soul of man can 
 interpret. Every presentiment of the mind is exe- 
 cuted somewhere in a gigantic fact. What else is 
 Greece, Rome, England, France, St. Helena? What 
 else are churches, literatures, and empires? The 
 new man must feel that he is new, and has not come 
 into the world mortgaged to the opinions and usages 
 of Europe, and Asia, and Egypt. The sense of 
 spiritual independence is like the lovely varnish of 
 the dew, whereby the old, hard, peaked earth, and 
 its old self-same productions, are made new every 
 morning, and shining with the last touch of the 
 artist's hand. A false humility, a complaisance to 
 reigning schools, or to the wisdom of antiquity, must 
 not defraud me of supreme possession of this hour. 
 If any person have less love of liberty, and less jeal- 
 ousy to guard his integrity, shall he therefore dictate 
 to you and me? Say to such doctors. We are thank- 
 ful to you, as we are to history, to the pyramids, and 
 the authors ; but now our day is come ; we have 
 
1 26 LITER AR Y E THICS. 
 
 been born out of the eternal silence ; and now will 
 we live, — live for ourselves, — and not sis the pall- 
 bearers of a funeral, but as the upholders and creators 
 of our age ; and neither Greece nor Rome, nor the 
 three Unities of Aristotle, nor the three Kings of 
 Cologne, nor the College of the Sorbonne, nor the 
 "Edinburgh Review,^^ is to command any longer. 
 Now that we are here, we will put our own interpreta- 
 tion on things, andour own things for interpretation. 
 Please himself with complaisance who will, — for 
 me, things must take my scale, not I theirs. I will 
 say with the warlike king: — "God gave me this 
 crown, and the whole world shall not take it away.'' 
 
 The whole value of history, of biography, is to in- 
 crease my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can 
 be and do. This is the moral of the Plutarchs, the 
 Cudworths, the Tennemanns, who give us the story 
 of men or of opinions. Any history of philosophy 
 fortifies my faith, by showing me that what high 
 dogmas I had supposed were the rare and late fruit 
 of a cumulative culture, and only now possible to 
 some recent Kant or Fichte, were the prompt im- 
 provisations of the earliest inquirers, — of Parmen- 
 ides, Heraclitus, and Xenophanes. In view of these 
 students, the soul seems to whisper: — "There is a 
 better way than this indolent learning of another. 
 Leave me alone ; do not teach me out of Leibnitz or 
 Schelling, and I shall find it all out myself." 
 
 Still more do we owe to biography the fortification 
 of our hope. If you would know the power of 
 character, see how much you would impoverish the 
 world if you could take clean out of history the 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 1 27 
 
 lives of Milton, Shakspeare, and Plato, — these 
 three, — and cause them not to be. See you not how 
 much less the power of man would be? I console 
 myself in the poverty of my thoughts, in the paucity 
 of great men, in the malignity and dulness of the 
 nations, by falling back on these sublime recollec- 
 tions, and seeing what the prolific soul could beget 
 on actual nature ; seeing that Plato was, and 
 Shakspeare, and Milton, — three irrefragable fects. 
 Then I dare ; I also will essay to be. The humblest, 
 the most hopeless, in view of these radiant facts, may 
 now theorize and hope. In spite of all the rueful 
 abortions that squeak and gibber in the street, in 
 spite of slumber and guUt, in spite of the army, the 
 bar-room, and the jail, have been these glorious 
 manifestations of the mind; and I will thank my 
 great brothers so truly for the admonition of their 
 being, as to endeavor also to be just and brave, to 
 aspire and to speak. Plotinus too, and Spinoza, and 
 the immortal bards of philosophy, — that which they 
 have written out with patient courage, makes me 
 bold. No more will I dismiss, with haste, the 
 visions which flash and sparkle across my sky ; but 
 observe them, approach them, domesticate them, 
 brood on them, and draw out of the past, genuine 
 life for the present hour. 
 
 To feel the fuU value of these lives, as occasions of 
 hope and provocation, you must come to know that 
 each admirable genius is but a successful diver in 
 that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. The 
 impoverishing philosophy of ages has laid stress on 
 the distinctions of the individual, and not on the 
 
128 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 universal attributes of man. The youth, intoxicated 
 with his admiration of a hero, fails to see that it is 
 only a projection of his own soul which he admires. 
 In solitude, in a remote villaije, the ardent youth 
 loiters and mourns. Witii infiamed eye, in this 
 sleeping wilderness, he has read the story of the 
 Emperor Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has 
 brought home to the surrounding woods the faint 
 roar of cannonades in the Milanese, and marches in 
 Germany. He is curious concerning that man's day. 
 What filled it? the crowded orders, the stern deci- 
 sions, the foreign despatches, the Castilian etiquette? 
 The soul answers. Behold his day here ! In the 
 sighing of these woods, in the quiet of these gray 
 fields, in the cool breeze that sings out of these 
 northern mountains ; in the workmen, the boys, the 
 maidens, you meet, — in the hopes of the morning, 
 the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon ; 
 in the disquieting comparisons ; in the regrets at 
 want of vigor ; in the great idea, and the puny 
 execution, — behold Charles the Fifth's day; an- 
 other, yet the same ; behold Chatham's, Hampden's, 
 Bayard's, Alfred's, Scipio's, Pericles' day, — day of 
 all that are born of women. The difference of cir- 
 cumstance is merely costume. I am tasting the self- 
 same life, its sweetness, its greatness, its pain, 
 which I so admire in other men. Do not foolishly 
 ask of the inscrutable, obliterated past what it can- 
 not tell, — the details of that nature, of that day, 
 called Byron, or Burke ; but ask it of the envelop- 
 ing Now ; the more quaintly you inspect its eva- 
 nescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 129 
 
 causes, its astounding whole, so much the more 
 you master the biography of this hero and that, and 
 every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and 
 justice, and you can put up your Iiistory books. 
 
 An intimation of these broad rights is familiar in 
 the sense of injury which men feel in the assumption 
 of an}' man to limit their possible progress. We 
 resent all criticism which denies us anything that 
 lies in our line of advance. Say to '.he man of 
 letters that he cannot paint a Transfiguration, or 
 build a steamboat, or be a grand-marshal, and he 
 \vill not seem to himself depreciated. But deny to 
 him any quality of literaiy or metaphysical power, 
 and he is piqued. Concede to him genius, which is 
 a sort of Stoical plenum annulling the comparative, 
 and he is content ; but concede him talents never so 
 rare, denying him genius, and he is aggrieved. 
 What does this mean? Why, simply that the soul 
 has assurance, by instincts and presentiments, of all 
 power in the direction of its ray, as well as of the 
 special skills it has already acquired. 
 
 In order to a knowledge of the resources of the 
 scholar, we must not rest in the use of slender 
 accomplishments, — of faculties to do this and that 
 other feat with words ; but we must pay our vows to 
 the highest power, and pass, if it be possible, by 
 assiduous love and watching, into the visions of 
 absolute truth. The growth of the intellect is 
 strictly analogous in all individuals. It is larger 
 reception. Able men, in general, have good dispo- 
 sitions and a respect for justice ; because an able 
 man is nothing else than a good, free, vascular or- 
 
130 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 ganiration, whereinto the universal spirit freely flows ; 
 so that his fund of justice is not only vast, but in- 
 finite. All men, in the abstract, are just and good; 
 what hinders them, in the particular, is the momen- 
 tary predominance of the finite and individual over 
 the general truth. The condition of our incarnation 
 in a private self seems to be a perpetual tendency 
 to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse 
 to the exclusion of the law of universal being. The 
 hero is great by means of the predominance of the 
 universal nature ; he has only to open his mouth, 
 and it speaks ; he has only to be forced to act, and 
 it acts. All men catch the word or embrace the 
 deed with the heart, for it is verily theirs as much 
 as his ; but in them this disease of an excess of 
 organization cheats them of equal issues. Nothing 
 is more simple than greatness ; indeed, to be simple 
 is to be great. The vision of genius comes by re- 
 nouncing the too officious activity of the understand- 
 ing, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the 
 spontaneous sentiment. Out of this must all that is 
 alive and genial in thought go. Men grind and 
 grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out 
 but what was put in. But the moment they desert 
 the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, 
 wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to 
 their aid. Observe the phenomenon of extempore 
 debate. A man of cultivated mind, but reserved 
 habits, sitting silent, admires the miracle of free, 
 impassioned, picturesque speech, in the man address- 
 ing an assembly, — a state of being and power, how 
 unlike his own ! Presently his own emotion rises, to 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 13 1 
 
 his lips and overflows in speech. He must also rise 
 and say somewhat. Once embarked, once having 
 overcome the novelty of the situation, he finds it 
 just as easy and natural to speak — to speak with 
 thoughts, with pictures, with rhj^hmical balance of 
 sentences — as it was to sit silent ; for it needs not 
 to do, but to suffer ; he only adjusts himself to the 
 free spirit whicli gladly utters itself through him, 
 and motion is as easy as rest. 
 
 II. I pass now to consider the task offered to the 
 intellect of this country. The view I have taken of 
 the resources of the scholar presupposes a subject as 
 broad. We do not seem to have imagined its riches. 
 We have not heeded the invitation it holds out. To 
 be as good a scholar as Englishmen are, to have 
 as much learning as our contemporaries, to have 
 written a book that is read, satisfies us. We 
 assume that all thought is already long ago ade- 
 quately set down in books, all imaginations in 
 poems ; and what we say, we only throw in as con- 
 firmatory of this supposed complete body of litera- 
 ture. A very shallow assumption. Say, rather, all 
 literature is yet to be written. Poetry has scarce 
 chanted its first song. The perpetual admonition of 
 Nature to us is : — " The world is new, untried. Do 
 not believe the past. I give you the universe a 
 virgin to-day.'' 
 
 By Latin and English poetry we were bom and 
 bred in an oratorio of praises of Nature, — flowers, 
 birds, mountains, sun, and moon ; yet the natural- 
 ist of this hour finds that he knows nothing, by all 
 
132 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 their poems, of any of these fine things ; that he 
 has conversed with the mere surface and show of 
 them all ; and of their essence, or of their history, 
 knows nothing. Further inquiry will discover that 
 nobody, that not these chanting poets themselves, 
 knew anything sincere of these handsome natures 
 they so commended ; that they contented them- 
 selves with the passing chirp of a bird, that they saw 
 one or two mornings, and listlessly looked at sunsets, 
 and repeated idly these few glimpses in their song. 
 But go into the forest, you shall find all new and 
 undescribed. The screaming of the wild geese fly- 
 ing by night ; the thin note of the companionable 
 titmouse in the winter day; the fall of swarms of 
 flies in autumn, from combats high in the air, 
 pattering down on the leaves like rain ; the angry 
 hiss of the woodbirds ; the pine throwing out its 
 pollen for the benefit of the next century ; the tur- 
 pentine exuding from the tree ; and, indeed, any 
 vegetation, any animation, any and all, are alike 
 unattempted. The man who stands on the seashore 
 or who rambles in the woods seems to be the first 
 man that ever stood on the shore or entered a 
 giove, his sensations and his world are so novel and 
 strange. Whilst I read the poets, I think that noth- 
 ing new can be said about morning and evening. 
 But when I see the daybreak, I am not reminded of 
 these Homeric, or Shakspearian, or Miltonic, or 
 Chaucerian pictures. No ; but I feel perhaps the 
 pain of an alien world, a world not yet subdued by 
 the thought; or I am cheered by the moist, warm, 
 glittering, budding, melodious hour, that takes down 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 1 33 
 
 the narrow walls of my soul, and extends its life and 
 pulsation to the very horizon. That is morning, to 
 cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sicUy 
 body, and to become as large as Nature. 
 
 The noonday darkness of the American forest, 
 the deep, echoing, aboriginal woods, where the. liv- 
 ing columns of the oak and fir tower up from the 
 ruins of the trees of the last millenium ; where, from 
 year to year, the eagle and the crow see no intruder ; 
 the pines, bearded with savage moss, yet touched 
 with grace by the violets at their feet ; the broad, 
 cold lowland, which forms its coat of vapor with the 
 stillness of subterranean crystallization ; and where 
 the traveller, amid the repulsive plants that are 
 native in the swamp, thinks with pleasing terror of 
 the distant town ; this beauty — haggard and desert 
 beauty, which the sun and the moon, the snow and 
 the rain, repaint and vary — has never been recorded 
 by art, yet is not indifferent to any passenger. All 
 men are poets at heart. They serve Nature for bread, 
 but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes. What 
 mean these journeys to Niagara ; these pilgrims to 
 the White Hills? Men believe in the adaptations of 
 utility always ; in the mountains they may beheve 
 in the adaptations of the eye. Undoubtedly the 
 changes of geology have a relation to the prosperous 
 sprouting of the corn and peas in my kitchen garden ; 
 but not less is there a relation of beauty between my 
 soul and the dim crags of Agiocochook up there in 
 the clouds. Every man, when this is told, hearkens 
 with joy, and yet his own conversation with Nature is 
 still unsung. 
 
134 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 Is it otherwise with civil history? Is it not the 
 lesson of our experience that every man, were life 
 long enough, would write history for himself ? What 
 else do these volumes of extracts and manuscript 
 commentaries, that every scholar writes, indicate? 
 Greek history is one thing to me ; anotlier, to you. 
 Since the birth of Niebuhr and Wolf, Roman and 
 Greek History have been v/ritten anew. Since 
 Carlyle wrote French History, we see that no history 
 that we have is safe, but a new classifier shall give 
 it new and more philosophical arrangement. Thu- 
 cydides, Livy, have only provided materials. The 
 moment a man of genius pronounces the name of the 
 Pelasgi, of Athens, of the Etrurian, of the Roman 
 people, we see their state under a new aspect. As in 
 poetry and history, so in the other departments. 
 There are few masters or none. Religion is yet to 
 be settled on its fast foundations in the breast of 
 man ; and politics, and philosophy, and letters, and 
 art. As yet we have nothing but tendency and 
 indication. 
 
 This starting, this warping of the best literary 
 works from the adamant of nature, is especially 
 observable in philosophy. Let it take what tone of 
 pretension it will, to this complexion must it come 
 at last. Take, for example, the French Eclecticism, 
 which Cousin esteems so conclusive : there is an 
 optical illusion in it. It avows great pretensions. It 
 looks as if they had all truth, in taking all the sys- 
 tems, and had nothing to do but to sift and wash 
 and strain, and the gold and diamonds would remain 
 in the last colander. But Truth is such a flyaway. 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 1 35 
 
 such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbarrelable 
 a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light. 
 Shut the sliutters never so quick, to keep all the light 
 in, it is all in vain ; it is gone before you can cry, 
 Hold. And so it happens with our philosophy. 
 Translate, collate, distil all the systems, it steads you 
 nothing; for Truth will not be compelled in any 
 mechanical manner. But the first observation you 
 make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on 
 the veriest trifle, may open a new view of Nature and 
 of man, that, like a menstruum, shall dissolve all 
 theories in it ; shall take up Greece, Rome, Stoicism, 
 Eclecticism, and what not, as mere data and food for 
 analysis, and dispose of your world-containing sys- 
 tem as a very little unit. A profound thought any- 
 where classifies all things ; a profound thought will 
 lift Olympus. The book of philosophy is only a fact, 
 and no more inspiring fact than another, and no less ; 
 but a wise man will never esteem it anything final 
 and transcending. Go and talk with a man of genius, 
 and the first word he utters sets all your so-called 
 knowledge afloat and at large. Then Plato, Bacon, 
 Kant, and the Eclectic Cousin condescend instantly 
 to be men and mere facts. 
 
 I by no means aim in these remarks to disparage 
 the merit of these or of any existing compositions ; I 
 only say that any particular portraiture does not in 
 any manner exclude or forestall a new attempt, but, 
 when considered by the soul, warps and shrinks 
 away. The inundation of the spirit sweeps away 
 before it all our little architecture of wit and memory, 
 as straws and straw-huts before the torrent. Works 
 
136 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 of the intellect are great only by comparison with each 
 other. "Ivanhoe" and " Waverley" compared with 
 "Castle RadclifFe" and the Porter novels; but noth- 
 ing is great — not mighty Homer and Milton — be- 
 side the infinite Reason. It carries them away as a 
 flood. They are as a sleep. 
 
 Thus is justice done to each generation and indi- 
 vidual, — Avisdom teaching man that he shall not hate, 
 or fear, or mimic his ancestors ; that he shall not 
 bewail himself, as if the world was old, and thought 
 was spent, and he was born into the dotage of things ; 
 for, by virtue of the Deity, thought renews itself 
 inexhaustibl}' every da}', and the thing whereon it 
 shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new sub- 
 ject with countless relations. 
 
 III. Having thus spoken of the resources and 
 the subject of the scholar, out of the same faith pro- 
 ceeds also the rule of his ambition and life. Let him 
 know that the world is his, but he must possess it by 
 putting himself into harmony with the constitution of 
 things. He must be a solitary, laborious, modest, 
 and charitable soul. 
 
 He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must 
 have his glees and his glooms alone. His own 
 estimate must be measure enough, his own praise 
 reward enough for him. And why must the student 
 be solitary and silent ? That he may become ac- 
 quainted with his thoughts. If he pines in a lonely 
 place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is not 
 in the lonely place : his heart is in the market ; he 
 does not see ; he does not hear ; he does not think. 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 137 
 
 But go cherish your soul ; expel companions ; set 
 your habits to a hfe of solitude, — then will the facul- 
 ties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and 
 field flowers ; you will have results which, when you 
 meet your fellow-men, you can communicate and 
 they will gladly receive. Do not go into solitude 
 only that you may presently come into public. Such 
 solitude denies itself; is public and stale. The 
 public can get public experience, but they wish the 
 scholar to replace to them those private, sincere, 
 divine experiences, of which they have been de- 
 frauded by dwelling in the street. It is the noble, 
 manlike, just thought which is the superiority de- 
 manded of you, and not crowds but solitude confers 
 this elevation. Not insulation of place, but indepen- 
 dence of spirit is essential; and it is only as the 
 garden, the cottage, the forest, and the rock are a 
 sort of mechanical aids to this that they are of 
 value. Think alone, and all places are friendly and 
 sacred. The poets who have lived in cities have 
 been hermits still. Inspiration makes solitude any- 
 where. Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden, De 
 Stael dwell in crowds, it may be, but the instant 
 thought comes, the crowd grows dim to their eye; 
 their eye fixes on the horizon, on vacant space ; they 
 forget the bystanders ; they spurn personal relations ; 
 they deal with abstractions, with verities, with ideas. 
 They are alone with the mind. 
 
 Of course, I would not have any superstition about 
 solitude. Let the youth study the uses of solitude 
 and of society. Let him use both, not serve either. 
 The reason why an ingenious soul shuns society is 
 
"38 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 to the end of finding society. It repudiates the 
 false out of love of the true. You can very soon 
 learn all that society can teach you for one while. 
 Its foolish routine, an indefinite multiplication of 
 balls, concerts, rides, theatres, can teach you no 
 more than a few can. Then accept the hint of 
 shame, of spiritual emptiness and waste, which true 
 nature gives you, and retire and hide ; lock the 
 door ; shut the shutters ; then welcome falls the im- 
 prisoning rain, dear hermitage of Nature. Re-collect 
 the spirits. Have solitary prayer and praise. Digest 
 and correct the past experience, and blend it with 
 the new and divine life. 
 
 You will pardon me, gentlemen, if I say I think 
 that we have need of a more rigorous scholastic 
 rule ; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the hardi- 
 hood and devotion of the scholar himself can en- 
 force. We live in the sun and on the surface, a 
 thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of 
 muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of 
 our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can great- 
 ness ever grow? Come, now, let us go and be dumb. 
 Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, 
 austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in 
 corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and 
 drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. 
 Silence, seclusion, austerity may pierce deep into 
 the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, 
 bring up out of secular darkness the sublimities of 
 the moral constitution. How mean to go blazing, a 
 gaudy butterfly, in fashionable or political saloons, 
 the fool of society, the fool of notoriety, a topic for 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 139 
 
 newspapers, a piece of the street, and forfeiting the 
 real prerogative of the russet coat, the privacy, and 
 the true and warm heart of the citizen ! 
 
 Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the 
 lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our being. 
 A mistake of the main end to which they labor is in- 
 cident to literary men, who, dealing with the organ 
 of language, the subtlest, strongest, and longest- 
 lived of man's creations, and only fitly used as the 
 weapon of thought and of justice, learn to enjoy the 
 pride of playing with this splendid engine, but rob it 
 of its almightiness by failing to work with it. Extri- 
 cating themselves from the tasks of the world, the 
 world revenges itself by exposing, at every turn, the 
 folly of these incomplete, pedantic, useless, ghostly 
 creatures. The scholar will feel that the richest 
 romance, the noblest fiction that was ever woven, 
 the heart and soul of beauty, lies enclosed in human 
 life. Itself of surpassing value, it is also the richest 
 material for his creations. How shall he know its 
 secrets of tenderness, of terror, of will, and of fate? 
 How can he catch and keep the strain of upper music 
 that peals from it? Its laws are concealed under 
 the details of daily action. All action is an experi- 
 ment upon them. He must bear his share of the 
 common load. He must work with men in houses, 
 and not with their names in books. His needs, 
 appetites, talents, affections, accomplishments, are 
 keys that open to him the beautiful museum of 
 human life. Why should he read it as an Arabian 
 tale, and not know, in his own beating bosom, its 
 sweet and smart? Out of love and hatred, out of 
 
140 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 earnings, and borrowings, and landings, and losses ; 
 out of sickness and pain ; out of wooing and worship- 
 ping; out of travelling, and voting, and watching, 
 and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, — comes 
 our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws. Let 
 him not slur his lesson ; let him learn it by heart. 
 Let him endeavor exactly, bravely, and cheerfully to 
 solve the problem of that life which is set before him. 
 And this by punctual action, and not by promises 
 or dreams. Believing, as in God, in the presence 
 and favor of the grandest influences, let him deserve 
 that favor, and learn how to receive and use it, by 
 fidelity also to the lower observances. 
 
 This lesson is taught with emphasis in the life of 
 the great actor of this age, and affords the explana- 
 tion of his success. Bonaparte represents truly a 
 great recent revolution, which we in this country, 
 please God, shall carry to its farthest consummation. 
 Not the least instructive passage in modern history 
 seems to me a trait of Napoleon, exhibited to the 
 English when he became their prisoner. On coming 
 on board the " Bellerophon," a file of English sol- 
 diers drawn up on deck gave him a militar}' salute. 
 Napoleon observed that their manner of handling 
 their arms differed from the French exercise, and, 
 putting aside the guns of those nearest him, walked 
 up to a soldier, took his gun, and himself went 
 through the motion in the French mode. The Eng- 
 lish officers and men looked on with astonishment, 
 and inquired if such familiarity was usual with the 
 Emperor. 
 
 In this instance, as always, that man, with what- 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 141 
 
 ever defects or vices, represented performance in lieu 
 of pretension. Feudalism and Orientalism had long 
 enough thought it majestic to do nothing ; the mod- 
 ern majesty consists in work. He belonged to a class, 
 fast growing in the world, who think that what a man 
 can do is his greatest ornament, and that he always 
 consults his dignity by doing it. He was not a be- 
 liever in luck ; he had a faith, like sight, in the ap- 
 plication of means to ends. Means to ends is the 
 motto of all his behavior. He believed that the great 
 captains of antiquity performed their exploits only by 
 correct combinations, and by justly comparing the re- 
 lation between means and consequences, efforts and 
 obstacles. The vulgar call good fortune that which 
 really is produced by the calculations of genius. But 
 Napoleon, thus faithful to facts, had also this crown- 
 ing merit, that, whilst he believed in number and 
 weight, and omitted no part of prudence, he believed 
 also in the fireedom and quite incalculable force of 
 the soul. A man of infinite caution, he neglected 
 never the least particular of preparation, of patient 
 adaptation ; yet nevertheless he had a sublime confi- 
 dence, as in his all, in the sallies of the courage, and 
 the faith in his destiny, which, at the right moment, 
 repaired all losses, and demolished cavalry, infantry, 
 king, and kaiser as with irresistible thunderbolts. 
 As they say the bough of the tree has the character 
 of the leaf, and the whole tree of the bough, so it is 
 curious to remark, Bonaparte's army partook of this 
 double strength of the captain; for whilst strictly 
 supplied in all its appointments, and everything ex- 
 pected from the valor and discipline of every platoon, 
 
142 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 in flank and centre, yet always remained his total 
 trust in tlie prodigious revolutions of fortune, whicli 
 his reserved Imperial Guard were capable of working, 
 if, in all else, the day was lost. Here he was sub- 
 lime. He no longer calculated the chance of the 
 cannon-ball. He was faithful to tactics to the utter- 
 most ; and when all tactics had come to an end, 
 then he dilated, and availed himself of the mighty 
 saltations of the most formidable soldiers in nature. 
 
 Let the scholar appreciate this combination of gifts, 
 which, applied to better purpose, make true wisdom. 
 He is a revealer of things. Let him first learn the 
 things. Let him not, too eager to grasp some badge 
 of reward, omit the work to be done. Let him know 
 that, though the success of the market is in the re- 
 ward, true success is the doing ; that, in the private 
 obedience to his mind ; in the sedulous inquiry, day 
 after day, year after year, to know how the thing 
 stands ; in the use of all means, and most in the rev- 
 erence of the humble commerce and humble needs 
 of life, — to hearken what they say, and so, by mut- 
 ual reaction of thought and life, to make thought 
 solid and life wise ; and in a contempt for the gab- 
 ble of to-day's opinions, the secret of the world is to 
 be learned, and the skill truly to unfold it is acquired. 
 Or, rather, is it not that, by this discipline, the 
 usuqjation of the senses is overcome, and the lower 
 faculties of man are subdued to docility : through 
 which, as an unobstructed channel, the soul now easily 
 and gladly flows ? 
 
 The good scholar will not refuse to bear the yoke 
 in his youth ; to know, if he can, the uttermost secret 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 143 
 
 of toil and endurance ; to make his own hands 
 acquainted with the soil by which he is fed, and the 
 sweat that goes before comfort and luxury. Let him 
 pay his tithe, and serve the world as a true and noble 
 man ; never forgetting to worship the immortal divin- 
 ities, who whisper to the poet, and make him the 
 utterer of melodies that pierce the ear of eternal 
 time. If he have this twofold goodness — the drill 
 and the inspiration — then he has health ; then he is a 
 whole, and not a fragment ; and the perfection of his 
 endowment will appear in his compositions. Indeed, 
 this twofold merit characterizes ever the productions 
 of great masters. The man of genius should occupy 
 the whole space between God or pure mind, and the 
 multitude of uneducated men. He must draw from 
 the infinite Reason, on one side ; and he must pene- 
 trate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the 
 other. From one he must draw his strength ; to the 
 other he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to 
 the real ; the other, to the apparent. At one pole 
 is Reason; at the other, Commonsense. If he be 
 defective at either extreme of the scale, his philos- 
 ophy will seem low and utilitarian ; or it will appear 
 too vague and indefinite for the uses of life. 
 
 The student, as we all along insist, is great only 
 by being passive to the superincumbent spirit. Let 
 this faith, then, dictate all his action. Snares and 
 bribes abound to mislead him ; let him be true never- 
 theless. His success has its perils too. There is 
 somewhat inconvenient and injurious in his position. 
 They whom his thoughts have entertained or inflamed, 
 seek him before yet they have learned the hard con- 
 
144 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 ditions of thought. They seek him, that he may 
 turn his lamp on the dark riddles whose solution 
 they think is inscribed on the walls of their being. 
 They find that he is a poor, ignorant man, in a 
 white-seamed, rasty coat, like themselves, nowise 
 emitting a continuous stream of light, but now and 
 then a jet of luminous thought, followed by total 
 darkness ; moreover, that he cannot make of his 
 infrequent illumination a portable taper to carry 
 whither he would, and explain now this dark riddle, 
 now that. Sorrow ensues. The scholar regrets to 
 damp the hope of ingenuous boys ; and the youth lias 
 lost a star out of his new flaming firmament. Hence 
 the temptation to the scholar to mystify ; to hear the 
 question ; to sit upon it ; to make an answer of words, 
 in lack of the oracle of things. Not the less let him 
 be cold and true, and wait in patience, knowing that 
 truth can make even silence eloquent and memorable. 
 Truth shall be policy enough for him. Let him open 
 his breast to all honest inquiry, and be an artist 
 superior to tricks of art. Show frankly, as a saint 
 would do, your experience, methods, tools, and 
 means. Welcome all comers to the freest use of the 
 same. And out of this superior fi-ankness and charity 
 you shall learn higher secrets of your nature, which 
 gods will bend and aid you to communicate. 
 
 If, with a high trust, he can thus submit himself, 
 he will find that ample returns are poured into his 
 bosom, out of what seemed hours of obstruction and 
 loss. Let him not grieve too much on account of 
 unfit associates. When he sees how much thought 
 he owes to the disagreeable antagonism of various 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. 145 
 
 persons who pass and cross him, he can easily think 
 that in a society of perfect sympathy, no word, no 
 act, no record, would be. He will learn that it is 
 not much matter what he reads, what he does. Be 
 a scholar, and he shall have the scholar's part of 
 everjthing. As, in the counting-room, the mer- 
 chant cares little whether the cargo be hides or 
 barilla; the transaction, a letter of credit or a 
 transfer of stocks ; be it what it may, his commis- 
 sion comes gently out of it ; so you shall get your 
 lesson out of the hour, and the object, whether it 
 be a concentrated or a wasteful employment, even 
 in reading a dull book, or working off a stint of 
 mechanical day labor, which your necessities or the 
 necessities of others impose. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these 
 considerations upon the scholar's place, and hope, 
 because I thought that, standing, as many of you 
 now do, on the threshold of this college, girt and 
 ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in 
 your country, you would not be sorry to be admon- 
 ished of those primary duties of the intellect, 
 whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your 
 new companions. You will hear every day the 
 maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the 
 first duty is to get land and money, place and name. 
 ' ' What is this Truth you seek ? what is this Beauty ? " 
 men will ask, with derision. If, nevertlieless, God 
 have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, 
 be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say: — 
 "As others do, so will I; I renounce, I am sorry 
 
146 LITERARY ETHICS. 
 
 for it, my early visions ; I must eat the good of the 
 land, and let learning and romantic expectations go 
 until a more convenient season," — then dies the 
 man in you ; then once more perish the buds of art, 
 and poetry, and science, as they have died already 
 in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that 
 choice is the crisis of your history ; and see that you 
 hold yourself fast by the intellect. It is this domi- 
 neering temper of the sensual world that creates the 
 extreme need of the priests of science ; and it is the 
 office and right of the intellect to make and not take 
 its estimate. Bend to the persuasion which is 
 flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its 
 tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted 
 world how passing fair is wisdom. Forewarned that 
 the vice of the times and the country is an excessive 
 pretension, let us seek the shade, and find wisdom 
 in neglect. Be content \vith a little light, so it be 
 your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither 
 chided nor flattered out of your position of per- 
 petual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept an- 
 other''s dogmatism. Why should you renounce your 
 right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the 
 premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? 
 Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make 
 yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will 
 give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as 
 shall not take away your property in all men's pos- 
 sessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, 
 and in hope. 
 
 You will not fear that I am enjoining too stem an 
 asceticism. Ask not, Of what use is a scholarship 
 
LITERARY ETHICS. H? 
 
 that systematically retreats? or, Who is the better 
 for the philosopher who conceals his accomplish- 
 ments, and hides his thoughts from the waiting 
 world? Hides his thoughts ! Hide the sun and 
 moon. Thought is all light, and publishes itself 
 to tlie universe. It will speak, though you were 
 dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It will flow 
 out of your actions, your manners, and your face. 
 It wiU bring you friendships. It will impledge you 
 to truth by the love and expectation of generous 
 minds. By virtue of the laws of that Nature, which 
 is one and perfect, it shall yield every sincere good 
 that is in the soul, to the scholar beloved of earth 
 and heaven. 
 
148 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETY 
 OF THE ADELPHI, IN WATERVILLE COLLEGE, 
 MAINE, AUGUST 11, iS+i. 
 
 Gentlemen : Let us exchange congratulations on 
 the enjoyments and the promises of this Kterary an- 
 niversary. The land we live in has no interest so 
 dear, if it knew its want, as the fit consecration of 
 days of reason and thought. Where there is no vision 
 the people perish. The scholars are the priests 
 of that thought which establishes the foundations of 
 the earth. No matter what is their special work or 
 ■profession, they stand for the spiritual interest of the 
 world, and it is a common calamity if they neglect 
 their post in a country where the material interest is 
 so predominant as it is in America. We hear some- 
 thing too much of the results of machinery, com- 
 merce, and the useful arts. We are a puny and a 
 fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are 
 our diseases. The rapid wealth which hundreds in 
 the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant 
 expansions of our population and arts, enchants the 
 eyes of all the rest ; the luck of one is the hope of 
 thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood 
 of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, 
 the church, the house, and the very body and feature 
 of man. 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. I49 
 
 I do not wish to look with sour aspect at the in- 
 dustrious manufactiuing village, or the mart of com- 
 merce. I love the music of the water-wheel ; I value 
 the railway ; I feel the pride which the sight of a ship 
 inspires ; I look on trade and every mechanical craft 
 as education also. But let me discriminate what is 
 precious herein. There is in each of these works an 
 i act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series 
 \ of steps taken ; that act or step is the spiritual act ;) 
 ■ all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand 
 times. And I will not be deceived into admiring the 
 routine of handicrafts and mechanics, how splendid 
 soever the result, any more than I admire the routine 
 of the scholars or clerical class. That splendid re- 
 sults ensue from the labors of stupid men is the fruit 
 of higher laws than their will, and the routine is not 
 to be praised for it. I would not have the laborer 
 sacrificed to the result, — I would not have the la- 
 borer sacrificed to my convenience and pride, nor to 
 that of a great class of such as me. Let there be 
 worse cotton and better men. The weaver should not 
 be bereaved of his superiority to his work, and his 
 knowledge that the product or the skill is of no value, 
 e-xcept so far as it embodies his spiritual prerogatives. 
 If I see nothing to admire in the unit, shall I admire 
 a million units? Men stand in awe of the city, but 
 do not honor any individual citizen ; and are continu- 
 ally )delding to this dazzling result of numbers that 
 which they would never 5deld to the solitary example 
 of any one. 
 
 Whilst the multitude of men degrade each other, 
 and give currency to desponding doctrines, the scholar 
 
150 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 must be a bringer of hope, and must reenforce man 
 against himself. I sometimes beheve that our literary 
 anniversaries will presently assume a greater impor- 
 tance, as the eyes of men open to their capabilities. 
 Here a new set of distinctions, a new order of ideas, 
 prevail. Here we set a bound to the respectability 
 of wealth, and a bound to the pretensions of the Law 
 and the Church. The bigot must cease to be a bigot 
 to-day. Into our charmed circle power cannot 
 enter ; and the sturdiest defender of existing institu- 
 tions feels the terrific inflammability of this air which 
 condenses heat in every corner that may restore to 
 the elements the fabrics of ages. Nothing solid is 
 secure : everything tilts and rocks. Even the scholar 
 is not safe ; he too is searched and revised. Is his 
 learning dead? Is he living in his memory? The 
 power of mind is not mortification, but life. But 
 come forth, thou curious child ! hither, thou loving, 
 all-hoping poet ! hither, thou tender, doubting heart, 
 who has not yet found any place in the world's market 
 fit for thee ; any wares which thou couldst bu)' or sell, 
 — so large is thy love and ambition, — thine and not 
 theirs is the hour. Smooth thy brow, and hope and 
 love on, for the kind heaven justifies thee, and the 
 whole world feels that thou art in the right. 
 
 We ought to celebrate this hour by expressions of 
 manly joy. Not thanks, not prayer, seem quite the 
 liighest or truest name for ourcom^munication with 
 the infinite, but glad and conspiring reception, — 
 reception that becomes giving in its turn, as the re- 
 ceiver is only the All-Giver in part and in infancy. I 
 cannot — nor can any man — speak precisely of 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 15 1 
 
 things so sublime, but it seems to me the wit of man, 
 his strength, his grace, his tendency, his art, is the 
 grace and the presence of God. It is beyond expla- 
 nation. When all is said and done, the rapt saint 
 is found the only logician. Not exhortation, not ar- 
 gument, becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and 
 praise. But not of adulation : we are too nearly re- 
 lated in the deep of the mind to that we honor. It 
 I is God in us which checks the language of petition by 
 Ij-grander thought. In the bottom of the heart it is 
 said: — " I am, and by me, O child! this fair body 
 and world of thine stands and grows. I am; all 
 things are mine, and all mine are thine." 
 
 The festival of the intellect and the return to 
 its source cast a strong light on the always 
 interesting topics of__Man _and JJature. We are 
 forcibly reminded of the old want. There is no 
 man; there hath never been. The Intellect still 
 asks that a man may be born. The flame of 
 life flickers feebly in human breasts. We demand 
 of men a richness and a universality we do not 
 _find^ Great men do not content us. It is their 
 solitude, not their force, that makes them con- 
 spicuous. There is somewhat indigent and tedious 
 about them. They are poorly tied to one thought. 
 If they are prophets, they are egotists ; if polite 
 and various, they are shallow. How tardily men 
 arrive at any result ! how tardily they pass from it 
 to another! The crystal sphere of thought is as 
 concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. 
 ,^As our soils and rocks lie in , strata, concentric 
 (' strata, so do aU men's thinkings run laterally, neyer 
 
152 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 vertical!}'. Here comes by a great inquisitor with 
 augur and plumb-line, and will bore an Artesian 
 well through our conventions and theories, and 
 pierce to the core of things. But as soon as he 
 probes the crust, behold gimlet, plumb-line, and 
 philosopher take a lateral direction, in spite of all 
 resistance, as if some strong wind took everything 
 off its feet ; and if you come month after month 
 to see what progress our reformer has made, — 
 not an inch has he pierced, — you still find him 
 with new words in the old place, floating about 
 in new parts of the same old vein or crust. The 
 new book says, " I will give you the key to Nature," 
 and we expect to go like a thunderbolt to the centre. 
 But the thunder is a surface phenomenon, makes a 
 skin-deep cut, and so does the sage. The wedge 
 turns out to be a rocket. Thus a man lasts but a 
 very little while, for his monomania becomes insup- 
 portably tedious in a few months. It is so with 
 every book and person ; and yet — and yet — we 
 do not take up a new book, or meet a new man, 
 without a pulse-beat of e.xpectation. And this in- 
 vincible hope of a more adequate interpreter is the 
 sure prediction of his advent. 
 
 ^ In the absence of man, we turn to Nature, 
 l^which stands next- In the divine order, intellect is 
 primary; nature, secondary; it is the memoix 
 of the mind. TViat which once existed in intel- 
 lect as pure law has now taken body as Nature. 
 It existed already in the mind in solution ; now it 
 has been precipitated, and the bright sediment 
 is the world. We can never be quite strangers 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 153 
 
 or inferiors in Nature. It is flesh of our flesh, 
 / and bone of our bone. But we no longer hold 
 I. it by the hand ; we have lost our miraculous 
 power; our arm is no more as strong as the 
 frost, nor our will equivalent to gravity and the 
 elective attractions. JYet we can use Nature as a 
 . convenient standard, and the meter of our rise 
 ; and fall. It has this advantage as a witness, it 
 cannot be debauched. When man curses, Nature 
 still testifies to truth and love. We may, there- 
 fore, safely study the mind in Nature, because we 
 cannot steadily gaze on it in mind; as we explore 
 the face of the sun in a pool, when our eyes cannot 
 brook his direct splendors. 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, that it were some 
 suitable pasan, if we should piously celebrate this 
 hour by exploring the method of Nature. Let us 
 see that, as nearly as we can, and try how far it 
 is transferable to the literary life. Every earnest 
 glance we give to the realities around us, with 
 intent to learn, proceeds from a holy impulse, and 
 is really songs of praise. What difference can it 
 make whether it take the shape of exhortation, or 
 of passionate exclamation, or of scientific statement? 
 These are forms merely. Through them we ex- 
 press, at last, the fact, that God has done thus or 
 thus. 
 
 In treating a subject so large, in which we must 
 necessarily appeal to the intuition, and aim much 
 more to suggest than to describe, I know it is 
 not easy to speak with the precision attainable on 
 topics of less scope. I do not wish, in attempting 
 
154 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 to paint a man, to describe an air-fed, unimpas- 
 sioned, impossible gliost. My eyes and ears are 
 revolted by any neglect of the physical facts, the 
 limitations of man. And yet one who conceives 
 the true order of Nature, and beholds the visible 
 as proceeding from the invisible, cannot state his 
 thought, without seeming to those who study the 
 physical laws to do them some injustice. There is 
 an intrinsic defect in the organ. Language over- 
 states. Statements of tlie infinite are usually felt 
 to be unjust to the finite, and blasphemous. Em- 
 pedocles undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought 
 when he said, "I am God;" but the moment 
 it was out of his mouth, it became a lie to the ear ; 
 and the world revenged itself for tlie seeming arro- 
 gance, by the good story about his shoe. How can 
 I hope for better hap in my attempts to enunciate 
 spiritual facts? Yet let us hope that as far as we 
 receive the truth, so far shall we be felt by every 
 true person to say what is just. 
 
 The method of Nature: who could ever analyze it? 
 That rushing stream will not stop to be observed. 
 We can never surprise Nature in a corner; never 
 find the end of a thread ; never tell where to set 
 the first stone. The bird hastens to lay her egg: 
 the egg hastens to be a bird. Xhfi. wholeness we 
 admire in the order of the world is the result of in- 
 finite distribution. Its smoothness is the smooth- 
 ness of the pitch of the cataract. Its permanence 
 is a perpetual inchoation. Every natural fact is 
 an emanation, and that from which it emanates 
 is an emanation also, and from every emanation 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 155 
 
 is a new emanation. If anything could stand still, 
 it would be crushed and dissipated by the torrent it 
 resisted, and if it were a mind, would be crazed ; 
 as insane persons are those who hold fast to one 
 thought, and do not flow with the course of Nature. 
 Not the cause, but an ever novel effect, Nature de- 
 scends always from above. It is unbroken obedi- 
 ence. The beauty of these fair objects is imported 
 into them from a metaphysical and eternal spring. 
 In all animal and vegetable forms, the physiologist 
 concedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can 
 account for the facts, but a mysterious principle of 
 life must be assumed, which not only inhabits the 
 organ, but makes the organ. 
 
 How silent, how spacious, what room for all, 
 yet without place to insert an atom, — in graceful 
 succession, in equal fulness, in balanced beauty, 
 the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an 
 odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, 
 it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, 
 nor unravelled, nor shown. Away, profane philoso- 
 pher ! seekest thou in Nature the cause ? This refers 
 to that, and that to the next, and the next to the 
 third, and everything refers. Thou must ask in 
 another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou 
 must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which 
 it exists, ere thou canst know the law. Known it 
 will not be, but gladly beloved and enjoyed. 
 
 The simultaneous life throughout the whole 
 body, the equal serving of innumerable ends with- 
 out the least emphasis or preference to any, but the 
 steady degradation of each to the success of all, 
 
156 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 allows the understanding no place to work. Nature 
 can only be conceived as existing to a universal and 
 not to a particular end, to a universe of ends, 
 and not to one, — a work of ecstasy, to be repre- 
 sented by a circular movement, as intention might be 
 signified by a straight line of definite length. Each 
 effect strengthens every other. There is no revolt 
 in all the kingdoms from the commonweal : no de- 
 tachment of an individual. Hence the catholic 
 character which makes every leaf an exponent of 
 the world. When we behold the landscape in a 
 poetic spirit, we do not reckon individuals. Nature 
 knows neither palm nor oak, but only vegetable life, 
 which sprouts into forests, and festoons the globe 
 with a garland of grasses and vines. 
 
 That no single end may be selected, and Nature 
 judged thereby, appears from this, that if man himself 
 be considered as the end, and it be assumed that the 
 final cause of the world is to make holy or wise or 
 beautiful men, we see that it has not succeeded. 
 Read alternately in natural and in civil history, a 
 treatise of astronomy, for example, with a volume of 
 French Memoires pour servir. When we have spent 
 our wonder in computing this wasteful hospitality with 
 which boon Nature turns off new firmaments without 
 end into her wide common, as fast as the madrepores 
 make coral, — suns and planets hospitable to souls, — 
 and then shorten the sight to look into this court of 
 Louis Quatorze, and see the game that is played 
 there, — duke and marshal, abb6 and madame, — 
 a gambling table where each is laying traps for the 
 other, where the end is ever by some lie or fetch to 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 157 
 
 outwit your rival and ruin him witli this solemn fop 
 in wig and stars, — the king ; one can hardly help 
 asking if this planet is a fair specimen of the so 
 generous astronomy, and, if so, whether the ex- 
 periment have not failed, and whether it be quite 
 worth while to make more, and glut the innocent 
 space with so poor an article. 
 
 I think we feel not much otherwise if, instead of 
 beholding foolish nations, we take the great and wise 
 men, the eminent souls, and narrowly inspect their 
 biography. None of them seen by himself, and 
 his performance compared -ivith his promise or idea, 
 will justify the cost of that enormous apparatus of 
 means by which this spotted and defective person 
 was at last procured. 
 
 To questions of this sort Nature replies, " I grow." 
 All is nascent, infant. When we are dizzied with 
 the arithmetic of the savant toiling to compute the 
 length of her line, the return of her curve, we are 
 steadied by the perception that a great deal is doing ; 
 that all seems just begun ; remote aims are in active 
 accomplishment. We can point nowhere to anything 
 final ; but tendency appears on all hands : planet, 
 system, constellation, total nature is growing like a 
 field of maize in July ; is becoming somewhat else ; 
 is in rapid metamorphosis. The embryo does not 
 more strive to be a man than yonder burr of light 
 we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a globe, 
 and parent of new stars. Why should not then 
 these messieurs of Versailles strut and plot for 
 tabourets and ribbons, for a season, without prejudice 
 to their faculty to run on better errands by and by? 
 
158 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 But Nature seems further to reply: — "I have 
 ventured so great a stake as my success in no single 
 creature. I have not yet arrived at any end. The 
 gardener aims to produce a fine peach or pear, but 
 my aim is the health of the whole tree, — root, stem, 
 leaf, flower, and seed, — and by no means the pam- 
 pering of a monstrous pericarp at the expense of all 
 the other functions.'" 
 
 In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that im- 
 pression Nature makes on us is this, that it does not 
 exist to any one or to any number of particular ends, 
 but to numberless and endless benefit ; that there is 
 in it no private will, no rebel leaf or limb, but the 
 whole is oppressed by one superincumbent tendency, 
 obeys that redundancy or excess of life which in con- 
 scious beings we call ecstasy. 
 
 With this conception of the genius or method of 
 Nature, let us go back to man. It is true, he pre- 
 tends to give account of himself to himself, but, at 
 last, what has he to recite but the fact that there is 
 a Life not to be described or known otherwise than 
 by possession? What account can he give of his 
 essence more than so it was to be ? The royal rea- 
 son, the Grace of God seems the only description of 
 our multiform but ever identical fact. There is 
 virtue, there is genius, there is success, or there is 
 not. There is the incoming or the receding of God : 
 that is all we can affirm ; and we can show neither 
 how nor why. Self-accusation, remorse, and the 
 didactic morals of self-denial and strife with sin, is a 
 view we are constrained by our constitution to take 
 of the fact seen from the platform of action ; but 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 1 59 
 
 seen from the platform of intellectioa, there is noth- 
 ing for us but praise and wonder. 
 
 The termination of the world in a man appears 
 to be the last victory of intelligence. The universal 
 does not attract us until housed in an individual. 
 Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? The 
 ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no char- 
 acter until seen with the shore or the ship. Whc? 
 would value any number of miles of Atlantic brine 
 bounded bylines of latitude and longitude? Con- 
 fine it by granite rocks, let it wash a shore where wise 
 men dwell, and it is filled with expression ; and the 
 point of greatest interest is where the land and 
 water meet. So must we admire in man the fonn 
 of the formless, the concentration of the vast, the 
 house of reason, the cave of memory. See the play 
 of thoughts ! what nimble gigantic creatures are 
 these ! what saurians, what palaiotheria shall be 
 named with these agile movers? The great Pan of 
 old, who was clothed in a leopard skin to signify the 
 beautiful variety of things and the firmament, his 
 coat of stars, was but the representative of thee, 
 O rich and various Man ! thou palace of sight and 
 sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the 
 night and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain, 
 the geometry of the City of God ; in thy heart, the 
 bower of love and the realms of right and wrong. 
 An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the fore- 
 going ages to form and ripen. The history of the 
 genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the ex- 
 perience of every child. He too is a demon or god 
 thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever 
 
l6o THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 to lead things from disorder into order. Each indi- 
 vidual soul is such, in virtue of its being a power to 
 translate tlie world into some particular language of 
 its own ; if not into a picture, a statue, or a dance, 
 — why, then, into a trade, an art, a science, a mode 
 of living, a conversation, a character, an influence. 
 You admire pictures, but it is as impossible for you 
 to paint a right picture as for grass to bear apples. 
 But when the genius comes, it makes fingers ; it is 
 pliancy, and the power of transferring the affair in 
 the street into oils and colors. Raphael must be 
 born, and Salvator must be born. 
 
 There is no attractiveness like that of a new man. 
 The sleepy nations are occupied with their political 
 routine. England, France, and America read Parlia- 
 mentary debates, which no high genius now enlivens ; 
 and nobody will read them who trusts his own eye : 
 only they who are deceived by the popular repetition 
 of distinguished names. But when Napoleon unrolls 
 his map, the eye is commanded by original power. 
 When Chatham leads the debate, men may well 
 listen, because they must listen. A man, a personal 
 ascendency, is the only great phenomenon. When 
 Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to 
 do it. Follow the great man, and you shall see what 
 the world has at heart in these ages. There is no 
 omen like that. 
 
 But what strikes us in the fine genius is that which 
 belongs of right to every one. A man should know 
 himself for a necessary actor. A link was wanting 
 between two craving parts of Nature, and he was 
 hurled into being as the bridge over that yawning 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. l6l 
 
 need, the mediator betwixt two else unmairiageable 
 facts. His two parents held each of one of the 
 wants, and the union of foreign constitutions in him 
 enables him to do gladly and gracefully what the as- 
 sembled human race could not have sufficed to do. 
 He knows his materials ; he applies himself to his 
 work; he cannot read, or think, or look, but he 
 unites the hitherto separated strands into a perfect 
 cord. The thoughts he delights to utter are the 
 reason of his incarnation. Is it for him to account 
 himself cheap and superfluous, or to linger by the 
 wayside for opportunities? Did he not come into 
 being because something must be done which he and 
 no other is and does ? If only he sees, the world will 
 be visible enough. He need not study where to 
 stand, nor to put things in favorable lights ; in him is 
 the light, from him all things are illuminated to their 
 centre. What patron shall he ask for employment 
 and reward? Hereto was he born, to deliver the 
 thought of his heart from the universe to the universe, 
 to do an office which Nature could not forego, nor 
 he be discharged from rendering, and then emerge 
 again into the holy silence and eternity out of which 
 as a man he arose. God is rich, and many more 
 men than one he harbors in his bosom, biding their 
 time and the needs and the beauty of all. Is not 
 this the theory of every man's genius or faculty? 
 Why then goest thou as some Boswell or listening 
 worshipper to this saint or to that? That is the only 
 iese-majesty. Here art thou with whom so long the 
 universe travailed in labor ; darest thou think meanly 
 of thyself whom the stalwart Fate brought forth to 
 
l62 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 unite his ragged sides, to shoot the gulf, to reconcile 
 the irreconcilable? 
 
 Whilst a necessity so great caused the man to 
 exist, his health and erectness consist in the fidelity 
 with which he transmits influences from the vast and 
 universal to the point on which his genius can act. 
 Tlie ends are momentary: they are vents for the 
 current of inward life which increases as it is spent. 
 A man's wisdom is to know that all ends are momen- 
 tary, that the best end must be superseded by a 
 better. But there is a mischievous tendency in him 
 to transfer his thought from the life to tlie ends, to 
 quit his agency and rest in his acts ; the tools run 
 away with the worlcman, the human \vith the divine. 
 I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, 
 and unable to turn his head and see the speaker. 
 In all the millions who have heard the voice, none 
 ever saw the face. As children in their play run be- 
 hind each other, and seize one by the ears and make 
 him walk before them, so is the spirit our unseen 
 pilot. That well-known voice speaks in all lan- 
 guages, governs all men, and none ever caught a 
 glimpse of its form. If the man will exactly obey it, 
 it will adopt him, so that he shall not any longer 
 separate it from himself in his thought, he shall 
 seem to be it, he shall be it. If he listen with in- 
 satiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is tauglit 
 him, the sound swells to a ravishing music, he is 
 borne away as with a flood, he becomes careless 
 of his food and of his house, he is the fool of 
 ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if his eye is 
 set on the things to be done, and not on the truth 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 163 
 
 that is still taught, and for the sake of which the 
 things are to be done, then the voice grows faint, 
 and at last is but a humming in his ears. His 
 health and greatness consist in his being the channel 
 through which heaven flows to earth ; in short, in the 
 fulness in which an ecstatical state takes place in 
 him. It is pitiful to be an artist, when, by forbear- 
 ing to be artists, we might be vessels filled with the 
 divine overflowings, enriched by the circulations of 
 omniscience and omnipresence. Are there not mo- 
 ments in the history of heaven when the human race 
 was not counted by individuals, but was only the 
 Influenced, was God in distribution, God rushing 
 into multiform benefit? It is sublime to receive, 
 sublime to love ; but this lust of imparting as from ics, 
 this desire to be loved, the wish to be recognized as 
 individuals, — is finite, comes of a lower strain. 
 
 Shall I say, then, that, as far as we can trace the 
 natural history of the soul, its health consists in the 
 fulness of its reception, — call it piety, call it venera- 
 tion, — in the fact that enthusiasm is organized 
 therein. What is best in any work of art but that 
 part which the work itself seems to require and do ; 
 that which the man cannot do again, that which 
 flows from the hour and the occasion, like the elo- 
 quence of men in a tumultuous debate? It was al- 
 ways the theory of literature that the word of a poet 
 was authoritative and final. He was supposed to be 
 the mouth of a divine wisdom. We rather envied 
 his circumstance than his talent. We too could 
 have gladly prophesied standing in that place. We 
 BO quote our Scriptures ; and the Greeks so quoted 
 
164 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 Homer, Theognis, Pindar, and the rest. If the 
 theory has receded out of modern criticism, it is 
 because we have not liad poets. Whenever they 
 appear, they will redeem their own credit. 
 
 This ecstatical state seems to direct a regard to 
 the whole and not to the parts ; to the cause and not 
 to the ends; to the tendency and not to the act. 
 It respects genius, and not talent; hope, and not 
 possession; the anticipation of all things by the 
 intellect, and not the history itself; art, and not 
 works of art ; poetry, and not e.xperiment ; virtue, 
 and not duties. 
 
 There is no office or function of man but is 
 rightly discharged by this divine method, and noth- 
 ing that is not noxious to him if detached from its 
 universal relations. Is it his work in the world to 
 study Nature, or the laws of the world? Let him 
 beware of proposing to himself any end. Is it for 
 use? Nature is debased, as if one looking at the 
 ocean can remember only the price of fish. Or is it 
 for pleasure ? he is mocked : there is a certain in- 
 fatuating air in woods and mountains which draws 
 on the idler to want and misery. There is some- 
 thing social and instrusive in the nature of all things ; 
 they seek to penetrate and overpower, each the 
 nature of every other creature, and itself alone in all 
 modes and throughout space and spirit to prevail and 
 possess. Every star in heaven is discontented and 
 insatiable. Gravitation and chemistry cannot content 
 them. Ever they woo and court the e3'e of every 
 beholder. Every man who comes into the world 
 they seek to fascinate and possess, to pass into his 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 1^5 
 
 mind, for they desire to republish themselves in a 
 more delicate world than that they occupy. It is 
 not enough that they are Jove, Mars, Orion, and the 
 North Star, in the gravitating firmament : they would 
 have such poets as Newton, Herschel, and Laplace, 
 that they may reexist and reappear in the finer 
 world of rational souls, and fill that realm with their 
 fame. So is it with all immaterial objects. These 
 beautiful basilisks set their brute, glorious eyes on 
 the eye of every child, and, if they can, cause their 
 nature to pass through his wondering eyes into him, 
 and so all things are mixed. 
 
 Therefore man must be on his guard against this 
 cup of enchantments, and must look at-Nature with a 
 supernatural eye. By piety alone, by conversing 
 with the cause of Nature, is he safe and commands 
 it. And because all knowledge is assimilation to the 
 object of knowledge, as the power or genius of Nature 
 is ecstatic, so must its science or the description of 
 it be. The poet must be a rhapsodist ; his inspira- 
 tion a sort of bright casualty; his will in it only the 
 surrender of wUl to the Universal Power, which will 
 not be seen face to face, but must be received and 
 s3Tnpathetically known. It is remarkable that we 
 have out of the deeps of antiquity in the oracles as- 
 cribed to the half fabulous Zoroaster, a statement of 
 this fact, which every lover and seeker of truth will 
 recognize. " It is not proper," said Zoroaster, " to 
 understand the intelligible with vehemence, but if 
 you incline your mind, you will apprehend it ; not 
 too earnestly, but bringing a pure and inquiring eye. 
 You will not understand it as when understanding 
 
1 66 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 some particular thing, but with the flower of the 
 mind. Things divine are not attainable by mortals 
 who understand sensual things, but only the light- 
 armed arrive at the summit." 
 
 And because ecstasy is the law and cause of 
 Nature, therefore you cannot interpret it in too high 
 and deep a sense. Nature represents the best mean- 
 ing of the wisest man. Does the sunset landscape 
 seem to you the palace of Friendship, — those pur- 
 ple skies arid lovely waters the amphitheatre dressed 
 and garnished only for the exchange of thought and 
 love of the purest souls? It is that. All other 
 meanings which base men have put on it are con- 
 jectural and false. You cannot bathe twice in the 
 same river, said Heraclitus ; and I add, a man never 
 sees the same object twice : with his own enlarge- 
 ment the object acquires new aspects. 
 
 Does not the same law hold for virtue? It is viti- 
 ated by too much will. He who aims at progress 
 should aim at an infinite not at a special benefit. 
 The reforms whose fame now fills the land with 
 Temperance, Anti-Slavery, Non-Resistance, No Gov- 
 ernment, Equal Labor, fair and generous as each 
 appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for 
 themselves as an end. To every refomn, in propor- 
 tion to its energy, early disgusts are incident, so that 
 the disciple is surprised at the very hour of his first 
 triumphs with chagrins, and sickness, and a general 
 distrust ; so that he shuns his associates, hates the 
 enterprise which lately seemed so fair, and meditates 
 to cast himself into the arms of that society and man- 
 ner of life which he had newly abandoned with so 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 1 67 
 
 much pride and hope. Is it that he attached the 
 value of virtue to some particular practices, as the 
 denial of certain appetites in certain specified indul- 
 gences, and afterward found himself still as wicked 
 and as far from happiness in that abstinence as he 
 1 had been in the abuse? But the soul can be ap- 
 peased not by a deed but by a tendency. It is in a 
 hope that she feels her wings. You shall love recti- 
 tude and not the disuse of money or the avoidance 
 of trade ; an unimpeded mind, and not a* monkish 
 diet ; sympathy and usefiilness, and not hoeing or 
 coopering. Tell me not how great your project is, 
 the civil liberation of the world, its conversion into a 
 Christian church, the establishment of public educa- 
 tion, cleaner diet, a new division of labor and of 
 land, laws of love for laws of property ; — I say to 
 you plainly there is no end to wliich your practical 
 faculty can aim, so sacred or so large, that, if pur- 
 sued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an 
 offence to the nostril. The imaginative faculty of 
 the soul must be fed with objects immense and 
 eternal. Your end should be one inapprehensible to 
 the senses : then will it be a god always approached, 
 — never touched; always giving health. A man 
 adorns himself with prayer and love, as an aim 
 adorns an action. What is strong but goodness, 
 and what is energetic but the presence of a brave 
 man? The doctrine in vegetable physiology of the 
 presence, or the general influence of any substance 
 over and above its chemical influence, as of an alkali 
 or a living plant, is more predicable of man. You 
 need not speak to me, I need not go where you are. 
 
1 68 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 that you should exert magnetism on me. Be you 
 only whole and sufficient, and I shall feel you in 
 every part of my life and fortune, and I can as easily 
 dodge the gravitation of the globe as escape your 
 influence. 
 
