Essays By Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 6

Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences, from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving gra.s.s that divides the brook? Let us not vilify but raise it to that standard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but h.o.a.rd and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee forever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give and of me to receive. It profanes n.o.body. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a G.o.dlier existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good.

19. Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We must be our own before we can be another's. There is at least this satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin proverb;--you can speak to your accomplice on even terms. _Crimen quos[304] inquinat, aequat_.

To those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

20. What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent,--so we may hear the whisper of the G.o.ds. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say anything to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue, is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall catch never a true glance of his eye. We see the n.o.ble afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late,--very late,--we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, no consuetudes or habits of society, would be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we desire,--but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is in them; then shall we meet as water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already they. In the last a.n.a.lysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.

21. The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world.

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage,[305] of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is pa.s.sed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no G.o.d attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world, those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as specters and shadows merely.

22. It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater.

Let us feel, if we will, the absolute insulation of man. We are sure that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the Europe, an old faded garment of dead persons; the books, their ghosts.

Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me. I will be dependent no more." Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own? A friend is Ja.n.u.s-faced:[306] he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger[307] of a greater friend.

23. I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak much with my friend. If he is great, he makes me so great that I cannot descend to converse. In the great days, presentiments hover before me, far before me in the firmament. I ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them, I go out that I may seize them. I fear only that I may lose them receding into the sky in which now they are only a patch of brighter light.

Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty G.o.ds. It is true, next week I shall have languid moods, when I can well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; then I shall regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were by my side again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only with new visions, not with yourself but with your l.u.s.ters, and I shall not be able any more than now to converse with you. So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as though we parted not.

24. It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I c.u.mber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful s.p.a.ce, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pa.s.s away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the G.o.ds of the empyrean.[308] It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a G.o.d, that it may deify both.

HEROISM[309]

"Paradise is under the shadow of swords,"[310]

_Mahomet._

1. In the elder English dramatists,[311] and mainly in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher,[312] there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a n.o.ble behavior were as easily marked in the society of their age, as color is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio[313] enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, This is a gentleman,--and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight in personal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character and dialogue,--as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double Marriage,[314]--wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry.

Among many texts, take the following. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens--all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Martius, and he seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles will not ask his life, although a.s.sured, that a word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds.

"_Valerius._ Bid thy wife farewell.

_Soph._ No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown.[315]

My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste.

_Dor._ Stay, Sophocles--with this, tie up my sight; Let not soft nature so transformed be, And lose her gentler s.e.xed humanity, To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well; Never one object underneath the sun Will I behold before my Sophocles: Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die.

_Mar._ Dost know what 'tis to die?

_Soph._ Thou dost not, Martius, And therefore, not what 'tis to live; to die Is to begin to live. It is to end An old, stale, weary work, and to commence A newer and a better. 'Tis to leave Deceitful knaves for the society Of G.o.ds and goodness. Thou, thyself, must part At last, from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, And prove thy fort.i.tude what then 'twill do.

_Val._ But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus?

_Soph._ Why should I grieve or vex for being sent To them I ever loved best? Now, I'll kneel, But with my back toward thee; 'tis the last duty This trunk can do the G.o.ds.

_Mar._ Strike, strike, Valerius, Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth: This is a man, a woman! Kiss thy lord, And live with all the freedom you were wont.

O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, Ere thou transgress this knot of piety.

_Val._ What ails my brother?

_Soph._ Martius, oh Martius, Thou now hast found a way to conquer me.

_Dor._ O star of Rome! what grat.i.tude can speak Fit words to follow such a deed as this?

_Mar._ This admirable duke, Valerius, With his disdain of fortune and of death, Captived himself, has captived me, And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul.

By Romulus,[316] he is all soul, I think; He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved; Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, And Martius walks now in captivity."

2. I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration, that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the same tune. We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet, Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the ode of "Dion,"[317] and some sonnets, have a certain n.o.ble music; and Scott[318] will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour of Burley.[319] Thomas Carlyle,[320] with his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns[321] has given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies,[322] there is an account of the battle of Lutzen,[323] which deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley's[324] History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of individual valor with admiration, all the more evident on the part of the narrator, that he seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford[325] requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence.

