"Paradise is under the shadow of swords,"[310]
_Mahomet._
1. In the elder English dramatists,[311] and mainly in the plays of
Beaumont and Fletcher,[312] there is a constant recognition of
gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily marked in the society
of their age, as color is in our American population. When any Rodrigo,
Pedro, or Valerio[313] enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or
governor exclaims, This is a gentleman,--and proffers civilities without
end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight
in personal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of
character and dialogue,--as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the
Double Marriage,[314]--wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial,
and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the
slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry.
Among many texts, take the following. The Roman Martius has conquered
Athens--all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens,
and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Martius, and he
seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles will not ask his life, although
assured, that a word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds.
"_Valerius._ Bid thy wife farewell.
_Soph._ No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen,
Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown.[315]
My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste.
_Dor._ Stay, Sophocles--with this, tie up my sight;
Let not soft nature so transformed be,
And lose her gentler sexed humanity,
To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well;
Never one object underneath the sun
Will I behold before my Sophocles:
Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die.
_Mar._ Dost know what 'tis to die?
_Soph._ Thou dost not, Martius,
And therefore, not what 'tis to live; to die
Is to begin to live. It is to end
An old, stale, weary work, and to commence
A newer and a better. 'Tis to leave
Deceitful knaves for the society
Of gods and goodness. Thou, thyself, must part
At last, from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs,
And prove thy fortitude what then 'twill do.
_Val._ But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus?
_Soph._ Why should I grieve or vex for being sent
To them I ever loved best? Now, I'll kneel,
But with my back toward thee; 'tis the last duty
This trunk can do the gods.
_Mar._ Strike, strike, Valerius,
Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth:
This is a man, a woman! Kiss thy lord,
And live with all the freedom you were wont.
O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me
With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart,
My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn,
Ere thou transgress this knot of piety.
_Val._ What ails my brother?
_Soph._ Martius, oh Martius,
Thou now hast found a way to conquer me.
_Dor._ O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak
Fit words to follow such a deed as this?
_Mar._ This admirable duke, Valerius,
With his disdain of fortune and of death,
Captived himself, has captived me,
And though my arm hath ta'en his body here,
His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul.
By Romulus,[316] he is all soul, I think;
He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved;
Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free,
And Martius walks now in captivity."
2. I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or
oration, that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the
same tune. We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often
the sound of any fife. Yet, Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the ode of
"Dion,"[317] and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and
Scott[318] will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord
Evandale, given by Balfour of Burley.[319] Thomas Carlyle,[320] with
his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has
suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his
biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns[321] has
given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies,[322] there is an
account of the battle of Lutzen,[323] which deserves to be read. And
Simon Ockley's[324] History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of
individual valor with admiration, all the more evident on the part of
the narrator, that he seems to think that his place in Christian
Oxford[325] requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence.
But if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to
Plutarch,[326] who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the
Brasidas,[327] the Dion,[328] the Epaminondas,[329] the Scipio[330] of
old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all
the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the
despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A
wild courage, a Stoicism[331] not of the schools, but of the blood,
shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame.
3. We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of
political science, or of private economy. Life is a festival only to
the wise. Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a
ragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by
our predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. The
disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of natural,
intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to
breed such compound misery. A lockjaw that bends a man's head back to
his heels, hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes,
insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine
indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by
human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily,
almost no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some
amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a
share in the expiation.
4. Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let
him hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and that the
commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go
dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, and neither
defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and
life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the
mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his
behavior.
5. Toward all this external evil, the man within the breast assumes a
warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with
the infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we
give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety
and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust
which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its
energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind
of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but
pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music,
alike in frightful alarms, and in the tipsy mirth of universal
dissoluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there
is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to know that other souls are
of one texture with it; it has pride; it is the extreme of individual
nature. Nevertheless, we must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat
in great actions, which does not allow us to go behind them. Heroism
feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a
different breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual
activity, would have modified or even reversed the particular action,
yet for the hero, that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not
open to the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of
the unschooled man, that he finds a quality in him that is negligent
of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and
knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and
all possible antagonists.
6. Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in
contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism
is an obedience[332] to a secret impulse of an individual's character.
Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every
man must be supposed to see a little further on his own proper path
than any one else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his
act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in
unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean
contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself
by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success
at last, and then the prudent also extol.
7. Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul
at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood
and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil
agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable,
temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being
scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a
fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common
life. That false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt
and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus,[333] is almost
ashamed of its body. What shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums, and
cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and
custard, which rack the wit of all human society. What joys has kind
nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no interval
between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the
world then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so
innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and
dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying
traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or
a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the
great soul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. "Indeed,
these humble considerations[334] make me out of love with greatness.
What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many pairs of silk
stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the
peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for
superfluity, and one other for use!"
8. Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the
inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon
narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display: the soul of a
better quality thrusts back the unreasonable economy into the vaults
of life, and says, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire
he will provide. Ibn Hankal,[335] the Arabian geographer, describes a
heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bokhar,[336] "When I was
in Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were
open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason,
and was told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a
hundred years. Strangers may present themselves at any hour, and in
whatever number; the master has amply provided for the reception of
the men and their animals, and is never happier than when they tarry
for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in any other country."
