Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
the act of creation, the act of thought, is instantly transferred to
the record. The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man. Henceforth
the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit.
Henceforward it is settled the book is perfect; as love of the hero
corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes
noxious.[17] The guide is a tyrant. We sought a brother, and lo, a
governor. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, always
slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened,
having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry if
it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by
thinkers, not by Man Thinking, by men of talent, that is, who start
wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of
principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their
duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke,[18] which
Bacon,[19] have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were
only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the
book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature
and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate[20]
with the world and soul. Hence the restorers of readings,[21] the
emendators,[22] the bibliomaniacs[23] of all degrees. This is bad;
this is worse than it seems.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What
is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect?
They are for nothing but to inspire.[24] I had better never see a book
than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and
made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world of
value is the active soul,--the soul, free, sovereign, active. This
every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although
in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees
absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is
genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound
estate of every man.[25] In its essence it is progressive. The book,
the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with
some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,--let us hold by
this. They pin me down.[26] They look backward and not forward. But
genius always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead,
not in his hindhead. Man hopes. Genius creates. To create,--to
create,--is the proof of a divine presence. Whatever talents may be,
if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not
his;[27]--cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are
creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words;
manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or
authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good
and fair.
On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive
always from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of
light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery; and a
fatal disservice[28] is done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy
of genius by over-influence.[29] The literature of every nation bear
me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for two
hundred years.[30]
Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly
subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.
Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly,
the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of
their readings.[31] But when the intervals of darkness come, as come
they must,--when the soul seeth not, when the sun is hid and the stars
withdraw their shining,--we repair to the lamps which were kindled by
their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn
is.[32] We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, "A
fig-tree, looking on a fig-tree, becometh fruitful."
It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the
best books. They impress us ever with the conviction that one nature
wrote and the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great
English poets, of Chaucer,[33] of Marvell,[34] of Dryden,[35] with the
most modern joy,--with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part
caused by the abstraction of all _time_ from their verses. There is
some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived
in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which
lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh thought and
said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical
doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some
pre-established harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and
some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact
observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the young grub
they shall never see.
I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of
instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know that as the human body
can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the
broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And
great and heroic men have existed who had almost no other information
than by the printed page. I only would say that it needs a strong head
to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the
proverb says, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must
carry out the wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as
well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and
invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with
manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense
of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always
true, that as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy
days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his
volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato[36] or Shakespeare,
only that least part,--only the authentic utterances of the
oracle;--all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's
and Shakespeare's.
Of course there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise
man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading.
Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach
elements. But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to
drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various
genius to their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires set
the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures
in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns[37] and
pecuniary foundations,[38] though of towns of gold, can never
countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit.[39] Forget this,
and our American colleges will recede in their public importance,
whilst they grow richer every year.
* * * * *
III. There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a
recluse, a valetudinarian,[40]--as unfit for any handiwork or public
labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" sneer at
speculative men, as if, because they speculate or _see_, they could do
nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy--who are always, more
universally than any other class, the scholars of their day--are
addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men
they do not hear, but only a mincing[41] and diluted speech. They are
often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there are advocates for
their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is
not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is
essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never
ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of
beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but
there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble[42] of
thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious
to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived.
Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.
The world--this shadow of the soul, or _other me_, lies wide around.
Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me
acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult.
I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to
suffer and to work, taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb
abyss[43] be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its
fear;[44] I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So
much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness
have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my
dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his
nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is
pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation,
want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar
grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power.
It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid
products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted
into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin.[45] The
manufacture goes forward at all hours.
The actions and events of our childhood and youth are now matters of
calmest observation. They lie like fair pictures in the air. Not so
with our recent actions,--with the business which we now have in hand.
On this we are quite unable to speculate. Our affections as yet
circulate through it. We no more feel or know it than we feel the
feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body. The new deed is yet a
part of life,--remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life. In
some contemplative hour it detaches itself from the life like a ripe
fruit,[46] to become a thought of the mind. Instantly it is raised,
transfigured; the corruptible has put on incorruption.[47] Henceforth
it is an object of beauty, however base its origin and neighborhood.
Observe, too, the impossibility of antedating this act. In its grub
state it cannot fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly,
without observation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and
is an angel of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in our private
history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert
form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean.[48]
Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs,
and ferules,[49] the love of little maids and berries, and many
another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend
and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and
world, must also soar and sing.[50]
Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has
the richest return of wisdom. I will not shut myself out of this globe
of action, and transplant an oak into a flower-pot, there to hunger
and pine; nor trust the revenue of some single faculty, and exhaust
one vein of thought, much like those Savoyards,[51] who, getting their
livelihood by carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and smoking Dutchmen,
for all Europe, went out one day to the mountain to find stock, and
discovered that they had whittled up the last of their pine-trees.
Authors we have, in numbers, who have written out their vein, and who,
moved by a commendable prudence, sail for Greece or Palestine, follow
the trapper into the prairie, or ramble round Algiers, to replenish
their merchantable stock.