A great contemporary writer, so I am told, regards originality as much
rarer than is commonly supposed. But, on the contrary, is it not far
more frequent than is commonly supposed? For one should not identify
originality with mere primacy of conception or utterance, as if a
thought could be original but once. In truth, it may be so thousands or
millions of times; nay, from the beginning to the end of man's times
upon the earth, the same thoughts may continue rising from the same
fountains in his spirit. Of the central or stem thoughts of
consciousness, of the imperial presiding imaginations, this is actually
true. Ceaseless re-origination is the method of Nature. This alone
keeps history alive. For if every Mohammedan were but a passive
appendage to the dead Mohammed, if every disciple were but a copy in
plaster of his teacher, and if history were accordingly living and
original only in such degree as it is an unprecedented invention, the
laws of decay should at once be made welcome to the world.
The fact is otherwise. As new growths upon the oldest cedar or baobab
do not merely spin themselves out of the wood already formed,--as they
thrive and constitute themselves only by original conversation with
sun, earth, and air,--that is, in the same way with any seed or
sapling,--so generations of Moslems, Parsees, or Calvinists, while
obeying the structural law of their system, yet quaff from the mystical
fountains of pure Life the sustenance by which they live. Merely out
of itself the tree can give nothing,--literally, nothing. True, if cut
down, it may, under favorable circumstances, continue for a time to
feed the growing shoots out of its own decay. Yet not even at the cost
of decay and speedy exhaustion could the old trunk accomplish this
little, but for the draft made upon it by the new growths. It is
_their_ life, it is the relationship which they assert with sun
and rain and all the elements, which is foremost in bringing about even
this result. So it is with the great old literatures, with the old
systems of philosophy and faith. They are simply avenues, or structural
forms, through which succeeding generations of souls come into
conversation with eternal Nature, and express their original life.
Observe, again, that the tree lives only while new shoots are produced
upon it. The new twigs and leaves not only procure sustenance for
themselves, but even keep the trunk itself alive: so that the chief
order of support is just opposite what it seems; and the tree lives
from above, down,--as do men and all other creatures. So in history, it
requires a vast amount of original thought or sentiment to sustain the
old structural forms. This gigantic baobab of Catholicism, for example,
is kept alive by the conversion of Life into Belief, which takes place
age after age in the bosoms of women and men. The trunk was long ago in
extensive decay; every wind menaces it with overthrow; but the hearts
that bud and blossom upon it yearly send down to the earth and up to
the sky such a claim for resource as surrounds the dying trunk with
ever new layers of supporting growth. Equally are the thought, poetry,
rhetoric of by-gone times kept in significance by the perceiving, the
imagining, and the sense of a flowing symbolism in Nature, which our
own time brings to them. To make Homer alive to this age,--what an
expenditure of imagination, of pure feeling and penetration does it
demand! Let the Homeric heart or genius die out of mankind, and from
that moment the "Iliad" is but dissonance, the long melodious roll of
its echoes becomes a jarring chop of noises. What chiefly makes Homer
great is the vast ideal breadth of relationship in which he establishes
human beings. But he in whose narrow brain is no space for high
Olympus and deep Orcus,--he whose coarse fibre never felt the
shudder of the world at the shaking of the ambrosial locks, nor a
thrill in the air when a hero fails,--what can this grand stoop of the
ideal upon the actual world signify to him? To what but an ethical
genius in men can appeal for guest-rites be made by the noble
"Meditations" of Marcus Antoninus, or the exquisite, and perhaps
incomparable, "Christian Morals" of Sir Thomas Browne?
Appreciative genius is centrally the same with productive
genius; and it is the Shakspeare in men alone that prints Shakspeare
and reads him. So it is that the works of the masters are, as it were,
perpetually re-written and renewed in life by the genius of mankind.
In saying that constant re-origination is the method of Nature, I do
not overlook the element nor underrate the importance of Imitation.
This it is that secures continuity, connection, and structural unity.
