Much that is in itself undesirable occurs in obedience to a general law
which is not only desirable, but of infinite necessity and benefit. It
is not desirable that Topper and Macaulay should be read by tens of
thousands, and Wilkinson only by tens. It is not desirable that a
narrow, selfish, envious Cecil, who could never forgive his noblest
contemporaries for failing to be hunchbacks like himself, should steer
England all his life as it were with supreme hand, and himself sail on
the topmost tide of fortune; while the royal head of Raleigh goes to the
block, and while Bacon, with his broad and bountiful nature,--Bacon,
one of the two or three greatest and humanest statesmen ever born to
England, and one of the friendliest men toward mankind ever born into
the world,--dies in privacy and poverty, bequeathing his memory "to
foreign nations and the next ages." But it is wholly desirable that
he who would consecrate himself to excellence in art or life should
sometimes be compelled to make it very clear to himself whether it be
indeed excellence that he covets, or only plaudits and pounds sterling.
So when we find our purest wishes perpetually hindered, not only in the
world around us, but even in our own bosoms, many of the particular
facts may indeed merit reproach, but the general fact merits, on the
contrary, gratitude and gratulation. For were our best wishes not, nor
ever, hindered, sure it is that the still better wishes of destiny
in our behalf would be hindered yet worse. Sure it is, I say, that
Hindrance, both outward and inward, comes to us not through any
improvidence or defect of benignity in Nature, but in answer to our
need, and as part of the best bounty which enriches our days. And to
make this indubitably clear, let us hasten to meditate that simple and
central law which governs this matter and at the same time many others.
And the law is, that every definite action is conditioned upon a
definite resistance, and is impossible without it. We walk in virtue of
the earth's resistance to the foot, and are unable to tread the elements
of air and water only because they are too complaisant, and deny the
foot that opposition which it requires. Precisely that, accordingly,
which makes the difficulty of an action may at the same time make its
possibility. Why is flight difficult? Because the weight of every
creature draws it toward the earth. But without this downward
proclivity, the wing of the bird would have no power upon the air.
Why is it difficult for a solid body to make rapid progress in water?
Because the water presses powerfully upon it, and at every inch of
progress must be overcome and displaced. Yet the ship is able to float
only in virtue of this same hindering pressure, and without it would not
sail, but sink. The bird and the steamer, moreover,--the one with
its wings and the other with its paddles,--apply themselves to this
hindrance to progression as their only means of making progress; so
that, were not their motion obstructed, it would be impossible.
The law governs not actions only, but all definite effects whatsoever.
If the luminiferous ether did not resist the sun's influence, it could
not be wrought into those undulations wherein light consists; if the
air did not resist the vibrations of a resonant object, and strive
to preserve its own form, the sound-waves could not be created and
propagated: if the tympanum did not resist these waves, it would not
transmit their suggestion to the brain; if any given object does not
resist the sun's rays,--in other words, reflect them,--it will not be
visible; neither can the eye mediate between any object and the brain
save by a like opposing of rays on the part of the retina.
These instances might be multiplied _ad libitum_, since there is
literally _no_ exception to the law. Observe, however, what the law is,
namely, that _some_ resistance is indispensable,--by no means that this
alone is so, or that all modes and kinds of resistance are of equal
service. Resistance and Affinity concur for all right effects; but it is
the former that, in some of its aspects, is much accused as a calamity
to man and a contumely to the universe; and of this, therefore, we
consider here.
Not all kinds of resistance are alike serviceable; yet that which is
required may not always consist with pleasure, nor even with safety. Our
most customary actions are rendered possible by forces and conditions
that inflict weariness at times upon all, and cost the lives of many.
Gravitation, forcing all men against the earth's surface with an energy
measured by their weight avoirdupois, makes locomotion feasible; but by
the same attraction it may draw one into the pit, over the precipice, to
the bottom of the sea. What multitudes of lives does it yearly destroy!
Why has it never occurred to some ingenious victim of a sluggish liver
to represent Gravitation as a murderous monster revelling in blood?
Surely there are woful considerations here that might be used with the
happiest effect to enhance the sense of man's misery, and have been too
much neglected!
Probably there are few children to whom the fancy has not occurred, How
convenient, how fine were it to weigh nothing! We smile at the little
wiseacres; we know better. How much better do we know? That ancient
lament, that ever iterated accusation of the world because it opposes a
certain hindrance to freedom, love, reason, and every excellence which
the imagination of man can portray and his heart pursue,--what is it, in
the final analysis, but a complaint that we cannot walk without weight,
and that therefore climbing _is_ climbing?
