GRIT.

There is an influential form of practical force, compounded of strong

will, strong sense, and strong egotism, which long waited for a strong

monosyllable to announce its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are

never at rest until they have become terms of language; and that

peculiar thing which is not exactly courage or heroism, but which

unmistakably is "Grit," has coined its own word to blurt out its own

quality. If the word has not yet pushed its way into classic usage, or

effected a lodgement in the dictionaries, the force it names is no less

a reality of the popular consciousness, and the word itself no less a

part of popular speech. Men who possessed the thing were just the men to

snub elegance and stun propriety by giving it an inelegant, though

vitally appropriate name. There is defiance in its very sound. The word

is used by vast numbers of people to express their highest ideal of

manliness, which is "real grit." It is impossible for anybody to acquire

the reputation it confers by the most dexterous mimicry of its outside

expressions; for a swift analysis, which drives directly to the heart of

the man, instantly detects the impostor behind the braggart, and curtly

declares him to lack "the true grit." The word is so close to the thing

it names, has so much pith and point, is so tart on the tongue, and so

stings the ear with its meaning, that foreigners ignorant of the

language might at once feel its significance by its griding utterance as

it is shot impatiently through the resisting teeth.

Grit is in the grain of character. It may generally be described as

heroism materialized,--spirit and will thrust into heart, brain, and

backbone, so as to form part of the physical substance of the man. The

feeling with which it rushes into consciousness is akin to physical

sensation; and the whole body--every nerve, muscle, and drop of

blood--is thrilled with purpose and passion. "Spunk" does not express

it; for "spunk," besides being _petite_ in itself, is courage in

effervescence rather than courage in essence. A person usually cowardly

may be kicked or bullied into the exhibition of spunk; but the man of

grit carries in his presence a power which spares him the necessity of

resenting insult; for insult sneaks away from his look. It is not mere

"pluck"; for pluck also comes by fits and starts, and can be

disconnected from the other elements of character. A tradesman once had

the pluck to demand of Talleyrand, at the time that trickster-statesman

was at the height of his power, when he intended to pay his bill; but he

was instantly extinguished by the impassive insolence of Talleyrand's

answer,--"My faith, how curious you are!" Considered as an efficient

force, it is sometimes below heroism, sometimes above it: below heroism,

when heroism is the permanent condition of the soul; above heroism, when

heroism is simply the soul's transient mood. Thus, Demosthenes had

flashes of splendid heroism, but his valor depended on his genius being

kindled,--his brave actions naming out from mental ecstasy rather than

intrepid character. The moment his will dropped from its eminence of

impassioned thought, he was scared by dangers which common soldiers

faced with gay indifference. Erskine, the great advocate, was a hero at

the bar; but when he entered the House of Commons, there was something

in the fixed imperiousness and scorn of Pitt which made him feel

inwardly weak and fluttered. Erskine had flashes of heroism; Pitt had

consistent and persistent grit. If we may take the judgment of Sir

Sidney Smith, Wellington had more grit than Napoleon had heroism. Just

before the Battle of Waterloo, Sir Sidney, at Paris, was told that the

Duke had decided to keep his position at all events. "Oh!" he

exclaimed, "if the Duke has said that, of course t' other fellow must

give way."

And this is essentially the sign of grit, that, when it appears, t'

other fellow or t' other opinion must give way. Its power comes from its

tough hold on the real, and the surly boldness with which it utters and

acts it out. Thus, in social life, it puts itself in rude opposition to

all those substitutes for reality which the weakness and hypocrisy and

courtesy of men find necessary for their mutual defence. It denies that

it has ever surrendered its original rights and aboriginal force, or

that it has assented to the social compact. When it goes into any

company of civilized persons, its pugnacity is roused by seeing that

social life does not rest on the vigor of the persons who compose it,

but on the authority of certain rules and manners to which all are

required to conform. These appear to grit as external defences, thrown

up to protect elegant feebleness against any direct collision with

positive character, and to keep men and women at a respectful distance

from ladies and gentlemen. Life is carried on there at one or more

removes from the realities of life, on this principle, that, "I won't

speak the truth of you, if you won't speak the truth of me"; and the

name of this principle is politeness. It is impolite to tell foolish men

that they are foolish, mean men that they are mean, wicked men that they

are wicked, traitorous men that they are traitors; for smooth lies

cement what impolite veracities would shatter. The system, it is

contended, on the whole, civilizes the individuals whose natures it may

repress, and is better than a sincerity which would set them by the

ears, and put a veto on all social intercourse whatever. But strong as

may be the argument in favor of the system, it is certainly as important

that it should be assailed as that it should exist, and that it should

be assailed from within; for, carried out unchecked to its last

consequences, it results in sinking its victims into the realm of vapors

and vacuity, its representative being the all-accomplished London man of

fashion who committed suicide to save himself from the bore of dressing

and undressing. Besides, in "good society," so called, the best

sentiments and ideas can sometimes get expression only through the form

of bad manners. It is charming to be in a circle where human nature is

pranked out in purple and fine linen, and where you sometimes see

manners as beautiful as the masterpieces of the arts; yet some people

cannot get rid of the uneasy consciousness that a subtle tyranny

pervades the room and ties the tongue,--that philanthropy is impolite,

that heroism is ungenteel, that truth, honor, freedom, humanity,

strongly asserted, are marks of a vulgar mind; and many a person, daring

enough to defend his opinions anywhere else, by speech or by the sword,

quails in the parlor before some supercilious coxcomb,

"Weak in his watery smile

And educated whisker,"

who can still tattle to the girls that the reformer is "no gentleman."