By vital imitation the embryonic man assumes the features and
traits of his progenitors. After birth the infant remains in the
matrix of the household; after infancy the glowing youth is held in
that of society; and processes kindred with those which bestowed
likeness to father and mother go on to assimilate him with a social
circle or an age. Complaint is made, and by good men, of that implicit
acquiescence which keeps in existence Islam, Catholicism, and the like,
long after their due time has come to die; yet, abolish the law of
imitation which causes this, and the immediate disintegration of
mankind will follow. Mortar is much in the way, when we wish to take
an old building to pieces and make other use of the bricks; do you
therefore advise its disuse?
But imitation would preserve nothing, did not the law of re-origination
keep it company. We are not born from our parents alone, but from the
loins of eternal Nature no less. Was Orpheus the grandson of Zeus and
Mnemosyne,--of sovereign Unity and immortal Memory? Equally is
Shakspeare and every genuine bard. Could the heroes of old Greece
trace their derivation from the gods?
Little of a hero is he, even in these times of ours, who is not of the
like lineage. And indeed, one and all, we have a father and mother
whose marriage-morn is of more ancient date than our calendars, and of
whose spousal solemnities this universe is the memorial. All life,
indeed, whatsoever be its form and rank, has, along with connections of
pedigree and lateral association, one tap-root that strikes straight
down into the eternal.
Because Life is of this unsounded depth, it may well afford to repeat
the same forms forever, nor incurs thereby any danger of exhausting its
significance and becoming stale. Vital repetition, accordingly, goes
on in Nature in a way not doubtful and diffident, but frank, open,
sure, as if the game were one that could not be played out. It is now a
very long while that buds have burst and grass grown; yet Spring comes
forward still without bashfulness, fearing no charge of having
plagiarized from her predecessors. The field blushes not for its
blades, though they are such as for immemorial times have spired from
the sod; the boughs publish their annual book of many a verdant scroll
without apprehension of having become commonplace at last; the
bobolink pours his warble in cheery sureness of acceptance, unmindful
that it is the same warble with which the throats of other bobolinks
were throbbing before there was a man to listen and smile; and night
after night forever the stars, and age after age the eyes of women and
men, shine on without apology, or the least promise that this shall be
positively their last appearance. Life knows itself original always,
nor a whit the less so for any repetition of its elected and
significant forms. Youth and newness are, indeed, inseparable from it.
Death alone is senile; and we become physically aged only by the
presence and foothold of this dogged intruder in our bodies. The body
is a fortress for the possession of which Death is perpetually
contending; only the incessant activity of Life at every foot of the
rampart keeps him at bay; but, with, the advance of years, the
assailants gain, here and there a foothold, pressing the defenders
back; and just in proportion as this defeat take a place the man
becomes _old_. But Life sets out from the same basis of mystery to
build each new body, no matter how many myriads of such forms have been
built before; and forsaking it finally, is no less young, inscrutable,
enticing than before.
Now Thought, as part of the supreme flowering of Life, follows its law.
It cannot be anticipated by any anticipation of its forms and results.
There were hazel-brown eyes in the world before my boy was born; but
the light that shines in these eyes comes direct from the soul
nevertheless. The light of true thought, in like manner, issues only
from an inward sun; and shining, it carries always its perfect
privilege, its charm and sacredness. Would you have purple or yellow
eyes, because the accustomed colors have been so often repeated? Black,
blue, brown, gray, forever! May the angels in heaven have no other!
Forever, too, and equally, the perpetual loves, thoughts, and melodies
of men! Let them come out of their own mystical, ineffable haunts,--let
them, that is, be _real_,--and we ask no more.
The question of originality is, therefore, simply one of vitality. Does
the fruit really grow on the tree? does it indeed come by vital
process?--little more than this does it concern us to know. Truths
become cold and commonplace, not by any number of rekindlings in men's
bosoms, but by out-of-door reflections without inward kindling. Saying
is the royal son of Seeing; but there is many a pretender to the
throne; and when these supposititious people usurp, age after age, the
honors that are not theirs, the throne and government are disgraced.
Truisms are corpses of truths; and statements are to be found in every
stage of approach to this final condition. Every time there is an
impotency or unreality in their enunciation, they are borne a step
nearer the sepulchre. If the smirking politician, who wishes to delude
me into voting for him, bid me his bland "Good-morning," not only does
he draw a film of eclipse over the sun, and cast a shadow on city and
field, but he throws over the salutation itself a more permanent
shadow; and were the words never to reach us save from such lips, they
would, in no long time, become terms of insult or of malediction. But
so often as the sweet greeting comes from wife, child, or friend, its
proper savors are restored. A jesting editor says that "You tell a
telegram" is the polite way of giving the lie; and it is quite possible
that his witticism only anticipates a serious use of language some
century hence. Terms and statements are perpetually saturated by the
uses made of them. Etymology and the dictionary resist effects in vain.
