Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good.
Hudson[268] and Bering[269] accomplished so much in their fishing
boats, as to astonish Parry[270] and Franklin,[271] whose equipment
exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an
opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena
than any one since. Columbus[272] found the New World in an undecked
boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of
means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few
years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man.
We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of
science, and yet Napoleon[273] conquered Europe by the bivouac, which
consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all
aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las
Casas,[274] "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and
carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should
receive his supply of corn, grind it in his handmill, and bake his
bread himself."
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is
composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to
the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a
nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them.
And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments
which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away
from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem
the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property,
and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be
assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what
each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes
ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially
he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental,--came to him by
inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having;
it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there,
because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man
is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is
living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or
revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually
renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life,"
said the Caliph Ali,[275] "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest
from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us
to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in
numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new
uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex![276] The Democrats
from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels
himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In
like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in
multitude. Not so, O friends! will the god deign to enter and inhabit
you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts
off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong
and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a
man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless
mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of
all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is
weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so
perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly
rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs,
works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than
a man who stands on his head.
So use all that is called Fortune.[277] Most men gamble with her, and
gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as
unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the
chancelors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained
the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her
rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your
sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable
event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for
you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
FRIENDSHIP.[278]
1. We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Barring all
the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human
family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many
persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we
honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in
church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the
language of these wandering eyebeams. The heart knoweth.
2. The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain
cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of
benevolence and complacency which are felt toward others, are likened
to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more
active, more cheering are these fine inward irradiations. From the
highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good will,
they make the sweetness of life.
3. Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The
scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not
furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is
necessary to write a letter to a friend, and, forthwith, troops of
gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words.
See in any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation
which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is
expected and announced, and an uneasiness between pleasure and pain
invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear
to the good hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all
things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new,
and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger,
only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard
by us. He stands to us for humanity. He is, what we wish. Having
imagined and invested him, we ask how we should stand related in
conversation and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. The
same idea exalts conversation with him. We talk better than we are
wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our dumb devil
has taken leave for the time. For long hours we can continue a series
of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest,
secretest experience, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and
acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers. But
as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his
definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. He
has heard the first, the last and best, he will ever hear from us. He
is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension, are old
acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dress,
and the dinner, but the throbbing of the heart, and the communications
of the soul, no more.
4. What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which relume[279] a
young world for me again? What is so delicious as a just and firm
encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on their
approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and
the true! The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is
metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all
ennuis vanish; all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity
but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured
that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it
would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.
5. I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old
and the new. Shall I not call God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth
himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and
yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the
noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate.[280] Who hears me,
who understands me, becomes mine,--a possession for all time. Nor is
nature so poor, but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we
weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many
thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by-and-by stand
in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims
is a traditionary globe. My friends have come[281] to me unsought. The
great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of
virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me
and in them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual
character, relation, age, sex and circumstance, at which he usually
connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent
lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and
enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the
first Bard[282]--poetry without stop--hymn, ode and epic,[283] poetry
still flowing, Apollo[284] and the Muses[285] chanting still. Will these
two separate themselves from me again, or some of them? I know not, but
I fear it not; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by
simple affinity, and the Genius[286] of my life being thus social, the
same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these
men and women, wherever I may be.
6. I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is
almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison,[287] of misused
wine" of the affections. A new person is to me a great event, and
hinders me from sleep. I have had such fine fancies lately about two
or three persons, as have given me delicious hours, but the joy ends
in the day: it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action
is very little modified. I must feel pride in my friend's
accomplishments as if they were mine, and a property in his virtues.
I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears
applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our
friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer,
his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his
dress, books and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds
new and larger from his mouth.
7. Yet the systole and diastole[288] of the heart are not without
their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the
immortality[289] of the soul, is too good to be believed. The lover,
beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily that which he
worships; and in the golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with
shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero
the virtues in which he shines, and afterward worship the form to
which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the
soul does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science,
all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness.
Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical
foundation of this Elysian temple?[290] Shall I not be as real as the
things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they
are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though
it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is
not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the