 But there are other examples of this total and su- 
 preme influence besides Nature and the conscience. 
 " From the poisonous tree, the world," say the 
 Brahmins, " two species of fruit are produced, sweet 
 as the waters of life, — Love or the society of beautiful 
 souls, and Poetry, whose taste is like the immortal 
 juice of Vishnu." What is Love, and why is it the 
 chief good, but because it is an overpowering enthu- 
 siasm.' Never self-possessed or pi-udent, it is all 
 abandonment. Is it not a certain admirable wisdom, 
 preferable to all other advantages, and whereof all 
 others are only secondaries and indemnities, because 
 this is that in which the individual is no longer his 
 own foolish master, but inhales an odorous and celes- 
 tial air, is wrapped round with awe of the object, 
 blending for the time that object with the real and 
 only good, and consults every omen in nature with 
 tremulous interest. When we speak truly, is not 
 he only unhappy who is not in love? his fancied 
 freedom and self-rule, is it not so much death? 
 He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, 
 sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, 
 drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those 
 virtues which it possesses. Therefore if the object 
 be not itself a living and expanding soul, he pres- 
 ently exhausts it. But the love remains in his mind, 
 and the wisdom it brought him ; and it craves a new 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 1 69 
 
 and higher object. And the reason why all men 
 honor love, is because it looks up and not down ; 
 aspires and not despairs. 
 
 And what is Genius but finer love, a love imper- 
 sonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, 
 and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the 
 same .'' It looks to the cause and life ; it proceeds 
 from within outward, whilst Talent goes from with- 
 out inward. Talent finds its models, methods, and 
 ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the 
 soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, 
 and draws its means and the style of its architecture 
 from within, going abroad only for audience and 
 spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the 
 distance and character of the ear we speak to. All 
 your learning of all literatures would never enable 
 you to anticipate one of its thoughts or expressions, 
 and yet each is natural and familiar as household 
 words. Here about us coils forever the ancient 
 enigma, so old and so unutterable. Behold ! there 
 is the sun, and the rain, and the rocks ; the old sun, 
 the old stones. How easy were it to describe all 
 this fitly ; yet no word can pass. Nature is a mute, 
 and man, her articulate speaking brother, lo ! he also 
 is a mute. Yet when Genius arrives, its speech is 
 like a river; it has no straining to describe, more 
 than there is straining in Nature to exist When 
 thought is best, there is most of it. Genius sheds 
 wisdom like perfume, and advertises us that it flows 
 out of a deeper source than the foregoing silence, 
 that it knows so deeply and speaks so musically, 
 because it is itself a mutation of the thing it de- 
 
170 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 scribes. It is sun and moon and wave and fire in 
 music, as astronomy is thought and liarmony in 
 masses of matter. 
 
 What is all history but the work of ideas, a record 
 of the incomputable energy which his infinite aspira- 
 tions infuse into man? Has anything grand and 
 lasting been done? Who did it? Plainly not any 
 man, but all men : it was the prevalence and inun- 
 dation of an idea. What brought the pilgrims here ? 
 One man says, civil liberty ; another, the desire of 
 founding a Church ; and a third discovers that the 
 moti\-e force was plantation and trade. But if the 
 Puritans could rise from the dust, they could not 
 answer. It is to be seen in what they were, and not 
 in what they designed ; it was the growth and ex- 
 pansion of the human race, and resembled herein 
 the sequent Revolution, which was not begun in 
 Concord, or Lexington, or Virginia, but was the 
 overflowing of the sense of natural right in every 
 clear and active spirit of the period. Is a man 
 boastful and knowing, and his own master ? — we 
 turn from him without hope ; but let him be filled with 
 awe and dread before the Vast and the Divine, which 
 uses him glad to be used, and our eye is riveted to 
 the chain of events. What a debt is ours to that 
 old religion which, in the childhood of most of us, 
 still dwelt like a sabbath morning in the country of 
 New England, teaching privation, self-denial, and 
 sorrow ! A man was born not for prosperity, but to 
 suffer for the benefit of others, like the noble rock- 
 maple which all around our villages bleeds for the 
 service of man. Not praise, not men's acceptance 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. I^l 
 
 of our doing, but the spirit's holy errand through us 
 absorbed the thought. How dignified was this ! 
 How all that is called talents and success, in our 
 noisy capitals, becomes buzz and din before this 
 man-worthiness ! How our friendships and the 
 complaisances we use shame us now ! Shall we not 
 quit our companions, as if they were thieves and 
 pot-companions, and betake ourselves to some desert 
 cUfF of Mount Katahdin, some unvisited recess in 
 Moosehead Lake, to bewail our innocency and to 
 recover it, and with it the power to communicate 
 again with these sharers of a more sacred idea? 
 
 And what is to replace for us the piety of that 
 race ? We cannot have theirs : it glides away from 
 us day by day, but we also can bask in the great 
 morning which rises forever out of the eastern sea, 
 and be ourselves the children of the hght. I stand 
 here to say. Let us worship the mighty and tran- 
 scendent Soul. It is the office, I doubt not, of this 
 age to annul that adulterous divorce which the super- 
 stition of many ages has effected between the intel- 
 lect and holiness. The lovers of goodness have 
 been one class, the students of wisdom another, as 
 if either could exist in any purity without the other. 
 Truth is always holy, holiness always wise. I will 
 that we keep terms with sin and a sinful literature 
 and society no longer, but live a life of discovery 
 and performance. Accept the intellect, and it will 
 accept us. Be the lowly ministers of that pure om- 
 niscience, and deny it not before men. It will burn 
 up all profane literature, all base current opinions, 
 aU the false powers of the world, as in a moment of 
 
172 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 
 
 time. I draw from Nature the lesson of an intimate 
 divinity. Our health and reason as men needs our 
 respect to this fact, against the heedlessness and 
 against the contradiction of society. The sanity of 
 man needs the poise of this immanent force. His 
 nobility needs the assurance of this inexhaustibls 
 reserved power. How great soever have been its 
 bounties, they are a drop to the sea whence they 
 flow. If you say, "the acceptance of the vision is 
 also the act of God," I shall not seek to penetrate 
 the mystery, I admit the force of what you say. If 
 you ask, " How can any rules be given for the attain- 
 ment of gifts so sublime t " I shall only remark that 
 the solicitations of this spirit, as long as there is life, 
 are never forborne. Tenderly, tenderly, they woo 
 and court us from every object in nature, from every 
 fact in life, from every thought in the mind. The 
 one condition coupled with the gift of truth is its use. 
 That man shall be learned who reduceth his learning 
 to practice. Emanuel Swedenborg affirmed that it 
 was opened to him, "that the spirits who knew 
 truth in this life, but did it not, at death shall lose 
 their knowledge." " If knowledge," said Ali the 
 Caliph, " calleth unto practice, well; if not, it goeth 
 away." The only way into Nature is to enact our 
 best insight. Instantly we are higher poets, and 
 can speak a deeper law. Do what you know, and 
 perception is converted into character, as islands and 
 continents were built by invisible infusories, or as 
 these forest leaves absorb light, electricity, and vola- 
 tile gases, and the gnarled oak to live a thousand 
 years is the arrest and fixation of the most volatile 
 and ethereal currents. The doctrine of this Supreme 
 
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 173 
 
 Presence is a cry of joy and exultation. Who shall 
 dare think he has come late into nature, or has missed 
 anything excellent in the past, who seeth the admira- 
 ble stars of possibility, and the yet untouched con- 
 tinent of hope glittering with all its mountains in the 
 vast West ? I praise with wonder this great reality, 
 which seems to drown all things in the deluge of its 
 light. What man, seeing this, can lose it from his 
 thoughts, or entertain a meaner subject? The en- 
 trance of this into his mind seems to be the birth 
 of man. We cannot describe the natural history of 
 the soul, but we know that it is divine. I cannot 
 tell if these wonderful qualities which house to-day 
 in this mortal frame shall ever reassemble in equal 
 activity in a similar frame, or whether they have 
 before had a natural history like that of this body you 
 see before you ; but this one thing I know, that these 
 qualities did not now begin to exist, cannot be sick 
 with my sickness, nor buried in any grave ; but that 
 they circulate through the Universe : before the world 
 was, they were. Nothing can bar them out, or shut 
 them in, but they penetrate the ocean and land, space 
 and time, form and essence, and hold the key to uni- 
 versal nature. I draw from this faith courage and 
 hope. All things are known to the soul. It is not to 
 be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be 
 greater than it. Let those fear and those fawn who 
 will. The soul is in her native realm, and it is 
 wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich 
 as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a 
 beautiful scorn : they are not for her who putteth on 
 her coronation robes, and goes out through universal 
 love to universal power. 
 
1 74 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE MECHANICS' 
 APPRENTICES' LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, BOS- 
 TON, JANUARY 25, 1S41. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : I wish to 
 offer to your consideration some tlioughts on the par- 
 ticular and general relations of man as a reformer. I 
 shall assume that the aim of each young man in this 
 association is the very highest that belongs to a 
 rational mind. _Let it be granted, that our life, as we 
 lead it, is common and mean ; that some of those 
 offices and functions for which we were mainly 
 created are grown so rare in society, that the memory 
 of them is only kept alive in old books and in dim 
 traditions ; that prophets and poets, that beautiful 
 and perfect men, we are not now, no, nor have even 
 seen such ; that some sources of human instruction 
 are almost unnamed and unknown among us ; that 
 the community in which we live will hardly bear to 
 be told that every man should be open to ecstasy or 
 a divine illumination, and his daily walk elevated by 
 intercourse with the spiritual world. Grant all this, 
 as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors will 
 deny that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in 
 such disciplines and courses as will desei-ve that 
 guidance and clearer communication with the spiritual 
 nature. And, further, I will not dissemble my hope 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. iJS 
 
 that each person whom I address has felt his own call 
 to cast aside all evil customs, timidities, and limita- 
 tions, and to be in his place a free and helpful man, 
 a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip along 
 through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping 
 by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as 
 he can, but a brave and upright man, who must find 
 or cut a straight road to everything excellent in the 
 earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make 
 it easier for all who follow him to go in honor and 
 with benefit. 
 
 In the history of the world the doctrine of reform 
 had never such scope as at the present hour. 
 Lutherans, Hernhutters, Jesuits, Monks, Quakers, 
 Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, Bentham, in their ac- 
 cusations of society, all respected something, — 
 Church or State, literature or history, domestic usages, 
 the market town, the dinner table, coined money. 
 But now all these and all things else hear the trum- 
 pet, and must rush to judgment, — Christianity, the 
 laws, commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory ; 
 and not a kingdom, town, statute, rite, calling, man, 
 or woman, but is threatened by the new spirit. 
 
 What if some of the objections whereby our insti- 
 tutions are assailed are extreme and speculative, and 
 the reformers tend to idealism : that only shows the 
 extravagance of the abuses which have driven the 
 mind into the opposite extreme. It is when your 
 facts and persons grow unreal and fantastic by too 
 much falsehood, that the scholar flies for refuge to the 
 world of ideas, and aims to recruit and replenish Nat- 
 ure from that source. Let ideas establish their legit- 
 
176 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 imate sway again in societ)', let life be fair and 
 poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, 
 and philanthropists. 
 
 It will afford no security from the new ideas that 
 the old nations, the laws of centuries, the property 
 and institutions of a hundred cities, are built on other 
 foundations. The demon of reform has a secret door 
 into the heart of every lawmaker, of every inhabitant 
 of every city. The fact that a new thought and hope 
 have dawned in your breast, should apprise you that 
 in the same hour a new light broke in upon a thou- 
 sand private hearts. That secret which you would 
 fain keep, — as soon as you go abroad, lo ! there is 
 one standing on the door-step to tell you the same. 
 There is not the most bronzed and sharpened money- 
 catcher who does not, to your consternation, almost, 
 quail and shake the moment he hears a question 
 prompted by the new ideas. We thought he had 
 some semblance of ground to stand upon, that such 
 as he at least would die hard ; but he trembles and 
 flees. Then the scholar says : — " Cities and coaches 
 shall never impose on me again ; for, behold, every 
 solitary dream of mine is rushing to fulfilment. That 
 fancy I had, and hesitated to utter because )rou Avould 
 laugh, — the broker, the attorney, the market-man, 
 are saying the same thing. Had I waited a day 
 longer to speak, I had been too late. Behold, State 
 Street thinks, and Wall Street doubts, and begins to 
 prophesy ! " 
 
 It cannot be wondered at that this general inquest 
 into abuses should arise in the bosom of society, 
 when one considers the practical impediments that 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 1 77 
 
 stand in the way of virtuous 3'oung men. The youug 
 man, on entering life, finds the way to lucrative em- 
 ployments blocked with abuses. The ways of trade- 
 are grown selfish to the borders of theft, and supple 
 to the borders (if not beyond the borders) of fraud. 
 The employments of commerce are not intrinsically 
 unfit for a man, or less genial to his faculties, but 
 these are now in their general course so vitiated by 
 derelictions and abuses at whidi all connive, that it 
 requires more vigor and resources than can be ex- 
 pected of every young man to right himself in them ; 
 he is lost in them ; he cannot move hand or foot in 
 them. Has he genius and virtue? the less does he 
 find them fit for him to grow in; and if he would 
 thrive in them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant 
 dreams of boyhood and youth as dreams, he must 
 forget the prayers of his childhood, and must take on 
 him the harness of routine and obsequiousness. If 
 not so minded, nothing is left him but to begin the 
 world anev/, as he does who puts the spade into the 
 ground for food. We are all implicated, of course, 
 in this charge ; it is only necessary to ask a few ques- 
 tions as to the progress of the articles of commerce 
 from the fields where they grew, to our houses, to 
 become aware that we eat and drink and wear perjury 
 and fraud in a hundred commodities. How many 
 articles of daily consumption are furnished us from 
 the West Indies ; yet it is said that in the Spanish 
 islands the venality of the officers of the government 
 has passed into usage, and that no article passes into 
 our ships which has not been fraudulently cheapened. 
 In the Spanish islands, every agent or factor of the 
 
178 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 Americans, unless he be a consul, has taken oath 
 that he is a Catholic, or has caused a priest to make 
 that declaration for him. The aboHtionist has shown 
 us our dreadful debt to the Southern negro. In the 
 island of Cuba, in addition to the ordinary abomina- 
 tions of slavery, it appears only men are bought for 
 the plantations, and one dies in ten every year, of 
 these miserable bachelors, to yield us sugar. I 
 leave for those who have the knowledge the part of 
 sifting the oaths of our custom-houses ; 1 will not in- 
 quire into the oppression of the sailors ; I will not pry 
 into the usages of our retail trade. I content myself 
 with the fact that the general system of our trade 
 (apart from the blacker traits, which, I hope, are 
 exceptions denounced and unshared by all reputable 
 men) is a system of selfishness, is not dictated by 
 the high sentiments of human nature, is not measured 
 by the exact law of reciprocity, much less by the 
 sentiments of love and heroism ; but is a system of 
 distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not 
 of giving but of taking advantage. It is not that 
 which a man delights to unlock to a noble friend, 
 which he meditates on with joy and self-approval in 
 his hour of love and aspiration ; but rather what he 
 then puts out of sight, only showing the brilliant re- 
 sult, and atoning for the manner of acquiring, by the 
 manner of expending it. I do not charge the mer- 
 chant or the manufacturer. The sins of our trade 
 belong to no class, to no individual. One plucks, 
 one distributes, one eats. Everybody partakes, 
 everybody confesses, with cap and knee volunteers 
 his confession, yet none feels himself accountable. 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 179 
 
 He did not create the abuse ; he cannot alter it. 
 What is he? an obscure private person who must get 
 his bread. That is the vice, — that no one feels 
 himself called to act for man, but only as a fraction 
 of man. It happens, therefore, that all such ingenuous 
 souls as feel within themselves the irrepressible striv- 
 ings of a noble aim, who by tlie law of their nature 
 must act simply, find these ways of trade unfit for 
 them, and they come forth from it. Such cases are 
 becoming more numerous every year. 
 
 But by coming out of trade 5'ou have not cleared 
 yourself. The trail of the serpent reaches into all 
 the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each 
 has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very 
 intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. 
 Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting 
 of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, 
 an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the 
 sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of 
 private opinion and lofty integrity. Nay, the evil 
 custom reaches into the whole institution of property, 
 until our laws which establish and protect it seem 
 not to be the issue of love and reason, but of selfish- 
 ness. Suppose a man is so unhappy as to be born 
 a saint, with keen perceptions, but with the con- 
 science and love of an angel, and he is to get his 
 living in the world ; he finds himself excluded from 
 all lucrative works ; he has no farm, and he cannot 
 get one ; for to earn money enough to buy one 
 requires a sort of concentration toward money, which 
 is the selling himself for a number of years, and to 
 him the present hour is as sacred and inviolable as 
 
l8o MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 any future hour. Of course, whilst another man has 
 no laud, my title to mine, 3'our title to yours, is at 
 once vitiated. Inextricable seem to be the twinings 
 and tendrils of this evil, and we all involve ourselves 
 in it the deeper by forming connections, by wives 
 and children, by benefits and debts. 
 
 Considerations of this kind have turned the atten- 
 tion of many philanthropic and intelligent persons 
 to the claims of manual labor as a part of the edu- 
 cation of every young man. If the accumulated 
 wealth of the past generations is thus tainted, — 
 no matter how much of it is offered to us, — we 
 must begin to consider if it were not the nobler 
 part to renounce it, and to put ourselves into primary 
 relations with the soil and Nature, and abstaining 
 from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take 
 each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in 
 the manual labor of the world. 
 
 But it is said : — " What ! will you give up the im- 
 mense advantages reaped from the division of labor, 
 and set every man to make his own shoes, bureau, 
 knife, wagon, sails, and needle? This would be 
 to put men back into barbarism b}' their own act." 
 I see no instant prospect of a virtuous revolution ; 
 yet I confess I should not be pained at a change 
 which threatened a loss of some of the luxuries or 
 conveniences of society, if it proceeded from a 
 preference of the agricultural life out of the belief 
 that our primary duties as men could be better dis- 
 charged in that calling. Who could regret to see 
 a high conscience and a purer taste exercising a sen- 
 sible effect on young men in their choice of occupa- 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. l8l 
 
 tion, and thinning the ranks of competition in the 
 labors of commerce, of law, and of state? It is 
 easy to see that the inconvenience would last but 
 a short time. This would be great action, which 
 always opens the eyes of men. When many persons 
 shall have done this, when the majority shall admit 
 the necessity of reform in all these institutions, their 
 abuses will be redressed, and the way will be open 
 again to the advantages which arise from the divi- 
 sion of labor, and a man may select the fittest em- 
 ployment for his peculiar talent again, without 
 compromise. 
 
 But quite apart from the emphasis which the 
 times give to the doctrine that the manual labor of 
 society ought to be shared among all the members, 
 there are reasons proper to every individual why he 
 should not be deprived of it. The use of manual 
 labor is one which never grows obsolete, and which 
 is inapplicable to no person. A man should have a 
 farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must 
 have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our 
 delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in 
 the work of our hands. We must have an antago- 
 nism in the tough world for all the variety of our 
 spiritual faculties, or they wOl not be born. Manual 
 labor is the study of the external world. The ad- 
 vantage of riches remains with him who procured 
 them, not with the heir. When I go into my garden 
 with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilara- 
 tion and health, that I discover that I have been 
 defrauding myself all this time in letting others do 
 for me what I should have done with my own hands. 
 
iSz MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 But not only health, but education, is in the work. 
 Is it possible that I who get indefinite quantities of 
 sugar, hominy, cotton, buckets, crockery ware, and 
 letter paper, by simply signing my name once in 
 three months to a check in favor of John Smith and 
 Co., traders, get the fair share of exercise to my 
 faculties by that act, which Nature intended for me 
 in making all these far-fetched matters important to 
 ray comfort? It is Smith himself, and his carriers, 
 and dealers, and manufacturers, it is the sailor, the 
 hidedrogher, the butcher, the negro, the hunter, and 
 the planter who have intercepted the sugar of the 
 sugar, and the cotton of the cotton. They have got 
 the education, I only the commodity. This were all 
 very well if I were necessarily absent, being detained 
 by work of ray own, like theirs, work of the same 
 faculties ; then should I be sure of ray hands and- 
 feet, but now I feel some shame before my wood- 
 chopper, my ploughman, and my cook, for they have 
 sorae sort of self-sufficiency, they can contrive with- 
 out my aid to bring the day and year round, but I 
 depend on them, and have not earned by use a right 
 to my arms and feet. 
 
 Consider further the difference between the first 
 and second owner of property. Every species of 
 property is preyed on by its own enemies, as iron by 
 rust ; timber by rot ; cloth by moths ; provisions by 
 mould, putridity, or vermin; money by thieves; an 
 orchard by insects ; a planted field by weeds and the 
 inroad of cattle ; a stock of cattle by hunger ; a road 
 by rain and frost ; a bridge by freshets. And who- 
 ever takes any of these things into his possession, 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 1 83 
 
 takes the charge of defending them from this troop 
 of enemies, or of keeping them in repair. A man 
 who supplies his own want, who builds a raft or a 
 boat to go a-fishing, finds it easy to calk it, or put 
 in a thole-pin, or mend the rudder. What he gets 
 only as fast as he wants for his own ends, does not 
 embarrass him, or take away his sleep with looking 
 after. But when he comes to give all the goods he 
 has year after year collected, in one estate to his son, 
 — house, orchard, ploughed land, cattle, bridges, hard- 
 ■\vare, wooden-ware, carpets, cloths, provisions, books, 
 money, — and cannot give him the skill and experi- 
 ence which made or collected these, and the method 
 and place they have in his own life, the son finds his 
 hands full, — not to use these things, but to look 
 after them and defend them from their natural 
 enemies. To him they are not means, but masters. 
 Their enemies will not remit ; rust, mould, vermin, 
 rain, sun, freshet, fire, all seize their own, fill him 
 with vexation, and he is converted from the owner 
 into a watchman or a watch-dog to this magazine of 
 old and new chattels. What a change ! Instead of 
 the masterly good humor, and sense of power, and 
 fertility of resource in himself; instead of those 
 strong and learned hands, those piercing and learned 
 eyes, that supple body, and that mighty and prevail- 
 ing heart, which the father had, whom nature loved 
 and feared, whom snow and rain, water and land, 
 beast and fish seemed all to know and to serve, we 
 have now a puny, protected person, guarded by 
 walls and curtains, stoves and down beds, coaches, 
 and men-servants and women-servants from the earth 
 
184 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 and the sky, and who, bred to depend on all these, 
 is made anxious by all that endangers those posses- 
 sions, and is forced to spend so much time in guard- 
 ing them, that he has quite lost sight of their original 
 use, namely, to help him to his ends, — to the prose- 
 cution of his love, to the helping of his friend, to 
 the worship of his God, to the enlargement of his 
 knowledge, to the serving of his country, to the in- 
 dulgence of his sentiment, and he is now what is 
 called a rich man, — the menial and runner of his 
 riches. 
 
 Hence it happens that the whole interest of history 
 lies in the fortunes of the poor. Knowledge, virtue, 
 power, are the victories of man over his necessities, 
 his march to the dominion of the world. Every 
 man ought to have this opportunity to conquer the 
 world for himself. Only such persons interest us — ■ 
 Spartans, Romans, Saracens, English, Americans — 
 who have stood in the jaws of need, and have by 
 their own wit and might extricated tliemselves and 
 made man victorious. 
 
 I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of labor, 
 or insist that everj' man should be a farmer, any 
 more than that every man should be a lexicographer. 
 In general, one may say that the husbandman's is 
 the oldest and most universal profession, and that 
 vdiere a man does not yet discover in himself any fit- 
 ness for one work more than another, this may be 
 preferred. But the doctrine of the farm is merely 
 this, that every man ought to stand in primary rela- 
 tions with the work of the world, ought to do it 
 himself, and not to suffer the accident of his having 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 185 
 
 a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to 
 some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever him 
 from those duties ; and for this reason, that labor is 
 God's education ; that lie only is a sincere learner, 
 he only can become a master, who learns the secrets 
 of labor, and who by real cunning extorts from Nature 
 its sceptre. 
 
 Neither would I shut my ears to the plea of the 
 learned professions, of the poet, the priest, the law- 
 giver, and men of study generally ; namely, that in 
 the experience of all men of that class, the amount 
 of manual labor which is necessary to the mainten- 
 ance of a family, indisposes and disqualifies for in- 
 tellectual exertion. I know it often, perhaps usually, 
 happens, that where there is a fine organization apt 
 for poetry and philosophy, that individual finds him- 
 self compelled to wait on his thoughts, to waste 
 several days that he ma)' enhance and glorify one ; 
 and is better taught by a moderate and dainty ex- 
 ercise, such as rambling in the fields, rowing, skat- 
 ing, hunting, than by the downright drudgery of the 
 farmer and the smith. I would not quite forget the 
 venerable counsel of the Egyptian mysteries, which 
 declared that " there were two pairs of eyes in man, 
 and it is requisite that the pair which are beneath 
 should be closed when the pair that are above them 
 perceive, and that when the pair above are closed, 
 those which are beneath should be opened." Yet I 
 will suggest that no separation from labor can be 
 without some loss of power and of truth to the seer 
 himself; that, I doubt not, the faults and vices of 
 our literature and philosophy, their too great fine- 
 
lS6 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 ness, effeminacy, and melancholy, are attributable to 
 the enervated and sickly habits of the literary class. 
 Better that the book should not be quite so good, 
 and the bookmaker abler and better, and not him- 
 self often a ludicrous contrast to all that he has 
 written. 
 
 But granting that for ends so sacred and dear, 
 some relaxation must be had, I think, that if a man 
 find in himself any strong bias to poetry, to art, to 
 the contemplative life, drawing him to these things 
 with a devotion incompatible with good husbandry, 
 that man ought to reckon early with himself, and, 
 respecting the compensations of the Universe, ought 
 to ransom himself from the duties of economy by a 
 certain rigor and privation in his habits. For privi- 
 leges so rare and grand, let him not stint to pay a 
 great tax. Let him be a canobite, a pauper, and, if 
 need be, celibate also. Let him learn to eat his 
 meals standing, and to relish the taste of fair water 
 and black bread. He may leave to others the costly 
 conveniences of housekeeping, and large hospitalit)', 
 and the possession of works of art. Let him feel 
 that genius is a hospitality, and that he who can 
 create works of art needs not collect them. He must 
 live in a chamber, and postpone his self-indulgence, 
 forewarned and forearmed against that frequent mis- 
 fortune of men of genius, — the taste for luxury. 
 This is the tragedy of genius, — attempting to drive 
 along the ecliptic with one horse of the heavens and 
 one horse of the earth, there is only discord and 
 ruin and downfall to chariot and charioteer. 
 
 The duty that every man should assume his own 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 187 
 
 vows, should call the institutions of society to ac- 
 count, and examine their fitness to him, gains in 
 emphasis, if we look at our modes of living. Is our 
 housekeeping sacred and honorable ? Does it raise 
 and inspire us, or does it cripple us instead? I 
 ought to be armed by every part and function of my 
 household, by all my social function, by my economy, 
 by my feasting, by my voting, by my traffic. Yet I 
 am almost no party to an}' of these things. Custom 
 does it for me, gives me no power therefrom, and 
 runs me in debt to boot. We spend our incomes for 
 paint and paper, for a hundred trifles, I know not 
 what, and not for the things of a man. Our e.xpense 
 is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we 
 run in debt ; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not 
 beauty, not worship, that costs so much. Why needs 
 any man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine 
 garments, handsome apartments, access to public 
 houses and places of amusement? Only for want of 
 thought. Give his mind a new image, and he flees 
 into a solitary garden or garret to enjoy it, and is 
 richer with that dream than the fee of a county 
 could make him. But we are first thoughtless, and 
 then find that we are moneyless. We are first sen- 
 sual, and then must be rich. We dare not trust our 
 wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, and 
 so we buy ice-creams. He is accustomed to carpets, 
 and we have not sufficient character to put floor- 
 cloths out of his mind whilst he stays in the house, 
 and so we pile the floor with carpets. Let the house 
 rather be a temple of the Furies of Lacedaemon, 
 formidable and holy to all, which none but a Spartan 
 
1 88 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 may enter or so much as behold. As soon as there 
 is faith, as soon as there is society, comfits and cush- 
 ions will be left to slaves. E.xpense will be inventive 
 and heroic. We shall eat hard and lie hard ; we 
 shall dwell like the ancient Romans in narrow tene- 
 ments, whilst our public edifices, like theirs, will be 
 worthy for their proportion of the landscape in which 
 we set them, for conversation, for art, for music, for 
 worship. We shall be rich to great purposes ; poor 
 only for selfish ones. 
 
 Now what lielp for these evils ? How can the man 
 who has learned but one art procure all the con- 
 veniences of life honestly? Shall we say all we 
 think? — perhaps with his own hands. Suppose he 
 collects or makes them .ill ; yet he has learned 
 their lesson. If he cannot do that, then perhaps 
 he can go witliout. Immense wisdom and riches 
 are in that. It is better to go without, than to have 
 them at too great a cost. Let us learn the meaning 
 of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a 
 sacrament, when its aim is grand, when it is the 
 prudence of simple tastes, when it is practised for 
 freedom, or love, or devotion. iVIuch of the econ- 
 omy which we see in houses is of a base origin, and 
 is best kept out of sight. Parclied corn eaten to-day 
 that I may have roast fowl to my dinner on Sunday 
 is a baseness ; but parched corn and a house with 
 one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, 
 that I may be serene and docile to what the mind 
 shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the lowest 
 mission of knowledge or goodwill, is frugality for 
 gods and heroes. 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 1 89 
 
 Can we not leaxn the lesson of self-help? Society 
 is full of infirm people, who incessantly summon 
 others to serve them. They contrive everywhere to 
 exhaust for their single comfort the entire means and 
 appliances of that luxury to which our invention has 
 yet attained. Sofes, ottomans, stoves, wine, game- 
 fowl, spices, perflimes, rides, the theatre, entertain- 
 ments, — all these they want, they need, and what- 
 ever can be suggested more than these, they crave 
 also, as if it was the bread which should keep them 
 from starving; and if they miss any one, they rep- 
 resent themselves as the most wronged and most 
 wretched persons on earth. One must have been 
 born and bred with them to know how to prepare a 
 meal for their learned stomach. Meantime, they 
 never bestir themselves to serve another person ; not 
 they ! they have a great deal more to do for them- 
 selves than they can possibly perform, nor do they 
 once perceive the cruel joke of their lives ; but the 
 more odious they grow, the sharper is the tone of 
 their complaining and craving. £,Can anything be so 
 elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one's 
 self, so as to have somewhat left to give, instead of 
 being always prompt to grab? ] It is more elegant to 
 answer one's own needs than to be richly served ; 
 inelegant perhaps it may look to-day, and to a few, 
 but it is an elegance forever and to all. 
 
 I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in reform. 
 I do not wish to push my criticism on the state of 
 things around me to that extravagant mark that 
 shall compel me to suicide, or to an absolute isola- 
 tion firom the advantages of civil society. If we 
 
190 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 suddenly plant our foot, and say, I will neither 
 eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any food or fabric 
 which I do not know to be innocent, or deal with 
 any person whose whole manner of life is not clear 
 and rational, we shall stand still. Whose is so? 
 Not mine; not thine; not his. But I think we 
 must clear ourselves each one by the interrogation, 
 whether we have earned our bread to-day by the 
 hearty contribution of our energies to the common 
 benefit ; and we must not cease to tend to the cor- 
 rection of these flagrant wrongs, by laying one stone 
 aright every day. 
 
 But the idea which now begins to agitate society 
 has a wider scope than our daily employments, our 
 households, and the institutions of property. We 
 are to revise the whole of our social structure, the 
 state, the school, religion, marriage, trade, science, 
 and explore their foundations in our own nature ; we 
 are to see that the world not only fitted the former 
 men, but fits us, and to clear ourselves of every 
 usage which has not Its roots in our own mind. 
 What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a re- 
 maker of what man has made ; a renouncer of lies ; 
 a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great 
 Nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no 
 moment on an old past, but every hour repairs 
 herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and 
 with every pulsation a new life? Let him renounce 
 everything which is not true to him, and put all his 
 practices back on their first thoughts, and do noth- 
 ing for which he has not the whole world for his 
 reason. If there are inconveniences, and what is 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 191 
 
 called ruin in the way, because we have so enervated 
 and maimed ourselves, yet it would be like dying of 
 perfumes to sink in the effort to reattach the deeds 
 of every day to the hdy and mysterious recesses of 
 life. 
 
 The power, which is at once spring and regulator 
 in all efforts of reform, is the conviction that there is 
 an infinite worthiness in man which will appear at 
 the call of worth, and that all particular reforms are 
 the removing of some impediment. Is it not the 
 highest duty that man should be honored in us? I 
 ought not to allow any man, because he has broad 
 lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. I 
 ought to make him feel that I can do without his 
 riches, that I cannot be bought, — neither by com- 
 fort, neither by pride, — and though I be utterly 
 penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is 
 the poor man beside me. And if, at the same time, 
 a woman or a child discovers a sentiment of piety, 
 or a juster way of thinking than mine, I ought to 
 confess it by my respect and obedience, though it go 
 to alter my whole way of life. 
 
 The Americans have many virtues, but they have 
 not Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose 
 meaning is more lost sight of. We use these words 
 as if they were as obsolete as Selah and Amen. And 
 yet they have the broadest meaning, and the most 
 cogent application to Boston in 1841. The Ameri- 
 cans have no faith. They rely on the power of a 
 dollar; they are deaf to a sentiment. They thmk 
 you may talk the north wind down as easily as raise 
 society ; and no class more faithless than the scholars 
 
192 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 or intellectual men. Now if I talk with a sincere 
 wise man, and my friend, with a poet, with a consci- 
 entious youth who is still under the dominion of his 
 own wild thoughts, and not yet harnessed in the 
 team of society to drag with us all in the ruts of 
 custom, I see at once how paltry is all this genera- 
 tion of unbelievers, and what a house of cards their 
 institutions are, and I see what one brave man, what 
 one great thought executed might effect. I see that 
 the reason of the distrust of the practical man in all 
 theory is his inability to perceive the means whereby 
 we work. Look, he sa3's, at the tools with which 
 this world of yours is to be built. As we cannot 
 make a planet, with atmosphere, rivers, and forests, 
 by means of the best carpenters' or engineers' tools, 
 with chemist's laboratory and smiths forge to boot, 
 — so neither can we ever construct that heavenly 
 society you prate of, out of foolish, sick, selfish men 
 and women, such as we know them to be. But the 
 believer not only beholds his heaven to be possible, 
 but already to begin to exist, — not by the men or 
 materials the statesman uses, but by men transfigured 
 and raised above themselves by the power of princi- 
 ples. To principles something else is possible that 
 transcends all the power of expedients. 
 
 Every great and commanding moment in the 
 annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusi- 
 asm. The victories of the Arabs after Mahomet, 
 who, in a few years, from a small and mean begin- 
 ning, established a larger empire than that of Rome, 
 is an example. They did they knew not what. The 
 naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an over- 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 1 93 
 
 match for a troop of Roman cavalry. The women 
 fought like men, and conquered the Roman men. 
 They were miserably equipped, miserably fed. They 
 were temperance troops. There was neither brandy 
 nor flesh needed to feed them. They conquered Asia, 
 and Africa, and Spain, on barley. The Caliph Omar's 
 walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it 
 than another man's sword. His diet \vas barley bread ; 
 his sauce was salt ; and oftentimes by way of absti- 
 nence he ate his bread without salt. His drink was 
 water. His palace was built of mud ; and when he 
 left Medina to go to the conquest of Jerusalem, he 
 rode on a red camel, with a wooden platter hanging 
 at his saddle, with a bottle of water and two sacks, 
 one holding barley, and the other dried fruits. 
 
 But there will dawn ere long on our politics, on 
 our modes of living, a nobler morning than that 
 Arabian faith, in the sentiment of love. This is the 
 one remedy for all ills, the panacea of Nature. We 
 must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes 
 possible. Our age and history, for these thousand 
 years, has not been the history of kindness, but of 
 selfishness. Our distrust is very expensive. The 
 money we spend for courts and prisons is very ill laid 
 out. We make, by distmst, the thief, and burglar, 
 and incendiary, and by our court and jail we keep 
 him so. An acceptance of the sentiment of love 
 throughout Christendom for a season would bring 
 the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with 
 the devotion of his faculties to our service. See this 
 wide society of laboring men and women. We allow 
 ourselves to be ser\'ed by them, we live apart from 
 
194 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 them, and meet them without a salute in the streets. 
 We do not greet their talents, nor rejoice in their 
 good fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in the 
 assembly of the people vote for what is dear to them. 
 Thus we enact the part of the selfish noble and king 
 from the foundation of the world. See, this tree 
 always bears one fruit. In every household the 
 peace of a pair is poisoned by the malice, slyness, 
 indolence, and alienation of domestics. Let any two 
 matrons meet, and observe how soon their conversa- 
 tion turns on the troubles from their ^•■help,''^ as our 
 phrase is. In every knot of laborers, the rich man 
 does not feel himself among his friends, — and at the 
 polls he finds them arrayed in a mass in distinct 
 opposition to him. We complain that the politics of 
 masses of the people are controlled by designing 
 men, and led in opposition to manifest justice and 
 the commonweal, and to their own interest. But the 
 people do not wish to be represented or ruled by 
 the ignorant and base. They only vote for these, 
 because they were asked with the voice and sem- 
 blance of kindness. They will not vote for them 
 long. They inevitably prefer wit and probity. To 
 use an Egyptian metaphor, it is not their will for any 
 long time " to raise the nails of wild beasts, and to 
 depress the heads of the sacred birds." Let our 
 affection flow out to our fellows ; it would operate in 
 a day the greatest of all revolutions. It is better to 
 v/ork on institutions by the sun than by the \nnd. 
 The state must consider the poor man, and all voices 
 must speak for him. Every child that is born must 
 have a just chance for his bread. Let the ameliora- 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 195 
 
 tion in our laws of property proceed from the con- 
 cession of tlie ricli, not from the grasping of tlie poor. 
 Let us begin by habitual imparting. Let us under- 
 stand that the equitable rule is, that no one should 
 take more than his share, let him be ever so rich. 
 Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see to 
 it that the world is the better for me, and to find my 
 reward in the act. Love would put a new face on 
 this weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and 
 enemies too long, and it would warm the heart to 
 see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the 
 impotence of armies, and navies, and lines of de- 
 fence, would be susperseded by this unarmed child. 
 Love will creep where it cannot go, will accomplish 
 that by imperceptible methods — being its own lever, 
 fulcrum, and power — which force could never 
 achieve. Have you not seen in the woods, in a late 
 autumn morning, a poor fungus or mushroom, — a 
 plant without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing 
 but a soft mush or jelly, — by its constant, total, and 
 inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its 
 way up through the frosty ground, and actually to lift 
 a hard crust on its head? It is the symbol of the 
 pov.-er of kindness. The virtue of this principle in 
 human society in application to great interests is 
 obsolete and forgotten. Once or twice in history it 
 has been tried in illustrious instances, with signal 
 success. This great, overgrown, dead Christendom 
 of ours still keeps alive at least the name of a lover 
 of mankind. But one day all men will be lovers; 
 and every calamity will be dissolved in the universal 
 sunshine. 
 
196 MAN THE REFORMER. 
 
 Will you suffer me to add one trait more to this 
 portrait of man the reformer? The meditator be- 
 tween the spiritual and the actual world should have 
 a great prospective prudence. An Arabian poet 
 describes his hero by saying, 
 
 " Sunshine was he 
 In the winter day; 
 And in the midsummer 
 Coolness and shade." , 
 
 He who would help himself and others should not 
 be a subject of irregular and interrupted impulses of 
 virtue, but a continent, persisting, immovable per- 
 son, such as we have seen a few scattered up and 
 down in time for the blessing of the world ; men 
 who have in the gravity of their nature a quality 
 which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which dis- 
 tributes the motion equably over all the wheels, and 
 hinders it from falling unequally and suddeni)' in 
 destructive shocks. It is better that joy should be 
 spread over all the day in the form of strength, than 
 that it should be concentrated into ecstasies, full of 
 danger and followed by reactions. There is a sub- 
 lime prudence which is the very highest that we know 
 of man, which, believing in a vast future, sure of 
 more to come than is yet seen, postpones always the 
 present hour to the whole life ; postpones talent to 
 genius, and special results to character. As the 
 merchant gladly takes money from his income to add 
 to his capital, so is the great man very willing to lose 
 particular powers and talents so that he gain in the 
 elevation of his life. The opening of the spiritual 
 
MAN THE REFORMER. 197 
 
 senses disposes men ever to greater sacrifices, to 
 leave their signal talents, their best means and skill 
 of procuring a present success, their power and their 
 fame, to cast all things behind, in the insatiable 
 thirst for divine communications. A purer fame, a 
 greater power, rewards the sacrifice. It is the con- 
 version of our harvest into seed. As the farmer 
 casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the 
 time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, 
 but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess 
 into means and powers, when we shall be willing to 
 sow the sun and the moon for seeds. 
 
198 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 READ AT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, 
 DECEMBER 2, 1841. 
 
 The Times, as we say, or the present aspects of our 
 social state, the Laws, Divinity, Natural Science, 
 Agriculture, Art, Trade, Letters, have their root in 
 an invisible spiritual reality. To appear in these 
 aspects they must first exist, or have some necessary 
 foundation. Beside all the small reasons we assign, 
 there is a great reason for the existence of every ex- 
 tant fact ; a reason which lies grand and immovable, 
 often unsuspected, behind it in .silence. The Times 
 are the masquerade of the Eternities ; trivial to the 
 dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise ; 
 the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history ; 
 the quarry out of which the genius of to-day is 
 building up the Future. The Times — -the nations, 
 manners, institutions, opinions, votes — are to be 
 studied as omens, as sacred leaves whereon a weighty 
 sense is inscribed, if we have the wit and the love to 
 search it out. Nature itself seems to propound to us 
 this topic, and to invite us to explore the meaning of 
 the conspicuous facts of the day. Everything that is 
 popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of 
 the philosopher ; and this for the obvious reason that 
 although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it 
 characterizes the people. 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 199 
 
 Here is very good matter to be handled if we are 
 skilful ; an abundance of important practical ques- 
 tions which it behooves us to understand. Let us 
 examine the pretensions of the attacking and de- 
 fending parties. Here is this great fact of Con- 
 servatism, entrenched in its immense redoubts, with 
 Himmaleh for its front, and Atlas for its flank, and 
 Andes for its rear, and the Atlantic and Pacific seas 
 for its ditches and trenches, which has planted its 
 crosses and crescents, and stars and stripes, and 
 various signs and badges of possession over every 
 rood of the planet, and says : — "I will hold fast ; and 
 to whom I will, will I give ; and whom I will, will I 
 exclude and starve." So says Conservatism, and all 
 the children of men attack the colossus in their 
 youth, and all, or all but a few, bow before it when 
 they are old. A necessity not yet commanded, a 
 negative imposed on the will of man by his condition, 
 a deficiency in his force, is the foundation on which 
 it rests. Let this side be fairly stated. Meantime, 
 on the other part arises Reform, and oiTers the senti- 
 ment of Love as an overmatch to this material might. 
 I wish to consider well this affirmative side, which 
 has a loftier port and reason than heretofore, 
 which encroaches on the other every day, puts it 
 out of countenance, out of reason, and out of temper, 
 and leaves it nothing but silence and possession. 
 
 The fact of aristocracy, with its two weapons of 
 wealth and manners, is as commanding a feature 
 of the nineteenth century, and the American republic, 
 as of old Rome, or modern England. The reason 
 and influence of wealth, the aspect of philosophy and 
 
200 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 religion, and the tendencies which have acquired the 
 name of TranscendentaHsm in Old and New Eng- 
 land ; the aspect of poetry, as the exponent and 
 interpretation of these things ; the fuller develop- 
 ment and the freer play of Character as a social and 
 political agent, — these and other related topics will 
 in turn come to be considered. 
 
 But the subject of the Times is not an. abstract 
 question. We talk of the world, but we mean a few 
 men and women. If you speak of the age, you mean 
 your own platoon of people, as Milton and Dante 
 painted in colossal their platoons, and called them 
 Heaven and Hell. In our idea of progiess, we do 
 not go out of this personal picture. We do not 
 think the sky will be bluer, or honey sweeter, or our 
 climate more temperate, but only that our relation to 
 our fellows will be simpler and happier. What is 
 the reason to be given for this extreme attraction 
 which persons have for us, but that they are the Age? 
 they are the results of the Past ; they are the heralds 
 of the Future. They indicate — these witty, suffer- 
 ing, blushing, intimidating figures of the only race in 
 which there are individuals or changes — how far on 
 the Fate has gone, and wh?.t it drives at. As trees 
 make scenery and constitute the hospitality of the 
 landscape, so persons are the world to persons. A 
 cunning mystery by which the Great Desert of 
 thoughts and of planets takes this engaging form, to 
 bring, as it would seem, its meanings nearer to the 
 raind. Thoughts walk and speak, and look with eyes 
 at me, and transport me into new and magnificent 
 scenes. These are the pungent instructors who thrill 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 20I 
 
 the heart of each of us, and make all other teaching 
 formal and cold. How I follow them with aching 
 heart, with pining desire ! I count myself nothing 
 before them. I would die for them with joy. They 
 can do what they will with me. How they lash us 
 with those tongues ! How they make the tears start, 
 make us blush and turn pale, and lap us in Elysium 
 to soothing dreams and castles in the air ! By tones 
 of triumph, of dear love, by threats, by pride that 
 freezes, — these have the skill to make the world look 
 bleak and inhospitable, or seem the nest of tenderness 
 and joy. I do not wonder at the miracles which 
 poetry attributes to the music of Orpheus, when I 
 remember what I have experienced fi-om the varied 
 notes of the human voice. They are an incalculable 
 energy which countervails all other forces in Nature, 
 because they are the channel of supernatural powers. 
 There is no interest or institution so poor and with- 
 ered, but if a new strong man could be born into it 
 he would immediately redeem and replace it. A 
 personal ascendency — that is the only fact much 
 worth considering. I remember, some years ago, 
 somebody shocked a circle of friends of order here in 
 Boston, who supposed that our people were identified 
 with their religious denominations, by declaring that 
 an eloquent man — let him be of what sect soever — ■ 
 would be ordained at once in one of our metropolitan 
 churches. To be sure he would; and not only in 
 ours, but in any church, mosque, or temple on the 
 planet ; but he must be eloquent, able to supplant 
 our method and classification by the superior beauty 
 of his own. Every fact we have was brought here by 
 
202 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 some person ; and there is none that will not change 
 and pass away before a person whose nature is 
 broader than the person which the fact in question 
 represents. And so I find the Age walking about 
 in happy and hopeful natures, in strong eyes and 
 pleasant thoughts, and think I read it nearer and 
 truer so than in the statute book, or in the invest- 
 ments of capital, which rather celebrate with mourn- 
 ful music the obsequies of the last age. In the brain 
 of a fanatic ; in the wild hope of a mountain boy, 
 called by city boys very ignorant, because they do 
 not know what his hope has certainly apprised him 
 shall be ; in the love-glance of a girl ; in the hair- 
 splitting conscientiousness of some eccentric person, 
 who has found some new scruple to embarrass him- 
 self and his neighbors withal, — is to be found that 
 which shall constitute the times to come, more than 
 in the now organized and accredited oracles. For 
 whatever is affirmative and now advancing, contains 
 it. I think that only is real which men love and 
 rejoice in ; not what they tolerate, but what they 
 choose ; what they embrace and avow, and not the 
 things which chill, benumb, and terrify them. 
 
 And so why not draw for these times a portrait 
 gallery? Let us paint the painters. Whilst the 
 Daguerreotypist, with camera-obscura and silver 
 plate, begins now to traverse tiie land, let us set 
 up our camera also, and let the sun paint the 
 people. Let us paint the agitator, and the man of 
 the old school, and the member of congress, and 
 the college-professor, the formidable editor, the 
 priest, and reformer, the contemplative girl, and 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 203 
 
 the fair aspirant for fashion and opportunities, the 
 woman of the world who has tried and knows; let 
 us examine how well she knows. Could we indi- 
 cate the indicators, indicate those who most accu- 
 rately represent every good and evil tendency of the 
 general mind, in the just order which they take on 
 this canvas of Time, so that all witnesses should 
 recognize a spiritual law, as each well-known form 
 flitted for a moment across the wall, we should have 
 a series of sketches which would report to the next 
 ages the color and quality of ours. 
 
 Certainly, I think, if this were done, there would 
 be much to admire as well as to condemn ; souls of 
 as lofty a port as any in Greek or Roman fame 
 might appear; men of great heart, of strong hand 
 and of persuasive speech; subtle thinkers, and men 
 of wide sympathy, and an apprehension which looks 
 over all history, and everywhere recognizes its own. 
 To be sure, there will be fragments and hints of 
 men, more than enough ; bloated promises, which 
 end in nothing or little. And then truly great men, 
 but with some defect in their composition, which 
 neutralizes their whole force. Here is a Damascus 
 blade, such as you may search through nature in 
 vain to parallel, laid up on the shelf in some village 
 to rust and ruin. And how many seem not quite 
 available for that idea which they represent ! Now 
 and then comes a bolder spirit, I should rather say 
 a more surrendered soul, more informed and led by 
 God, which is much in advance of the rest, quite 
 beyond their sympathy, but predicts what shall soon 
 be the general fulness ; as when we stand by the sea. 
 
204 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 shore, whilst the tide is coming in, a wave comes up 
 the beach far liiglier than any foregoing one, and 
 recedes ; and for a long while none comes up to 
 that mark ; but after some time the whole sea is there 
 and beyond it. 
 
 But we are not permitted to stand as spectators 
 of the pageant which ' the times exhibit ; we are 
 parties also, and have a responsibility which is not 
 to be declined. A little while this interval of 
 wonder and comparison is pemnitted us, but to the 
 end that we shall play a manly part. As the solar 
 system moves forward in the heavens, certain stars 
 open before us, and certain stars close up behind 
 us ; so is man's life. The reputations that were 
 great and inaccessible change and tarnish. How 
 great were once Lord Bacon's dimensions ! he is now 
 reduced almost to the middle height ; and many an- 
 other star has turned out to be a planet or an aster- 
 oid ; only a few are the fixed stars which have no 
 parallax, or none for us. The change and decline 
 of old reputations are the gracious marks of our own 
 growth. Slowly, like light of morning, it steals on us, 
 the new fact, that we, who were pupils or aspirants, are 
 now society ; do compose a portion of that head and 
 heart we are wont to think worthy of all reverence 
 and heed. We are the representatives of religion 
 and intellect, and stand in the light of Ideas, whose 
 rays stream through us to those younger and mor-e in 
 the dark. What further relations we sustain, what new 
 lodges we are entering, is now unknown. To-day is 
 a king in disguise. To-day always looks mean to the 
 thoughtless, in the face of a uniform experience, 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 205 
 
 that all good and great and happy actions are made 
 up precisely of these blank to-days. Let us not be 
 so deceived. Let us unmask the king as he passes. 
 Let us not inhabit times of wonderful and various 
 promise without divining their tendency. Let us 
 not see the foundations of nations, and of a new 
 and better order of things laid, with roving eyes, and 
 an attention preoccupied with trifles. 
 
 The two omnipresent parties of History, the party 
 of the Past and the party of the Future, divide so- 
 ciety to-day as of old. Here is the innumerable mul- 
 titude of those who accept the state and the church 
 from the last generation, and stand on no argument 
 but possession. They have reason also, and, as I 
 think, better reason than is commonly stated. No 
 Burke, no Metternich , has yet done full justice to the 
 side of conservatism. But this class, however large, 
 relying not on the intellect but on instinct, blends 
 itself with the brute forces of nature, is respectable 
 only as nature is, but the individuals have no attrac- 
 tion for us. It is the dissenter, the theorist, the as- 
 pirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark 
 on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. 
 Omitting then for the present all notice of the sta- 
 tionary class, we shall find that the movement party 
 divides itself into two classes, — the actors and the 
 students. 
 
 The actors constitute that great army of martyrs 
 who, at least in America, by their conscience and 
 philanthropy, occupy the ground which Calvinism 
 occupied in the last age, and compose the visible 
 church of the existing generation. The present age 
 
2o6 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 will be marked by its harvest of projects for the re- 
 form of domestic, civil, literary, and ecclesiastical' 
 institutions. The leaders of the crusades against 
 war, negro slavery, intemperance, government based 
 on force, usages of trade, court and custom-house 
 oaths, and so on to the agitators on the sys- 
 tem of education and the laws of property, are the 
 right successors of Luther, Knox, Robinson, Fox, 
 Penn, Wesley, and Whitefield. They have the same 
 virtues and vices, the same noble impulse, and the 
 same bigotry. These movements are on all accounts 
 important ; they not only check the special abuses, 
 but they educate the conscience and the intellect of 
 the people. How can such a. question as the slave 
 trade be agitated for forty years by all the Christian 
 nations, without throwing great light on ethics into 
 the general mind? The fury with which the slave- 
 trader defends every inch of his bloody deck, and his 
 howling auction-platform, is a trumpet to alarm the 
 ear of mankind, to wake the dull, and drive all neu- 
 trals to take sides, and to listen to the argument and 
 the verdict. The temperance-question, v.-hich rides 
 the conversation of ten thousand circles, and is tacitly 
 recalled at every public and at every private table, 
 drawing with it all the curious ethics of the pledge, 
 of the wine-question, of the equity of the manufacture 
 and the trade, is a gymnastic training to the casuistry 
 and conscience of the time. Anti-masonry had a 
 deep right and wrong, which gradually emerged to 
 sight out of the turbid controversy. The political 
 questions touching the banks, the tariff, the limits 
 of the executive power, the right of the constituent 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 207 
 
 to instruct the representative, the treatment of the 
 Indians, the boundary wars, the congress of nations, 
 are all pregnant with ethical conclusions ; and it is 
 well if government and our social order can extricate 
 themselves from these alembics, and find tliemselves 
 still government and social order. The student of 
 history will hereafter compute the singular value of 
 our endless discussion of questions to the mind of the 
 period. 
 
 Whilst each of these aspirations and attempts of 
 the people for the better is magnified by the natural 
 exaggeration of its advocates, until it excludes the 
 others from sight, and repels disipreet persons by the 
 unfairness of the plea, the movements are in reality 
 all parts of one movement. There is a perfect chain 
 — see it, or see it not — of reforms emerging from 
 the surrounding darkness, each cherishing some part 
 of the general idea, and all must be seen, in order to 
 do justice to any one. Seen in this their natural 
 connection, they are sublime. The conscience of 
 the Age demonstrates itself in this effort to raise the 
 life of man by putting in it harmony with his idea of 
 the Beautiful and the Just. The historj' of reform is 
 always identical ; it is the comparison of the idea 
 with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable 
 to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. 
 We arraign our daily employments. They appear 
 to us unfit, unworthy of the faculties we spend on 
 them. In conversation with a wise man, we find 
 ourselves apologizing for our employments ; we speak 
 of them with shame. Nature, literature, science, 
 childhood, appear to us beautiful ; but not our own 
 
2oS LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 daily work, not the ripe fruit and considered labors 
 of man. This beauty which the fancy finds in every- 
 thing else certainly accuses that manner of life we 
 lead. Why should it be hateful.' Why should it 
 contrast thus with all natural beauty? Why should 
 it not be poetic, and invite and raise us? Is there a 
 necessity that the works of man should be sordid? 
 Perhaps not. Out of this fair Idea in the mind 
 springs the effort at the Perfect. It is the interior 
 testimony to a fairer possibility of life and manners 
 which agitates society every day with the offer of 
 some new amendment. If we would make more 
 strict inquiry concerning its origin, we find ourselves 
 rapidly approaching the inner boundaries of thought, 
 that term where speech becomes silence, and science 
 conscience. For the origin of all reform is in that 
 mysterious fountain of the moral sentiment in man, 
 which, amidst the natural, ever contains the super- 
 natural for men. That is new and creative. That 
 is alive. That alone can make a man other than he 
 is. Here or nowhere resides unbounded energy, 
 unbounded power. 
 
 The new voices in the wilderness crying " Re- 
 pent" have revived a hope which had well-nigh 
 perished out of the world, that the thoughts of the 
 mind may yet, in some distant age, in some happy 
 hour, be executed by the hands. That is the hope 
 of wliich all other hopes are parts. For some ages 
 these ideas have been consigned to the poet and 
 musical composer, to the prayers and the sermons 
 of churches ; but the thought that they can ever have 
 any footing in real life seems long since to have 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 209 
 
 been exploded by all judicious persons. Milton, in 
 his best tract, describes a relation between religion 
 and the daily occupations, which is true until this 
 time : — 
 
 "A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and 
 to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so 
 entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, 
 that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a 
 stock going upon that trade. What should he 
 do? Fain he would have the name to be re- 
 ligious; fain he would bear up with his neighbors 
 in that. What does he, therefore, but resolve to 
 give over toiling, and to find himself out some 
 factor, to whose care and credit he may commit 
 the whole managing of his religious affairs ; some 
 divine of note and estimation that must be. To 
 him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of 
 his religion, with all the locks and keys, into his 
 custody ; and indeed makes the very person of that 
 man his religion ; esteems his associating with him 
 a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own 
 piety. So that a man may say his religion is now 
 no more within himself, but is become a dividual 
 movable, and goes and comes near him, according 
 as that good man frequents the house. He enter- 
 tains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; 
 his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally 
 supped,, and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is 
 saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well- 
 spiced beverage, and better breakfasted than he 
 whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on 
 green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his 
 
2IO LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind 
 entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his 
 religion." 
 
 This picture would serve for our times. Religion 
 was not invited to eat or drink or sleep with us, or 
 to make or divide -an estate, but was a holiday guest. 
 Such omissions judge the church ; as the compro- 
 mise made with the slaveholder, not much noticed 
 at first, every day appears more flagrant mischief 
 to the American constitution. But now the purists 
 are looking into all these matters. The more in- 
 telligent are growing uneasy on the subject of 
 Marriage. They wish to see the character repre- 
 sented also in that covenant. There shall be 
 nothing brutal in it, but it shall honor the man 
 and the woman, as much as the most diffusive 
 and universal action. Grimly the same spirit 
 looks into the law of Property, and accuses men 
 of driving a trade in the great boundless providence 
 which had given the air, the water, and the land 
 to men, to use and not to fence in and monopolize. 
 It casts its eye on Trade, and Day Labor, and so 
 it goes up and down, paving the earth with eyes, 
 destroying privacy, and making thorough-lights. Is 
 all this for nothing? Do you suppose that the 
 reforms, which are preparing, will be as superficial 
 as those we know? 
 
 By the books it reads and translates, judge 
 what books it will presently print. A great deal 
 of the profoundest thinking of antiquity, which 
 had become as good as obsolete for us, is now 
 reappearing in extracts and allusions, and in 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 211 
 
 twenty years will get all printed anew. See 
 how daring is the reading, the speculation, the 
 experimenting of the time. If now some genius 
 shall arise who could unite these' scattered rays ! 
 And always such a genius does embody the ideas 
 of each time. Here is great variety and richness 
 of mysticism, each part of which now only disgusts, 
 whilst it forms the sole thought of some poor Per- 
 fectionist or "Comer out;" yet, when it shall be 
 taken up as the garniture of some profound and all- 
 reconciling thinker, will appear the rich and appro- 
 priate decoration of his robes. 
 
 These reforms are our contemporaries ; they are 
 ourselves ; our own light, and sight, and conscience ; 
 they only name the relation which subsists between 
 us and the vicious institutions which they go to 
 rectify. They are the simplest statements of man 
 in these matters ; the plain right and wrong. I 
 cannot choose but allow and honor them. The 
 impulse is good, and the theory; the practice is 
 less beautiful. The Reformers affirm the inward 
 life, but they do not trust it, but use outward and 
 vulgar means. They do not rely on precisely that 
 strength which wins me to their cause ; not on love, 
 not on a principle, but on men, on multitudes, on 
 circumstances, on money, on party; that is, on 
 fear, on wrath, and pride. The love which lifted 
 men to the sight of these better ends was the 
 true and best distinction of this time, the dispo- 
 sition to trust a principle more than a material 
 force. I think that the soul of reform ; the con- 
 viction that not sensualism, not slavery, not war, 
 
212 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 not imprisonment, not even government, are needed, 
 but in lieu of tliem all, reliance on the sentiment 
 of man, which will work best the more it is trusted ; 
 not reliance on numbers, but, contrariwise, dis- 
 trust of numbers, and the feeling that then are we 
 strongest when most private and alone. The young 
 men who have been vexing society for these last 
 years with regenerative methods seem to have 
 made this mistake ; they all exaggerated some 
 special means, and all failed to see that the 
 Reform of Reforms must be accomplished without 
 means. 
 
