Essays — First Series
a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing
army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly
appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to
answer just as well.
Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways.
When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the
leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking of
man and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and
works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and so forth,
are done by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon,
comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever.
The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of
a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out and thoroughly knows
how knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The
simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is
inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a
man’s wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the
inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The wild fertility of
nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our
fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and schools, for
erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. One sees
very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that middle
point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason.
He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He
hears and feels what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-peddler.
There is no permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics. We
side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and the
robber; but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be
again,—not in the low circumstance, but in comparison with the
grandeurs possible to the soul.
A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would
show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that
our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our
easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting
ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love,—a believing
love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists.
There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man,
so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong
enchantment into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, and
when we struggle to wound its creatures our hands are glued to our
sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to
teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us,
and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you
choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes
of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for
you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you
there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in
the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it
floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a
perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you
are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will
not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the
society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better
than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and
still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as
do now the rose and the air and the sun.
I say, _do not choose;_ but that is a figure of speech by which I would
distinguish what is commonly called _choice_ among men, and which is a
partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites,
and not a whole act of the man. But that which I call right or
goodness, is the choice of my constitution; and that which I call
heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance
desirable to my constitution; and the action which I in all my years
tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable
to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an
excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade.
What business has he with an evil trade? Has he not a _calling_ in his
character?
Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one
direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently
inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river;
he runs against obstructions on every side but one, on that side all
obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over a deepening
channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his
organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself
in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him and good when
it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the
more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his
work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly
proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by
the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do
somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he
has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward
“signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men,”
is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one
mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein.
By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply, and
creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work he
unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not
abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let
out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and
hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common
experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to the
customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as
a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man
is lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his
full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must
find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his
work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and
character make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in
his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will
never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the
meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it
into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims.
We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men,
and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. We
think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in
certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract
rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a
nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and
Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and
company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or
vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet
written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as
any. In our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of
hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death,
and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a
royal mind will. To make habitually a new estimate,—that is elevation.
What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In
himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is
in his nature and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The
goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter
them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite
productiveness.
He may have his own. A man’s genius, the quality that differences him
from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the
selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit,
determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a
progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to
him wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity
that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which
are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the
loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons,
which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain
because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet
unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him as they can interpret
parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the
conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my
attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door,
whilst a thousand persons as worthy go by it, to whom I give no regard.
It is enough that these particulars speak to me. A few anecdotes, a few
traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis
in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance if
you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift.
Let them have their weight, and do not reject them and cast about for
illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks
great is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.
Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius the man has
the highest right. Everywhere he may take what belongs to his spiritual
estate, nor can he take any thing else though all doors were open, nor
can all the force of men hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to
attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will
tell itself. That mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion
over us. To the thoughts of that state of mind he has a right. All the
secrets of that state of mind he can compel. This is a law which
statesmen use in practice. All the terrors of the French Republic,
which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But
Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with
the morals, manners and name of that interest, saying that it was
indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same
connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de
Narbonne in less than a fortnight penetrated all the secrets of the
imperial cabinet.
Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. Yet a man may
come to find _that_ the strongest of defences and of ties,—that he has
been understood; and he who has received an opinion may come to find it
the most inconvenient of bonds.
If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils
will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he
publishes. If you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and
angles, it is vain to say, I will pour it only into this or that;—it
will find its level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your
doctrine without being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of
the curve, and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. We
are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect