p LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 00DDlfiDa77A •J • J v-\' >s- \/^Mc^^'\/':ate/^.^ .-X^ ^0 V. * o . -^ ^' , o " " * '^1^ RALPH WALDO EMERSON NTELLECT .^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ r^ X ^?* %^^ 5(^ t^* If?* u3* 5<^* c3* ,^^ t<^ C^* ^* t^* <<3* RALPH WALDO EMERSON Philadelphia ^ ,^ S ^ .^ HENRY ALTEMUS ^-Vx ■IC Copyrighted, 1896, by Henry Altkmus. \ \ Ac^ic^ HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, PHILADBLPHIA. INTELLECT. '-VERY substance is negatively electric to that h stands above it in the chemical tables, posi- y to that which stands below it. Water dis- 3S wood and stone, and salt; air dissolves iv; electric fire dissolves air, but the intellect )lves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the sub- unnamed relations of nature in its resistless Vtruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which itellect constructive. Intellect is the simple er anterior to all action or construction, dly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural ory of the intellect, but what man has yet been to mark the steps and boundaries of that sparent essence ? The first questions are al- s to be asked, and the wisest doctor is grav- id by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can speak of the action of the mind under any di- 'ons, as, of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its rks, and so forth, since it melts will into per- ption, knowledge into act? Each becomes le other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like le vision of the eye, but is union with the things .10 wn. (3) 4 INTELLECT. Intellect and intellection signify, to the com- mon ear, consideration of abstract truth. The consideration of time and place, of you and me, of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's minds. Intellect separates the fact considered from you^ from all local and personal reference, and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. Heraclitus looked upon the affections as dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and evil affec- tions, it is hard for man to walk forward in a straight line. Intellect is void of affection, and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as i and mine. He who is immersed in wluit concerns person or place, cannot see the problem of existence. This the intellect always ponders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The intellect pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness between remote things, and reduces all things into a few principles. The making a fact the subject of thought, raises it. All that mass of mental and moral phe- nomena which we do not make objects of voluntary thought, come within the power of fortune; they constitute the circumstance of daily life ; they are subject to change, to fear, and hope. Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But a INTELLECT. 5 truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. We behold it as a god up- raised above care and fear. And so any fact in our life, or any record of our fancies or reflec- tions, disentangled from the web of our uncon- sciousness, becomes an object impersonal and im- mortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. It is offered for science. What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings. The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every step. The mind that grows could not pre- dict the times, the means, the mode of that spon- taneity. God enters by a private door into every individual. Long prior to the age of reflection, is the thinking of the mind. Out of darkness, it came insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. Over it always reigned a firm law. In the period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impres- sions from the surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind doth or saith, is after a law. It has no random act or word. And this native law remains over it after it has come to re- flection or conscious thought. In the most worn, pedantic, introverted, self-tormentor's life, the greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, un- imaginable, and must be, until he can take him- self up by his own ears. What am I ? What has my will done to make me that I am ? Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, this hour, 6 INTELLECT. this connection of events, by might and mind sublime, and my ingenuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree. Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from 3^our bed, or walk abroad in the morning after medita- ting the matter before sleep, on the previous night. Always our thinking is a pious reception. Out truth of thought is therefore vitiated as much by too violent direction given by our will, as by too great negligence. We do not determine what we will think. We only open our senses, clear away, as we can, all obstruction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have little control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. By-and-by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have been, what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as we can, what we have beheld. As far as we can recall these ecstasies, we carry away in the inef- faceable memory, the result, and all men and all the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But the moment we cease to report, and attempt to correct and contrive, it is not truth. If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us, we shall perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over the INTELLECT. 1 arithmetical or logical. The first always contains the second, but virtual and latent. We want, in every man, a long logic ; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition ; but its virtue is as silent method ; the moment it would appear as propositions, and have a separate value, it is worthless. In every man's mind, some images, words, and facts remain, without effort on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and afterwards these illustrate to him important laws. All our prog- ress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can ren- der no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trust- ing it to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe. Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules. What you have aggregated in a natural manner, surprises and de- lights when it is produced. For we cannot over- see each other's secret. And hence the differences between men in natural endowment are insignifi- cant in comparison with their common wealth. Do you think the porter and the cook have no an- ecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you? Everybody knows as much as the savant. The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in 19 ^ INTELLECT. the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of living and thinking of other men, and especially of those classes whose minds have not been sub- dued by the drill of school education. This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but becomes richer and more frequent in its informations through all states of culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when we not onlj^ observe, but take pains to observe ; when we of set purpose, sit down to consider an abstract truth; when we keep the mind's eye open, whilst we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret law of some class of facts. What is the hardest task in the world ? To think. I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant, who said. No man can see God face to face and live. For example, a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say, I will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed attitude of the library, to seize the thought. But we come in, and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain, INTELLECT. 9 wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the principle we wanted. But the oracle comes, because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect resen:jbled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire the breath ; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the blood, — the law of undula- tion. So now you must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear your activity, and see what the great Soul showeth. Our intellections are mainly prospective. The immortality of man is as legitimately preached from the intellections as from the moral volitions. Every intellection is mainly prospective. Its present value is its least. It is a little seed. In- spect what delights you in Plutarch, in Shakes- peare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writer ac- quires, is a lantern which he instantly turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret, become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an il- lustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men say, where did he get this? and think there was something divine in his life. But no ; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp to ransack their attic withal. We are all wise. The difference between per- sons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me, who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that lo INTELLECT. ray experiences had somewhat superior ; whilst T saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me, and I w^ould make the same use of them. He held the old ; he holds the new ; I had the habit of tacking together the old and the new, which he did not use to exercise. This may hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we should meet Shakespeare, we should not be conscious of any steep inferiority ; no, but of a great equality, — only that he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying his facts, which we lack. For, not- withstanding our utter incapacity to produce any- thing like Hamlet and Othello, see the perfect reception this wit, and immense knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all. If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe corn, and then retire within doors, and shut your eyes, and press them with your hand, you shall still see apples hanging in the bright light, with boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, and this for five or six hours afterwards. There lie the impressions on the reten- tive organ, though you knew it not. So lies the whole series of natural images with which your life has made you acquainted, in 3'our memory, though you know it not, and a thrill of passion flashes light on their dark chamber, and tlie active power seizes instantly the fit image, as the word of its moment- ary thought. It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Oar history, we are sure, is quite tame. We have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser INTELLECT. i r years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing np some won- derful article out of that pond ; until, bj^-and-b}', we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know, is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of tlie hundred vol- umes of the Universal History. In the intellect constructive, which we popu- larly designate by the word Genius, we observe the same balance of two elements, as in intellect receptive. The constructive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, sys- tems. It is the generation of the mind, the mar- riage of thought with nature. To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publica- tion. The first is revelation, alwaj^s a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence, or incessant study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid v/ith wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought now, for the first time, bursting into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and to dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought of man, and goes to fashion every institution. But to make it available, it needs a vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. To be communica- ble, it must become picture or sensible object. We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. The ray 12 INTELLECT. of light passes invisible through space, and only when it falls on an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy is directed on something outward, then is it a thought. The relation between it and you, first makes you, the value of you, ap- parent to me. The rich, inventive genius of the painter must be smothered and lost for want cf the power of drawing, and in our happy hours, we should be inexhaustible poets, if once we could break through the silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some access to primary truth, so all have some art or pov/er of communication in their head, but only in the artist does it descend into the hand. There is an inequality whose laws we do not yet know, between two men and be- tween two moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. In common hours, we have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for their portraits, they are not de- tached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius is spontaneous ; but the power of picture or ex- pression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states, without which no production is possible. It is a conversion of all nature into the rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous also. It does not flow from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. Not by any conscious imitation of particular forms are the grand strokes of the painter executed, but by re- INTELLECT. 