|
Part II.
Part II.
Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: It was somebody`s
name, or he happened to be there at the time, or, it was so then, and another
day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The
man was born to do it, and his father was born to be the father of him and of
this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall see there was no luck in the
matter, but it was all a problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry.
The curve of the flight of the moth is preordained, and all things go by
number, rule, and weight.
Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that, as
he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not
see, that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes
are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and connection are not somewhere
and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no
anomaly, - but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in.
As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of
our fortunes; cant and lying and the attempt to secure a good which does not
belong to us, are, once for all, balked and vain. But, in the human mind, this
tie of fate is made alive. The law is the basis of the human mind. In us, it
is inspiration; out there in Nature, we see its fatal strength. We call it the
moral sentiment.
We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of Law, which compares well
with any in our Western books. "Law it is, which is without name, or color, or
hands, or feet; which is smallest of the least, and largest of the large; all,
and knowing all things; which hears without ears, sees without eyes, moves
without feet, and seizes without hands."
If any reader tax me with using vague and traditional phrases, let me
suggest to him, by a few examples, what kind of a trust this is, and how real.
Let me show him that the dice are loaded; that the colors are fast, because
they are the native colors of the fleece; that the globe is a battery, because
every atom is a magnet; and that the police and sincerity of the Universe are
secured by God`s delegating his divinity to every particle; that there is no
room for hypocrisy, no margin for choice.
The countryman leaving his native village, for the first time, and going
abroad, finds all his habits broken up. In a new nation and language, his
sect, as Quaker, or Lutheran, is lost. What! it is not then necessary to the
order and existence of society? He misses this, and the commanding eye of his
neighborhood, which held him to decorum. This the peril of New York, of New
Orleans, of London, of Paris, to young men. But after a little experience, he
makes the discovery that there are no large cities, - none large enough to
hide in; that the censors of action are as numerous and as near in Paris, as
in Littleton or Portland; that the gossip is as prompt and vengeful. There is
no concealment, and, for each offence, a several vengeance; that, reaction, or
nothing for nothing, or, things are as broad as they are long, is not a rule
for Littleton or Portland, but for the Universe.
We cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. We are disgusted by
gossip; yet it is of importance to keep the angels in their proprieties. The
smallest fly will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon impossible to exclude
from the privatest, highest, selectest. Nature created a police of many ranks.
God has delegated himself to a million deputies. From these low external
penalties, the scale ascends. Next come the resentments, the fears, which
injustice calls out; then, the false relations in which the offender is put to
other men; and the reaction of his fault on himself, in the solitude and
devastation of his mind.
You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by
opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or
wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of
mind you had, when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or
gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all
physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are
detective. If you follow the suburban fashion in building a sumptuous -
looking house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as a cheap dear
house. There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in
the civilized world. Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real
character, and reveals it by hiding. If a man wish to conceal anything he
carries, those whom he meets know that he conceals somewhat, and usually know
what he conceals. Is it otherwise if there be some belief or some purpose he
would bury in his breast? `Tis as hard to hide as fire. He is a strong man who
can hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences, without
disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought,
namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or, in
that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty. People
seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of
character. We can only see what we are, and if we misbehave we suspect others.
The fame of Shakespear or of Voltaire, of Thomas a Kempis, or of Bonaparte,
characterizes those who give it. As gaslight is found to be the best nocturnal
police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity.
Each must be armed - not necessarily with musket and pike. Happy, if,
seeing these, he can feel that he has better muskets and pikes in his energy
and constancy. To every creature is his own weapon, however skilfully
concealed from himself, a good while. His work is sword and shield. Let him
accuse none, let him injure none. The way to mend the bad world, is to create
the right world. Here is a low political economy plotting to cut the throat of
foreign competition, and establish our own; excluding others by force, or
making war on them; or, by cunning tariffs, giving preference to worse wares
of ours. But the real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of
war. The way to conquer the foreign artisan, is, not to kill him, but to beat
his work. And the Crystal Palaces and the World Fairs, with their committees
and prizes on all kinds of industry, are the result of this feeling. The
American workman who strikes ten blows with his hammer, whilst the foreign
workman only strikes one, is as really vanquishing that foreigner, as if the
blows were aimed at and told on his person. I look on that man as happy, who,
when there is question of success, looks into this work for a reply, not into
the market, not into opinion, not into patronage. In every variety of human
employment, in the mechanical and in the fine arts, in navigation, in farming,
in legislating, there are among the numbers who do their task perfunctorily,
as we say, or just to pass, and as badly as they dare, - there are the working
- men on whom the burden of the business falls, - those who love work, and
love to see it rightly done, who finish their task for its own sake; and the
state and the world is happy, that has the most of such finishers. The world
will always do justice at last to such finishers: it cannot otherwise. He who
has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and
appreciated, and know that it will not loiter. Men talk as if victory were
something fortunate. Work is victory. Wherever work is done, victory is
obtained. There is no chance, and no blanks. You want but one verdict: if you
have your own, you are secure of the rest. And yet, if witnesses are wanted,
witnesses are near. There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or
more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and
report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone, and no man acts
alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life, - now under
one disguise, now under another, - like a police in citizens` clothes, walk
with him, step for step, through all the kingdom of time.
This reaction, this sincerity is the property of all things. To make our
word or act sublime, we must make it real. It is our system that counts, not
the single word or unsupported action. Use what language you will, you can
never say anything but what you are. What I am, and what I think, is conveyed
to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it back. What I am has been secretly
conveyed from me to another, whilst I was vainly making up my mind to tell him
it. He has heard from me what I never spoke.
As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat
less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress of the character,
there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in
propositions. Young people admire talents, and particular excellences. As we
grow older, we value total powers and effects, as the spirit, or quality of
the man. We have another sight, and a new standard; an insight which
disregards what is done for the eye, and pierces to the doer; an ear which
hears not what men say, but hears what they do not say.
There was a wise, devout man who is called, in the Catholic Church, St.
Philip Neri, of whom many anecdotes touching his discernment and benevolence
are told at Naples and Rome. Among the nuns in a convent not far from Rome,
one had appeared, who laid claim to certain rare gifts of inspiration and
prophecy, and the abbess advised the Holy Father, at Rome, of the wonderful
powers shown by her novice. The Pope did not well known what to make of these
new claims, and Philip coming in from a journey, one day, he consulted him.
Philip undertook to visit the nun, and ascertain her character. He threw
himself on his mule, all travel - soiled as he was, and hastened through the
mud and mire to the distant convent. He told the abbess the wishes of his
Holiness, and begged her to summon the nun without delay. The nun was sent
for, and, as soon as she came into the apartment, Philip stretched out his leg
all bespattered with mud, and desired her to draw off his boots. The young
nun, who had become the object of much attention and respect, drew back with
anger, and refused the office: Philip ran out of doors, mounted his mule, and
returned instantly to the Pope; "Give yourself no uneasiness, Holy Father, any
longer: here is no miracle, for here is no humility."
We need not much mind what people please to say, but what they must say;
what their natures say, though their busy, artful Yankee understandings try to
hold back, and choke that word, and to articulate something different. If we
will sit quietly, - what they ought to say is said, with their will, or
against their will. We do not care for you, let us pretend what we will: - we
are always looking through you to the dim dictator behind you. Whilst your
habit or whim chatters, we civilly and impatiently wait until that wise
superior shall speak again. Even children are not deceived by the false
reasons which their parents give in answer to their questions, whether
touching natural facts, or religion, or persons. When the parent, instead of
thinking how it really is, puts them off with a traditional or a hypocritical
answer, the children perceive that it is traditional or hypocritical. To a
sound constitution the defect of another is at once manifest: and the marks of
it are only concealed from us by our own dislocation. An anatomical observer
remarks, that the sympathies of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis, tell at last
on the face, and on all its features. Not only does our beauty waste, but it
leaves word how it went to waste. Physiognomy and phrenology are not new
sciences, but declarations of the soul that it is aware of certain new sources
of information. And now sciences of broader scope are starting up behind
these. And so for ourselves, it is really of little importance what blunders
in statement we make, so only we make no wilful departures from the truth. How
a man`s truth comes to mind, long after we have forgotten all his words! How
it comes to us in silent hours, that truth is our only armor in all passages
of life and death! Wit is cheap, and anger in cheap; but if you cannot argue
or explain yourself to the other party, cleave to the truth against me,
against thee, and you gain a station from which you cannot be dislodged. The
other party will forget the words that you spoke, but the party you took
continues to plead for you.
Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which life offers me? I am well
assured that the Questioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring the
answers also in due time. Very rich, very potent, very cheerful Giver that he
is, he shall have it all his own way, for me. Why should I give up my thought,
because I cannot answer an objection to it? Consider only, whether it remains
in my life the same it was. That only which we have within, can we see
without. If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is
grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps. He only is
rightly immortal, to whom all things are immortal. I have read somewhere, that
none is accomplished, so long as any are incomplete; that the happiness of one
cannot consist with the misery of any other.
