Essays — First Series
this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are
tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis
cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being
which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse
from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with
them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and
being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist and
afterwards see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have
shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here
are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom and which
cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of
immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs
of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do
nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask
whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all
philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can
affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind
and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary
perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of
them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to
be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving;—the
idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and
respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of
perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do
not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose
to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal.
If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of
time all mankind,—although it may chance that no one has seen it before
me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.
The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is
profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh
he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the
world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls,
from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the
whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old
things pass away,—means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now,
and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made
sacred by relation to it,—one as much as another. All things are
dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle
petty and particular miracles disappear. If therefore a man claims to
know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of
some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe
him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and
completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast
his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries
are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and
space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is
light: where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an
impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful
apologue or parable of my being and becoming.
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say
‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before
the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window
make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what
they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There
is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown
flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its
nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But
man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround
him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and
strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not
yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what
David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price
on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote
the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the
men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting
the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point
of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them
and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words
as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It
is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be
weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory
of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his
voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of
the corn.
And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid;
probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering
of the intuition. That thought by what I can now nearest approach to
say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself,
it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the
footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall
not hear any name;—the way, the thought, the good shall be wholly
strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the
way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its
forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is
somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision there is nothing that
can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion
beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of
Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.
Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long
intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I
think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances,
as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is
called death.
Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of
repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new
state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one
fact the world hates; that the soul _becomes;_ for that for ever
degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a
shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas
equally aside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the
soul is present there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of
reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which
relies because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters
me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by
the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of
eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man
or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of
nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men,
poets, who are not.
This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on
every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE.
Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it
constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into
all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they
contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence,
personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its
presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for
conservation and growth. Power is, in nature, the essential measure of
right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot
help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and
orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the
vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of
the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul.
Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the
cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books
and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the
invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.
Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law
demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.
But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his
genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with
the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the
urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before
the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool,
how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or
sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our
friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our
hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I
have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly,
even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not
be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the
whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic
trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all
knock at once at thy closet door and say,—‘Come out unto us.’ But keep
thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to
annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but
through my act. “What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave
ourselves of the love.”
If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let
us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war
and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts.
This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check
this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the
expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we
converse. Say to them, ‘O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O
friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward
I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law
less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I
shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the
chaste husband of one wife,—but these relations I must fill after a new
and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I
cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for
what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to
deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will
so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the
sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you
are noble, I will love you: if you are not, I will not hurt you and
myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same
truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this
not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and