Music soothes the din of philosophy and lightens incessantly over the

heads of sages.[151]

* * * * *

How can the language of the poet be more expressive than nature? He

is content that what he has already read in simple characters, or

indifferently in all, be translated into the same again.

* * * * *

He is the true artist whose life is his material; every stroke of

the chisel must enter his own flesh and bone and not grate dully on

marble.[152]

* * * * *

The Springs.—What is any man's discourse to me if I am not sensible of

something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of the crickets? In

it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am

not constantly greeted and cheered in their discourse, as it were by

the flux of sparkling streams.

* * * * *

I cannot see the bottom of the sky, because I cannot see to the bottom

of myself. It is the symbol of my own infinity. My eye penetrates as

far into the ether as that depth is inward from which my contemporary

thought springs.

Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but

by abandonment, and childlike mirthfulness. If you would know aught, be

gay before it.

_June 24._ When I read Cudworth I find I can tolerate all,—atomists,

pneumatologists, atheists, and theists,—Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus,

Democritus, and Pythagoras. It is the attitude of these men, more than

any communication, which charms me. It is so rare to find a man musing.

But between them and their commentators there is an endless dispute. But

if it come to that, that you compare notes, then you are all wrong. As

it is, each takes me up into the serene heavens, and paints earth and

sky. Any sincere thought is irresistible; it lifts us to the zenith,

whither the smallest bubble rises as surely as the largest.

Dr. Cudworth does not consider that the belief in a deity is as great a

heresy as exists. Epicurus held that the gods were "of human form, yet

were so thin and subtile, as that, comparatively with our terrestrial

bodies, they might be called incorporeal; they having not so much

_carnem_ as _quasi-carnem_, nor _sanguinem_ as _quasi-sanguinem_,

a certain kind of aerial or ethereal flesh and blood." This, which

Cudworth pronounces "romantical," is plainly as good doctrine as his

own. As if any sincere thought were not the best sort of truth!

* * * * *

There is no doubt but the highest morality in the books is rhymed

or measured,—is, in form as well as substance, poetry. Such is the

scripture of all nations. If I were to compile a volume to contain the

condensed wisdom of mankind, I should quote no rhythmless line.[153]

* * * * *

Not all the wit of a college can avail to make one harmonious line. It

never _happens_. It may get so as to jingle, but a jingle is akin to a

jar,—jars regularly recurring.[154]

So delicious is plain speech to my ears, as if I were to be more

delighted by the whistling of the shot than frightened by the flying of

the splinters, I am content, I fear, to be quite battered down and made

a ruin of. I outgeneral myself when I direct the enemy to my vulnerable

points.

The loftiest utterance of Love is, perhaps, sublimely satirical.

Sympathy with what is sound makes sport of what is unsound.

* * * * *

Cliffs. Evening.—Though the sun set a quarter of an hour ago, his rays

are still visible, darting half-way to the zenith. That glowing morrow

in the west flashes on me like a faint presentiment of morning when I

am falling asleep. A dull mist comes rolling from the west, as if it

were the dust which day has raised. A column of smoke is rising from

the woods yonder, to uphold heaven's roof till the light comes again.

The landscape, by its patient resting there, teaches me that all good

remains with him that waiteth, and that I shall sooner overtake the dawn

by remaining here, than by hurrying over the hills of the west.

Morning and evening are as like as brother and sister. The sparrow and

thrush sing and the frogs peep for both.

The woods breathe louder and louder behind me. With what hurry-skurry

night takes place! The wagon rattling over yonder bridge is the

messenger which day sends back to night; but the dispatches are sealed.

In its rattle the village seems to say, This one sound, and I have done.

Red, then, is Day's color; at least it is the color of his heel. He is

'stepping westward.' We only notice him when he comes and when he goes.

With noble perseverance the dog bays the stars yonder. I too, like

thee, walk alone in this strange, familiar night, my voice, like thine,

beating against its friendly concave; and barking I hear only my own

voice. 10 o'clock.

_June 25._ Let me see no other conflict but with prosperity. If my path

run on before me level and smooth, it is all a mirage; in reality it is

steep and arduous as a chamois pass. I will not let the years roll over

me like a Juggernaut car.

We will warm us at each other's fire. Friendship is not such a cold

refining process as a double sieve, but a glowing furnace in which all

impurities are consumed.

Men have learned to touch before they scrutinize,—to shake hands, and

not to stare.

_June 26._ The best poetry has never been written, for when it might

have been, the poet forgot it, and when it was too late remembered it;

or when it might have been, the poet remembered it, and when it was too

late forgot it.

The highest condition of art is artlessness.

Truth is always paradoxical.

He will get to the goal first who stands stillest.

There is one let better than any help, and that is,—_Let-alone_.

By sufferance you may escape suffering.

He who resists not at all will never surrender.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

Say, Not so, and you will outcircle the philosophers.

Stand outside the wall, and no harm can reach you. The danger is that

you be walled in with it.

_June 27._ I am living this 27th of June, 1840, a dull, cloudy day and

no sun shining. The clink of the smith's hammer sounds feebly over the

roofs, and the wind is sighing gently, as if dreaming of cheerfuller

days. The farmer is plowing in yonder field, craftsmen are busy in the

shops, the trader stands behind the counter, and all works go steadily

forward. But I will have nothing to do; I will tell fortune that I

play no game with her, and she may reach me in my Asia of serenity and

indolence if she can.

* * * * *

For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself.[155]

* * * * *

He was no artist, but an artisan, who first made shields of brass.[156]

* * * * *

Unless we meet religiously, we prophane one another. What was the

consecrated ground round the temple, we have used as no better than a

domestic court.

Our friend's is as holy a shrine as any God's, to be approached with

sacred love and awe. Veneration is the measure of Love. Our friend

answers ambiguously, and sometimes before the question is propounded,

like the oracle of Delphi. He forbears to ask explanation, but doubts

and surmises darkly with full faith, as we silently ponder our fates.

In no presence are we so susceptible to shame. Our hour is a sabbath,

our abode a temple, our gifts peace offerings, our conversation a

communion, our silence a prayer. In prophanity we are absent, in

holiness near, in sin estranged, in innocence reconciled.

_June 28._ The prophane never hear music; the holy ever hear it. It is

God's voice, the divine breath audible. Where it is heard, there is a

sabbath. It is omnipotent; all things obey it as they obey virtue. It

is the herald of virtue.[157] It passes by sorrow, for grief hangs its

harp on the willows.

_June 29._ Of all phenomena, my own race are the most mysterious and

undiscoverable. For how many years have I striven to meet one, even on

common manly ground, and have not succeeded!

_June 30._ I sailed from Fair Haven last evening as gently and steadily

as the clouds sail through the atmosphere. The wind came blowing

blithely from the southwest fields, and stepped into the folds of our

sail like a winged horse, pulling with a strong and steady impulse.

The sail bends gently to the breeze, as swells some generous impulse of

the heart, and anon flutters and flaps with a kind of human suspense.

I could watch the motions of a sail forever, they are so rich and

full of meaning. I watch the play of its pulse, as if it were my own

blood beating there. The varying temperature of distant atmospheres

is graduated on its scale. It is a free, buoyant creature, the bauble

of the heavens and the earth. A gay pastime the air plays with it. If

it swells and tugs, it is because the sun lays his windy finger on it.

The breeze it plays with has been outdoors so long. So thin is it, and

yet so full of life; so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and

impatient when least serviceable.[158] So am I blown on by God's breath,

so flutter and flap, and fill gently out with the breeze.

In this fresh evening each blade and leaf looks as if it had been dipped

in an icy liquid greenness. Let eyes that ache come here and look,—the

sight will be a sovereign eyewater,—or else wait and bathe them in the

dark.

We go forth into the fields, and there the wind blows freshly onward,

and still on, and we must make new efforts not to be left behind. What

does the dogged wind intend, that, like a willful cur, it will not let

me turn aside to rest or content? Must it always reprove and provoke

me, and never welcome me as an equal?

The truth shall prevail and falsehood discover itself, as long as the

wind blows on the hills.

* * * * *

A man's life should be a stately march to a sweet but unheard music, and

when to his fellows it shall seem irregular and inharmonious, he will

only be stepping to a livelier measure, or his nicer ear hurry him into

a thousand symphonies and concordant variations. There will be no halt

ever, but at most a marching on his post, or such a pause as is richer

than any sound, when the melody runs into such depth and wildness as to

be no longer heard, but implicitly consented to with the whole life and

being. He will take a false step never, even in the most arduous times,

for then the music will not fail to swell into greater sweetness and

volume, and itself rule the movement it inspired.[159]

* * * * *

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the

soul.

* * * * *

Value and effort are as much coincident as weight and a tendency to

fall. In a very wide but true sense, effort is the deed itself, and

it is only when these sensible stuffs intervene, that our attention

is distracted from the deed to the accident. It is never the deed men

praise, but some marble or canvas which are only a staging to the real

work.[160]

_July 1._ To be a man is to do a man's work; always our resource is

to endeavor. We may well say, Success to our endeavors. Effort is the

prerogative of virtue.[161]

The true laborer is recompensed by his labor, not by his employer.

Industry is its own wages. Let us not suffer our hands to lose one jot

of their handiness by looking behind to a mean recompense, knowing that

our true endeavor cannot be thwarted, nor we be cheated of our earnings

unless by not earning them.[162]

* * * * *

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem

not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this, which is

stereotyped in the poet's life, is what he has become through his work.

Some symbol of value may shape itself to the senses in wood, or marble,

or verse, but this is fluctuating as the laborer's hire, which may or

may not be withheld. His very material is not material but supernatural.

Perhaps the hugest and most effective deed may have no sensible result

at all on earth, but paint itself in the heavens in new stars and

constellations. Its very material lies out of nature. When, in rare

moments, we strive wholly with one consent, which we call a yearning,

we may not hope that our work will stand in any artist's gallery.[163]

Let not the artist expect that his true work will stand in any prince's

gallery.

_July 2._ I am not taken up, like Moses, upon a mountain to learn the

law, but lifted up in my seat here, in the warm sunshine and genial

light.

* * * * *

They who are ready to go are already invited.

* * * * *

Neither men nor things have any true mode of invitation but to be

inviting.

* * * * *

Can that be a task which all things abet, and to postpone which is to

strive against nature?[164]

_July 3._ When Alexander appears, the Hercynian and Dodonean woods seem

to wave a welcome to him.

* * * * *

Do not thoughts and men's lives enrich the earth and change the aspect

of things as much as a new growth of wood?

* * * * *

What are Godfrey and Gonsalvo unless we breathe a life into them, and

reënact their exploits as a prelude to our own? The past is only so

heroic as we see it; it is the canvas on which our conception of heroism

is painted, the dim prospectus of our future field. We are dreaming of

what we are to do.[165]

* * * * *

The last sunrise I witnessed seemed to outshine the splendor of all

preceding ones, and I was convinced that it behooved man to dawn as

freshly, and with equal promise and steadiness advance into the career

of life, with as lofty and serene a countenance to move onward through

his midday to a yet fairer and more promising setting. Has the day

grown old when it sets? and shall man wear out sooner than the sun? In

the crimson colors of the west I discern the budding hues of dawn. To

my western brother it is rising pure and bright as it did to me, but

the evening exhibits in the still rear of day the beauty which through

morning and noon escaped me.[166] When we are oppressed by the heat and

turmoil of the noon, let us remember that the sun which scorches us with

brazen beams is gilding the hills of morning and awaking the woodland

quires for other men.

We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves.

What we call the gross atmosphere of evening is the accumulated deed

of the day, which absorbs the rays of beauty, and shows more richly

than the naked promise of the dawn. By earnest toil in the heat of the

noon, let us get ready a rich western blaze against the evening of our

lives.[167]

* * * * *

Low-thoughted, plodding men have come and camped in my neighbor's field

to-night, with camp music and bustle. Their bugle instantly finds a

sounding board in the heavens, though mean lips blow it. The sky is

delighted with strains which the connoisseur rejects. It seems to say,

Now is this my own earth.[168]

* * * * *

In music are the centripetal and centrifugal forces. The universe needed

only to hear a divine harmony that every star might fall into its proper

place and assume a true sphericity.[169]

_July 4._ 4 o'clock, A. M. The Townsend Light Infantry encamped last

night in my neighbor's inclosure.

The night still breathes slumberously over field and wood, when a few

soldiers gather about one tent in the twilight, and their band plays an

old Scotch air, with bugle and drum and fife attempered to the season.

It seems like the morning hymn of creation. The first sounds of the

awakening camp, mingled with the chastened strains which so sweetly

salute the dawn, impress me as the morning prayer of an army.[170]

And now the morning gun fires. The soldier awakening to creation and

awakening it. I am sure none are cowards now. These strains are the

roving dreams which steal from tent to tent, and break forth into

distinct melody. They are the soldier's morning thought. Each man awakes

himself with lofty emotions, and would do some heroic deed. You need

preach no homily to him; he is the stuff they are made of.

* * * * *

The whole course of our lives should be analogous to one day of the

soldier's. His Genius seems to whisper in his ear what demeanor is

befitting, and in his bravery and his march he yields a blind and

partial obedience.