The Buddhists say, "No seed will die;" every seed will grow. Where is the
service which can escape its remuneration? What is vulgar, and the essence of
all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward? `Tis the difference of artisan and
artist, of talent and genius, of sinner and saint. The man whose eyes are
nailed not on the nature of his act, but on the wages, whether it be money, or
office, or fame, - is almost equally low. He is great, whose eyes are opened
to see that the reward of actions cannot be escaped, because he is transformed
into his action, and taketh its nature, which bears its own fruit, like every
other tree. A great man cannot be hindered of the effect of his act, because
it is immediate. The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and in the dark
brings them friends from far. Fear God, and where you go, men shall think they
walk in hallowed cathedrals.
And so I look on those sentiments which make the glory of the human
being, love, humility, faith, as being also the intimacy of Divinity in the
atoms; and that, as soon as the man is right, assurances and provisions
emanate from the interior of his body and his mind; as, when flowers reach
their ripeness, incense exhales from them, and as a beautiful atmosphere is
generated from the planet by the averaged emanations from all its rocks and
soils.
Thus man is made equal to every event. He can face danger for the right.
A poor, tender, painful body, he can run into flame or bullets or pestilence,
with duty for his guide. He feels the insurance of a just employment. I am not
afraid of accident, as along as I am in my place. It is strange that superior
persons should not feel that they have some better resistance against cholera,
than avoiding green peas and salads. Life is hardly respectable, - is it? if
it has no generous guaranteeing task, no duties or affections, that constitute
a necessity of existing. Every man`s task is his life - preserver. The
conviction that his work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends him. The
lightning - rod that disarms the cloud of its threat is his body in its duty.
A high aim reacts on the means, on the days, on the organs of the body. A high
aim is curative, as well as arnica. "Napoleon," says Goethe, "visited those
sick of the plague, in order to prove that the man who could banish, fear,
could vanquish the plague also; and he was right. `Tis incredible what force
the will has in such cases: it penetrates the body, and puts it in a state of
activity, which repels all hurtful influences; whilst fear invites them."
It is related of William of Orange, that, whilst he was besieging a town
on the continent, a gentleman sent to him on public business came to his camp,
and learning that the King was before the walls, he ventured to go where he
was. He found him directing the operation of his gunners, and, having
explained his errand, and received his answer, the King said, "Do you not
know, sir, that every moment you spend here is at the risk of your life?" "I
run no more risk," replied the gentleman, "than your Majesty." "Yes," said the
King, "but my duty brings me here, and yours does not." In a few minutes, a
cannon - ball fell on the spot, and the gentleman was killed.
Thus can the faithful student reverse all the warnings of his early
instinct, under the guidance of a deeper instinct. He learns to welcome
misfortune, learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great. He learns
the greatness of humility. He shall work in the dark, work against failure,
pain, and ill - will. If he is insulted, he can be insulted; all his affair is
not to insult. Hafiz writes,
"At the last day, men shall wear
On their heads the dust,
As ensign and as ornament
Of their lowly trust."
The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which
buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whip of the driver,
the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes. In the greatest
destitution and calamity, it surprises man with a feeling of elasticity which
makes nothing of loss.
I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose life and discourse
betrayed many inspirations of this sentiment. Benedict was always great in the
present time. He had hoarded nothing from the past, neither in his cabinets,
neither in his memory. He had no designs on the future, neither for what he
should do to men, nor for what men should do for him. He said, "I am never
beaten until I know that I am beaten. I meet powerful brutal people to whom I
have no skill to reply. They think they have defeated me. It is so published
in society, in the journals: I am defeated in this fashion, in all men`s
sight, perhaps on a dozen different lines. My ledger may show that I am in
debt, cannot yet make my ends meet, and vanquish the enemy so. My race may not
be prospering: we are sick, ugly, obscure, unpopular. My children may be
worsted. I seem to fail in my friends and clients, too. That is to say, in all
the encounters that have yet chanced, I have not been weaponed for that
particular occasion, and have been historically beaten; and yet, I know, all
the time, that I have never been beaten; have never yet fought, shall
certainly fight, when my hour comes, and shall beat." "A man," says the Vishnu
Sarma, "who having well compared his own strength or weakness with that of
others, after all doth not know the difference, is easily overcome by his
enemies."
