Representative Men: Seven Lectures
think that the intellect and moral sentiment are unanimous; and that,
though philosophy extirpates bugbears, yet it supplies the natural
checks of vice, and polarity to the soul. I think that the wiser a man
is, the more stupendous he finds the natural and moral economy, and
lifts himself to a more absolute reliance.
There is the power of moods, each setting at nought all but its own
tissue of facts and beliefs. There is the power of complexions,
obviously modifying the dispositions and sentiments. The beliefs and
unbeliefs appear to be structural; and, as soon as each man attains
the poise and vivacity which allow the whole machinery to play, he
will not need extreme examples, but will rapidly alternate all opinions
in his own life. Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one
hour. We go forth austere, dedicated, believing in the iron links of
Destiny, and will not turn on our heel to save our life; but a book,
or a bust, or only the sound of a name, shoots a spark through the
nerves, and we suddenly believe in will: my finger-ring shall be the
seal of Solomon: fate is for imbeciles: all is possible to the resolved
mind. Presently, a new experience gives a new turn to our thoughts:
common sense resumes its tyranny: we say, "Well, the army, after all,
is the gate to fame, manners, and poetry: and, look you,--on the whole,
selfishness plants best, prunes best, makes the best commerce, and the
best citizen." Are the opinions of a man on right and wrong, on fate
and causation, at the mercy of a broken sleep or an indigestion? Is
his belief in God and Duty no deeper than a stomach evidence? And what
guaranty for the permanence of his opinions? I like not the French
celerity,--a new church and state once a week.--This is the second
negation; and I shall let it pass for what it will. As far as it asserts
rotation of states of mind, I suppose it suggests its own remedy,
namely, in the record of larger periods. What is the mean of many
states; of all the states? Does the general voice of ages affirm any
principle, or is no community of sentiment discoverable in distant
times and places? And when it shows the power of self-interest, I
accept that as a part of the divine law, and must reconcile it with
aspiration the best I can.
The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of mankind, in all
ages,--that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often
hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape of Kinde or nature, grows over
us like grass. We paint Time with a scythe; Love and Fortune, blind;
and Destiny, deaf. We have too little power of resistance against this
ferocity which champs us up. What front can we make against these
unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? What can I do against the
influence of Race, in my history? What can I do against hereditary and
constitutional habits, against scrofula, lymph, impotence? against
climate, against barbarism, in my country? I can reason down or deny
everything, except this perpetual Belly; feed he must and will, and
I cannot make him respectable.
But the main resistance which the affirmative impulse finds, and one
including all others, is in the doctrine of the Illusionists. There
is a painful rumor in circulation, that we have been practiced upon
in all the principal performances of life, and free agency is the
emptiest name. We have been sopped and drugged with the air, with food,
with woman, with children, with sciences, with events which leave us
exactly where they found us. The mathematics, 'tis complained, leave
the mind where they find it: so do all sciences; and so do all events
and actions. I find a man who has passed through all the sciences, the
churl he was; and, through all the offices, learned, civil, and social,
can detect the child. We are not the less necessitated to dedicate
life to them. In fact, we may come to accept it as the fixed rule and
theory of our state of education, that God is a substance, and his
method is illusion. The eastern sages owned the goddess Yoganidra, the
great illusory energy of Vishnu, by whom, as utter ignorance, the whole
world is beguiled.
Or, shall I state it thus?--The astonishment of life, is, the absence
of any appearance of reconciliation between the theory and practice
of life. Reason, the prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and
then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and
works which have no direct bearing on it;--is then lost, for months
or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we
compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable
hours. But what are these cares and works the better? A method in the
world we do not see, but this parallelism of great and little, which
never react on each other, nor discover the smallest tendency to
converge. Experiences, fortunes, governings, readings, writings are
nothing to the purpose; as when a man comes into the room, it does not
appear whether he has been fed on yams or buffalo,--he has contrived
to get so much bone and fibre as he wants, out of rice or out of snow.
So vast is the disproportion between the sky of law and the pismire
of performance under it, that, whether he is a man of worth or a sot,
is not so great a matter as we say. Shall I add, as one juggle of this
enchantment, the stunning non-intercourse law which makes cooperation
impossible? The young spirit pants to enter society. But all the ways
of culture and greatness lead to solitary imprisonment. He has been
often baulked. He did not expect a sympathy with his thought from the
village, but he went with it to the chosen and intelligent, and found
no entertainment for it, but mere misapprehension, distaste, and
scoffing. Men are strangely mistimed and misapplied; and the excellence
of each is an inflamed individualism which separates him more.
