Riverside Edition
LECTURES AND BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCHES
BEING VOLUME X.
OF
EMERSON’S COMPLETE WORKS
LECTURES
AND
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
BY
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
NEW YORK: 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1884
Copyright, 1883,
BY EDWARD W. EMERSON.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
NOTE.
OF the pieces included in this volume the following, namely, those from
the “Dial,” “Character,” “Plutarch,” and the biographical sketches
of Dr. Ripley, of Mr. Hoar, and of Henry Thoreau, were printed by
Mr. Emerson before I took any part in the arrangement of his papers.
The rest, except the sketch of Miss Mary Emerson, I got ready for
his use in readings to his friends or to a limited public. He had
given up the regular practice of lecturing, but would sometimes, upon
special request, read a paper that had been prepared for him from
his manuscripts, in the manner described in the preface to “Letters
and Social Aims,”--some former lecture serving as a nucleus for
the new. Some of these papers he afterwards allowed to be printed;
others, namely, “Aristocracy,” “Education,” “The Man of Letters,” “The
Scholar,” “Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England,” “Mary
Moody Emerson,” are now published for the first time.
J. E. CABOT.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
DEMONOLOGY 7
ARISTOCRACY 33
PERPETUAL FORCES 69
CHARACTER 91
EDUCATION 123
THE SUPERLATIVE 157
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS 175
THE PREACHER 207
THE MAN OF LETTERS 229
THE SCHOLAR 247
PLUTARCH 275
HISTORIC NOTES OF LIFE AND LETTERS IN NEW
ENGLAND 305
THE CHARDON STREET CONVENTION 349
EZRA RIPLEY, D. D. 355
MARY MOODY EMERSON 371
SAMUEL HOAR 405
THOREAU 419
CARLYLE 453
DEMONOLOGY.
NIGHT-DREAMS trace on Memory’s wall
Shadows of the thoughts of day,
And thy fortunes as they fall
The bias of thy will betray.
In the chamber, on the stairs,
Lurking dumb,
Go and come
Lemurs and Lars.
DEMONOLOGY.[1]
THE name Demonology covers dreams, omens, coincidences, luck,
sortilege, magic, and other experiences which shun rather than court
inquiry, and deserve notice chiefly because every man has usually in a
lifetime two or three hints in this kind which are specially impressive
to him. They also shed light on our structure.
The witchcraft of sleep divides with truth the empire of our lives.
This soft enchantress visits two children lying locked in each other’s
arms, and carries them asunder by wide spaces of land and sea, and wide
intervals of time:--
“There lies a sleeping city, God of dreams!
What an unreal and fantastic world
Is going on below!
Within the sweep of yon encircling wall
How many a large creation of the night,
Wide wilderness and mountain, rock and sea,
Peopled with busy, transitory groups,
Finds room to rise, and never feels the crowd.”
’Tis superfluous to think of the dreams of multitudes, the astonishment
remains that one should dream; that we should resign so quietly this
deifying Reason, and become the theatre of delirious shows, wherein
time, space, persons, cities, animals, should dance before us in merry
and mad confusion; a delicate creation outdoing the prime and flower of
actual nature, antic comedy alternating with horrid pictures. Sometimes
the forgotten companions of childhood reappear:--
“They come, in dim procession led,
The cold, the faithless, and the dead,
As warm each hand, each brow as gay,
As if they parted yesterday:”--
or we seem busied for hours and days in peregrinations over seas
and lands, in earnest dialogues, strenuous actions for nothings and
absurdities, cheated by spectral jokes and waking suddenly with ghastly
laughter, to be rebuked by the cold, lonely, silent midnight, and to
rake with confusion in memory among the gibbering nonsense to find the
motive of this contemptible cachinnation. Dreams are jealous of being
remembered; they dissipate instantly and angrily if you try to hold
them. When newly awaked from lively dreams, we are so near them, still
agitated by them, still in their sphere,--give us one syllable, one
feature, one hint, and we should repossess the whole; hours of this
strange entertainment would come trooping back to us; but we cannot get
our hand on the first link or fibre, and the whole is lost. There is a
strange wilfulness in the speed with which it disperses and baffles our
grasp.
A dislocation seems to be the foremost trait of dreams. A painful
imperfection almost always attends them. The fairest forms, the most
noble and excellent persons, are deformed by some pitiful and insane
circumstance. The very landscape and scenery in a dream seem not to
fit us, but like a coat or cloak of some other person to overlap and
encumber the wearer; so is the ground, the road, the house, in dreams,
too long or too short, and if it served no other purpose would show us
how accurately nature fits man awake.
There is one memory of waking and another of sleep. In our dreams
the same scenes and fancies are many times associated, and that too,
it would seem, for years. In sleep one shall travel certain roads in
stage-coaches or gigs, which he recognizes as familiar, and has dreamed
that ride a dozen times; or shall walk alone in familiar fields and
meadows, which road or which meadow in waking hours he never looked
upon. This feature of dreams deserves the more attention from its
singular resemblance to that obscure yet startling experience which
almost every person confesses in daylight, that particular passages of
conversation and action have occurred to him in the same order before,
whether dreaming or waking; a suspicion that they have been with
precisely these persons in precisely this room, and heard precisely
this dialogue, at some former hour, they know not when.
