Essays — Second Series
demeanor on each occasion. She did not study the Persian grammar, nor
the books of the seven poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed
to be written upon her. For though the bias of her nature was not to
thought, but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature as to
meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by
her sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all,
all would show themselves noble.
I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or Fashion, which seems so
fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary facts for
science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spectators.
The constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle to the
ambitious youth who have not found their names enrolled in its Golden
Book, and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and privileges.
They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and
relative: it is great by their allowance; its proudest gates will
fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For the present
distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the
tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your
residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the
most extreme susceptibility. For the advantages which fashion values
are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets
namely. Out of this precinct they go for nothing; are of no use in the
farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in
the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven
of thought or virtue.
But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. The worth of
the thing signified must vindicate our taste for the emblem. Everything
that is called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before the cause and
fountain of honor, creator of titles and dignities, namely the heart of
love. This is the royal blood, this the fire, which, in all countries
and contingencies, will work after its kind and conquer and expand
all that approaches it. This gives new meanings to every fact. This
impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but its own. What is rich?
Are you rich enough to help anybody? to succor the unfashionable and the
eccentric? rich enough to make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant
with his consul's paper which commends him "To the charitable," the
swarthy Italian with his few broken words of English, the lame pauper
hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or besotted
wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and
your house from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel
that they were greeted with a voice which made them both remember and
hope? What is vulgar but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive
reasons? What is gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart and yours
one holiday from the national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is
an ugly beggar. The king of Schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful
as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad
and deep that although his speech was so bold and free with the Koran
as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor outcast,
eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or who
had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but
fled at once to him; that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable
in the centre of the country, that it seemed as if the instinct of all
sufferers drew them to his side. And the madness which he harbored he
did not share. Is not this to be rich? this only to be rightly rich?
But I shall hear without pain that I play the courtier very ill, and
talk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see, that
what is called by distinction society and fashion has good laws as well
as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good
for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition
of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I
overheard Jove, one day,' said Silenus, 'talking of destroying the
earth; he said it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went
from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other. Minerva
said she hoped not; they were only ridiculous little creatures, with
this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeterminate aspect,
seen far or seen near; if you called them bad, they would appear so; if
you called them good, they would appear so; and there was no one person
or action among them, which would not puzzle her owl, much more all
Olympus, to know whether it was fundamentally bad or good.'
*****
GIFTS.
Gifts of one who loved me,--
'T was high time they came;
When he ceased to love me,
Time they stopped for shame.
V. GIFTS.
IT is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy; that the world
owes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go into
chancery and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, which
involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the
difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year and other times, in
bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though
very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing.
If at any time it comes into my head that a present is due from me to
somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone.
Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a
proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the
world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of
ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house.
Nature does not cocker us; we are children, not pets; she is not fond;
everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal
laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference
of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery even though
we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance
enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us:
what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable
gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of
fantastic values being attached to them. If a man should send to me to
come a hundred miles to visit him and should set before me a basket of
fine summer-fruit, I should think there was some proportion between the
labor and the reward.
For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and
one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option; since if the man
at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you could
procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat
bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is always
a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity does
everything well. In our condition of universal dependence it seems
heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give
all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic
desire, it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him. I
can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies.
Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my
friends prescribed, is that we might convey to some person that which
properly belonged to his character, and was easily associated with him
in thought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most
part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for
gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me.
Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer,
corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his
picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and
pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when
a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an
index of his merit. But it is a cold lifeless business when you go to
the shops to buy me something which does not represent your life and
talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who
represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold
and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of
black-mail.
The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful
sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to receive gifts.
How dare you give them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite
forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being
bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of
receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow.
We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something
of degrading dependence in living by it:--
"Brother, if Jove to thee a present make,
Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."
We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society if
it do not give us, besides earth and fire and water, opportunity, love,
reverence, and objects of veneration.
He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or
sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence I think
is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I
am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such
as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the
gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should
read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not him. The gift,
to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to
my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass
to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How
can you give me this pot of oil or this flagon of wine when all your oil
and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence
the fitness of beautiful, not useful things, for gifts. This giving is
flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as
all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all considering the value of
the gift but looking back to the greater store it was taken from,--I
rather sympathize with the beneficiary than with the anger of my lord
Timon. For the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually
punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great
happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning from one who has
had the ill-luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business,
this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a
slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire in
the Buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your
benefactors."
The reason of these discords I conceive to be that there is no
commensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give anything to
a magnanimous person. After you have served him he at once puts you in
debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial
and selfish compared with the service he knows his friend stood in
readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend,
and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit
it is in my power to render him seems small. Besides, our action on each
other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random that we can
seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for