The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or
shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not for
ostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so
perfect are the compensations of the universe. In some way the time
they seem to lose is redeemed, and the pains they seem to take
remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of human love, and
raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But hospitality must
be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave
soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its
table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its
own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks[337] and fair water
than belong to city feasts.
9. The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no
dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy,
not for its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn, and
denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of
tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely
knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision,
his living is natural and poetic. John Eliot,[338] the Indian Apostle,
drank water, and said of wine,--"It is a noble, generous liquor, and
we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was
made before it." Better still is the temperance of king David[339] who
poured out on the ground unto the Lord the water which three of his
warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives.
10. It is told of Brutus,[340] that when he fell on his sword, after
the battle of Philippi,[341] he quoted a line of Euripides,[342]--"O
virtue! I have followed thee through life, and I find thee at last but
a shade." I doubt not the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic
soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to
dine nicely, and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the
perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not
need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.
11. But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic class, is the
good humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common
duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But
these rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a rate,
that they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of
sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio,[343] charged
with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait
for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his
hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates'[344]
condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the
Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346]
playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and
Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his
company,
_Jul._ Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye.
_Master._ Very likely,
'Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye.
These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glow of a
perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything
seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were
the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish
churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of
years. Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world
behind them, and play their own play in innocent defiance of the
Blue-Laws[347] of the world; and such would appear, could we see the
human race assembled in vision, like little children frolicking
together; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a stately
and solemn garb of works and influences.
12. The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a
romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at
school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All
these great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in
beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already
domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great
guest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to
disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times,
with number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia,
and England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the
muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame.
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry
places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But
here we are; and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that
here is best. See to it only that thyself is here;--and art and
nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall
not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas,[348]
brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus[349] to
die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The
Jerseys[350] were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and
London streets for the feet of Milton.[351] A great man makes his
climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved
element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest, which is
inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the
imagination in reading the actions of Pericles,[352] Xenophon,[353]
Columbus,[354] Bayard,[355] Sidney,[356] Hampden,[357] teach us how
needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth of our living,
should deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on
principles that should interest man and nature in the length of our
days.
13. We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, who never
ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary.
When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, or
books, or religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw
contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of
a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an
active profession, and the forming Colossus[358] shrinks to the common
size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which
always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge
the moment they put their horses of the sun to plow in its furrow.
They found no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What
then? The lesson they gave in their first aspirations, is yet true;
and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their
belief. Or why should a woman liken herself to any historical woman,
and think, because Sappho,[359] or Sévigné,[360] or De Staël,[361] or
the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not
satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis,[362] none
can,--certainly not she. Why not? She has a new and unattempted
problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that ever
bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way,
accept the hint of each new experience, search, in turn, all the
objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the
charm of her new-born being which is the kindling of a new dawn in the
recesses of space. The fair girl, who repels interference by a decided
and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and
lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. The
silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear!
Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you
live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision.
14. The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency. All
men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when
you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to
reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common,
nor the common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the
sympathy of people in those actions whose excellence is that they
outrun sympathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve
your brother, because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back
your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you.
Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a
decorous age. It was a high counsel[363] that I once heard given to a
young person,--"Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple manly
character need never make an apology, but should regard its past
action with the calmness of Phocion,[364] when he admitted that the
event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from
the battle.
15. There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find
consolation in the thought,--this is a part of my constitution, part
of my relation and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted
with me that I should never appear to disadvantage, never make a
ridiculous figure? Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our
money. Greatness once and forever has done with opinion. We tell our
charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, not because we
think they have great merit, but for our justification. It is a
capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his
charities.
16. To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some
rigor of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an
asceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at
ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the
great multitude of suffering men. And not only need we breathe and
exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of
solitude, of unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man to look with a
bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to
familiarize himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of
execration, and the vision of violent death.
17. Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never
shines in which this element may not work. The circumstances of man,
we say, are historically somewhat better in this country, and at this
hour, than perhaps ever before. More freedom exists for culture. It
will not now run against an ax at the first step out of the beaten
track of opinion. But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try
his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the
trial of persecution always proceeds. It is but the other day that the
brave Lovejoy[365] gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the
rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to
live.
18. I see not any road to perfect peace which a man can walk, but to
take counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too much association, let
him go home much, and establish himself in those courses he approves.
The unremitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure
duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with
honor, if need be, in the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever
outrages have happened to men may befall a man again; and very easily
in a republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion.
Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers, and the gibbet, the youth may
freely bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper he
can, and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such
penalties, whenever it may please the next newspaper and a sufficient
number of his neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary.
19. It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible
heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction
of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow
us.
"Let them rave:[366]
Thou art quiet in thy grave."
In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour when we
are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy them who have seen
safely to an end their manful endeavor? Who that sees the meanness of
our politics, but inly congratulates Washington that he is long
already wrapped in his shroud, and forever safe; that he was laid
sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him?
Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave, who are no more to
suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious
complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite
nature? And yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than
treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no
mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable
being.