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BIRDALONE SERIES 
 OF ESSAYS 
 
 PRUDENCE BY 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 
ETMAN 
 KEEP THE 8f 
 
 LAW,-ANYi 
 
 WAf WILL 
 BE STROWN 
 
 WITH sAns^ 
 
 FACTIONS 
 
 EMERSOT^ 
 
 "^^J 
 

 
 i 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 BY RALPH 
 
 •U^ALDO- 
 
 EM E RS ON 
 
 i?^ 
 
 M'CM- VI 
 MORGAN SHEPARD 
 C OMPANV' NEW YORK 
 © SAN PRATvTCISCO 
 
 j"^!^ 
 
 ^^3^ 
 
|1UBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Twe Copies Received 
 
 DEC 13 5906 
 
 / Copyright Entry 
 CUSS A XXC, No. 
 COPY B. 
 
 7tu,r 
 
 .? 
 
 )^0 
 
 DECORATIONS COPYRIGHTED 
 
 BY 
 
 MORGAN SHEPARD CO. 
 
 MCMVI 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 HAT right have I to 
 write on Prudence, 
 whereof I have little, 
 and that of the neg- 
 ative sort? My 
 prudence consists in 
 avoiding and going 
 without, not in the 
 inventing^f means and methods, not 
 in adroit steering, not in gentle repair- 
 ing. I have no skill to make money 
 spend well, no genius in my economy, 
 and whoever 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 
 prudence, that I have to write on poetry 
 or holiness. We write from aspiration 
 and antagonism, as well as from 
 
e experience. We paint those qualities 
 
 ndship 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. More- 
 over 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. 
 
 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 Degi 
 prudence or law of shows recognizes 
 the co-presence of other laws, and 
 knows that its own office is subaltern, 
 knows that it is surface and not center 
 where it works. Prudence is false 
 when detached. It is legitimate when 
 it is the Natural History of the soul 
 incarnate ; when it unfolds the beauty 
 of laws within the narrow scope of 
 the senses. 
 
 There are all degrees of proficiency 
 in knowledge of the world. It is 
 sufficient to our present purpose to 
 indicate three. One class live 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 
 artists, 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 
 
Proverbs scnsc ; thc sccond, tastc ; 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 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 devotion to matter, 
 as if we possessed no other faculties 
 than the palate, the nose, the touch, the 
 eye, and ear ; a prudence which adores 
 the Rule of Three, which never sub- 
 scribes, which gives never, which lends 
 seldom, and asks but one question of 
 any project, — Will it bake bread ? This 
 is a disease 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 Spurious 
 the perfection of the man as the end, Prudence 
 degrades every thing else, as health 
 and bodily life, into means. It sees 
 prudence not to be a several faculty, 
 but a name for wisdom and virtue 
 conversing 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 
 immerse 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 there- 
 fore literature's. The true prudence 
 limits this sensualism by admitting the 
 
Books knowledge of an internal and real 
 world. This recognition once made, 
 — the order of the world and the dis- 
 tribution of affairs and times being 
 studied with the co-perception of their 
 subordinate place, will reward any 
 degree of attention. For, our existence 
 thus apparently attached in nature to 
 the sun and the returning 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 
 keeps 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 
 resolve to give bound and period to 
 
his being, on all sides, the sun and Bread 
 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 parti- 
 tions and properties which impose new 
 restraints on the young inhabitant. 
 
 We eat of the bread which 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 vacant, indivisible, and divine in its 
 coming, is slit and peddled into trifles 
 and tatters. A door is to 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, — 
 
Clouds these eat up the hours. Do what we 
 ^^'" can, summer will have its flies. If we 
 walk in the woods, we must feed 
 mosquitoes. If we go a-fishing, we 
 must expect a wet coat. Then climate 
 is a great 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 tropics. 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 house- 
 holder. He must brew, bake, salt and 
 preserve his food. He must pile wood 
 
\ 
 
 and coal. But as it happens that Hands 
 not one stroke can labor lay- to, without Handle 
 some new acquaintance with nature, 
 and as nature is inexhaustibly signifi- 
 cant, the inhabitants of these climates 
 have always excelled the southerner in 
 force. Such is the value of these 
 matters, that a man who knows other 
 things can never know too much of 
 these. Let him have accurate per- 
 ceptions. Let him, if he have hands, 
 handle ; if eyes, measure and discrim- 
 inate ; let him accept and hive every 
 fact of chemisty, 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. 
 
i 
 
 Victory The application of means to ends 
 ensures 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 efficient in 
 the packing of fire-wood in a shed, or 
 in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, 
 as in Peninsular 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 with 
 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 house- 
 keeping. 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 abundant flow of this saccharine 
 element of pleasure in every suburb 
 and extremity of the good world. Let 
 
 10 
 
L man keep the law, — any law, — and his Neglect 
 vay will be strown with satisfactions, 
 fhere is more difference in the quality 
 )f our pleasures than in the amount. 
 