 The Reforms have their high origin in an ideal 
 justice, but they do not retain the purity of an idea. 
 They are quickly organized in some low, inade- 
 quate form, and present no more poetic image to the 
 mind than the evil tradition which they reprobated. 
 They mix the fire of the moral sentiment with per- 
 sonal and party heats, with measureless exaggera- 
 tions, and the blindness that prefers some darling 
 measure to justice and truth. Those who are urg- 
 ing with most ardor what are called the greatest 
 benefits of mankind, are narrow, self-pleasing, con- 
 ceited men, and affect us as the insane do. They 
 bite us, and we run mad also. I think the work of 
 the reformer as innocent as other work that is done 
 around him ; but vifhen I have seen it near, I 
 do not like it better. It is done in the same 
 way, it is done profanely, not piously; by manage- 
 ment, by tactics, and clamor. It is a buzz in 
 the ear. I cannot feel any pleasure in sacrifices 
 which display to me such partiality of character. 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 213 
 
 We do not want actions, but men ; not a chemical 
 drop of water, but rain ; the spirit that sheds and 
 showers actions, countless, endless actions. You 
 have on. some occasion played a bold part. You 
 have set your heart and face against society, when 
 you thought it wrong, and returned it frown for 
 frou-n. Excellent : now can you afford to forget it, 
 reckoning ali- your action no more than the passing 
 of your hand through the air, or a little breath of 
 your mouth? The world leaves no track in space, 
 and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast 
 idea. To the youth diffident of his ability, and fiiU 
 of compunction at his unprofitable existence, the 
 temptation is always great to lend himself to public 
 movements, and as one of a party accomplish what 
 he cannot hope to effect alone. But he must resist 
 the degradation of a man to a measure. I must act 
 with truth, though I should never come to act, as 
 you call it, with effect. I must consent to inaction. 
 A patience which is grand ; a brave and cold neglect 
 of the offices which prudence exacts, so it be done 
 in a deep, upper piety; a consent to solitude and 
 inaction, which proceeds out of an unwillingness to 
 violate character, — is the century which makes the 
 gem. Whilst, therefore, I desire to express the re- 
 spect and joy I feel before this sublime connection of 
 reforms, now in their infancy around us, I urge the 
 more earnestly the paramount duties of self-reliance. 
 I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey 
 my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All 
 men, all things, the state, the church, yea, the friends 
 of the heart, are phantasms and unreal beside the 
 
214 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 sanctuary of the heart. With so much awe, with so 
 much fear^ let it be respected. 
 
 The great majority of men, unable to judge of any 
 principle until its light falls on a fact, are not aware 
 of the evil that is around them, until they see it in 
 some gross form, as in a class of intemperate men, 
 or slaveholders, or soldiers, or fraudulent persons. 
 Then they are greatly moved : and magnifying the 
 importance of that wrong, they fancy that if that 
 abuse were redressed all would go well, and they fill 
 the land witli clamor to correct it. Hence the mis- 
 sionary and other religious efforts. If every island 
 and every house had a Bible, if every child was 
 brought into the Sunday school, would the wounds 
 of the world heal, and man be upright ? 
 
 But the man of ideas, accounting the circum- 
 tance nothing, judges of the commonwealth from 
 the state of his own mind. "If," he says, "I am 
 selfish, then is there slavery, or the effbrt to estab- 
 lish it, wherever I go. But if I am just, then is 
 there no slavery, let the laws say what they will. 
 For if I treat all men as gods, how to me can there 
 be such a thing as a slave ? " But how frivolous is 
 your war against circumstances. This denouncing 
 philanthropist is himself a slaveholder in every word 
 and look. Does he free me? Does he cheer me? 
 He is the state of Georgia, or Alabama, with their 
 sanguinary slave-laws walking here on our north- 
 £astern shores . We are all thankful he has no more 
 political power, as we are fond of liberty ourselves. 
 I am afraid our virtue is a little geographical. I am 
 not mortified by our vice : that is obduracy ; it colors 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 315 
 
 and palters, it curses and swears, and I can see to the 
 end of it ; but, I own, our virtue makes me ashamed ; 
 so sour and narrow, so thin and blind, virtue so ^ice- 
 like. Then, again, how trivial seem the contests of 
 the abolitionist, whilst he aims merely at the circum- 
 stance of the slave! Give the slave the least eleva- 
 tion of religious sentiment, and he is no slave : you 
 are the slave ; he not only in his humility feels his 
 superiority, feels that much-deplored condition of his 
 to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. 
 He is the master. The exaggeration which our 
 young people make of his wrongs characterizes 
 themselves. What are no trifles to them, they 
 naturally think are no trifles to Pompey. 
 
 We say, then, that the reforming movement is 
 sacred in its origin ; in its management and details 
 timid and profane. These benefactors hope to raise 
 man by improving his circumstances ; by combina- 
 tion of that which is dead, they hope to make some- 
 thing alive. In vain. By new infusions alone of 
 the spirit by which he is made and directed, can he 
 be remade and reinforced. The sad Pestalozzi, 
 who shared with all ardent spirits the hope of 
 Europe on the outbreak of the French Revolution, 
 after witnessing its sequel, recorded his conviction, 
 that " the amelioration of outward circumstances 
 will be the effect, but can never be the means, of 
 mental and moral improvement.''' Quitting now the 
 class of actors, let us turn to see how it stands with 
 the other class of which we spoke ; namely, the 
 students. 
 
 A new disease has fallen on the life of man, 
 
3l6 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 Every age, like every human body, has its own 
 distemper. Other times have had war, or famine, 
 or a barbarism domestic or bordering, as their an- 
 tagonism. Our forefathers walked in the world and 
 went to their graves, tormented with the fear of Sin 
 and the terror of the Day of Judgment. These 
 terrors have lost their force, and our tonnent is 
 Unbelief, the Uncertainty as to what we ought to 
 do ; the distrust of the value of what we do, and the 
 distrust that the Necessity (which we all at last be- 
 lieve in) is fair and beneficent. Our Religion as- 
 sumes the negative form of rejection. Out of love 
 of the true, we repudiate the false ; and the Religion 
 is an abolishing criticism. A great perplexity hangs 
 like a cloud on the brow of all cultivated persons, a 
 certain imbecility in the best spirits, which distin- 
 guishes the period. We do not find the same trait 
 in the Arabian, in the Hebrew, in Greek, Roman, 
 Norman, English periods ; no, but in other men a 
 natural firmness. The men did not see beyond the 
 need of the hour. They planted their foot strong, 
 and doubted nothing. We mistrust every step we 
 take. We find it the worst thing about time, that 
 we know not what to do with it. We are so sharp- 
 sighted that we can neither work nor think, neither 
 read Plato nor not read him. 
 
 Then there is what is called a too intellectual 
 tendency. Can there be too much intellect? We 
 have never met with any such excess. But the crit- 
 icism, which is levelled at the laws and manners, 
 ends in thought, without causing a new method of 
 life. The genius of the day does not incline to a 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 217 
 
 deed, but to a beholding. It is not that men do 
 not wish to act ; they pine to be employed, but are 
 paralyzed by the uncertainty what they should do. 
 The inadequacy of the work to the faculties is the 
 painful perception which keeps them still. This 
 happens to the best. Then, talents bring their 
 usual temptations, and the current literature and 
 poetry with perverse ingenuity draw us away from 
 life to solitude and meditation. This could well be 
 borne if it were great and involuntary ; if the men 
 were ravished by their thought, and hurried into 
 ascetic extravagances. Society could then manage 
 to release their shoulder from its wheel, and grant 
 them for a time this privilege of sabbath. But they 
 are not so. Thinking, which was a rage, is become an 
 art. The thinker gives me results, and never invites 
 me to be present with him at his invocation of truth, 
 and to enjoy with him its proceeding into his mind. 
 
 So little action amidst such audacious and yet 
 sincere profession, that we begin to doubt if that 
 great revolution in the art of war, which has made 
 it a game of posts instead of a game of battles, has 
 not operated on Reform ; whether this be not also 
 a war of posts, a paper blockade, in which each 
 party is to display the utmost resources of his spirit 
 and belief, and no conflict occur ; but the world 
 shall take that course which the demonstration of 
 the truth shall indicate. 
 
 But we shall pay for being too intellectual, as they 
 call it. People are not as light-hearted for it. I 
 think men never loved life less. I question if care 
 and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly on the 
 
2l8 LECTURE GN THE TIMES. 
 
 faces of anv population. This Etuiiii, for which we 
 Saxons had no name, this word of France has got a 
 tenific significance. It shortens hfe, and bereaves 
 the day of its Hght. Old age begins in the nursery, 
 and before the young American is put into jacket 
 and trousers, he says, " I want something which I 
 never sav.- before; " and " I wish I was not I.' I 
 have seen the same gloom on the brow even of those 
 adventurers from the intellectual class, who had 
 dived deepest and with most success into active 
 Hfe. I have seen the authentic sign of an.xiety and 
 perplexity on the greatest forehead of the state. 
 The canker-worms have crawled to the topmost 
 bough of the wild elm, and sv/ing down from that. 
 Is there less oxygen in the atmosphere? What has 
 checked in this age the animal spirits which gave to 
 our forefathers their bounding pulse ? 
 
 But have a little patience with this melancholy 
 humor. Their unbelief arises out of a greater Be- 
 lief, their inaction out of a scorn of inadequate ac- 
 tion. By the side of these men, the hot agitators 
 have a certain cheap and ridiculous air ; they even 
 look smaller than the others. Of the two, I own, 
 I like the speculators best. They have some piety 
 which looks with faith to a fair Future, unprofaned 
 by rash and unequal attempts to realize it. And 
 tiTily we shall find much to console us, when we 
 consider the cause of their uneasiness. It is the 
 love of greatness, it is the need of harmony, the 
 contrast of the dwarfish Actual with the exorbitant 
 Idea. No man can compare the ideas and aspira- 
 tions of the innovators of the present day with 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 219 
 
 those of former periods, without feeUng how great 
 and high this criticism is. The revolutions that im- 
 pend over society are not now from ambition and 
 rapacity, from impatience of one or another form 
 of government, but from new modes of thinking, 
 whicli shall recompose society after a new order, 
 which shall animate labor by love and science, v/hicli 
 shall destroy the value of many kinds of property, 
 and replace all property within the dominion of 
 reason and equity. There was never so great a 
 thought laboring in the breasts of men as now. It 
 almost seems as if what was aforetime spoken fabu- 
 lously and hieroglyphically was now spoken plainly, 
 — the doctrine, namely, of the indwelling of the Crea- 
 tor in man. The spiritualist wishes this only, that 
 the spiritual principle should be suffered to demon- 
 strate itself to the end, in all possible applications 
 to the state of man, without the admission of an}'- 
 thing unspiritual ; that is, anything positive, dog- 
 matic, or personal. The excellence of this class 
 consists in this, that they have believed ; that, af- 
 firming the need of new and higher modes of living 
 and action, they have abstained from the recommen- 
 dation of low methods. Their fault is that they 
 have stopped at the intellectual perception ; that 
 their will is not yet inspired from the Fountain of 
 Love. But whose fault is this? and what a fault, 
 and to what inquiry does it lead ! We have come 
 to that which is the spring of all power, of beauty 
 and virtue, of art and poetry ; and who shall tell us 
 according to what law its inspirations and its infor- 
 mations are given or withholden? 
 
320 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 I do not wish to be guilty of the narrowness and 
 pedantry of inferring the tendency and genius of the 
 Age from a few and insufficient facts or persons. 
 Every age has a thousand sides and signs and ten- 
 dencies, and it is only when surveyed from inferior 
 points of view that great varieties of character ap- 
 pear. Our time, too, is full of activity and perform- 
 ance. Is there not something comprehensive in the 
 grasp of a society which to great mechanical inven- 
 tion, and the best institutions of property, adds the 
 most daring theories ; which explores the subtlest 
 and most universal problems? At the manifest risk 
 of repeating what every other Age has thought of 
 itself, we might say, we think the Genius of this 
 Age more philosophical than any other has been, 
 righter in its aims, truer, with less fear, less fable, 
 less mixture of any sort. 
 
 But turn it how we will, as we ponder this mean- 
 ing of the times, every new thought drives us to the 
 deep fact, that the Time is the child of the Eternity. 
 The main interest which any aspects of the Times 
 can have for us is the great spirit which gazes through 
 them, tlve light which they can shed on the wonder- 
 ful questions. What we are, and Whither we tend? 
 We do not wish to be deceived. Here we drift, like 
 white sail across the wild ocean, now bright on the 
 wave, now darkling in the trough' of the sea ; but 
 from what port did we sail? Who knows? Or to 
 what port are we bound? Who knows? There is 
 no one to tell us but such poor weather-tossed mari- 
 ners as ourselves, whom we speak as we pass, or who 
 have hoisted some signal, or floated to us some letter 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 221 
 
 in a bottle from far. But what know they more than 
 we? They also found themselves on this wondrous 
 sea. No ; from the older sailors, nothing. Over all 
 their speaking-trumpets the gray sea and the loud 
 winds answer. Not in us ; not in Time. Where, then, 
 but in Ourselves, where but in that Thought through 
 which we communicate with absolute Nature, and are 
 made aware that, whilst we shed the dust of which 
 we are built, grain by grain, tUl it is all gone, the law 
 which clothes us with humanity remains new? where 
 but in the intuitions which are vouchsafed us from 
 within, shall we learn the Truth? Faithless, faith- 
 less, we fancy that with the dust we depart and are 
 not ; and do not know that the law and the percep- 
 tion of the law are at last one ; that only as much as 
 the law enters us, becomes us, we are living men, — 
 immortal with the immortality of this law. Under- 
 neath all these appearances lies that which is, that 
 which lives, that which causes. This ever-renewing 
 generation of appearances rests on a reality, and a 
 reality that is alive. 
 
 To a true scholar the attraction of the aspects of 
 Nature, the departments of life, and the passages 
 of his experience, is simply the information they yield 
 him of this supreme Nature which lurks within all. 
 That reality, that causing force, is moral. The Moral 
 Sentiment is but its other name. It makes by its 
 presence or absence right and \vrong, beauty and 
 ugliness, genius or depravation. As the granite 
 comes to the surface, and towers into the highest 
 mountains, and, if we dig down, we find it below the 
 superficial strata, so in all the details of our domestic 
 
322 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 
 
 or civil life is hidden the elemental reality which 
 ever and anon comes to the surface and forms the 
 grand men who are the leaders and examples, rather 
 than the companions, of the race. The granite is 
 curiously concealed under a thousand formations and 
 surfaces, under fertile soils, and grasses, and flowers, 
 under well-manured arable fields, and large towns 
 and cities ; but it makes the foundation of these, and 
 is always indicating its presence by slight but sure 
 signs. So is it with the Life of our life ; so close 
 does that also hide. I read it in glad and in weep- 
 ing eyes ; I read it in the pride and in the humility 
 of people ; it is recognized in every bargain and in 
 every complaisance, in every criticism, and in all 
 praise ; it is voted for at elections ; it wins the cause 
 with juries ; it rides the stormy eloquence of the 
 senate, sole victor ; histories are written of it, holi- 
 days decreed to it ; statues, tombs, churches, built to 
 its honor ; yet men seem to fear and to shun it, when 
 it comes barely to view in our immediate neighbor- 
 hood. 
 
 For that reality let us stand ; that let us serve, and 
 for that speak. Only as far as that shines through 
 them are these times or any times worth considera- 
 tion. I wish to speak of the pohtics, education, 
 business, and religion around us, without ceremony 
 or false deference. You \vill absolve me from the 
 charge of flippancy, or malignity, or the desire to say 
 smart things at the expense of whomsoever, when 
 you see that reality is all we prize, and that we are 
 bound on our entrance into Nature to speak for that. 
 Let it not be recorded in our own memories, that in 
 
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 223 
 
 this moment of the Eternity, when we who were named 
 by our names flitted across the light we were afraid 
 of any fact, or disgraced the fair Day by a pusillani- 
 mous preference of our bread to our freedom. What 
 is the scholar, what is the man for, but for hospi- 
 tality to every new thought of his time? Have you 
 leisiu-e, power, property, friends? you shall be the 
 asylum and patron of every new thought, every un- 
 proven opinion, every untried project, which proceeds 
 out of good will and honest seeking. All the news- 
 papers, all the tongues of to-day will of course, at first, 
 defame what is noble ; but you who hold not of to- 
 day, not of the times, but of the Everlasting, are to 
 stand for it ; and the highest compliment man ever 
 receives from heaven is the sending to him its dis- 
 guised and discredited angels. 
 
224 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 r'- 
 
 /.■ 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ^ASONIC 
 TEMPLE, BOSTON, DECEMBER 9,1841'. 
 
 The two parties which divide the state, the party 
 of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, 
 and have disputed the possession of the world ever 
 since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of 
 civil history. The conservative party established the 
 reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most 
 ancient world. The battle of patrician and plebeian, 
 of parent state and colony, of old usage and -accom- 
 modation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, re- 
 appears in all countries and times. The war rages 
 not only in battlefields, in natural councils and 
 ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's bosom 
 with opposing advantages every hour. On rolls the 
 old world meantime, and now one, now the other, 
 gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if 
 for the first time, under new names and hot person- 
 alities. 
 
 Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must 
 have a correspondent depth of seat in the human con- 
 stitution. It is the opiJOsition of Past and Future, of 
 Memory and Hope, of the Understanding and the 
 Reason. It is the primal antagonism, the appear- 
 ance in trifles of the two poles of Nature. 
 
 There is a fragment of old fable which seems 
 
TBE CONSERVATIVE. 225 
 
 somehow to have been dropped from the current my- 
 thologies, which may desei-ve attention, as it appears 
 to relate to this subject. 
 
 Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with none 
 but the great Uranus or Heaven beholding him, and 
 he created an oj^ter. Then he would act again, but 
 he made nothing more, but went on creating the race 
 of oysters. Then Uranus cried, "A new work, O 
 Saturn ! the old is not good again." 
 
 Saturn replied : — "I fear. There is not only the 
 alternative of making and not making, but also of un- 
 making. Seest thou the great sea, how it ebbs and 
 flows ? so it is with me ; my power ebbs ; and if I put 
 forth my hands, I shall not do, but undo. Therefore 
 I do what I have done ; I hold what I have got ; and 
 so I resist Night and Chaos." 
 
 "O Saturn," replied Uranus, "thou canst not 
 hold thine own but by making more. Thy oysters 
 are barnacles and cockles, and with the next flowing 
 of the tide they will be pebbles and sea-foam." 
 
 " I see," rejoins Saturn, " thou art in league with 
 Night ; thou art become an evil eye ; thou spakest 
 from love ; now thy words smite me with hatred. 
 I appeal to Fate, must there not be rest?" — "I 
 appeal to Fate also," said Uranus, " must there not 
 be motion?" But Saturn was silent, and went on 
 making oysters for a thousand years. 
 
 After that, the word of Uranus came into his mind 
 like a ray of the sun, and he made Jupiter ; and then 
 he feared again ; and Nature froze, the things that 
 were made went backward, and, to save the world, 
 Jupiter slew his father Saturn. 
 
226 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 This may stand for the earliest account of a con- 
 versation on politics between a Conservative and a 
 Radical which has come down to us. It is ever 
 thus. It is the counteraction of the centripetal and 
 the centrifugal forces. Innovation is the salient 
 energy; Conservatism the pause on the last move- 
 ment. "That which is was made by God," saith 
 Convervatism. " He is leaving that, he is entering 
 this other," rejoins Innovation. 
 
 There is always a certain meanness in the argu- 
 ment of Conservatism, joined with a certain superior- 
 ity in its fact. It affirms because it holds. Its 
 fingers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes 
 to see a better fact. The castle, which Conservatism 
 is set to defend, is the actual state of things, good 
 and bad. The project of Innovation is the best 
 possible state of things. Of course. Conservatism 
 always has the worst of the argument, is always 
 apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading that to 
 change would be to deteriorate ; it must saddle itself 
 with the mountainous load of the violence and vice 
 of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny 
 ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet ; whilst 
 Innovation is always in the right, triumphant, attack- 
 ing, and sure of final success. Conservatism stands 
 on man's confessed limitations ; Reform on his indis- 
 putable infinitude ; Conser\'atism on circumstance ; 
 Liberalism on power ; one goes to make an adroit 
 member of the social frame, the other to postpone 
 all things to the man himself; Conservatism is deb- 
 onair and social ; Reform is individual and impe- 
 rious. We are reformers in spring and summer ; in 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 227 
 
 autumn and winter we stand by the old ; reformers 
 in the morning, conservers at night. Reform is 
 affirmative, Conservatism negative ; Conservatism goes 
 for comfort. Reform for truth. Conservatism is more 
 candid to behold another's worth ; Reform more dis- 
 posed to maintain and increase its own. Conserva- 
 tism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no 
 invention : it is all memory. Reform has no grati- 
 tude, no prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great 
 difference to your figure and to your thought, 
 whether your foot is advancing or receding. Con- 
 servatism never puts the foot forward ; in the hour 
 when it does that, it is not establishment, but re- 
 form. Conservatism tends to universal seeming and 
 treachery, believes in a negative fate, believes that 
 men's temper governs them ; that for me it avails 
 not to trust in principles ; they will fail me ; I must 
 bend a little ; it distrusts Nature ; it thinks there is a 
 general law without a particular application, — law for 
 all that does not include any one. Reform in its 
 antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick 
 with hoofs ; it runs to egotism and bloated self- 
 conceit ; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural 
 refining and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and 
 sensual reaction. 
 
 And so, whilst we do not go beyond general state- 
 ments, it may be safely affirmed of these two meta- 
 physical antagonists, that each is a good half, but 
 an impossible whole. Each exposes the abuses of 
 the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both 
 must combine. Nature does not give the crown of 
 its approbation — namely, beauty — to any action or 
 
228 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 emblem or actor, but to one which combines both 
 these elements ; not to the rock which resists the 
 waves from age to age, nor to the wave which lashes 
 incessantly the rock ; but the superior beauty is with 
 the oak which stands with its hundred arms against 
 the storms of a century, and grows every year like a 
 sapling ; or the river which ever flowing, yet is found 
 in the same bed from age to age ; or, greatest of ail, 
 the man who has subsisted for years amid the 
 clranges of Nature, yet has distanced himself, so that 
 when you remember what he was, and see what he 
 is, you say. What strides ! what a disparity is here ! 
 
 Throughout Nature the past combines in every 
 creature with the present. Each of the convolutions 
 of the sea-shell, each node and spine, marks one year 
 of the fish's life ; what was the mouth of the shell for 
 one season, with the addition of new matter by the 
 growth of the animal, becoming an ornamental 
 node. The leaves and a shell of soft wood are all 
 that the vegetation of this summer has made, but the 
 solid columnar stem, which lifts that bank of foliage 
 into the air to draw the eye . and to cool us with its 
 shade, is the gift and legacy of dead and buried 
 years. 
 
 In Nature, each of these elements being always 
 present, each theory has a natural support. As we 
 take our stand on Necessity or on Ethics, shall we 
 go for the conservative or for the reformer. If we 
 read the world historically we shall say, Of all the 
 ages, the present hour and circumstance is the cumu- 
 lative result; this is the best throw of the dice of 
 Nature that has yet been, or that is yet possible. If 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 229 
 
 we see it from the side of Will, or the Moral Senti- 
 ment, we shall accuse the Past and the Present, and 
 require the impossible of the Future. 
 
 But although this bifold fact lies thus united in real 
 Nature, and so united that no man can continue to 
 exist in whom both these elements do not work, yet 
 men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish 
 children, who, by reason of their partiality, see 
 everything in the most absurd manner, and are the 
 victims at all times of the nearest object. There is 
 even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all 
 times. Our experience, our perception, is conditioned 
 by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, 
 that is, with every truth a certain falsehood. As 
 this is the invariable method of our training, we 
 must give it allowance, and suffer men to learn, as 
 they have done for six millenniums, a word at a time, 
 to pair off into insane parties, and learn the amount 
 of truth each knows, by the denial of an equal amount 
 of truth. For the present, then, to come at what 
 sum is attainable to us, we must even hear the parties 
 plead as parties. 
 
 That which is best about Conservatism, that which, 
 though it cannot be expressed in detail, inspires rev- 
 erence in all, is the Inevitable. There is the ques- 
 tion not only, what the conservative says for himself, 
 but, why must he say it ? What insurmountable fact 
 binds him to that side ? Here is the feet which men 
 call Fate, and fate in dread degrees, fate behind fate, 
 not to be disposed of by the consideration that the 
 Conscience commands this or that, but necessitating 
 the question, whether the faculties of man will play 
 
230 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 him true in resisting the facts of universal experience ? 
 For altliougli tlie commands of the Conscience are 
 essentially absolute, they are historically limitary. 
 Wisdom does not seek a literal rectitude, but a 
 useful, that is, a conditioned one, such a one as the 
 faculties of man and the constitution of things will 
 warrant. The reformer, the partisan, loses himself 
 in driving to the utmost some specialty of right con- 
 duct, until his own nature and all Nature resists him ; 
 but Wisdom attempts nothing enormous and dis- 
 proportioned to its powers, nothing which it cannot 
 perform or nearly perform. We have all a certain 
 intellection or presentiment of reform existing in the 
 mind, which does not yet descend into the character, 
 and those who throw themselves blindly on this lose 
 themselves. Whatever they attempt in that direction 
 fails, and reacts suicidally on the actor himself. This 
 is the penalty of having transcended Nature. For the 
 e.xisting world is not a dream, and cannot with im- 
 punity be treated as a dream ; neither is it a disease ; 
 but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the 
 mother of whom you were born. Reform converses 
 with possibilities, perchance with impossibilities ; but 
 here is sacred fact. This also was tnae, or it could 
 not be : it had life in it, or it could not have e.xisted ; 
 it has life in it, or it could not continue. Your 
 schemes may be feasible, or may not be, but this 
 has the endorsement of Nature and a long friendship 
 and cohabitation with the powers of Nature. This 
 will stand until a better cast of the dice is made. 
 The contest between the Future and the Past is one 
 between Divinity entering and Divinity departing. 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 23 1 
 
 You are welcome to try your experiments, and, if you 
 can, to displace the actual order by that ideal repub- 
 lic you announce, for nothing but God will expel God. 
 But plainl}- the burden of proof must lie with the pro- 
 jector. We hold to this, until you can demonstrate 
 something better. 
 
 The system of property and law goes back for its 
 origin to barbarous and sacred times ; it is the fruit 
 of the same mysterious cause as the mineral or ani- 
 mal world. There is a natural sentiment and pre- 
 possession in favor of age, of ancestors, of barbarous 
 and aboriginal usages, which is a homage to the ele- 
 ment of necessity and divinity which is in them. The 
 respect for the old names of places, of mountains 
 and streams, is universal. The Indian and barba- 
 rous name can never be supplanted without loss. 
 The ancients tell us that the gods loved the Ethio- 
 pians for their stable customs ; and the Egyptians 
 and Chaldeans, whose origin could not be explored, 
 passed among the junior tribes of Greece and Italy 
 for sacred nations. 
 
 JMoreover, so deep is the foundation of the exist- 
 ing social system, that it leaves no one out of it. 
 We may be partial, but Fate is not. All men have 
 their root in it. You who quarrel with the arrange- 
 ments of society, and are wiUing to einbroil all, and 
 risk the indisputable good that exists, for the chance 
 of better, live, move, and have your being in this, 
 and your deeds contradict your words every day. 
 For as you cannot jump from the ground without 
 using the resistance of the ground, nor put out the 
 boat to sea without shoving from the shore, nor 
 
232 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 attain liberty without rejecting obligation, so you 
 are under the necessity of using the Actual order of 
 things in order to disuse it; to live by it, whilst 
 you wish to take away its life. The past has baked 
 your loaf, and in the strength of its bread you would 
 break up the oven. But you are betrayed by your 
 own Nature. You also are conservatives. However 
 men please to style themselves, I see no other than 
 a conservative party. You are not only identical 
 with us in your needs, but also in your methods and 
 aims. You quarrel with ra}' conservatism, but it is 
 to build up one of your own; it will have a new 
 beginning, but the same course and end, the same 
 trials, the same passions; among ^the lovers of the 
 new I observe that there is a jealousy of the new- 
 est, and that the seceder from the seceder is as dam- 
 nable as the pope himself. 
 
 On these and the like grounds of general state- 
 ment, Conservatism plants itself without danger of 
 being displaced. Especially before this personal ap- 
 peal the innovator must confess his weakness, must 
 confess that no man is to be found good enough to 
 be entitled to stand champion for the principle. But 
 when this great tendency comes to practical encoun- 
 ters, and is challenged by young men, to whom it is 
 no abstraction, but a fact of hunger, distress, and 
 exclusion from opportunities, it must needs seem in- 
 jurious. The youth, of course, is an innovator by 
 the fact of his birth. There he stands, newly born 
 on the planet, a universal beggar, with all the reason 
 of things, one would say, on his side. In his first 
 consideration how to feed, clothe, and warm himself. 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 233 
 
 he is met by warnings on every hand that tliis thing 
 and that thing have owners, and he must go else- 
 where. Then he says : — " If I am born into the earth, 
 where is my part? have the goodness, gentlemen of 
 this world, to show me my wood-lot where I may 
 fell my wood, my field where to plant m}- corn, my 
 pleasant ground where to buUd my cabin." 
 
 ' ' Touch any wood, or field, or house-lot on your 
 pern," cry all the gentlemen of this world; "but 
 you may come and work in ours, for us, and we will 
 give you a piece of bread." 
 
 " And what is that peril?" 
 
 "Knives and muskets, if we meet you in the act; 
 imprisonment, if we find you afterward." 
 
 "And by what authority, kind gentlemen?" 
 
 " By our law." 
 
 " And your law, — is it just? " 
 
 " As just for you as it was for us. We wrought 
 for others under this law, and got our lands so." 
 
 ' ' I repeat the question. Is your law just ? " 
 
 "Not quite just, but necessary. Moreover, it is 
 juster now than it was when we were born ; we have 
 made it milder and more equal." 
 
 " I will none of your law," returns the youth ; "it 
 encumbers me. I cannot understand, or so much as 
 spare time to read that needless library of your laws. 
 Nature has sufficiently provided me with rewards and 
 sharp penalties, to bind me not to transgress. Like 
 the Persian noble of old, I ask ' that I may neither 
 command nor obey.' I do not msh to enter into your 
 complex social system. I shall serve those whom 
 I can, and they who can will serve me. I shall 
 
234 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 seek those whom I love, and shun those whom I 
 love not ; and what more can all your laws render 
 me?" 
 