Animals have been called “the dreams of nature.” Perhaps for a
conception of their consciousness we may go to our own dreams. In a
dream we have the instinctive obedience, the same torpidity of the
highest power, the same unsurprised assent to the monstrous as these
metamorphosed men exhibit. Our thoughts in a stable or in a menagerie,
on the other hand, may well remind us of our dreams. What compassion
do these imprisoning forms awaken! You may catch the glance of a dog
sometimes which lays a kind of claim to sympathy and brotherhood. What!
somewhat of me down there? Does he know it? Can he too, as I, go out
of himself, see himself, perceive relations? We fear lest the poor
brute should gain one dreadful glimpse of his condition, should learn
in some moment the tough limitations of this fettering organization.
It was in this glance that Ovid got the hint of his metamorphoses;
Calidasa of his transmigration of souls. For these fables are our
own thoughts carried out. What keeps those wild tales in circulation
for thousands of years? What but the wild fact to which they suggest
some approximation of theory? Nor is the fact quite solitary, for in
varieties of our own species where organization seems to predominate
over the genius of man, in Kalmuck or Malay or Flathead Indian, we
are sometimes pained by the same feeling; and sometimes too the
sharp-witted prosperous white man awakens it. In a mixed assembly we
have chanced to see not only a glance of Abdiel, so grand and keen,
but also in other faces the features of the mink, of the bull, of the
rat, and the barn-door fowl. You think, could the man overlook his own
condition, he could not be restrained from suicide.
Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of
thought is presided over by a certain reason, too. Their extravagance
from nature is yet within a higher nature. They seem to us to suggest
an abundance and fluency of thought not familiar to the waking
experience. They pique us by independence of us, yet we know ourselves
in this mad crowd, and owe to dreams a kind of divination and wisdom.
My dreams are not me; they are not Nature, or the Not-me: they are
both. They have a double consciousness, at once sub- and objective. We
call the phantoms that rise, the creation of our fancy, but they act
like mutineers, and fire on their commander; showing that every act,
every thought, every cause, is bipolar, and in the act is contained the
counteraction. If I strike, I am struck; if I chase, I am pursued.
Wise and sometimes terrible hints shall in them be thrown to the man
out of a quite unknown intelligence. He shall be startled two or three
times in his life by the justice as well as the significance of this
phantasmagoria. Once or twice the conscious fetters shall seem to be
unlocked, and a freer utterance attained. A prophetic character in all
ages has haunted them. They are the maturation often of opinions not
consciously carried out to statements, but whereof we already possessed
the elements. Thus, when awake, I know the character of Rupert, but
do not think what he may do. In dreams I see him engaged in certain
actions which seem preposterous,--out of all fitness. He is hostile,
he is cruel, he is frightful, he is a poltroon. It turns out prophecy
a year later. But it was already in my mind as character, and the
sibyl dreams merely embodied it in fact. Why then should not symptoms,
auguries, forebodings be, and, as one said, the moanings of the spirit?
We are let by this experience into the high region of Cause, and
acquainted with the identity of very unlike-seeming effects. We learn
that actions whose turpitude is very differently reputed proceed
from one and the same affection. Sleep takes off the costume of
circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes
to a deed. A skilful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet
not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them,--a
cheerful, manly part, or a poor drivelling part? However monstrous and
grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth. The same
remark may be extended to the omens and coincidences which may have
astonished us. Of all it is true that the reason of them is always
latent in the individual. Goethe said: “These whimsical pictures,
inasmuch as they originate from us, may well have an analogy with our
whole life and fate.”
The soul contains in itself the event that shall presently befall
it, for the event is only the actualizing of its thoughts. It is no
wonder that particular dreams and presentiments should fall out and be
prophetic. The fallacy consists in selecting a few insignificant hints
when all are inspired with the same sense. As if one should exhaust
his astonishment at the economy of his thumb-nail, and overlook the
central causal miracle of his being a man. Every man goes through the
world attended with innumerable facts prefiguring (yes, distinctly
announcing) his fate, if only eyes of sufficient heed and illumination
were fastened on the sign. The sign is always there, if only the eye
were also; just as under every tree in the speckled sunshine and shade
no man notices that every spot of light is a perfect image of the sun,
until in some hour the moon eclipses the luminary; and then first we
notice that the spots of light have become crescents, or annular, and
correspond to the changed figure of the sun. Things are significant
enough, Heaven knows; but the seer of the sign,--where is he? We doubt
not a man’s fortune may be read in the lines of his hand, by palmistry;
in the lines of his face, by physiognomy; in the outlines of the skull,
by craniology: the lines are all there, but the reader waits. The long
waves indicate to the instructed mariner that there is no near land
in the direction from which they come. Belzoni describes the three
marks which led him to dig for a door to the pyramid of Ghizeh. What
thousands had beheld the same spot for so many ages, and seen no three
marks!
Secret analogies tie together the remotest parts of nature, as the
atmosphere of a summer morning is filled with innumerable gossamer
threads running in every direction, revealed by the beams of the rising
sun. All life, all creation, is tell-tale and betraying. A man reveals
himself in every glance and step and movement and rest:--
“Head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.”
Not a mathematical axiom but is a moral rule. The jest and byword to
an intelligent ear extends its meaning to the soul and to all time.
Indeed, all productions of man are so anthropomorphous that not
possibly can he invent any fable that shall not have a deep moral and
be true in senses and to an extent never intended by the inventor.
Thus all the bravest tales of Homer and the poets, modern philosophers
can explain with profound judgment of law and state and ethics. Lucian
has an idle tale that Pancrates, journeying from Memphis to Coppus,
and wanting a servant, took a door-bar and pronounced over it magical
words, and it stood up and brought him water, and turned a spit, and
carried bundles, doing all the work of a slave. What is this but a
prophecy of the progress of art? For Pancrates write Watt or Fulton,
and for “magical words” write “steam;” and do they not make an iron
bar and half a dozen wheels do the work, not of one, but of a thousand
skilful mechanics?
“Nature,” said Swedenborg, “makes almost as much demand on our faith
as miracles do.” And I find nothing in fables more astonishing than
my experience in every hour. One moment of a man’s life is a fact
so stupendous as to take the lustre out of all fiction. The lovers
of marvels, of what we call the occult and unproved sciences, of
mesmerism, of astrology, of coincidences, of intercourse, by writing
or by rapping or by painting, with departed spirits, need not reproach
us with incredulity because we are slow to accept their statement. It
is not the incredibility of the fact, but a certain want of harmony
between the action and the agents. We are used to vaster wonders than
these that are alleged. In the hands of poets, of devout and simple
minds, nothing in the line of their character and genius would surprise
us. But we should look for the style of the great artist in it, look
for completeness and harmony. Nature never works like a conjuror, to
surprise, rarely by shocks, but by infinite graduation; so that we live
embosomed in sounds we do not hear, scents we do not smell, spectacles
we see not, and by innumerable impressions so softly laid on that
though important we do not discover them until our attention is called
to them.
For Spiritism, it shows that no man almost is fit to give evidence.
Then I say to the amiable and sincere among them, these matters are
quite too important than that I can rest them on any legends. If I
have no facts, as you allege, I can very well wait for them. I am
content and occupied with such miracles as I know, such as my eyes and
ears daily show me, such as humanity and astronomy. If any others are
important to me they will certainly be shown to me.
In times most credulous of these fancies the sense was always met and
the superstition rebuked by the grave spirit of reason and humanity.
When Hector is told that the omens are unpropitious, he replies,--
“One omen is the best, to fight for one’s country.”
Euripides said, “He is not the best prophet who guesses well, and he is
not the wisest man whose guess turns out well in the event, but he who,
whatever the event be, takes reason and probability for his guide.”
“Swans, horses, dogs and dragons,” says Plutarch, “we distinguish as
sacred, and vehicles of the Divine foresight, and yet we cannot believe
that men are sacred and favorites of Heaven.” The poor shipmaster
discovered a sound theology, when in the storm at sea he made his
prayer to Neptune, “O God, thou mayst save me if thou wilt, and if thou
wilt thou mayst destroy me; but, however, I will hold my rudder true.”
Let me add one more example of the same good sense, in a story quoted
out of Hecateus of Abdera:--
“As I was once travelling by the Red Sea, there was one among the
horsemen that attended us named Masollam, a brave and strong man,
and according to the testimony of all the Greeks and barbarians, a
very skilful archer. Now while the whole multitude was on the way, an
augur called out to them to stand still, and this man inquired the
reason of their halting. The augur showed him a bird, and told him,
‘If that bird remained where he was, it would be better for them all
to remain; if he flew on, they might proceed; but if he flew back
they must return.’ The Jew said nothing, but bent his bow and shot
the bird to the ground. This act offended the augur and some others,
and they began to utter imprecations against the Jew. But he replied,
‘Wherefore? Why are you so foolish as to take care of this unfortunate
bird? How could this fowl give us any wise directions respecting our
journey, when he could not save his own life? Had he known anything
of futurity, he would not have come here to be killed by the arrow of
Masollam the Jew.’”