13 pairing to the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. Who is the first drawing-master ? With- out instruction we know very well the ideal of the human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a picture, if the attitude be natural, or grand, or mean, though he has never received any instruction in drawing, or heard any conversation on the subject, nor can liimself draw with correctness a single feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all con- sideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. We may owe to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill ; for, as soon as we let our will go, and let the unconscious states ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are ! We entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of Avoods, and of monsters, and the mystic pencil Avhere- with we then draw, has no awkwardness, or inex- perience, no meagreness or poverty; it can design well, and group well ; its composition is full of art, its colors are well laid on, and the whole canvas which it paints, is life-like, and apt to touch us with terror, with tenderness, with desire, and with grief. Neitlier are the artist's copies from experi- ence, ever mere copies, but always touched and softened by tints from this ideal domain. The conditions essential to a constructive mind, do not appear to be so often combined but that a good sentence or verse remains fresh and memor- 14 INTELLECT, able for a long time. Yet when we write with ease, and come out into the free air of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to continue this communication at pleasure. Up, down, around, the kingdom of thought has no en- closures, but the Muse makes us free of her cit}^ Well, the Avorld has a million writers. One would think, then, that good thought would be as famil- iar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good books ; nay, I remember any beauti- ful verse for twenty years. It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always greatly in advance of the creative, so that always there are many competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books. But some of the conditions of intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a whole, and de- mands integrity in every work. This is resisted equally by a man's devotion to a single thought, and by his ambition to combine too many. Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and ap- ply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood ; herein resembling the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of our nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on tlie body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the })olitical or religious fanatic, or indeed any pos- sessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exag- INTELLECT, 15 geration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind and blown so far in one direction, that I am out of the hoop of your horizon. Is it any better, if the student, to avoid this offence, and to liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole, of history, or science, or phil- osophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and subtraction. When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Re- ligion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopedia, the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no complete- ness, and at last we discover tliat our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, is the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the intel- lect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a model, by the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet does the world reap- pear in miniature in every event, so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension, and in its works. For this reason, i6 INTELLECT. an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk with accom- plished persons Avho appear to be strangers in na- ture. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them : the world is only their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral and complete, is one whom nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more likeness than variety in all her changes. We are stung by the desire for new thought, but when we receive a new thought, it is only the old thought with a new face, and though we make it our own, we in- stantly crave another ; we are not really enriched. For the truth was in us, before it was reflected to us from natural objects; and the profound genius wdll cast the likeness of all creatures into every product of his wit. But if the constructive powers are rare, and it is given to few men to be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost, and may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly paral- lel is the whole rule of intellectual duty, to the rule of moral duty. A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented. God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, — you can never have both. Between these, as a pen- INTELLECT. 17 diilum, man oscillates ever. He in whom tlie love of repose predominates, will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely, his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation ; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth p/redom- inates, will keep himself aloof from all moorings and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his being. The circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes, to find the man who can yield him truth. He shall then know that there is some- what more blessed and great in hearing than in speaking. Happy is the hearing man: unhappy the speaking man. As long as I hear truth, I am bathed by a beautiful element, and am not con- scious of any limits to my nature. The sugges^ tions are thousandfold that I hear and see. The waters of the great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. But if I speak, I define, I confine, and am less. When Socrates speaks, Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shame that they do not speak. They also are good. He likewise defers to them, loves them, whilst he speaks. Because a true and natural man contains and is the same truth which an eloquent man ar- ticulates : but in the eloquent man, because he i8 INTELLECT. can articulate it, it seems something the less to reside, and he turns to these silent beautiful with the more inclination and respect. The ancient sentence said, Let us be silent, for so are the gods. Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal. Every man's progress is through a succession of teachers, each of whom seems at the time to have a super- lative influence, but it at last gives place to a new. Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, Leave father, mother, house and lands, and follow me. Who leaves all, receives more. This is as true intellectually, as morally. Each new mind we approach, seems to require an abdication of all our past and present possessions. A new doctrine seems, at first, a subversion of all our opinions, tastes, and manner of living. Such has Sweden- borg, such has Kant, such has Coleridge, such has Cousin seemed to many young men in this coun- try. Take thankfully and heartily all they can give. Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and after a short season, the dismay v/ill be overpast, the ex- cess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright star shining serenely in your heaven, and blend- ing its light with all your day. But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which draws him, because that is his own, he is to refuse himself to that which draws him not, whatsoever fame and authority may attend it, be- cause it is not his own. Entire self-reliance belongs INTELLECT. 19 to the inteliect. One soul is a counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance for the sea. It must treat things, and books, and sovereign genius, as itself also a sovereign. If JEschylus be that man he is taken for, he has not yet done his office, when he has educated the learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master of delight to me also. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand JEschyluses to my intellectual integrity. Especially take the same ground in regard to ab- stract truth, the science of the mind. The Bacon, the Spinoza, the Hume, Schelling, Kant, or who- soever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, is only a more or less awkward translator of things in your consciousness, which you have also your way of seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say then, instead of too timidly poring into his obscure sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering back to you your consciousness. He has not succeeded ; now let another try. If Plato cannot, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps Kant. Anyhovk^, when at last it is done, you will find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, com- mon state, which the writer restores to you. But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the subject might provoke it, speak to the open question between Truth and Love. I shall not presume to interfere in the old politics of the skies ; " The cherubim know most ; the seraphim love most." The gods shall settle their own quar- 20 INTELLECT. rels. But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti^fhQ expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. When at long intervals, we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these great spiritual lords, who have walked in the world, — these of the old religion, — dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christi- anity look par venues and popular ; for "persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect." This band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their thinking, that it seems antece- dent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry, and music, and dancing, and astronomy, and mathe- matics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope and applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of things, for its illustra- tion. But what marks its elevation, and has even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and from ago to age prattle to each other, and to no contemporary. Well assured that their speech is intelligible, and the most natural thing in the INTELLECT. 21 world, they add thesis to thesis, without a mo- ment's heed of the universal astonishment of the human race below, who do not comprehend their plainest argument ; nor do they ever relent so much as to insert a popular or explaining sen- tence ; nor testify the least displeasure or petu- lance at the dullness of their amazed auditory. The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort tlieir lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not. PRUDENCE. PRUDENCE. What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have little, and that of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gen- tle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my economy, and who- ever sees my garden, discovers that I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity, and people without perception. Then I have the same title to write on prndence, that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not possess. The poet admires the man of energy and tactics ; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the bar : and where a man is not vain and egotistic, you shall find what he has not, by his praise. Moreover, it would be hardly honest in me not to balance these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship with words of coarser sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is real and constant, not to own it in passing. (25) 26 PRUDENCE. Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. It is content to seek health of body by complying with physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect. The world of the senses is a world of shows ; it does not exist for itself, but has a symbolic character ; and a true prudence or law of shows, recognises the co-presence of other laws ; and knows that its own office is subaltern ; knows that it is surface and not centre where it works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate when it is the Natural History of the soul incar- nate ; when it unfolds the beauty of laws within the narrow scope of the senses. There are all degrees of proficiency in knowl- edge of the world. It is sufficient, to our present purpose, to indicate three. One class lives to the utility of the symbol ; esteeming health and wealth a final good. Another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol ; as the poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of science. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified ; these are wise men. The first class have common sense ; the second, taste ; and the third, spiritual perception. Once in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly ; then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and, lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred PRUDENCE. 