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repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite
unawaken'd, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests
out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great
word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history
has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of another
great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten.
As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in the States, (and I entirely
respect them,) are toward those vast and sweeping movements, influences,
moral and physical, of humanity, now and always current over the planet,
on the scale of the impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to
reduce the whole matter to the consideration of a single self, a man, a
woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the treatment of the universal, in
politics, metaphysics, or anything, sooner or later we come down to one
single, solitary soul.
There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises,
independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining
eternal. This is the thought of identity--yours for you, whoever
you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most
spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and
only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the
significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of
the Me in the centre,) creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no
account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision,
it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the
fable, 'once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over the whole earth,
and spreads to the roof of heaven.
The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own central
idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto--not criticism by
other standards, and adjustments thereto--is the lesson of Nature.
True, the full man wisely gathers, culls, absorbs; but if, engaged
disproportionately in that, he slights or overlays the precious
idiocrasy and special nativity and intention that he is, the man's self,
the main thing, is a failure, however wide his general cultivation.
Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse are not only attended
to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us up, like a cancer. Already, the
democratic genius watches, ill-pleased, these tendencies. Provision for
a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue, justification of what one has
in one's self, whatever it is, is demanded. Negative qualities, even
deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and normal simplicity
and separation, amid this more and more complex, more and more
artificialized state of society--how pensively we yearn for them! how we
would welcome their return!
In some such direction, then--at any rate enough to preserve the
balance--we feel called upon to throw what weight we can, not for
absolute reasons, but current ones. To prune, gather, trim, conform, and
ever cram and stuff, and be genteel and proper, is the pressure of our
days. While aware that much can be said even in behalf of all this,
we perceive that we have not now to consider the question of what
is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or set of
nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous
congeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becoming
stifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite
conformity and art. In addition to establish'd sciences, we suggest a
science as it were of healthy average personalism, on original-universal
grounds, the object of which should be to raise up and supply through
the States a copious race of superb American men and women, cheerful,
religious, ahead of any yet known.
America has yet morally and artistically originated nothing. She seems
singularly unaware that the models of persons, books, manners, &c.,
appropriate for former conditions and for European lands, are but exiles
and exotics here. No current of her life, as shown on the surfaces of
what is authoritatively called her society, accepts or runs into social
or esthetic democracy; but all the currents set squarely against it.
Never, in the Old World, was thoroughly upholster'd exterior appearance
and show, mental and other, built entirely on the idea of caste, and on
the sufficiency of mere outside acquisition--never were glibness, verbal
intellect, more the test, the emulation--more loftily elevated as head
and sample--than they are on the surface of our republican States this
day. The writers of a time hint the mottoes of its gods. The word of the
modern, say these voices, is the word Culture.
We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy. This word
Culture, or what it has come to represent, involves, by contrast, our
whole theme, and has been, indeed, the spur, urging us to engagement.
Certain questions arise. As now taught, accepted and carried out, are
not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious
infidels, who believe in nothing? Shall a man lose himself in countless
masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, that,
and the other, that the simply good and healthy and brave parts of him
are reduced and clipp'd away, like the bordering of box in a garden? You
can cultivate corn and roses and orchards--but who shall cultivate the
mountain peaks, the ocean, and the tumbling gorgeousness of the clouds?
Lastly--is the readily-given reply that culture only seeks to help,
systematize, and put in attitude, the elements of fertility and power, a
conclusive reply?
I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I should certainly
insist, for the purposes of these States, on a radical change of
category, in the distribution of precedence. I should demand a programme
of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors
or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the
working-men, the facts of farms and jack-planes and engineers, and of
the broad range of the women also of the middle and working strata,
and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and
powerful motherhood. I should demand of this programme or theory a scope
generous enough to include the widest human area. It must have for its
spinal meaning the formation of a typical personality of character,
eligible to the uses of the high average of men--and _not_ restricted
by conditions ineligible to the masses. The best culture will always be
that of the manly and courageous instincts, and loving perceptions, and
of self-respect--aiming to form, over this continent, an idiocrasy
of universalism, which, true child of America, will bring joy to its
mother, returning to her in her own spirit, recruiting myriads of
offspring, able, natural, perceptive, tolerant, devout believers in
her, America, and with some definite instinct why and for what she has
arisen, most vast, most formidable of historic births, and is, now and
here, with wonderful step, journeying through Time.
