want Monadnoc, Agiocochook,--or Helvellyn, or Plinlimmon, dear to
English song, in your closet? Caerleon, Provence, Ossian, and Cadwallon?
Tie a couple of strings across a board and set it in your window, and
you have an instrument which no artist's harp can rival. It needs no
instructed ear; if you have sensibility, it admits you to sacred
interiors; it has the sadness of nature, yet, at the changes, tones of
triumph and festal notes ringing out all measures of loftiness. "Did you
never observe," says Gray, "'while rocking winds are piping loud,' that
pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a
shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Æolian harp? I do
assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit."
Perhaps you can recall a delight like it, which spoke to the eye, when
you have stood by a lake in the woods, in summer, and saw where little
flaws of wind whip spots or patches of still water into fleets of
ripples, so sudden, so slight, so spiritual, that it was more like the
rippling of the Aurora Borealis, at night, than any spectacle of day.
7. But the solitude of nature is not so essential as solitude of habit.
I have found my advantage in going in summer to a country inn, in winter
to a city hotel, with a task which would not prosper at home. I thus
secured a more absolute seclusion; for it is almost impossible for a
housekeeper, who is in the country a small farmer, to exclude
interruptions, and even necessary orders, though I bar out by system all
I can, and resolutely omit, to my constant damage, all that can be
omitted. At home, the day is cut into short strips. In the hotel, I have
no hours to keep, no visits to make or receive, and I command an
astronomic leisure. I forget rain, wind, cold, and heat. At home, I
remember in my library the wants of the farm, and have all too much
sympathy. I envy the abstraction of some scholars I have known, who
could sit on a curbstone in State Street, put up their back, and solve
their problem. I have more womanly eyes. All the conditions must be
right for my success, slight as that is. What untunes is as bad as what
cripples or stuns me. Novelty, surprise, change of scene, refresh the
artist,--"break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms," as
Hafiz said. The sea-shore, and the taste of two metals in contact, and
our enlarged powers in the presence, or rather at the approach and at
the departure of a friend, and the mixture of lie in truth, and the
experience of poetic creativeness which is not found in staying at home,
nor yet in travelling, but in transitions from one to the other, which
must therefore be adroitly managed to present as much transitional
surface as possible,--these are the types or conditions of this power.
"A ride near the sea, a sail near the shore," said the ancient. So
Montaigne travelled with his books, but did not read in them. "_La
Nature aime les croisements_," says Fourier.
I know there is room for whims here; but in regard to some apparent
trifles there is great agreement as to their annoyance. And the machine
with which we are dealing is of such an inconceivable delicacy that
whims also must be respected. Fire must lend its aid. We not only want
time, but warm time. George Sand says, "I have no enthusiasm for nature
which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy." And I remember
that Thoreau, with his robust will, yet found certain trifles disturbing
the delicacy of that health which composition exacted,--namely, the
slightest irregularity, even to the drinking too much water on the
preceding day. Even a steel pen is a nuisance to some writers. Some of
us may remember, years ago, in the English journals, the petition,
signed by Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, and other writers in
London, against the license of the organ-grinders, who infested the
streets near their houses, to levy on them blackmail.
Certain localities, as mountain-tops, the sea-side, the shores of rivers
and rapid brooks, natural parks of oak and pine, where the ground is
smooth and unencumbered, are excitants of the muse. Every artist knows
well some favorite retirement. And yet the experience of some good
artists has taught them to prefer the smallest and plainest chamber,
with one chair and table, and with no outlook, to these picturesque
liberties. William Blake said, "Natural objects always did and do
weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me." And Sir Joshua
Reynolds had no pleasure in Richmond; he used to say "the human face was
his landscape." These indulgences are to be used with great caution.
Allston rarely left his studio by day. An old friend took him, one fine
afternoon, a spacious circuit into the country, and he painted two or
three pictures as the fruits of that drive. But he made it a rule not to
go to the city on two consecutive days. One was rest; more was lost
time. The times of force must be well husbanded, and the wise student
will remember the prudence of Sir Tristram in _Morte d'Arthur_, who,
having received from the fairy an enchantment of six hours of growing
strength every day, took care to fight in the hours when his strength
increased; since from noon to night his strength abated. What prudence,
again, does every artist, every scholar, need in the security of his
easel or his desk! These must be remote from the work of the house, and
from all knowledge of the feet that come and go therein. Allston, it is
said, had two or three rooms in different parts of Boston, where he
could not be found. For the delicate muses lose their head, if their
attention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad in
talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your book-shelf
and your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish
some commandment, it makes you odious to men, and men odious to you, and
you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the
lamp, and you must solve those questions though you die.
8. Conversation, which, when it is best, is a series of intoxications.
Not Aristotle, not Kant or Hegel, but conversation, is the right
metaphysical professor. This is the true school of philosophy,--this the
college where you learn what thoughts are, what powers lurk in those
fugitive gleams, and what becomes of them; how they make history. A wise
man goes to this game to play upon others, and to be played upon, and at
least as curious to know what can be drawn from himself as what can be
drawn from them. For, in discourse with a friend, our thought, hitherto
wrapped in our consciousness, detaches itself, and allows itself to be
seen as a thought, in a manner as new and entertaining to us as to our
companions. For provocation of thought, we use ourselves and use each
other. Some perceptions--I think the best--are granted to the single
soul; they come from the depth, and go to the depth, and are the
permanent and controlling ones. Others it takes two to find. We must be
warmed by the fire of sympathy to be brought into the right conditions
and angles of vision. Conversation; for intellectual activity is
contagious. We are emulous. If the tone of the companion is higher than
ours, we delight in rising to it. 'Tis a historic observation that a
writer must find an audience up to his thought, or he will no longer
care to impart it, but will sink to their level, or be silent. Homer
said, "When two come together, one apprehends before the other"; but it
is because one thought well that the other thinks better: and two men of
good mind will excite each other's activity, each attempting still to
cap the other's thought. In enlarged conversation we have suggestions
that require new ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and
sciences. By sympathy, each opens to the eloquence, and begins to see
with the eyes of his mind. We were all lonely, thoughtless; and now a
principle appears to all: we see new relations, many truths; every mind
seizes them as they pass; each catches by the mane one of these strong
coursers like horses of the prairie, and rides up and down in the world
of the intellect. We live day by day under the illusion that it is the
fact or event that imports, whilst really it is not that which
signifies, but the use we put it to, or what we think of it. We esteem
nations important, until we discover that a few individuals much more
concern us; then, later, that it is not at last a few individuals, or
any sacred heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, the large equality
to truth, of a single mind,--as if in the narrow walls of a human heart
the whole realm of truth, the world of morals, the tribunal by which the
universe is judged, found room to exist.
9. New poetry; by which I mean chiefly, old poetry that is new to the
reader. I have heard from persons who had practice in rhyming, that it
was sufficient to set them on writing verses, to read any original
poetry. What is best in literature is the affirming, prophesying,
spermatic words of men-making poets. Only that is poetry which cleanses
and mans me.
Words used in a new sense, and figuratively, dart a delightful lustre;
and _every_ word admits a new use, and hints ulterior meanings. We have
not learned the law of the mind,--cannot control and domesticate at will
the high states of contemplation and continuous thought. "Neither by sea
nor by land," said Pindar, "canst thou find the way to the
Hyperboreans"; neither by idle wishing, nor by rule of three or rule of
thumb. Yet I find a mitigation or solace by providing always a good book
for my journeys, as Horace or Martial or Goethe,--some book which lifts
me quite out of prosaic surroundings, and from which I draw some lasting
knowledge. A Greek epigram out of the anthology, a verse of Herrick or
Lovelace, are in harmony both with sense and spirit.
You shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels, nor Montaigne,
nor the newest French book. You may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus,
Hindoo mythology, and ethics. You may read Chaucer, Shakspeare, Ben
Jonson, Milton,--and Milton's prose as his verse; read Collins and Gray;
read Hafiz and the Trouveurs; nay, Welsh and British mythology of
Arthur, and (in your ear) Ossian; fact-books, which all geniuses prize
as raw material, and as antidote to verbiage and false poetry.
Fact-books, if the facts be well and thoroughly told, are much more
nearly allied to poetry than many books are that are written in rhyme.
Only our newest knowledge works as a source of inspiration and thought,
as only the outmost layer of _liber_ on the tree. Books of natural
science, especially those written by the ancients,--geography, botany,
agriculture, explorations of the sea, of meteors, of astronomy,--all the
better if written without literary aim or ambition. Every book is good
to read which sets the reader in a working mood. The deep book, no
matter how remote the subject, helps us best.
Neither are these all the sources, nor can I name all. The receptivity
is rare. The occasions or predisposing circumstances I could never
tabulate; but now one, now another landscape, form, color, or companion,
or perhaps one kind of sounding word or syllable, "strikes the electric
chain with which we are darkly bound," and it is impossible to detect
and wilfully repeat the fine conditions to which we have owed our
happiest frames of mind. The day is good in which we have had the most
perceptions. The analysis is the more difficult, because poppy-leaves
are strewn when a generalization is made; for I can never remember the
circumstances to which I owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or put
myself in the conditions.
"'Tis the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain."
