Essays — Second Series
practical reform, yet I was never able to find in him the enterprise of
love he took in hand. He adopted it by ear and by the understanding from
the books he had been reading. All his action was tentative, a piece of
the city carried out into the fields, and was the city still, and no new
fact, and could not inspire enthusiasm. Had there been something latent
in the man, a terrible undemonstrated genius agitating and embarrassing
his demeanor, we had watched for its advent. It is not enough that the
intellect should see the evils and their remedy. We shall still postpone
our existence, nor take the ground to which we are entitled, whilst
it is only a thought and not a spirit that incites us. We have not yet
served up to it.
These are properties of life, and another trait is the notice of
incessant growth. Men should be intelligent and earnest. They must also
make us feel that they have a controlling happy future opening before
them, whose early twilights already kindle in the passing hour. The hero
is misconceived and misreported; he cannot therefore wait to unravel any
man's blunders; he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to
his domain and new claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you if you
have loitered about the old things and have not kept your relation to
him by adding to your wealth. New actions are the only apologies
and explanations of old ones which the noble can bear to offer or to
receive. If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to
consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and
has doubled his power to serve you, and ere you can rise up again will
burden you with blessings.
We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence that is only measured
by its works. Love is inexhaustible, and if its estate is wasted, its
granary emptied, still cheers and enriches, and the man, though he
sleep, seems to purify the air and his house to adorn the landscape and
strengthen the laws. People always recognize this difference. We know
who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscription
to soup-societies. It is only low merits that can be enumerated.
Fear, when your friends say to you what you have done well, and say it
through; but when they stand with uncertain timid looks of respect and
half-dislike, and must suspend their judgment for years to come, you may
begin to hope. Those who live to the future must always appear selfish
to those who live to the present. Therefore it was droll in the good
Riemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, to make out a list of his
donations and good deeds, as, so many hundred thalers given to Stilling,
to Hegel, to Tischbein; a lucrative place found for Professor Voss,
a post under the Grand Duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two
professors recommended to foreign universities; &c., &c. The longest
list of specifications of benefit would look very short. A man is a
poor creature if he is to be measured so. For all these of course
are exceptions, and the rule and hodiernal life of a good man is
benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to be inferred from the
account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the way in which he had spent his
fortune. "Each bon-mot of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half a million
of my own money, the fortune I inherited, my salary and the large income
derived from my writings for fifty years back, have been expended to
instruct me in what I now know. I have besides seen," &c.
I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to enumerate traits of this
simple and rapid power, and we are painting the lightning with charcoal;
but in these long nights and vacations I like to console myself so.
Nothing but itself can copy it. A word warm from the heart enriches me.
I surrender at discretion. How death-cold is literary genius before this
fire of life! These are the touches that reanimate my heavy soul and
give it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, where I thought
myself poor, there was I most rich. Thence comes a new intellectual
exaltation, to be again rebuked by some new exhibition of character.
Strange alternation of attraction and repulsion! Character repudiates
intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into thought, is
published so, and then is ashamed before new flashes of moral worth.
Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no use to ape it or to
contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance, and of persistence,
and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation.
This masterpiece is best where no hands but nature's have been laid on
it. Care is taken that the greatly-destined shall slip up into life in
the shade, with no thousand-eyed Athens to watch and blazon every new
thought, every blushing emotion of young genius. Two persons lately,
very young children of the most high God, have given me occasion for
thought. When I explored the source of their sanctity and charm for the
imagination, it seemed as if each answered, 'From my nonconformity; I
never listened to your people's law, or to what they call their gospel,
and wasted my time. I was content with the simple rural poverty of my
own; hence this sweetness; my work never reminds you of that;--is pure
of that.' And nature advertises me in such persons that in
democratic America she will not be democratized. How cloistered and
constitutionally sequestered from the market and from scandal! It was
only this morning that I sent away some wild flowers of these wood-gods.
They are a relief from literature,--these fresh draughts from the
sources of thought and sentiment; as we read, in an age of polish and
criticism, the first lines of written prose and verse of a nation.
