Essays — Second Series
as well as in war, or the State, or letters; and the reason why this or
that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man; that is all
anybody can tell you about it. See him and you will know as easily why
he succeeds, as, if you see Napoleon, you would comprehend his fortune.
In the new objects we recognize the old game, the Habit of fronting the
fact, and not dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of
somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the
natural merchant, who appears not so much a private agent as her factor
and Minister of Commerce. His natural probity combines with his insight
into the fabric of society to put him above tricks, and he communicates
to all his own faith that contracts are of no private interpretation.
The habit of his mind is a reference to standards of natural equity and
public advantage; and he inspires respect and the wish to deal with
him, both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the
intellectual pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords.
This immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the Southern
Ocean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his familiar port, centres in
his brain only; and nobody in the universe can make his place good. In
his parlor I see very well that he has been at hard work this morning,
with that knitted brow and that settled humor, which all his desire to
be courteous cannot shake off. I see plainly how many firm acts have
been done; how many valiant noes have this day been spoken, when others
would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, with the pride of art and
skill of masterly arithmetic and power of remote combination, the
consciousness of being an agent and playfellow of the original laws of
the world. He too believes that none can supply him, and that a man must
be born to trade or he cannot learn it.
This virtue draws the mind more when it appears in action to ends not
so mixed. It works with most energy in the smallest companies and in
private relations. In all cases it is an extraordinary and incomputable
agent. The excess of physical strength is paralyzed by it. Higher
natures overpower lower ones by affecting them with a certain sleep. The
faculties are locked up, and offer no resistance. Perhaps that is the
universal law. When the high cannot bring up the low to itself, it
benumbs it, as man charms down the resistance of the lower animals. Men
exert on each other a similar occult power. How often has the influence
of a true master realized all the tales of magic! A river of command
seemed to run down from his eyes into all those who beheld him, a
torrent of strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, which pervaded them
with his thoughts and colored all events with the hue of his mind. "What
means did you employ?" was the question asked of the wife of Concini,
in regard to her treatment of Mary of Medici; and the answer was, "Only
that influence which every strong mind has over a weak one." Cannot
Caesar in irons shuffle off the irons and transfer them to the person
of Hippo or Thraso the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so immutable a bond?
Suppose a slaver on the coast of Guinea should take on board a gang
of negroes which should contain persons of the stamp of Toussaint
L'Ouverture: or, let us fancy, under these swarthy masks he has a gang
of Washingtons in chains. When they arrive at Cuba, will the relative
order of the ship's company be the same? Is there nothing but rope and
iron? Is there no love, no reverence? Is there never a glimpse of right
in a poor slave-captain's mind; and cannot these be supposed available
to break or elude or in any manner overmatch the tension of an inch or
two of iron ring?
This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooperates
with it. The reason why we feel one man's presence and do not feel
another's is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being; justice
is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a
scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will of the
pure runs down from them into other natures as water runs down from
a higher into a lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be
withstood than any other natural force. We can drive a stone upward for
a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will forever
fall; and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of
a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the
privilege of truth to make itself believed. Character is this moral
order seen through the medium of an individual nature. An individual is
an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought,
are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close or pound. All
things exist in the man tinged with the manners of his soul. With what
quality is in him he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he
tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, all
his regards return into his own good at last. He animates all he can,
and he sees only what he animates. He encloses the world, as the patriot
does his country, as a material basis for his character, and a theatre
for action. A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True,
as the magnet arranges itself with the pole; so that he stands to all
beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso
journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the
medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.
Thus, men of character are the conscience of the society to which they
belong.
The natural measure of this power is the resistance of circumstances.
Impure men consider life as it is reflected in opinions, events, and
persons. They cannot see the action until it is done. Yet its moral
element preexisted in the actor, and its quality as right or wrong it
was easy to predict. Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive
and negative pole. There is a male and a female, a spirit and a fact,
a north and a south. Spirit is the positive, the event is the negative.
