Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
facts, inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. The
beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude,
are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands,
instead of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be
fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the
scythe in the mornings of June; yet what is more lonesome and sad than
the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle[670] when it is too late in
the season to make hay? Scatter brained and "afternoon men" spoil much
more than their own affairs in spoiling the temper of those who 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 to
their senses. The last Grand Duke of Weimar,[671] a man of superior
understanding, said: "I have sometimes remarked in the presence of
great works of art, and just now especially in Dresden, how much a
certain property contributes to the effect which gives life to the
figures, and to the life an irresistible truth. This property is the
hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre of gravity. I
mean the placing the figures firm upon 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
centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and oscillating
appearance. The Raphael in the Dresden gallery[672] (the only great
affecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest and most
passionless 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 possesses in the highest degree the property of the
perpendicularity of all the figures." This perpendicularity 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
them discriminate between what they remember and what they dreamed.
Let them call a spade a spade.[673] Let them give us facts, and honor
their own senses with trust.
But what man shall dare task 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 genius should now be the exception 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 lawgivers; 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
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_,[674] 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[675] 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 art is less for every deduction from
his 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[676] 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.[677] oppresses and slays a
score of innocent persons, as when Antonio and Tasso, both apparently
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, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a
"discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself and to others.
The scholar shames us by his bifold[678] life. Whilst something higher
than prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted,
he is an encumbrance. Yesterday, Cæsar[679] was not so great; to-day,
Job[680] 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, sneaking; 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 has not seen the tragedy of imprudent
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 perfections the exact measure
of our deviations. 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 hand. There is nothing he will not be the
better for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard,[681] or
the State-street[682] prudence of buying by the acre to sell by the
foot; or the thrift of the agriculturist, to stick[683] in 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 ironmonger'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 depreciation 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 cart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed to be very much
on 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 in 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
everything 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 freedom. Let him practise the
minor virtues.[684] 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 around the globe in a pine ship
and come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming
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 which secures an outward well-being 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 and they will
be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves
great, though they 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 resolution. Let him front the object of his worst
apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fears
groundless. The Latin proverb says,[685] "in battles the eye is first
overcome." 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 football. Examples are
cited by soldiers of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire
given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The
terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin.