There is not yet any inventory of a man's faculties, any more than a
bible of his opinions. Who shall set a limit to the influence of a
human being? There are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry
nations with them, and lead the activity of the human race. And if
there be such a tie, that, wherever the mind of man goes, nature will
accompany him, perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of that force
to draw material and elemental powers, and, where they appear, immense
instrumentalities organize around them. Life is a search after power;
and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,--there is
no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,--that no honest seeking
goes unrewarded. A man should prize events and possessions as the ore
in which this fine mineral is found; and he can well afford to let
events and possessions, and the breath of the body go, if their value
has been added to him in the shape of power. If he have secured the
elixir, he can spare the wide gardens from which it was distilled. A
cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which
nature works, and the education of the will is the flowering and result
of all this geology and astronomy.
All successful men have agreed in one thing,--they were _causationists_.
They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was
not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last
of things. A belief in causality, or strict connection between every
trifle and the principle of being, and, in consequence, belief in
compensation, or, that nothing is got for nothing,--characterizes all
valuable minds, and must control every effort that is made by an
industrious one. The most valiant men are the best believers in the
tension of the laws. "All the great captains," said Bonaparte, "have
performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of the art,--by
adjusting efforts to obstacles."
The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young
orators describe;--the key to all ages is--Imbecility; imbecility in the
vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but
certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear. This
gives force to the strong,--that the multitude have no habit of
self-reliance or original action.
We must reckon success a constitutional trait. Courage,--the old
physicians taught, (and their meaning holds, if their physiology is a
little mythical,)--courage, or the degree of life, is as the degree of
circulation of the blood in the arteries. "During passion, anger, fury,
trials of strength, wrestling, fighting, a large amount of blood is
collected in the arteries, the maintenance of bodily strength requiring
it, and but little is sent into the veins. This condition is constant
with intrepid persons." Where the arteries hold their blood, is courage
and adventure possible. Where they pour it unrestrained into the veins,
the spirit is low and feeble. For performance of great mark, it needs
extraordinary health. If Eric is in robust health, and has slept well,
and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old, at his
departure from Greenland, he will steer west, and his ships will reach
Newfoundland. But take out Eric, and put in a stronger and bolder
man,--Biorn, or Thorfin,--and the ships will, with just as much ease,
sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further, and reach
Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results. With adults,
as with children, one class enter cordially into the game, and whirl
with the whirling world; the others have cold hands, and remain
bystanders; or are only dragged in by the humor and vivacity of those
who can carry a dead weight. The first wealth is health. Sickness is
poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one: it must husband its resources
to live. But health or fulness answers its own ends, and has to spare,
runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's
necessities.
All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. The
mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current of
events, and strong with their strength. One man is made of the same
stuff of which events are made; is in sympathy with the course of
things; can predict it. Whatever befalls, befalls him first; so that he
is equal to whatever shall happen. A man who knows men, can talk well
on politics, trade, law, war, religion. For, everywhere, men are led in
the same manners.
The advantage of a strong pulse is not to be supplied by any labor, art,
or concert. It is like the climate, which easily rears a crop, which no
glass, or irrigation, or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere rival. It
is like the opportunity of a city like New York, or Constantinople,
which needs no diplomacy to force capital or genius or labor to it.
They come of themselves, as the waters flow to it. So a broad, healthy,
massive understanding seems to lie on the shore of unseen rivers, of
unseen oceans, which are covered with barks, that, night and day, are
drifted to this point. That is poured into its lap, which other men lie
plotting for. It is in everybody's secret; anticipates everybody's
discovery; and if it do not command every fact of the genius and the
scholar, it is because it is large and sluggish, and does not think them
worth the exertion which you do.
This affirmative force is in one, and is not in another, as one horse
has the spring in him, and another in the whip. "On the neck of the
young man," said Hafiz, "sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise."
Import into any stationary district, as into an old Dutch population in
New York or Pennsylvania, or among the planters of Virginia, a colony of
hardy Yankees, with seething brains, heads full of steam-hammer, pulley,
crank, and toothed wheel,--and everything begins to shine with values.
What enhancement to all the water and land in England, is the arrival of
James Watt or Brunel! In every company, there is not only the active
and passive sex, but, in both men and women, a deeper and more important
_sex of mind_, namely, the inventive or creative class of both men and
women, and the uninventive or accepting class. Each _plus_ man
represents his set, and, if he have the accidental advantage of personal
ascendency,--which implies neither more nor less of talent, but merely
the temperamental or taming eye of a soldier or a schoolmaster, (which
one has, and one has not, as one has a black moustache and one a blond,)
then quite easily and without envy or resistance, all his coadjutors and
feeders will admit his right to absorb them. The merchant works by
book-keeper and cashier; the lawyer's authorities are hunted up by
clerks; the geologist reports the surveys of his subalterns; Commander
Wilkes appropriates the results of all the naturalists attached to the
Expedition; Thorwaldsen's statue is finished by stone-cutters; Dumas has
journeymen; and Shakspeare was theatre-manager, and used the labor of
many young men, as well as the playbooks.
There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.
Society is a troop of thinkers, and the best heads among them take the
best places. A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled,
the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and
farms. His eye makes estates, as fast as the sun breeds clouds.
When a new boy comes into school, when a man travels, and encounters
strangers every day, or, when into any old club a new comer is
domesticated, that happens which befalls, when a strange ox is driven
into a pen or pasture where cattle are kept; there is at once a trial of
strength between the best pair of horns and the new comer, and it is
settled thenceforth which is the leader. So now, there is a measuring
of strength, very courteous, but decisive, and an acquiescence
thenceforward when these two meet. Each reads his fate in the other's
eyes. The weaker party finds, that none of his information or wit quite
fits the occasion. He thought he knew this or that: he finds that he
omitted to learn the end of it. Nothing that he knows will quite hit
the mark, whilst all the rival's arrows are good, and well thrown. But
if he knew all the facts in the encyclopaedia, it would not help him:
for this is an affair of presence of mind, of attitude, of aplomb: the
opponent has the sun and wind, and, in every cast, the choice of weapon
and mark; and, when he himself is matched with some other antagonist,
his own shafts fly well and hit. 'Tis a question of stomach and
constitution. The second man is as good as the first,--perhaps better;
but has not stoutness or stomach, as the first has, and so his wit seems
over-fine or under-fine.
Health is good,--power, life, that resists disease, poison, and all
enemies, and is conservative, as well as creative. Here is question,
every spring, whether to graft with wax, or whether with clay; whether
to whitewash or to potash, or to prune; but the one point is the thrifty
tree. A good tree, that agrees with the soil, will grow in spite of
blight, or bug, or pruning, or neglect, by night and by day, in all
weathers and all treatments. Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we
are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with
dirty water, if clean cannot be had. If we will make bread, we must
have contagion, yeast, emptyings, or what not, to induce fermentation
into the dough: as the torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by
virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. And we
have a certain instinct, that where is great amount of life, though
gross and peccant, it has its own checks and purifications, and will be
found at last in harmony with moral laws.
We watch in children with pathetic interest, the degree in which they
possess recuperative force. When they are hurt by us, or by each other,
or go to the bottom of the class, or miss the annual prizes, or are
beaten in the game,--if they lose heart, and remember the mischance in
their chamber at home, they have a serious check. But if they have the
buoyancy and resistance that preoccupies them with new interest in the
new moment,--the wounds cicatrize, and the fibre is the tougher for the
hurt.
One comes to value this _plus_ health, when he sees that all
difficulties vanish before it. A timid man listening to the alarmists
in Congress, and in the newspapers, and observing the profligacy of
party,--sectional interests urged with a fury which shuts its eyes to
consequences, with a mind made up to desperate extremities, ballot in
one hand, and rifle in the other,--might easily believe that he and his
country have seen their best days, and he hardens himself the best he
can against the coming ruin. But, after this has been foretold with
equal confidence fifty times, and government six per cents have not
declined a quarter of a mill, he discovers that the enormous elements of
strength which are here in play, make our politics unimportant.
Personal power, freedom, and the resources of nature strain every
faculty of every citizen. We prosper with such vigor, that, like
thrifty trees, which grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, and borers, so we
do not suffer from the profligate swarms that fatten on the national
treasury. The huge animals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor of
the disease attests the strength of the constitution. The same energy
in the Greek _Demos_ drew the remark, that the evils of popular
government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them
in the spirit and energy it awakens. The rough and ready style which
belongs to a people of sailors, foresters, farmers, and mechanics, has
its advantages. Power educates the potentate. As long as our people
quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions. A Western
lawyer of eminence said to me he wished it were a penal offence to bring
an English law-book into a court in this country, so pernicious had he
found in his experience our deference to English precedent. The very
word 'commerce' has only an English meaning, and is pinched to the cramp
exigencies of English experience. The commerce of rivers, the commerce
of railroads, and who knows but the commerce of air-balloons, must add
an American extension to the pond-hole of admiralty. As long as our
people quote English standards, they will miss the sovereignty of power;
but let these rough riders,--legislators in shirt-sleeves,--Hoosier,
Sucker, Wolverine, Badger,--or whatever hard head Arkansas, Oregon, or
Utah sends, half orator, half assassin, to represent its wrath and
cupidity at Washington,--let these drive as they may; and the
disposition of territories and public lands, the necessity of balancing
and keeping at bay the snarling majorities of German, Irish, and of
native millions, will bestow promptness, address, and reason, at last,
on our buffalo-hunter, and authority and majesty of manners. The
instinct of the people is right. Men expect from good whigs, put into
office by the respectability of the country, much less skill to deal
with Mexico, Spain, Britain, or with our own malcontent members, than
from some strong transgressor, like Jefferson, or Jackson, who first
conquers his own government, and then uses the same genius to conquer
the foreigner. The senators who dissented from Mr. Polk's Mexican war,
were not those who knew better, but those who, from political position,
could afford it; not Webster, but Benton and Calhoun.
This power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. 'Tis the power of Lynch
law, of soldiers and pirates; and it bullies the peaceable and loyal.
But it brings its own antidote; and here is my point,--that all kinds of
power usually emerge at the same time; good energy, and bad; power of
mind, with physical health; the ecstasies of devotion, with the
exasperations of debauchery. The same elements are always present, only
sometimes these conspicuous, and sometimes those; what was yesterday
foreground, being to-day background,--what was surface, playing now a
not less effective part as basis. The longer the drought lasts, the
more is the atmosphere surcharged with water. The faster the ball falls
to the sun, the force to fly off is by so much augmented. And, in
morals, wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures with great impulses
have great resources, and return from far. In politics, the sons of
democrats will be whigs; whilst red republicanism, in the father, is a
spasm of nature to engender an intolerable tyrant in the next age. On
the other hand, conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts
the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into
radicalism.
Those who have most of this coarse energy,--the 'bruisers,' who have run
the gauntlet of caucus and tavern through the county or the state, have
their own vices, but they have the good nature of strength and courage.
Fierce and unscrupulous, they are usually frank and direct, and above
falsehood. Our politics fall into bad hands, and churchmen and men of
refinement, it seems agreed, are not fit persons to send to Congress.
Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.
Men in power have no opinions, but may be had cheap for any opinion, for
any purpose,--and if it be only a question between the most civil and
the most forcible, I lean to the last. These Hoosiers and Suckers are
really better than the snivelling opposition. Their wrath is at least
of a bold and manly cast. They see, against the unanimous declarations
of the people, how much crime the people will bear; they proceed from
step to step, and they have calculated but too justly upon their
Excellencies, the New England governors, and upon their Honors, the New
England legislators. The messages of the governors and the resolutions
of the legislatures, are a proverb for expressing a sham virtuous
indignation, which, in the course of events, is sure to be belied.
In trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace of ferocity.
Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive
officers out of saints. The communities hitherto founded by
Socialists,--the Jesuits, the Port-Royalists, the American communities
at New Harmony, at Brook Farm, at Zoar, are only possible, by installing
Judas as steward. The rest of the offices may be filled by good
burgesses. The pious and charitable proprietor has a foreman not quite
so pious and charitable. The most amiable of country gentlemen has a
certain pleasure in the teeth of the bull-dog which guards his orchard.
Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country,
that they always sent the devil to market. And in representations of
the Deity, painting, poetry, and popular religion have ever drawn the
wrath from Hell. It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little
wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for
hands and legs, as if poor decayed formalists of law and order cannot
run like wild goats, wolves, and conies; that, as there is a use in
medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues; that
public spirit and the ready hand are as well found among the malignants.
'Tis not very rare, the coincidence of sharp private and political
practice, with public spirit, and good neighborhood.
I knew a burly Boniface who for many years kept a public-house in one of
our rural capitals. He was a knave whom the town could ill spare. He was
a social, vascular creature, grasping and selfish. There was no crime
which he did not or could not commit. But he made good friends of the
selectmen, served them with his best chop, when they supped at his
house, and also with his honor the Judge, he was very cordial, grasping
his hand. He introduced all the fiends, male and female, into the town,
and united in his person the functions of bully, incendiary, swindler,
barkeeper, and burglar. He girdled the trees, and cut off the horses'
tails of the temperance people, in the night. He led the rummies' and
radicals in town-meeting with a speech. Meantime, he was civil, fat,
and easy, in his house, and precisely the most public-spirited citizen.