 On the other hand, nature punishes 
 iny neglect of prudence^ If you think 
 he senses final, obey their law. If you 
 )elieve in the soul, do not clutch at 
 ensual sweetness before it is ripe on 
 he slow tree of cause and effect. It is 
 dnegar to the eyes to deal with men 
 )f loose and imperfect perception. Dr. 
 bhnson is reported to have said, "If 
 he child says he looked out of this 
 vindow, when he looked out of that, — 
 vhiphim." Our American character 
 marked by a more than average 
 lelight in accurate perception, which 
 s shown by the currency of the by- 
 vord, "No mistake." But the discom- 
 ort of unpunctuality, of confusion of 
 hought about facts, of inattention to 
 he wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. 
 !*he beautiful laws of time and space 
 
 11 
 
aintings Qiice dislocatcd by our inaptitude, arc) 
 holes and dens. If the hiye be 
 disturbed by rash and stupid hands 
 instead of honey it will yield us beesj 
 Our words and actions to be fair musi 
 be timely. A gay and pleasant sound 
 is the whetting of the scythe in the 
 mornings of June ; yet what is morei 
 lonesome and sad than the sound of s; 
 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 wha 
 deal with them. I have seen a 
 
 criticism on some paintings, of which 
 I am reminded when I see the shiftless 
 and unhappy men who are not true tc 
 their senses. The last Grand Duke oi 
 Weimar, a man of superior under- 
 standing, said: "I have sometimes 
 remarked in the presence of greal 
 works of art, and just now especially, 
 in Dresden, how much a certain 
 
 12 
 
property contributes to the effect Gravity 
 /vhich gives life to the figures, and to 
 :he life an irresistible truth. This 
 Droperty is the hitting, in all the figures 
 lAre draw, the right center of gravity. 
 I mean, the placing the figures firm 
 apon their feet, making the hands 
 grasp, and fastening the eyes on the 
 spot where they should look. Even 
 lifeless figures, as vessels and stools, — 
 let them be drawn ever so correctly, — 
 lose all effect so soon as they lack the 
 resting upon their center of gravity, 
 ^nd have a certain swimming and 
 oscillating appearance. The Raphael, 
 in the Dresden gallery (the only 
 greatly affecting picture which I have 
 seen), is the quietest and most passion- 
 less piece you can imagine ; a couple 
 of saints who worship 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 
 
 13 
 
A Spade possesses in the highest degree th 
 property of the perpendicularity of al 
 the figures." — This perpendicular! 
 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 I 
 them discriminate between what they 
 remember, and what they dreamed, i 
 Let them call a spade a spade. Let; 
 them give us facts, and honor their ownl 
 senses with trust. I 
 
 But what man shall dare tax another' 
 with imprudence? Who is prudent?' 
 The men we call greatest are least in 
 this kingdom. There is a certain fatal 
 dislocation in our relation to nature, 
 distorting 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 ponder 
 the question of Reform. We must 
 
 call the highest prudence to counsel, 
 and ask why health and beauty and | 
 
 14 
 
genius should now be the exception, Lawgivers 
 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 law- 
 givers ; that is, the boldest lyric 
 inspiration 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 phenomena^ 
 we are surprised. Beauty should 
 
 be the dowry of every man and woman, 
 as invariably as sensation ; but it is 
 rare. Health or sound organization 
 should be universal. Genius should be 
 the child of genius, and every child 
 should be inspired; but now it is not 
 
 15 
 
to be predicted of any child, and 
 nowhere is it pure. We call partial 
 half-lights, by courtesy, genius ; talent 
 which converts itself to money, talent 
 which glitters to-day, that it may dine 
 and sleep well to-morrow ; and 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 sensuality withal, but no 
 gifts can raise intemperance. The man 
 of talent affects to call his transgressions 
 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 the wish to 
 reap where he had not sowed. His 
 