Now how different all this is, when a man of social grit thrusts himself

into a drawing-room, and with an easy audacity tosses out disagreeable

facts and unfashionable truths, the porcelain crashing as his words

fall, and saying everything that no gentleman ought to say, indifferent

to the titter or terror of the women and the offended looks and

frightened stare of the men. How the gilded lies vanish in his presence!

How he states, contradicts, confutes! how he smashes through proprieties

to realities, flooding the room with his aggressive vitality, mastering

by main force a position in the most exclusive set, and, by being

perfectly indifferent to their opinion, making it impossible for them to

put him down! He thus becomes a social power by becoming a social

rebel,--persecutes conventional politeness into submission to rude

veracity,--establishes an autocracy of man over the gentleman,--and

practises a kind of "Come-Outerism," while insisting on enjoying all the

advantages of _Go-Interism_. Ben Jonson in the age of Elizabeth, Samuel

Johnson in the last century, Carlyle and Brougham in the present, are

prominent examples of this somewhat insolent manhood in the presence of

social forms. It is, however, one of the rarest, as it is one of the

ugliest, kinds of human strength; it requires, perhaps, in its

combination, full as many defects as merits; and how difficult is its

justifiable exercise we see in the career of so illustrious a

philanthropist as Wilberforce,--a man whose speech in Parliament showed

no lack of vivid conceptions and smiting words, a man whom no threats of

personal violence could intimidate, and who would cheerfully have risked

his life for his cause, yet still a man who could never forget that he

was a Tory and a gentleman, who had no grit before lords and ladies,

whose Abolitionism was not sufficiently blunt and downright in the good

company of cabinet ministers, whose sensitive nature flinched at the

thought of being conscientiously impolite and heroically ill-natured,

and whose manners were thus frequently in the way of the full efficiency

of his morals. In many respects a hero, in all respects benevolent, he

still was not like Romilly, a man of grit. Politeness has been defined

as benevolence in small things. To be benevolent in great things,

decorum must sometimes yield to duty; and Draco, though in the king's

drawing-room, and loyally supporting in Parliament the measures of the

ministry, is still Draco, though cruelty in him has learned the dialect

of fashion and clothed itself in the privileges of the genteel.

Proceeding from social life to business life, we shall find that it is

this unamiable, but indomitable, quality of grit which not only acquires

fortunes, but preserves them after they have been acquired. The ruin

which overtakes so many merchants is due not so much to their lack of

business talent as to their lack of business nerve. How many lovable

persons we see in trade, endowed with brilliant capacities, but cursed

with yielding dispositions,--who are resolute in no business habits and

fixed in no business principles,--who are prone to follow the instincts

of a weak good-nature against the ominous hints of a clear intelligence,

now obliging this friend by indorsing an unsafe note, and then pleasing

that neighbor by sharing his risk in a hopeless speculation,--and who,

after all the capital they have earned by their industry and sagacity

has been sunk in benevolent attempts to assist blundering or plundering

incapacity, are doomed, in their bankruptcy, to be the mark of bitter

taunts from growling creditors and insolent pity from a gossiping

public. Much has been said about the pleasures of a good conscience; and

among these I reckon the act of that man who, having wickedly lent

certain moneys to a casual acquaintance, was in the end called upon to

advance a sum which transcended his honest means, with a dark hint,

that, if the money was refused, there was but one thing for the casual

acquaintance to do,--that is, to commit suicide. The person thus

solicited, in a transient fit of moral enthusiasm, caught at the hint,

and with great earnestness advised the casual acquaintance to do it, on

the ground that it was the only reparation he could make to the numerous

persons he had swindled. And this advice was given with no fear that the

guilt of that gentleman's blood would lie on his soul, for the mission

of that gentleman was to continue his existence by sucking out the life

of others, and his last thought was to destroy his own; and it is hardly

necessary to announce that he is still alive and sponging. Indeed, a

courageous merchant must ever by ready to face the fact that he will be

called a curmudgeon, if he will not ruin himself to please others, and a

weak fool, if he does. Many a fortune has melted away in the hesitating

utterance of the placable "Yes," which might have been saved by the

unhesitating utterance of the implacable "No!" Indeed, in business, the

perfection of grit is this power of saying "No," and saying it with such

wrathful emphasis that the whole race of vampires and harpies are scared

from you counting-room, and your reputation as unenterprising,

unbearable niggard is fully established among all borrowers of money

never meant to be repaid, and all projectors of schemes intended for the

benefit of the projectors alone. At the expense of a little temporary

obloquy, a man can thus conquer the right to mind his own business; and

having done this, he has shown his possession of that nerve which, in

his business, puts inexorable purpose into clear conceptions, follows

out a plan of operations with sturdy intelligence, and conducts to

fortune by the road of real enterprise. Many others may evince equal

shrewdness in framing a project, but they hesitate, become timid, become

confused, at some step in its development. Their character is not strong

enough to back up their intellect. But the iron-like tenacity of the

merchant of grit holds on to the successful end.