27 volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and barns thereon, reverencing the splendor of the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny. The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a de- votion to matter as if we possessed no other fac- ulties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which gives never, which lends seldom, and asks but one question of any project — Will it bake bread ? This is a dis- ease like a thickening of the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But culture, revealing the high origin of the apparent world, and aiming at the perfection of the man as the end, degrades everything else, as health and bodily life, into means. It sees prudence not to be a several fac- ulty, but a name for wisdom and virtue convers- ing with the body and its wants. Cultivated men always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the achievement of a civil or social measure, great personal influence, a graceful and commanding address had their value as proofs of the energy of the spirit. If a man lose his balance, and im- merse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man. The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. The true prudence limits this sensu- 28 PRUDENCE. alisra by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. This recognition once made, — the order of the world and the distribution of af- fairs and times being studied with the co-percep- tion of their subordinate place, will reward any degree of attention. For, our existence thus ap- parently attached in nature to the sun and the re- turning moon and the periods which they mark ; so susceptible to climate and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond of splendor, and so tender to hunger and cold and debt, — reads all its primary lessons out of these books. Prudence does not go behind nature, and ask, whence it is? It takes the laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and kee]3s these laws, that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects space and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death. There revolve to give bound and period to his being, on all sides, the sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky ; here lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. Here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws, and fenced and distributed externally with civil partitions and properties which impose new restraints on the young inhabitant. We eat of the bread wliich grows in the field. We live by the air which blows around us, and we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so va- cant, indivisible and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to PRUDENCE. 29 be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache ; then the tax ; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains ; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word, — these eat up the hours. Do what we can, summer will have its flies. If we walk in the woods, we must feed musquitoes. If we go a fishing, we must expect a wet coat. Then climate is agieat impediment to idle persons. We often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain. We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the trop- ics. The islander may ramble all day at will. At night, he may sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a table for his morning meal. The northerner is perforce a householder. He must brew, bake, salt and pre- serve his food. He must pile wood and coal. But as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to, without some new acquaintance with nature ; and as nature is inexhaustibly significant, the inhabit- ants of these climates have always excelled the southerner in force. Such is the value of these matters, that a man who know;s other things, can never know too much of these. Let him have accurate perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, 30 PRUDENCE. handle ; if eyes, measure and discriminate \ let him accept and hive every fact of chemistry, natural history, and economics ; the more he has, the less is he willing to spare any one. Time is always bringing the occasions that disclose their value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural and innocent action. The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of. The application of means to ends, en- sures victory and the songs of victory not less in a farm or a shop, than in the tactics of party, or of war. The good husband finds method as ef- ficient in the packing of fire-Avood in a shed, or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in Penin- sular campaigns or the files of the Department of State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner of the barn- chamber, and stored witli nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver, and chisel. Herein he tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses, and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping. His garden or his poultry-yard, — very paltry places, it may be, — tell him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find argument for optimism, in the abund- ant flow of this saccharine element of pleasure, in every suburb and extremity of the good world. Let a man keep the law, — any law, — and his way will be strewn with satisfactions. There is more PRUDENCE. 31 difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount. On tlie other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. If you think the senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes, to deal with men of loose and imper- fect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, "If the child says he looked out of this window when he looked out of that, — whip him." Our American character is marked by a more than average delight in accurate perception, which is shown by the currency of the by-word, "No mistake." But the discomfort of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of inatten- tion to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. The beautiful laws of time and space once dislo- cated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair, must be timel}*. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June ; yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle, when it is too late in the season to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon men " spoil much more than their own affair, in spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. 1 have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I am reminded, when I see the shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to their senses. 