* * * * *

The fresher breeze which accompanies the dawn rustles the oaks and

birches, and the earth respires calmly with the creaking of crickets.

Some hazel leaf stirs gently, as if anxious not to awake the day too

abruptly, while the time is hastening to the distinct line between

darkness and light. And soldiers issue from their dewy tents, and as if

in answer to expectant nature, sing a sweet and far-echoing hymn.

* * * * *

We may well neglect many things, provided we overlook them.

* * * * *

When to-day I saw the "Great Ball" rolled majestically along, it seemed

a shame that man could not move like it. All dignity and grandeur has

something of the undulatoriness of the sphere. It is the secret of

majesty in the rolling gait of the elephant, and of all grace in action

and in art. The line of beauty is a curve. Each man seems striving to

imitate its gait, and keep pace with it, but it moves on regardless

and conquers the multitude with its majesty. What shame that our lives,

which should be the source of planetary motion and sanction the order of

the spheres, are full of abruptness and angularity, so as not to roll,

nor move majestically.[171]

_July 5._ Go where we will, we discover infinite change in particulars

only, not in generals.

* * * * *

You cannot rob a man of anything which he will miss.

_July 6._ All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some

wise man.[172]

* * * * *

I observe a truly wise practice on every hand, in education, in

religion, and the morals of society,—enough embodied wisdom to have set

up many an ancient philosopher.[173]

This society, if it were a person to be met face to face, would not

only be tolerated but courted, with its so impressive experience and

admirable acquaintance with things.

Consider society at any epoch, and who does not see that heresy has

already _prevailed_ in it?[174]

* * * * *

Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it

brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day

will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been

written.

Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand

and shells on the shore. So much increase of _terra firma_. This may be

a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a

beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.

_July 7._ I have experienced such simple joy in the trivial matters of

fishing and sporting, formerly, as might inspire the muse of Homer and

Shakespeare. And now, when I turn over the pages and ponder the plates

of the "Angler's Souvenir," I exclaim with the poet,—

"Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer's cloud?"[175]

When I hear a sudden burst from a horn, I am startled, as if one had

provoked such wildness as he could not rule nor tame. He dares to wake

the echoes which he cannot put to rest.[176]

_July 8._ Doubt and falsehood are yet good preachers. They affirm

roundly, while they deny partially.

* * * * *

I am pleased to learn that Thales was up and stirring by night not

unfrequently, as his astronomical discoveries prove.

* * * * *

It was a saying of Solon that "it is necessary to observe a medium in

all things."

The golden mean, in ethics as in physics, is the centre of the system,

and that about which all revolve; and though, to a distant and plodding

planet, it is the uttermost extreme, yet, when that planet's year is

complete, it will be found central.[177] They who are alarmed lest

virtue run into extreme good, have not yet wholly embraced her, but

described only a slight arc about her, and from so small a curvature

you can calculate no centre whatever; but their mean is no better than

meanness, nor their medium than mediocrity.

The brave man, while he observes strictly this golden mean, seems to run

through all extremes with impunity; like the sun, which now appears in

the zenith, now in the horizon, and again is faintly reflected from the

moon's disk, and has the credit of describing an entire great circle,

crossing the equinoctial and solstitial colures, without detriment to

his steadfastness or mediocrity.[178]

* * * * *

Every planet asserts its own to be the centre of the system.

* * * * *

Only _meanness_ is mediocre, _moderate_; but the true _medium_ is not

contained within any _bounds_, but is as wide as the ends it connects.

* * * * *

When Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the

Athenians and not to the Megarians, he caused the tombs to be opened,

and showed that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their

dead to the same side with the Athenians, but the Megarians to the

opposite side.[179]

So does each part bear witness to all, and the history of all the past

may be read in a single grain of its ashes.

_July 9._ In most men's religion the ligature which should be its muscle

and sinew is rather like that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held

in their hands, when they went abroad from the temple of Minerva, the

other end being attached to the statue of the goddess. But frequently,

as in their case, the thread breaks, being stretched, and they are left

without an asylum.[180]

* * * * *

The value of many traits in Grecian history depends not so much on their

importance as history, as [on] the readiness with which they accept a

wide interpretation, and illustrate the poetry and ethics of mankind.

When they announce no particular truth, they are yet central to all

truth. They are like those examples by which we improve, but of which

we never formally extract the moral. Even the isolated and unexplained

facts are like the ruins of the temples which in imagination we restore,

and ascribe to some Phidias, or other master.

* * * * *

The Greeks were boys in the sunshine, the Romans were men in the field,

the Persians women in the house, the Egyptians old men in the dark.

* * * * *

He who receives an injury is an accomplice of the wrong-doer.

_July 10._ To myself I am as pliant as osier, and my courses seem not so

easy to be calculated as Encke's comet; but I am powerless to bend the

character of another; he is like iron in my hands. I could tame a hyena

more easily than my friend. I contemplate him as a granite boulder. He

is material which no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell an

oak with a firebrand, and wear a hatchet out of the rock, but I cannot

hew the smallest chip out of my fellow. There is a character in every

one which no art can reach to beautify or deform.[181]

* * * * *

Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts.

* * * * *

We know men through their eyes. You might say that the eye was always

original and unlike another. It is the feature of the individual, and

not of the family,—in twins still different. All a man's privacy is in

his eye, and its expression he cannot alter more than he can alter his

character. So long as we look a man in the eye, it seems to rule the

other features, and make them, too, original. When I have mistaken one

person for another, observing only his form, and carriage, and inferior

features, the unlikeness seemed of the least consequence; but when I

caught his eye, and my doubts were removed, it seemed to pervade every

feature.

The eye revolves on an independent pivot which we can no more control

than our own will. Its axle is the axle of the soul, as the axis of the

earth is coincident with the axis of the heavens.

_July 11._ The true art is not merely a sublime consolation and holiday

labor which the gods have given to sickly mortals, to be wrought at in

parlors, and not in stithies amid soot and smoke, but such a masterpiece

as you may imagine a dweller on the table-lands of Central Asia might

produce, with threescore and ten years for canvas, and the faculties of

a man for tools,—a human life, wherein you might hope to discover more

than the freshness of Guido's Aurora, or the mild light of Titian's

landscapes; not a bald imitation or rival of Nature, but the restored

original of which she is the reflection. For such a work as this,

whole galleries of Greece and Italy are a mere mixing of colors and

preparatory quarrying of marble.[182]

Not how is the idea expressed in stone or on canvas, is the question,

but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the

artist.

There is much covert truth in the old mythology which makes Vulcan

a brawny and deformed smith, who sweat more than the other gods. His

stithy was not like a modern studio.

* * * * *

Let us not wait any longer, but step down from the mountains on to the

plain of earth. Let our delay be like the sun's, when he lingers on the

dividing line of day and night a brief space when the world is grateful

for his light. We will make such haste as the morning and such delay as

the evening.[183]

* * * * *

It concerns us rather to be something here present than to leave

something behind us.[184]

* * * * *

It is the man determines what is said, not the words. If a mean person

uses a wise maxim, I bethink me how it can be interpreted so as to

commend itself to his meanness; but if a wise man makes a commonplace

remark, I consider what wider construction it will admit. When Pittacus

says, "It is necessary to accommodate one's self to the time and take

advantage of the occasion," I assent. He might have considered that

to accommodate one's self to all times, and take advantage of all

occasions, was really to be independent, and make our own opportunity.

_July 12._ What first suggested that necessity was grim, and made fate

so fatal? The strongest is always the least violent. Necessity is a

sort of Eastern cushion on which I recline. I contemplate its mild,

inflexible countenance, as the haze in October days. When I am vexed I

only ask to be left alone with it. Leave me to my fate. It is the bosom

of time and the lap of eternity; since to be necessary is to be needful,

it is only another name for inflexibility of good. How I welcome my grim

fellow and aspire to be such a necessity as he! He is so flexible, and

yields to me as the air to my body! I leap and dance in his midst, and

play with his beard till he smiles. I greet thee, my elder brother, who

with thy touch ennoblest all things. Must it be so, then is it good.

Thou commendest even petty ills by thy countenance.

Over Greece hangs the divine necessity, ever a mellower heaven of

itself, whose light too gilds the Acropolis and a thousand fanes and

groves.[185]

* * * * *

Pittacus said there was no better course than to endeavor to do well

what you are doing at any moment.

* * * * *

Go where he will, the wise man is proprietor of all things. Everything

bears a similar inscription, if we could but read it, to that on the

vase found in the stomach of a fish in old times,—"To the most wise."

* * * * *

When his impious fellow-passengers invoked the gods in a storm, Bias

cried, "Hist! hist! lest the gods perceive that you are here, for we

should all be lost."

* * * * *

A wise man will always have his duds picked up, and be ready for

whatever may happen, as the prudent merchant, notwithstanding the lavish

display of his wares, will yet have them packed or easy to be removed in

emergencies. In this sense there is something sluttish in all finery.

When I see a fine lady or gentleman dressed to the top of the fashion,

I wonder what they would do if an earthquake should happen, or a fire

suddenly break out, for they seem to have counted only on fair weather,

and that things will go on smoothly and without jostling. Those curls

and jewels, so nicely adjusted, expect an unusual deference from the

elements.

Our dress should be such as will hang conveniently about us, and fit

equally well in good and in bad fortune; such as will approve itself

of the right fashion and fabric, whether for the cotillion or the

earthquake. In the sack of Priene, when the inhabitants with much hurry

and bustle were carrying their effects to a place of safety, some one

asked Bias, who remained tranquil amid the confusion, why he was not

thinking how he should save something, as the others were. "I do so,"

said Bias, "for I carry all my effects with me."

_July 14._ Our discourse should be _ex tempore_, but not _pro tempore_.

_July 16._ We are as much refreshed by sounds as by sights, or scents,

or flavors,—as the barking of a dog heard in the woods at midnight, or

the tinklings which attend the dawn.

As I picked blackberries this morning, by starlight, the distant yelping

of a dog fell on my inward ear, as the cool breeze on my cheek.

_July 19._ These two days that I have not written in my Journal, set

down in the calendar as the 17th and 18th of July, have been really an

æon in which a Syrian empire might rise and fall. How many Persias have

been lost and won in the interim? Night is spangled with fresh stars.

_July 26._ When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out

gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I

could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring night.

_July 27._ Some men, like some buildings, are bulky but not great. The

Pyramids any traveller may measure with his line, but the dimensions

of the Parthenon in feet and inches will seem to dangle from its

entablature like an elastic drapery.[186]

* * * * *

Much credit is due to a brave man's eye. It is the focus in which all

rays are collected. It sees from within, or from the centre, just as we

scan the whole concave of the heavens at a glance, but can compass only

one side of the pebble at our feet.[187]

* * * * *

The grandeur of these stupendous masses of clouds, tossed into such

irregular greatness across the sky, seems thrown away on the meanness

of my employment. The drapery seems altogether too rich for such poor

acting.[188]

In vain the sun challenges man to equal greatness in his career. We

look in vain over earth for a Roman greatness to answer the eternal

provocation.[189]

We look up to the gilded battlements of the eternal city, and are

contented to be suburban dwellers outside the walls.[190]

* * * * *

By the last breath of the May air I inhale I am reminded that the ages

never got so far down as this before. The wood thrush is a more modern

philosopher than Plato and Aristotle. They are now a dogma, but he

preaches the doctrine of this hour.

* * * * *

This systole-diastole of the heart, the circulation of the blood from

the centre to the extremities, the chylification which is constantly

going on in our bodies are a sort of military evolution, a struggle to

outgeneral the decay of time by the skillfulest tactics.

* * * * *

When bravery is worsted, it joins the peace society.

* * * * *

A word is wiser than any man, than any series of words. In its present

received sense it may be false, but in its inner sense by descent and

analogy it approves itself. Language is the most perfect work of art in

the world. The chisel of a thousand years retouches it.

* * * * *

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have

provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it. She has

bevelled the margins of the eyelids that the tears may not overflow on

the cheek.[191]

* * * * *

We can conceive of a Bravery so wide that nothing can meet to befall it,

so omnipresent that nothing can lie in wait for it, so permanent that

no obstinacy can reduce it. The stars are its silent sentries by night,

and the sun its pioneer by day. From its abundant cheerfulness spring

flowers and the rainbow, and its infinite humor and wantonness produce

corn and vines.[192]

V

1841

(ÆT. 23-24)

_Jan. 23._ A day is lapsing. I hear cockerels crowing in the yard,

and see them stalking among the chips in the sun. I hear busy feet on

the floors, and the whole house jars with industry. Surely the day is

well spent, and the time is full to overflowing. Mankind is as busy

as the flowers in summer, which make haste to unfold themselves in the

forenoon, and close their petals in the afternoon.

The momentous topics of human life are always of secondary importance

to the business in hand, just as carpenters discuss politics between

the strokes of the hammer while they are shingling a roof.[193]

The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the

spheres.