He was active in getting the roads repaired and planted with
shade-trees; he subscribed for the fountains, the gas, and the
telegraph; he introduced the new horse-rake, the new scraper, the
baby-jumper, and what not, that Connecticut sends to the admiring
citizens. He did this the easier, that the peddler stopped at his
house, and paid his keeping, by setting up his new trap on the
landlord's premises.
Whilst thus the energy for originating and executing work, deforms
itself by excess, and so our axe chops off our own fingers,--this evil
is not without remedy. All the elements whose aid man calls in, will
sometimes become his masters, especially those of most subtle force.
Shall he, then, renounce steam, fire, and electricity, or, shall he
learn to deal with them? The rule for this whole class of agencies
is,--all _plus_ is good; only put it in the right place.
Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea,
and elegies; cannot read novels, and play whist; cannot satisfy all
their wants at the Thursday Lecture, or the Boston Athenaeum. They pine
for adventure, and must go to Pike's Peak; had rather die by the hatchet
of a Pawnee, than sit all day and every day at a counting-room desk.
They are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing;
for hair-breadth adventures, huge risks, and the joy of eventful living.
Some men cannot endure an hour of calm at sea. I remember a poor Malay
cook, on board a Liverpool packet, who, when the wind blew a gale, could
not contain his joy; "Blow!" he cried, "me do tell you, blow!" Their
friends and governors must see that some vent for their explosive
complexion is provided. The roisters who are destined for infamy at
home, if sent to Mexico, will "cover you with glory," and come back
heroes and generals. There are Oregons, Californias, and Exploring
Expeditions enough appertaining to America, to find them in files to
gnaw, and in crocodiles to eat. The young English are fine animals,
full of blood, and when they have no wars to breathe their riotous
valors in, they seek for travels as dangerous as war, diving into
Maelstroms; swimming Hellesponts; wading up the snowy Himmaleh; hunting
lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in South Africa; gypsying with Borrow in
Spain and Algiers; riding alligators in South America with Waterton;
utilizing Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with Layard; yachting among the
icebergs of Lancaster Sound; peeping into craters on the equator; or
running on the creases of Malays in Borneo.
The excess of virility has the same importance in general history, as in
private and industrial life. Strong race or strong individual rests at
last on natural forces, which are best in the savage, who, like the
beasts around him, is still in reception of the milk from the teats of
Nature. Cut off the connection between any of our works, and this
aboriginal source, and the work is shallow. The people lean on this,
and the mob is not quite so bad an argument as we sometimes say, for it
has this good side. "March without the people," said a French deputy
from the tribune, "and you march into night: their instincts are a
finger-pointing of Providence, always turned toward real benefit. But
when you espouse an Orleans party, or a Bourbon, or a Montalembert
party, or any other but an organic party, though you mean well, you have
a personality instead of a principle, which will inevitably drag you
into a corner."
The best anecdotes of this force are to be had from savage life, in
explorers, soldiers, and buccaneers. But who cares for fallings-out of
assassins, and fights of bears, or grindings of icebergs? Physical force
has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in
volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical
countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little
on our hearth: and of electricity, not volleys of the charged cloud, but
the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy;
the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the
cannibals in the Pacific.
In history, the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a
savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening
sense of beauty:--and you have Pericles and Phidias,--not yet passed
over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and the
world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still
flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency or acridity is got
out by ethics and humanity.
The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the
hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the
camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his
intellectual power culminated: the compression and tension of these
stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can
rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor
drawn from occupations as hardy as war.
We say that success is constitutional; depends on a _plus_ condition of
mind and body, on power of work, on courage: that it is of main efficacy
in carrying on the world, and, though rarely found in the right state
for an article of commerce, but oftener in the supersaturate or excess,
which makes it dangerous and destructive, yet it cannot be spared, and
must be had in that form, and absorbents provided to take off its edge.
The affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. They originate
and execute all the great feats. What a force was coiled up in the
skull of Napoleon! Of the sixty thousand men making his army at Eylau,
it seems some thirty thousand were thieves and burglars. The men whom,
in peaceful communities, we hold if we can, with iron at their legs, in
prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this man dealt with, hand to
hand, dragged them to their duty, and won his victories by their
bayonets.