It is not the tendency of our times to ascribe importance to whimsical
pictures of sleep, or to omens. But the faith in peculiar and alien
power takes another form in the modern mind, much more resembling the
ancient doctrine of the guardian genius. The belief that particular
individuals are attended by a good fortune which makes them desirable
associates in any enterprise of uncertain success, exists not only
among those who take part in political and military projects,
but influences all joint action of commerce and affairs, and a
corresponding assurance in the individuals so distinguished meets and
justifies the expectation of others by a boundless self-trust. “I have
a lucky hand, sir,” said Napoleon to his hesitating Chancellor; “those
on whom I lay it are fit for anything.” This faith is familiar in one
form,--that often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an
element of success; that children and young persons come off safe from
casualties that would have proved dangerous to wiser people. We do not
think the young will be forsaken; but he is fast approaching the age
when the sub-miraculous external protection and leading are withdrawn
and he is committed to his own care. The young man takes a leap in
the dark and alights safe. As he comes into manhood he remembers
passages and persons that seem, as he looks at them now, to have been
supernaturally deprived of injurious influence on him. His eyes were
holden that he could not see. But he learns that such risks he may no
longer run. He observes, with pain, not that he incurs mishaps here and
there, but that his genius, whose invisible benevolence was tower and
shield to him, is no longer present and active.
In the popular belief, ghosts are a selecting tribe, avoiding millions,
speaking to one. In our traditions, fairies, angels and saints show the
like favoritism; so do the agents and the means of magic, as sorcerers
and amulets. This faith in a doting power, so easily sliding into the
current belief everywhere, and, in the particular of lucky days and
fortunate persons, as frequent in America to-day as the faith in
incantations and philters was in old Rome, or the wholesome potency
of the sign of the cross in modern Rome,--this supposed power runs
athwart the recognized agencies, natural and moral, which science and
religion explore. Heeded though it be in many actions and partnerships,
it is not the power to which we build churches, or make liturgies
and prayers, or which we regard in passing laws, or found college
professorships to expound. Goethe has said in his Autobiography what is
much to the purpose:--
“I believed that I discovered in nature, animate and inanimate,
intelligent and brute, somewhat which manifested itself only in
contradiction, and therefore could not be grasped by a conception,
much less by a word. It was not god-like, since it seemed
unreasonable; not human, since it had no understanding; not devilish,
since it was beneficent; not angelic, since it is often a marplot. It
resembled chance, since it showed no sequel. It resembled Providence,
since it pointed at connection. All which limits us seemed permeable
to that. It seemed to deal at pleasure with the necessary elements
of our constitution; it shortened time and extended space. Only in
the impossible it seemed to delight, and the possible to repel with
contempt. This, which seemed to insert itself between all other
things, to sever them, to bind them, I named the Demoniacal, after the
example of the ancients, and of those who had observed the like.
“Although every demoniacal property can manifest itself in the
corporeal and incorporeal, yes, in beasts too in a remarkable manner,
yet it stands specially in wonderful relations with men, and forms in
the moral world, though not an antagonist, yet a transverse element,
so that the former may be called the warp, the latter the woof. For
the phenomena which hence originate there are countless names, since
all philosophies and religions have attempted in prose or in poetry
to solve this riddle, and to settle the thing once for all, as indeed
they may be allowed to do.
“But this demonic element appears most fruitful when it shows itself
as the determining characteristic in an individual. In the course of
my life I have been able to observe several such, some near, some
farther off. They are not always superior persons, either in mind or
in talent. They seldom recommend themselves through goodness of heart.
But a monstrous force goes out from them, and they exert an incredible
power over all creatures, and even over the elements; who shall say
how far such an influence may extend? All united moral powers avail
nothing against them. In vain do the clear-headed part of mankind
discredit them as deceivers or deceived,--the mass is attracted.
Seldom or never do they meet their match among their contemporaries;
they are not to be conquered save by the universe itself, against
which they have taken up arms. Out of such experiences doubtless arose
the strange, monstrous proverb, ‘Nobody against God but God.’”[2]
It would be easy in the political history of every time to furnish
examples of this irregular success, men having a force which without
virtue, without shining talent, yet makes them prevailing. No equal
appears in the field against them. A power goes out from them which
draws all men and events to favor them. The crimes they commit, the
exposures which follow, and which would ruin any other man, are
strangely overlooked, or do more strangely turn to their account.
I set down these things as I find them, but however poetic these
twilights of thought, I like daylight, and I find somewhat wilful, some
play at blindman’s-buff, when men as wise as Goethe talk mysteriously
of the demonological. The insinuation is that the known eternal laws
of morals and matter are sometimes corrupted or evaded by this gipsy
principle, which chooses favorites and works in the dark for their
behoof; as if the laws of the Father of the universe were sometimes
balked and eluded by a meddlesome Aunt of the universe for her pets.
You will observe that this extends the popular idea of success to the
very gods; that they foster a success to you which is not a success
to all; that fortunate men, fortunate youths exist, whose good is not
virtue or the public good, but a private good, robbed from the rest.
It is a midsummer-madness, corrupting all who hold the tenet. The
demonologic is only a fine name for egotism; an exaggeration namely
of the individual, whom it is Nature’s settled purpose to postpone.
“There is one world common to all who are awake, but each sleeper
betakes himself to one of his own.”[3] Dreams retain the infirmities
of our character. The good genius may be there or not, our evil genius
is sure to stay. The Ego partial makes the dream; the Ego total the
interpretation. Life is also a dream on the same terms.