The solidity and apparent necessity of this routine insensibly recommend

it to me. It is like a cane or a cushion for the infirm, and in view of

it all are infirm. If there were but one erect and solid-standing tree

in the woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and make sure of

their footing. Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to;

we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.[194]

It is the fence over which neighbors lean when they talk. All this

cockcrowing, and hawing and geeing, and business in the streets, is like

the spring-board on which tumblers perform and develop their elasticity.

Our health requires that we should recline on it from time to time. When

we are in it, the hand stands still on the face of the clock, and we

grow like corn in the genial dankness and silence of the night.[195] Our

weakness wants it, but our strength uses it. Good for the body is the

work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for

either the work of the other. Let them not call hard names, nor know a

divided interest.

* * * * *

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I am

reminded, by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to

be contemplated, of the inexpressible privacy of a life,—how silent

and unambitious it is. The beauty there is in mosses will have to be

considered from the holiest, quietest nook.[196]

The gods delight in stillness; they say, 'St—'st. My truest, serenest

moments are too still for emotion; they have woollen feet. In all our

lives we live under the hill, and if we are not gone we live there

still.

_Jan. 24. Sunday._ I almost shrink from the arduousness of meeting men

erectly day by day.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to

be. Be sure you give men the best of your wares, though they be poor

enough, and the gods will help you to lay up a better store for the

future. Man's noblest gift to man is his sincerity, for it embraces his

integrity also. Let him not dole out of himself anxiously, to suit their

weaker or stronger stomachs, but make a clean gift of himself, and empty

his coffers at once. I would be in society as in the landscape; in the

presence of nature there is no reserve, nor effrontery.

* * * * *

Coleridge says of the "_ideas_ spoken out everywhere in the Old and New

Testament," that they "resemble the fixed stars, which appear of the

same size to the naked as to the armed eye; the magnitude of which the

telescope may rather seem to diminish than to increase."

* * * * *

It is more proper for a spiritual fact to have suggested an analogous

natural one, than for the natural fact to have preceded the spiritual

in our minds.

* * * * *

By spells seriousness will be forced to cut capers, and drink a deep and

refreshing draught of silliness; to turn this sedate day of Lucifer's

and Apollo's, into an all fools' day for Harlequin and Cornwallis. The

sun does not grudge his rays to either, but they are alike patronized

by the gods. Like overtasked schoolboys, all my members and nerves

and sinews petition Thought for a recess, and my very thigh-bones

itch to slip away from under me, and run and join the mêlée. I exult

in stark inanity, leering on nature and the soul. We think the gods

reveal themselves only to sedate and musing gentlemen. But not so; the

buffoon in the midst of his antics catches unobserved glimpses, which

he treasures for the lonely hour. When I have been playing tomfool, I

have been driven to exchange the old for a more liberal and catholic

philosophy.

_Jan. 25. Monday._ To-day I feel the migratory instinct strong in me,

and all my members and humors anticipate the breaking up of winter. If

I yielded to this impulse, it would surely guide me to summer haunts.

This indefinite restlessness and fluttering on the perch do, no doubt,

prophesy the final migration of souls out of nature to a serene summer,

in long harrows and waving lines[197] in the spring weather, over what

fair uplands and fertile Elysian meadows winging their way at evening

and seeking a resting-place with loud cackling and uproar!

* * * * *

Wealth, no less than knowledge, is power. Among the Bedouins the richest

man is the sheik, among savages he who has most iron and wampum is

chief, and in England and America he is the merchant prince.

* * * * *

We should strengthen, and beautify, and industriously mould our bodies

to be fit companions of the soul,—assist them to grow up like trees, and

be agreeable and wholesome objects in nature. I think if I had had the

disposal of this soul of man, I should have bestowed it sooner on some

antelope of the plains than upon this sickly and sluggish body.

_Jan. 26. Tuesday._ I have as much property as I can command and use.

If by a fault in my character I do not derive my just revenues, there is

virtually a mortgage on my inheritance. A man's wealth is never entered

in the registrar's office. Wealth does not come in along the great

thoroughfares, it does not float on the Erie or Pennsylvania canal, but

is imported by a solitary track without bustle or competition, from a

brave industry to a quiet mind.

* * * * *

I had a dream last night which had reference to an act in my life in

which I had been most disinterested and true to my highest instinct but

completely failed in realizing my hopes; and now, after so many months,

in the stillness of sleep, complete justice was rendered me. It was a

divine remuneration. In my waking hours I could not have conceived of

such retribution; the presumption of desert would have damned the whole.

But now I was permitted to be not so much a subject as a partner to that

retribution. It was the award of divine justice, which will at length

be and is even now accomplished.[198]

* * * * *

Good writing as well as good acting will be obedience to conscience.

There must not be a particle of will or whim mixed with it. If we can

listen, we shall hear. By reverently listening to the inner voice, we

may reinstate ourselves on the pinnacle of humanity.

_Jan. 27. Wednesday._ In the compensation of the dream, there was no

implied loss to any, but immeasurable advantage to all.[199]

* * * * *

The punishment of sin is not positive, as is the reward of virtue.

* * * * *

For a flower, I like the name pansy, or _pensée_, best of any.

_Jan. 28._ No innocence can quite stand up under suspicion, if it is

conscious of being suspected. In the company of one who puts a wrong

construction upon your actions, they are apt really to deserve a

mean construction. While in that society I can never retrieve myself.

Attribute to me a great motive, and I shall not fail to have one; but a

mean one, and the fountain of virtue will be poisoned by the suspicion.

Show men unlimited faith as the coin with which you will deal with them,

and they will invariably exhibit the best wares they have. I would meet

men as the friends of all their virtue, and the foes of all their vice,

for no man is the partner of his guilt. If you suspect me you will never

see me, but all our intercourse will be the politest leave-taking;

I shall constantly defer and apologize, and postpone myself in your

presence. The self-defender is accursed in the sight of gods and men; he

is a superfluous knight, who serves no lady in the land. He will find

in the end that he has been fighting windmills, and battered his mace

to no purpose. The injured man with querulous tone resisting his fate

is like a tree struck by lightning, which rustles its sere leaves the

winter through, not having vigor enough [to] cast them off.

As for apologies, I must be off with the dew and the frost, and leave

mankind to repair the damage with their gauze screens and straw.

* * * * *

Resistance is a very wholesome and delicious morsel at times. When Venus

advanced against the Greeks with resistless valor, it was by far the

most natural attitude into which the poet could throw his hero to make

him resist heroically. To a devil one might yield gracefully, but a god

would be a worthy foe, and would pardon the affront.

* * * * *

It would be worth while, once for all, fairly and cleanly to tell how

we are to be used, as vendors of lucifer matches send directions in the

envelope, both how light may be readily procured and no accident happen

to the user.

* * * * *

Let your mood determine the form of salutation, and approach the

creature with a natural nonchalance, as though he were anything but what

he is, and you were anything but what you are,—as though he were he,

and you were you; in short, as though he were so insignificant that it

did not signify, and so important that it did not import. Depend upon

it, the timber is well seasoned and tough, and will bear rough usage;

and if it should crack, there is plenty more where it came from. I am no

piece of china-ware that cannot be jostled against my neighbor, without

danger of rupture from the collision, and must needs ring a scrannel

strain to the end of my days when once I am cracked; but rather one of

the old-fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while stands at the head

of the table, and at another is a milking-stool, and at another a seat

for children, and finally goes down to its grave not unadorned with

honorable scars, and does not die till it is _worn_ out. Use me, for I

am useful in my way. I stand as one of many petitioners, from toadstool

and henbane up to dahlia and violet, supplicating to be put to my use,

if by any means ye may find me serviceable; whether for a medicated

drink or bath, as balm and lavender; or for fragrance, as verbena and

geranium; or for sight, as cactus; or for thoughts, as pansy.[200]

_Jan. 29._ There is something proudly thrilling in the thought that this

obedience to conscience and trust in God, which is so solemnly preached

in extremities and arduous circumstances, is only to retreat to one's

self, and rely on our own strength. In trivial circumstances I find

myself sufficient to myself, and in the most momentous I have no ally

but myself, and must silently put by their harm by my own strength, as I

did the former. As my own hand bent aside the willow in my path, so must

my single arm put to flight the devil and his angels. God is not our

ally when we shrink, and neuter when we are bold. If by trusting in God

you lose any particle of your vigor, trust in Him no longer. When you

trust, do not lay aside your armor, but put it on and buckle it tighter.

If by reliance on the gods I have disbanded one of my forces, then was

it poor policy. I had better have retained the most inexperienced tyro

who had straggled into the camp, and let go the heavenly alliance. I

cannot afford to relax discipline because God is on my side, for He

is on the side of discipline. And if the gods were only the heavens I

fought under, I would not care if they stormed or were calm. I do not

want a countenance, but a help. And there is more of God and divine help

in a man's little finger than in idle prayer and trust.

* * * * *

The best and bravest deed is that which the whole man—heart, lungs,

hands, fingers, and toes—at any time prompts. Each hanger-on in the

purlieus of the camp, must strike his standard at the signal from the

Prætorian tent, and fall into the line of march; but if a single sutler

delay to make up his pack, then suspect the fates and consult the omens

again. This is the meaning of integrity; this is to be an integer, and

not a fraction. Be even for all virtuous ends, but odd for all vice. Be

a perfect power, so that any of your roots multiplied into itself may

give the whole again.

* * * * *

Beauty is compared, not measured, for it is the creature of proportions,

not of size. Size must be subdued to it. It is hard for a tall or a

short person to be beautiful.

To graft the Persian lilac on the ash, is as if you were to splice the

thigh-bones of the Venus de Medici.

* * * * *

Friends will have to be introduced each time they meet. They will

be eternally strange to one another, and when they have mutually

appropriated their value for the last hour, they will go and gather

a new measure of strangeness for the next. They are like two boughs

crossed in the wood, which play backwards and forwards upon one another

in the wind, and only wear into each other, but never the sap of the

one flows into the pores of the other, for then the wind would no more

draw from them those strains which enchanted the wood. They are not two

united, but rather one divided.

* * * * *

Of all strange and unaccountable things this journalizing is the

strangest. It will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not

good, nor its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost

and richest wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest

homemade stuffs; but after months or years I may discover the wealth

of India, and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in

that confused heap, and what perhaps seemed a festoon of dried apple

or pumpkin will prove a string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from

Coromandel.

* * * * *

Men lie behind the barrier of a relation as effectually concealed as the

landscape by a mist; and when at length some unforeseen accident throws

me into a new attitude to them, I am astounded, as if for the first time

I saw the sun on the hillside. They lie out before me like a new order

of things. As, when the master meets his pupil as a man, then first do

we stand under the same heavens, and master and pupil alike go down the

resistless ocean stream together.

_Jan. 30. Saturday._ Far over the fields, between the tops of yonder

wood, I see a slight cloud not larger than the vapor from a kettle,

drifting by its own inward purpose in a direction contrary to the

planet. As it flits across the dells and defiles of the tree-tops, now

seen, then lost beyond a pine, I am curious to know wherein its will

resides, for to my eye it has no heart, nor lungs, nor brain, nor any

interior and private chamber which it may inhabit.

Its motion reminds me of those lines of Milton:—

"As when far off at sea a fleet descried

Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds

Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood,

Ply stemming nightly toward the pole."

The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of

a pineapple, which if you divide in the middle will expose three red

kernels like the tamarind-stone. So does winter with his mock harvest

jeer at the sincerity of summer. The tropical fruits, which will not

bear the rawness of our summer, are imitated in a thousand fantastic

shapes by the whimsical genius of winter.

* * * * *

In winter the warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated

from the earth. In summer I forget to bless the sun for his heat; but

when I feel his beams on my back as I thread some snowy dale, I am

grateful as for a special kindness which would not be weary of well

doing but had pursued me even into that by-place.

* * * * *

When the wind blows, the fine snow comes filtering down through all the

aisles of the wood in a golden cloud.

* * * * *

The trees covered with snow admit a very plain and clean light, but

not brilliant, as if through windows of ground glass; a sort of white

darkness it is, all of the sun's splendor that can be retained.

* * * * *

The fashions of the wood are more fluctuating than those of Paris; snow,

rime, ice, green and dry leaves incessantly make new patterns. There are

all the shapes and hues of the kaleidoscope and the designs and ciphers

of books of heraldry in the outlines of the trees. Every time I see a

nodding pine-top, it seems as if a new fashion of wearing plumes had

come into vogue.

* * * * *

I saw a team come out of a path in the woods, as though it had never

gone in, but belonged there, and only came out like Elisha's bears. It

was wholly of the village, and not at all of the wood.

* * * * *

These particles of snow which the early wind shakes down are what is

stirring, or the morning news of the wood. Sometimes it is blown up

above the trees, like the sand of the desert.

* * * * *

You glance up these paths, closely imbowered by bent trees, as through

the side aisles of a cathedral, and expect to hear a choir chanting from

their depths. You are never so far in them as they are far before you.

Their secret is where you are not and where your feet can never carry

you.