32 PRUDENCE. The last Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of su- perior understanding, said : " I have sometimes remarked in the presence of great works of art, and just now especially, in Dresden, how much a certain property contributes to the effect which gives life to the figures, and to the life an irresist- ible truth. This property is the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre of gravity. I mean, the placing the figures firm upon their feet, making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot where they should look. Even life- less figures, as vessels and stools, — let them be drawn ever so correctly, — lose all effect so soon as ^hey lack the resting upon their centre of grav- ity, and have a certain swimming and oscillating appearance. The Raphael, in the Dresden gal'ery, (the only greatly affecting picture which I have seen,) is the quietest and most passionless piece you can imagine ; a couple of saints who worship 1 the Virgin and child. Nevertheless, it awakens a" deeper impression than the contortions of ten crucified martyrs. For, beside all the resistless beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree the property of the perpendicularity of all thei figures." — This perpendicularity we demand of ■ all the figures in this picture of life. Let them stand on their feet, and not float and swing. Let us know where to find them. Let them discrim- inate between what they remember, and what;| they dreamed. Let them call a spade a spade, i Let them give us facts, and honor their own senses with trust. PRUDENCE. 33 But what man shall dare tax another with im- prudence ? Who is prudent ? The men we call greatest are least in this kingdom. There is a cer- tain fatal dislocation in our relation to nature, dis- torting all our modes of living, and making every law our enemy, which seems at last to have aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to pon- der the question of Reform. 'We must call the highest prudence to counsel, and ask why liealth and beauty and genius should now be the excep- tion, rather than the rule of human nature ? We do not know the properties of plants and animals and the laws of nature through our sympathy with the same, but this remains the dream of poets. Poetry and prudence should be coincident. Poets should be lawgivers ; that is, the boldest lyric in- spiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted. We have violated law upon law, until we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a coincidence between reason and the phe- nomena, we are surprised. Beauty should be the dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as sensation ; but it is rare. Health or sound organ- ization should be universal. Genius should be the child of genius, and every child should be in- spired ; but now it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial half-lights, " courtesy, genius ; talent which con- verts itself to money, talent which glitters to-day, that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow ; and 34 PRUDENCE. society is officered by men of parts, as they are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic; and piety and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. We have found out fine names to cover our sen- suality withal, but no gifts can raise intemper- ance. The man of talent affects to call his trans- gressions of the laws of the senses trivial, and to count them nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art rebukes him. That never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor tlie wish to reap where he had not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from his holiness, and less for every defect of common sense. On him who scorned the world, as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. He that despiseth small things, will perish by little and little. Goethe's Tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair historical portrait, and that is true tragedy. It does not seem to me so genuine grief w^hen some tyrannous Richard HI. oppresses and slays a score of inno- cent persons, as w^hen Antonio and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong each other. One living after the maxims of this world, and consistent and true to them, the other fired with all divine sen- timents, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, without submitting to their law\ That is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of t PRUDENCE, 35 physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a '' discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself and to others. The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst something higher than prudence is active, he is admirable ; when common sense is wanted, he is an incumbrance. Yesterday, Csesar was not so great ; to-day, Job not so miserable. Yesterday, radiant with the light of an ideal world, in which he lives, the first of men, and now oppressed by wants, and by sickness, for which he must thank himself, none is so poor to do him reverence. He resembles the opium eaters, whom travelers de- scribe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantino- ple, who skulk about all day, the most pitiful drivellers, yellow, emaciated, ragged, and sneak- ing ; then, at evening, when the bazaars are open, they slink to the opium shop, swallow their mor- sel, and become tranquil, glorious, and great. And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius, struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted, and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins ? Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, as liints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his own labor and self-denial ? Health, bread, climate, social position, have their importance, and he will give them their due. Let him esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections the exact measure of our deviations. Let him 36 PRUDENCE. make the night, night, and the day, day. Let him control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much wisdom may be expended on a private econ- omy, as on an empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it. The laws of the world are written out for him on every piece of money in his hand. There is nothing he will not be the bet- ter for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard ; or the State-street prudence of buying by the acre, to sell by the foot ; or the thrift of the agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, be- cause it will grow whilst he sleeps ; or the pru- dence which consists in husbanding little strokes of the tool, little portions of time, particles of stock, and small gains. The eye of prudence may never shut. L'on, if kept at the ironmonger's, will rust. Beer, if not brewed in the right state of the atmosphere, will sour. Timber of ships will rot at sea, or, if laid up high and dry, will strain, warp, and dry-rot. Money, if kept by us, yields ■ no rent, and is liable to loss ; if invested, is liable I to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the iron is white. Keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yan- kee trade is reputed to be very much on the ex- treine of this prudence. It saves itself by its ac- i tivity. It takes bank-notes — good, bad, clean, | ragged, and saves itself by the speed with which it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fash- ion, nor money-stocks depreciate, in the few swift PRUDENCE. ' 37 moments which the Yankee suffers any one of them to remain in his possession. In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed. Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn that everything in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what he sows, he reaps. By diligence and self-command, let him put the bread he eats at his own disposal, and not at that of others, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other men ; for the best good of wealth is free- dom. Let him practice the minor virtues. How much of human life is lost in waiting ! Let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many words and promises are promises of conversation ! Let his be words of fate. When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper float round the globe in a pine ship, and come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming population; let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a slender human word among the storms, dis- tances, and accidents, that drive us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to redeem its pledge, after months and years, in the most distant climates. We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The pru- dence which secures an outward well-being, is not to be studied by one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by another, but they are 14 38 PRUDENCE, reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time, persons, property, and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots in the soul, and if the soul were changed, would cease to be, or would become some other thing, therefore, the proper ad- ministration of outward things will always rest on a just apprehension of their cause and origin, that is, the good man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted, the politic man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. On the most profitable lie, the course of events pres- ently lays a destructive tax ; whilst frankness i proves to be the best tactics, for it invites frank- I ness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship. Trust men, and they will be true to you ; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great, though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade. So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not consist in evasion, or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any sincerity, must screw himself up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fear ground- less. The Latin proverb says, that "in battles, the eye is first overcome." The eye is daunted, and greatly exaggerates the perils of the hour. Entire self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life than a match at foils or at PRUDENCE, 39 foot-ball. Examples are cited by soldiers, of men who have seen the cannon pointed, and the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet, as under the sun of June. In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes readily to heart, and magni- fies the consequence of the other party ; but it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak, and apparently strong. To himself, he seems weak ; to others, formidable. You are afraid of Grim ; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the good will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill will. But the sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip up hh claims, is as thin and timid as any ; and the peace of society is often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid, and the other dares not. Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten ; bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. It is a proverb, that " courtesy costs nothing ; " but calculation might come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind ; but kindness is necessary to perception ; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines ; but meet on what common ground remains, — if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both, — the area will widen very fast, and ere you know 40 PRUDENCE, it, the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air. If he set out to contend, almost St. Paul will lie, almost St. John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical peo- ple, an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls. Shuffle they will, and crow, crook, and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither should you j^ut yourself in a false position to j^our contemporaiies, by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of senti- ment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love, roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at least shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones, that you will never do yourself justice in dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of b}^ the right handle, does not show itself propor- tionate, and in its true bearings, but bears ex- torted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a consent, and it shall presently be granted, since, really, and underneath all their external diversi-i ties, all men are of one heart and mind. i| Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men, on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sym- pathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. PRUDENCE. 41 But whence and when ? To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us. Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us. We are too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater, or more powerful. Let us suck the sweet- ness of those affections and consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. Undoubtedly, we can easily pick faults in our com- pany, can easily whisper names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man's imagination hath its friends ; and pleasant would life be with such companions. But, if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not the Deity, but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as straw- berries lose their flavor in garden-beds. Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and all the virtues range themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a present well-be- ing. I do not know if all matter will be found to be made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will, we are pretty sure in a short space, to be mumbling our ten commandments. - l"? ii ' .0- •^^^ / ^^^^^%^'. % .^ Z'^^^.;^ ^^^ / /^ . . * ' A k^' „ BOMS BROS. a"^ LIBMAMV BIN0IN6 >% AJ^ ^.^' 'Mt