Concerning Lofty Men, and Evidence that the Passions
belong to the Next Life, and Stoicism to this.
I call certain men _lofty_ or festal-day-men, and to this class belong,
in my history, Ottomar, Gustavus, the Genius and the Doctor, and none
beside.
By a lofty man I do not mean the man of strict honesty and rectitude,
who, like a body of a solar system, pursues his path without other than
apparent aberrations; nor do I mean the fine soul which, with prophetic
feeling, smooths all down, spares every one, satisfies every one, and
sacrifices itself, but does not throw itself away; nor the man of
honor, whose word is a rock, and in whose breast, heated and moved by
the central Sun of Honor, there are no thoughts and purposes other than
the deeds outside of it; nor, finally, either the cold, virtuous man of
principle, or the man of feeling, whose feelers wind about all beings,
and quiver in another's wound, and who embraces Virtue and a Beauty
with equal ardor; nor do I mean by the lofty man the mere great man of
genius, and indeed the very metaphor indicates in the one case
horizontal, and in the other vertical extension.
But I mean him who, to a greater or lesser degree of all these
distinctions, adds something more, which earth so seldom
possesses--elevation above the earth, the feeling of the pettiness of
all earthly doings, and the disproportion between our heart and our
place; a countenance lifted[64] above the confusing jungle and the
disgusting filth of our floor--the wish for death and the glance beyond
the clouds. If an angel should place himself above our atmosphere and
look down through this darkened sea, turbid with cloud-scum and
floating verdure, to the bottom on which we lie and to which we cleave;
were he to see the thousand eyes and hands which stare and clutch
_horizontally_ at the contents of the air, at mere tinsel; should he
see the worse ones which are bent _sheer downward_ toward the prey and
yellow mica on the muddy bottom, and finally the worst, which
_supinely_ drag the noble human face[65] through the mire;--if this
angel however, should behold among the sea-animals some lofty men
walking upright and looking upward to himself, and should perceive how
they, weighed down by the watery column above their heads, entangled in
the snarl and slime of the ground beneath them, pressed through the
waves and panted for a breath of the vast ether above them, how they
loved more than they were loved, endured life rather than enjoyed it,
equally far from the stationary upward gaze of astonishment and the
race of business-life, left their hands and feet to the mercy of the
bottom, and gave only the upward yearning heart and head to the ether
beyond the sea, and looked at nothing but the hand which separates the
weight of the body from the bottom to which the diver is held down by
it, and lets him soar into his proper element-- ... Oh, well might this
angel count such men as submerged angels, and pity their low condition
and their tears in the sea.... Could one gather together the graves of
a Pythagoras (that noblest soul among the ancients), of Plato,
Socrates, Antoninus (not so much, of Cato the great or Epictetus),
Shakespeare's (if his life was like his writing), J. J. Rousseau's, and
the like, into one churchyard, then would one have the true princely
bench of the _high nobility_ of mankind, the consecrated earth of our
globe, God's flower-garden in the low North. But why do I take my white
paper and picture it and strew it with coal-dust or ink-powder, in
order to dust-in the image of a lofty man, while from heaven hangs down
the great, never-fading picture of the virtuous man which Plato in his
Republic has transferred out of his own heart to the canvas?
The greatest villains are the least acquainted with each other; lofty
men know each other after the first hour. Authors who belong to this
class are the most censured and the least read; for example, the
departed Hamann. Englishmen and Orientals have this fixed star on the
breast oftener than any other people.
Ottomar led me to the subject of the passions: I know that he, once at
least, hated nothing so much as heads and hearts which were covered
with the stony rind of Stoicism--that he longed for cataracts in his
veins and in his lungs tempests--that he said, a man without passion
was a still greater egotist than one of the intensest; that one whom
the near fire of the sensuous world did not kindle would be still
inflamed by the distant fixed-starlight of the intellectual; that the
Stoic differed from the worn-out courtier only in this, that the
cooling off of the former proceeded from within outward, that of the
other from without inward.... I know not whether with the inwardly
burning, outwardly freezing, slippery court-man it is so; but so it is
with glass: when it receives from without too much chilling around the
glowing nucleus, it becomes porous and frangible;[66] the process must
be reversed.
All passions deceive themselves, not in respect to the _kind_, or the
_degree_, but in respect to the _object_ of the feeling; namely thus:
Our passions err, not in this respect, that they hate or love some
person or other:--for then there would be an end of all moral
beauty and ugliness:--nor yet in this, that they wail or exult over
anything--for in that case, not the smallest tear of joy or sorrow over
weal or woe would be allowable, and we should not be permitted any
longer to wish or even will anything, not even virtue. Nor do the
passions err as to the degree of this inclination or disinclination,
this rejoicing and bewailing; for supposing the sense and the fancy
invest the object in their eyes with thousandfold greater moral or
physical charms than they wear to others: nevertheless the loving and
hating must increase in proportion to the outward occasion; and
provided any external attraction gratifies the least degree of love or
hatred, then must even the exaggerated attraction justify an aggravated
degree of the passions. Most of the arguments against anger only prove
that the imputed moral ugliness of the enemy does not exist, not that
it does exist and he is still to be loved--most of the arguments
against our love only prove that our love mistakes not so much the
degree as the object, etc. Not merely a moderate, but the highest
degree of the passions would be allowable, provided only their object
were presented to them, _e. g_., the highest love toward the highest of
good beings, the highest hatred toward the highest of bad ones. Now as
no earthly objects have the quality that can justly excite in us such
tempests of the soul; as therefore the greatest objects which can
attract or repel us must be found, in other worlds: we see that the
greatest emotions of our inner being perhaps find only outside of the
body their permitted and more ample field of activity.
On the whole, passion is subjective and relative: the same movement of
the will is in the stronger soul and amidst greater billows only a
volition, and in the weaker one and on the smoother surface an internal
storm. A perpetual stream of volition flows through us, and the
passions are only the _water-falls_ and _spring-floods_ of this river;
but are we justified in damming them up merely because of their
rarity?--Is not that a flood to the brooklet which is only a wave to
the river?--And if we, when on fire, censure our coldness, and when
cold our heat, where do we get the right? And does the duration of our
censure give it?
I feel in advance, objections and difficulties, nay I know and
feel that, on this beclouded rainy globe nothing can wall and
roof us in against outward storms, except the subjugation of inward
ones--nevertheless I also feel, that all which has gone before is true.