CONCORD, February 27, 1853.
MR. BLAKE,--I have not answered your letter before, because I have
been almost constantly in the fields surveying of late. It is long
since I have spent many days so profitably in a pecuniary sense; so
unprofitably, it seems to me, in a more important sense. I have earned
just a dollar a day for seventy-six days past; for, though I charge at
a higher rate for the days which are seen to be spent, yet so many
more are spent than appears. This is instead of lecturing, which has
not offered, to pay for that book which I printed.[46] I have not only
cheap hours, but cheap weeks and months; that is, weeks which are
bought at the rate I have named. Not that they are quite lost to me,
or make me very melancholy, alas! for I too often take a cheap
satisfaction in so spending them,--weeks of pasturing and browsing,
like beeves and deer,--which give me animal health, it may be, but
create a tough skin over the soul and intellectual part. Yet, if men
should offer my body a maintenance for the work of my head alone, I
feel that it would be a dangerous temptation.
As to whether what you speak of as the "world's way" (which for the
most part is my way), or that which is shown me, is the better, the
former is imposture, the latter is truth. I have the coldest
confidence in the last. There is only such hesitation as the
appetites feel in following the aspirations. The clod hesitates
because it is inert, wants _animation_. The one is the way of death,
the other of life everlasting. My hours are not "cheap in such a way
that _I_ doubt whether the world's way would not have been better,"
but cheap in such a way that I doubt whether the world's way, which I
have adopted for the time, could be worse. The whole enterprise of
this nation, which is not an upward, but a westward one, toward
Oregon, California, Japan, etc., is totally devoid of interest to me,
whether performed on foot, or by a Pacific railroad. It is not
illustrated by a thought; it is not warmed by a sentiment; there is
nothing in it which one should lay down his life for, nor even his
gloves,--hardly which one should take up a newspaper for. It is
perfectly heathenish,--a filibustering _toward_ heaven by the great
western route. No; they may go their way to their manifest destiny,
which I trust is not mine. May my seventy-six dollars, whenever I get
them, help to carry me in the other direction! I see them on their
winding way, but no music is wafted from their host,--only the
rattling of change in their pockets. I would rather be a captive
knight, and let them all pass by, than be free only to go whither they
are bound. What end do they propose to themselves beyond Japan? What
aims more lofty have they than the prairie dogs?
As it respects these things, I have not changed an opinion one iota
from the first. As the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in
Assyria, they look to me now, a New-Englander. The higher the
mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from
year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no
change. I am a Switzer on the edge of the glacier, with his advantages
and disadvantages, goitre, or what not. (You may suspect it to be some
kind of swelling at any rate.) I have had but one _spiritual_ birth
(excuse the word), and now whether it rains or snows, whether I laugh
or cry, fall farther below or approach nearer to my standard; whether
Pierce or Scott is elected,--not a new scintillation of light flashes
on me, but ever and anon, though with longer intervals, the same
surprising and everlastingly new light dawns to me, with only such
variations as in the coming of the natural day, with which, indeed, it
is often coincident.
As to how to preserve potatoes from rotting, your opinion may change
from year to year; but as to how to preserve your soul from rotting, I
have nothing to learn, but something to practice.
Thus I declaim against them; but I in my folly am the world I condemn.
I very rarely, indeed, if ever, "feel any itching to be what is called
useful to my fellow-men." Sometimes--it may be when my thoughts for
want of employment fall into a beaten path or humdrum--I have dreamed
idly of stopping a man's horse that was running away; but, perchance,
I wished that he might run, in order that I might stop him;--or of
putting out a fire; but then, of course, it must have got well
a-going. Now, to tell the truth, I do not dream much of acting upon
horses before they run, or of preventing fires which are not yet
kindled. What a foul subject is this of doing good! instead of
minding one's life, which should be his business; doing good as a dead
carcass, which is only fit for manure, instead of as a living
man,--instead of taking care to flourish, and smell and taste sweet,
and refresh all mankind to the extent of our capacity and quality.
People will sometimes try to persuade you that you have done something
from that motive, as if you did not already know enough about it. If I
ever _did_ a man any good, in their sense, of course it was something
exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I
am constantly doing by being what I am. As if you were to preach to
ice to shape itself into burning-glasses, which are sometimes useful,
and so the peculiar properties of ice be lost. Ice that merely
performs the office of a burning-glass does not do its duty.
The problem of life becomes, one cannot say by how many degrees, more
complicated as our material wealth is increased,--whether that needle
they tell of was a gateway or not,--since the problem is not merely
nor mainly to get life for our bodies, but by this or a similar
discipline to get life for our souls; by cultivating the lowland farm
on right principles, that is, with this view, to turn it into an
upland farm. You have so many more talents to account for. If I
accomplish as much more in spiritual work as I am richer in worldly
goods, then I am just as worthy, or worth just as much, as I was
before, and no more. I see that, in my own case, money _might_ be of
great service to me, but probably it would not be; for the difficulty
now is, that I do not improve my opportunities, and therefore I am
not prepared to have my opportunities increased. Now, I warn you, if
it be as you say, you have got to put on the pack of an upland farmer
in good earnest the coming spring, the lowland farm being cared for;
ay, you must be selecting your seeds forthwith, and doing what winter
work you can; and, while others are raising potatoes and Baldwin
apples for you, you must be raising apples of the Hesperides for them.