And as single words may thus be discharged of their lawful meaning, so
the total purport of words, that is, truths themselves, may in like
manner be disgraced. If the man of ordinary heart ostentatiously
patronize the maxims of perfect charity, if the traditional priest or
feeble pietist repeat the word _God_ or recite the raptures of
adoring bards, the sentences they maunder and the sentiments they belie
are alike covered with rust; and in due time some Shelley will turn
atheist in the interest of religion, and some Johnson in the interest
of morality aver that he writes for money alone.
But Truth does not share the fortunes of her verbal body. The grand
ideas, the master-imaginations and moving faiths of men, run in the
blood of the race; and a given degree of pure human heat infallibly
brings them out. Not more surely does the rose appear on the rose-bush,
or the apple, pear, or peach upon the trees of the orchard, than these
fruits of the soul upon nations of powerful and thrifty spirit. For
want of vitality the shrub may fail to flower, the tree to bear fruit,
and man to bring forth his spiritual product; but if Thought be
attained, certain thoughts and imaginations will come of it. Let two
nations at opposite sides of the globe, and without intercommunication
arrive at equal stages of mental culture, and the language of the one
will, on the whole, be equivalent to that of the other, nay, the very
rhetoric, the very fancies of the one will, in a broad way of
comparison, be tantamount to those of the other. The nearer we get to
any past age, the more do we find that the totality of its conceptions
and imaginings is much the same with that of our own. There are
specific variation and generic unity; and he whom the former blinds to
the latter reads the old literatures without eyes, and knows neither
his own time nor any other. Owen, Agassiz, Carpenter explain the
homologies of anatomy and physiology; but a doctrine of the homologies
of thought is equally possible, and will sometime be set forth.
The basis, then, of any sufficient doctrine of literature and literary
production is found in two statements:--
First, that the perfect truth of the universe issues, by vital
representation, into the personality of man.
Secondly, that this truth _tends_ in every man, though often in
the obscurest way, toward intellectual and artistic expression.
Now just so far as by any man's speech we feel ourselves brought into
direct relationship with this ever-issuing fact, so far the impressions
of originality are produced. That all his words were in the dictionary
before he used them,--that all his thoughts, under some form of
intimation, were in literature before he arrived at them,--matters not;
it is the verity, the vital process, the depth of relationship, which
concerns us.
Nay, in one sense, the older his truth, the _more_ do the effects
of originality lie open to him. The simple, central, imperial elements
of human consciousness are first in order of expression, and continue
forever to be first in order of power and suggestion. The great
purposes, the great thoughts and melodies issue always from these. This
is the quarry which every masterly thinker or poet must work. Homer is
Homer because he is so simply true alike to earth and sky,--to the
perpetual experience and perpetual imagination of mankind. Had he gone
working around the edges, following the occasional _détours_ and
slips of consciousness, there would have been no "Iliad" or "Odyssey"
for mankind to love and for Pope to spoil. The great poets tell us
nothing new. They remind us. They bear speech deep into our being, and
to the heart of our heart lend a tongue. They have words that
correspond to facts in all men and women. But they are not newsmongers.
Yesterday, I read in a prose translation of the "Odyssey" the exquisite
idyl of Nausicaa and her Maids, and the discovery of himself by
Ulysses. Perhaps the picture came out more clearly than ever before; at
any rate, it filled my whole day with delight, and to-day I seem to
have heard some sweetest good tidings, as if word had come from an old
playmate, dear and distant in memory, or a happy and wealthy letter had
arrived from a noble friend. Whence this enrichment? There was nothing
in this idyl, to which, even on a first reading, I could give the name
of "new truth." The secret is, that I _have_ indeed had tidings of
old playmates, dear and distant in memory,--of those bright-eyed,
brave, imaging playmates of all later ages, the inhabitants of Homer's
world. And little can one care for novelties of thought, in comparison
with these tones from the deeps of undying youth. Bring to our lips
these cups of the fresh wine of life, if you would do good. Bring us
these; for it is by perpetual rekindlings of the youth in us that our
life grows and unfolds. Each advancing epoch of the inward life is no
less than this,--a fresh efflux of adolescence from the immortal and
exhaustless heart. Everywhere the law is the same,--Become as a little
child, to reach the heavenly kingdoms. This, however, we become not by
any return to babyhood, but by an effusion or emergence from within of
pure life,--of life which takes from years only their wisdom and their
chastening, and gives them in payment its perfect renewal.