But if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch,[326] who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas,[327] the Dion,[328] the Epaminondas,[329] the Scipio[330] of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism[331] not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame.

3. We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of political science, or of private economy. Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by our predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. The disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed such compound misery. A lockjaw that bends a man's head back to his heels, hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes, insanity that makes him eat gra.s.s; war, plague, cholera, famine indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily, almost no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.

4. Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rect.i.tude of his behavior.

5. Toward all this external evil, the man within the breast a.s.sumes a warlike att.i.tude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. To this military att.i.tude of the soul we give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms, and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with it; it has pride; it is the extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless, we must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat in great actions, which does not allow us to go behind them. Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual activity, would have modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero, that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled man, that he finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists.

6. Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience[332] to a secret impulse of an individual's character.

Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little further on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.

7. Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a fort.i.tude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the b.u.t.t and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus,[333] is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums, and cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and custard, which rack the wit of all human society. What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the world then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. "Indeed, these humble considerations[334] make me out of love with greatness.

What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity, and one other for use!"

8. Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display: the soul of a better quality thrusts back the unreasonable economy into the vaults of life, and says, I will obey the G.o.d, and the sacrifice and the fire he will provide. Ibn Hankal,[335] the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bokhar,[336] "When I was in Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a hundred years. Strangers may present themselves at any hour, and in whatever number; the master has amply provided for the reception of the men and their animals, and is never happier than when they tarry for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in any other country."

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not for ostentation--do, as it were, put G.o.d under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe. In some way the time they seem to lose is redeemed, and the pains they seem to take remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of human love, and raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks[337] and fair water than belong to city feasts.

9. The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn, and denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic. John Eliot,[338] the Indian Apostle, drank water, and said of wine,--"It is a n.o.ble, generous liquor, and we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was made before it." Better still is the temperance of king David[339] who poured out on the ground unto the Lord the water which three of his warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives.

10. It is told of Brutus,[340] that when he fell on his sword, after the battle of Philippi,[341] he quoted a line of Euripides,[342]--"O virtue! I have followed thee through life, and I find thee at last but a shade." I doubt not the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its n.o.bleness. It does not ask to dine nicely, and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.

11. But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic cla.s.s, is the good humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a rate, that they will not soothe their enemies by pet.i.tions, or the show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio,[343] charged with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates'[344]

condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346]

playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his company,

_Jul._ Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye.

_Master._ Very likely, 'Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye.

These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have c.u.mbered the earth long thousands of years. Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world behind them, and play their own play in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws[347] of the world; and such would appear, could we see the human race a.s.sembled in vision, like little children frolicking together; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a stately and solemn garb of works and influences.

12. The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All these great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great guest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us of our superst.i.tious a.s.sociations with places and times, with number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia, and England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, there the G.o.ds sojourn, and not in any geography of fame.

Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and cla.s.sic topography. But here we are; and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself is here;--and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas,[348]

brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus[349] to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The Jerseys[350] were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and London streets for the feet of Milton.[351] A great man makes his climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest, which is inhabited by the n.o.blest minds. The pictures which fill the imagination in reading the actions of Pericles,[352] Xenophon,[353]

Columbus,[354] Bayard,[355] Sidney,[356] Hampden,[357] teach us how needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth of our living, should deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on principles that should interest man and nature in the length of our days.

13. We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary.

When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, or books, or religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an active profession, and the forming Colossus[358] shrinks to the common size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun to plow in its furrow.

They found no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What then? The lesson they gave in their first aspirations, is yet true; and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their belief. Or why should a woman liken herself to any historical woman, and think, because Sappho,[359] or Sevigne,[360] or De Stael,[361] or the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis,[362] none can,--certainly not she. Why not? She has a new and unattempted problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that ever bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way, accept the hint of each new experience, search, in turn, all the objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the charm of her new-born being which is the kindling of a new dawn in the recesses of s.p.a.ce. The fair girl, who repels interference by a decided and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own n.o.bleness. The silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

Come into port greatly, or sail with G.o.d the seas. Not in vain you live, for every pa.s.sing eye is cheered and refined by the vision.