"To me men are for what they are,
They wear no masks with me."
'Tis odd that our people should have--not water on the brain,--but a
little gas there. A shrewd foreigner said of the Americans, that,
"whatever they say has a little the air of a speech." Yet one of the
traits down in the books as distinguishing the Anglo-Saxon, is, a trick
of self-disparagement. To be sure, in old, dense countries, among a
million of good coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinction, and you
find humorists. In an English party, a man with no marked manners or
features, with a face like red dough, unexpectedly discloses wit,
learning, a wide range of topics, and personal familiarity with good men
in all parts of the world, until you think you have fallen upon some
illustrious personage. Can it be that the American forest has refreshed
some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out,--the love of
the scarlet feather, of beads, and tinsel? The Italians are fond of red
clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy
morning in the city of Palermo, the street was in a blaze with scarlet
umbrellas. The English have a plain taste. The equipages of the
grandees are plain. A gorgeous livery indicates new and awkward city
wealth. Mr. Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title of _Mister_ good
against any king in Europe. They have piqued themselves on governing
the whole world in the poor, plain, dark Committee-room which the House
of Commons sat in, before the fire.
Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found,
cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. The countryman finds the town
a chophouse, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the
horizon, hills and plains, and with them, sobriety and elevation. He
has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile
to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares
and disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects
are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud of
insignificant annoyances:
"Mirmidons, race feconde,
Mirmidons,
Enfin nous commandons;
Jupiter livre le monde
Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons."[3]
'Tis heavy odds
Against the gods,
When they will match with myrmidons.
We spawning, spawning myrmidons,
Our turn to-day! we take command,
Jove gives the globe into the hand
Of myrmidons, of myrmidons.
[3] Beranger.
What is odious but noise, and people who scream and bewail? people whose
vane points always east, who live to dine, who send for the doctor, who
coddle themselves, who toast their feet on the register, who intrigue to
secure a padded chair, and a corner out of the draught. Suffer them
once to begin the enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will go
down on the unfinished tale. Let these triflers put us out of conceit
with petty comforts. To a man at work, the frost is but a color: the
rain, the wind, he forgot them when he came in. Let us learn to live
coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The least habit of dominion over
the palate has certain good effects not easily estimated. Neither will
we be driven into a quiddling abstemiousness. 'Tis a superstition to
insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical
atoms.
A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. How can you mind
diet, bed, dress, or salutes or compliments, or the figure you make in
company, or wealth, or even the bringing things to pass, when you think
how paltry are the machinery and the workers? Wordsworth was praised to
me, in Westmoreland, for having afforded to his country neighbors an
example of a modest household where comfort and culture were secured,
without display. And a tender boy who wears his rusty cap and outgrown
coat, that he may secure the coveted place in college, and the right in
the library, is educated to some purpose. There is a great deal of
self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and
country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that
keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on
essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse,
but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the
factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the
paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.
We can ill spare the commanding social benefits of cities; they must be
used; yet cautiously, and haughtily,--and will yield their best values
to him who best can do without them. Keep the town for occasions, but
the habits should be formed to retirement. Solitude, the safeguard of
mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter
where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars.
He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling
with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and
writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the
morning,--solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the
imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may
make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves
to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato,
Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live
in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and
the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul
in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and
habits of solitude. The high advantage of university-life is often the
mere mechanical one, I may call it, of a separate chamber and
fire,--which parents will allow the boy without hesitation at Cambridge,
but do not think needful at home. We say solitude, to mark the
character of the tone of thought; but if it can be shared between two or
more than two, it is happier, and not less noble. "We four," wrote
Neander to his sacred friends, "will enjoy at Halle the inward
blessedness of a _civitas Dei_, whose foundations are forever
friendship. The more I know you, the more I dissatisfy and must
dissatisfy all my wonted companions. Their very presence stupefies me.
The common understanding withdraws itself from the one centre of all
existence."