You can watch the operation of this quality in every-day business

transactions. Your man of grit seems never deficient in news of the

markets, though he may employ no telegraph-operator. Thus, about two

years ago, a great Boston holder of flour went to considerable expense

in obtaining special intelligence, which would, when generally known,

carry flour up to ten dollars and a half a barrel. Another dealer,

suspecting something, went to him and said, "What do you say flour's

worth to-day?"--"Oh," was the careless answer, "I suppose it might bring

ten dollars."--"Well," retorted the querist, gruffly, "I've got five

thousand barrels on hand, and I should like to _see_ the man who would

give me ten dollars barrel for it!"--"I will," said the other, quickly,

disclosing his secret by the eagerness of his manner, "Well," was the

reply, "all I can say is, then, that I have _seen_ the man."

The importance of this quality as a business power is most apparent in

those frightful panics which periodically occur in our country, and

which sometimes tax the people more severely than wars and standing

armies. In regard to one of the last of these financial hurricanes, that

of 1857, there can be little doubt, that, if the acknowledged holders of

financial power had been men of real grit, it might have been averted;

there can be as little doubt, that, when it burst, if they had been men

of real grit, it might have been made less disastrous. But they kept

nearly all their sails set up to the point of danger, and when the

tempest was on them ignominiously took to their boats and abandoned the

ship. And as for the crew and passengers, it was the old spectacle of a

shipwreck,--individuals squabbling to get a plank, instead of combining

to construct a raft.

Indeed, there was something pitiable in the state of things which that

panic revealed in the business centres of the country. Common sense

seemed to be disowned by mutual consent; an infectious fear went

shivering from man to man; and a strange fascination led people to

increase by suspicions and reports the peril which threatened their own

destruction. Men, being thus thrown back upon the resources of

character, were put to terrible tests. As the intellect cannot act when

the will is paralyzed, many a merchant, whose debts really bore no

proportion to his property, was seen sitting, like the French prisoner

in the iron cage whose sides were hourly contracting, stupidly gazing at

the bars which were closing in upon him, and feeling in advance the pang

of the iron which was to cut into his flesh and crush his bones.

In invigorating contrast to the panic-smitten, we had the privilege to

witness many an example of the grit-inspired. Then it was that the

grouty, taciturn, obstinate trader, so unpopular in ordinary times,

showed the stuff he was made of. Then his bearing was cheer and hope to

all who looked upon him. How he girded himself for the fight, resolved,

if he died, to die hard! How he tugged with obstacles as if they were

personal affronts, and hurled them to the right and to the left! How

grandly, amid the chatter of the madmen about him, came his few words of

sense and sanity! And then his brain, brightened, not bewildered, by the

danger, how clear and alert it was, how fertile in expedients, how firm

in principles, with a glance that pierced through the ignorant present

to the future, seeing as calmly and judging as accurately in the tempest

as it had in the sunshine. Never losing heart and never losing head,

with as strong a grip on his honor as on his property, detesting the

very thought of failure, knowing that he might be broken to pieces, but

determined that he would not weakly "go to pieces," he performed the

greatest service to the community, as well as to himself, by resolutely,

at any sacrifice, paying his debts when they became due. It is a pity

that such austere Luthers of commerce, trade-militant instead of

church-militant, who meet hard times with a harder will, had not a

little beauty in their toughness, so that grit, lifted to heroism, would

allure affection as well as enforce respect. But their sense is so

rigid, their integrity so gruff, and their courage so unjoyous, that all

the genial graces fly their companionship; and a libertine Sheridan,

with Ancient Pistol's motto of "Base is the slave that pays," will often

be more popular, even among the creditor portion of the public, than

these crabbed heroes, and, if need be, surly martyrs, of mercantile

honesty and personal honor.

In regard to public life, and the influence of this rough manliness in

politics, it is a matter of daily observation, that, in the strife of

parties and principles, backbone without brain will carry it against

brain without backbone. A politician weakly and amiably in the right is

no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. You

cannot, by tying an opinion to a man's tongue, make him the

representative of that opinion; and at the close of any battle for

principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the

wounded, but among the missing. The true motto for a party is neither

"Measures, not men," nor "Men, not measures," but "Measures _in_

men,"--measures which are in their blood as well as in their brain and

on their lips. Wellington said that Napoleon's presence in the French

army was equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers; and in a

legislative assembly, Mirabeau and John Adams and John Quincy Adams are

not simply persons who hold a single vote, but forces whose power

thrills through the whole mass of voters. Mean natures always feel a

sort of terror before great natures; and many a base thought has been

unuttered, many a sneaking vote withheld, through the fear inspired by

the rebuking presence of one noble man.

Opinions embodied in men, and thus made aggressive and militant, are the

opinions which mark the union of thought with grit. A politician of this

class is not content to comprehend and wield the elements of power

already existing in a community, but he aims to make his individual

conviction and purpose dominant over the convictions and purposes of the

accredited exponents of public opinion. He cares little about his

unpopularity at the start, and doggedly persists in his course against

obstacles which seem insurmountable. A great, but mischievous, example

of this power appeared in our own generation in the person of Mr.

Calhoun, a statesman who stamped his individual mind on the policy and

thinking of the country more definitely, perhaps, than any statesman

since Hamilton, though his influence has, on the whole, been as evil as

Hamilton's was, on the whole, beneficent. Keen-sighted, far-sighted, and

inflexible, Mr. Calhoun clearly saw the logical foundations and logical

results of the institution of Slavery; and though at first called an

abstractionist and a fanatic by the looser thinkers of his own region,

his inexorable argumentation, conquering by degrees politicians who

could reason, made itself felt at last among politicians who could not

reason; and the conclusions of his logic were adopted by thousands whose

brains would have broken in the attempt to follow its processes. One of

those rare deductive reasoners whose audacity marches abreast their

genius, he would have been willing to fight to the last gasp for a

conclusion which he had laboriously reached by rigid deduction through

a score of intermediate steps, from premises in themselves repugnant to

the primal instincts both of reason and humanity. Always ready to meet

anybody in argument, he detested all reasoners who attempted to show the

fallacy of his argument by pointing out the dangerous results to which

it led. In this he sometimes brought to mind that inflexible professor

of the deductive method who was timidly informed that his principles, if

carried out, would split the world to pieces. "Let it split," was his

careless answer; "there are enough more planets." By pure intellectual

grit, he thus effected a revolution in the ideas and sentiments of the

South, and through the South made his mind act on the policy of the

nation. The present war has its root in the principles he advocated.

Never flinching from any logical consequence of his principles, Mr.

Calhoun did not rest until through him religion, morality,

statesmanship, the Constitution of the United States, the constitution

of man, were all bound in black. Chattel slavery, the most nonsensical

as well as detestable of oppressions, was, to him, the most beneficent

contrivance of human wisdom. He called it an institution: Mr. Emerson

has more happily styled it a destitution. At last the chains of his iron

logic were heard clanking on the whole Southern intellect. Reasoning the

most masterly was employed to annihilate the first principles of reason;

the understanding of man was insanely placed in direct antagonism to his

moral instincts; and finally the astounding conclusion was reached, that

the Creator of mankind has his pet races,--that God himself scouts his

colored children, and nicknames them "Niggers."

It is delicious to watch the exulting and somewhat contemptuous audacity

with which he hurries to the unforeseen conclusion those who have once

been simple enough to admit his premises. Towards men who have some

logical capacity his tone is that of respectful impatience; but as he

goads on the reluctant and resentful victims of his reasoning, who

loiter and limp painfully in the steps of his rapid deductions, he seems

to say, with ironic scorn, "A little faster, my poor cripples!"

So confident was Mr. Calhoun in his capacity to demonstrate the validity

of his horrible creed, that he was ever eager to measure swords with the

most accomplished of his antagonists in the duel of debate. And it must

be said that he despised all the subterfuges and evasions by which, in

ordinary controversies, the real question is dodged, and went directly

to the heart of the matter,--a resolute intellect, burning to grapple

with another resolute intellect in a vital encounter. In common

legislative debates, on the contrary, there is no vital encounter. The

exasperated opponents, personally courageous, but deficient in clear and

fixed ideas, mutually contrive to avoid the things essential to be

discussed, while wantoning in all the forms of discussion. They assert,

brag, browbeat, dogmatize, domineer, pummel each other with the

_argumentum ad hominem_, and abundantly prove that they stand for

opposite opinions; we watch them as we watch the feints and hits of a

couple of pugilists in the ring; but after the sparring is over, we find

that neither the Southern champion nor the Northern bruiser has touched

the inner reality of the question to decide which they stripped

themselves for the fight. In regard to the intellectual issue, they are

like two bullies enveloping themselves in an immense concealing dust of

arrogant words, and, as they fearfully retreat from personal collision,

shouting furiously to each other, "Let me get at him!" And this is what

is commonly called grit in politics,--abundant backbone to face persons,

deficient brain-bone to encounter principles.

Not so was it when two debaters like Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster engaged

in the contest of argument. Take, for example, as specimens of pure

mental manliness, their speeches in the Senate, in 1833, on the question

whether or not the Constitution is a compact between sovereign States.

Give Mr. Calhoun those two words, "compact" and "sovereign," and he

conducts you logically to Nullification and to all the consequences of

Nullification. Andrew Jackson, a man in his kind, of indomitable

resolution, intended to arrest the argument at a convenient point by the

sword, and thus save himself the bother of going farther in the chain of

inferences than he pleased. Mr. Webster grappled with the argument and

with the man; and it is curious to watch that spectacle of a meeting

between two such hostile minds. Each is confident of the strength of his

own position; each is eager for a close hug of dialectics. Far from

avoiding the point, they drive directly towards it, clearing their

essential propositions from mutual misconception by the sharpest

analysis and exactest statement. To get their minds near each other, to

think close to the subject, to feel the griding contact of pure

intellect with pure intellect, and, as spiritual beings, to conduct the

war of reason with spiritual weapons,--this is their ambition.

