SELF-RELIANCE
(1841)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Ne te quaesiveris extra.
Man
is his own star; and the soul that can
Render
an honest and a perfect man,
Commands
all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing
to him falls early or too late.
Our
acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our
fatal shadows that walk by us still.
-
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune.
Cast
the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle
him with the she-wolf's teat,
Wintered
with the hawk and fox,
Power
and speed be hands and feet.
I read the other day some verses
written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. Always
the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The
sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To
believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private
heart is true for all men, - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and
it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost -
and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last
Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we
ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions,
and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and
watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than
the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice
his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own
rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great
works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to
abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most
when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger
will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all
the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from
another.
There is a time in every man's
education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that
imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his
portion; that though the wide universe
is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of
ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in
nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know
until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes
much impression on him, and another none. It is not without preestablished
harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should
fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the
utmost syllable of his confession. We but half express ourselves, and are
ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely
trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to
exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart
into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall
give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt
his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates
to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you,
the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events. Great men have
always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age,
betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart,
working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now
men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not
pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and
benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Almighty effort let us
advance on Chaos and the Dark.
What pretty oracles nature yields us
on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes. That
divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has
computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their
mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their
faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so
that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and
play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own
piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be
put by, it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because
he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room who spoke so clear and
emphatic?
It seems he knows how to speak to
his contemporaries. Good Heaven! it is he! it is that very lump of bashfulness
and phlegm which for weeks has done nothing but eat when you were by, and now
rolls out these words like
bellstrokes.
It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he
will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure
of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to
conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. How is a boy the
master of society; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on
such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits,
in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent,
troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he
gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him; he does not court
you. But the man is as it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon
as he has once acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed person, watched by
the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into
his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his
neutral, godlike independence! Who can thus lose all pledge and, having
observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted
innocence, must always be formidable, must always engage the poet's and the
man's regards. Of such an immortal youth the force would be felt. He would
utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but
necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and put them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear
in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its
members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the
better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and
culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance
is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man, must be a
nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the
name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred
but the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have
the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was
prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear
old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the
sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, -
"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied,
"They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will
live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my
nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this;
the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against
it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every
thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we
capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every
decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I
ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice
and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot
assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news
from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, "Go love thy infant; love thy
wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish
your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk
a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless
would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.
Your goodness must have some edge to it, - else it is none. The doctrine of
hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when
that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my
genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim. I hope it
is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in
explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.
Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put
all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish
philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men
as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons
to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to
prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at
college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many
now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies; - though I
confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar,
which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Virtues are, in the popular
estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues.
Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much
as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their
works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, - as
invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not
wish to expiate, but to live.
My life is not an apology, but a
life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be
of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be
glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet
and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a
conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse
this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no
difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent.
I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and
mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or
the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
What I must do is all that concerns
me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in
intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and
meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they
know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live
after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but
the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness
the independence of solitude.
The objection to conforming to
usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses
your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead
church, contribute to a dead Bible Society, vote with a great party either for
the Government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, - under
all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And of
course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and
I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must
consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect
I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic
the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know
beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not
know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution
he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to
look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish
minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the
emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another
handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of
opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of
a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true.
Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four: so that every word
they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime
nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we
adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the
gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular,
which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean
"the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in
company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not
interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping
wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, and make the most
disagreeable sensation; a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave young
man will suffer twice.
For non-conformity the world whips
you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour
face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the
friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance
like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces
of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause - disguise no god,
but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the
discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the
college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage
of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are
timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the
indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused,
when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made
to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it
godlike as a trifle of no concernment.
The other terror that scares us from
self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the
eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts,
and we are loath to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head
over your shoulder? Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, lest
you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose
you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom
never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but
to bring the past for judgment into the thousand eyed present, and live ever in
a new day. Trust your emotion. In your metaphysics you have denied personality
to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart
and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your
theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines. With consistency a great soul
has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow
on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else
if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon
balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it
contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you
shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is
it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates,
and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure
and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
I suppose no man can violate his
nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as
the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the
sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an
acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it
still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God
allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or
retrospect, and I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it
not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of
insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he
carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character
teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice
only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every
moment.
Fear never but you shall be
consistent in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural
in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike
they seem. These varieties are lost sight of when seen at a little distance, at
a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the
best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This is only microscopic
criticism. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself
to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will
explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act
singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness
always appeals to the future. If I can be great enough now to do right and
scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it
how it will, do right now. Always scorn
appearances and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.