Will is the north, action the south pole. Character may be ranked as
having its natural place in the north. It shares the magnetic currents
of the system. The feeble souls are drawn to the south or negative
pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold a
principle until it is lodged in a person. They do not wish to be lovely,
but to be loved. Men of character like to hear of their faults; the
other class do not like to hear of faults; they worship events; secure
to them a fact, a connection, a certain chain of circumstances, and they
will ask no more. The hero sees that the event is ancillary; it must
follow him. A given order of events has no power to secure to him the
satisfaction which the imagination attaches to it; the soul of goodness
escapes from any set of circumstances; whilst prosperity belongs to a
certain mind, and will introduce that power and victory which is its
natural fruit, into any order of events. No change of circumstances
can repair a defect of character. We boast our emancipation from many
superstitions; but if we have broken any idols it is through a transfer
of the idolatry. What have I gained, that I no longer immolate a bull to
Jove or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble
before the Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic
Judgment-day,--if I quake at opinion, the public opinion, as we call it;
or at the threat of assault, or contumely, or bad neighbors, or poverty,
or mutilation, or at the rumor of revolution, or of murder? If I quake,
what matters it what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or
another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the
person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors. The
covetousness or the malignity which saddens me when I ascribe it to
society, is my own. I am always environed by myself. On the other part,
rectitude is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy but by
serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual. It is disgraceful to fly to
events for confirmation of our truth and worth. The capitalist does not
run every hour to the broker to coin his advantages into current money
of the realm; he is satisfied to read in the quotations of the market
that his stocks have risen. The same transport which the occurrence of
the best events in the best order would occasion me, I must learn to
taste purer in the perception that my position is every hour meliorated,
and does already command those events I desire. That exultation is only
to be checked by the foresight of an order of things so excellent as to
throw all our prosperities into the deepest shade.
The face which character wears to me is self-sufficingness. I revere the
person who is riches; so that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor,
or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron, benefactor,
and beatified man. Character is centrality, the impossibility of being
displaced or overset. A man should give us a sense of mass. Society
is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into
ceremonies and escapes. But if I go to see an ingenious man I shall
think myself poorly entertained if he give me nimble pieces of
benevolence and etiquette; rather he shall stand stoutly in his place
and let me apprehend if it were only his resistance; know that I have
encountered a new and positive quality;--great refreshment for both of
us. It is much that he does not accept the conventional opinions and
practices. That nonconformity will remain a goad and remembrancer, and
every inquirer will have to dispose of him, in the first place. There is
nothing real or useful that is not a seat of war. Our houses ring with
laughter and personal and critical gossip, but it helps little. But the
uncivil, unavailable man, who is a problem and a threat to society, whom
it cannot let pass in silence but must either worship or hate,--and
to whom all parties feel related, both the leaders of opinion and the
obscure and eccentric,--he helps; he puts America and Europe in the
wrong, and destroys the skepticism which says, 'man is a doll, let us
eat and drink, 'tis the best we can do,' by illuminating the untried
and unknown. Acquiescence in the establishment and appeal to the public,
indicate infirm faith, heads which are not clear, and which must see a
house built, before they can comprehend the plan of it. The wise man
not only leaves out of his thought the many, but leaves out the few.
Fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed, the commander because he is
commanded, the assured, the primary,--they are good; for these announce
the instant presence of supreme power.
Our action should rest mathematically on our substance. In nature, there
are no false valuations. A pound of water in the ocean-tempest has no
more gravity than in a midsummer pond. All things work exactly according
to their quality and according to their quantity; attempt nothing they
cannot do, except man only. He has pretension; he wishes and attempts
things beyond his force. I read in a book of English memoirs, "Mr. Fox
(afterwards Lord Holland) said, he must have the Treasury; he had served
up to it, and would have it." Xenophon and his Ten Thousand were quite
equal to what they attempted, and did it; so equal, that it was not
suspected to be a grand and inimitable exploit. Yet there stands that
fact unrepeated, a high-water mark in military history. Many have
attempted it since, and not been equal to it. It is only on reality that
any power of action can be based. No institution will be better than the
institutor. I knew an amiable and accomplished person who undertook a