 With equal earnestness and good faith, replies to 
 this plaintiff an upholder of the establishment, a 
 man of many virtues : — 
 
 " Your opposition is feather-brained and over-fine. 
 Young man, I have no skill to talk with you, but 
 look at me ; I have risen early and sat late, and 
 toiled honestl}- and painfully for very many years. I 
 never dreamed about methods ; I laid my bones to, 
 and drudged for the good I possess ; it was not got by 
 fraud, nor by luck, but by work, and you must show 
 me a wan-ant like these stubborn facts in your own 
 fidelity and labor before I suffer you, on the faith 
 of a few fine words, to ride into my estate, and claim 
 to scatter it as your own.'' 
 
 " Now you touch the heart of the matter," replies 
 the reformer. " To that fidelity and labor I pay 
 homage. I am unworthy to arraign your manner of 
 living until I too have been tried. But I should be 
 more unworthy, if I did not tell you why I cannot 
 walk in your steps. I find this vast network, whicli 
 3'ou call property, extended over the whole planet. 
 I cannot occupy the bleakest crag of the White Hills 
 or the Alleghany Range, but some man or corpora- 
 tion steps up to me to show me that it is his. Now, 
 though I am very peaceable, and on my private ac- 
 count could well enough die, since it appears there 
 was some mistake in my creation, and that I have 
 been ?«irsent to this earth, where all the seats were 
 already taken, — yet I feel called upon in behalf of 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 235 
 
 rational nature, which I represent, to declare to you 
 my opinion, that, if tlie Earth is yours, so also is it 
 mine. All your aggregate existences are less to me 
 a fact than is my own ; as I am born to the Earth, 
 so the Earth is given to me, what I want of it to till 
 and lo plant ; nor could I, without pusillanimity, 
 omit to claim so much. , I must not only have a name 
 to live — I must live. /My genius leads me to build 
 a different manner of life from any of yours. I can- 
 not, then, spare you the whole world. I love you 
 better. I must tell you the truth practically, and 
 take that which you call yours. It is God's world 
 and mine ; yours as much as you want, mine as 
 much as I want. Besides, I know your ways ; 1 
 know the symptoms of the disease. To the end 
 of your power, you will sen-e this lie which cheats 
 you. Your want is a gulf which the possession of 
 the broad earth would not fill. Yonder sun in heaven 
 you would pluck down from shining on the universe, 
 and make him a property and privacy, if you could ; 
 and the moon and the north star you would quickly 
 have occasion for in your closet and bed-chamber. 
 What you do not want for use, you crave for orna- 
 ment, and what your convenience could spare, your 
 pride cannot." 
 
 On the other hand, precisely the defence which 
 v/as set up for the British Constitution, namely, that 
 with all its admitted defects, rotten boroughs, and 
 monopolies, it worked well, and substantial justice 
 was somehow done ; the wisdom and the worth did 
 get into parliament, and every interest did by right, 
 or might, or slight, get represented : the same 
 
236 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 defence is set up for the existing institutions. Tliey 
 are not the best ; they are not just ; and in respect 
 to you, personally, O brave young man ! they can- 
 not be justified. They have, it is most true, left 
 you no acre for your own, and no law but our law, 
 to the ordaining of which you were no party. But 
 they do answer the end ; they are really friendly to 
 the good, unfriendly to the bad ; they second the 
 industrious and the kind ; they foster genius. They 
 really have so much flexibility as to afford your talent 
 and character, on the whole, the same chance of 
 demonstration and success which they might have, 
 if there was no law and no property. 
 
 It is trivial and merely superstitious to say 
 that nothing is given you, no outfit, no exhibi- 
 tion ; for in this institution of credit, which is as 
 universal as honesty and promise in the human 
 countenance, always some neighbor stands ready 
 to be bread and land and tools and stock to the 
 young adventurer. And if in any one respect 
 they have come short, see what ample retribu- 
 tion of good they have made. They have lost 
 no time and spared no expense to collect libra- 
 ries, museums, galleries, colleges, palaces, hos- 
 pitals, observatories, cities. The ages have not 
 been idle, nor kings slack, nor the rich niggardly. 
 Have we not atoned for this small offence (which 
 we could not help) of leaving you no right in 
 the soil, by this splendid indemnity of ancestral 
 and national wealth? Would you have been 
 born like a gypsy in a hedge, and preferred your 
 freedom on a heath, and the range of a planet 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 237 
 
 which had no shed or boscage to cover you 
 from sun and wind, to ^tliis towered and citied 
 world? to this world of Rome, and Memphis, 
 and Constantinople, and Vienna, and Paris, and 
 London, and New York? For thee Naples, Flor- 
 ence, and Venice, for thee the fair Mediterranean, 
 the sunny Adriatic, for thee both Indies smile ; for 
 thee the hospitable North opens its heated palaces 
 under the polar circle ; for thee roads have been 
 cut in every direction across the land, and fleets of 
 floating palaces with every security for strength 
 and provision for luxury swim by sail and by 
 steam through all the waters of this world. Every 
 island for thee has a town, every town a hotel. 
 Though thou wast bom landless, yet to thy in- 
 dustry and thrift and small condescension to the 
 established usage scores of servants are swarm- 
 ing in every strange place with cap and knee to thy 
 command, — scores, nay, hundreds and thousands, 
 for thy wardrobe, thy table, thy chamber, thy li- 
 brary, thy leisure ; and every whim is anticipated 
 and served by the best ability of the whole popu- 
 lation of each country. The king on the throne 
 governs for thee, and the judge judges ; the bar- 
 rister pleads, the farmer tQls, the joiner hammers, 
 the postman rides. Is it not exaggerating a trifle 
 to insist on a formal acknowledgment of your 
 claims, when these substantial advantages have 
 been secured to you? Now can your children be 
 educated, your labor turned to their advantage, 
 and its fruits secured to them after your death. 
 It is frivolous to say you have no acre, because you 
 
238 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 have not a mathematically measured piece of land. 
 Providence takes care that you shall have a place, 
 that you are waited for, and corae accredited ; and 
 as soon as you put your gift to use, you shall have 
 acre or acre's worth according to your exhibition 
 of desert, — acre, if you need land ; acre's worth, 
 if you prefer to draw, or carve, or make shoes or 
 wheels, to the tilling of the soil. 
 
 Besides, it might temper your indignation at the 
 supposed wrong which society has done you, to keep 
 the question before you, how society got into this 
 predicament. Who put things on this false basis? 
 No single man, but all men. No man voluntarily 
 and knowingly ; but it is the result of that degree of 
 culture there is in the planet. The order of things 
 is as good as the character of the population permits. 
 Consider it as the work of a great and beneficent and 
 progressive necessity, which, from the first pulsation 
 of the first animal life up to the present high culture 
 of the best nations, has advanced thus far. Thank 
 the rude foster-mother, though she has taug'nt )'ou a 
 better wisdom than her own, and has set hopes in 
 your heart which shall be history in the ne.\t ages. 
 You are yourself the result of this manner of lining, 
 this foul compromise, this vituperated Sodom. It 
 nourished you with care and love on its breast, as it 
 had nourished many a lover of the right, and many 
 a poet, and prophet, and teacher of men. Is it so 
 irremediably bad? Then again, if the mitigations 
 are considered, do not all the mischiefs virtually 
 vanish? The form is bad, but see you not how 
 every personal character reacts on the form, and 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 239 
 
 makes it new? A strong person makes the law and 
 custom null before his own will. Then the principle 
 of love and truth reappears in the strictest courts 
 of fashion and prpperty. Under the richest robes, 
 in the darlings of the selectest circles of European 
 or American aristocracy, the strong heart will beat 
 with love of mankind, with impatience of accidental 
 distinctions, with the desire to achieve its own fate, 
 and make every ornament it wears authentic and 
 real. 
 
 Moreover, as we have already shown that there 
 is no pure reformer, so it is to be considered that 
 there is no pure conservative, no man who from the 
 beginning to the end of his life maintains the defec- 
 tive institutions ; but he who sets his face like a flint 
 against every novelty, when approached in the con- 
 fidence of conversation, in the presence of friendly 
 and generous persons, has also his gracious and re- 
 lenting motions, and espouses for the time the cause 
 of man ; and even if this be a shortlived emotion, 
 yet the remembrance of it in private hours mitigates 
 his selfishness and compliance with custom. 
 
 The Friar Bernard lamented in his cell on Mount 
 Cenis the crimes of mankind, and rising one morning 
 before day from his bed of moss and dry leaves, he 
 gnawed his roots and berries, drank of the spring, 
 and set forth to go to Rome to reform the corruption 
 of mankind. On his way he encountered manv 
 travellers who greeted him courteously ; and the 
 cabins of the peasants and the castles of the lords 
 supplied his few wants. When he came at last to 
 Rome his piet}' and good will easily introduced him 
 
240 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 to many families of the rich, and on the first day he 
 saw and talked with gentle mothers with their babes 
 at their breasts, who told him how much love they 
 bore their children, and how they were perplexed in 
 their daily walk lest they should fail in their duty to 
 them. "What!" he said, "and this on rich em- 
 broidered carpets, on marble floors, with cunning 
 sculpture, and carved wood, and rich pictures, and 
 piles of books about you? " — " Look at our pictures 
 and books," they said, " and we will tell you, good 
 Father, how we spent the last evening. These are 
 stories of godly children and holy families and ro- 
 mantic sacrifices made in old or in recent times by 
 great and not mean persons ; and last evening our 
 family was collected, and our husbands and brothers 
 discoursed sadly on what we could save and give in 
 the hard times." Then came in the men, and they 
 said, " What cheer, brother? Does thy convent 
 want gifts ? " Then the friar Bernard went home 
 swiftly with other thoughts than he brought, say- 
 ing : — " This way of life is wrong, yet these Romans 
 whom I prayed God to destroy are lovers, they are 
 lovere ; what can 1 do ? " 
 
 The reformer concedes that these mitigations exist, 
 and that if he proposed comfort he should take sides 
 with the establishment. Your words are excellent, 
 but they do not tell the whole. Conservatism is 
 affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning 
 juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat 
 for everything they give. I look bigger, but am less; 
 I have more clothes, but am not so warm ; more 
 armor, but less courage ; more books, but less wit. 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 241 
 
 What you say of your planted, builded, and decor- 
 ated world is true enough, and I gladly avail myself 
 of its convenience ; yet I have remarked that what 
 holds in particular holds in general, that the plant 
 Man does not require for his most glorious flowering 
 this pomp of preparation and convenience, but the 
 thoughts of some beggarly Homer who strolled, God 
 knows when, in the infanc}' and barbarism of the old 
 world ; the gravity and sense of some slave Moses 
 who leads away his fellow slaves from their masters ; 
 the contemplation of some Scythian Anacharsis ; the 
 erect, formidable valor of some Dorian townsmen in 
 the town of Sparta ; the vigor of Clovis the Frank, 
 -■nd Alfred the Saxon, and Alaric the Goth, and 
 Mahomet, Ali, and Omar the Arabians, Saladin the 
 Curd, and Othman the Turk, sufficed to build what 
 you call society on the spot and in the instant when 
 the sound mind in a sound body appeared. Rich 
 and iine is your dress, O Conservatism ! your horses 
 are of the best blood ; your roads are well cut and 
 well paved ; your pantry is full of meats and your 
 cellar of wines, and a very good state and condition 
 are you for gentlemen and ladies to Uve under ; but 
 every one of these goods steals away a drop of my 
 blood. I want the necessity of supplying my own 
 wants. All this costly culture of yours is not neces- 
 sary. Greatness does not need it. Yonder peasant 
 who sits neglected there in a corner carries a whole 
 revolution of man and Nature in his head, which shall 
 be a sacred history to some future ages. For man is 
 the end of Nature ; nothing so easily organizes itself 
 in every part of the universe as he ; no moss, no 
 
242 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 lichen is so easily born ; and he takes along with him 
 and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of 
 society and condition ex tempore, as an army encamps 
 in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, 
 creates a white city in an hour, a government, a 
 market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and 
 for love. 
 
 These considerations, urged by those whose char- 
 acters and whose fortunes are yet to be formed, must 
 needs command the sympathy of all reasonable per- 
 sons. But beside that charity which should make 
 all adult persons interested for the youth and engage 
 them to see that he has a free field and fair play on 
 his entrance into life, we are bound to see that the 
 society of which we compose a part does not permit 
 the formation or continuance of views and practices 
 injurious to the honor and welfare of mankind. The 
 objection to Conservatism when embodied in a party 
 is that in its love of acts it hates principles ; it lives 
 in the senses, not in truth ; it sacrifices to despair ; it 
 goes for availableness in its candidate, not for worth ; 
 and for expediency in its measures, and not for the 
 right. Under pretence of allowing for friction it 
 makes so many additions and supplements to the 
 machine of society, that it will play smoothly and 
 softly, but will no longer grind any grist. 
 
 The conservative party in the universe concedes 
 that the radical would talk sufficiently to the purpose 
 if we were still in the garden of Eden ; he legislates 
 for man as he ought to be ; his theory is right, but he 
 makes no allowance for friction ; and this omission 
 makes his whole doctrine false. The idealist retorts 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 243 
 
 that the conservative falls into a far more noxious 
 error in the other extreme. The conservative as- 
 sumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is 
 a hospital, his total legislation is for the present dis- 
 tress, a universe in slippers and flannels, vi'ith bib and 
 pap-spoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea. Sickness 
 gets organized as well as health, the vice as well as 
 the virtue. Now that a vicious system of trade has 
 existed so long, it has stereotyped itself in the human 
 generation, and misers are born. And now that sick- 
 ness has got such a foothold, leprosy has grown cun- 
 ning, has got into the ballot-box ; the lepers outvote 
 the clean ; society has resolved itself into a Hospital 
 Committee, and all its laws are quarantine. If any 
 man resist, and set up a foolish hope he has enter- 
 tained as good against the general despair, society 
 frov/ns on him, shuts him out of her opportunities, 
 her granaries, her refectories, her water and bread, 
 and will serve him a sexton's turn. Conservatism 
 takes as low a view of every part of human action and 
 passion. Its religion is just as bad : a lozenge for 
 the sick ; a dolorous tune to beguile the distemper ; 
 mitigations of pain by pillows and anodynes ; always 
 mitigations, never remedies ; pardons for sin, funeral 
 honors, — never self-help, renovation, and virtue. 
 Its social and political action has no better aim ; to 
 keep out wind and weather, to bring the day and 
 year about and make the world last our day ; not to 
 sit on the world and steer it ; not to sink the memory 
 of the past in the glory of a new and more excellent 
 creation; a timid cobbler and patcher, it degrades 
 whatever it touches. The cause of education is urged 
 
244 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 in this country with the utmost earnestness, — on 
 what ground? why, on tliis, that the people liave tlie 
 power, and if they are not instructed to sympathize 
 with the intelligent, reading, trading, and governing 
 class, inspired with a taste for the same competitions 
 and prizes, they will upset the fair pageant of Judi- 
 cature, and perhaps lay a hand on the sacred muni- 
 ments of wealth itself, and new distribute the land. 
 Religion is taught in the same spirit. The contrac- 
 tors who were building a road out of Baltimore some 
 years ago found the Irish laborers quarrelsome and 
 refractory to a degree that embarrassed the agents 
 and seriously interrupted the progress of the work. 
 The corporation were advised to call off the police 
 and build a Catholic chapel ; which they did ; the 
 priest presently restored order, and the work went on 
 prosperously. Such hints, be sure, are too valuable 
 to be lost. If you do not value the Sabbath or other 
 religious institutions, give yourself no concern about 
 maintaining them. They have already acquired a 
 market value as conservators of property; and if 
 priest and church-member should fail, the chambers 
 of commerce and the presidents of the banks, the 
 very innholders and landlords of the county, would 
 muster with fury to tlieir support. 
 
 Of course, religion in such hands loses its essence. 
 Instead of that reliance which the soul suggests on 
 the eternity of truth and duty, men are misled into 
 a reliance on institutions, which, the moment they 
 cease to be the instantaneous creations of the devout 
 sentiment, are worthless. Religion among the low 
 becomes low. As it loses its truth, it loses credit 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 245 
 
 with the sagacious. They detect the falsehood of 
 the preaching, but when they say so, all good citi- 
 zens cry, "Hush! do not weaken the state, do not 
 take off the strait-jacket from dangerous persons." 
 Every lionest fellow must keep up the hoax the best 
 he can ; must patronize providence and piety, and 
 wherever he sees anything that will keep men 
 amused, schools or churches or poetry, or picture- 
 galleries or music, or what not, he must cry, " Hist- 
 a-boy ! " and urge the game on. What a compliment 
 we pay to the good Spirit with our superserviceable 
 zeal ! 
 
 But not to balance reasons for and against the es- 
 tablishment any longer, and if it still be asked in 
 this necessity of partial organization. Which party on 
 the whole has the highest claims on our sympathy? 
 I bring it home to the private heart, where all such 
 questions must have their final arbitrament. How 
 mil every strong and generous mind choose its 
 ground, — \^-ith the defenders of the old? or with 
 the seekers of the new? Which is that state which 
 promises to edify a great, brave, and beneficent man ; 
 to throw him on his resources, and tax the strength 
 of his character? On which part will each of us 
 find himself in the hour of health and of aspiration ? 
 
 I understand well the respect of mankind for war, 
 because that breaks up the Chinese stagnation of 
 Society, and demonstrates the personal merits of all 
 men. A state of war or anarchy, in which law has 
 little force, is so far valuable, that it puts every man 
 on trial. The man of principle is known as such, 
 and even in the fury of faction is respected. In the 
 
246 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 civil wars of France, Montaigne alone, among all the 
 French gentry; kept his castle gates unbarred, and 
 made his personal integrity as good at least as a regi- 
 ment. The man of courage and resources is shown, 
 and the effeminate and base person. Those who 
 rise above war, and those who fall below it, it easily 
 discriminates, as weU as those who, accepting its 
 rude conditions, keep their own head by their own 
 sword. 
 
 But in peace and a commercial state we depend, 
 not as we ought, on our knowledge and all men's 
 knowledge that we are honest men, but we cowardly 
 lean on the virtue of others. For it is always at last 
 the virtue of some men in the society which keeps 
 the law in any reverence and power. Is there not 
 something shameful that I should owe my peaceful 
 occupancy of my house and field, not to the knowl- 
 edge of my countrymen that I am useful, but to 
 their respect for sundry other reputable persons, I 
 know not whom, whose joint virtues still keep the 
 law in good order? 
 
 It will never make any difference to a hero what 
 the laws are. His greatness will shine and accom- 
 plish itself unto the end, whether they second him 
 or not. If he have earned his bread by drudgery, 
 and in the narrow and crooked ways which v.'ere all 
 an evil law had left him, he will make it at least 
 honorable by his expenditure. Of the past he will 
 take no heed ; for its wrongs he will not hold him- 
 self responsible ; he will say, all the meanness of my 
 progenitors shall not bereave me of the power to 
 make this hour and company fair and fortunate. 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE. 247 
 
 Whatsoever streams of power and commodity flow 
 to me, shall of me acquire healing virtue, and be- 
 come fountains of safety. Cannot I too descend a 
 Redeemer into Nature? Whosoever hereafter shall 
 name my name shall not record a malefactor, but 
 a benefactor in the earth. If there be power in 
 good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, the north, 
 wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow 
 with a kindlier beam, that I have lived. I am pri- 
 marily engaged to myself to be a public servant of 
 all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there 
 is intelligence and good will at the heart of things, 
 and ever higher and yet higher leadings. These 
 are my engagements ; how can your law further or 
 hinder me in what I shall do to men? On the other 
 hand, these dispositions establish their relations to 
 me. Wherever there is worth, I shall be greeted. 
 Wlierever there are men, are the objects of my study 
 and love. Sooner or later all men wiU be my 
 friends, and will testify in all methods the energy 
 of their regard. I cannot thank your law for my 
 protection. I protect it. It is not in its power to 
 protect me. It is my business to make myself re- 
 vered. I depend on my honor, my labor, and my 
 dispositions for my place in the affections of man- 
 kind, and not on any conventions or parchments of 
 yours. 
 
 But if I allow myself in derelictions, and become 
 idle and dissolute, I quickly come to love the pro- 
 tection of a strong law, because I feel no tide in 
 myself to my advantages. To the intemperate and 
 covetous person no love flows ; to him manldnd 
 
248 THE CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 would pay no rent, no dividend, if force were once 
 relaxed ; nay, if they could give their verdict, they 
 would say that his self-indulgence and his oppres- 
 sion deserved punishment from society, and not that 
 rich board and lodging he now enjoys. The law 
 acts, then, as a screen of his unworthiness, and 
 makes him worse the longer it protects him. 
 
 In conclusion, to return from this alternation of 
 partial views to the high platform of universal and 
 necessary history, it is a happiness for mankind that 
 innovation has got on so far, and has so free a field 
 before it. The boldness of the hope men entertain 
 transcends all former experience. It calms and 
 cheers them with the picture of a simple and equal 
 life of truth and piety. And this hope flowered on 
 what tree? It was not imported from the stock of 
 some celestial plant, but grew here on the wild crab 
 of Conservatism. It is much that this old and vitu- 
 perated system of things has borne so feir a child. 
 It predicts that amidst a planet peopled with conser- 
 vatives, one Reformer may yet be bom. 
 
THE TRANSCE.VDENTALIST. 249 
 
 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 A LECTURE READ AT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, 
 BOSTON, JANUARY, 1S42. 
 
 The first thing we have to say respecting what are 
 called new -views here in New England, at the pres- 
 ent time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest 
 of thoughts cast into the mould of these new times. 
 The light is always identical in its composition, but 
 it falls on a great variety of objects, and by so falling 
 is first revealed to us, not in its own form, for it is 
 formless, but in theirs ; in like manner, thought only 
 appears in the objects it classifies. What is popu- 
 larly called Transcendentalism among us is Idealism ; 
 Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, man- 
 kind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists 
 and Idealists : the first class founding on experience, 
 the second on consciousness ; the first class begin- 
 ning to think fi-om the data of the senses, the second 
 class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, 
 the senses give us representations of things, but what 
 are the things themselves they cannot tell. The 
 materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force 
 of circumstances, and the animal wants of man ; the 
 idealist, on the power of Thought and of Will, on in- 
 spiration, on miracle, on individual culture. These 
 two modes of thinking are both natural, but the 
 idealist contends that his way of thinking is in higher 
 
250 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 Nature. He concedes all that the other affirms, 
 admits the impressions of sense, admits their coher- 
 ency, their use and beauty, and then asks the mate- 
 rialist for his gi'ounds of assurance, that things are as 
 his senses represent them. But I, he says, affirm 
 facts not affected by the illusions of sense, facts which 
 are of the same nature as the faculty which reports 
 them, and not liable to doubt ; facts which in their 
 first appearance to us assume a native superiority to 
 material facts, degrading these into a language by 
 which the first are to be spolcen ; facts which it only 
 needs a retirement from the senses to discern. Every 
 materialist will be an idealist ; but an idealist can 
 never go backward to be a materialist. 
 
 The idealist in speaking of events sees them as 
 spirits. He does not deny the sensuous fact: by no 
 means ; but he will not see that alone. He does not 
 deny the presence of this table, this chair, and the 
 walls of this room, but he looks at these things as the 
 reverse side of the tapestry, as the other end, each 
 being a sequel or completion of a spiritual fact which 
 nearly concerns him. This manner of looking at 
 things transfers every object in Nature from an in- 
 dependent and anomalous position without there, into 
 the consciousness. Even the materialist Condillac, 
 perhaps the most logical expounder of materialism, 
 was constrained to say, " Though we should soar 
 into the heavens, though we should sink into the 
 abyss, we never go out of ourselves ; it is always our 
 own thought that we perceive." What more could 
 an idealist say? 
 
 The materialist, secure in the certainty of sensa- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 251 
 
 tion, mocks at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers and 
 dreamers, and believes that his life is solid, that he 
 at least takes nothing for granted, but knows where 
 he stands, and what he does. Yet how easy it is to 
 show him that he also is a phantom walking and 
 working amid phantoms, and that he need only ask 
 a question or two beyond his daily questions to find 
 his solid universe growing dim and impalpable before 
 his sense. The sturdy capitalist, no matter how deep 
 and square on blocks of Quincy granite he lays the 
 foundations of his banking-house or Exchange, must 
 set it, at last, not on a cube corresponding to the 
 angles of his structure, but on a mass of unknown 
 materials and solidity, red-hot or white-hot, perhaps, 
 at the core, which rounds off to an almost perfect 
 sphericity, and lies floating in soft air, and goes spin- 
 ning away, dragging bank and banker with it at a 
 rate of thousands of miles the hour, he knows not 
 whither, — a bit of bullet, now glimmering, now 
 darkling through a small cubic space on the edge of 
 an unimaginable pit of emptiness. And this wild 
 balloon, in which his whole venture is embarked, is 
 a just symbol of his whole state and faculty. One 
 thing, at least, he says is certain, and does not give 
 me the headache, that figures do not lie ; the multi- 
 plication table has been hitherto found unimpeachable 
 truth ; and, moreover, if I put a gold eagle in my safe, 
 I find it again to-morrow ; but for these thoughts, 
 I know not whence they are. They change and pass 
 away. But ask him why he believes that a uniform 
 experience vrill continue uniform, or on what grounds 
 he founds his faith in his figures, and he will perceive 
 
252 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 that his mental fabric is built up on just as strange 
 and quaking foundations as his proud edifice of 
 stone. 
 
 In the order of thought, the materialist takes his 
 departure from the external world, and esteems a 
 man as one product of that. The idealist takes his 
 departure from his consciousness, and reckons the 
 world an appearance. The materialist respects sen- 
 sible masses. Society, Government, social art, and 
 luxury, every establishment, every mass, wliether 
 majority of numbers, or extent of space, or amount 
 of objects, ever}- social action. The idealist has 
 another measure, which is metaphysical ; namely, the 
 rank which things themselves take in his conscious- 
 ness, not at all the size or appearance. IVIind is the 
 only reality, of which men and all otlier natures are 
 better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, liis- 
 tory, are only subjective phenomena. Although in 
 his action overpowered by tlie laws of action, and so, 
 warmly cooperating with men, even preferring them 
 to himself, yet when he speaks scientifically, or after 
 the order of thought, he is constrained to degrade 
 persons into representatives of truths. He does not 
 respect labor, or the products of labor, namely, prop- 
 erty, otherwise than as a manifold symbol, illustrat- 
 ing with wonderful fidelity of details the laws of 
 being ; he does not respect government, except as far 
 as it reiterates the law of his mind ; nor the church, 
 nor charities, nor arts, for tliemselves ; but hears, as 
 at a vast distance, what they say, as if his conscious- 
 ness would speak to him through a pantomimic scene. 
 His thought, — that is the Universe. His experience 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 253 
 
 inclines him to behold tlie procession of fects you 
 call the world, as flowing perpetually outward from 
 an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike 
 of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard 
 all things as having a subjective or relative existence, 
 relative to that aforesaid Unkno«-n Centre of him. 
 
 From this transfer of the world into the conscious- 
 ness, this beholding of aU things in the mind, 
 follow easily his whole ethics. It is simpler to be 
 self-dependent. The height, the deity of man is, 
 to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign 
 force. Society is good when it does not violate me ; 
 but best when it is likest to solitude. Everything 
 real is self-existent. Everything divine shares the 
 self-existence of Deity. All that you call the world 
 is the shadow of that substance which you are, the 
 perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those 
 that are dependent and of those that are independ- 
 ent of your will. Do not cumber yourself with 
 fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects ; 
 let the soul be erect, and all things will go well. 
 You think me the child of my circumstances ; I make 
 my circumstance. Let any thought or motive of 
 mine be different from that they are, the difference 
 will transform my condition and economy. I — this 
 thought which is called I — is the mould into which 
 the world is poured like melted wax. The mould is 
 invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the 
 mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but 
 it is the power of me. Am I in harmony with myself? 
 my position will seem to you just and commanding. 
 Am I vicious and insane ? my fortunes will seem to 
 
254 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 you obscure and descending. As I am, so shall I 
 associate, and so shall I act ; Csesar's history will 
 paint out Ccesar. Jesus acted so because he thought 
 so. I do not wish to overlook or to gainsay any 
 reality ; I say, I make my circumstance ; but if you 
 ask me. Whence am I ? I feel, like other men, my re- 
 lation to that fact which cannot be spoken, or defined, 
 nor even thought, but which exists, and will exist. 
 
 The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connec- 
 tion of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, 
 in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new 
 influx of light and power ; he believes in inspiration 
 and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual prin- 
 ciple should be suifered to demonstrate itself to the 
 end, in all possible applications to the state of man, 
 without the admission of anything unspiritual ; that 
 is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus 
 the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of 
 the thought, and never. Who said it? And so he 
 resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures 
 on the spirit than its own. 
 
 In action he easily incurs the charge of anti- 
 nomianism b}' his avowal that he, who has the Law- 
 giver, may with safety not only neglect, but even 
 contravene, every written commandment. In the 
 play of Othello, the expiring Desdemona absolves 
 her husband of the murder, to her attendant Emilia. 
 Afterwards, when EmiUa charges him with the 
 crime, Othello exclaims, 
 
 " You heard her say herself it was not I." 
 Emilia replies, 
 
 " The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil." 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 255 
 
 Of this fine incident, Jacobi, the Transcendental 
 moralist, makes use, with other parallel instances, 
 in his repl)' to Fichte. Jacobi, refusing all measure 
 of right and wrong except the determinations of the 
 private spirit, remarks that there is no crime but lias 
 sometimes been a virtue. " I," he says, " am that 
 atheist, that godless person, who, in opposition to an 
 imaginary doctrine of calculation, would lie as the 
 dying Desdemoua lied ; would lie and deceive, as 
 Pylades when he personated Orestes ; would assas- 
 sinate like Timoleon; would perjure m3'self Hke 
 Epaminondas and John de Witt ; I would resolve 
 on suicide like Cato ; I would commit sacrilege with 
 David ; yea, and pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, 
 for no other reason than that I was fainting for lack 
 of food. For I have assurance in m)'self, that, in 
 pardoning these faults according to the letter, man 
 exerts the sovereign right which the majesty of his 
 being confers on him ; he sets the seal of his divine ■ 
 nature to the grace he accords." ' 
 
 In like manner, if there is anything grand and 
 daring in human thought or virtue ; any reliance on 
 the vast, the unknown ; any presentiment ; any ex- 
 travagance of faith, — the spiritualist adopts it as most 
 in Natmre. The Oriental mind has always tended to 
 this largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. 
 The Buddliist who thanks no man, who says, "Do 
 not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his convic- 
 tion that every good deed can by no possibility 
 escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by 
 pretending that he has done more than he should, is 
 a Transcendentalist. 
 