 16 
 
art is less for every deduction from his Richard in 
 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 when some 
 tyrannous Richard III. oppresses and 
 slays a score of innocent persons, as 
 when Antonio and Tasso, both appar- 
 ently right, wrong each other. One 
 living after the maxims of this world, 
 and consistent and true to them ; the 
 other fired with all divine sentiments, 
 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 physical laws, self-indulgent, 
 
 17 
 
Caesar becomcs presently unfortunate, queru- 
 lous, 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 
 travellers describe as frequenting the 
 bazaars of Constantinople, 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 morsel, and become 
 tranquil, glorious, and great. And who 
 
 18 
 
has not seen the tragedy of imprudent Health 
 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 hints 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 perfec- 
 tions the exact measure of our deviation. 
 Let him 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 
 economy 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 
 
 19 
 
Beer hand. There is nothing he will not be 
 the better 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, because it will grow 
 whilst he sleeps; or the prudence 
 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. Iron, if kept at the iron- 
 monger'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 to depre- 
 ciation 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 
 
 20 
 
cart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee Yanke< 
 trade is reputed to be very much on Trade 
 the extreme of this prudence. It saves 
 itself by its activity. 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 fashion, nor money- 
 stocks depreciate, in the few swift 
 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 every thing 
 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 
 
 21 
 
Pledge freedom. Let him practise 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 swarm- 
 ing 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, distances, 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 prudence 
 
 22 
 
which secures an outward well-being Truth 
 is not to be studied by one set of men, 
 whilst heroism and holiness are studied 
 by another, but they are 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 
 administration 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 
 presently lays a destructive tax ; whilst 
 frankness proves to be the best tactics, 
 for it invites frankness, puts the parties 
 on a convenient footing, and makes 
 their business a friendship. Trust men, 
 
 23 
 
Soldiers and they w ill be true to you ; treat them 
 greatly, and they will show themselves 
 great, though 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 serenity must screw himself up to 
 a resolution. Let him front the object 
 of his worst apprehension, and his 
 stoutness will commonly make his fear 
 groundless. The Latin proverb says, 
 that in "battles first the eye is over- 
 come." 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 foot- 
 ball. Examples are cited by soldiers, 
 of men who have seen the cannon 
 pointed, and the fire given to it, and 
 who had stepped aside from the path 
 
 24 
 
of the ball. The terrors of the storm June 
 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 magnifies 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 his 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 : 
 
 25 
 
Shuffle 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 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, hypo- 
 critical people 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 
 
 26 
 
not a thought has enriched either party, Natural 
 and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, Motions 
 or hope. So neither should you put 
 yourself in a false position to your 
 contemporaries, by indulging in a view 
 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 by the right handle, does 
 not show itself proportioned, and in its 
 true bearings, but bears extorted, 
 hoarse, and half witness. But assume 
 a consent, and it shall presently be 
 granted, since really, and underneath 
 
 27 
 
all their external diversities, all men 
 are of one heart and mind. 
 
 Wisdom will never let us stand with 
 any man or men on an unfriendly- 
 footing. We refuse sympathy and 
 intimacy with people, as if we waited 
 for some better sympathy and intimacy 
 to come. 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 sweetness 
 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 company, 
 can easily whisper names prouder, and 
 that tickle the fancy more. Every- 
 man' s imagination hath its friends; 
 
 28 
 
and pleasant would life be witii such Courage 
 companions. But if you cannot have 
 them on good mutual terms, you can- 
 not have them. If not the Deity, but 
 our ambition hews and shapes the 
 new relations, their virtue escapes, as 
 strawberries lose their flavor in garden- 
 beds. 
 
 Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, 
 humility, and all the virtues, range 
 themselves on the side oi prudence, or 
 the art of securing a present well-being. 
 I do not know if all matter will be 
 found to be made oi 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. 
 
^ 
 
 RD 
 
 ^ *7 
 
This edition of Emerson's Prudence 
 has been printed for Morgan 
 Shepard Co. by Kenneth Ives 
 ( Inc. ) . Decorations de- 
 signed by Fred. W. 
 Goudy, October 
 M CMVI 
 

 
 
 
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