This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure when it appears under
conditions of supreme refinement, as in the proficients in high art.
When Michel Angelo was forced to paint the Sistine Chapel in fresco, of
which art he knew nothing, he went down into the Pope's gardens behind
the Vatican, and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, mixed
them with glue and water with his own hands, and having, after many
trials, at last suited himself, climbed his ladders, and painted away,
week after week, month after month, the sibyls and prophets. He
surpassed his successors in rough vigor, as much as in purity of
intellect and refinement. He was not crushed by his one picture left
unfinished at last. Michel was wont to draw his figures first in
skeleton, then to clothe them with flesh, and lastly to drape them.
"Ah!" said a brave painter to me, thinking on these things, "if a man
has failed, you will find he has dreamed instead of working. There is
no way to success in our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint,
and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day."
Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an
ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight. And, though a man
cannot return into his mother's womb, and be born with new amounts of
vivacity, yet there are two economies, which are the best _succedanea_
which the case admits. The first is, the stopping off decisively our
miscellaneous activity, and concentrating our force on one or a few
points; as the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree
into one or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into
a sheaf of twigs.
"Enlarge not thy destiny," said the oracle: "endeavor not to do more
than is given thee in charge." The one prudence in life is
concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference
whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares,
friends, and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting.
Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and
drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. Friends, books,
pictures, lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes,--all are
distractions which cause oscillations in our giddy balloon, and make a
good poise and a straight course impossible. You must elect your work;
you shall take what your brain can, and drop all the rest. Only so, can
that amount of vital force accumulate, which can make the step from
knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has,
the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. 'Tis a stop out of a
chalk circle of imbecility into fruitfulness. Many an artist lacking
this, lacks all: he sees the masculine Angelo or Cellini with despair.
He, too, is up to Nature and the First Cause in his thought. But the
spasm to collect and swing his whole being into one act, he has not.
The poet Campbell said, that "a man accustomed to work was equal to any
achievement he resolved on, and, that, for himself, necessity not
inspiration was the prompter of his muse."
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade,
in short, in all management of human affairs. One of the high anecdotes
of the world is the reply of Newton to the inquiry, "how he had been
able to achieve his discoveries?"--"By always intending my mind." Or if
you will have a text from politics, take this from Plutarch: "There was,
in the whole city, but one street in which Pericles was ever seen, the
street which led to the market-place and the council house. He declined
all invitations to banquets, and all gay assemblies and company. During
the whole period of his administration, he never dined at the table of a
friend." Or if we seek an example from trade,--"I hope," said a good
man to Rothschild, "your children are not too fond of money and
business: I am sure you would not wish that."--"I am sure I should wish
that: I wish them to give mind, soul, heart, and body to business,--that
is the way to be happy. It requires a great deal of boldness and a
great deal of caution, to make a great fortune, and when you have got
it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it. If I were to listen
to all the projects proposed to me, I should ruin myself very soon.
Stick to one business, young man. Stick to your brewery, (he said this
to young Buxton,) and you will be the great brewer of London. Be
brewer, and banker, and merchant, and manufacturer, and you will soon be
in the Gazette."
Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive and tenacious, but they do
not rush to a decision. But in our flowing affairs a decision must be
made,--the best, if you can; but any is better than none. There are
twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at
once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him
on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as
much, but can only bring it to light slowly. The good Speaker in the
House is not the man who knows the theory of parliamentary tactics, but
the man who decides off-hand. The good judge is not he who does
hair-splitting justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at
substantial justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance of
suitors. The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and
angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who
throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a
scrape. Dr. Johnson said, in one of his flowing sentences, "Miserable
beyond all names of wretchedness is that unhappy pair, who are doomed to
reduce beforehand to the principles of abstract reason all the details
of each domestic day. There are cases where little can be said, and
much must be done."
The second substitute for temperament is drill, the power of use and
routine. The hack is a better roadster than the Arab barb. In
chemistry, the galvanic stream, slow, but continuous, is equal in power
to the electric spark, and is, in our arts, a better agent. So in human
action, against the spasm of energy, we offset the continuity of drill.