* * * * *

I tread in the tracks of the fox which has gone before me by some hours,

or which perhaps I have started, with such a tiptoe of expectation as if

I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in these woods,

and expected soon to catch it in its lair.[201]

* * * * *

The snow falls on no two trees alike, but the forms it assumes are as

various as those of the twigs and leaves which receive it. They are,

as it were, predetermined by the genius of the tree. So one divine

spirit descends alike on all, but bears a peculiar fruit in each. The

divinity subsides on all men, as the snowflakes settle on the fields and

ledges and takes the form of the various clefts and surfaces on which

it lodges.

* * * * *

Here is the distinct trail of a fox stretching [a] quarter of a mile

across the pond. Now I am curious to know what has determined its

graceful curvatures, its greater or less spaces and distinctness, and

how surely they were coincident with the fluctuations of some mind,

why they now lead me two steps to the right, and then three to the

left. If these things are not to be called up and accounted for in the

Lamb's Book of Life, I shall set them down for careless accountants.

Here was one expression of the divine mind this morning. The pond was

his journal, and last night's snow made a _tabula rasa_ for him. I know

which way a mind wended this morning, what horizon it faced, by the

setting of these tracks; whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by the

greater or less intervals and distinctness, for the swiftest step leaves

yet a lasting trace.[202]

* * * * *

Sometimes I come out suddenly upon a high plain, which seems to be the

upper level and true surface of the earth, and by its very baldness

aspires and lies up nearer to the stars,—a place where a decalogue might

be let down or a saint translated.

* * * * *

I take a horse and oxen, standing among the wood-piles in the forest,

for one of them, and when at length the horse pricks his ears, and I

give him another name, where's the difference? I am startled by the

possibility of such errors, and the indifference with [which] they are

allowed to occur.

* * * * *

Fair Haven Pond is _scored_ with the trails of foxes, and you may see

where they have gambolled and gone through a hundred evolutions, which

testify to a singular listlessness and leisure in nature.

Suddenly, looking down the river, I saw a fox some sixty rods off,

making across to the hills on my left. As the snow lay five inches deep,

he made but slow progress, but it was no impediment to me. So, yielding

to the instinct of the chase, I tossed my head aloft and bounded away,

snuffing the air like a fox-hound, and spurning the world and the Humane

Society at each bound. It seemed the woods rang with the hunter's

horn, and Diana and all the satyrs joined in the chase and cheered

me on. Olympian and Elean youths were waving palms on the hills. In

the meanwhile I gained rapidly on the fox; but he showed a remarkable

presence of mind, for, instead of keeping up the face of the hill, which

was steep and unwooded in that part, he kept along the slope in the

direction of the forest, though he lost ground by it. Notwithstanding

his fright, he took no step which was not beautiful. The course on his

part was a series of most graceful curves. It was a sort of leopard

canter, I should say, as if he were nowise impeded by the snow, but

were husbanding his strength all the while. When he doubled I wheeled

and cut him off, bounding with fresh vigor, and Antæus-like, recovering

my strength each time I touched the snow. Having got near enough for a

fair view, just as he was slipping into the wood, I gracefully yielded

him the palm. He ran as though there were not a bone in his back,

occasionally dropping his muzzle to the snow for a rod or two, and then

tossing his head aloft when satisfied of his course. When he came to a

declivity he put his fore feet together and slid down it like a cat. He

trod so softly that you could not have heard it from any nearness, and

yet with such expression that it would not have been quite inaudible at

any distance. So, hoping this experience would prove a useful lesson to

him, I returned to the village by the highway of the river.[203]

* * * * *

There is all the romance of my youthfulest moment in music. Heaven lies

about us, as in our infancy. There is nothing so wild and extravagant

that it does not make true. It makes a dream my only real experience,

and prompts faith to such elasticity that only the incredible can

satisfy it. It tells me again to trust the remotest and finest, as the

divinest, instinct. All that I have imagined of heroism, it reminds

and reassures me of. It is a life unlived, a life beyond life, where at

length my years will pass. I look under the lids of Time.

_Jan. 31. Sunday._ At each step man measures himself against the system.

If he cannot actually belay the sun and make it fast to this planet,

yet the British man alone spins a yarn in one year which will reach

fifty-one times the distance from the earth to the sun. So, having his

cable ready twisted and coiled, the fixed stars are virtually within

his grasp. He carries his lasso coiled at his saddle bow, but is never

forced to cast it.

All things are subdued to me by virtue of that coiled lasso I carry,

and I lead them without the trouble of a cast. It is the rope that lies

coiled on the deck, which moors my ship, and I have never to bend a

cable.

In God's hall hang cables of infinite length, and in His entries stand

bars of infinite strength; but those cables were never bent, nor those

bars ever poised, for all things have been subdued to the divinity from

the first, and these are the seals of His power.

The guilty never escape, for a steed stands ever ready saddled and

bridled at God's door, and the sinner surrenders at last.

_End of my Journal of 396 pages._

_Feb. 2. Tuesday._ It is easy to repeat, but hard to originate. Nature

is readily made to repeat herself in a thousand forms, and in the

daguerreotype her own light is amanuensis, and the picture too has more

than a surface significance,—a depth equal to the prospect,—so that the

microscope may be applied to the one as the spy-glass to the other. Thus

we may easily multiply the forms of the outward; but to give the within

outwardness, that is not easy.

That an impression may be taken, perfect stillness, though but for an

instant, is necessary. There is something analogous in the birth of all

rhymes.

Our sympathy is a gift whose value we can never know, nor when we impart

it. The instant of communion is when, for the least point of time, we

cease to oscillate, and coincide in rest by as fine a point as a star

pierces the firmament.

* * * * *

The stars are the mountain peaks of celestial countries.

* * * * *

A child asked its father what became of the old moon, and he said it

was cut up into stars.

* * * * *

There is always a single ear in the audience, to which we address

ourselves.

* * * * *

How much does it concern you, the good opinion of your friend? Therein

is the measure of fame. For the herd of men multiplied many times will

never come up to the value of one friend. In this society there is no

fame but love; for as our name may be on the lips of men, so are we in

each other's hearts. There is no ambition but virtue; for why should we

go round about, who may go direct?

All those contingencies which the philanthropist, statesman, and

housekeeper write so many books to meet are simply and quietly settled

in the intercourse of friends.

* * * * *

For our aspirations there is no expression as yet, but if we obey

steadily, by another year we shall have learned the language of last

year's aspirations.

* * * * *

When I read the other day the weight of some of the generals of the

Revolution, it seemed no unimportant fact in their biography. It is at

least one other means of comparing ourselves with them. Tell me how much

Milton or Shakespeare weighed, and I will get weighed myself, that I

may know better what they are to me.

Weight has something very imposing in it, for we cannot get rid of it.

Once in the scales we must weigh. And are we not always in the scales,

and weighing just our due, though we kick the beam, and do all we can

to heavy or lighten ourselves?

_Feb. 3. Wednesday._ The present seems never to get its due; it is the

least obvious,—neither before, nor behind, but within us. All the past

plays into this moment, and we are what we are. My aspiration is one

thing, my reflection another, but, over all, myself and condition is

and does. To men and nature I am each moment a finished tool,—a spade,

a barrow, or a pickaxe. This immense promise is no _efficient_ quality.

For all practical purposes I am done.

When we do a service to our neighbor, we serve our next neighbor.

* * * * *

We are constantly invited to be what we are; as to something worthy and

noble. I never waited but for myself to come round; none ever detained

me, but I lagged or tagged after myself.

* * * * *

It steads us to be as true to children and boors as to God himself. It

is the only attitude which will suit all occasions; it only will make

the earth yield her increase, and by it do we effectually expostulate

with the wind. If I run against a post, this is the remedy. I would

meet the morning and evening on very sincere ground. When the sun

introduces me to a new day, I silently say to myself, "Let us be

faithful all round; we will do justice and receive it." Something

like this is the secret charm of Nature's demeanor toward us, strict

conscientiousness [?] and disregard of us when we have ceased to have

regard for ourselves. So she can never offend us. How true she is!—and

never swerves. In her most genial moment her laws are as steadfastly

and relentlessly fulfilled—though the decalogue is rhymed and set to

sweetest music—as in her sternest.

* * * * *

Any exhibition of affection—as an inadvertent word, or act, or

look—seems premature, as if the time were not ripe for it; like the buds

which the warm days near the end of winter cause to push out and unfold

before the frosts are yet gone.

* * * * *

My life must seem as if it were passing at a higher level than that

which I occupy. It must possess a dignity which will not allow me to be

familiar.

* * * * *

The unpretending truth of a simile implies sometimes such distinctness

in the conception as only experience could have supplied. Homer could

not improve the simile of a soldier who was careful enough to tell the

truth. If he knows what it was, he will know what it was like.

* * * * *

As the ancient Britons were exhibited in Rome in their native costume,

and the Dacian came to display his swordsmanship in the arena, so

Tyrolese peasants have come farther yet, even from the neighborhood of

Rome to Concord, for our entertainment this night.

_Feb. 4. Thursday._ When you are once comfortably seated at a public

meeting, there is something unmanly in the sitting on tiptoe and _qui

vive_ attitude,—the involuntarily rising into your throat, as if gravity

had ceased to operate,—when a lady approaches, with quite godlike

presumption, to elicit the miracle of a seat where none is.

* * * * *

Music will make the most nervous chord vibrate healthily.

* * * * *

Such a state of unrest becomes only a fluttered virtue. When once I have

learned my place in the sphere, I will fill it once for all, rather

like a fixed star than a planet. I will rest as the mountains do, so

that your ladies might as well walk into the midst of the Tyrol, and

look for Nature to spread them a green lawn for their disport in the

midst of those solemn fastnesses, as that I should fly out of my orbit

at their approach and go about eccentric, like a comet, to endanger

other systems. No, be true to your instincts, and sit; wait till you can

be genuinely polite, if it be till doomsday, and not lose your chance

everlastingly by a cowardly yielding to young etiquette. By your look

say unto them, The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places, and I

will fill that station God has assigned me. As well Miss Cassiopeia up

there might ask the brazen-fronted Taurus to draw in his horns, that

she might shine in his stead. No, no! not till my cycle is completed.

How is it that motion will always find space to move in, and rest a

seat? Men hate antagonism, and the weaker will always yield to the

stronger. If a stranger enter with sufficient determination into a

crowded assembly, as if commissioned by the gods to find a seat there,

as the falling stone by a divine impulse seeks a resting-place, each

one will rise without thinking to offer his place. Now we have only to

be commissioned to sit, and depend upon it the gods will not balk their

own work. Ye came one day too late, as did the poet after the world

had been divided, and so returned to dwell with the god that sent him.

When presumptuous womanhood demands to surrender my position, I bide my

time,—though it be with misgiving,—and yield to no mortal shove, but

expect a divine impulse. Produce your warrant, and I will retire; for

not now can I give you a clear seat, but must leave part of my manhood

behind and wander a diminished man, who at length will not have length

and breadth enough to fill any seat at all. It was very kind in the gods

who gave us a now condition, or condition of rest, in which we might

unhurriedly deliberate before taking a step. When I give up my now and

here without having secured my then and there, I am the prodigal son of

a kind father and deserve no better than the husks which the swine eat,

nor that the fatted calf be killed for me.

Rest forever. When instinct comes to the rescue of your politeness, it

will seat you securely still, though it be to hang by a rail or poise

yourself on a stick. To do otherwise is to be polite only as the soldier

who runs away when the enemy demands his post. Politeness is rather

when the generals interchange civilities before the fight, not when one

returns a sword after the victory.

* * * * *

Not only in his cunning hand and brain, but when he speaks, too, does

man assert his superiority. He conquers the spaces with his voice, as

well as the lion. The voice of a strong man modulated to the cadence

of some tune is more imposing than any natural sound. The keeper's is

the most commanding, and is heard over all the din of the menagerie. A

strong, musical voice imposes a new order and harmony upon nature; from

it as a centre the law is promulgated to the universe. What it lacks

in volume and loudness may always be made up in musical expression and

distinctness. The brute growls to secure obedience; he threatens. The

man speaks as though obedience were already secured.

* * * * *

Brave speaking is the most entire and richest sacrifice to the gods.

_Feb. 5. Friday._ Only on rare occasions am I reminded that man too has

a voice, as well as birds and quadrupeds, which breaks on the stillness

of nature with its peculiar accent. The least sound pervades and

subdues all space to it as long as it fills my ear. Contrasted single

with the silence, it is as wide as it. Music is the crystallization of

sound. There is something in the effect of a harmonious voice upon the

disposition of its neighborhood analogous to the law of crystals; it

centralizes itself and sounds like the published law of things. If the

law of the universe were to be audibly promulgated, no mortal lawgiver

would suspect it, for it would be a finer melody than his ears ever

attended to. It would be sphere music.[204]

* * * * *

When by tutoring their voices singers enhance one another's performance,

the harmony is more complete and essential than is heard. The quire is

one family held together by a very close bond. Hence the romance we

associate with Gypsies and circus companies and strolling musicians.

The idea of brotherhood is so strong in them. Their society is ideal

for that one end.

There is something in this brotherhood—this feeling of kind, or

kindness—which insensibly elevates the subjects of it in our eyes.

However poor or mean, they have something which counterbalances our

contempt. This is that in the strolling pauper _family_ which does

not court our charity but can even bless and smile on us and make the

kindness reciprocal. It sanctifies the place and the hour.

