Essays — First Series
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_, 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 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 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 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 the
Third 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 life. Whilst something higher than
prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted, he is
an encumbrance. Yesterday, Cæsar was not so great; to-day, the felon at
the gallows’ foot is not more 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. He
resembles the pitiful drivellers whom travellers describe as
frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk about all day,
yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and at evening, when the bazaars
are open, slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become
tranquil and glorified seers. 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, or the
State-Street prudence of buying by the acre to sell by the foot; or the
thrift of the agriculturist, to stick 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 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 every
thing 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, 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. 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 round 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,—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 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 fear groundless. The Latin
proverb says, “In battles the eye is first overcome.” 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. The drover, the
sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous
a pulse under the sleet as under the sun of June.
In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes
readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but
it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently
strong. To himself he seems weak; to others, formidable. You are afraid
of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the
good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will. But the
sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip up
_his_ claims, is as thin and timid as any, and the peace of society is
often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid, and the other
dares not. Far off, men swell, bully and threaten; bring them hand to
hand, and they are a feeble folk.
It is a proverb that ‘courtesy costs nothing’; but calculation might
come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind, but
kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an
eye-water. If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never recognize
the dividing lines, but meet on what common ground remains,—if only
that the sun shines and the rain rains for both; the area will widen
very fast, and ere you know it, the boundary mountains on which the eye
had fastened have melted into air. If they set out to contend, Saint
Paul will lie and Saint John will hate. What low, poor, paltry,
hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and
chosen souls! They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign to
confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a
thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery,
modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false
position with your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and
bitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs,
assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely
that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your
paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. So at
least shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of the
soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that you will never do
yourself justice in dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of by
the right handle, does not show itself proportioned and in its true
bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a
consent and it shall presently be granted, since really and underneath
their external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind.
Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly
footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited
for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when?
To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are
preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us.
Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us. We are
too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater
or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and
consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet.
Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily
whisper names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man’s