Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
university to every poor man’s door in the newsboy’s basket. Scraps of
science, of thought, of poetry are in the coarsest sheet, so that in
every house we hesitate to burn a newspaper until we have looked it
through.
The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgment
and compend of a nation’s arts: the ship steered by compass
and chart,--longitude reckoned by lunar observation and by
chronometer,--driven by steam; and in wildest sea-mountains, at vast
distances from home,
“The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm.”
No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so weak a creature, of
forces so prodigious. I remember I watched, in crossing the sea, the
beautiful skill whereby the engine in its constant working was made to
produce two hundred gallons of fresh water out of salt-water, every
hour,--thereby supplying all the ship’s want.
The skill that pervades complex details; the man that maintains
himself; the chimney taught to burn its own smoke; the farm made to
produce all that is consumed on it; the very prison compelled to
maintain itself and yield a revenue, and, better still, made a reform
school, and a manufactory of honest men out of rogues, as the steamer
made fresh water out of salt,--all these are examples of that tendency
to combine antagonisms, and utilize evil, which is the index of high
civilization.
Civilization is the result of highly complex organization. In the
snake, all the organs are sheathed; no hands, no feet, no fins, no
wings. In bird and beast, the organs are released, and begin to play.
In man, they are all unbound, and full of joyful action. With this
unswaddling he receives the absolute illumination we call Reason, and
thereby true liberty.
Climate has much to do with this melioration. The highest civility has
never loved the hot zones. Wherever snow falls, there is usually civil
freedom. Where the banana grows, the animal system is indolent and
pampered at the cost of higher qualities: the man is sensual and cruel.
But this scale is not invariable. High degrees of moral sentiment
control the unfavorable influences of climate; and some of our grandest
examples of men and of races come from the equatorial regions,--as the
genius of Egypt, of India, and of Arabia.
These feats are measures or traits of civility; and temperate climate
is an important influence, though not quite indispensable, for there
have been learning, philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the tropics.
But one condition is essential to the social education of man, namely,
morality. There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though
it may not always call itself by that name, but sometimes the point
of honor, as in the institution of chivalry; or patriotism, as in the
Spartan and Roman republics; or the enthusiasm of some religious sect
which imputes its virtue to its dogma; or the cabalism, or _esprit de
corps_, of a masonic or other association of friends.
The evolution of a highly-destined society must be moral; it must run
in the grooves of the celestial wheels. It must be catholic in aims.
What is _moral_? It is the respecting in action catholic or universal
ends. Hear the definition which Kant gives of moral conduct: “Act
always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal
rule for all intelligent beings.”
Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what
is higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength
and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of
the elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe
chopping upward chips from a beam. How awkward! at what disadvantage he
works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now,
not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe;
that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much
ill-temper, laziness, and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers,
until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a
waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel: the river is
good-natured, and never hints an objection.
We had letters to send: couriers could not go fast enough, nor far
enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in
spring, snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the
horses out of a walk. But we found out that the air and earth were
full of Electricity; and always going our way,--just the way we wanted
to send. _Would he take a message?_ Just as lief as not; had nothing
else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one
staggering objection,--he had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, no
hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much
thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and
to fold up the letter in such invisible compact form as he could
carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and
thread,--and it went like a charm.
I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the
sea-shore, makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which
thus engages the assistance of the moon, like a hired hand, to grind,
and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron.
Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor,
to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods
themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of
the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets,
wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing.
Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these
magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of
an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for
example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer,
having by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an
expedient as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation,
contrived to put the diameter of the earth’s orbit, say two hundred
millions of miles, between his first observation and his second, and
this line afforded him a respectable base for his triangle.
All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot bring the heavenly
powers to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in
which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure.
It is a peremptory rule with them, that _they never go out of their
road_. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that
way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained
paths,--neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote
of dust.
And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and
political action leans on principles. To accomplish anything excellent,
the will must work for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature
walled in on every side, as Daniel wrote,--
“Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!”
but when his will leans on a principle, when he is the vehicle of
ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas
are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. “It was
a great instruction,” said a saint in Cromwell’s war, “that the best
courages are but beams of the Almighty.” Hitch your wagon to a star.
Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let
us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams
going the other way,--Charles’s Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules:
every god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the
divinities honor and promote,--justice, love, freedom, knowledge,
utility.
If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by putting our works in the
path of the celestial circuits, we can harness also evil agents, the
powers of darkness, and force them to serve against their will the ends
of wisdom and virtue. Thus, a wise government puts fines and penalties
on pleasant vices. What a benefit would the American government, not
yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city,
village, and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum
almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he
found vices very good patriots?--“he got five millions from the love of
brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay
him as much.” Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully
carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such
joy as they give and such harm as they do.
These are traits, and measures, and modes; and the true test of
civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the
crops,--no, but the kind of man the country turns out. I see the vast
advantages of this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate
zone. I see the immense material prosperity,--towns on towns, states
on states, and wealth piled in the massive architecture of cities;
California quartz-mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled
architecturally along-shore from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward
to California again. But it is not New York streets built by the
confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out
towards Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they
touch New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston,--not
these that make the real estimation. But, when I look over this
constellation of cities which animate and illustrate the land, and
see how little the government has to do with their daily life, how
self-helped and self-directed all families are,--knots of men in purely
natural societies,--societies of trade, of kindred blood, of habitual
hospitality, house and house, man acting on man by weight of opinion,
of longer or better-directed industry, the refining influence of
women, the invitation which experience and permanent causes open to
youth and labor,--when I see how much each virtuous and gifted person,
whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of excellent
people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with great reason
reckons these people his superiors in virtue, and in the symmetry and
force of their qualities, I see what cubic values America has, and
in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or
enormous wealth.
In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral and intellectual
steps. The appearance of the Hebrew Moses, of the Indian Buddh,--in
Greece, of the Seven Wise Masters, of the acute and upright Socrates,
and of the Stoic Zeno,--in Judæa, the advent of Jesus,--and in modern
Christendom, of the realists Huss, Savonarola, and Luther, are causal
facts which carry forward races to new convictions, and elevate the
rule of life. In the presence of these agencies, it is frivolous to
insist on the invention of printing or gunpowder, of steam-power or
gas-light, percussion-caps and rubber-shoes, which are toys thrown off
from that security, freedom, and exhilaration which a healthy morality
creates in society. These arts add a comfort and smoothness to house
and street life; but a purer morality, which kindles genius, civilizes
civilization, casts backward all that we held sacred into the profane,
as the flame of oil throws a shadow when shined upon by the flame of
the Bude-light. Not the less the popular measures of progress will ever
be the arts and the laws.
But if there be a country which cannot stand any one of these tests,--a
country where knowledge cannot be diffused without perils of mob-law
and statute-law,--where speech is not free,--where the post-office is
violated, mail-bags opened, and letters tampered with,--where public