Conventionally courteous to each other, they are really in the deadliest

antagonism; for their contest is the tug and strain of soul with soul,

and each feels that defeat would be worse than death. No nervous

irritation, no hard words, no passionate recriminations, no flinching

from unexpected difficulties, no substitution of declamatory sophisms

for rigorous inferences--but close, calm, ruthless grapple of thought

with thought. To each, at the time, life seems to depend on the

issue--not merely the life which a sword-cut or pistol-bullet can

destroy, but immortal life, the life of immaterial minds and

personalities, thus brought into spiritual feud. They know very well,

that, whatever be the real result, the Webster-men will give the victory

of argument to Webster, the Calhoun-men the victory of argument to

Calhoun; but that consideration does not enter their thoughts as they

prepare to close in that combat which is to determine, not to the world,

but to each other, which is the stronger intellect, and which is in the

right Few ever appreciate great men in this hostile attitude, not of

their passions, but of their minds; and those who do it the least are

their furious partisans. Most people are contented with the argument

that tells, and are apt to be bored with the argument which refutes; but

a true reasoner despises even his success, if he feels that two persons,

himself and his opponent, know that he is in the wrong. And the strain

on the whole being in this contest of intellect with intellect, and the

reluctance with which the most combative enter it unless they are

consciously strong, is well illustrated by Dr. Johnson's remark to some

friends, when sickness had relaxed the tough fibre of his brain,--"If

that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill me."

A peculiar kind of grit, not falling under any of the special

expressions I have noted, yet partaking in some degree of all, is

illustrated in the character of Lieutenant-General Grant. Without an

atom of pretension or rhetoric, with none of the external signs of

energy and intrepidity, making no parade of the immovable purpose, iron

nerve, and silent, penetrating intelligence God has put into him, his

tranquil greatness is hidden from superficial scrutiny behind a cigar,

as President Lincoln's is behind a joke. When anybody tries to coax,

cajole, overawe, browbeat, or deceive Lincoln, the President nurses his

leg, and is reminded of a story; when anybody tries the same game with

Grant, the General listens and--smokes. If you try to wheedle out of him

his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an

imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise

him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from

his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the Presidency, it

does not disturb the equanimity with which he inhales and exhales the

unsubstantial vapor which typifies the politician's promises. While you

are wondering what kind of man this creature without a tongue is, you

are suddenly electrified with the news of some splendid victory, proving

that behind the cigar, and behind the face discharged of all tell-tale

expression, is the best brain to plan and the strongest heart to dare

among the generals of the Republic.

It is curious to mark a variation of this intellectual hardihood and

personal force when the premises are not in the solidities, but in the

oddities of thought and character, and whim stands stiffly up to the

remotest inferences which may be deduced from its insanest freaks of

individual opinion. Thus it is said that in one of our country towns

there is an old gentleman who is an eccentric hater of women; and this

crotchet of his character he carries to its extreme logical

consequences. Not content with general declamation against the sex, he

turns eagerly, the moment he receives the daily newspaper, to the list

of deaths; and if he sees the death of a woman recorded, he gleefully

exclaims,--"Good! good! there's another of 'em gone!"

We have heard of a man who had conceived a violent eccentric prejudice

against negroes; and he was not content with chiming in with the usual

cant of the prejudice that they ought not to be allowed in our churches

and in our rail-road-cars, but vociferated, that, if he had his way,

they should not be allowed in Africa! The advantage of grit in this

respect is in its annihilating a prejudice by presenting a vivid vision

of its theoretical consequences. Carlyle has an eccentric hatred of the

eighteenth century, its manners, morals, politics, religion, and men. He

has expressed this in various ways for thirty years; but in his last

work, the "Life of Frederick the Great," his prejudice reached its

logical climax in the assertion, that the only sensible thing the

eighteenth century ever did was blowing out its own brains in the French

Revolution.

Again, in discussion, some men have felicity in replying to a question,

others a felicity in replying to the motive which prompted the question.

In one case you get an answer addressed to your understanding; in the

other, an answer which smites like a slap in the face. Thus, when a pert

skeptic asked Martin Luther where God was before He created heaven,

Martin stunned his querist with the retort,--"He was building hell for

such idle, presumptuous, fluttering, and inquisitive spirits as you."

And everybody will recollect the story of the self-complacent cardinal

who went to confess to a holy monk, and thought by self-accusation to

get the reputation of a saint.

"I have been guilty of every kind of sin," snivelled the cardinal.

"It is a solemn fact," replied the impassive monk.

"I have indulged in pride, ambition, malice, and revenge," groaned the

cardinal.

"It is too true," answered the monk.

"Why, you fool," exclaimed the enraged dignitary, "you don't imagine

that I mean all this to the letter!"