The history of man is a series of conspiracies to win from Nature
some advantage without paying for it. It is curious to see what grand
powers we have a hint of and are mad to grasp, yet how slow Heaven
is to trust us with such edge-tools. “All that frees talent without
increasing self-command is noxious.” Thus the fabled ring of Gyges,
making the wearer invisible, which is represented in modern fable by
the telescope as used by Schlemil, is simply mischievous. A new or
private language, used to serve only low or political purposes; the
transfusion of the blood; the steam battery, so fatal as to put an end
to war by the threat of universal murder; the desired discovery of the
guided balloon, are of this kind. Tramps are troublesome enough in
the city and in the highways, but tramps flying through the air and
descending on the lonely traveller or the lonely farmer’s house or the
bank-messenger in the country, can well be spared. Men are not fit to
be trusted with these talismans.
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Animal magnetism inspires the prudent and moral with a certain terror;
so the divination of contingent events, and the alleged second-sight
of the pseudo-spiritualists. There are many things of which a wise man
might wish to be ignorant, and these are such. Shun them as you would
the secrets of the undertaker and the butcher. The best are never
demoniacal or magnetic; leave this limbo to the Prince of the power of
the air. The lowest angel is better. It is the height of the animal;
below the region of the divine. Power as such is not known to the
angels.
Great men feel that they are so by sacrificing their selfishness and
falling back on what is humane; in renouncing family, clan, country,
and each exclusive and local connection, to beat with the pulse and
breathe with the lungs of nations. A Highland chief, an Indian sachem
or a feudal baron may fancy that the mountains and lakes were made
specially for him Donald, or him Tecumseh; that the one question for
history is the pedigree of his house, and future ages will be busy with
his renown; that he has a guardian angel; that he is not in the roll of
common men, but obeys a high family destiny; when he acts, unheard-of
success evinces the presence of rare agents; what is to befall him,
omens and coincidences foreshow; when he dies banshees will announce
his fate to kinsmen in foreign parts. What more facile than to project
this exuberant selfhood into the region where individuality is forever
bounded by generic and cosmical laws? The deepest flattery, and that to
which we can never be insensible, is the flattery of omens.
We may make great eyes if we like, and say of one on whom the sun
shines, “What luck presides over him!” But we know that the law of
the Universe is one for each and for all. There is as precise and
as describable a reason for every fact occurring to him, as for
any occurring to any man. Every fact in which the moral elements
intermingle is not the less under the dominion of fatal law. Lord Bacon
uncovers the magic when he says, “Manifest virtues procure reputation;
occult ones, fortune.” Thus the so-called fortunate man is one who,
though not gifted to speak when the people listen, or to act with grace
or with understanding to great ends, yet is one who, in actions of a
low or common pitch, relies on his instincts, and simply does not act
where he should not, but waits his time, and without effort acts when
the need is. If to this you add a fitness to the society around him,
you have the elements of fortune; so that in a particular circle and
knot of affairs he is not so much his own man as the hand of nature
and time. Just as his eye and hand work exactly together,--and to hit
the mark with a stone he has only to fasten his eye firmly on the mark
and his arm will swing true,--so the main ambition and genius being
bestowed in one direction, the lesser spirits and involuntary aids
within his sphere will follow. The fault of most men is that they are
busybodies; do not wait the simple movement of the soul, but interfere
and thwart the instructions of their own minds.
Coincidences, dreams, animal magnetism, omens, sacred lots, have great
interest for some minds. They run into this twilight and say, “There’s
more than is dreamed of in your philosophy.” Certainly these facts are
interesting, and deserve to be considered. But they are entitled only
to a share of attention, and not a large share. _Nil magnificum,
nil generosum sapit._ Let their value as exclusive subjects of
attention be judged of by the infallible test of the state of mind
in which much notice of them leaves us. Read a page of Cudworth or
of Bacon, and we are exhilarated and armed to manly duties. Read
demonology or Colquhoun’s Report, and we are bewildered and perhaps a
little besmirched. We grope. They who love them say they are to reveal
to us a world of unknown, unsuspected truths. But suppose a diligent
collection and study of these occult facts were made, they are merely
physiological, semi-medical, related to the machinery of man, opening
to our curiosity how we live, and no aid on the superior problems why
we live, and what we do. While the dilettanti have been prying into the
humors and muscles of the eye, simple men will have helped themselves
and the world by using their eyes.