The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New World, is,
under permanent law and order, and after preserving cohesion,
(ensemble-individuality,) at all hazards, to vitalize man's free play of
special Personalism, recognizing in it something that calls ever more
to be consider'd, fed, and adopted as the substratum for the best
that belongs to us, (government indeed is for it,) including the new
esthetics of our future.
To formulate beyond this present vagueness--to help line and put
before us the species, or a specimen of the species, of the democratic
ethnology of the future, is a work toward which the genius of our land,
with peculiar encouragement, invites her well-wishers. Already certain
limnings, more or less grotesque, more or less fading and watery, have
appear'd. We too, (repressing doubts and qualms,) will try our hand.
Attempting, then, however crudely, a basic model or portrait of
personality for general use for the manliness of the States, (and
doubtless that is most useful which is most simple and comprehensive
for all, and toned low enough,) we should prepare the canvas well
beforehand. Parentage must consider itself in advance. (Will the time
hasten when fatherhood and motherhood shall become a science--and the
noblest science?) To our model, a clear-blooded, strong-fibred
physique, is indispensable; the questions of food, drink, air, exercise,
assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out of these we
descry a well-begotten selfhood--in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional,
aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under
control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor
sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing
the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast expanded, an erect attitude,
a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet
capable also of flashing--and a general presence that holds its own
in the company of the highest. (For it is native personality, and that
alone, that endows a man to stand before presidents or generals, or in
any distinguish'd collection, with _aplomb_--and _not_ culture, or any
knowledge or intellect whatever.) With regard to the mental-educational
part of our model, enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic
knowledge, &c., the concentration thitherward of all the customs of our
age, especially in America, is so overweening, and provides so fully
for that part, that, important and necessary as it is, it really needs
nothing from us here--except, indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint.
Manners, costumes, too, though important, we need not dwell upon here.
Like beauty, grace of motion, &c., they are results. Causes, original
things, being attended to, the right manners unerringly follow. Much
is said, among artists, of "the grand style," as if it were a thing by
itself. When a man, artist or whoever, has health, pride, acuteness,
noble aspirations, he has the motive-elements of the grandest style. The
rest is but manipulation, (yet that is no small matter.)
Leaving still unspecified several sterling parts of any model fit for
the future personality of America, I must not fail, again and ever,
to pronounce myself on one, probably the least attended to in modern
times--a hiatus, indeed, threatening its gloomiest consequences after
us. I mean the simple, unsophisticated Conscience, the primary moral
element. If I were asked to specify in what quarter lie the grounds of
darkest dread, respecting the America of our hopes, I should have to
point to this particular. I should demand the invariable application to
individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-true plumb-rule
of persons, eras, nations. Our triumphant modern civilizee, with his
all-schooling and his wondrous appliances, will still show himself but
an amputation while this deficiency remains. Beyond, (assuming a more
hopeful tone,) the vertebration of the manly and womanly personalism
of our western world, can only be, and is, indeed, to be, (I hope,) its
all-penetrating Religiousness.
The ripeness of Religion is doubtless to be looked for in this field of
individuality, and is a result that no organization or church can
ever achieve. As history is poorly retain'd by what the technists call
history, and is not given out from their pages, except the learner
has in himself the sense of the well-wrapt, never yet written, perhaps
impossible to be written, history--so Religion, although casually
arrested, and, after a fashion, preserv'd in the churches and creeds,
does not depend at all upon them, but is a part of the identified
soul, which, when greatest, knows not bibles in the old way, but in new