Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men such as they[74] are very naturally seek money or power; and power
because it is as good as money,--the "spoils," so called, "of office."
And why not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their
sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit
the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks
and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual
domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world
for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the
materials strewn along the ground. The private life of one man shall
be a more illustrious monarchy, more formidable to its enemy, more
sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in
history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth[75] the particular
natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only
done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The
books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have
quite exhausted. What is that but saying that we have come up with the
point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one
scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on. First, one, then
another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater by all these
supplies, we crave a better and a more abundant food. The man has
never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined
in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded,
unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of
the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily, and now out of the
throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It
is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which
animates all men.
* * * * *
But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of the
Scholar. I ought not to delay longer to add what I have to say of
nearer reference to the time and to this country.
Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas which
predominate over successive epochs, and there are data for marking the
genius of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the Reflective or
Philosophical age.[76] With the views I have intimated of the oneness
or the identity of the mind through all individuals, I do not much
dwell on these differences. In fact, I believe each individual passes
through all three. The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the
adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a revolution in the
leading idea may be distinctly enough traced.
Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion.[77] Must that needs be
evil? We, it seems, are critical. We are embarrassed with second
thoughts.[78] We cannot enjoy anything for hankering to know whereof
the pleasure consists. We are lined with eyes. We see with our feet.
The time is infected with Hamlet's unhappiness,--
"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."[79]
Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. Would we be
blind? Do we fear lest we should outsee nature and God, and drink
truth dry? I look upon the discontent of the literary class as a mere
announcement of the fact that they find themselves not in the state of
mind of their fathers, and regret the coming state as untried; as a
boy dreads the water before he has learned that he can swim. If there
is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of
Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of
being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and
by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by
the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a
very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
I read with some joy of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as
they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and
science, through church and state.
One of these signs is the fact that the same movement[80] which
effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the
state assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect.
Instead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the low, the common,
was explored and poetized. That which had been negligently trodden
under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves
for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer
than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of
the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household
life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a
sign--is it not?--of new vigor when the extremities are made active,
when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not
for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or
Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the
common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give
me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future
worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the
firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the
boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body;--show
me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence
of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in
these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle
bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal
law;[81] and the shop, the plow, and the ledger referred to the like
cause by which light undulates and poets sing;--and the world lies no
longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order:
there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and
animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.
This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith,[82] Burns,[83]
Cowper,[84] and, in a newer time, of Goethe,[85] Wordsworth,[86] and
Carlyle.[87] This idea they have differently followed and with various
success. In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope,[88] of
Johnson,[89] of Gibbon,[90] looks cold and pedantic. This writing is
blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not less
beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far.
The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This
perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.
Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown
us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.
There is one man of genius who has done much for this philosophy of
life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated:--I
mean Emanuel Swedenborg.[91] The most imaginative of men, yet writing
with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a
purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time.
Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could
surmount. But he saw and showed the connexion between nature and the
affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual
character of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his
shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature;
he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul
material forms, and has given in epical parables a theory of insanity,
of beasts, of unclean and fearful things.
Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political
movement, is the new importance given to the single person. Everything
that tends to insulate the individual--to surround him with barriers
of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and
man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign
state--tends to true union as well as greatness. "I learned," said the
melancholy Pestalozzi,[92] "that no man in God's wide earth is either
willing or able to help any other man." Help must come from the bosom
alone. The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the
ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes
of the future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be one
lesson more than another that should pierce his ear, it is--The world
is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and
you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers
the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare
all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched
might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all
preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the
courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already
suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice
make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent,
indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of
this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is
no work for any one but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of
the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the
mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth
below not in unison with these, but are hindered from action by the
disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and
turn drudges, or die of disgust, some of them suicides. What is the
remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful
now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if
the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there
abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience,--patience;
with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace
the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work the study and
the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent,
the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the
world, not to be an unit; not to be reckoned one character; not to
yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to
be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the
party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted
geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and
friends,--please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own
feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.
Then shall man be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for
sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a
wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will
for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by
the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.
COMPENSATION.[93]
The wings of Time are black and white,
Pied with morning and with night.
Mountain tall and ocean deep
Trembling balance duly keep.
In changing moon, in tidal wave,
Glows the feud of Want and Have.
Gauge of more and less through space
Electric star and pencil plays.
The lonely Earth amid the balls
That hurry through the eternal halls,
A makeweight flying to the void,
Supplemental asteroid,
Or compensatory spark,
Shoots across the neutral Dark.
Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine,
Stanch and strong the tendrils twine;
Through the frail ringlets thee deceive,
None from its stock that vine can reave.
Fear not, then, thou child infirm,
There's no god dare wrong a worm.
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts,
And power to him who power exerts;
Hast not thy share? On winged feet,
Lo! it rushes thee to meet;
And all that Nature made thy own,
Floating in air or pent in stone,