And this is not the least remarkable fact which the adepts have
developed. Men who had never wondered at anything, who had thought it
the most natural thing in the world that they should exist in this
orderly and replenished world, have been unable to suppress their
amazement at the disclosures of the somnambulist. The peculiarity
of the history of Animal Magnetism is that it drew in as inquirers
and students a class of persons never on any other occasion known
as students and inquirers. Of course the inquiry is pursued on low
principles. Animal magnetism peeps. It becomes in such hands a black
art. The uses of the thing, the commodity, the power, at once come to
mind and direct the course of inquiry. It seemed to open again that
door which was open to the imagination of childhood--of magicians and
fairies and lamps of Aladdin, the travelling cloak, the shoes of
swiftness and the sword of sharpness that were to satisfy the uttermost
wish of the senses without danger or a drop of sweat. But as Nature can
never be outwitted, as in the Universe no man was ever known to get a
cent’s worth without paying in some form or other the cent, so this
prodigious promiser ends always and always will, as sorcery and alchemy
have done before, in very small and smoky performance.
Mesmerism is high life below stairs; Momus playing Jove in the kitchens
of Olympus. ’Tis a low curiosity or lust of structure, and is separated
by celestial diameters from the love of spiritual truths. It is wholly
a false view to couple these things in any manner with the religious
nature and sentiment, and a most dangerous superstition to raise them
to the lofty place of motives and sanctions. This is to prefer halos
and rainbows to the sun and moon. These adepts have mistaken flatulency
for inspiration. Were this drivel which they report as the voice of
spirits really such, we must find out a more decisive suicide. I say to
the table-rappers:--
“I well believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,
And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.”
They are ignorant of all that is healthy and useful to know, and by
laws of kind,--dunces seeking dunces in the dark of what they call
the spiritual world,--preferring snores and gastric noises to the
voice of any muse. I think the rappings a new test, like blue litmus
or other chemical absorbent, to try catechisms with. It detects
organic skepticism in the very heads of the Church. ’Tis a lawless
world. We have left the geometry, the compensation, and the conscience
of the daily world, and come into the realm or chaos of chance and
pretty or ugly confusion; no guilt and no virtue, but a droll bedlam,
where everybody believes only after his humor, and the actors and
spectators have no conscience or reflection, no police, no foot-rule,
no sanity,--nothing but whim and whim creative.
Meantime far be from me the impatience which cannot brook the
supernatural, the vast; far be from me the lust of explaining away all
which appeals to the imagination, and the great presentiments which
haunt us. Willingly I too say, Hail! to the unknown awful powers which
transcend the ken of the understanding. And the attraction which this
topic has had for me and which induces me to unfold its parts before
you is precisely because I think the numberless forms in which this
superstition has re-appeared in every time and every people indicates
the inextinguishableness of wonder in man; betrays his conviction that
behind all your explanations is a vast and potent and living Nature,
inexhaustible and sublime, which you cannot explain. He is sure no
book, no man has told him all. He is sure the great Instinct, the
circumambient soul which flows into him as into all, and is his life,
has not been searched. He is sure that intimate relations subsist
between his character and his fortunes, between him and his world;
and until he can adequately tell them he will tell them wildly and
fabulously. Demonology is the shadow of Theology.
The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a
corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The
voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard,
unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: From the course of lectures on “Human Life,” read in
Boston, 1839-40. Published in the _North American Review_, 1877.]
[Footnote 2: Goethe, _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, Book xx.]
[Footnote 3: Heraclitus.]
ARISTOCRACY.
BUT if thou do thy best,
Without remission, without rest,
And invite the sunbeam,
And abhor to feign or seem
Even to those who thee should love
And thy behavior approve;
If thou go in thine own likeness,--
Be it health or be it sickness,--
If thou go as thy father’s son,
If thou wear no mask or lie,
Dealing purely and nakedly,--....
ARISTOCRACY.[4]
THERE is an attractive topic, which never goes out of vogue and is
impertinent in no community,--the permanent traits of the Aristocracy.
It is an interest of the human race, and, as I look at it, inevitable,
sacred and to be found in every country and in every company of men.
My concern with it is that concern which all well-disposed persons
will feel, that there should be model men,--true instead of spurious
pictures of excellence, and, if possible, living standards.
I observe that the word _gentleman_ is gladly heard in all
companies; that the cogent motive with the best young men who are
revolving plans and forming resolutions for the future, is the spirit
of honor, the wish to be gentlemen. They do not yet covet political
power, nor any exuberance of wealth, wealth that costs too much; nor do
they wish to be saints; for fear of partialism; but the middle term,
the reconciling element, the success of the manly character, they find
in the idea of gentleman. It is not to be a man of rank, but a man of
honor, accomplished in all arts and generosities, which seems to them
the right mark and the true chief of our modern society. A reference
to society is part of the idea of culture; science of a gentleman;
art of a gentleman; poetry in a gentleman: intellectually held,
that is, for their own sake, for what they are; for their universal
beauty and worth;--not for economy, which degrades them, but not
over-intellectually, that is, not to ecstasy, entrancing the man, but
redounding to his beauty and glory.
In the sketches which I have to offer I shall not be surprised if my
readers should fancy that I am giving them, under a gayer title, a
chapter on Education. It will not pain me if I am found now and then to
rove from the accepted and historic, to a theoretic peerage: or if it
should turn out, what is true, that I am describing a real aristocracy,
a chapter of Templars who sit indifferently in all climates and under
the shadow of all institutions, but so few, so heedless of badges, so
rarely convened, so little in sympathy with the predominant politics of
nations, that their names and doings are not recorded in any Book of
Peerage, or any Court Journal, or even Daily Newspaper of the world.