Solitude takes off the pressure of present importunities that more
catholic and humane relations may appear. The saint and poet seek
privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of
culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private
quality. Here is a new poem, which elicits a good many comments in the
journals, and in conversation. From these it is easy, at last, to
eliminate the verdict which readers passed upon it; and that is, in the
main, unfavorable. The poet, as a craftsman, is only interested in the
praise accorded to him, and not in the censure, though it be just. And
the poor little poet hearkens only to that, and rejects the censure, as
proving incapacity in the critic. But the poet _cultivated_ becomes a
stockholder in both companies,--say Mr. Curfew,--in the Curfew stock,
and in the _humanity_ stock; and, in the last, exults as much in the
demonstration of the unsoundness of Curfew, as his interest in the
former gives him pleasure in the currency of Curfew. For, the
depreciation of his Curfew stock only shows the immense values of the
humanity stock. As soon as he sides with his critic against himself,
with joy, he is a cultivated man.
We must have an intellectual quality in all property and in all action,
or they are nought. I must have children, I must have events, I must
have a social state and history, or my thinking and speaking want body
or basis. But to give these accessories any value, I must know them as
contingent and rather showy possessions, which pass for more to the
people than to me. We see this abstraction in scholars, as a matter of
course: but what a charm it adds when observed in practical men.
Bonaparte, like Caesar, was intellectual, and could look at every object
for itself, without affection. Though an egotist _a l'outrance_, he
could criticize a play, a building, a character, on universal grounds,
and give a just opinion. A man known to us only as a celebrity in
politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he
has some intellectual taste or skill; as when we learn of Lord Fairfax,
the Long Parliament's general, his passion for antiquarian studies; or
of the French regicide Carnot, his sublime genius in mathematics; or of
a living banker, his success in poetry; or of a partisan journalist, his
devotion to ornithology. So, if in travelling in the dreary
wildernesses of Arkansas or Texas, we should observe on the next seat a
man reading Horace, or Martial, or Calderon, we should wish to hug him.
In callings that require roughest energy, soldiers, sea-captains, and
civil engineers sometimes betray a fine insight, if only through a
certain gentleness when off duty; a good-natured admission that there
are illusions, and who shall say that he is not their sport? We only
vary the phrase, not the doctrine, when we say, that culture opens the
sense of beauty. A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and,
however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be
said to have arrived at self-possession. I suffer, every day, from the
want of perception of beauty in people. They do not know the charm with
which all moments and objects can be embellished, the charm of manners,
of self-command, of benevolence. Repose and cheerfulness are the badge
of the gentleman,--repose in energy. The Greek battle-pieces are calm;
the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect;
as we say of Niagara, that it falls without speed. A cheerful,
intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it
indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.
When our higher faculties are in activity, we are domesticated, and
awkwardness and discomfort give place to natural and agreeable
movements. It is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods
and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifference
to death. The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains,
appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships. Even a high
dome, and the expansive interior of a cathedral, have a sensible effect
on manners. I have heard that stiff people lose something of their
awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think,
sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish
hurry.
But, over all, culture must reinforce from higher influx the empirical
skills of eloquence, or of politics, or of trade, and the useful arts.
There is a certain loftiness of thought and power to marshal and adjust
particulars, which can only come from an insight of their whole
connection. The orator who has once seen things in their divine order,
will never quite lose sight of this, and will come to affairs as from a
higher ground, and, though he will say nothing of philosophy, he will
have a certain mastery in dealing with them, and an incapableness of
being dazzled or frighted, which will distinguish his handling from that
of attorneys and factors. A man who stands on a good footing with the
heads of parties at Washington, reads the rumors of the newspapers, and
the guesses of provincial politicians, with a key to the right and wrong
in each statement, and sees well enough where all this will end.
Archimedes will look through your Connecticut machine, at a glance, and
judge of its fitness. And much more, a wise man who knows not only what
Plato, but what Saint John can show him, can easily raise the affair he
deals with, to a certain majesty. Plato says, Pericles owed this
elevation to the lessons of Anaxagoras. Burke descended from a higher
sphere when he would influence human affairs. Franklin, Adams,
Jefferson, Washington, stood on a fine humanity, before which the brawls
of modern senates are but pot-house politics.