"Ho! ho!" said the monk, "so you have been a liar, too, have you?"

This relentless rebuker of shams furnishes us with a good transition to

another department of the subject, namely, moral hardihood, or grit

organized in conscience, and applying the most rigorous laws of ethics

to the practical affairs of life. Now there is a wide difference between

moral men, so called, and men moralized,--between men who lazily adopt

and lazily practise the conventional moral proprieties of the time, and

men transformed into the image of inexorable, unmerciful moral ideas,

men in whom moral maxims appear organized as moral might. There are

thousands who are prodigal of moral and benevolent opinions, and

honestly eloquent in loud professions of what they would do in case

circumstances called upon them to act; but when the occasion is suddenly

thrust upon them, when temptation, leering into every corner and crevice

of their weak and selfish natures, connects the notion of virtue with

the reality of sacrifice, then, in that sharp pinch, they become

suddenly apprised of the difference between rhetoric and rectitude, and

find that their speeches have been far ahead of their powers of

performance. Thus, in one of Gerald Griffin's novels, there is a scene

in which a young Irish student, fresh from his scholastic ethics, amazes

the company at his father's table, who are all devout believers in the

virtues of the hair-trigger, by an eloquent declamation against the

folly and the sin of duelling. At last one of the set gets sufficient

breath to call him a coward. The hot Irish blood is up in an instant, a

tumbler is thrown at the head of the doubter of his courage, and in ten

seconds the young moralist is crossing swords with his antagonist in a

duel.

But the characteristic of moral grit is equality with the occasions

which exact its exercise. It is morality with thews and sinews and blood

and passions,--morality made man, and eager to put its phrases to the

test of action. It gives and takes hard blows,--aims not only to be

upright in deed, but downright in word,--silences with a "Thus saith the

Lord" all palliations of convenient sins,--scowls ominously at every

attempt to reconcile the old feud between the right and the expedient

and make them socially shake hands,--and when cant taints the air,

clears it with good wholesome rage and execration. On the virtues of

this stubborn conscientiousness it is needless to dilate; its

limitations spring from its tendency to disconnect morality from mercy,

and law from love,--its too frequent substitution of moral antipathies

for moral insight,--and its habit of describing individual men, not as

they are in themselves, but as they appear to its offended conscience.

Understanding sin better than it understands sinners, it sometimes

sketches phantoms rather than paints portraits,--identifies the weakly

wicked with the extreme of Satanic wickedness,--and in its assaults,

pitches _at_ its adversaries rather than really pitches _into_ them.

But, in a large moral view, the light of intellectual perception should

shine far in advance of the heat of ethical invective, and an ounce of

characterization is worth a ton of imprecations. Indeed, moral grit,

relatively admirable as it is, partakes of the inherent defect of other

and lower kinds of grit, inasmuch as its force is apt to be as

unsympathetic as it is uncompromising, as ungracious as it is

invincible. It drives rather than draws, cuffs rather than coaxes.

Intolerant of human infirmity, it is likewise often intolerant of all

forms of human excellence which do not square with its own conceptions

of right; and its philanthropy in the abstract is apt to secrete a

subtile misanthropy in the concrete. Brave, unselfish, self-sacrificing,

and flinching from no consequences which its principles may bring upon

itself, it flinches from no consequences which they may bring upon

others; and its attitude towards the laws and customs of instituted

imperfection is almost as sourly belligerent as towards those of

instituted iniquity.

Men of this austere and somewhat crabbed rectitude may be found in every

department of life, but they are most prominent and most efficient when

they engage in the reform of abuses, whether those abuses be in manners,

institutions, or religion; and here they never shrink from the rough,

rude work of the cause they espouse. They are commonly adored by their

followers, commonly execrated by their opponents; but they receive the

execration as the most convincing proof that they have performed their

duties, as the shrieks of the wounded testify to the certainty of the

shots. Indeed, they take a kind of grim delight in so pointing their

invective that the adversaries of their principles are turned into

enemies of their persons, and scout at all fame which does not spring

from obloquy. As they thus exist in a state of war, the gentler elements

of their being fall into the background; the bitterness of the strife

works into their souls, and gives to their conscientious wrath a certain

Puritan pitilessness of temper and tone. In the thick of the fight,

their battle-cry is, "No quarter to the enemies of God and man!"--and

as, unfortunately, there are few men who, tried by their standards, are

friends of man, population very palpably thins as the lava-tide of their

invective sweeps over it, and to the mental eye men, disappear as man

emerges.

