Essays — Second Series
or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no
favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done
thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has
the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home
where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through
him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who
has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him needs not
husband and educate a few to share with him a select and poetic life.
His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his
presence, frankincense and flowers.
We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at
the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the
influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, as
the rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its
presence is hardly yet suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it; the
Annual Register is silent; in the Conversations' Lexicon it is not set
down; the President's Message, the Queen's Speech, have not mentioned
it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which genius and piety
throw into the world, alters the world. The gladiators in the lists
of power feel, through all their frocks of force and simulation, the
presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and ambition are
confession of this divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor
amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide its
nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is
because we know how much is due from us that we are impatient to
show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a
conscience of this right to grandeur of character, and are false to it.
But each of us has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful,
or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an apology to
others and to ourselves for not reaching the mark of a good and equal
life. But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of
our companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our
own brow, or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad.
We do penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, and we
are constrained to reflect on our splendid moment with a certain
humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a
fair expression of our permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet
in society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, 'I am not all
here.' Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough,
not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology
for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This
conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a
poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class
of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail; climb they
must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could
enter into strict relations with the best persons and make life serene
around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford
to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press, and covet relations
so hollow and pompous as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a
charlatan who could afford to be sincere.
The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave
the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own
constitution; which work with more energy than we believe whilst we
depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been
very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable,
but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the
revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any
party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from
all party, and unites him at the same time to the race. It promises
a recognition of higher rights than those of personal freedom, or the
security of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be trusted,
to be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as the basis of a State,
has never been tried. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing
into confusion if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his
part in certain social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built,
letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government
of force is at an end. Are our methods now so excellent that all
competition is hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise
better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid
fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet and the system
of force. For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior
to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force
where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code
of force they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the
post-office, of the highway, of commerce and the exchange of property,
of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science can be
answered.
We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to
governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and
instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on
the moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in the unity of things,
to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial
restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen
might be reasonable and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a
confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man sufficient
faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of
renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those
who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have
admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to
mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority of the
laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full
of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except
avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits them dare to
think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of
talent and women of superior sentiments cannot hide their contempt.
Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with
suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men,--if indeed I can
speak in the plural number,--more exactly, I will say, I have just been
conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will
make it for a moment appear impossible that thousands of human beings
might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest sentiments,
as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.
*****
NOMINALIST AND REALIST.
In countless upward-striving waves
The moon-drawn tide-wave strives:
In thousand far-transplanted grafts
The parent fruit survives;
So, in the new-born millions,
The perfect Adam lives.
Not less are summer-mornings dear
To every child they wake,
And each with novel life his sphere
Fills for his proper sake.
VIII. NONIMALIST AND REALIST.
I CANNOT often enough say that a man is only a relative and
representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from
being that truth which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us.
If I seek it in him I shall not find it. Could any man conduct into me
the pure stream of that which he pretends to be! Long afterwards I
find that quality elsewhere which he promised me. The genius of the
Platonists is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of
it can I detach from all their books. The man momentarily stands for
the thought, but will not bear examination; and a society of men will
cursorily represent well enough a certain quality and culture, for
example, chivalry or beauty of manners; but separate them and there is
no gentleman and no lady in the group. The least hint sets us on the
pursuit of a character which no man realizes. We have such exorbitant
eyes that on seeing the smallest arc we complete the curve, and when the
curtain is lifted from the diagram which it seemed to veil, we are vexed
to find that no more was drawn than just that fragment of an arc which
we first beheld. We are greatly too liberal in our construction of each
other's faculty and promise. Exactly what the parties have already done
they shall do again; but that which we inferred from their nature and
inception, they will not do. That is in nature, but not in them. That
happens in the world, which we often witness in a public debate. Each
of the speakers expresses himself imperfectly; no one of them hears much
that another says, such is the preoccupation of mind of each; and the
audience, who have only to hear and not to speak, judge very wisely and
superiorly how wrongheaded and unskilful is each of the debaters to his
own affair. Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find,
but symmetrical men never. When I meet a pure intellectual force or a
generosity of affection, I believe here then is man; and am presently
mortified by the discovery that this individual is no more available to
his own or to the general ends than his companions; because the power
which drew my respect is not supported by the total symphony of his
talents. All persons exist to society by some shining trait of beauty or
utility which they have. We borrow the proportions of the man from that
one fine feature, and finish the portrait symmetrically; which is false,
for the rest of his body is small or deformed. I observe a person who
makes a good public appearance, and conclude thence the perfection of
his private character, on which this is based; but he has no private
character. He is a graceful cloak or lay-figure for holidays. All our
poets, heroes, and saints, fail utterly in some one or in many parts to
satisfy our idea, fail to draw our spontaneous interest, and so leave us
without any hope of realization but in our own future. Our exaggeration
of all fine characters arises from the fact that we identify each in
turn with the soul. But there are no such men as we fable; no Jesus, nor
Pericles, nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor Washington, such as we have made.
We consecrate a great deal of nonsense because it was allowed by great
men. There is none without his foible. I verily believe if an angel
should come to chant the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too much
gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious
atrocity. It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful,
but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. He
is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a
cripple. The men of fine parts protect themselves by solitude, or by
courtesy, or by satire, or by an acid worldly manner, each concealing as
he best can his incapacity for useful association, but they want either
love or self-reliance.
Our native love of reality joins with this experience to teach us a
little reserve, and to dissuade a too sudden surrender to the brilliant
qualities of persons. Young people admire talents or particular
excellences; as we grow older we value total powers and effects, as the
impression, the quality, the spirit of men and things. The genius is
all. The man,--it is his system: we do not try a solitary word or act,
but his habit. The acts which you praise, I praise not, since they are