Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
with a reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that
surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be
happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above
time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not
yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not
what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a
price on a few texts, on a few lives.[214] We are like children who
repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they
grow older, of the men and talents and characters they chance to
see,--painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards,
when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered
those saying, they understand them, and are willing to let the words
go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes.
If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man
to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new
perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded
treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall
be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.
And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid;
probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off
remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest
approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have
life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall
not discern the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of
man; you shall not hear any name;--the way, the thought, the good,
shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and
experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that
ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike
beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision,
there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The
soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation,
perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with
knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic
Ocean, the South Sea,--long intervals of time, years, centuries,--are
of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state
of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is
called life, and what is called death.
Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of
repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new
state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one
fact the world hates, that the soul _becomes_; for that forever
degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to
shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas[215]
equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as
the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent.[216]
To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather
of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience
than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I
must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when
we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height,
and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to
principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities,
nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.
This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on
every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE.
Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it
constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into
all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they
contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war eloquence,
personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of
its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature
for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure
of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which
cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise
and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the
vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of
the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.
Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the
cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books
and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the
invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here
within.[217] Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our
own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our
native riches.
But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his
genius admonished to stay at home to put itself in communication with
the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the
urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before
the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool,
how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or
sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of
our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our
hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and
I have all men's.[218] Not for that will I adopt their petulance or
folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation
must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At
times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with
emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want,
charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, "Come out unto
us." But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men
possess to annoy men, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can
come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by
desire we bereave ourselves of the love."
If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith,
let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of
war, and wake Thor and Woden,[219] courage and constancy, in our Saxon
breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth.
Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to
the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we
converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O
friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward
I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law
less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but
proximities.[220] I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support
my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,--but these relations
I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your
customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you,
or you.[221] If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the
happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.
I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is
deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever
inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will
love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by
hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth
with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not
selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine,
and all men's however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.
Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by
your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will
bring us out safe at last.[222] But so may you give these friends
pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their
sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when
they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they
justify me, and do the same thing.
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a
rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism;[223] and the bold
sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the
law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or
the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfill your round of
duties by clearing yourself in the _direct_, or in the _reflex_ way.
Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother,
cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid
you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to
myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the
name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can
discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code.
If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its
commandment one day.
And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the
common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a
taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight,
that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself,
that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to
others!
If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by
distinction _society_, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew
and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous,
desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune,
afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and
perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our
social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot
satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to
their practical force,[224] and do lean and beg day and night
continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations,
our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has
chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of
fate, where strength is born.
If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all
heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is _ruined_. If the
finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in
an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of
Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is
right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life.
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the
professions, who _teams it, farms it_,[225] _peddles_, keeps a school,
preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so
forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet,
is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his
days, and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does
not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a
hundred chances. Let a Stoic[226] open the resources of man, and tell
men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves;
that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a
man is the word made flesh,[227] born to shed healing to the
nations,[228] that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that
the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books,
idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
thank and revere him,--and that teacher shall restore the life of man