Instead, however, of turning aside to applications, let us push forward
the central statement in the interest of applications to be made by
every reader for himself,--since he says too much who does not leave
much more unsaid. Observe, then, that objects which so utterly submit
themselves to man as to become testimonies and publications of his
inward conceptions serve even these most exacting and monarchical
purposes only by opposition to them, and, to a certain extent, in the
very measure of that opposition. The stone which the sculptor carves
becomes a fit vehicle for his thought through its resistance to his
chisel; it sustains the impress of his imagination solely through its
unwillingness to receive the same. Not chalk, not any loose and friable
material, does Phidias or Michel Angelo choose, but ivory, bronze,
basalt, marble. It is quite the same whether we seek expression or
uses. The stream must be dammed before it will drive wheels; the steam
compressed ere it will compel the piston. In fine, Potentiality combines
with Hindrance to constitute active Power. Man, in order to obtain
instrumentalities and uses, blends his will and intelligence with a
force that vigorously seeks to pursue its own separate free course; and
while this resists him, it becomes his servant.
But why not look at this fact in its largest light? For do we not here
touch upon the probable reason why God must, as it were, be offset by
World, Spirit by Matter, Soul by Body? The Maker must needs, if it be
lawful so to speak, heap up in the balance against His own pure, eternal
freedom these numberless globes of cold, inert matter. Matter is,
indeed, movable by no fine persuasions: brutely faithful to its own law,
it cares no more for AEschylus than for the tortoise that breaks his
crown; the purpose of a cross for the sweetest saint it serves no less
willingly than any other purpose,--stiffly holding out its arms there,
about its own wooden business, neither more nor less, centred utterly
upon itself. But is it not this stolid self-centration which makes it
needful to Divinity? An infinite energy required a resisting or doggedly
indifferent material, itself _quasi_ infinite, to take the impression of
its life, and render potentiality into power. So by the encountering of
body with soul is the product, man, evolved. Philosophers and saints
have perceived that the spiritual element of man is hampered and
hindered by his physical part: have they also perceived that it is the
very collision between these which strikes out the spark of thought
and kindles the sense of law? As the tables of stone to the finger of
Jehovah on Sinai, so is the firm marble of man's material nature to the
recording soul. But even Plato, when he arrives at these provinces of
thought, begins to limp a little, and to go upon Egyptian crutches. In
the incomparable apologues of the "Phaedrus" he represents our inward
charioteer as driving toward the empyrean two steeds, of which the one
is virtuously attracted toward heaven, while the other is viciously
drawn to the earth; but he countenances the inference that the earthward
proclivity of the latter is to be accounted pure misfortune. But to the
universe there is neither fortune nor misfortune; there is only the
reaper, Destiny, and his perpetual harvest. All that occurs on a
universal scale lies in the line of a pure success. Nor can the universe
attain any success by pushing past man and leaving him aside. That
were like the prosperity of a father who should enrich himself by
disinheriting his only son.
Principles necessary to all action must of course appear in moral
action. The moral imagination, which pioneers and produces inward
advancement, works under the same conditions with the imagination of
the artist, and must needs have somewhat to work _upon_. Man is both
sculptor and quarry,--and a great noise and dust of chiselling is there
sometimes in his bosom. If, therefore, we find in him somewhat which
does not immediately and actively sympathize with his moral nature, let
us not fancy this element equally out of sympathy with his pure destiny.
The impulsion and the resistance are alike included in the design of our
being. Hunger--to illustrate--respects food, food only. It asks leave to
be hunger neither of your conscience, your sense of personal dignity,
nor indeed of your humanity in any form; but exists by its own
permission, and pushes with brute directness toward its own ends. True,
the soul may at last so far prevail as to make itself felt even in
the stomach; and the true gentleman could as soon relish a lunch of
porcupines' quills as a dinner basely obtained, though it were of
nightingales' tongues. But this is sheer conquest on the part of
the soul, not any properly gastric inspiration at all; and it is in
furnishing opportunity for precisely such conquest that the lower nature
becomes a stairway of ascent for the soul.
