Tablets Part 9

II.--PERSONAL.

Persist in being yourself, and against fate and yourself. Faith and persistency are life's architects, while doubt and despair bury all under the ruins of any endeavor. You may pull all your paradises about your ears save your earliest; that is to be yours sometime. Strive and have; still striving till striving is having. We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes. Nor need we turn sour if we fail to draw the prizes in life's lottery. It were the speck in the fruit, the falling of our manliness into decay. These blanks were all prizes had we the equanimity to take them without whimpering or discontent. The calamities we suffer arise not from circ.u.mstances chiefly, but from ourselves. If the dose is nauseous or bitter, 'tis because we are, else it were not drank off with the disgust we manifest. Sweet, bitter or sour,--we taste one thing in everything tasted, and that is ourselves. Could each once be clean delivered of himself how salutary were all things and sufficing. "'Tis in morals as in dietetics, one cannot see his fault till he has got rid of it."

Only virtue is fame; nor is it forward in sounding its own praises, being sure that merit never sleeps untold, nor dies without honors. It cannot: once lived and whispered ever so faintly in private places, it publishes itself in spite of every concealment and sometime blazes its fame abroad by myriads of trumpets. The light trembling in the socket of bashfulness, or hidden under the bushel of misapprehension, or inopportunity, flames forth at fitting moment, irradiates the world thereafter forever, streaks the dawn, as a visitation of the day-spring from on high.

It is as ign.o.ble to go begging conditions as to go begging bread. If too feeble, too proud or unapt to create these, one may make up his mind to dispense with any advantage that power on that side of life confers. Not a circ.u.mstance, like the animal whose place in nature is determined, but a creator of circ.u.mstances, man brings to his help freedom, opportunity, art, to build a world out of the world in harmony with his wants. If his occupation is spoiling him 'tis the dictate of virtue as of prudence, to quit it for one that in maintaining shall enrich him also. He must be a bad economist who squanders himself on his maintenance; wasting both his days and himself. His gifts are too costly for such cheap improvidence.

One's character is the task allotted him to form, his faculties the implements, his genius the workman, life the engagement, and with these gifts of nature and of G.o.d, shall he fail to quarry forth from his opportunities a man for his heavenly task-master? "The wise man does not submit to employments which he may undertake, but accommodates and lends himself to them only."

Nor is any man greatest standing apart in his individualism; his strength and dignity come by sympathy with the aims of the best men of the community of which he is a member. Yet whoever seeks the crowd, craving popularity for propping repute, forfeits his claim to reverence and expires in the incense he inhales. The truly great stand upright as columns of the temple whose dome covers all, against whose pillared sides mult.i.tudes lean; at whose base they kneel in times of trouble.

Stand fast by your convictions and there maintain yourself against every odds. One with yourself, you are one with Almighty G.o.d, and a majority against all the world:

Vox priva, vox Dei.

III.--POLITICAL.

"To G.o.d, thy country, and thyself be true, If priest and people change, keep thou thy guard."

Both conformity and nonconformity are alike impracticable. When the conformist can stay clean in his conformity, the nonconformist come clean out of his nonconformity, it will be time to plead self-consistency. Nor let any stay to make proselytes. I have never known the followers of either to come clean out of themselves even, but casting their tributes to expediency or authority, surrender unreservedly to party or sect and sink the man. Born free into free inst.i.tutions, it behooves all to preserve that freedom unimpaired, neither intimidated nor bribed by persons or parties: see that these take nothing of theirs with consent, least of all that which gives consent its dignity and worth,--one's integrity. Good men should not obey bad laws too well, lest bad men taking courage from the precedent, disobey good ones.

"Know there's on earth a yet auguster thing, Veiled though it be, than President or King."

The honorable man prefers his privilege of standing uncommitted to parties when these fail to represent the whole of honor and justice for the state. But when politics become attractive by being principled, senates and cabinets the legislators and executives of justice and common rights, servants of the High Laws, then, as an honorable man and faithful citizen, he is won to the polls to cast a pious and patriotic suffrage for having affairs administered through the best men, whom best men promote to offices to which their virtues give dignity and distinction. There are times nevertheless in one's history when abstinence from this first privilege of a freeman and republican, seems a duty best performed in its non-performance, the true means of preserving self-respect, by standing magnanimously as a protest for the right against the wrong--a vote less on the wrong side of a mixed issue, being as two cast on the right side, the silent significance of a name known as the representative of honor and justice, showing where lies the wrong and the shame--the blush of a defeat on the cheek of an ill-gotten victory. Of no party properly, a good man votes by his virtues for mankind, too just to be claimed by any unless to save it from dishonor.