There are these, and more than these diseases of thought, which our
ordinary teachers do not attempt to remove. Now shall we, because a
good nature inclines us to virtue's side, say, There are no doubts,--and
lie for the right? Is life to be led in a brave or in a cowardly manner?
and is not the satisfaction of the doubts essential to all manliness?
Is the name of virtue to be a barrier to that which is virtue? Can you
not believe that a man of earnest and burly habit may find small good
in tea, essays, and catechism, and want a rougher instruction, want
men, labor, trade, farming, war, hunger, plenty, love, hatred, doubt,
and terror, to make things plain to him; and has he not a right to
insist on being convinced in his own way? When he is convinced, he
will be worth the pains.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief
in denying them. Some minds are incapable of skepticism. The doubts
they profess to entertain are rather a civility or accommodation to
the common discourse of their company. They may well give themselves
leave to speculate, for they are secure of a return. Once admitted to
the heaven of thought, they see no relapse into night, but infinite
invitation on the other side. Heaven is within heaven, and sky over
sky, and they are encompassed with divinities. Others there are, to
whom the heaven is brass, and it shuts down to the surface of the
earth. It is a question of temperament, or of more or less immersion
in nature. The last class must needs have a reflex or parasite faith;
not a sight of realities, but an instinctive reliance on the seers and
believers of realities. The manners and thoughts of believers astonish
them, and convince them that these have seen something which is hid
from themselves. But their sensual habit would fix the believer to his
last position, whilst he as inevitably advances; and presently the
unbeliever, for love of belief, burns the believer.
Great believers are always reckoned infidels, impracticable, fantastic,
atheistic, and really men of no account. The spiritualist finds himself
driven to express his faith by a series of skepticisms. Charitable
souls come with their projects, and ask his cooperation. How can he
hesitate? It is the rule of mere comity and courtesy to agree where
you can, and to turn your sentence with something auspicious, and not
freezing and sinister. But he is forced to say, "O, these things will
be as they must be: what can you do? These particular griefs and crimes
are the foliage and fruit of such trees as we see growing. It is vain
to complain of the leaf or the berry: cut it off; it will bear another
just as bad. You must begin your cure lower down." The generosities
of the day prove an intractable element for him. The people's questions
are not his; their methods are not his; and, against all the dictates
of good nature, he is driven to say, he has no pleasure in them.
Even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, of the divine Providence,
and of the immortality of the soul, his neighbors cannot put the
statement so that he shall affirm it. But he denies out of more faith,
and not less. He denies out of honesty. He had rather stand charged
with the imbecility of skepticism, than with untruth. I believe, he
says, in the moral design of the universe; it exists hospitably for
the weal of the souls; but your dogmas seem to me caricatures; why
should I make believe them? Will any say, this is cold and infidel?
The wise and magnanimous will not say so. They will exult in his
far-sighted good-will, that can abandon to the adversary all the ground
of tradition and common belief, without losing a jot of strength. It
sees to the end of all transgression. George Fox saw "that there was
an ocean of darkness and death; but withal, an infinite ocean of light
and love which flowed over that of darkness."
The final solution in which skepticism is lost is in the moral
sentiment, which never forfeits its supremacy. All moods may be safely
tried, and their weight allowed to all objections: the moral sentiment
as easily outweighs them all, as any one. This is the drop which
balances the sea. I play with the miscellany of facts, and take those
superficial views which we call skepticism; but I know that they will
presently appear to me in that order which makes skepticism impossible.
A man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the universe,
that the masses of nature do undulate and flow.
This faith avails to the whole emergency of life and objects. The world
is saturated with deity and with law. He is content with just and
unjust, with sots and fools, with the triumph of folly and fraud. He
can behold with serenity the yawning gulf between the ambition of man
and his power of performance, between the demand and supply of power,
which makes the tragedy of all souls.
Charles Fourier announced that "the attractions of man are proportioned
to his destinies;" in other words, that every desire predicts its own
satisfaction. Yet, all experience exhibits the reverse of this; the
incompetency of power is the universal grief of young and ardent minds.
They accuse the divine Providence of a certain parsimony. It has shown
the heaven and earth to every child, and filled him with a desire for
the whole; a desire raging, infinite; a hunger, as of space to be
filled with planets; a cry of famine, as of devils for souls. Then for
the satisfaction,--to each man is administered a single drop, a bead
of dew of vital power per day,--a cup as large as space, and one drop
of the water of life in it. Each man woke in the morning, with an
appetite that could eat the solar system like a cake; a spirit for
action and passion without bounds; he could lay his hand on the morning
star; he could try conclusions with gravitation or chemistry; but, on
the first motion to prove his strength--hands, feet, senses, gave way,
and would not serve him. He was an emperor deserted by his states, and