Essays — Second Series
the appetite is keen. The vegetable life does not content itself with
casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the
air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish,
thousands may plant themselves; that hundreds may come up, that tens may
live to maturity; that at least one may replace the parent. All things
betray the same calculated profusion. The excess of fear with which the
animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight
of a snake, or at a sudden noise, protects us, through a multitude of
groundless alarms, from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks in
marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no prospective end;
and nature hides in his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or the
perpetuity of the race.
But the craft with which the world is made, runs also into the mind and
character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his
composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure
of holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to heart.
Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced
to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the contention is
ever hottest on minor matters. Not less remarkable is the overfaith of
each man in the importance of what he has to do or say. The poet, the
prophet, has a higher value for what he utters than any hearer, and
therefore it gets spoken. The strong, self-complacent Luther declares
with an emphasis not to be mistaken, that "God himself cannot do without
wise men." Jacob Behmen and George Fox betray their egotism in the
pertinacity of their controversial tracts, and James Naylor once
suffered himself to be worshipped as the Christ. Each prophet comes
presently to identify himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat
and shoes sacred. However this may discredit such persons with the
judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency,
and publicity to their words. A similar experience is not infrequent
in private life. Each young and ardent person writes a diary, in which,
when the hours of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul.
The pages thus written are to him burning and fragrant; he reads them
on his knees by midnight and by the morning star; he wets them with his
tears; they are sacred; too good for the world, and hardly yet to be
shown to the dearest friend. This is the man-child that is born to the
soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. The umbilical cord
has not yet been cut. After some time has elapsed, he begins to wish to
admit his friend to this hallowed experience, and with hesitation, yet
with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his
eyes? The friend coldly turns them over, and passes from the writing to
conversation, with easy transition, which strikes the other party with
astonishment and vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself. Days
and nights of fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness and of
light have engraved their shadowy characters on that tear-stained book.
He suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. Is there then
no friend? He cannot yet credit that one may have impressive experience
and yet may not know how to put his private fact into literature; and
perhaps the discovery that wisdom has other tongues and ministers than
we, that though we should hold our peace the truth would not the less be
spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our zeal. A man can
only speak so long as he does not feel his speech to be partial and
inadequate. It is partial, but he does not see it to be so whilst he
utters it. As soon as he is released from the instinctive and particular
and sees its partiality, he shuts his mouth in disgust. For no man can
write anything who does not think that what he writes is for the time
the history of the world; or do anything well who does not esteem his
work to be of importance. My work may be of none, but I must not think
it of none, or I shall not do it with impunity.
In like manner, there is throughout nature something mocking, something
that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere; keeps no faith with
us. All promise outruns the performance. We live in a system of
approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is
also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in
nature, not domesticated. Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to
drink; but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us
hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is the same with all
our arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, our language itself
are not satisfactions, but suggestions. The hunger for wealth, which
reduces the planet to a garden, fools the eager pursuer. What is the end
sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good sense and beauty, from the
intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any kind. But what an operose
method! What a train of means to secure a little conversation! This
palace of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen, these stables,
horses and equipage, this bank-stock and file of mortgages; trade to all
the world, country-house and cottage by the waterside, all for a little
conversation, high, clear, and spiritual! Could it not be had as well
by beggars on the highway? No, all these things came from successive
efforts of these beggars to remove friction from the wheels of life, and
give opportunity. Conversation, character, were the avowed ends; wealth
was good as it appeased the animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney,
silenced the creaking door, brought friends together in a warm and
quiet room, and kept the children and the dinner-table in a different
apartment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the ends; but it was known that
men of thought and virtue sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or
could lose good time whilst the room was getting warm in winter days.
Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences,
the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have
been lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That
is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the
governments generally of the world are cities and governments of the
rich; and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would
be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with pains
and sweat and fury nowhere; when all is done, it is for nothing. They
are like one who has interrupted the conversation of a company to make
his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say. The appearance
strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of aimless nations.
Were the ends of nature so great and cogent as to exact this immense
sacrifice of men?
Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be expected,
a similar effect on the eye from the face of external nature. There is
in woods and waters a certain enticement and flattery, together with a
failure to yield a present satisfaction. This disappointment is felt
in every landscape. I have seen the softness and beauty of the summer
clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, their height
and privilege of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much the
drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to some pavilions and
gardens of festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy, but the poet finds
himself not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the river, the
bank of flowers before him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still
elsewhere. This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo
of the triumph that has passed by and is now at its glancing splendor
and heyday, perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in
the field, then in the adjacent woods. The present object shall give you
this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which has just gone by.
What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness
in the sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand or plant
his foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever and ever.
It is the same among the men and women as among the silent trees; always
a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction.
Is it that beauty can never be grasped? in persons and in landscape
is equally inaccessible? The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the
wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven
whilst he pursued her as a star: she cannot be heaven if she stoops to
such a one as he.
What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that first
projectile impulse, of this flattery and balking of so many well-meaning
creatures? Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe a slight
treachery and derision? Are we not engaged to a serious resentment of
this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, and fools of nature?
One look at the face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest,
and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts
itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret
is untold. Many and many an Oedipus arrives; he has the whole mystery
teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill;
no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the
fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong
enough to follow it and report of the return of the curve. But it
also appears that our actions are seconded and disposed to greater
conclusions than we designed. We are escorted on every hand through life
by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us.
We cannot bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal with
persons. If we measure our individual forces against hers we may easily
feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. But if, instead
of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the
workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning
dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity
and chemistry, and, over them, of life, preexisting within us in their
highest form.
The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain of
causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condition
of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from the wheel.
Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest or Identity insinuates its
compensation. All over the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or
self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of
its hours; and though we are always engaged with particulars, and
often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every experiment the innate
universal laws. These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand
around us in nature forever embodied, a present sanity to expose and
cure the insanity of men. Our servitude to particulars betrays into a
hundred foolish expectations. We anticipate a new era from the invention
of a locomotive, or a balloon; the new engine brings with it the old
checks. They say that by electro-magnetism your salad shall be grown
from the seed whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner; it is a symbol of
our modern aims and endeavors, of our condensation and acceleration of
objects;--but nothing is gained; nature cannot be cheated; man's life
is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow. In these
checks and impossibilities however we find our advantage, not less than
in the impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are on that
side. And the knowledge that we traverse the whole scale of being,
from the centre to the poles of nature, and have some stake in every