I find the caste in the man. The Golden Book of Venice, the scale
of European chivalry, the Barons of England, the hierarchy of India
with its impassable degrees, is each a transcript of the decigrade or
centigraded Man. A many-chambered Aristocracy lies already organized in
his moods and faculties. Room is found for all the departments of the
State in the moods and faculties of each human spirit, with separate
function and difference of dignity.
The terrible aristocracy that is in nature. Real people dwelling with
the real, face to face undaunted: then, far down, people of taste,
people dwelling in a relation, or rumor, or influence of good and
fair, entertained by it, superficially touched, yet charmed by these
shadows:--and, far below these, gross and thoughtless, the animal man,
billows of chaos, down to the dancing and menial organizations.
I observe the inextinguishable prejudice men have in favor of a
hereditary transmission of qualities. It is in vain to remind them
that nature appears capricious. Some qualities she carefully fixes and
transmits, but some, and those the finer, she exhales with the breath
of the individual, as too costly to perpetuate. But I notice also that
they may become fixed and permanent in any stock, by painting and
repainting them on every individual, until at last Nature adopts them
and bakes them into her porcelain.
At all events I take this inextinguishable persuasion in men’s minds as
a hint from the outward universe to man to inlay as many virtues and
superiorities as he can into this swift fresco of the day, which is
hardening to an immortal picture.
If one thinks of the interest which all men have in beauty of character
and manners; that it is of the last importance to the imagination
and affection, inspiring as it does that loyalty and worship so
essential to the finish of character--certainly, if culture, if laws,
if primogeniture, if heraldry, if money could secure such a result as
superior and finished men, it would be the interest of all mankind to
see that the steps were taken, the pains incurred. No taxation, no
concession, no conferring of privileges never so exalted would be a
price too large.
The old French Revolution attracted to its first movement all the
liberality, virtue, hope and poetry in Europe. By the abolition of
kingship and aristocracy, tyranny, inequality and poverty would end.
Alas! no; tyranny, inequality, poverty, stood as last and fierce as
ever. We likewise put faith in Democracy; in the Republican principle
carried out to the extremes of practice in universal suffrage, in the
will of majorities. The young adventurer finds that the relations of
society, the position of classes, irk and sting him, and he lends
himself to each malignant party that assails what is eminent. He
will one day know that this is not removable, but a distinction in
the nature of things; that neither the caucus, nor the newspaper,
nor the Congress, nor the mob, nor the guillotine, nor fire, nor all
together, can avail to outlaw, cut out, burn, or destroy the offense
of superiority in persons. The manners, the pretension, which annoy me
so much, are not superficial, but built on a real distinction in the
nature of my companion. The superiority in him is inferiority in me,
and if this particular companion were wiped by a sponge out of nature,
my inferiority would still be made evident to me by other persons
everywhere and every day.
No, not the hardest utilitarian will question the value of an
aristocracy if he love himself. For every man confesses that the
highest good which the universe proposes to him is the highest society.
If a few grand natures should come to us and weave duties and offices
between us and them, it would make our bread ambrosial.
I affirm that inequalities exist, not in costume, but in the powers of
expression and action; a primitive aristocracy; and that we, certainly,
have not come here to describe well-dressed vulgarity. I cannot tell
how English titles are bestowed, whether on pure blood, or on the
largest holder in the three-per-cents. The English government and
people, or the French government, may easily make mistakes; but Nature
makes none. Every mark and scutcheon of hers indicates constitutional
qualities. In science, in trade, in social discourse, as in the state,
it is the same thing. Forever and ever it takes a pound to lift a pound.
It is plain that all the deference of modern society to this idea of
the Gentleman, and all the whimsical tyranny of Fashion which has
continued to engraft itself on this reverence, is a secret homage to
reality and love which ought to reside in every man. This is the steel
that is hid under gauze and lace, under flowers and spangles. And it is
plain that instead of this idolatry, a worship; instead of this impure,
a pure reverence for character, a new respect for the sacredness of the
individual man, is that antidote which must correct in our country the
disgraceful deference to public opinion, and the insane subordination
of the end to the means. From the folly of too much association we must
come back to the repose of self-reverence and trust.
The game of the world is a perpetual trial of strength between man
and events. The common man is the victim of events. Whatever happens
is too much for him, he is drawn this way and that way, and his whole
life is a hurry. The superior man is at home in his own mind. We like
cool people, who neither hope nor fear too much, but seem to have many
strings to their bow, and can survive the blow well enough if stock
should rise or fall, if parties should be broken up, if their money or
their family should be dispersed; who can stand a slander very well;
indeed on whom events make little or no impression, and who can face
death with firmness. In short, we dislike every mark of a superficial
life and action, and prize whatever mark of a central life.