This, then, is the proof of originality,--that one shall utter the pure
consciousness of man. If he live, and live humanly, in his speech, the
speech itself will live; for it will obtain hospitality in all wealthy
and true hearts.
But if the most original speech be, as is here explained, of that which
is oldest and most familiar in the consciousness of man, it
nevertheless does not lack the charm of surprise and all effects of
newness. For, in truth, nothing is so strange to men as the very facts
they seem to confess every day of their lives. Truisms, I have said,
are the corpses of truths; and they are as far from the fact they are
taken to represent as the perished body from the risen soul. The
mystery of truth is hidden behind them; and when next it shall come
forth, it will bring astonishment, as at first. Every time the grand
old truths are livingly uttered, the world thinks it never heard them
before. The news of the day is hardly spoken before it is antiquated.
For this an hour too late is a century, is forever, too late. But truth
of life and the heart, the world-old imaginations, the root-thoughts of
human consciousness,--these never lose their privilege to surprise, and
at every fresh efflux are wellnigh sure to be persecuted by some as
unlawful impositions upon the credence of mankind. Nay, the same often
happens with the commonest truths of observation. Mr. Ruskin describes
leaves and clouds, objects that are daily before all eyes; and the very
artists cry, "Fie upon him!" as a propounder of childish novelties:
slowly they perceive that it was leaves and clouds which were novel.
Luther thunders in the ears of the Church its own creed; the Pope asks,
"Is it possible that he believes all this?" and the priesthood scream,
"To the stake with the heretic!" A poet prints in the "Atlantic
Monthly" a simple affirmation of the indestructibility of man's true
life; numbers of those who would have been shocked and exasperated to
hear questioned the Church dogma of immortality exclaim against this as
a ridiculous paradox. Once in a while there is grown a heart so
spacious that Nature finds in it room to chant aloud the word
_God_, and set its echoes rolling billowy through one man's being;
and he, lifting up his voice to repeat it among men from that inward
hearing, invariably astounds, and it may be infuriates his
contemporaries. The simple proposition, GOD IS, could it once be
_wholly_ received, would shake our sphere as no earthquake ever
did, and would leave not one stone upon another, I say not merely of
some city of Lisbon, but of entire kingdoms and systems of
civilization. The faintest inference from this cannot be vigorously
announced in modern senates without sending throbs of terror over half
a continent, and eliciting shrieks of remonstrance from the very
shrines of worship.
The ancient perpetual truths prove, at each fresh enunciation, not only
surprising, but incredible. The reason is, that they overfill the
vessels of men's credence. If you pour the Atlantic Ocean into a pint
basin, what can the basin do but refuse to contain it, and so spill it
over? Universal truths are as spacious and profound as the universe
itself; and for the cerebral capacity of most of us the universe is
really somewhat large!
But as the major numbers of mankind are too little self-reverent to
dispense with the services of self-conceit, they like to think
themselves equal, and very easily equal, to any truth, and habitually
assume their extempore, off-hand notion of its significance as a
perfect measure of the fact. As if a man hollowed his hand, and,
dipping it full out of Lake Superior, said, "Lake Superior just fills
my hand!" To how many are the words _God, Love, Immortality_ just
such complacent handfuls! And when some mariner of God seizes them with
loving mighty arms, and bears them in his bark beyond sight of their
wonted shores, what wonder that they perceive not the identity of this
sky-circled sea with their accustomed handful? Yet, despite egotism and
narrowness of brain and every other limitation, the spirit of man will
claim its privilege and assert its affinity with all truth; and in such
measure as one utters the pure heart of mankind, and states the real
relationships of human nature, is he sure of ultimate audience and
sufficing love.