(Only hear how he preaches!) No man can suspect that he is the
proprietor of an upland farm,--upland in the sense that it will
produce nobler crops, and better repay cultivation in the long
run,--but he will be perfectly sure that he ought to cultivate it.
Though we are desirous to earn our bread, we need not be anxious to
_satisfy_ men for it,--though we shall take care to pay them,--but
God, who alone gave it to us. Men may in effect put us in the debtors'
jail for that matter, simply for paying our whole debt to God, which
includes our debt to them, and though we have His receipt for it,--for
His paper is dishonored. The cashier will tell you that He has no
stock in his bank.
How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how
slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our _souls_! Indeed, we
would-be practical folks cannot use this word without blushing because
of our infidelity, having starved this substance almost to a shadow.
We feel it to be as absurd as if a man were to break forth into a
eulogy on _his dog_, who has n't any. An ordinary man will work every
day for a year at shoveling dirt to support his body, or a family of
bodies; but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a
year for the support of his soul. Even the priests, the men of God, so
called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of
the body. But he alone is the truly enterprising and practical man who
succeeds in _maintaining_ his soul here. Have not we our everlasting
life to get? and is not that the only excuse at last for eating,
drinking, sleeping, or even carrying an umbrella when it rains? A man
might as well devote himself to raising pork as to fattening the
bodies, or temporal part merely, of the whole human family. If we made
the true distinction we should almost all of us be seen to be in the
almshouse for souls.
I am much indebted to you because you look so steadily at the better
side, or rather the true centre of me (for our true centre may, and
perhaps oftenest does, lie entirely aside from us, and we are in fact
eccentric), and, as I have elsewhere said, "give me an opportunity to
live." You speak as if the image or idea which I see were reflected
from me to you; and I see it again reflected from you to me, because
we stand at the right angle to one another; and so it goes zigzag to
what successive reflecting surfaces, before it is all dissipated or
absorbed by the more unreflecting, or differently reflecting,--who
knows? Or, perhaps, what you see directly, you refer to me. What a
little shelf is required, by which we may impinge upon another, and
build there our eyry in the clouds, and all the heavens we see above
us we refer to the crags around and beneath us. Some piece of mica, as
it were, in the face or eyes of one, as on the Delectable Mountains,
slanted at the right angle, reflects the heavens to us. But, in the
slow geological upheavals and depressions, these mutual angles are
disturbed, these suns set, and new ones rise to us. That ideal which I
worshiped was a greater stranger to the mica than to me. It was not
the hero I admired, but the reflection from his epaulet or helmet. It
is nothing (for us) permanently inherent in another, but his attitude
or relation to what we prize, that we admire. The meanest man may
glitter with micacious particles to his fellow's eye. These are the
spangles that adorn a man. The highest union,--the only _un_-ion
(don't laugh), or central oneness, is the coincidence of visual rays.
Our club-room was an apartment in a constellation where our visual
rays met (and there was no debate about the restaurant). The way
between us is over the mount.
Your words make me think of a man of my acquaintance whom I
occasionally meet, whom you, too, appear to have met, one Myself, as
he is called. Yet, why not call him _Your_self? If you have met with
him and know him, it is all I have done; and surely, where there is a
mutual acquaintance, the _my_ and _thy_ make a distinction without a
difference.
I do not wonder that you do not like my Canada story. It concerns me
but little, and probably is not worth the time it took to tell it. Yet
I had absolutely no design whatever in my mind, but simply to report
what I saw. I have inserted all of myself that was implicated, or made
the excursion. It has come to an end, at any rate; they will print no
more, but return me my MS. when it is but little more than half done,
as well as another I had sent them, because the editor[47] requires
the liberty to omit the heresies without consulting me,--a privilege
California is not rich enough to bid for.
I thank you again and again for attending to me; that is to say, I am
glad that you hear me and that you also are glad. Hold fast to your
most indefinite, waking dream. The very green dust on the walls is an
organized vegetable; the atmosphere has its fauna and flora floating
in it; and shall we think that dreams are but dust and ashes, are
always disintegrated and crumbling thoughts, and not dust-like
thoughts trooping to their standard with music,--systems beginning to
be organized? These expectations,--these are roots, these are nuts,
which even the poorest man has in his bin, and roasts or cracks them
occasionally in winter evenings,--which even the poor debtor retains
with his bed and his pig, i. e., his idleness and sensuality. Men go
to the opera because they hear there a faint expression in sound of
this news which is never quite distinctly proclaimed. Suppose a man
were to sell the hue, the least amount of coloring matter in the
superficies of his thought, for a farm,--were to exchange an absolute
and infinite value for a relative and finite one,--to gain the whole
world and lose his own soul!
Do not wait as long as I have before you write. If you will look at
another star, I will try to supply my side of the triangle.
Tell Mr. Brown that I remember him, and trust that he remembers me.
P. S.--Excuse this rather flippant preaching, which does not cost me
enough; and do not think that I mean you _always_, though your letter
_requested_ the subjects.