And now, if in the relations between every manly spirit and the world
around him we discover the same fact, are we not by this time prepared
to contemplate it altogether with dry eyes? What if it be true, that
in trade, in politics, in society, all tends to low levels? What if
disadvantages are to be suffered by the grocer who will not sell
adulterated food, by the politician who will not palter, by the
diplomatist who is ashamed to lie? For this means only that no one can
be honest otherwise than by a productive energy of honesty in his own
bosom. In other words,--a man reaches the true welfare of a human
soul only when his bosom is a generative centre and source of noble
principles; and therefore, in pure, wise kindness to man, the world
is so arranged that there shall be perpetual need of this access and
reinforcement of principle. Society, the State, and every institution,
grow lean the moment there is a falling off in this divine fruitfulness
of man's heart, because only in virtue of bearing such fruit is man
worthy of his name. Honor and honesty are constantly consumed _between_
men, that they may be forever newly demanded _in_ them.
We cannot too often remind ourselves that the aim of the universe is
a personality. As the terrestrial globe through so many patient
aeons climbed toward the production of a human body, that by this
all-comprehending, perfect symbol it might enter into final union with
Spirit, so do the uses of the world still forever ascend toward man, and
seek a continual realization of that ancient wish. When, therefore,
Time shall come to his great audit with Eternity, persons alone will be
passed to his credit. "So many wise and wealthy souls,"--that is what
the sun and his household will have come to. The use of the world is not
found in societies faultlessly mechanized; for societies are themselves
but uses and means. They are the soil in which persons grow; and I no
more undervalue them than the husbandman despises his fertile acres
because it is not earth, but the wheat that grows from it, which comes
to his table. Society is the culmination of all uses and delights;
persons, of all results. And societies answer their ends when they
afford two things: first, a need for energy of eye and heart, of noble
human vigor; and secondly, a generous appreciation of high qualities,
when these may appear. The latter is, indeed, indispensable; and
whenever noble manhood ceases to be recognized in a nation, the days of
that nation are numbered. But the need is also necessary. Society must
be a consumer of virtue, if individual souls are to be producers of it.
The law of demand and supply has its applications here also. New waters
must forever flow from the fountain-heads of our true life, if the
millwheel of the world is to continue turning; and this not because the
supernal powers so greatly cared to get corn ground, but because the
Highest would have rivers of His influence forever flowing, and would
call them men. Therefore it is that satirists who paint in high colors
the resistances, but have no perception of the law of conversion into
opposites, which is the grand trick of Nature,--these pleasant gentlemen
are themselves a part of the folly at which they mock.
As a man among men, so is a nation among nations. Very freely I
acknowledge that any nation, by proposing to itself large and liberal
aims, plucks itself innumerable envies and hatreds from without, and
confers new power for mischief upon all blindness and savagery that
exist within it. But what does this signify? Simply that no nation can
be free longer than it nobly loves freedom; that none can be great in
its national purposes when it has ceased to be so in the hearts of its
citizens. Freedom must be perpetually won, or it must be lost; and this
because the sagacious Manager of the world will not let us off from
the disciplines that should make us men. The material of the artist is
passive, and may be either awakened from its ancient rest or suffered
to sleep on; but that marble from which the perfections of manhood and
womanhood are wrought quits the quarry to meet us, and converts us to
stone, if we do not rather transform that to life and beauty.
Hostile, predatory, it rushes upon us; and we, cutting at it in brave
self-defence, hew it above our hope into shapes of celestial and
immortal comeliness. So that angels are born, as it were, from the noble
fears of man,--from an heroic fear in man's heart that he shall fall
away from the privilege of humanity, and falsify the divine vaticination
of his soul.
Hence follows the fine result, that in life to hold your own is to make
advance. Destiny comes to us, like the children in their play, saying,
"Hold fast all I give you"; and while we nobly detain it, the penny
changes between our palms to the wealth of cities and kingdoms. The
barge of blessing, freighted for us by unspeakable hands, comes floating
down from the head-waters of that stream whereon we also are afloat; and
to meet it we have only to wait for it, not ourselves ebbing away, but
loyally stemming the tide. It may be, as Mr. Carlyle alleges, that the
Constitution of the United States is no supreme effort of genius; but
events now passing are teaching us that every day of fidelity to the
spirit of it lends it new preciousness; and that an adherence to it, not
petty and literal, but at once large and indomitable, might almost make
it a charter of new sanctities both of law and liberty for the human
race.