At best the state's polity is deliberative, ruling the right as far as is practicable under the circ.u.mstances. Of mixed elements, it contents itself with mixed results,--the best permitted under the mixed conditions. But the statesman may not compromise principle for the sake of accommodating legislation to suit the interests of party. If he ride that horse too fearlessly, he is sure to be overthrown. General intelligence interposes the effective check upon political ambition and carries forward state affairs. But if, unequal to self-government, the people have attained to that sense of freedom and no more, which renders liberty a snare, then the state stumbles towards a despotism, call the rule by any fine name you please. No greater calamity can befall a people than that of deliberating long on issues imperilling liberty; any impotency of indecision betraying a lapse into slavery from which the gravest deliberative wisdom cannot rescue them. Knowingly to put on the yoke and wear it restively meanwhile, were a servitude that only slavery itself can cure.

Where sleep the G.o.ds There mob-rule sways the state, Treason hath plots and fell debate, Brother doth brother darkly brand, Few faithful midst sedition's storm do stand, The whole of virtue theirs to stay the reeling land.

"States are destroyed, not so much from want of courage as for want of virtue, and the most pernicious of all ignorance is, when men do not love what they approve; written laws being but images of, or subst.i.tutes for those true laws which ought to be present in every human soul through a perfect insight into good."

THE SOUL'S ERRAND.

"Go, Soul, the Body's guest, Upon a thankless errand; Fear not to touch the best, The truth shall be thy warrant; Go, since all else must die, And give all else the lie.

Go tell the Court it glows And shines like rotten wood; Go tell the Church it shows What's good, but does not good: If Court and Church reply, Give Court and Church the lie.

Tell Potentates they live Acting, but base their actions; Not loved, unless they give, Nor strong, save by their factions: If Potentates reply, Give Potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition, That rule affairs of state, Their purpose is ambition, Their practice chiefly hate: And if they do reply, Then give them all the lie.

Tell those that brave it most, They beg for more by spending; Who, in their greatest cost, Seek nothing but commending: And if they make reply, Spare not to give the lie.

Tell Zeal it lacks devotion; Tell Love it is but l.u.s.t; Tell Time it is but motion; Tell Help it is but dust: And wish them no reply, For thou must give the lie.

Tell Age it daily wasteth; Tell Honor how it alters; Tell Beauty that it blasteth; Tell Favor that she falters: And as they do reply, Give every one the lie.

Tell Wit how much she wrangles In fickle points of niceness; Tell Wisdom she entangles Herself in over niceness; And if they do reply Then give them both the lie.

Tell Physic of her boldness; Tell Skill it is pretension; Tell Charity of coldness; Tell Law it is contention; And if they yield reply, Then give them all the lie.

Tell Fortune of her blindness; Tell Nature of decay; Tell Friendship of unkindness; Tell Justice of delay; And if they do reply, Then give them still the lie.

Tell Arts they have no soundness, But vary by esteeming; Tell Schools they lack profoundness And stand too much on seeming: If Arts and Schools reply, Give Arts and Schools the lie.

Tell Faith it's fled the city; Tell how the country erreth; Tell manhood, shakes off pity, Tell Virtue least preferreth; And if they do reply, Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing; Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing; Yet stab at thee who will, No stab the soul can kill."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Small triangular decoration of two stylized fish]

BOOK II

SPECULATIVE

"Philosophy is one of the richest presents that man ever received from heaven, being that which raises the mind into the contemplation of eternal things, and is the science which of all others affords the most agreeable entertainment."--EVELYN.

I.

INSTRUMENTALITIES.

"The age, the present times, are not To snudge in, and embrace a cot; Action and blood now get the game, Disdain treads on the peaceful name: Who sits at home, too, bears a load Greater than those that gad abroad."

HENRY VAUGHAN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative banner of two mythical animals among leaves]

INSTRUMENTALITIES.

I.--TENDENCIES.

Our time is revolutionary. It drifts strong and fast into unitarianism and the empire of ideas. All things are undergoing reform and reconstruction; the fellowship of all souls intent on laying broad and deep the foundations of the new inst.i.tutions. The firm of Globe Brothers & Co., prospers in both hemispheres, every citizen being a partner in the concern. The nations are leagued together on the basis of mutual a.s.sistance, finding the old alliances founded on force and fear to be insecure; the people seeing it best to be friends and copartners in conducting the world's affairs;--trade the natural knot tying them by the coa.r.s.er wants only; world-politics their bond of union and prosperity. No longer playing independent parts safely, they co-operate and conspire for the common welfare, interposing such checks as each individually requires for his security. Ruling is conducted not by legislation nor diplomacy, but by social and commercial inter-communication; every man opening out for himself the sphere suited to his gifts, and taking his thinking and doing into head and hands as a loyal man and citizen. Power is stealing with a speed and momentum unprecedented from the few to the many; is played out on a theatre world-wide, whole populations taking part in affairs; the distance once separating extremes being bridged; middle men with human sympathies and broad common-sense taking the lead and setting the old pretensions aside. A daring realism overleaping the old barriers gives government into the hands of the whole people, rulers being their servants, not masters; presidents and kings the representatives of ideas and paying loyal homage to these crowned heads; the old virtues of reverence for man, fidelity to principle, so venerable and sacred in private stations, seeking reappearance in public life.