 1 CoIeridge*s Translation. 
 
256 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 You will see by this sketch that there is no such 
 thing as a Transcendental party; that there is no 
 pure Transcendentalist ; that we know of none but 
 23rophets and heralds of such a philosophy ; that all 
 who by strong bias of Nature have leaned to the 
 spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of 
 their goal. We have had many harbingers and fore- 
 runners ; but of a purely spiritual life history has 
 afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man 
 who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten 
 angels' food ; who, trusting to his sentiments, found 
 life made of miracles ; who, working for universal 
 aims, found himself fed, he knew not how ; clothed, 
 sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet 
 it was done by his own hands. Only in the instinct 
 of the lower animals we find the suggestion of the 
 methods of it, and something higher than our under- 
 standing. The squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee 
 gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and 
 they are thus provided for ^vithout selfishness or dis- 
 grace. 
 
 Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is the 
 Saturnalia or excess of Faith ; the presentiment of a 
 faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only 
 when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction 
 of his wish? Nature is transcendental, exists pri- 
 marily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet 
 takes no thought for the morrow. Man owns the 
 dignity of the life which throbs around him in chem- 
 istry, and tree, and animal, and in the involuntary 
 functions of his own body ; yet he is balked when he 
 tries to fling himself into this enchanted circle, where 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 257 
 
 all is done without degradation. Yet genius and 
 virtue predict in man the same absence of private 
 ends, and of condescension to circumstances, united 
 with every trait and talent of beauty and power. 
 
 This way of thinking, falling on Roman times, 
 made Stoic philosophers ; falling on despotic times, 
 made patriot Catos and Brutuses ; falling on super- 
 stitious times, made prophets and apostles ; on pop- 
 ish times, made protestants and ascetic monks, 
 preachers of Faith against the preachers of Works ; 
 on prelatical times, made Puritans and Quakers ; and 
 falling on Unitarian and commercial times, makes 
 the peculiar shades of Idealism which we know. 
 
 It is w-ell known to most of my audience that 
 the Idealism of the present day acquired the name 
 of Transcendental from the use of that term by Im- 
 manuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to the 
 skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that 
 there was nothing in the intellect which was not pre- 
 viously in the experience of the senses, by showing 
 that there was a very important class of ideas, or 
 imperative forms, which did not come by experience, 
 but through which experience was acquired ; that 
 these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he de- 
 nominated them Transcendentaliovca.%. The extraor- 
 dinary profoundness and precision of that man's 
 thinking have given vogue to his nomenclature, in 
 Europe and America, to that extent, that whatever 
 belongs to the class of intuitive thought, is popularly 
 called at the present day TrMiscendental. 
 
 Although, as we have said, there is no pure Tran- 
 scendentalist, yet the tendency to respect the intui- 
 
258 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 tions, and to give them, at least in our creed, all 
 authority over our experience, has deeply colored 
 the conversation and poetry of the present day ; 
 and the history of genius and of religion in these 
 times, through impure, and as yet not incarnated in 
 any powerful individual, will be the history of this 
 tendency. 
 
 It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the 
 coarsest observer, that many intelligent and re- 
 ligious persons withdraw themselves from the com- 
 mon labors and competitions of the market and the 
 caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary 
 and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit 
 has yet appeared to justify their separation. They 
 hold themselves aloof; they feel the disproportion 
 between their faculties and the work offered them, 
 and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish 
 of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and 
 such ambitions as the city can propose to them. 
 They are striking work, and crying out for somewliat 
 worthy to do ! What they do is done only because 
 they are overpowered by the humanities that speak 
 on all sides ; and they consent to such labor as is 
 open to them, though to their loft}- dream the writing 
 of Iliads or Hamlets, or the building of cities or 
 empires, seems drudgery. 
 
 Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp 
 or angel, and these must. The question, which a 
 wise man and a student of modern history will ask, 
 is, ^yhat that kind is. And truly, as in ecclesiatical 
 history we take so much pains to know what the 
 Gnostics, what the Essenes, what the Manichees, 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 259 
 
 and what the Reformers beheved, it would not mis- 
 become us to inquire nearer home, what these com- 
 panions and contemporaries of ours think and do, at 
 least so far as these thoughts and actions appear to 
 be not accidental and personal, but common to many, 
 and the inevitable flower of the Tree of Time. Our 
 American literature and spiritual history are, we 
 confess, in the optative mood ; but whoso knows 
 these seething brains, these admirable radicals, these 
 unsocial worshippers, these talkers who talk the sun 
 and moon away, will believe that this heresy cannot 
 pass away without leaving its mark. 
 
 They are lonely ; the spirit of their writing and 
 conversation is lonely ; they repel influences ; they 
 shun general society ; they incline to shut themselves 
 in their chamber in the house, to live in the country 
 rather than in the town, and to find their tasks and 
 amusements in solitude. Society, to be sure, does 
 not like this very well ; it saith, Whoso goes to walk 
 alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to 
 be unfit to be his companions ; it is very uncivil, 
 nay, insulting. Society will retaliate. Meantime, 
 this retirement does not proceed from any whim on 
 the part of these separators ; but if any one will take 
 pains to talk with them, he will find that this part 
 is chosen both from temperament and from principle ; 
 with some unwillingness, too, and as a choice of the 
 less of two evils ; for these persons are not by nature 
 melancholy, sour, and unsocial, they are not stock- 
 ish or brute, but joyous, susceptible, affectionate ; 
 they have even more than others a great wish to be 
 loved. Like the young Mozart, they are rather ready 
 
26o THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 to cry ten times a day, " But are you sure you love 
 me ? " Nay, if they tell you their Avhole thought, 
 thev will own that love seems to them the last and 
 highest gift of Nature ; that there are persons whom 
 in their hearts they daily thank for existing, — per- 
 sons whose faces are perhaps unknown to them, but 
 whose fame and spirit have penetrated their solitude, 
 — and for whose sake they wish to exist. To be- 
 hold the beauty of another character, which inspires 
 a new interest in our own ; to behold the beauty 
 lodged in a human being, with such \-ivacity of ap- 
 prehension that I am instantly forced home to in- 
 quire if I am not deformity itself; to behold in 
 another the expression of a love so high that it as- 
 sures itself, — assures itself also to me against every 
 possible casualty except my unworthiness ; — these 
 are degrees on the scale of human happiness to 
 which they have ascended ; and it is a fidelity to this 
 sentiment which has made common association dis- 
 tasteful to them. They wish a just and even fellow- 
 ship, or none. They cannot gossip with 3'ou, and 
 they do not wish, as they are sincere and religious, 
 to gi'atify any mere curiosity which you may enter- 
 tain. Like fairies, they do not wish to be spoken of. 
 Love me, they say, but do not ask who is my cousin 
 and my uncle. If you do not need to hear my thought, 
 because you can read it in my face and behavior, 
 then I will tell it you from sunrise to sunset. If you 
 cannot divine it, you would not understand what I 
 say. I will not molest myself for you. I do not 
 wish to be profaned. 
 
 And yet it seems as if this loneliness, and not 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 261 
 
 this love, would prevail in their circumstances, be- 
 cause of the extravagant demand they make on 
 human nature. That, indeed, constitutes a new 
 feature in their portrait, that they are the most exact- 
 ing and extortionate critics. Their quarrel with 
 every man they meet is not with his kind, but with 
 his degree. There is not enough of him, — that is 
 the only fault. They prolong their privilege of child- 
 hood in this wise, of doing nothing, — but making 
 immense demands on all the gladiators in the lists of 
 action and fame. They make us feel the strange dis- 
 appointment which overcasts every human youth. 
 So many promising youths, and never a finished 
 man ! The profound nature will have a savage rude- 
 ness ; the delicate one will be shallow, or the victim 
 of sensibility ; the richly accomplished will have 
 some capital absurdity ; and so every piece has a 
 crack. 'Tis strange, but tliis masterpiece is a re- 
 sult of such an extreme delicacy, that the most 
 unobserved flaw in the boy will neutralize the most 
 aspiring genius, and spoil the work. Talk with a sea- 
 man of the hazards to life in his profession, and he 
 will ask you, ' ' Where are the old sailors ? do you 
 not see that all are young men.'" And we, on this 
 sea of human thought, in like manner inquire. 
 Where are the old idealists ? where are they who rep- 
 resented to the last generation that extravagant hope, 
 which a few happy aspirants suggest to ours? In 
 looking at the class of counsel, and power, and 
 wealth, and at the matronage of the land, amidst all 
 the prudence and all the triviality, one asks. Where 
 are they who represented genius, virtue, the invisible 
 
362 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 and heavenly world, to these? Are they dead, — 
 taken in early ripeness to the gods, — as ancient 
 wisdom foretold their fate ? Or did the high idea die 
 out of them, and leave their unpei-fiimed body as its 
 tomb and tablet, announcing to all that the celestial 
 inhabitant, who once gave them beauty, had de- 
 parted? Will it be better with the new generation? 
 We easily predict a fair future to each new candidate 
 who enters the lists, but we are frivolous and vola- 
 tile, and by low aims and ill example do what we 
 can to defeat this hope. Then these youths bring 
 us a rough but effectual aid. By their unconcealed 
 dissatisfaction the)' expose our poverty, and the in- 
 significance of man to man. A man is a poor lim- 
 itary benefactor. He ought to be a shower of 
 benefits — a great influence, which should never 
 let his brother go, but should refresh old merits con- 
 tinually with new ones ; so that, though absent, he 
 should never be out of my mind, his name never 
 far from my lips ; but if the earth should open 
 at m}' side, or my last hour were come, his name 
 should be the prayer I should utter to the Universe. 
 But in our experience man is cheap, and friendship 
 wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our 
 friends in their absence, but we do not ; when deed, 
 word, or letter comes not, they let us go. These 
 e.xacting children advertise us of our wants. There 
 is no compliment, no smooth speech with them ; the}' 
 pay you only this one compliment, of insatiable ex- 
 pectation ; they aspire, they severely exact, and if 
 they only stand fast in this watch-tower, and persist 
 in demanding unto the end, and without end, then 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 263 
 
 are they terrible friends, whereof poet and priest can- 
 not choose but stand in awe ; and wliat if they eat 
 clouds, and drink wind, they have not been without 
 service to the race of man. 
 
 With this passion for what is great and extraor- 
 dinary, it cannot be wondered at that they are re- 
 pelled by vulgarity and frivolity in people. They 
 say to themselves. It is better to be alone than in 
 bad company. And it is really a wish to be met, — 
 the wish to find society for their hope and religion, 
 — which prompts them to shun wliat is called so- 
 ciety. They feel that they are never so fit for friend- 
 ship as when they have quitted mankind, and taken 
 themselves to friend. A picture, a book, a favorite 
 spot in the hills or the woods, which they can people 
 with the fair and worthy creation of the fancy, can 
 give them often forms so vivid, that these for the 
 time shall seem real, and society the illusion. 
 
 But their solitary and fastidious manners not only 
 withdraw them from the conversation, but fi-om the 
 labors of the world ; they are not good citizens, not 
 good members of society ; unwillingly they bear their 
 part of the public and private burdens ; they do not 
 willingly share in the public charities, in the public 
 religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of 
 missions foreign or domestic, in the abolition of the 
 slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They do 
 not even like to vote. The philanthropists inquire 
 whether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth : 
 they had as lief hear that their friend is dead, as that 
 he is a Transcendentalist ; for then is he paralyzed, 
 and can never do anything for humanity. What 
 
264 THE TRAXSCEXDEA'TALIST. 
 
 right, cries tlie good world, has the man of genius to 
 retreat from work, and indulge himself ? The popu- 
 lar literary creed seems to be, " I am a sublime 
 genius ; I ought not therefore to labor." But genius 
 is the power to labor better and more availably. 
 Deserve thy genius; exhalt it. The good, the illu- 
 minated, sit apart from the rest, censuring their dul- 
 ness and vices, as if they thought that, by sitting 
 very grand in their chairs, the very brokers, attor- 
 neys, and congressmen would see the error of their 
 ways, and flock to them. But the good and wise 
 must learn to act, and carry salvation to the comba- 
 tants and demagogues in the dusty arena below. 
 
 On the part of these children, it is replied, that 
 life and their faculty seem to them gifts too rich to 
 be squandered on such trifles as you propose to 
 them. What you call \"our fundamental institutions, 
 your great and holy causes, seem to them great 
 abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters. 
 Each "Cause," as it is called, — say Abolition, 
 Temperance, say Calvinism, or Unitarianism, — 
 becomes speedily a little shop, where the article, let 
 it have been at first never so subtle and ethereal, is 
 now made up into portable and convenient cakes, 
 and retailed in small quantities to suit purchasers. 
 You make very free use of these words " great" and 
 " hoi}"." but few things appear to them such. Few 
 persons have any magnificence of nature to inspire 
 enthusiasm, and the philanthropies and charities have 
 a certain air of quackery. As to the general course 
 of living, and the daily employments of men, they 
 cannot see much virtue in these, since they are parts 
 
THE TRAXSCENDENTALIST. 265 
 
 of this vicious circle ; and as no great ends are an- J 
 swered by the men, there is nothing noble in the arts 
 by which they are maintained. Nay, they have 
 made the experiment, and found that, from the hb- 
 eral professions to the coarsest manual labor, and 
 irom the com'tesies of the academy and the college to 
 the conventions of the cotillon-room and the morning 
 call, there is a spirit of cowardly compromise and 
 seeming, which intimates a frightfiil skepticism, a 
 life without love, and an activity without an aim. 
 
 Unless the action is necessar}', unless it is ade- 
 quate, I do not wish to perform it. I do not wish to 
 do one thing but once. I do not love routine. 
 Once possessed of the principle, it is equally easy to 
 make four or forty thousand applications of it. A 
 great man will be content to have indicated in any 
 the slightest manner his perception of the reigning 
 Idea of his time, and will leave to those who like it 
 the multiplication of examples. When he has hit the 
 white, the rest may shatter the target. Everything 
 admonishes us how needlessly long life is. Every 
 moment of a hero so raises and cheers us, that 
 a twelvemonth is an age. All that the brave Xan- 
 thus brings home from his wars is the recollection 
 that, at the storming of Samos, "in the heat of the 
 battle, Pericles smiled on me, and passed on to 
 another detachment." It is the quality of the mo- 
 ment, not the number of days, of events, or of 
 actors, that imports. 
 
 New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our 
 condition ; if you want tlie aid of our labor, we our- 
 selves stand in greater want of the labor. We are 
 
266 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 miserable with inaction. We perisli of rest and 
 rust ; but we do not like your work. 
 
 " Then," says the world, " show me your own." 
 
 " We have none.'' 
 
 "What will you do, then?" cries the world. 
 
 " We will wait." 
 
 " How long? " 
 
 " Until the Universe rises up and calls us to 
 work." 
 
 " But whilst you wait, you grow old and useless." 
 
 "Be it so: I can sit in a corner and perish (as 
 you call it), but I will not move until I have the 
 highest command. If no call should come for years, 
 for centuries, then I know that the want of the Uni- 
 verse is the attestation of faith by my abstinence. 
 Your virtuous projects, so called, do not cheer me. 
 I know that which shall come will cheer me. If I 
 cannot work, at least I need not lie. All that is 
 clearly due to-day is not to lie. In other places, 
 other men have encountered sharp trials, and have 
 behaved themselves well. The martyrs were sawn 
 asunder, or hung alive on meat-hooks. Cannot we 
 screw our courage to patience and truth, and with- 
 out complaint, or even with good-humor, await our 
 turn of action in the Infinite Counsels?" 
 
 But to come a little closer to the secret of these 
 persons, we must say, that to them it seems a very 
 easy matter to answer the objections of the man of 
 the world, but not so easy to dispose of the doubts 
 and objections that occur to themselves. They are 
 exercised in their own spirit with queries, which 
 acquaint them with all adversity, and with the trials 
 
THE TRAA'SCENDENTALIST. 267 
 
 of the bravest heroes. When I asked them con- 
 cerning their private experience, they answered 
 somewhat in this wise : It is not to be denied that 
 there must be some wide difference between my faith 
 and other faith ; and mine is a certain brief experi- 
 ence, which surprised me in the highway or in the 
 market, in some place, at some time, — whether in ths 
 body or out of the body, God knoweth , — and made 
 me aware that I had played the fool with fools all 
 this time, but that law existed for me and for all ; 
 that to me belonged trust, a child's trust and obe- 
 dience, and the worship of ideas, and I should 
 never be fool more. Well, in the space of an hour, 
 probably, I was let down from this height ; I was at 
 my old tricks, the selfish member of a selfish society. 
 My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep 
 world ; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved 
 of the responsibility of seeing a Universe which I 
 do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of- 
 lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever- 
 glow for a benign climate. 
 
 These two states of thought diverge every mo- 
 ment, and stand in wild contrast. To him who 
 looks at his life from these moments of illumina- 
 tion, it will seem that he skulks and plays a mean, 
 shiftless, and subaltern part in the world. That is 
 to be done which he has not skill to do, or to be 
 said which others can say better, and he lies by, 
 or occupies his hands with some plaything, until his 
 hour comes again. Much of our reading, much of our 
 labor, seems mere waiting ; it was not that we were 
 born for. Any other could do it as well, or better. 
 
26S THE rRAA'SCENDENTALIST. 
 
 So little skill enters into these works, so little do 
 they mix with the divine life, that it really signifies 
 little what we do, whether we turn a grindstone, or 
 ride, or ran, or make fortunes, or govern the state. 
 The worst feature of this double consciousness is, 
 that the two lives, of the understanding and of the 
 soul, which we lead, really show very little relation 
 to each other, never meet and measure each other : 
 one prevails now, all buzz and din ; and the other 
 prevails then, all infinitude and paradise ; and, with 
 the progress of life, the two discover no greater 
 disposition to reconcile themselves. Yet, what is 
 my faith? What am I? What but a thought of 
 serenity and independence, an abode in tlie deep 
 blue sky? Presently the clouds shut down again; 
 yet we retain the belief that this petty web we 
 weave will at last be overshot and reticulated with 
 veins of the blue, and that the moments will charac- 
 terize the days. Patience, then, is for us, is it not? 
 Patience, and still patience. When we pass, as 
 presently we shall, into some new infinitude, out 
 of this Iceland of negations, it will please us to re- 
 flect that, though we had few virtues or consola- 
 tions, we bore with our indigence, nor once strove 
 to repair it with hypocrisy or false heat of any 
 kind. 
 
 But this class are not sufficiently characterized, 
 if we omit to add that they are lovers and worship- 
 pers of Beauty. In the eternal trinity of Truth, 
 Goodness, and Beauty, each in its perfection includ- 
 ing the three, they prefer to make Beauty the sign 
 and head. Something of the same taste is observa- 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 269 
 
 ble in all the moral movements of the time, in the 
 religious and benevolent enterprises. They have 
 a liberal, even an sesthetic spirit. A reference to 
 Beauty in action sounds, to be sure, a little hollow 
 and ridiculous in the ears of the old Church. In 
 politics, it has often sufficed, when they treated of 
 justice, if they kept the bounds of selfish calculation. 
 If they granted restitution, it was prudence which 
 granted it. But the justice which is now claimed 
 for the black, and the pauper, and the drunkard is 
 for Beauty, — is for a necessity to the soul of the 
 agent, not of the beneficiary. I say, this is the 
 tendency, not yet the realization. Our virtue totters 
 and trips, does not yet walk firmly. Its represent- 
 atives are austere ; they preach and denounce ; 
 their rectitude is not yet a grace. They are still 
 liable to that slight taint of burlesque which, in 
 our strange world, attaches to the zealot. A saint 
 should be as dear as the apple of the eye. Yet we 
 are tempted to smile, and we flee from the working 
 to the speculative reformer, to escape that same 
 slight ridicule. Alas for these days of derision and 
 criticism ! We call the Beautiful the highest, be- 
 cause it appears to us the golden means escaping 
 the dowdiness of the good and the heartlessness 
 of the true. They are lovers of Nature also, and 
 find an indemnity in the inviolable order of the 
 world for the violated order and grace of man. 
 
 There is, no doubt, a great deal of well-founded 
 objection to be spoken or felt against the sayings and 
 doings of this class, some of whose traits we have 
 selected ; no doubt, they will lay themselves open to 
 
270 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 
 
 criticism and to lampoons, and as ridiculous stories 
 will be to be told of them as of any. There will be 
 cant and pretension ; there will be subtilty and 
 moonshine. These persons are of unequal strength, 
 and do not all prosper. They complain that every- 
 thing around them must be denied ; and if feeble, 
 it takes all their strength to deny, before they can 
 begin to lead their own life. Grave seniors insist on 
 their respect to this institution and that usage ; to 
 an obsolete history : to some vocation, or college, or 
 etiquette, or beneficiary, or charity, or morning or 
 evening call, which they resist, as what does not 
 concern them. But it costs such sleepless nights, 
 alienations and misgivings, — they have so many 
 moods about it ; — these old guardians never change 
 their minds ; they have but one mood on the subject, 
 namely, that Antony is ver}' perverse, — that it is 
 quite as much as Antony can do, to assert his rights, 
 abstain from what he thinks foolish, and keep his 
 temper. He cannot help the reaction of this injus- 
 tice in his own mind. He is braced up and stilted ; 
 all freedom and flowing genius, all sallies of wit and 
 frolic nature are quite out of the question ; it is well 
 if he can keep from lying, injustice, and suicide. 
 This is no time for gayety and grace. His strength 
 and spirits are wasted in rejection. But the strong 
 spirits overpower those around them without effort. 
 Their thought and emotion comes in hke a flood, 
 quite withdraws them from all notice of these carp- 
 ing critics ; they surrender themselves with glad 
 heart to the heavenly guide, and only by implication 
 reject the clamorous nonsense of the hour. Grave 
 
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 27 1 
 
 seniors talk to the deaf, church and old book 
 mumble and ritualize to an unheeding, preoccupied, 
 and advancing mind, and thus they by happiness of 
 gi-eater momentum lose no time, but take the right 
 road at first. 
 
 But all these of whom I speak are not proficients : 
 they are novices ; they only show the road in which 
 man should travel, when the soul has greater health 
 and prowess. Yet let them feel the dignity of their 
 charge, and deserve a larger power. Their heart is 
 the ark in which the fire is concealed, which shall 
 bum in a broader and universal flame. Let them 
 obey the Genius then most when his impulse is 
 wildest ; then most when he seems to lead to unin- 
 habitable deserts of thought and life ; for the path 
 which tlie hero travels alone is the highway of health 
 and benefit to mankind. What is the privilege and 
 nobility of our nature but its persistency, through its 
 power to attach itself to what is permanent? 
 
 Society also has its duties in reference to this 
 class, and must behold them with what charity it 
 can. Possibly some benefit may yet accrue from 
 them to the state. In our Mechanics' Fair, there 
 must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenters' planes, 
 and baking-troughs, but also some few finer instru- 
 ments, — rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes ; 
 and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, 
 there must be a few persons of purer fire, kept 
 specially as gauges and meters of character ; persons 
 of a fine, detecting instinct, who betray the 
 smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the 
 bystander. Perhaps, too, there might be room for 
 
373 THE TRANSCEAWENTALIST. 
 
 the exciters and monitors ; collectors of tlie heavenly 
 spark with power to convey the electricity to others. 
 Or, as the storm-tossed vessel at sea speaks the 
 frigate or "line packet" to learn its longitude, so 
 it may not be without its advantage that we should 
 now and then encounter rare and gifted men, to 
 compare the points of our spiritual compass, and 
 verify our bearings from superior chronometers. 
 
 Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of 
 things, when every voice is raised for a new road or 
 another statute, or a subscription of stock, for an im- 
 provement in dress or in dentistry, for a new house 
 or a larger business, for a political party or the divi- 
 sion of an estate, — will you not tolerate one or two 
 solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and 
 principles not marketable or perishable ? Soon these 
 improvements and mechanical inventions will be 
 superseded ; these modes of living lost out of mem- 
 ory ; tliese cities rotted, ruined by war, by new in- 
 ventions, by new seats of trade, or the geologic 
 changes; — all gone, like the shells which sprinkle 
 the sea-beach with a white colony to-day, forever re- 
 newed to be forever destroyed. But the thoughts 
 which these few hermits strove to proclaim by silence 
 as well as by speech, not only by what they did, but 
 by what they forbore to do, shall abide in beauty and 
 strength to reorganize themselves in Nature, to invest 
 themselves anew in other, perhaps higher endowed 
 and happier mixed clay than ours, in fuller union 
 with the surrounding system. 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 273 
 
 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE MERCANTILE 
 LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, BOSTON, FEBRUARY 
 
 7, 1S44. 
 
 Gentlemen : It is remarkable that our people 
 have their intellectual culture from one country, and 
 their duties from another. This false state of things 
 is newly in a way to be corrected. America is 
 beginning to assert itself to the senses and to ,the 
 imagination of her children, and Europe is receding 
 in the same degree. This their reaction on educa- 
 tion gives a new importance to the internal improve- 
 ments and to the politics of the country. Who has 
 not been stimulated to reflection by the facilities now 
 in progress of construction for travel and the trans- 
 portation of goods in the United States? 
 
 This rage for road-building is beneiicent for 
 America, where vast distance is so main a considera- 
 tion in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as 
 the great political promise of the invention is to hold 
 the Union stanch, whose days seemed already num- 
 bered by the mere inconvenience of transporting 
 representatives, judges, and officers across such 
 tedious distances of land and water. Not only is 
 distance annihilated, but when, as now, the locomo- 
 tive and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot 
 every day across the thousand various threads of 
 national descent and employment, and bind them 
 
274 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 fast in one web, an hourly assimilation goes fonvard, 
 and there is no danger that local peculiarities and 
 hostilities should be preserved. 
 
 r. But I hasten to speak of the utility of these 
 improvements in creating an American sentiment. 
 An unlooked-for consequence of the railroad is the 
 increased acquaintance it has given the American 
 people with the boundless resources of their own 
 soil. If this invention has reduced England to a 
 third of its size, by bringing people so much nearer, 
 in this country it has given a new celerity to time, or 
 anticipated by fifty years the planting of tracts of 
 land, the choice of water privileges, the working of 
 mines, and other natural advantages. Railroad iron 
 is a magician's rod in its power to evoke the sleep- 
 ing energies of land and water. 
 
 The railroad is but one arrow in our quiver, though 
 it has great value as a sort of yardstick and sur- 
 veyor's line. The bountiful continent is ours, state 
 on state, and territory on territory, to the waves of 
 the Pacific sea: 
 
 " Our garden is the immeasurable earth, 
 The heaven's blue pillars are Medea's house.*' 
 
 The task of surveying, planting, and building upon 
 this immense tract requires an education and a senti- 
 ment commensurate thereto. A consciousness of 
 this fact is beginning to take the place of the purely 
 trading spirit and education which sprang up whilst 
 all the population lived on the fringe of sea-coast. 
 And even on the coast, prudent men have begun to 
 see that every American should be educated with a 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 275 
 
 view to the values of land. The arts of engineering 
 and of architecture are studied ; scientific agriculture 
 is an object of growing attention ; the mineral riches 
 are explored ; limestone, coal, slate, and iron ; and 
 the value of timber-lands is enhanced. 
 
 Columbus alleged as a reason for seeking a conti- 
 nent in the West, that the harmony of Nature re- 
 quired a great tract of land in the western hemisphere, 
 to balance the known extent of land in the eastern ; 
 and it now appears that we must estimate the native 
 values of this broad region to redress the balance of 
 our judgments, and appreciate the advantages opened 
 to the human race in this country, which is our fortu- 
 nate home. The land is the appointed remedy for 
 whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. The 
 continent we inhabit is to be ph3'sic and food for our 
 mind as well as our body. The land, with its tran- 
 quillizing, sanative influences, is to repair the errors 
 of a scholastic and traditional education, and bring 
 us into just relations with men and things. 
 
 The habit of Uving in the presence of these invita- 
 tions of natural wealth is not inoperative ; and this 
 habit, combined with the moral sentiment which, in 
 the recent years, has interrogated every institution, 
 usage, and law, has, naturally, given a strong direc- 
 tion to the wishes and aims of active young men to 
 withdraw from cities and cultivate the soil. This 
 inclination has appeared in the most unlooked-for 
 quarters, in men supposed to be absorbed in busi- 
 ness, and in those connected with the liberal profes- 
 sions. And, since the vi-alks of trade were crowded, 
 whilst that of agriculture cannot easily be, inasmuch 
 
276 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 as the farmer who is not wanted by others can yet 
 grow his own ijread, whilst tlie manufacturer or the 
 trader, who is not wanted, cannot, — this seemed a 
 happy tendency. For, beside all the moral benefit 
 which we may expect from the farmer's profession, 
 when a man enters it considerately, this promised 
 the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, 
 the adorning of the country with every advantage 
 and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection 
 for a man's home could suggest. 
 