I value literary biography for the hints it furnishes from so many
scholars, in so many countries, of what hygiene, what ascetic, what
gymnastic, what social practices their experience suggested and
approved. They are, for the most part, men who needed only a little
wealth. Large estates, political relations, great hospitalities, would
have been impediments to them. They are men whom a book could entertain,
a new thought intoxicate, and hold them prisoners for years perhaps.
Aubrey and Burton and Wood tell me incidents which I find not
insignificant.
These are some hints towards what is in all education a chief necessity,
the right government, or, shall I not say, the right obedience to the
powers of the human soul. Itself is the dictator; the mind itself the
awful oracle. All our power, all our happiness, consists in our
reception of its hints, which ever become clearer and grander as they
are obeyed.
[Footnote 5: Allingham.]
GREATNESS.
GREATNESS.
THERE is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power and
goodness we have, so much more the energy of that aim. Every human being
has a right to it, and in the pursuit we do not stand in each other's
way. For it has a long scale of degrees, a wide variety of views, and
every aspirant, by his success in the pursuit, does not hinder but helps
his competitors. I might call it completeness, but that is
later,--perhaps adjourned for ages. I prefer to call it Greatness. It is
the fulfilment of a natural tendency in each man. It is a fruitful
study. It is the best tonic to the young soul. And no man is unrelated;
therefore we admire eminent men, not for themselves, but as
representatives. It is very certain that we ought not to be, and shall
not be contented with any goal we have reached. Our aim is no less than
greatness; that which invites all, belongs to us all,--to which we are
all sometimes untrue, cowardly, faithless, but of which we never quite
despair, and which, in every sane moment, we resolve to make our own. It
is also the only platform on which all men can meet. What anecdotes of
any man do we wish to hear or read? Only the best. Certainly not those
in which he was degraded to the level of dulness or vice, but those in
which he rose above all competition by obeying a light that shone to him
alone. This is the worthiest history of the world.
Greatness,--what is it? Is there not some injury to us, some insult in
the word? What we commonly call greatness is only such in our barbarous
or infant experience. 'Tis not the soldier, not Alexander or Bonaparte
or Count Moltke surely, who represent the highest force of mankind; not
the strong hand, but wisdom and civility, the creation of laws,
institutions, letters, and art. These we call by distinction the
_humanities_; these, and not the strong arm and brave heart, which are
also indispensable to their defence. For the scholars represent the
intellect, by which man is man; the intellect and the moral
sentiment,--which in the last analysis can never be separated. Who can
doubt the potency of an individual mind, who sees the shock given to
torpid races--torpid for ages--by Mahomet; a vibration propagated over
Asia and Africa? What of Menu? what of Buddha? of Shakspeare? of Newton?
of Franklin?
There are certain points of identity in which these masters agree.
Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears. The man in
the tavern maintains his opinion, though the whole crowd takes the other
side; we are at once drawn to him. The porter or truckman refuses a
reward for finding your purse, or for pulling you drowning out of the
river. Thereby, with the service, you have got a moral lift. You say of
some new person, That man will go far,--for you see in his manners that
the recognition of him by others is not necessary to him. And what a
bitter-sweet sensation when we have gone to pour out our acknowledgment
of a man's nobleness, and found him quite indifferent to our good
opinion! They may well fear Fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim;
but he who rests on what he is, has a destiny above destiny, and can
make mouths at Fortune. If a man's centrality is incomprehensible to us,
we may as well snub the sun. There is something in Archimedes or in
Luther or Samuel Johnson that needs no protection. There is somewhat in
the true scholar which he cannot be laughed out of, nor be terrified or
bought off from. Stick to your own; don't inculpate yourself in the
local, social, or national crime, but follow the path your genius traces
like the galaxy of heaven, for you to walk in.
A sensible person will soon see the folly and wickedness of thinking to
please. Sensible men are very rare. A sensible man does not brag, avoids
introducing the names of his creditable companions, omits himself as
habitually as another man obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is
content with putting his fact or theme simply on its ground. You shall
not tell me that your commercial house, your partners, or yourself are
of importance; you shall not tell me that you have learned to know men;
you shall make me feel that; your saying so unsays it. You shall not
enumerate your brilliant acquaintances, nor tell me by their titles what
books you have read. I am to infer that you keep good company by your
better information and manners, and to infer your reading from the
wealth and accuracy of your conversation.
Young men think that the manly character requires that they should go to
California, or to India, or into the army. When they have learned that
the parlor and the college and the counting-room demand as much courage
as the sea or the camp, they will be willing to consult their own
strength and education in their choice of place.
There are to each function and department of nature supplementary men:
to geology, sinewy, out-of-doors men, with a taste for mountains and
rocks, a quick eye for differences and for chemical changes. Give such,
first, a course in chemistry, and then a geological survey. Others find
a charm and a profession in the natural history of man and the mammalia,
or related animals; others in ornithology, or fishes, or insects; others
in plants; others in the elements of which the whole world is made.