These Rainers, if they are not brothers and sisters, must be uncles and

cousins at least. These Swiss who have come to sing to us, we have no

doubt are the flower of the Tyrol.[205] Such is the instinctive kindness

with which the foreigner is always received, that he is ever presumed

to be the fairest and noblest of his race. The traveller finds that it

is not easy to move away from his friends, after all, but all people

whom he visits are anxious to supply the place to him of his parents

and brothers and sisters. To these Swiss I find that I have attributed

all Tell's patriotism and the devotion of Arnold Winkelried and whatever

goodness or greatness belongs to the nation.

* * * * *

All costume off a man, when not simply doffed, is grotesque. There

must be a heart inside it. When these Swiss appear before me in gaiters

and high-crowned hats with feathers, I am disposed to laugh, but soon

I see that their serious eye becomes these and they it. It is the

sincere life passed within it which consecrates the costume of any

people. A sufficiently sober eye will retrieve itself and subordinate

any grotesqueness. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic in

the midst of his buffoonery, and his trappings and finery will serve

that mood too and with their drooping sympathy enhance the sincerity of

his misfortune. When the soldier is hit by a cannon-ball, rags are as

becoming as purple.[206] So soon as a man engages to eat, drink, sleep,

walk, and sit, and meet all the contingencies of life therein, his

costume is hallowed and a theme for poetry, whether it be a bear's skin

or ermine, a beaver hat or a Turkish turban. He will not wear anything

because it is blue, or black, or round, or square, but from a necessity

which cannot be superseded.

I look into the face and manners for something familiar and homely even,

to be assured that the costume of the foreigner is not whimsical or

finical.

* * * * *

In all emergencies there is always one step which you may take on firm

ground where gravity will assure you footing. So you hold a draft on

Fate payable at sight.

_Feb. 6. Saturday._ One may discover a new side to his most intimate

friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will

be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest

intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then. When I observe my

friend's conduct toward others, then chiefly I learn the traits in his

character, and in each case I am unprepared for the issue.

When one gets up to address briefly a strange audience, in that little

he may have opportunity to say he will not quite do himself injustice.

For he will instantly and instinctively average himself to his audience,

and while he is true to his own character still, he will in a few

moments make that impression which a series of months and years would

but expand. Before he answers, his thought like lightning runs round the

whole compass of his experiences, and he is scrupulous to speak from

that which he is and with a more entire truthfulness than usual. How

little do we know each other then! Who can tell how his friend would

behave on any occasion?

* * * * *

As for those Swiss, I think of the fields their hands have plowed and

reaped, and respect their costume as the memorial or rather cotemporary

and witness of this. What is there in a toga but a Roman? What but a

Quaker in a broad-brimmed hat? He who describes the dress of a Janizary

going to war does me a similar service as when he paints the scenery of

the battle-field. It helps make his exploit picturesque.

Costume is not determined by whim, not even the tattooing and paint

of the savage. Sun, wind, rain, and the form of our bodies shape our

hats and coats for us, more even than taste. Good taste secures the

utmost gratification without sacrificing any conveniences. If all

nations derived their fashions from Paris or London, the world would

seem like a Vanity Fair or all fools' day, and the Tartar and Bedouin

ride in it like jesters in a circus, and the Pawnee and Esquimau

hunt in masquerade. What I am must make you forget what I wear. The

fashionable world is content to be eclipsed by its dress, and never will

bear the contrast. Only industry will reform _their_ dress. They are

idle,—_exo_strious, building without.

* * * * *

The value of the recess in any public entertainment consists in the

opportunity for self-recovery which it offers. We who have been swayed

as one heart, expanding and contracting with the common pulse, find

ourselves in the interim, and set us up again, and feel our own hearts

beating in our breasts. We are always a little astonished to see a man

walking across the room, through an attentive audience, with any degree

of self-possession. He makes himself strange to us. He is a little

stubborn withal, and seems to say, "I am self-sustained and independent

as well as the performer, and am not to be swallowed up in the common

enthusiasm. No, no, there are two of us, and John's as good as Thomas."

In the recess the audience is cut up into a hundred little coteries,

and as soon as each individual life has recovered its tone and the

purposes of health have been answered, it is time for the performances

to commence again.

* * * * *

In a public performer, the simplest actions, which at other times are

left to unconscious nature, as the ascending a few steps in front of an

audience, acquire a fatal importance and become arduous deeds.

* * * * *

When I select one here and another there, and strive to join sundered

thoughts, I make but a partial heap after all. Nature strews her nuts

and flowers broadcast, and never collects them into heaps. A man does

not tell us all he has thought upon truth or beauty at a sitting, but,

from his last thought on the subject, wanders through a varied scenery

of upland, meadow, and woodland to his next. Sometimes a single and

casual thought rises naturally and inevitably with a queenly majesty and

escort, like the stars in the east. Fate has surely enshrined it in this

hour and circumstances for some purpose. What she has joined together,

let not man put asunder. Shall I transplant the primrose by the river's

brim, to set it beside its sister on the mountain? _This_ was the soil

it grew in, _this_ the hour it bloomed in. If sun, wind, and rain came

_here_ to cherish and expand it, shall not we come here to pluck it?

Shall we require it to grow in a conservatory for our convenience?

* * * * *

I feel slightly complimented when Nature condescends to make use of me

without my knowledge, as when I help scatter her seeds in my walk, or

carry burs and cockles on my clothes from field to field.[207] I feel

as though I had done something for the commonweal, and were entitled

to board and lodging. I take such airs upon me as the boy who holds a

horse for the circus company, whom all the spectators envy.

* * * * *

"Lu ral lu ral lu" may be more impressively sung than very respectable

wisdom talked. It is well-timed, as wisdom is not always.

* * * * *

All things prophesy but the prophet. In augury and divination nature

is put to the torture. In Ben Jonson's tragedy of "Catiline," Lentulus

makes answer to Catiline, who has bribed the augurs to say that he is

that third Cornelius who is to be king of Rome, "All prophecies, you

know, suffer the torture." He who inspects the entrails is _always_

bribed, but they are unbribable. He who seeks to know the future by

unlawful means has unavoidably subjected the oracle to the torture of

_private_ and _partial_ interests. The oracles of God serve the public

interest without fee. To the just and benevolent mind nature _declares_,

as the sun lights the world.

_Feb. 7. Sunday._ Without greatcoat or drawers I have advanced thus

far into the snow-banks of the winter, without thought and with

impunity.[208] When I meet my neighbors in muffs and furs and tippets,

they look as if they had retreated into the interior fastnesses from

some foe invisible to me. They remind me that this is the season of

winter, in which it becomes a man to be cold. For feeling, I am a piece

of clean wood of this shape, which will do service till it rots, and

though the cold has its physical effect on me, it is a kindly one, for

it "finds its acquaintance there." My diet is so little stimulating,

and my body in consequence so little heated, as to excite no antagonism

in nature, but flourishes like a tree, which finds even the winter

genial to its expansion and the secretion of sap. May not the body

defend itself against cold by its very nakedness, and its elements be

so simple and single that they cannot congeal? Frost does not affect

one but several. My body now affords no more pasture for cold than a

leafless twig.[209] I call it a protestant warmth. My limbs do not tire

as formerly, but I use myself as any other piece of nature, and from

mere indifference and thoughtlessness may break the timber.

It is the vice of the last season which compels us to arm ourselves for

the next. If man always conformed to Nature, he would not have to defend

himself against her, but find her his constant nurse and friend, as do

plants and quadrupeds.

* * * * *

In the sunshine and the crowing of cocks I feel an illimitable holiness,

which makes me bless God and myself. The warm sun casts his incessant

gift at my feet as I walk along, unfolding his yellow worlds. Yonder

sexton with a few cheap sounds makes me richer than these who mind his

summons. The true gift is as wide as my gratitude, and as frequent, and

the donor is as grateful as the recipient. There would be a New Year's

gift indeed, if we would bestow on each other our sincerity. We should

communicate our wealth, and not purchase that which does not belong to

us for a sign. Why give each other a sign to keep? If we gave the thing

itself, there would be no need of a sign.

* * * * *

I am not sure I should find out a really great person soon. He would be

simple Thomas or Oliver for some centuries first. The lesser eminences

would hide the higher, and I should at last reach his top by a gentle

acclivity. I felt it would be necessary to remain some weeks at the

Notch to be impressed by the grandeur of the scenery. We do not expect

that Alexander will conquer Asia the first time we are introduced to

him. A great man accepts the occasion the fates offer him. Let us not

be disappointed. We stand at first upon the pampas which surround him.

It is these mountains round about which make the valleys here below. He

is not a dead level, so many feet above low-water mark. Greatness is in

the ascent. But there is no accounting for the little men.

"They must sweat no less

To fit their properties, than t' express their parts."

Or the line before this:—

"Would you have

Such an Herculean actor in the scene,

And not his hydra?"—JONSON.

The eaves are running on the south side of the house; the titmouse

lisps in the poplar; the bells are ringing for church; while the sun

presides over all and makes his simple warmth more obvious than all

else.[210] What shall I do with this hour, so like time and yet so

fit for eternity? Where in me are these russet patches of ground, and

scattered logs and chips in the yard? I do not feel cluttered. I have

some notion what the John's-wort and life-everlasting may be thinking

about when the sun shines on me as on them and turns my prompt thought

into just such a seething shimmer. I lie out indistinct as a heath at

noonday. I am evaporating and ascending into the sun.

* * * * *

Nothing stands in the way to success, but to failure. To victory is

all the way up hill; to defeat the simplest wight that weighs may soon

slide down. Cowards would not have victory but the fruits of victory;

but she it is that sweetens all the spoil. Thus, by a just fate, the

booty cannot fall to him who did not win it. There is victory in every

effort. In the least swing of the arm, in indignant thought, in stern

content, we conquer our foes.

* * * * *

Great thoughts make great men. Without these no heraldry nor blood will

avail.

The blood circulates to the feet and hands, but the thought never

descends from the head.

* * * * *

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no

wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he

will want no other reward. Is not Friendship divine in this?

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend

is my amiableness personified.

And yet we walk the stage indifferent actors, not thinking what a

sublime drama we might enact if we would be joint workers and a mutual

material. Why go to the woods to cut timber to display our art upon,

when here are men as trees walking? The world has never learned what men

can build each other up to be, when both master and pupil work in love.

He that comes as a stranger to my house will have to stay as a stranger.

He has made his own reception. But persevering love was never yet

refused.

"The vicious count their years, virtuous their acts."

JONSON.

The former consider the length of their service, the latter its quality.

Wait not till I invite thee, but observe

I'm glad to see thee when thou com'st.[211]

The most ardent lover holds yet a private court, and his love can never

be so strong or ethereal that there will not be danger that judgment

may be rendered against the beloved.

* * * * *

I would have men make a _greater_ use of me.[212] Now I must belittle

myself to have dealings with them. My friend will show such a noble

confidence that I shall aspire to the society of his good opinion. Never

presume men less that you may make them more. So far as we respond to

our ideal estimate of each other do we have profitable intercourse.

* * * * *

A brave man always knows the way, no matter how intricate the roads.

_Feb. 8._ All we have experienced is so much gone within us, and there

lies. It is the company we keep. One day, in health or sickness, it will

come out and be remembered. Neither body nor soul forgets anything. The

twig always remembers the wind that shook it, and the stone the cuff it

received. Ask the old tree and the sand.

* * * * *

To be of most service to my brother I must meet him on the most equal

and even ground, the platform on which our lives are passing. But how

often does politeness permit this?

* * * * *

I seek a man who will appeal to me when I am in fault. We will treat as

gods settling the affairs of men. In his intercourse I shall be always a

god to-day, who was a man yesterday. He will never confound me with my

guilt, but let me be immaculate and hold up my skirts. Differences he

will make haste to clear up, but leave agreements unsettled the while.

* * * * *

As time is measured by the lapse of ideas, we may grow of our own force,

as the mussel adds new circles to its shell. My thoughts secrete the

lime. We may grow old with the vigor of youth. Are we not always in

youth so long as we face heaven? We may always live in the morning of

our days. To him who seeks early, the sun never gets over the edge of

the hill, but his rays fall slanting forever. His wise sayings are like

the chopping of wood and crowing of cocks in the dawn.

* * * * *

My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste,

gleanings from the field which in action I reap. I must not live for

it, but in it for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom daily I

send off this sheet postpaid. I am clerk in their counting-room, and

at evening transfer the account from day-book to ledger. It is as a

leaf which hangs over my head in the path. I bend the twig and write

my prayers on it; then letting it go, the bough springs up and shows

the scrawl to heaven. As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were

as public a leaf as any in nature. It is papyrus by the riverside;

it is vellum in the pastures; it is parchment on the hills. I find it

everywhere as free as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn.

The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and the wind blows the

leaves as far as I go. Or, if my imagination does not soar, but gropes

in slime and mud, then I write with a reed.

It is always a chance scrawl, and commemorates some accident,—as great

as earthquake or eclipse. Like the sere leaves in yonder vase, these

have been gathered far and wide. Upland and lowland, forest and field

have been ransacked.