We spread the same amount of force over much time, instead of condensing
it into a moment. 'Tis the same ounce of gold here in a ball, and there
in a leaf. At West Point, Col. Buford, the chief engineer, pounded with
a hammer on the trunnions of a cannon, until he broke them off. He
fired a piece of ordnance some hundred times in swift succession, until
it burst. Now which stroke broke the trunnion? Every stroke. Which
blast burst the piece? Every blast. "_Diligence passe sens_" Henry
VIII. was wont to say, or, great is drill. John Kemble said, that the
worst provincial company of actors would go through a play better than
the best amateur company. Basil Hall likes to show that the worst
regular troops will beat the best volunteers. Practice is nine tenths.
A course of mobs is good practice for orators. All the great speakers
were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through England for seven years,
made Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through New England for
twice seven, trained Wendell Phillips. The way to learn German, is, to
read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know
every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat them by
heart. No genius can recite a ballad at first reading, so well as
mediocrity can at the fifteenth or twentieth reading. The rule for
hospitality and Irish 'help,' is, to have the same dinner every day
throughout the year. At last, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it to a
nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are well served. A
humorous friend of mine thinks, that the reason why Nature is so perfect
in her art, and gets up such inconceivably fine sunsets, is, that she
has learned how, at last, by dint of doing the same thing so very often.
Cannot one converse better on a topic on which he has experience, than
on one which is new? Men whose opinion is valued on 'Change, are only
such as have a special experience, and off that ground their opinion is
not valuable, "More are made good by exercitation, than by nature," said
Democritus. The friction in nature is so enormous that we cannot spare
any power. It is not question to express our thought, to elect our way,
but to overcome resistances of the medium and material in everything we
do. Hence the use of drill, and the worthlessness of amateurs to cope
with practitioners. Six hours every day at the piano, only to give
facility of touch; six hours a day at painting, only to give command of
the odious materials, oil, ochres, and brushes. The masters say, that
they know a master in music, only by seeing the pose of the hands on the
keys;--so difficult and vital an act is the command of the instrument.
To have learned the use of the tools, by thousands of manipulations; to
have learned the arts of reckoning, by endless adding and dividing, is
the power of the mechanic and the clerk. I remarked in England, in
confirmation of a frequent experience at home, that, in literary
circles, the men of trust and consideration, bookmakers, editors,
university deans and professors, bishops, too, were by no means men of
the largest literary talent, but usually of a low and ordinary
intellectuality, with a sort of mercantile activity and working talent.
Indifferent hacks and mediocrities tower, by pushing their forces to a
lucrative point, or by working power, over multitudes of superior men,
in Old as in New England.
I have not forgotten that there are sublime considerations which limit
the value of talent and superficial success. We can easily overpraise
the vulgar hero. There are sources on which we have not drawn. I know
what I abstain from. I adjourn what I have to say on this topic to the
chapters on Culture and Worship. But this force or spirit, being the
means relied on by Nature for bringing the work of the day about,--as
far as we attach importance to household life, and the prizes of the
world, we must respect that. And I hold, that an economy may be applied
to it; it is as much a subject of exact law and arithmetic as fluids and
gases are; it may be husbanded, or wasted; every man is efficient only
as he is a container or vessel of this force, and never was any signal
act or achievement in history, but by this expenditure. This is not
gold, but the gold-maker; not the fame, but the exploit.
If these forces and this husbandry are within reach of our will, and the
laws of them can be read, we infer that all success, and all conceivable
benefit for man, is also, first or last, within his reach, and has its
own sublime economies by which it may be attained. The world is
mathematical, and has no casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve.
Success has no more eccentricity, than the gingham and muslin we weave
in our mills. I know no more affecting lesson to our busy, plotting New
England brains, than to go into one of the factories with which we have
lined all the watercourses in the States. A man hardly knows how much
he is a machine, until he begins to make telegraph, loom, press, and
locomotive, in his own image. But in these, he is forced to leave out
his follies and hindrances, so that when we go to the mill, the machine
is more moral than we. Let a man dare go to a loom, and see if he be
equal to it. Let machine confront machine, and see how they come out.
The world-mill is more complex than the calico-mill, and the architect
stooped less. In the gingham-mill, a broken thread or a shred spoils
the web through a piece of a hundred yards, and is traced back to the
girl that wove it, and lessens her wages. The stockholder, on being
shown this, rubs his hands with delight. Are you so cunning, Mr.
Profitless, and do you expect to swindle your master and employer, in
the web you weave? A day is a more magnificent cloth than any muslin,
the mechanism that makes it is infinitely cunninger, and you shall not
conceal the sleezy, fraudulent, rotten hours you have slipped into the
piece, nor fear that any honest thread, or straighter steel, or more
inflexible shaft, will not testify in the web.