The gulf which yawns between uncompromising moral obligation and

compromising human conduct is so immense that these fierce servants of

the Lord seem to be fanatics and visionaries. But history demonstrates

that they are among the most practical of all the forces which work in

human affairs; for, without taking into account the response which their

inflexible morality finds in the breasts of inflexibly moral men, their

morality, in its application to common life, often becomes materialized,

and shows an intimate connection with the most ordinary human appetites

and passions. They commune with the mass of men through the subtile

freemasonry of discontent. Compelled to hurl the thunderbolts of the

moral law against injustice in possession, they unwittingly set fire to

injustice smouldering in unrealized passions; and their speech is

translated and transformed, in its passage into the public mind, into

some such shape as this:--"These few persons who are dominant in Church

and State, and who, while you physically and spiritually starve, are fed

fat by the products of your labor and the illusions of your

superstition, are powerful and prosperous, not from any virtue in

themselves, but from the violation of those laws which God has ordained

for the beneficent government of the universe. Their property and their

power are the signs, not of their merits, but of their sins." The

instinctive love of property and power are thus addressed to overturn

the present possessors of property and power; and the vices of men are

unconsciously enlisted in the service of the regeneration of man. The

motives which impel whole masses of the community are commonly different

from the motives of those reformers who urge the community to revolt;

and their fervent denunciations of injustice bring to their side

thousands of men who, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, only desire a

chance to be unjust. The annals of all emancipations, revolutions, and

reformations are disfigured by this fact. Better than what they

supplant, their good is still relative, not absolute.

In the history of religious reforms, few men better illustrate this hard

moral manliness, as distinguished from the highest moral heroism, than

the sturdy Scotch reformer, John Knox. Tenacious, pugnacious, thoroughly

honest and thoroughly earnest, superior to all physical and moral fear,

destitute equally of fine sentiments and weak emotions, blurting out

unwelcome opinions to queens as readily as to peasants, and in words

which hit and hurt like knocks with the fist, he is one of those large,

but somewhat coarse-grained natures, that influence rude populations by

having so much in common with them, and in which the piety of the

Christian, the thought of the Protestant, and the zeal of the martyr are

curiously blended with the ferocity of the demagogue. Jenny Geddes, at

the time when Archbishop Laud attempted to force Episcopacy upon

Scotland, is a fair specimen of the kind of character which the

teachings and the practice of such a man would tend to produce in a

nation. This rustic heroine was present when the new bishop, hateful to

Presbyterian eyes, began the service, with the smooth saying, "Let us

read the Collect of the Day." Jenny rose in wrath, and cried out to the

surpliced official of the Lord,--"Thou foul thief, wilt thou say mass at

my lug?" and hurled her stool at his head. Then rose cries of "A Pope! a

Pope! Stone him!" And "the worship of the Lord in Episcopal decency and

order" was ignominiously stopped. And in the next reign, when the same

thing was attempted, the Covenanters, the true spiritual descendants of

Knox, opposed to the most brutal persecution a fierce, morose heroism,

strangely compounded of barbaric passion and Christian fortitude. They

were the most perfect specimens of pure moral grit the world has ever

seen. In the great theological humorist of the nineteenth century, the

Reverend Sydney Smith, the legitimate intellectual successor of the

Reverend Rabelais and the Reverend Swift and the Reverend Sterne, their

sullen intrepidity excites a mingled feeling, in which fun strives with

admiration. In arguing against all intolerance, the intolerance of the

church to which he belonged as well as the intolerance of the churches

to which he was opposed, he said that persecution and bloodshed had no

effect in preventing the Scotch, "that metaphysical people, from going

to heaven in their true way instead of our true way"; and then comes the

humorous sally,--"With a little oatmeal for food and a little sulphur

for friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with one hand and grasping

his Calvinistical creed with the other, Sawney ran away to the flinty

hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and listened to his

sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy of the

tallest thistles." But from the graver historian, developing the

historic significance of their determined resistance to the insolent

claims of ecclesiastical authority, their desperate hardihood elicits a

more fitting tribute. "Hunted down," he says, "like wild beasts,

tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds,

hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from

England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of bands of marauders

from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the

boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of

their despair."

But the man who, in modern times, stands out most prominently as the

representative of this tough physical and moral fibre is Oliver

Cromwell, the greatest of that class of Puritans who combined the

intensest religious passions with the powers of the soldier and the

statesman, and who, in some wild way, reconciled their austere piety

with remorseless efficiency in the world of facts. After all the

materials for an accurate judgment of Cromwell which have been collected

by the malice of his libellers and the veneration of his partisans, he

is still a puzzle to psychologists; for no one, so far, has bridged the

space which separates the seeming anarchy of his mind from the executive

decision of his conduct. A coarse, strong, massive English

nature, thoroughly impregnated with Hebrew thought and Hebrew

passion,--democratic in his sympathy with the rudest political and

religious feelings of his party, autocratic in the consciousness of

superior abilities and tyrannic will,--emancipated from the illusions of

vanity, but not from those of ambition and pride,--shrinking from no

duty and no policy from the fear of obloquy or the fear of death,--a

fanatic and a politician,--a demagogue and a dictator,--seeking the

kingdom of heaven, but determined to take the kingdom of England by the

way,--believing in God, believing in himself, and believing in his

Ironsides,--clothing spiritual faith in physical force, and backing

dogmas and prayers with pikes and cannon,--anxious at once that his

troops should trust in God and keep their powder dry,--with a mind deep

indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, and prolific only in

enormous, half-shaped ideas, which stammer into expression at once

obscure and ominous, the language a strange compound of the slang of the

camp and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apostles,--we still

feel throughout, that, whatever may be the contradictions of his

character, they are not such as to impair the ruthless energy of his

will. Whatever he dared to think he dared to do. No practical emergency

ever found him deficient either in sagacity or resolution, however it

might have found him deficient in mercy. He overrode the moral judgments

of ordinary men as fiercely as he overrode their physical resistance,

crushing prejudices as well as Parliaments, ideas as well as armies; and

whether his task was to cut off the head of an unmanageable king, or

disperse an unmanageable legislative assembly, or massacre an

unmanageable Irish garrison, or boldly establish himself as the

uncontrolled supreme authority of the land, he ever did it thoroughly

and unrelentingly, and could always throw the responsibility of the

deed on the God of battles and the God of Cromwell. In all this we

observe the operation of a colossal practical force rather than an ideal

power, of grit rather than heroism. However much he may command that

portion of our sympathies which thrill at the touch of vigorous action,

there are other sentiments of our being which detect something partial,

vulgar, and repulsive even in his undisputed greatness.

In truth, grit, in its highest forms, is not a form of courage deserving

of unmixed respect and admiration. Admitting its immense practical

influence in public and private life, conceding its value in the rough,

direct struggle of person with person and opinions with institutions, it

is still by no means the top and crown of heroic character; for it lacks

the element of beauty and the element of sympathy; it is individual,

unsocial, bigoted, relatively to occasions; and its force has no

necessary connection with grandeur, generosity, and enlargement of soul.

Even in great men, like Cromwell, there is something in its aspect which

is harsh, ugly, haggard, and ungenial; even in them it is strong by the

stifling of many a generous thought and tolerant feeling; and when it

descends to animate sterile and stunted natures, endowed with sufficient

will to make their meanness or malignity efficient, its unfruitful force

is absolutely hateful. It has done good work for the cause of truth and

right; but it has also done bad work for the cause of falsehood and

wrong: for evil has its grit as well as virtue. As it lacks, suppresses,

or subordinates imagination, it is shorn of an important portion of a

complete manhood; for it not only loses the perception of beauty, but

the power of passing into other minds. It never takes the point of view

of the persons it opposes; its object is victory, not insight; and it

thus fails in that modified mercy to men which springs from an interior

knowledge of their characters. Even when it is the undaunted force

through which moral wrath expresses its hatred of injustice and wrong,

its want of imaginative perception makes it somewhat caricature the

sinners it inveighs against. It converts imperfect or immoral men into

perfect demons, which humanity as well as reason refuses to accept; and

it is therefore not surprising that the prayer of its indignant morality

sometimes is, "Almighty God, condemn them, for they _know_ what they

do!" But we cannot forget that there sounds down the ages, from the

saddest and most triumphant of all martyrdoms, a different and a diviner

prayer,--"Father, forgive them, for they know _not_ what they do!"

Indeed, however much we may be struck with the startling immediateness

of effect which follows the exercise of practical force, we must not

forget the immense agency in human affairs of the ideal powers of the

soul. These work creatively from within to mould character, not only

inflaming great passions, but touching the springs of pity, tenderness,

gentleness, and love,--above all, infusing that wide-reaching sympathy

which sends the individual out of the grit-guarded fortress of his

personality into the wide plain of the race. The culmination of these

ideal powers is in genius and heroism, which draw their inspiration from

ideal and spiritual sources, and radiate it in thoughts beautifully

large and deeds beautifully brave. They do not merely exert power, they

communicate it. If you are overcome by a man of grit, he insolently

makes you conscious of your own weakness. If you are overcome by genius

and heroism, you are made participants in their strength; for they

overcome only to invigorate and uplift. They sweep on their gathering

disciples to the object they have in view, by making it an object of

affection as well as duty. Their power to allure and to attract is not

lost even when their goal is the stake or the cross. They never, in

transient ignominy and pain, lose sight and feeling of the beauty and

bliss inseparably associated with goodness and virtue; and the happiest

death-beds have often been on the rack or in the flame of the

hero-martyr. And they are also, in their results, great practical

influences; for they break down the walls which separate man from

man,--by magnanimous thought or magnanimous act shame us out of our

bitter personal contentions, and flash the sentiment of a common nature

into our individual hatreds and oppositions. As grit decomposes society

into an aggregate of strong and weak persons, genius and heroism unite

them in one humanity. Thus, not many years ago, we were all battling

about the higher law and the law to return fugitive slaves. It was

argument against argument, passion against passion, person against

person, grit against grit. The notions advanced regarding virtue and

vice, justice and injustice, humanity and inhumanity, were as different

as if the controversy had not been between men and men, but between men

and cattle. There were no signs among the combatants that they had the

common reason and the common instincts of a common nature. Then came a

woman of genius, who refused to credit the horrible conceit that the

diversity was essential, who resolutely believed that the human heart

was a unit, and whose glance, piercing the mist of opinions and

interests, saw in the deep and universal sources of humane and human

action the exact point where her blow would tell; and in a novel

unexampled in the annals of literature for popular effect, shook the

whole public reason and public conscience of the country, by the most

searching of all appeals to its heart and imagination.