* * * * *

In our holiest moment our devil with a leer stands close at hand. He

is a very busy devil. It gains vice some respect, I must confess, thus

to be reminded how indefatigable it is. It has at least the merit of

industriousness. When I go forth with zeal to some good work, my devil

is sure to get his robe tucked up the first and arrives there as soon

as I, with a look of sincere earnestness which puts to shame my best

intent. He is as forward as I to a good work, and as disinterested. He

has a winning way of recommending himself by making himself useful. How

readily he comes into my best project, and does his work with a quiet

and steady cheerfulness which even virtue may take pattern from.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me. It always

came in by a hand, and never panting, but with a curried coolness

halted, as if halting were the beginning not the end of the course.

It only runs the swifter because it has no rider. It never was behind

me but when I turned to look and so fell behind myself. I never did a

charitable thing but there he stood, scarce in the rear, with hat in

hand, partner on the same errand, ready to share the smile of gratitude.

Though I shut the door never so quick and tell it to stay at home like

a good dog, it will out with me, for I shut in my own legs so, and it

escapes in the meanwhile and is ready to back and reinforce me in most

virtuous deeds. And if I turn and say, "Get thee behind me," he then

indeed turns too and takes the lead, though he seems to retire with a

pensive and compassionate look, as much as to say, "Ye know not what ye

do."

Just as active as I become to virtue, just so active is my remaining

vice. Every time we teach our virtue a new nobleness, we teach our vice

a new cunning. When we sharpen the blade it will stab better as well

as whittle. The scythe that cuts will cut our legs. We are double-edged

blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our

vice. And when we cut a clear descending blow, our vice on t'other edge

rips up the work. Where is the skillful swordsman that can draw his

blade straight back out of the wound?[213]

Every man proposes fairly, and does not willfully take the devil for his

guide; as our shadows never fall between us and the sun. Go towards the

sun and your shadow will fall behind you.

_Feb. 9. Tuesday._

"_Cato._ Good Marcus Tullius (which is more than great),

Thou hadst thy education with the gods."

JONSON.

Better be defamed than overpraised. Thou canst then justly praise

thyself. What notoriety art thou that can be defamed? Who can be praised

for what they are not deserve rather to be damned for what they are. It

is hard to wear a dress that is too long and loose without stumbling.

"Whoe'er is raised,

For wealth he has not, he is tax'd, not prais'd,"

says Jonson. If you mind the flatterer, you rob yourself and still cheat

him. The fates never exaggerate; men pass for what they are. The state

never fails to get a revenue out of you without a direct tax. Flattery

would lay a direct tax. What I am praised for what I am not I put to

the account of the gods. It needs a skillful eye to distinguish between

their coin and my own. But however there can be no loss either way, for

what meed I have earned is equally theirs. Let neither fame nor infamy

hit you, but the one go as far beyond as the other falls behind. Let

the one glance past you to the gods, and the other wallow where it was

engendered. The home thrusts are at helmets upon blocks, and my worst

foes but stab an armor through.

* * * * *

My life at this moment is like a summer morning when birds are singing.

Yet that is false, for nature's is an idle pleasure in comparison: my

hour has a more solid serenity. I have been breaking silence these

twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it. Silence has

no end; speech is but the beginning of it. My friend thinks I _keep_

silence, who am only choked with letting it out so fast. Does he forget

that new mines of secrecy are constantly opening in me?

* * * * *

If any scorn your love, let them see plainly that you serve not them

but another. If these bars are up, go your way to other of God's

pastures, and browse there the while. When your host shuts his door on

you he incloses you in the dwelling of nature. He thrusts you over the

threshold of the world. My foes restore me to my friends.

* * * * *

I might say friendship had no ears as love has no eyes, for no word

is evidence in its court. The least act fulfills more than all words

profess. The most gracious speech is but partial kindness, but the least

genuine deed takes the whole man. If we had waited till doomsday it

could never have been uttered.

_Feb. 10. Wednesday._ That was fine praise which Ben Jonson gave to

Thomas, Lord Chancellor:—

"Whilst thou art certain to thy words, once gone,

As is thy conscience, which is always one."

Words do not lose their truth by time or misinterpretation, but stand

unscathed longer than he who spoke them.

Let our words be such as we may unblushingly behold sculptured in

granite on the walls to the least syllable. Our thoughts and actions

may be very private for a long time, for they demand a more catholic

publicity to be displayed in than the world can afford. Our best deeds

shun the narrow walks of men, and are not ambitious of the faint light

the world can shed on them, but delight to unfold themselves in that

public ground between God and conscience.

Truth has for audience and spectator all the world. Within, where I

resolve and deal with principles, there is more space and room than

anywhere without, where my hands execute. Men should hear of your virtue

only as they hear the creaking of the earth's axle and the music of

the spheres. It will fall into the course of nature and be effectually

concealed by publicness.

* * * * *

I asked a man to-day if he would rent me some land, and he said he had

four acres as good soil "as any outdoors." It was a true poet's account

of it. He and I, and all the world, went outdoors to breathe the free

air and stretch ourselves. For the world is but outdoors,—and we duck

behind a panel.

_Feb. 11._ True help, for the most part, implies a greatness in him who

is to be helped as well as in the helper. It takes a god to be helped

even. A great person, though unconsciously, will constantly give you

great opportunities to serve him, but a mean one will quite preclude

all active benevolence. It needs but simply and _greatly_ to want it for

once, that all true men may contend who shall be foremost to render aid.

My neighbor's state must pray to heaven so devoutly yet disinterestedly

as he never prayed in words, before my ears can hear. It must ask

divinely. But men so cobble and botch their request, that you must stoop

as low as they to give them aid. Their meanness would drag down your

deed to be a compromise with conscience, and not leave it to be done on

the high table-land of the benevolent soul. They would have you doff

your bright and knightly armor and drudge for them,—serve _them_ and

not God. But if I am to serve them I must not serve the devil.

What is called charity is no charity, but the interference of a

third person. Shall I interfere with fate? Shall I defraud man of the

opportunities which God gave him, and so take away his life? Beggars

and silent poor cry—how often!—"Get between me and my god." I will not

stay to cobble and patch God's rents, but do clean, new work when he

has given me my hands full. This almshouse charity is like putting new

wine into old bottles, when so many tuns in God's cellars stand empty.

We go about mending the times, when we should be building the eternity.

I must serve a strong master, not a weak one. Help implies a sympathy

of energy and effort, else no alleviation will avail.

_Feb. 12. Friday._ Those great men who are unknown to their own

generation are already famous in the society of the great who have gone

before them. All worldly fame but subsides from their high estimate

beyond the stars. We may still keep pace with those who have gone out

of nature, for we run on as smooth ground as they.

The early and the latter saints are separated by no eternal interval.

The child may soon stand face to face with the best father.

_Feb. 13._ By the truthfulness of our story to-day we help explain

ourselves for all our life henceforth. How we hamper and belay ourselves

by the least exaggeration! The truth is God's concern; He will sustain

it; but who can afford to maintain a lie? We have taken away one of the

Pillars of Hercules, and must support the world on our shoulders, who

might have walked freely upon it.

* * * * *

My neighbor says that his hill-farm is poor stuff and "only fit to hold

the world together."[214] He deserves that God should give him better

for so brave a treating of his gifts, instead of humbly putting up

therewith. It is a sort of stay, or gore, or gusset, and he will not

be blinded by modesty or gratitude, but sees it for what it is; knowing

his neighbor's fertile land, he calls his by its right name. But perhaps

my farmer forgets that his lean soil has sharpened his wits. This is a

crop it was good for. And beside, you see the heavens at a lesser angle

from the hill than from the vale.

* * * * *

We have nothing to fear from our foes; God keeps a standing army for

that service; but we have no ally against our friends, those ruthless

vandals whose kind intent is a subtler poison than the Colchian, a more

fatal shaft than the Lydian.[215]

_Feb. 14. Sunday._ I am confined to the house by bronchitis, and so

seek to content myself with that quiet and serene life there is in a

warm corner by the fireside, and see the sky through the chimney-top.

Sickness should not be allowed to extend further than the body. We

need only to retreat further within us to preserve uninterrupted the

continuity of serene hours to the end of our lives.

As soon as I find my chest is not of tempered steel, and heart of

adamant, I bid good-by to these and look out a new nature. I will be

liable to no accidents.

* * * * *

I shall never be poor while I can command a still hour in which to take

leave of my sin.

* * * * *

The jingling team which is creaking past reminds me of that verse in

the Bible which speaks of God being heard in the bells of the horses.

_Feb. 15._ There is elevation in every hour. No part of the earth is so

low and withdrawn that the heavens cannot be seen from it, but every

part supports the sky. We have only to stand on the eminence of the

hour, and look out thence into the empyrean, allowing no pinnacle above

us, to command an uninterrupted horizon. The moments will lie outspread

around us like a blue expanse of mountain and valley, while we stand

on the summit of our hour as if we had descended on eagle's wings. For

the eagle has stooped to his perch on the highest cliff and has never

climbed the rock; he stands by his wings more than by his feet. We shall

not want a foothold, but wings will sprout from our shoulders, and we

shall walk securely, self-sustained.

* * * * *

For how slight an accident shall two noble souls wait to bring them

together!

_Feb. 17._ Our work should be fitted to and lead on the time, as bud,

flower, and fruit lead the circle of the seasons.

* * * * *

The mechanic works no longer than his labor will pay for lights, fuel,

and shop rent. Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will

warrant the expense of nature? Will it maintain the sun's light?

* * * * *

Our actions do not use time independently, as the bud does. They should

constitute its lapse. It is their room. But they shuffle after and serve

the hour.

_Feb. 18. Thursday._ I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their

greatest deed is the impression they make on me. Some serene, inactive

men can do everything. Talent only indicates a depth of character in

some direction. We do not acquire the ability to do new deeds, but a new

capacity for all deeds. My recent growth does not appear in any visible

new talent, but its deed will enter into my gaze when I look into the

sky, or vacancy. It will help me to consider ferns and everlasting. Man

is like a tree which is limited to no age, but grows as long as it has

its root in the ground. We have only to live in the alburnum and not in

the old wood. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.

* * * * *

Sometimes I find that I have frequented a higher society during sleep,

and my thoughts and actions proceed on a higher level in the morning.

* * * * *

A man is the hydrostatic paradox, the counterpoise of the system. You

have studied flowers and birds cheaply enough, but you must lay yourself

out to buy him.

_Feb. 19._ A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It

is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay

it down and commence living on its hint. I do not see how any can be

written more, but this is the last effusion of genius. When I read an

indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring

volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is

slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere

in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be

practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with the

least regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting. So I

cannot stay to hear a _good_ sermon and applaud at the conclusion, but

shall be half-way to Thermopylæ before that.

* * * * *

When any joke or hoax traverses the Union in the newspapers it apprises

me of a fact which no geography or guide-book contains, of a certain

leisure and nonchalance pervading society. It is a piece of information

from over the Alleghanies, which I know how to prize, though I did

not expect it. And it is just so in Nature. I sometimes observe in

her a strange trifling, almost listlessness, which conducts to beauty

and grace,—the fantastic and whimsical forms of snow and ice, the

unaccountable freaks which the tracks of rabbits exhibit. I know now

why all those busy speculators do not die of fever and ague.

* * * * *

Coleridge observed the "landscapes made by damp on a whitewashed wall,"

and so have I.

* * * * *

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood,

and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.[216]

* * * * *

It is the unexplored grandeur of the storm which keeps up the spirits

of the traveller.[217] When I contemplate a hard and bare life in the

woods, I find my last consolation in its untrivialness. Shipwreck is

less distressing because the breakers do not trifle with us. We are

resigned as long as we recognize the sober and solemn mystery of nature.

The dripping mariner finds consolation and sympathy in the infinite

sublimity of the storm. It is a moral force as well as he. With courage

he can lay down his life on the strand, for it never turned a deaf ear

to him, nor has he ever exhausted its sympathy.

* * * * *

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages, but in vain; I

find no sea-room. But in great souls I sail before the wind without a

watch, and never reach the shore.

* * * * *

You demand that I be less your friend that you may know it.

* * * * *

Nothing will reconcile friends but love. They make a fatal mistake when

they go about like foes to explain and treat with one another. It is a

mutual mistake. None are so unmanageable.

_Feb. 20. Saturday._ I suspect the moral discrimination of the oldest

and best authors. I doubt if Milton distinguished greatly between his

Satan and his Raphael. In Homer and Æschylus and Dante I miss a nice

discrimination of the _important_ shades of character.

* * * * *

When I am going out for an evening I arrange the fire in my stove so

that I do not fail to find a good one when I return, though it would

have engaged my frequent attention present. So that, when I know I am to

be at home, I sometimes make believe that I may go out, to save trouble.

And this is the art of living, too,—to leave our life in a condition to

go alone, and not to require a constant supervision. We will then sit

down serenely to live, as by the side of a stove.

When I sit in earnest, nothing must stand, all must be sedentary with me.

