Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or
a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the
great soul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. "Indeed,
these humble considerations[334] make me out of love with greatness.
What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many pairs of silk
stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the
peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for
superfluity, and one other for use!"
8. Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the
inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon
narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display: the soul of a
better quality thrusts back the unreasonable economy into the vaults
of life, and says, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire
he will provide. Ibn Hankal,[335] the Arabian geographer, describes a
heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bokhar,[336] "When I was
in Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were
open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason,
and was told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a
hundred years. Strangers may present themselves at any hour, and in
whatever number; the master has amply provided for the reception of
the men and their animals, and is never happier than when they tarry
for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in any other country."
The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or
shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not for
ostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so
perfect are the compensations of the universe. In some way the time
they seem to lose is redeemed, and the pains they seem to take
remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of human love, and
raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But hospitality must
be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave
soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its
table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its
own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks[337] and fair water
than belong to city feasts.
9. The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no
dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy,
not for its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn, and
denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of
tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely
knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision,
his living is natural and poetic. John Eliot,[338] the Indian Apostle,
drank water, and said of wine,--"It is a noble, generous liquor, and
we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was
made before it." Better still is the temperance of king David[339] who
poured out on the ground unto the Lord the water which three of his
warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives.
10. It is told of Brutus,[340] that when he fell on his sword, after
the battle of Philippi,[341] he quoted a line of Euripides,[342]--"O
virtue! I have followed thee through life, and I find thee at last but
a shade." I doubt not the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic
soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to
dine nicely, and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the
perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not
need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.
11. But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic class, is the
good humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common
duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But
these rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a rate,
that they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of
sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio,[343] charged
with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait
for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his
hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates'[344]
condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the
Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346]
playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and
Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his
company,
_Jul._ Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye.
_Master._ Very likely,
'Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye.
These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glow of a
perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything
seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were
the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish
churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of
years. Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world
behind them, and play their own play in innocent defiance of the
Blue-Laws[347] of the world; and such would appear, could we see the
human race assembled in vision, like little children frolicking
together; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a stately
and solemn garb of works and influences.
12. The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a
romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at
school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All
these great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in
beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already
domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great
guest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to
disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times,
with number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia,
and England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the
muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame.
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry
places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But
here we are; and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that
here is best. See to it only that thyself is here;--and art and
nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall
not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas,[348]
brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus[349] to
die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The
Jerseys[350] were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and
London streets for the feet of Milton.[351] A great man makes his
climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved
element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest, which is
inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the
imagination in reading the actions of Pericles,[352] Xenophon,[353]
Columbus,[354] Bayard,[355] Sidney,[356] Hampden,[357] teach us how
needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth of our living,
should deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on
principles that should interest man and nature in the length of our
days.
13. We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, who never
ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary.
When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, or
books, or religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw
contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of
a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an
active profession, and the forming Colossus[358] shrinks to the common
size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which
always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge
the moment they put their horses of the sun to plow in its furrow.
They found no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What
then? The lesson they gave in their first aspirations, is yet true;
and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their
belief. Or why should a woman liken herself to any historical woman,
and think, because Sappho,[359] or Sévigné,[360] or De Staël,[361] or
the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not
satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis,[362] none
can,--certainly not she. Why not? She has a new and unattempted
problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that ever
bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way,
accept the hint of each new experience, search, in turn, all the
objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the
charm of her new-born being which is the kindling of a new dawn in the
recesses of space. The fair girl, who repels interference by a decided
and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and
lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. The
silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear!
Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you
live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision.
14. The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency. All
men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when
you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to
reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common,
nor the common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the
sympathy of people in those actions whose excellence is that they
outrun sympathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve
your brother, because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back
your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you.
Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a
decorous age. It was a high counsel[363] that I once heard given to a
young person,--"Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple manly
character need never make an apology, but should regard its past
action with the calmness of Phocion,[364] when he admitted that the
event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from
the battle.
15. There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find
consolation in the thought,--this is a part of my constitution, part
of my relation and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted
with me that I should never appear to disadvantage, never make a
ridiculous figure? Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our
money. Greatness once and forever has done with opinion. We tell our
charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, not because we
think they have great merit, but for our justification. It is a
capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his
charities.
16. To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some
rigor of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an
asceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at
ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the
great multitude of suffering men. And not only need we breathe and
exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of
solitude, of unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man to look with a
bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to
familiarize himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of
execration, and the vision of violent death.
17. Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never
shines in which this element may not work. The circumstances of man,