Representative Men: Seven Lectures
reward,--they could not spend what they had earned, nor repose on their
down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux,--they deserted him. Men found
that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. It resembled
the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes
hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand,
so that the man cannot open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new
and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So,
this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power
and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry of France,
and of Europe, in 1814, was, "enough of him;" "assez de Bonaparte."
It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all that in him lay, to live and
thrive without moral principle. It was the nature of things, the eternal
law of man and of the world, which baulked and ruined him; and the
result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every experiment,
by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim,
will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious
Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essentially one of property,
of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches
will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our
wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste
with all doors open, and which serves all men.
VII. GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER
I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or
secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of
life that everywhere throbs and works. His office is a reception of
the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the eminent and
characteristic experiences.
Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their
history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The
rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its
channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern
and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its
sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow,
or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting,
a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the
memories of his fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is
full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and
signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to
the intelligent.
In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is
the print of the seal. It neither exceeds nor comes short of the fact.
But nature strives upward; and, in man, the report is something more
than print of the seal. It is a new and finer form of the original.
The record is alive, as that which it recorded is alive. In man, the
memory is a kind of looking-glass, which, having received the images
of surrounding objects, is touched with life, and disposes them in a
new order. The facts which transpired do not lie in it inert; but some
subside, and others shine; so that soon we have a new picture, composed
of the eminent experiences. The man cooperates. He loves to communicate;
and that which is for him to say lies as a load on his heart until it
is delivered. But, besides the universal joy of conversation, some men
are born with exalted powers for this second creation. Men are born
to write. The gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone;
his vocation is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the writer
attend his affairs. Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him
as a model, and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that
they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all
that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report
the Holy Ghost, or attempt it. Nothing so broad, so subtle, or so dear,
but comes therefore commended to his pen,--and he will write. In his
eyes, a man is the faculty of reporting, and the universe is the
possibility of being reported. In conversation, in calamity, he finds
new materials; as our German poet said, "some god gave me the power
to paint what I suffer." He draws his rents from rage and pain. By
acting rashly, he buys the power of talking wisely. Vexations, and a
tempest of passion, only fill his sails; as the good Luther writes,
"When I am angry I can pray well, and preach well;" and if we knew the
genesis of fine-strokes of eloquence, they might recall the complaisance
of Sultan Amurath, who struck off some Persian heads, that his
physician, Vesalius, might see the spasms in the muscles of the neck.
His failures are the preparation of his victories. A new thought, or
a crisis of passion, apprises him that all that he has yet learned and
written is exoteric--is not the fact, but some rumor of the fact. What
then? Does he throw away the pen? No; he begins again to describe in
the new light which has shined on him,--if, by some means, he may yet
save some true word. Nature conspires. Whatever can be thought can be
spoken, and still rises for utterance, though to rude and stammering
organs. If they cannot compass it, it waits and works, until, at last,
it moulds them to its perfect will, and is articulated.
This striving after imitative expression, which one meets everywhere,
is significant of the aim of nature, but is mere stenography. There
are higher degrees, and nature has more splendid endowments for those
whom she elects to a superior office; for the class of scholars or
writers, who see connection where the multitude see fragments, and who
are impelled to exhibit the facts in order, and so to supply the axis
on which the frame of things turns. Nature has dearly at heart the
formation of the speculative man, or scholar. It is an end never lost
sight of, and is prepared in the original casting of things. He is no
permissive or accidental appearance, but an organic agent, one of the
estates of the realm, provided and prepared from of old and from
everlasting, in the knitting and contexture of things. Presentiments,
impulses, cheer him. There is a certain heat in the breast, which
attends the perception of a primary truth, which is the shining of the
spiritual sun down into the shaft of the mine. Every thought which
dawns on the mind, in the moment of its emergency announces its own
rank,--whether it is some whimsy, or whether it is a power.
If he have his incitements, there is, on the other side, invitation
and need enough of his gift. Society has, at all times, the same want,
namely, of one sane man with adequate powers of expression to held up
each object of monomania in its right relation. The ambitious and
mercenary bring their last new mumbo-jumbo, whether tariff, Texas,
railroad, Romanism, mesmerism, or California; and, by detaching the
object from its relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare;
and a multitude go mad about it, and they are not to be reproved or
cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this particular
insanity by an equal frenzy on another crochet. But let one man have
the comprehensive eye that can replace this isolated prodigy in its
right neighborhood and bearings,--the illusion vanishes, and the
returning reason of the community thanks the reason of the monitor.
The scholar is the man of the ages, but he must also wish, with other
men, to stand well with his contemporaries. But there is a certain
ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy,
which is of no import, unless the scholars heed it. In this country,
the emphasis of conversation, and of public opinion, commends the
practical man; and the solid portion of the community is named with
significant respect in every circle. Our people are of Bonaparte's
opinion concerning ideologists. Ideas are subversive of social order
and comfort, and at last make a fool of the possessor. It is believed,
the ordering a cargo of goods from New York to Smyrna; or, the running
up and down to procure a company of subscribers to set a-going five
or ten thousand spindles; or, the negotiations of a caucus, and the
practising on the prejudices and facility of country-people, to secure
their votes in November,--is practical and commendable.
If I were to compare action of a much higher strain with a life of
contemplation, I should not venture to pronounce with much confidence
in favor of the former. Mankind have such a deep stake in inward
illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in
defense of his life of thought and prayer. A certain partiality, a
headiness, and loss of balance, is the tax which all action must pay.
Act, if you like,--but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too
strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the
victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces
them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment,
becomes a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in
some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form and
lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the Shaker
has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates
of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is anti-spiritual.
But where are his new things of today? In actions of enthusiasm, this
drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher
aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of
cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the
speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and
sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. The Hindoos
write in their sacred books, "Children only, and not the learned, speak
of the speculative and the practical faculties as two. They are but
one, for both obtain the selfsame end, and the place which is gained
by the followers of the one is gained by the followers of the other.
That man seeth, who seeth that the speculative and the practical
doctrines are one." For great action must draw on the spiritual nature.
The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The
greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstances.
This disparagement will not come from the leaders, but from inferior
persons. The robust gentlemen who stand at the head of the practical
class, share the ideas of the time, and have too much sympathy with
the speculative class. It is not from men excellent in any kind, that
disparagement of any other is to be looked for. With such, Talleyrand's
question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is
he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty? is he of the movement?
is he of the establishment?--but, Is he anybody? does he stand for
something? He must be good of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand,
all that State-street, all that the common sense of mankind asks. Be
real and admirable, not as we know, but as you know. Able men do not
care in what kind a man is able, so only that he is able. A master
likes a master, and does not stipulate whether it be orator, artist,
craftsman, or king.
Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the
literary class. And it is not to be denied that men are cordial in
their recognition and welcome of intellectual accomplishments. Still
the writer does not stand with us on any commanding ground. I think
this to be his own fault. A pound passes for a pound. There have been
times when he was a sacred person; he wrote Bibles; the first hymns;
the codes; the epics; tragic songs; Sibylline verses; Chaldean oracles;
Laconian sentences inscribed on temple walls. Every word was true, and