But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the
apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave.
We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our
friends. Ben Jonson specifies in his address to the Muse:--
"Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will,
And, reconciled, keep him suspected still,
Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse,
Almost all ways to any better course;
With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee,
And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty."
We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at heroism. But the wiser
God says, Take the shame, the poverty, and the penal solitude, that
belong to truth-speaking. Try the rough water as well as the smooth.
Rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. When the state is unquiet,
personal qualities are more than ever decisive. Fear not a revolution
which will constrain you to live five years in one. Don't be so tender
at making an enemy now and then. Be willing to go to Coventry
sometimes, and let the populace bestow on you their coldest contempts.
The finished man of the world must eat of every apple once. He must
hold his hatreds also at arm's length, and not remember spite. He has
neither friends nor enemies, but values men only as channels of power.
He who aims high, must dread an easy home and popular manners. Heaven
sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as
the burr that protects the fruit. If there is any great and good thing
in store for you, it will not come at the first or the second call, nor
in the shape of fashion, ease, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is
for dolls. "Steep and craggy," said Porphyry, "is the path of the
gods." Open your Marcus Antoninus. In the opinion of the ancients, he
was the great man who scorned to shine, and who contested the frowns of
fortune. They preferred the noble vessel too late for the tide,
contending with winds and waves, dismantled and unrigged, to her
companion borne into harbor with colors flying and guns firing. There
is none of the social goods that may not be purchased too dear, and mere
amiableness must not take rank with high aims and self-subsistency.
Bettine replies to Goethe's mother, who chides her disregard of
dress,--"If I cannot do as I have a mind, in our poor Frankfort, I shall
not carry things far." And the youth must rate at its true mark the
inconceivable levity of local opinion. The longer we live, the more we
must endure the elementary existence of men and women; and every brave
heart must treat society as a child, and never allow it to dictate.
"All that class of the severe and restrictive virtues," said Burke, "are
almost too costly for humanity." Who wishes to be severe? Who wishes
to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf of the poor, and low, and
impolite? and who that dares do it, can keep his temper sweet, his
frolic spirits? The high virtues are not debonair, but have their
redress in being illustrious at last. What forests of laurel we bring,
and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of
their contemporaries! The measure of a master is his success in
bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.
Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too early. In talking with
scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of
boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and
infinite quality in their esteem. I find, too, that the chance for
appreciation is much increased by being the son of an appreciator, and
that these boys who now grow up are caught not only years too late, but
two or three births too late, to make the best scholars of. And I think
it a presentable motive to a scholar, that, as, in an old community, a
well-born proprietor is usually found, after the first heats of youth,
to be a careful husband, and to feel a habitual desire that the estate
shall suffer no harm by his administration, but shall be delivered down
to the next heir in as good condition as he received it;--so, a
considerate man will reckon himself a subject of that secular
melioration by which mankind is mollified, cured, and refined, and will
shun every expenditure of his forces on pleasure or gain, which will
jeopardize this social and secular accumulation.
The fossil strata show us that Nature began with rudimental forms, and
rose to the more complex, as fast as the earth was fit for their
dwelling-place; and that the lower perish, as the higher appear. Very
few of our race can be said to be yet finished men. We still carry
sticking to us some remains of the preceding inferior quadruped
organization. We call these millions men; but they are not yet men.
Half-engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs all the music
that can be brought to disengage him. If Love, red Love, with tears and
joy; if Want with his scourge; if War with his cannonade; if
Christianity with its charity; if Trade with its money; if Art with its
portfolios; if Science with her telegraphs through the deeps of space
and time; can set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the
tough chrysalis, can break its walls, and let the new creature emerge
erect and free,--make way, and sing paean! The age of the quadruped is
to go out,--the age of the brain and of the heart is to come in. The
time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be
organized. Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all the material. He
is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power.
The formidable mischief will only make the more useful slave. And if one
shall read the future of the race hinted in the organic effort of Nature
to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the Better in
the human being, we shall dare affirm that there is nothing he will not
overcome and convert, until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and
gehenna. He will convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells into
benefit.