 Meantime, with cheap land and the pacific disposi- 
 tion of the people, everything invites to the arts of 
 agriculture, of gardening, and domestic architecture. 
 Public gardens on the scale of such plantations in 
 Europe and Asia are now unknown to us. There is 
 no feature of the old countries that strikes an Ameri- 
 can with more agreeable surprise than the beautiful 
 gardens of Europe ; such as the Boboli in Florence, 
 the Villa Borghese in Rome, the Villa d'Este in 
 Tivoli, the gardens at Munich and at Frankfort on 
 the Main ; works easily imitated here and which 
 might well make the land dear to the citizen and in- 
 flame patriotism. It is the fine art which is left for 
 us, now that sculpture, painting, and religious and 
 civil architecture have become effete and have passed 
 into second childhood. We have twenty degrees of 
 latitude wherein to choose a seat, and the new modes 
 of travelling enlarge the opportunity of selection bv 
 making it easy to cultivate very distant tracts and yet 
 remain in strict intercourse with the centres of trade 
 and population. And the whole force of all the arts 
 goes to facilitate the decoration of lands and dwell- 
 
THE YOUISTG AMERICAN. 277 
 
 ings. A garden has this advantage that it malces it 
 indifferent where you live. A well-laid garden makes 
 the face of the country of no account ; let that be 
 low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beauti- 
 ful abode worthy of man. If the landscape is pleas- 
 ing, the garden shows it ; if tame, it excludes it. A 
 little grove, which any farmer can find or cause to 
 grow near his house, will, in a few years, make cata- 
 racts and chains of mountains quite unnecessary to 
 his scenery; and he is so contented with his alleys, 
 woodlands, orchards, and river, tliat Niagara and the 
 Notch of the White Hills and Nantasket Beach are 
 superfluities. And yet the selection of a fit house-lot 
 has the same advantage over an indifferent one as 
 the selection to a given employment of a man who 
 has a genius for that work. In the last case the cult- 
 ure of years will never make the most painstaking 
 apprentice his equal ; no more will gardening give 
 the advantage of a happy site to a house in a hole or 
 on a pinnacle. In America we have hitherto little 
 to boast in this kind. The cities drain the country 
 of the best part of its population.; the flower of the 
 youth of both sexes goes into the towns, and the 
 country is cultivated by a so much inferior class. The 
 land — travel a whole day together — looks poverty- 
 stricken, and the buildings plain and poor. In 
 Europe, where society has an aristocratic structure, 
 the land is full of men of the best stock and the best 
 culture, whose interest and pride it is to remain half 
 the year on their estates, and to fill them with every 
 convenience and ornament. Of course these make 
 model farms and model architecture, and are a con- 
 
27S THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 slant education to the eye of the surrounding popula- 
 tion. Whatever events in progress shall go to 
 disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the 
 passion for country life and country pleasures, will 
 render a service to the whole face of this continent, 
 and will further the most poetic of all the occupations 
 of real life, the bringing out by art the native but 
 hidden graces of the landscape. 
 
 I look on such improvements, also, as directly 
 tending to endear the land to the inhabitant. Any 
 relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining 
 it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of 
 patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who 
 merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or 
 to his manufactory, values it less. The vast majority 
 of the people of this country live by the land, and 
 caiTy its quality in their manners and opinions. We 
 in the Atlantic states, by position, have been cora- 
 raercial, and have, as I said, imbibed easily a 
 European culture. Luckily for us, now that steam 
 has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, 
 rocky West is intruding a new and continental ele- 
 ment into the national mind, and we shall yet have 
 an American genius. How mucli better when the 
 whole land is a garden, and the people have grown 
 up in the bowers of a paradise. Without looking, 
 then, to those extraordinary social influences which 
 are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at 
 what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must 
 regard the land as a commanding and increasing 
 power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing 
 influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for 
 ages to come. 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 279 
 
 2. In the second place, the uprise and culmination 
 of the new and anti-feudal power of Commerce is the 
 political fact of most significance to the American at 
 this hour. 
 
 We cannot look on the freedom of this country, in 
 connection with its youth, without a presentiment 
 that here shall laws and institutions exist on some 
 scale of proportion to the majesty of Nature. To 
 men legislating for the area betwixt the two oceans, 
 betwixt the snows and the tropics, somewhat of the 
 gravity of Nature will infuse itself into the code. A 
 heterogeneous population crowding on all ships from 
 all corners of the world to the great gates of North 
 America, namely, Boston, New York, and New 
 Orleans, and thence proceeding inward to the prairie 
 and the mountains, and quickly contributing their 
 private thought to the public opinion, their toll to the 
 treasury, and their vote to the election, it cannot be 
 doubted that the legislation of this country should 
 become more catholic and cosmopolitan than that of 
 any other. It seems so easy for America to inspire 
 and express the most expansive and humane spirit ; 
 new-born, free, healthful, strong, the land of the 
 laborer, of the democrat, of the philanthropist, of the 
 believer, of the saint, she should speak for the hu- 
 man race. It is the country of the Future. From 
 Washington, proverbially "the city of magnificent 
 distances," through all its cities, states, and territo- 
 ries, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of 
 designs, and expectations. 
 
 Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny 
 by which the human race is guided — the race never 
 
28o THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 dying, the individual never spared — to results affect- 
 ing masses and ages. Men are narrow and selfish, 
 but the Genius or Destiny is not narrow, but benefi- 
 cent. It is not discovered in their calculated and 
 voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or with- 
 out their design. Only what is inevitable interests 
 us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, 
 and in the course of things. That Genius has in- 
 fused itself into Nature. It indicates itself by a small 
 excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always 
 favorable to the side of reason. All the facts in any 
 part of Nature shall be tabulated, and the results 
 shall indicate the same security and benefit ; so slight 
 as to be hardly obser\-able, and yet it is there. The 
 sphere is flattened at the poles and swelled at the 
 equator, a form flowing necessarily from the fluid 
 state ; yet the form, the mathematician assures us, 
 required to prevent the protuberances of the conti- 
 nent, or even of lesser mountains cast up at any time 
 by earthquakes, from continually deranging the axis 
 of the earth. The census of the population is found 
 to keep an invariable equality in the sexes, with a 
 trifling predominance in favor of the male, as if to 
 counterbalance the necessarily increased exposure of 
 male life in war, navigation, and other accidents. 
 Remark the unceasing effort throughout Nature at 
 somewhat better than the actual creatures : ameliora- 
 tion iji Nature, which alone permits and authorizes 
 amelioration in mankind. The population of the 
 world is a conditional population ; these are not the 
 best, but the best that could live in the existing state 
 of soils, gases, animals, and morals ; the best that 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 2S1 
 
 could yet live ; there shall be a better, please God. 
 This Genius, or Destiny, is of the sternest adminis- 
 tration, though rumors exist of its secret tenderness. 
 It may be styled a cruel kindness, serving the whole, 
 even to the ruin of the member ; a terrible commun- 
 ist, reserving all profits to the community, without 
 dividend to individuals. Its law is, you shall have 
 everything as a member, nothing to yourself. For 
 Nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding 
 economy, working up all that is wasted to-day into 
 to-morrow's creation ; not a superfluous grain of 
 sand, for all the ostentation she makes of expense 
 and public works. It is because Nature thus saves 
 and uses, laboring for the general, that we poor par- 
 ticulars are so crushed and straitened, and find it so 
 hard to live. She flung us out in her plenty, but we 
 cannot shed a hair, or a paring of a nail, but instantly 
 she snatches at the shred, and appropriates it to the 
 general stock. Our condition is like that of the poor 
 wolves : if one of the flock wound himself, or so much 
 as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently. 
 
 That serene Power interposes the check upon 
 the caprices and officiousness of our wills. Its 
 charity is not our charity. One of its agents is 
 our ^^'ill, but that which expresses itself in our 
 will is stronger than our v;ill. We are very for- 
 \vard to help it, but it will not be accelerated. 
 It resists our meddling, eleemosynary contriv- 
 ances. We devise sumptuary and relief laws, 
 but the principle of population is always reducing 
 wages to the lowest pittance on which human 
 life can be sustained. We legislate against fore- 
 
28 2 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 stalling and monopoly ; we would have a com- 
 mon granary for the poor ; but the selfishness 
 which hoards the corn for high prices is the 
 preventive of famine ; and the law of self-preser- 
 vation is surer policy than any legislation can be. 
 We concoct eleemosynary systems, and it turns 
 out that our charity increases pauperism. We 
 inflate our paper currency, we repair commerce 
 with unlimited credit, and are presently visited 
 with unlimited bankruptcy. 
 
 It is easy to see that the existing generation 
 are conspiring with a beneficence which, in its 
 working for coming generations, sacrifices the 
 passing one, which infatuates the most selfish 
 men to act against their private interest for the 
 public welfare. We build railroads, we know not 
 for what or for whom ; but one thing is certain, 
 that we who build will receive the very smallest 
 share of benefit. Benefit will accrue ; they are 
 essential to the country, but that will be felt not 
 until we are no longer countrymen. We do the 
 like in all matters : 
 
 " Man's heart the Almighty to the Future set 
 By secret and inviolable springs." 
 
 We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem 
 the waste, we make prospective laws, we found 
 colleges and hospitals for remote generations. We 
 should be mortified to learn that the little benefit 
 we chanced in our own persons to receive was the 
 utmost they would yield. 
 
 The history of commerce is the record of this 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 283 
 
 beneficent tendency. The patriarchal form of gov- 
 ernment readily becomes despotic, as each person 
 may see in his own family. Fathers wish to be the 
 fathers of the minds of their children, and behold 
 with impatience a new character and way of think- 
 ing presuming to show itself in their own son or 
 daughter. This feeling, which all their love and 
 pride in the powers of their children cannot subdue, 
 becomes petulance and tyranny when the head of 
 the clan, the emperor of an empire, deals with the 
 same difference of opinion in his subjects. Differ- 
 ence of opinion is the one crime which kings never 
 forgive. An empire is an immense egotism. " I 
 am the State,'' said the French Louis. When a 
 French ambassador mentioned to Paul of Russia, 
 that a man of consequence in St. Petersburg was 
 interesting himself in some matter, the Tsar in- 
 terrupted him, — " There is no man of consequence 
 in this empire, but he with whom I am actually 
 speaking; and so long only as I am speaking to 
 him, is he of any consequence." And Nicholas, 
 the present emperor, is reported to have said to 
 Ms council: "The age is embarrassed with new 
 opinions ; rely on me, gentlemen, I shall oppose an 
 iron will to the progress of liberal opinions." 
 
 It is easy to see that this patriarchal or family 
 management gets to be rather troublesome to all 
 but the papa ; the sceptre comes to be a crow- 
 bar. And this unpleasant egotism Feudalism op- 
 poses, and finally destroys. The king is compelled 
 to call in the aid of his brothers and cousins, and 
 remote relations, to help him keep his overgrown 
 
284 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 house in order ; and this club of noblemen always 
 come at last to have a will of their own ; they com- 
 bine to brave the sovereign, and call in the aid of 
 the people. Each chief attaches as many followers 
 as he can, by kindness, maintenance, and gifts ; and 
 as long as war lasts, the nobles, who must be 
 soldiers, rule very well. But when peace comes, 
 the nobles prove very whinrsical and uncomfortable 
 masters ; their frohcs turn out to be insulting and 
 degrading to the commoner. Feudalism grew to 
 be a bandit and brigand. 
 
 Meantime Trade had begun to appear: Trade, 
 a plant which grows wherever there is peace, as 
 soon as there is peace, and as long as there is 
 peace. The luxury and necessity of the noble 
 fostered it. And as quickly as men go to foreign 
 parts, in ships or caravans, a new order of things 
 springs up ; new command takes place, new ser- 
 vants and new masters. Their information, their 
 wealth, their correspondence, have made them 
 quite other men than left their native shore. 
 772^/ are nobles now, and by another patent than 
 the king's. Feudalism had been good, had broken 
 the power of the kings, and had some good traits 
 of its own ; but it had grown mischievous, it was 
 time for it to die, and, as they say of dying people, 
 all its faults came out. Trade was the strong man 
 that broke it down, and raised a new and unknown 
 power in its place. It is a new agent in the world, 
 and one of great function ; it is a very intellectual 
 force. This displaces physical strength, and installs 
 computation, combination, infomiation, science, in 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 285 
 
 its room. It calls out all force of a certain kind 
 that slumbered in the former dynasties. It is now 
 in the midst of its career. Feudalism is not ended 
 yet. Our governments still partake largely of that 
 element. Trade goes to make the governments in- 
 significant, and to bring every kind of faculty of 
 every individual that can in any manner serve any 
 person, on sale. Instead of a huge Army and Navy, 
 and Executive Departments, it converts Govern- 
 ment into an IntelligenceTOffice, where every man 
 may find what he wishes to buy, and expose what 
 he has to sell, not only produce and manufactures, 
 but art, skill, and intellectual and moral values. 
 This is the good and this the evil of trade, that it 
 would put everything into market, — talent, beauty, 
 virtue, and man himself. 
 
 By this means, however, it has done its work. It 
 has its faults, and will come to an end, as the others 
 do. The philosopher and lover of man have much 
 harm to say of trade ; but the historian will see that 
 trade was the principle of Liberty ; that trade planted 
 America and destroyed Feudahsm ; that it makes 
 peace and keeps peace, and it will abolish slavery. 
 We complain of its oppression of the poor, and of 
 its building up a new aristocracy on the ruins of the 
 aristocracy it destroyed. But the aristocracy of trade 
 has no permanence, is not entailed, was the result 
 of toil and talent, the result of merit of some kind, 
 and is continually falling, like the waves of the sea, 
 before new claims of the same sort. Trade is an in- 
 strument in the hands of that friendly Power which 
 works for us in our own despite. We design it thus 
 
286 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 and thus ; it turns out othenvise and far better. 
 This beneficent tendency, omnipotent without vio- 
 lence, exists and works. Every line of 11181017 in- 
 spires a confidence that we shall not go far wrong ; 
 that things mend. That is the moral of all we 
 learn, that it warrants Hope, the proliiic mother of 
 reforms. Our part is plainly not to throw our- 
 selves across the track, to block improvement, and 
 sit till we are stone, but to watch the uprise of suc- 
 cessive mornings, and to conspire with the new 
 works of new days. Government has been a fossil ; 
 it should be a plant. I conceive that the office of 
 statute law should be to express, and not to impede 
 the mind of mankind. New thoughts, new things. 
 Trade was one instrument, but Trade is also but for 
 a time, and must gi'S'e waj- to somewhat broader and 
 better, whose signs are already dawning in the sky. 
 
 3. I pass to speak of the signs of that which is 
 the sequel of trade. 
 
 In consequence of the revolution in the state of 
 society wrought by trade. Government in our times 
 is beginning to wear a clumsy and cumbrous appear- 
 ance. We have already seen our way to shorter 
 methods. The time is full of good signs. Some of 
 them shall ripen to fruit. All this beneficent social- 
 ism is a friendly omen, and the swelling cry of voices 
 for the education of the people indicates that Gov- 
 ernment has other offices than those of banker and 
 executioner. Witness the new movements in the 
 civilized world, the Communism of France, Germany, 
 and Switzerland ; the Trades' Unions ; the English 
 League against the Corn Laws ; and the whole In- 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 28 7 
 
 dustrial Statistics, so called. In Paris, the blouse, 
 the badge of the operative, has begun to make its 
 appearance in the saloons. Witness, too, the spec- 
 tacle of three Communities which have within a very 
 short time sprung up within this Commonwealth, 
 besides several others undertaken by citizens of 
 Massachusetts within the territory of other States. 
 These proceeded from a \-ariety of motives, from an 
 impatience of many usages in common life, from a 
 wish for greater freedom than the manners and opin- 
 ions of society permitted, but in great part from a 
 feehng that the true offices of the State, the State 
 had let fall to the ground ; that in the scramble of 
 parties for the public purse, the main duties of gov- 
 ernment were omitted, — the duty to instruct the 
 ignorant, to supply the poor v/ith work and with 
 good guidance. These communists preferred the 
 agricultural life as the most favorable condition for 
 human culture ; but they thought that the farm, as 
 we manage it, did not satisfy the right ambition of 
 man. The farmer, after sacrificing pleasure, taste, 
 freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often 
 a bankrupt, like the merchant. This result might 
 well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from 
 cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end 
 in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and removing 
 from bad to worse. It is time to have the thing 
 looked into, and with a sifting criticism ascertain 
 who is the fool. It seemed a great deal worse, be- 
 cause the farmer is living in the same town with men 
 who pretend to know exactly what he wants. On 
 one side is agricultural chemistry, coolly exposing 
 
288 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 the nonsense of our spendthrift agriculture and 
 ruinous expense of manures, and offering, by means 
 of a teaspoonful of artificial guano, to turn a sand- 
 bank into corn ; and, on the other, the farmer, not 
 only eager for the information, but with bad crops 
 and in debt and bankruptcy, for want of it. Here 
 are Etzlers and mechanical projectors, who, with the 
 Fourierists, undoubtingly affirm that the smallest 
 union would make every man rich ; and, on the 
 other side, a multitude of poor men and women seek- 
 ing work, and who cannot find enough to pay their 
 board. The science is confident, and surely the 
 povert}' is real. If any means could be found to 
 bring these two together ! 
 
 This was one design of the projectors of the As- 
 sociations which are now making their first feeble 
 experiments. They were founded in love and in 
 labor. They proposed, as you know, that all men 
 should take a part in the manual toil, and proposed 
 to amend the condition of men, by substituting har- 
 monious for hostile industry. It was a noble thought 
 of Fourier, which gives a favorable idea of his sys- 
 tem to distinguish in his Phalanx a class as the 
 Sacred Band, by whom whatever duties were dis- 
 agreeable, and likely to be omitted, were to be 
 assumed. 
 
 At least, an economical success seemed certain for 
 the enterprise, and that agricultural association must, 
 sooner or later, fi-x the price of bread, and drive 
 single farmers into association, in self-defence ; as 
 the great commercial and manufacturing companies 
 had already done. The Community is only the con- 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 289 
 
 tinuation of the same movement which made the 
 joint-stock companies for manufactures, mining, in- 
 surance, banking, and so forth. It has turned out 
 cheaper to make calico by companies ; and it is pro- 
 posed to plant com and to bake bread by companies. 
 
 Undoubtedly, abundant mistakes will be made by 
 these first adventurers, which wiU draw ridicule on 
 their schemes. I think, for example, that they ex- 
 aggerate the importance of a favorite project of theirs, 
 that of paying talent and labor at one rate, paying 
 all sorts of service at one rate, say ten cents the hour. 
 They have paid it so ; but not an instant would a 
 dime remain a dime. In one hand it became an 
 eagle as it fell, and in another hand a copper cent. 
 For the whole value of the dime is in knowing what 
 to do with it. One man buys with it a land-title of 
 an Indian, and makes his posterity princes ; or buys 
 corn enough to feed the world ; or pen, ink, and 
 paper, or a painter's brush, by which he can com- 
 municate himself to the human race as if he were 
 fire ; and the other buys barley candy. Money is of 
 no value ; it cannot spend itself. All depends on 
 the skill of the spender. Whether, too, the objection 
 almost universally felt by such women in the com- 
 munity as were mothers, to an associate life, to a 
 common table, and a common nursery, etc., setting 
 a higher value on the private family with poverty, 
 than on an association with wealth, vdll not prove in- 
 superable, remains to be determined. 
 
 But the Communities aimed at a higher success in 
 securing to all their members an equal and thorough 
 education. And on the whole, one may say, that 
 
290 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 aims so generous, and so forced on them by the 
 times, will not be relinquished, even if these attempts 
 fail, but will be prosecuted until they succeed. 
 
 This is the value of the Communities ; not what 
 they have done, but the revolution which they in- 
 dicate as on the way. Yes, Government must edu- 
 cate the poor man. Look across the country from 
 any hillside around us, and the landscape seems to 
 crave Government. The actual differences of men 
 must be acknowledged, and met with love and wis- 
 dom. These rising grounds which command the 
 champaign below seem to ask for lords, true lords, 
 /a«rflords, who understand the land and its uses, 
 and the applicabilities of men, and whose govern- 
 ment would be what it should, namely, mediation 
 between want and supply. How gladly would each 
 citizen pay a commission for the support and contin- 
 uation of good guidance ! None should be a gover- 
 nor who has not a talent for governing. Now many 
 people have a native skill for carving out business for 
 many hands ; a genius for the disposition of affairs ; 
 and are never happier than when difficult practical 
 questions, which embarrass other men, are to be 
 solved. All lies in light before them ; they are in 
 their element. Could any means be contrived to 
 appoint only these ! There really seems a progress 
 towards such a state of things, in which this work 
 shall be done by these natural workmen ; and this, 
 not certainly through any increased discretion shown 
 by the citizens at elections, but by the gradual con- 
 tempt into which official government falls, and the 
 increasing disposition of private adventurers to assume 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 29 1 
 
 its fellen functions. Thus the costly Post Office is 
 likely to go into disuse before the private transporta- 
 tion-shop of Harnden and his competitors. Tlie cur- 
 rency threatens to fall entirely into private hands. 
 Justice is continually administered more and more by 
 private reference, and not by litigation. We have 
 feudal governments in a commercial age. It would 
 be but an easy extension of our commercial system 
 to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay 
 an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man 
 has a talent for righting wrong, for administering 
 difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to 
 turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining 
 a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let 
 him in the country-town, or in Court street, put up 
 his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor ., Mr. Johnson, 
 Working ki7ig. 
 
 How can our young men complain of the poverty 
 of things in New England, and not feel that poverty 
 as a demand on their charity to' make New England 
 rich? Where is he who, seeing a thousand men use- 
 less and unhappy, and making the whole region for- 
 lorn by their inaction, and conscious himself of 
 possessing the faculty they want, does not hear his 
 call to go and be their king? 
 
 We must have kings, and we must have nobles. 
 Nature provides such in every society — only let us 
 have the real instead of the titular. Let us have our 
 leading and our inspiration from the best. In every 
 society some men are bom to rule, and some to 
 advise. Let the powers be well directed, directed by 
 love, and they would everywhere be greeted with joy 
 
292 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 and honor. The chief is the chief all the world over, 
 only not his cap and his plume. It is only their dis- 
 like of the pretender, which makes men sometimes 
 unjust to the accomplished man. If society were 
 transparent, the noble would everywhere be gladly 
 received and accredited, and would not be asked for 
 his day's work, but would be felt as benefit, inasmuch 
 as he was noble. That were his duty and stint, — 
 to keep himself pure and purifying, the leaven of his 
 nation. I think I see place and duties for a noble- 
 man in every society ; but it is not to drink wine and 
 ride in a fine coach, but to guide and adorn life for 
 the multitude by forethought, by elegant studies, by 
 perseverance, self-devotion, and the remembrance of 
 the humble old friend, by making his life secretly 
 beautiful. 
 
 I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart, 
 and be the nobility of this land. In every age of 
 the world there has been a leading nation, one of a 
 more generous sentiment, whose eminent citizens 
 were willing to stand for the interests of general 
 justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, by 
 the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. 
 Which should be that nation but these States? 
 Which should lead that movement, if not New Eng- 
 land? Who should lead the leaders, but the Young 
 American? The people, and the world, is now 
 sufl^ring from the want of religion and honor in its 
 public mind. In America, out-of-doors aU seems 
 a market ; in-doors, an air-tight stove of conven- 
 tionalism. Everybody who comes into our houses 
 savors of these habits : the men, of the market ; the 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 293 
 
 women, of the custom. I find no expression in our 
 state papers or legislative debate, in our lyceums or 
 churches, especially in our newspapers, of a high 
 national feeling, no lofty counsels that rightfully stir 
 the blood. I speak of those organs which can be 
 presumed to speak a popular sense. They recom- 
 mend conventional virtues, whatever will earn and 
 preserve property ; always the capitalist ; the college, 
 the church, the hospital, the theatre, the hotel, the 
 road, the ship, of the capitalist, — whatever goes to 
 secure, adorn, enlarge these, is good ; what jeopar- 
 dizes any of these is damnable. The "opposition" 
 papers, so called, are on the same side. They at- 
 tack the great capitalist, but with the aim to make 
 a capitalist of the poor man. The opposition is 
 against those who have money, from those who wish 
 to have money. But who announces to us in journal, 
 or in pulpit, or in the street, the secret of heroism ? 
 
 " Man alone 
 Can perform the impossible." 
 
 I shall not need to go into an enumeration of our 
 national defects and vices which require this Order 
 of Censors in the state. I might not set down our 
 most proclaimed offences as the worst. It is not 
 often the worst trait that occasions the loudest out- 
 cry. Men complain of their suffering, and not of the 
 crime. I fear little from the bad effect of Repudia- 
 tion ; I do not fear that it will spread. Stealing is 
 a suicidal business ; you cannot repudiate but once. 
 But the bold face and tardy repentance permitted to 
 this local mischief reveal a public mind so preoc- 
 
294 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 cupied with the love of gain, that the common senti- 
 ment of indignation at fraud does not act with its 
 natural force. The more need of a withdrawal from 
 the crowd, and a resort to the fountain of right, by 
 the brave. The timidity of our public opinion is 
 our disease, or, shall I say, the publicness of opinion, 
 the absence of private opinion. Good-nature is 
 plentiful, but we want justice, with heart of steel, to 
 fight do\vn the proud. The private mind has the 
 access to the totality of goodness and truth, that it 
 may be a balance to a corrupt society ; and to stand 
 for the private verdict against popular clamor is the 
 office of the noble. If a humane measure is pro- 
 pounded in behalf of the slave, or of the Irishman, 
 or the Catholic, or for the succor of the poor, that 
 sentiment, that project, will have the homage of the 
 hero. That is his nobility, his oath of knighthood, 
 to succor the helpless and oppressed ; always to 
 throw himself on the side of weakness, of youth, of 
 hope, on the liberal, on the expansive side, never on 
 the defensive, the conserving, the timorous, the lock 
 and bolt system. More than our good-will we may 
 not be able to give. We have our own affairs, our 
 own genius, which chains us to our proper work. 
 We cannot give our life to the cause of the debtor, 
 of the slave, or the pauper, as another is doing ; but 
 to one thing we are bound, not to blaspheme the 
 sentiment and the work of that man, not to throw 
 stumbling-blocks in the way of the abolitionist, the 
 philanthropist, as the organs of influence and opinion 
 are swift to do. It is for us to confide in the benef- 
 icent Supreme Power, and not to rely on our money, 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 295 
 
 and on the State because it is the guard of money. 
 At this moment, the terror of old people and of 
 vicious people is lest the Union of these States be 
 destroyed : as if the Union had any other real basis 
 than the good pleasure of a majority of the citizens 
 to be united. But the wise and just man will always 
 feel that he stands on his own feet ; that he imparts 
 strength to the State, not receives security from it ; 
 and that if all went down, he and such as he would 
 quite easily combine in a new and better constitution. 
 Every great and memorable community has consisted 
 of formidable individuals, who, like the Roman or 
 the Spartan, lent his own spirit to the State and 
 made it great. Yet only by the supernatural is a 
 man strong; nothing is so weak as an egotist. 
 Nothing is mightier than we, when we are vehicles 
 of a truth before which the State and the individual 
 are alike ephemeral. 
 
 Gentlemen, the development of our American in- 
 ternal resources, the extension to the utmost of the 
 commercial system, and the appearance of new moral 
 causes which are to modify the state, are giving an 
 aspect of greatness to the Future, which the imagi- 
 nation fears to open. One thing is plain for all men 
 of common sense and common conscience, that here, 
 here in America, is the home of man. After all the 
 deductions which are to be made for our pitiful poli- 
 tics, which stake every gravest national question on 
 the silly die, whether James or whether Jonathan 
 shall sit in the chair and hold the purse, — after all 
 the deduction is made for our frivolities and insani- 
 ties, there still remains an organic simplicity and 
 
296 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 liberty, which, when it loses its balance, redresses 
 itself presently, which offers opportunity to the 
 human mind not known in any other region. 
 
 It is true, the public mind wants self-respect. We 
 are full of vanity, of which the most signal proof is 
 our sensitiveness to foreign and especially English 
 censure. One cause of this is our immense reading, 
 and that reading chiefly confined to the productions 
 of the English press. It is also true that, to 
 imaginative persons in this country, there is some- 
 what bare and bald in our short history and unsettled 
 wilderness. They ask, who would live in a new 
 country, that can live in an old ? and it is not strange 
 that our youths and maidens should burn to see the 
 picturesque extremes of an antiquated country. But 
 it is one thing to visit the pyramids, and another to 
 wish to live there. Would they like tithes to the 
 clergy, and sevenths to the government, and horse- 
 guards, and licensed press, and grief when a child is 
 born, and threatening, starved weavers, and a pau- 
 perism now constituting one-thirteenth of the popula- 
 tion? Instead of the open future expanding here 
 before the eye of every boy to vastness, would they 
 like the closing in of the fiiture to a narrow slit of 
 sky, and that fast contracting to be no future ? One 
 thing, for instance, the beauties of aristocracy, we 
 commend to the study of the travelling American. 
 The English, the most conservative people this side 
 of India, are not sensible of the restraint, but an 
 American would seriously resent it. The aris- 
 tocracy, incorporated by law and education, degrades 
 life for the unprivileged classes. It is a questionable 
 
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 297 
 
 compensation to the embittered feeling of a proud 
 commoner, the reflection that a fop, who, by the 
 magic of title, paralyzes his arm, and plucks from 
 him half the graces and rights of a man, is himself 
 also an aspirant excluded with the same ruthlessness 
 from higher circles, since there is no end to the 
 wheels within wheels of this spiral heaven. Some- 
 thing may be pardoned to the spirit of loyalty when 
 it becomes fantastic ; and something to the imagina- 
 tion, for the baldest life is symbolic. Philip II. of 
 Spain rated his ambassador for neglecting serious 
 affairs in Italy, whilst he debated some point of honor 
 with the French ambassador: "You have left a 
 business of importance for a ceremony.'' The am- 
 bassador replied, " Your majesty's self is but a cere- 
 mony." In the East, where the religious sentiment 
 comes in to the support of the aristocracy, and in the 
 Romish church also, there is a grain of sweetness in 
 the tyranny ; but in England the fact seems to me 
 intolerable, what is commonly affirmed, that such is 
 the transcendent honor accorded to wealth and birth, 
 that no man of letters, be his eminence what it may, 
 is received into the best society, except as a lion and 
 a show. The English have many virtues, many ad- 
 vantages, and the proudest history of the world ; but 
 they need all, and more than all, the resources of the 
 past to indemnify a heroic gentleman in that coun- 
 try for the mortifications prepared for him by the 
 system of society, and which seem to impose the al- 
 ternative to resist or to avoid it. That there are 
 mitigations and practical alleviations to this rigor, is 
 not an excuse for the rule. Commanding worth. 
 
298 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 
 
 and personal power, must sit crowned in all com- 
 panies ; nor will extraordinary persons be slighted or 
 affronted in any company of civilized men. But the 
 system is an invasion of the sentiment of justice and 
 the native rights of men, lyhich, however decorated, 
 must lessen the value of English citizenship. It is 
 for Englishmen to consider, not for us ; we only say, 
 let us live in America, too thankful for our want of 
 feudal institutions. Our houses and towns are like 
 mosses and lichens, so slight and new ; but youth is 
 a fault of which we shall daily mend. This land, 
 too, is as old as the Flood, and wants no ornament or 
 privilege which Nature could bestow. Here stars, here 
 woods, here hills, here animals, here men abound, and 
 the vast tendencies concur of a new order. If only the 
 men are employed in conspiring with the designs of 
 the Spirit who led us hither, and is leading us still, 
 we shall quickly enough advance out of all hearing of 
 others' censures, out of all regrets of our own, into a 
 new and more excellent social state than history has 
 recorded.