How captivating is their devotion to their favorite books, whether
Aeschylus, Dante, Shakspeare, or Scott, as feeling that they have a
stake in that book; who touches that, touches them;--and especially
the total solitude of the critic, the Patmos of thought from which
he writes, in unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever read
this writing. Could they dream on still, as angels, and not wake to
comparisons, and to be flattered! Yet some natures are too good to be
spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into
the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will
warn them of the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of
trumpets, but they can afford to smile. I remember the indignation of an
eloquent Methodist at the kind admonitions of a Doctor of Divinity,--'My
friend, a man can neither be praised nor insulted.' But forgive the
counsels; they are very natural. I remember the thought which occurred
to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was,
Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that,
answer me this, 'Are you victimizable?'
As I have said, Nature keeps these sovereignties in her own hands, and
however pertly our sermons and disciplines would divide some share of
credit, and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she goes her own
gait and puts the wisest in the wrong. She makes very light of gospels
and prophets, as one who has a great many more to produce and no excess
of time to spare on any one. There is a class of men, individuals of
which appear at long intervals, so eminently endowed with insight and
virtue that they have been unanimously saluted as divine, and who seem
to be an accumulation of that power we consider. Divine persons are
character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory
organized. They are usually received with ill-will, because they are new
and because they set a bound to the exaggeration that has been made
of the personality of the last divine person. Nature never rhymes her
children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man we fancy a
resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his
character and fortune; a result which he is sure to disappoint. None
will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice,
but only in his own high unprecedented way. Character wants room; must
not be crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got in the
press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great
building. It may not, probably does not, form relations rapidly; and we
should not require rash explanation, either on the popular ethics, or on
our own, of its action.
I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove
impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait which the artist recorded in
stone he had seen in life, and better than his copy. We have seen many
counterfeits, but we are born believers in great men. How easily we
read in old books, when men were few, of the smallest action of the
patriarchs. We require that a man should be so large and columnar in
the landscape, that it should deserve to be recorded that he arose, and
girded up his loins, and departed to such a place. The most credible
pictures are those of majestic men who prevailed at their entrance, and
convinced the senses; as happened to the eastern magian who was sent to
test the merits of Zertusht or Zoroaster. When the Yunani sage arrived
at Balkh, the Persians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a day on which the
Mobeds of every country should assemble, and a golden chair was placed
for the Yunani sage. Then the beloved of Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht,
advanced into the midst of the assembly. The Yunani sage, on seeing that
chief, said, "This form and this gait cannot lie, and nothing but truth
can proceed from them." Plato said it was impossible not to believe in
the children of the gods, "though they should speak without probable
or necessary arguments." I should think myself very unhappy in my
associates if I could not credit the best things in history. "John
Bradshaw," says Milton, "appears like a consul, from whom the fasces
are not to depart with the year; so that not on the tribunal only, but
throughout his life, you would regard him as sitting in judgment upon
kings." I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that
one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men
should know the world. "The virtuous prince confronts the gods, without
any misgiving. He waits a hundred ages till a sage comes, and does not
doubt. He who confronts the gods, without any misgiving, knows heaven;
he who waits a hundred ages until a sage comes, without doubting, knows
men. Hence the virtuous prince moves, and for ages shows empire the
way." But there is no need to seek remote examples. He is a dull
observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of
magic, as well as of chemistry. The coldest precisian cannot go abroad
without encountering inexplicable influences. One man fastens an eye on
him and the graves of the memory render up their dead; the secrets that
make him wretched either to keep or to betray must be yielded;--another,
and he cannot speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their
cartilages; the entrance of a friend adds grace, boldness, and eloquence
to him; and there are persons he cannot choose but remember, who gave a
transcendent expansion to his thought, and kindled another life in his
bosom.
What is so excellent as strict relations of amity, when they spring from
this deep root? The sufficient reply to the skeptic who doubts the power
and the furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyful intercourse
with persons, which makes the faith and practice of all reasonable men.
I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound
good understanding which can subsist after much exchange of good
offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself
and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other