All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the
majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the
imagination? The consciousness of a
train of great days and victories behind. There they all stand and shed an
united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of
angels to every man's eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's
voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adam's eye. Honor
is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because
it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage because it is not a trap for
our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an
old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
I hope in these days we have heard
the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and
ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle
from the Spartan fife. Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man is
coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him: I wish that he should
wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it
kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity
and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade
and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great
responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man
belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is,
there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events. You are
constrained to accept his standard. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds
us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you
of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much
that he must make all circumstances indifferent - put all means into the shade.
This all great men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an
age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his
thought; - and posterity seem to follow his steps as a procession. A man Caesar
is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and
millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with
virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one
man; as, the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley;
Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome;"
and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout
and earnest persons.
Let a man then know his worth, and
keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down
with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which
exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which
corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels
poor when he looks at these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have
an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like
that, 'Who are you, sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice,
petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The
picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its
claim to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in
the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the
duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the
duke, and assured that he had been insane - owes its popularity to the fact
that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot,
but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true
prince.
Our reading is mendicant and
sycophantic. In history our imagination
makes fools of us, plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and
estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house
and common day's work: but the things of life are the same to both: the sum
total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and
Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a
stake depends on your private act to-day as followed their public and renowned
steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be
transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
The world has indeed been instructed
by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by
this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The
joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or
the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale
of men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with
honor, and represent the Law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they
obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the
right of every man.
The magnetism which all original
action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the
Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be
grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without
parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into
trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The
inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of
virtue, and the essence of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We
denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are
tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go,
all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours
rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space
from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceedeth obviously
from the same source whence their life and being also proceedeth. We first
share the life by which things exist and afterwards see them as appearances in
nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of
action and the fountain of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration
which giveth man wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot be denied
without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which
makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern
justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage
to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that
causes - all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its
absence is all we can affirm. Every man discerns between the voluntary acts of
his mind and his involuntary perceptions. And to his involuntary perceptions he
knows a perfect respect is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he
knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. All my
wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; - the most trivial reverie, the
faintest native emotion, are domestic and divine. Thoughtless people contradict
as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more
readily; for they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy
that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but
fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of
time all mankind, although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For
my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.
The relations of the soul to the
divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It
must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all
things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light,
nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and
new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom,
then old things pass away, - means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives
now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made
sacred by relation to it, - one thing as much as another. All things are
dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty
and particular miracles disappear. This is and must be. If therefore a man
claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of
some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him
not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is
the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being?
Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against
the sanity and majesty of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors
which the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was,
is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more
than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.
Man is timid and apologetic; he is
no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but
quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the
blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or
to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There
is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of
its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the
fullblown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its
nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. There is no
time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present,
but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that
surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and
strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see
what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the
phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always
set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who
repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older,
of the men of talents and character they chance to see, - painfully
recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the
point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them
and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words as good
when occasion comes. So was it with us, so will it be, if we proceed. If we
live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong,
as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly
disburthen the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives
with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle
of the corn.
And now at last the highest truth on
this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is
the far off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest
approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in
yourself, - it is not by any known or appointed way; you shall not discern the
footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear
any name; - the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It
shall exclude all other being. You take the way from man, not to man. All
persons that ever existed are its fugitive ministers. There shall be no fear in
it. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. It asks nothing. There is somewhat low
even in hope. We are then in vision. There is nothing that can be called
gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passion. It seeth identity
and eternal causation. It is a perceiving that Truth and Right are. Hence it
becomes a Tranquillity out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces
of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast intervals of time, years,
centuries, are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay that former
state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present and will always
all circumstances, and what is called life and what is called death.
Life only avails, not the having
lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of
transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the
darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for
that forever degrades the past; turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to
a shame; confounds the saint with the rogue; shoves Jesus and Judas equally
aside. Why then do we prate of self - reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present
there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor
external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies because it works
and is. Who has more soul than I masters me, though he should not raise his
finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. Who has less I
rule with like facility. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of eminent virtue. We
do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men,
plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and
ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.
This is the ultimate fact which we
so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the
ever-blessed One. Virtue is the governor, the creator, the reality. All things
real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Hardship, husbandry, hunting,
whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect
as examples of the soul's presence and impure action. I see the same law
working in nature for conservation and growth. The poise of a planet, the
bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of
every animal and vegetable, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing and
therefore self - relying soul. All history, from its highest to its trivial
passages, is the various record of this power.
Thus all concentrates; let us not
rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding
rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine
fact. Bid them take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let
our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the
poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.
But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of men. We must go alone. Isolation must precede true society. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary. Se let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say, "Come out unto us." - Do not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a moment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.". . .