* * * * *

I hear the faint sound of a viol and voices from the neighboring

cottage, and think to myself, "I will believe the Muse only for

evermore." It assures me that no gleam which comes over the serene soul

is deceptive. It warns me of a reality and substance, of which the best

that I see is but the phantom and shadow. O music, thou tellest me of

things of which memory takes no heed; thy strains are whispered aside

from memory's ear.

This is the noblest plain of earth, over which these sounds are borne,

the plain of Troy or Eleusis.

* * * * *

Thou openest all my senses to catch thy least hint, and givest me no

thought. It would be good to sit at my door of summer evenings forever

and hear thy strains. Thou makest me to toy with speech, or walk content

without it, not regretting its absence. I am pleased to think how

ignorant and shiftless the wisest are. My imperfect sympathies with my

friend are cheerful, glimmering light in the valley.

_Feb. 21. Sunday._ It is hard to preserve equanimity and greatness

on that debatable ground between love and esteem. There is nothing so

stable and unfluctuating as love. The waves beat steadfast on its shore

forever, and its tide has no ebb. It is a resource in all extremities,

and a refuge even from itself. And yet love will not be leaned on.

_Feb. 22._ Love is the tenderest mood of that which is tough—and the

toughest mood of that which is tender. It may be roughly handled as the

nettle, or gently as the violet. It has its holidays, but is not made

for them.

* * * * *

The whole of the day should not be daytime, nor of the night night-time,

but some portion be rescued from time to oversee time in. All our hours

must not be current; all our time must not lapse. There must be one hour

at least which the day did not bring forth,—of ancient parentage and

long-established nobility,—which will be a serene and lofty platform

overlooking the rest. We should make our notch every day on our

characters, as Robinson Crusoe on his stick. We must be at the helm at

least once a day; we must feel the tiller-rope in our hands, and know

that if we sail, we steer.

* * * * *

Friends will be much apart; they will respect more each other's privacy

than their communion, for therein is the fulfillment of our high aims

and the conclusion of our arguments. That we know and would associate

with not only has high intents, but goes on high errands, and has much

private business. The hours he devotes to me were snatched from higher

society. He is hardly a gift level to me, but I have to reach up to take

it. My imagination always assigns him a nobler employment in my absence

than ever I find him engaged in.[218]

We have to go into retirement religiously, and enhance our meeting by

rarity and a degree of unfamiliarity. Would you know why I see thee so

seldom, my friend? In solitude I have been making up a packet for thee.

* * * * *

The actions which grow out of some common but natural relations affect

me strangely, as sometimes the behavior of a mother to her children.

So quiet and noiseless an action often moves me more than many sounding

exploits.

_Feb. 23. Tuesday._ Let all our stores and munitions be provided for

the lone state.

* * * * *

The care of the body is the highest exercise of prudence. If I

have brought this weakness on my lungs, I will consider calmly and

disinterestedly how the thing came about, that I may find out the truth

and render justice. Then, after patience, I shall be a wiser man than

before.

Let us apply all our wit to the repair of our bodies, as we would mend a

harrow, for the body will be dealt plainly and implicitly with. We want

no moonshine nor surmises about it. This matter of health and sickness

has no fatality in it, but is a subject for the merest prudence.

If I know not what ails me, I may resort to amulets and charms and,

moonstruck, die of dysentery.

We do wrong to slight our sickness and feel so ready to desert our

posts when we are harassed. So much the more should we rise above our

condition, and make the most of it, for the fruit of disease may be as

good as that of health.[219]

* * * * *

There is a subtle elixir in society which makes it a fountain of

health to the sick. We want no consolation which is not the overflow

of our friend's health. We will have no condolence who are not dolent

ourselves. We would have our friend come and respire healthily before

us, with the fragrance of many meadows and heaths in his breath, and we

will inhabit his body while our own recruits.

Nothing is so good medicine in sickness as to witness some nobleness in

another which will advertise us of health. In sickness it is our faith

that ails, and noble deeds reassure us.

* * * * *

That anybody has thought of you on some indifferent occasion frequently

implies more good will than you had reason to expect. You have

henceforth a higher motive for conduct. We do not know how many amiable

thoughts are current.

_Feb. 26. Friday._ My prickles or smoothness are as much a quality of

your hand as of myself. I cannot tell you what I am, more than a ray

of the summer's sun. What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great

explainer. In the attempt to explain, shall I plane away all the spines,

till it is no thistle, but a cornstalk?

If my world is not sufficient without thee, my friend, I will wait

till it is and then call thee. You shall come to a palace, not to an

almshouse.

* * * * *

My homeliest thought, like the diamond brought from farthest within the

mine, will shine with the purest lustre.

Though I write every day, yet when I say a good thing it seems as if I

wrote but rarely.

* * * * *

To be great, we do as if we would be tall merely, be longer than we

are broad, stretch ourselves and stand on tiptoe. But greatness is well

proportioned, unstrained, and stands on the soles of the feet.

* * * * *

How many are waiting for health and warm weather! But they wait for none.

* * * * *

In composition I miss the hue of the mind. As if we could be satisfied

with the dews of the morning and evening without their colors, or the

heavens without their azure.[220]

* * * * *

This good book helps the sun shine in my chamber. The rays fall on its

page as if to explain and illustrate it.[221]

* * * * *

I who have been sick hear cattle low in the street, with such a healthy

ear as prophesies my cure. These sounds lay a finger on my pulse to

some purpose. A fragrance comes in at all my senses which proclaims

that I am still of Nature the child. The threshing in yonder barn and

the tinkling of the anvil come from the same side of Styx with me. If

I were a physician I would try my patients thus. I would wheel them to

a window and let Nature feel their pulse. It will soon appear if their

sensuous existence is sound. These sounds are but the throbbing of some

pulse in me.[222]

* * * * *

Nature seems to have given me these hours to pry into her private

drawers. I watch the shadow of the insensible perspiration rising from

my coat or hand on the wall. I go and feel my pulse in all the recesses

of the house and see if I am of force to carry a homely life and comfort

into them.

_Feb. 27. Saturday._ Life looks as fair at this moment as a summer's

sea, or a blond dress in a saffron light, with its sun and grass and

walled towns so bright and chaste, as fair as my own virtue which

would adventure therein. Like a Persian city or hanging gardens in the

distance, so washed in light, so untried, only to be thridded by clean

thoughts. All its flags are flowing, and tassels streaming, and drapery

flapping, like some gay pavilion. The heavens hang over it like some

low screen, and seem to undulate in the breeze.

Through this pure, unwiped hour, as through a crystal glass, I look out

upon the future, as a smooth lawn for my virtue to disport in. It shows

from afar as unrepulsive as the sunshine upon walls and cities, over

which the passing life moves as gently as a shadow. I see the course

of my life, like some retired road, wind on without obstruction into a

country maze.[223]

I am attired for the future so, as the sun setting presumes all men

at leisure and in contemplative mood,—and am thankful that it is

thus presented blank and indistinct. It still o'ertops my hope. My

future deeds bestir themselves within me and move grandly towards a

consummation, as ships go down the Thames. A steady onward motion I feel

in me, as still as that, or like some vast, snowy cloud, whose shadow

first is seen across the fields. It is the material of all things loose

and set afloat that makes my sea.

These various words are not without various meanings. The combined

voice of the race makes nicer distinctions than any individual. There

are the words "diversion" and "amusement." It takes more to amuse than

to divert. We must be surrendered to our amusements, but only turned

aside to our diversions. We have no will in the former, but oversee

the latter. We are oftenest diverted in the street, but amused in our

chambers. We are diverted from our engagements, but amused when we

are listless. We may be diverted from an amusement, and amused by a

diversion. It often happens that a diversion becomes our amusement, and

our amusement our employment.

_Feb. 28._ Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks.

The best you can write will be the best you are. Every sentence is

the result of a long probation. The author's character is read from

title-page to end. Of this he never corrects the proofs. We read it

as the essential character of a handwriting without regard to the

flourishes. And so of the rest of our actions; it runs as straight as

a ruled line through them all, no matter how many curvets about it. Our

whole life is taxed for the least thing well done; it is its net result.

How we eat, drink, sleep, and use our desultory hours, now in these

indifferent days, with no eye to observe and no occasion [to] excite

us, determines our authority and capacity for the time to come.

_March 3._ I hear a man blowing a horn this still evening, and it sounds

like the plaint of nature in these times. In this, which I refer to

some man, there is something greater than any man. It is as if the earth

spoke. It adds a great remoteness to the horizon, and its very distance

is grand, as when one draws back the head to speak. That which I now

hear in the west seems like an invitation to the east. It runs round the

earth as a whisper gallery. It is the spirit of the West calling to the

spirit of the East, or else it is the rattling of some team lagging in

Day's train. Coming to me through the darkness and silence, all things

great seem transpiring there. It is friendly as a distant hermit's

taper. When it is trilled, or undulates, the heavens are crumpled into

time, and successive waves flow across them.

It is a strangely healthy sound for these disjointed times. It is a

rare soundness when cow-bells and horns are heard from over the fields.

And now I see the beauty and full meaning of that word "sound." Nature

always possesses a certain sonorousness, as in the hum of insects, the

booming of ice, the crowing of cocks in the morning, and the barking of

dogs in the night, which indicates her sound state.[224] God's voice

is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonderful health, a cordial,

in sound. The effect of the slightest tinkling in the horizon measures

my own soundness. I thank God for sound; it always mounts, and makes

me mount. I think I will not trouble myself for any wealth, when I can

be so cheaply enriched. Here I contemplate to drudge that I may own a

farm—and may have such a limitless estate for the listening. All good

things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

* * * * *

As for these communities, I think I had rather keep bachelor's hall

in hell than go to board in heaven. Do you think your virtue will be

boarded with you? It will never live on the interest of your money,

depend upon it. The boarder has no home. In heaven I hope to bake my

own bread and clean my own linen. The tomb is the only boarding-house

in which a hundred are served at once. In the catacomb we may dwell

together and prop one another without loss.

_March 4._ Ben Jonson says in his epigrams,—

"He makes himself a thorough-fare of Vice."

This is true, for by vice the substance of a man is not changed, but

all his pores, and cavities, and avenues are prophaned by being made

the thoroughfares of vice. He is the highway of his vice. The searching

devil courses through and through him. His flesh and blood and bones

are cheapened. He is all trivial, a place where three highways of sin

meet. So is another the thoroughfare of virtue, and virtue circulates

through all his aisles like a wind, and he is hallowed.

* * * * *

We reprove each other unconsciously by our own behavior. Our very

carriage and demeanor in the streets should be a reprimand that will go

to the conscience of every beholder. An infusion of love from a great

soul gives a color to our faults, which will discover them, as lunar

caustic detects impurities in water.

* * * * *

The best will not seem to go contrary to others, but, as if _they_ could

afford to travel the same way, they go a parallel but higher course, a

sort of upper road. Jonson says,—

"That to the vulgar canst thyself apply,

Treading a better path not contrary."

Their way is a mountain slope, a river valley's course, a tide which

mingles a myriad lesser currents.

_March 5. Friday._ How can our love increase, unless our loveliness

increase also? We must securely love each other as we love God, with no

more danger that our love be unrequited or ill-bestowed. There is that

in my friend before which I must first decay and prove untrue. Love is

the least moral and the most. Are the best good in their love? or the

worst, bad?

_March 6._ An honest misunderstanding is often the ground of future

intercourse.

"THE SPHINX"[225]

_March 7, 8, 9, 10._ The Sphinx is man's insatiable and questioning

spirit, which still, as of old, stands by the roadside in us and

proposes the riddle of life to every passer. The ancients represented

this by a monster who was a riddle of herself, having a body composed of

various creatures, as if to hint that she had no individual existence,

but was nearly allied to and brooded over all. They made her devour

those who were unable to explain her enigmas, as we are devoured by

doubt, and struggle towards the light, as if to be assured of our lives.

For we live by confidence, and our bravery is in some moment when we are

certain to that degree that our certainty cannot be increased; as, when

a ray bursts through a gap in a cloud, it darts as far, and reaches the

earth as surely, as the whole sun would have done.

1. In the first four lines is described the mood in which the Sphinx

bestirs herself in us. We must look on the world with a drowsy and

half-shut eye, that it may not be too much in our eye, and rather stand

aloof from than within it. When we are awake to the real world, we are

asleep to the actual. The sinful drowse to eternity, the virtuous to

time. Menu says that the "supreme omnipresent intelligence" is "a spirit

which can only be conceived by a mind _slumbering_." Wisdom and holiness

always slumber; they are never active in the ways of the world. As in

our night-dreams we are nearest to awakening, so in our day-dreams

we are nearest to a supernatural awakening, and the plain and flat

satisfactoriness of life becomes so significant as to be questioned.

The Sphinx hints that in the ages her secret is kept, but in the

annihilation of ages alone is it revealed. So far from solving the

problem of life, Time only serves to propose and keep it in. Time

waits but for its solution to become eternity. Its lapse is measured

by the successive failures to answer the incessant question, and the

generations of men are the unskillful passengers devoured.