What is the meaning of this invincible respect for war, here in the
triumphs of our commercial civilization, that we can never quite
smother the trumpet and the drum? How is it that the sword runs away
with all the fame from the spade and the wheel? How sturdy seem to
us in the history, those Merovingians, Guelphs, Dorias, Sforzas,
Burgundies and Guesclins of the old warlike ages! We can hardly believe
they were all such speedy shadows as we; that an ague or fever, a drop
of water or a crystal of ice ended them. We give soldiers the same
advantage to-day. From the most accumulated culture we are always
running back to the sound of any drum and fife. And in any trade, or in
law-courts, in orchard and farm, and even in saloons, they only prosper
or they prosper best who have a military mind, who engineer in sword
and cannon style, with energy and sharpness. Why, but because courage
never loses its high price? Why, but because we wish to see those to
whom existence is most adorned and attractive, foremost to peril it
for their object, and ready to answer for their actions with their life.
The existence of an upper class is not injurious, as long as it is
dependent on merit. For so long it is provocation to the bold and
generous. These distinctions exist, and they are deep, not to be talked
or voted away. If the differences are organic, so are the merits, that
is to say the power and excellence we describe are real. Aristocracy is
the class eminent by personal qualities, and to them belongs without
assertion a proper influence. Men of aim must lead the aimless; men of
invention the uninventive. I wish catholic men, who by their science
and skill are at home in every latitude and longitude, who carry the
world in their thoughts; men of universal politics, who are interested
in things in proportion to their truth and magnitude; who know the
beauty of animals and the laws of their nature, whom the mystery of
botany allures, and the mineral laws; who see general effects and are
not too learned to love the Imagination, the power and the spirits
of Solitude;--men who see the dance in men’s lives as well as in a
ball-room, and can feel and convey the sense which is only collectively
or totally expressed by a population; men who are charmed by the
beautiful Nemesis as well as by the dire Nemesis, and dare trust
their inspiration for their welcome; who would find their fellows in
persons of real elevation of whatever kind of speculative or practical
ability. We are fallen on times so acquiescent and traditionary that we
are in danger of forgetting so simple a fact as that the basis of all
aristocracy must be truth,--the doing what elsewhere is pretended to be
done. One would gladly see all our institutions rightly aristocratic in
this wise.
I enumerate the claims by which men enter the superior class.
1. A commanding talent. In every company one finds the best man; and if
there be any question, it is decided the instant they enter into any
practical enterprise. If the finders of glass, gunpowder, printing,
electricity,--if the healer of small-pox, the contriver of the safety
lamp, of the aqueduct, of the bridge, of the tunnel; if the finders of
parallax, of new planets, of steam power for boat and carriage, the
finder of sulphuric ether and the electric telegraph,--if these men
should keep their secrets, or only communicate them to each other, must
not the whole race of mankind serve them as gods? It only needs to look
at the social aspect of England and America and France, to see the rank
which original practical talent commands.
Every survey of the dignified classes, in ancient or modern history,
imprints universal lessons, and establishes a nobility of a prouder
creation. And the conclusion which Roman Senators, Indian Brahmins,
Persian Magians, European Nobles and great Americans inculcate,--that
which they preach out of their material wealth and glitter, out of
their old war and modern land-owning, even out of sensuality and
sneers, is, that the radical and essential distinctions of every
aristocracy are moral. Do not hearken to the men, but to the Destiny in
the institutions. An aristocracy is composed of simple and sincere men
for whom nature and ethics are strong enough, who say what they mean
and go straight to their objects. It is essentially real.
The multiplication of monarchs known by telegraph and daily news
from all countries to the daily papers, and the effect of freer
institutions in England and America, has robbed the title of king of
all its romance, as that of our commercial consuls as compared with
the ancient Roman. We shall come to add “Kings” in the “Contents”
of the Directory, as we do “Physicians,” “Brokers,” etc. In simple
communities, in the heroic ages, a man was chosen for his knack; got
his name, rank and living for that; and the best of the best was the
aristocrat or king. In the Norse Edda it appears as the curious but
excellent policy of contending tribes, when tired of war, to exchange
hostages, and in reality each to adopt from the other a first-rate
man, who thus acquired a new country, was at once made a chief. And no
wrong was so keenly resented as any fraud in this transaction. In the
heroic ages, as we call them, the hero uniformly has some real talent.
Ulysses in Homer is represented as a very skilful carpenter. He builds
the boat with which he leaves Calypso’s isle, and in his own palace
carves a bedstead out of the trunk of a tree and inlays it with gold
and ivory. Epeus builds the wooden horse. The English nation down to a
late age inherited the reality of the Northern stock. In 1373, in writs
of summons of members of Parliament, the sheriff of every county is to
cause “two dubbed knights, or the most worthy esquires, the most expert
in feats of arms, and no others; and of every city, two citizens,
and of every borough, two burgesses, such as have greatest skill in
shipping and merchandising, to be returned.”