These lately have stimulus to their study through the extraordinary
revelations of the spectroscope that the sun and the planets are made in
part or in whole of the same elements as the earth is. Then there is the
boy who is born with a taste for the sea, and must go thither if he has
to run away from his father's house to the forecastle; another longs for
travel in foreign lands; another will be a lawyer; another, an
astronomer; another, a painter, sculptor, architect, or engineer. Thus
there is not a piece of nature in any kind, but a man is born, who, as
his genius opens, aims slower or faster to dedicate himself to that.
Then there is the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the orator, the
clergyman, the physician. 'Tis gratifying to see this adaptation of man
to the world, and to every part and particle of it.
Many readers remember that Sir Humphry Davy said, when he was praised
for his important discoveries, "My best discovery was Michael Faraday."
In 1848 I had the privilege of hearing Professor Faraday deliver, in the
Royal Institution in London, a lecture on what he called
Diamagnetism,--by which he meant _cross-magnetism_; and he showed us
various experiments on certain gases, to prove that whilst, ordinarily,
magnetism of steel is from north to south, in other substances, gases,
it acts from east to west. And further experiments led him to the theory
that every chemical substance would be found to have its own, and a
different, polarity. I do not know how far his experiments and others
have been pushed in this matter, but one fact is clear to me, that
diamagnetism is a law of the _mind_, to the full extent of Faraday's
idea; namely, that every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new
direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other
mind;--as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a new
countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character.
Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral
sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him
in a new path, and, the more it is trusted, separates and signalizes
him, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We call
this specialty the _bias_ of each individual. And none of us will ever
accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to
this whisper which is heard by him alone. Swedenborg called it the
_proprium_,--not a thought shared with others, but constitutional to the
man. A point of education that I can never too much insist upon is this
tenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and that
it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and
attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle,
which points always in one direction to his proper path, with more or
less variation from any other man's. He is never happy nor strong until
he finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to
watch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have the
entire assurance of his own mind. And in this self-respect, or
hearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may say, or
need never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect,
genius; in practice, talent;--not to imitate or surpass a particular man
in _his_ way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method,
style, wit, eloquence. 'Tis easy for a commander to command. Clinging to
Nature, or to that province of nature which he knows, he makes no
mistakes, but works after her laws and at her own pace, so that his
doing, which is perfectly natural, appears miraculous to dull people.
Montluc, the great Marshal of France, says of the Genoese admiral,
Andrew Doria, "It seemed as if the sea stood in awe of this man." And a
kindred genius, Nelson, said, "I feel that I am fitter to do the action
than to describe it." Therefore I will say that another trait of
greatness is facility.
This necessity of resting on the real, of speaking _your_ private
thought and experience, few young men apprehend. Set ten men to write
their journal for one day, and nine of them will leave out their
thought, or proper result,--that is, their net experience,--and lose
themselves in misreporting the supposed experience of other people.
Indeed, I think it an essential caution to young writers, that they
shall not in their discourse leave out the one thing which the discourse
was written to say. Let that belief which you hold alone, have free
course. I have observed that, in all public speaking, the rule of the
orator begins, not in the array of his facts, but when his deep
conviction, and the right and necessity he feels to convey that
conviction to his audience,--when these shine and burn in his address;
when the thought which he stands for gives its own authority to
him,--adds to him a grander personality, gives him valor, breadth, and
new intellectual power, so that not he, but mankind, seems to speak
through his lips. There is a certain transfiguration; all great orators
have it, and men who wish to be orators simulate it.
If we should ask ourselves what is this self-respect,--it would carry us
to the highest problems. It is our practical perception of the Deity in
man. It has its deep foundations in religion. If you have ever known a
good mind among the Quakers, you will have found _that_ is the element
of their faith. As they express it, it might be thus: "I do not pretend
to any commandment or large revelation, but if at any time I form some
plan, propose a journey, or a course of conduct, I perhaps find a silent
obstacle in my mind that I cannot account for. Very well,--I let it lie,
thinking it may pass away, but if it do not pass away, I yield to it,
obey it. You ask me to describe it. I cannot describe it. It is not an
oracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, nor a law; it is too simple to be
described, it is but a grain of mustard-seed, but such as it is, it is
something which the contradiction of all mankind could not shake, and
which the consent of all mankind could not confirm."
You are rightly fond of certain books or men that you have found to
excite your reverence and emulation. But none of these can compare with
the greatness of that counsel which is open to you in happy solitude. I
mean that there is for you the following of an inward leader,--a slow
discrimination that there is for each a Best Counsel which enjoins the
fit word and the fit act for every moment. And the path of each pursued
leads to greatness. How grateful to find in man or woman a new emphasis
of their own.