2. She hints generally at man's mystery. He knows only that he is, not

what, nor whence. Not only is he curiously and wonderfully wrought, but

with Dædalian intricacy. He is lost in himself as a labyrinth and has

no clue to get out by. If he could get out of his humanity, he would

have got out of nature. "Dædalian" expresses both the skill and the

inscrutable design of the builder.

The insolubleness of the riddle is only more forcibly expressed by the

lines,—

"Out of sleeping a waking,

Out of waking a sleep."

They express the complete uncertainty and renunciation of knowledge of

the propounder.

3, 4, 5, 6. In these verses is described the integrity of all animate

and inanimate things but man,—how each is a problem of itself and

not the solution of one and presides over and uses the mystery of the

universe as unhesitatingly as if it were the partner of God; how, by a

sort of _essential and practical faith_, each understands all, for to

see that we understand is to know that we misunderstand. Each natural

object is an end to itself. A brave, undoubting life do they all live,

and are content to be a part of the mystery which is God, and throw the

responsibility on man of explaining them and himself too.

3. The outlines of the trees are as correct as if ruled by God on the

sky. The motions of quadrupeds and birds Nature never thinks to mend,

but they are a last copy and the flourishes of His hand.

4. The waves lapse with such a melody on the shore as shows that they

have long been at one with Nature. Theirs is as perfect play as if

the heavens and earth were not. They meet with a sweet difference

and independently, as old playfellows. Nothing do they lack more than

the world. The ripple is proud to be a ripple and balances the sea.

The atoms, which are in such a continual flux, notwithstanding their

minuteness, have a certain essential valor and independence. They have

the integrity of worlds, and attract and repel firmly as such. The least

has more manhood than Democritus.

5. So also in Nature the perfection of the whole is the perfection of

the parts, and what is itself perfect serves to adorn and set off all

the rest. Her distinctions are but reliefs. Night veileth the morning

for the morning's sake, and the vapor adds a new attraction to the hill.

Nature looks like a conspiracy for the advantage of all her parts;

when one feature shines, all the rest seem suborned to heighten its

charm. In her circle each gladly gives precedence to the other. Day

gladly alternates with night. Behind these the vapor atones to the hill

for its interference, and this harmonious scene is the effect of that

at-one-ment.

6. In a sense the babe takes its departure from Nature as the grown man

his departure out of her, and so during its nonage is at one with her,

and as a part of herself. It is indeed the very flower and blossom of

Nature.

"Shines the peace of all being

Without cloud, in its eyes;

And the _sum_ of the world

In soft _miniature_ lies."[226]

To the charming consistency of the palm and thrush, this universal and

serene beauty is added, as all the leaves of the tree flower in the

blossom.

7. But alas, the fruit to be matured in these petals is fated to break

the stem which holds it to universal consistency. It passes _through

Nature_ to manhood, and becomes unnatural, without being as yet quite

supernatural. Man's most approved life is but conformity, not a simple

and independent consistency, which would make all things conform to it.

His actions do not adorn Nature nor one another, nor does she exist in

harmony but in contrast with them. She is not their willing scenery.

We conceive that if a true action were to be performed it would be

assisted by Nature, and perhaps be fondled and reflected many times as

the rainbow. The sun is a true light for the trees in a picture, but

not for the actions of men. They will not bear so strong a light as

the stubble; the universe has little sympathy with them, and sooner or

later they rebound hollowly on the memory. The April shower should be

as reviving to our life as to the garden and the grove, and the scenery

in which we live reflect our own beauty, as the dewdrop the flower. It

is the actual man, not the actual Nature, that hurts the romance of the

landscape. "He poisons the ground." The haymakers must be lost in the

grass of the meadow. They may be Faustus and Amyntas here, but near at

hand they are Reuben and Jonas. The woodcutter must not be better than

the wood, lest he be _worse_. Neither will bear to be considered as a

distinct feature. Man's works must lie in the bosom of Nature, cottages

be buried in trees, or under vines and moss, like rocks, that they

may not outrage the landscape. The hunter must be dressed in Lincoln

green, with a plume of eagle's feathers, to imbosom him in Nature.

So the skillful painter secures the distinctness of the whole by the

indistinctness of the parts. We can endure best to consider our repose

and silence. Only when the city, the hamlet, or the cottage is viewed

from a distance does man's life seem in harmony with the universe; but

seen closely his actions have no eagle's feathers or Lincoln green to

redeem them. The sunlight on cities at a distance is a deceptive beauty,

but foretells the final harmony of man with Nature.

Man as he is, is not the subject of any art, strictly speaking. The

naturalist pursues his study with love, but the moralist persecutes

his with hate. In man is the material of a picture, with a design

partly sketched, but Nature is such a picture drawn and colored. He is

a studio, Nature a gallery. If men were not idealists, no sonnets to

beautiful persons nor eulogies on worthy ones would ever be written.

We wait for the preacher to express _such_ love for his congregation as

the botanist for his herbarium.

8. Man, however, detects something in the lingering ineradicable

sympathy of Nature which seems to side with him against the stern

decrees of the soul. Her essential friendliness is only the more

apparent to his waywardness, for disease and sorrow are but a rupture

with her. In proportion as he renounces his will, she repairs his hurts,

and, if she burns, does oftener warm, if she freezes, oftener refreshes.

This is the motherliness which the poet personifies, and the Sphinx, or

wisely inquiring man, makes express a real concern for him. Nature shows

us a stern kindness, and only we are unkind. She endures long with us,

and though the severity of her law is unrelaxed, yet its evenness and

impartiality look relenting, and almost sympathize with our fault.

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. But to the poet there are no riddles. They are

"pleasant songs" to him; his faith solves the enigmas which recurring

wisdom does not fail to repeat. Poetry is the only solution time can

offer. But the poet is soonest a pilgrim from his own faith. Our brave

moments may still be distinguished from our wise. Though the problem

is always solved for the soul, still does it remain to be solved by the

intellect. Almost faith puts the question, for only in her light can it

be answered. However true the answer, it does not prevent the question;

for the best answer is but plausible, and man can only tell his relation

to truth, but render no account of truth to herself.

9. Believe, and ask not, says the poet.

"Deep love lieth under

These pictures of time;

They fade in the light of

Their meaning sublime."

Nothing is plain but love.

10, 11, 12, 13. Man comes short, because he seeks perfection. He adorns

no world, while he is seeking to adorn a better. His best actions have

no reference to their actual scenery. For when our actions become of

that worth that they might confer a grace on Nature, they pass out of

her into a higher arena, where they are still mean and awkward. So that

the world beholds only the rear of great deeds, and mistakes them often

for inconsistencies, not knowing with what higher they consist. Nature

is beautiful as in repose, not promising a higher beauty to-morrow.

Her actions are level to one another, and so are never unfit or

inconsistent. Shame and remorse, which are so unsightly to her, have

a prospective beauty and fitness which redeem them. We would have our

lover to be nobler than we, and do not fear to sacrifice our love to

his greater nobleness. Better the disagreement of noble lovers than

the agreement of base ones. In friendship each will be nobler than the

other, and so avoid the cheapness of a level and idle harmony. Love will

have its chromatic strains,—discordant yearnings for higher chords,—as

well as symphonies. Let us expect no finite satisfaction.

13. Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see

no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the

same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

14. The poet concludes with the same trust he began with, and jeers at

the blindness which could inquire. But our sphinx is so wise as to put

no riddle that can be answered. It is a great presumption to answer

conclusively a question which any sincerity has put. The wise answer

no questions,—nor do they ask them. She silences his jeers with the

conviction that she is the eye-beam of his eye. Our proper eye never

quails before an answer. To rest in a reply, as a response of the

oracle, that is error; but to suspect time's reply, because we would not

degrade one of God's meanings to be intelligible to us, that is wisdom.

We shall never arrive at his meaning, but it will ceaselessly arrive to

us. The truth we seek with ardor and devotion will not reward us with a

cheap acquisition. We run unhesitatingly in our career, not fearing to

pass any goal of truth in our haste. We career toward her eternally. A

truth rested in stands for all the vice of an age, and revolution comes

kindly to restore health.

16. The cunning Sphinx, who had been hushed into stony silence and

repose in us, arouses herself and detects a mystery in all things,—in

infancy, the moon, fire, flowers, sea, mountain,—and,

(17) in the spirit of the old fable, declares proudly,—

"Who telleth one of my meanings

Is master of all I am."

When some Œdipus has solved one of her enigmas, she will go dash her

head against a rock.

* * * * *

You may find this as enigmatical as the Sphinx's riddle. Indeed, I doubt

if she could solve it herself.

_March 11. Thursday._ Every man understands why a fool sings.

_March 13. Saturday._ There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in

some books, which is very rare to find, and yet looks quite cheap. There

may be nothing lofty in the sentiment, or polished in the expression,

but it is careless, countrified talk. The scholar rarely writes as

well as the farmer talks. Homeliness is a great merit in a book; it is

next to beauty and a high art. Some have this merit only. A few homely

expressions redeem them. Rusticity is pastoral, but affectation merely

civil. The scholar does not make his most familiar experience come

gracefully to the aid of his expression, and hence, though he live in

it, his books contain no tolerable pictures of the country and simple

life. Very few men can speak of Nature with any truth. They confer no

favor; they do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than

they speak. You can get more nature out of them by pinching than by

addressing them. It is naturalness, and not simply good nature, that

interests. I like better the surliness with which the woodchopper

speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, than

the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the

primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose and nothing more, than

the victim of his bouquet or herbarium, to shine with the flickering

dull light of his imagination, and not the golden gleam of a star.

Aubrey relates of Thomas Fuller that his was "a very working head, in so

much, that walking and meditating before dinner, he would eat up a penny

loaf, not knowing that he did it. His natural memory was very great, to

which he added the art of memory. He would repeat to you forwards and

backwards all the signs from Ludgate to Charing-cross." These are very

good and wholesome facts to know of a man, as copious as some modern

volumes.

He also says of Mr. John Hales, that, "he loved Canarie" and was buried

"under an altar monument of black marble ... with a too long epitaph;"

of Edmund Halley, that he "at sixteen could make a dial, and then he

said he thought himself a brave fellow;" of William Holder, who wrote

a book upon his curing one Popham, who was deaf and dumb, "He was

beholding to no author; did only consult with nature." For the most

part an author but consults with all who have written before upon any

subject, and his book is but the advice of so many. But a true book will

never have been forestalled, but the topic itself will be new, and, by

consulting with nature, it will consult not only with those who have

gone before, but with those who may come after. There is always room

and occasion enough for a true book on any subject, as there is room for

more light the brightest day, and more rays will not interfere with the

first.[227]

How alone must our life be lived! We dwell on the seashore, and none

between us and the sea. Men are my merry companions, my fellow-pilgrims,

who beguile the way but leave me at the first turn in the road, for none

are travelling _one_ road so far as myself.

Each one marches in the van. The weakest child is exposed to the fates

henceforth as barely as its parents. Parents and relations but entertain

the youth; they cannot stand between him and his destiny. This is the

one bare side of every man. There is no fence; it is clear before him

to the bounds of space.

* * * * *

What is fame to a living man? If he live aright, the sound of no man's

voice will resound through the aisles of his secluded life. His life is

a hallowed silence, a fane. The loudest sounds have to thank my little

ear that they are heard.

_March 15._ When I have access to a man's barrel of sermons, which were

written from week to week, as his life lapsed, though I now know him

to live cheerfully and bravely enough, still I cannot conceive what

interval there was for laughter and smiles in the midst of so much

sadness. Almost in proportion to the sincerity and earnestness of the

life will be the sadness of the record. When I reflect that twice a week

for so many years he pondered and preached such a sermon, I think he

must have been a splenetic and melancholy man, and wonder if his food

digested well. It seems as if the fruit of virtue was never a careless

happiness.

A great cheerfulness have all great wits possessed, almost a prophane

levity to such as understood them not, but their religion had the

broader basis in proportion as it was less prominent. The religion I

love is very laic. The clergy are as diseased, and as much possessed

with a devil, as the reformers. They make their topic as offensive as

the politician, for our religion is as unpublic and incommunicable

as our poetical vein, and to be approached with as much love and

tenderness.

_March 17. Wednesday._ The stars go up and down before my only eye.

Seasons come round to me alone. I cannot lean so hard on any arm as on

a sunbeam. So solid men are not to my sincerity as is the shimmer of

the fields.

_March 19. Friday._ No true and brave person will be content to live

on such a footing with his fellow and himself as the laws of every

household now require. The house is the very haunt and lair of our vice.

I am impatient to withdraw myself from under its roof as an unclean

spot. There is no circulation there; it is full of stagnant and mephitic

vapors.

_March 20._ Even the wisest and best are apt to use their lives as the

occasion to do something else in than to live greatly. But we should

hang as fondly over this work as the finishing and embellishment of a

poem.

* * * * *

It is a great relief when for a few moments in the day we can retire

to our chamber and be completely true to ourselves. It leavens the rest

of our hours. In that moment I will be nakedly as vicious as I am; this

false life of mine shall have a being at length.

_March 21. Sunday._ To be associated with others by my friend's

generosity when he bestows a gift is an additional favor to be grateful

for.