"I spent," he said, "ten months in the country. Thick - starred Orion was
my only companion. Wherever a squirrel or a bee can go with security, I can
go. I ate whatever was set before me, I touched ivy and dogwood. When I went
abroad, I kept company with every man on the road, for I knew that my evil and
my good did not come from these, but from the Spirit, whose servant I was. For
I could not stoop to be a circumstance, as they did, who put their life into
their fortune and their company. I would not degrade myself by casting about
in my memory for a thought, nor by waiting for one. If the thought come, I
would give it entertainment. It should, as it ought, go into my hands and
feet; but if it come not spontaneously, it comes not rightly at all. If it can
spare me, I am sure I can spare it. It shall be the same with my friends. I
will never woo the loveliest. I will not ask any friendship or favor. When I
come to my own, we shall both know it. Nothing will be to be asked or to be
granted." Benedict went out to seek his friend, and met him on the way; but he
expressed no surprise at any coincidences. On the other hand, if he called at
the door of his friend, and he was not at home, he did not go again;
concluding that he had misinterpreted the intimations.
He had the whim not to make an apology to the same individual whom he had
wronged. For this, he said, was a piece of personal vanity; but he would
correct his conduct in that respect in which he had faulted, to the next
person he should meet. Thus, he said, universal justice was satisfied.
Mira came to ask what she should do with the poor Genesee woman who had
hired herself to work for her, at a shilling a day, and, now sickening, was
like to be bedridden on her hands. Should she keep her, or should she dismiss
her? But Benedict said, "Why ask? One thing will clear itself as the thing to
be done, and not another, when the hour comes. Is it a question, whether to
put her into the street? Just as much whether to thrust the little Jenny on
your arm into the street. The milk and meal you give the beggar, will fatten
Jenny. Thrust the woman out, and you thrust your babe out of doors, whether it
so seem to you or not."
In the Shakers, so called, I find one piece of belief, in the doctrine
which they faithfully hold, that encourages them to open their doors to every
wayfaring man who proposes to come among them; for, they say, the Spirit will
presently manifest to the man himself, and to the society, what manner of
person he is, and whether he belongs among them. They do not receive him, they
do not reject him. And not in vain have they worn their clay coat, and drudged
in their fields, and shuffled in their Bruin dance, from year to year, if they
have truly learned thus much wisdom.
Honor him whose life is perpetual victory; him, who, by sympathy with the
invisible and real, finds support in labor, instead of praise; who does not
shine, and would rather not. With eyes open, he makes the choice of virtue,
which outrages the virtuous; of religion, which churches stop their discords
to burn and exterminate; for the highest virtue is always against the law.
Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician. Talent and
success interest me but moderately. The great class, they who affect our
imagination, the men who could not make their hands meet around their objects,
the rapt, the lost, the fools of ideas, - they suggest what they cannot
execute. They speak to the ages, and are heard from afar. The Spirit does not
love cripples and malformations. If there ever was a good man, be certain,
there was another, and will be more.
And so in relation to that future hour, that spectre clothed with beauty
at our curtain by night, at our table by day, - the apprehension, the
assurance of a coming change. The race of mankind have always offered at least
this implied thanks for the gift of existence, - namely, the terror of its
being taken away; the insatiable curiosity and appetite for its continuation.
The whole revelation that is vouch - safed us, is, the gentle trust, which, in
our experience we find, will cover also with flowers the slopes of this chasm.
Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. It is so
well, that it is sure it will be well. It asks no questions of the Supreme
Power. The son of Antiochus asked his father, when he would join battle? "Dost
thou fear," replied the King, "that thou only in all the army wilt not hear
the trumpet?" `Tis a higher thing to confide, that, if it is best we should
live, we shall live, - `tis higher to have this conviction, than to have the
lease of indefinite centuries and millenniums and aeons. Higher than the
question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will
come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future,
must be a great soul now. It is a doctrine too great to rest on any legend,
that is, on any man`s experience but our own. It must be proved, if at all,
from our own activity and designs, which imply an interminable future for
their play.
What is called religion effeminates and demoralizes. Such as you are, the
gods themselves could not help you. Men are too often unfit to live, from
their obvious inequality to their own necessities, or, they suffer from
politics, or bad neighbors, or from sickness, and they would gladly know that
they were to be dismissed from the duties of life. But the wise instinct asks,
"How will death help them?" These are not dismissed when they die. You shall
not wish for death out of pusillanimity. The weight of the Universe is pressed
down on the shoulders of each moral agent to hold him to his task. The only
path of escape known in all the worlds of God is performance. You must do your
work, before you shall be released. And as far as it is a question of fact
respecting the government of the Universe, Marcus Antoninus summed the whole
in a word, "It is pleasant to die, if there be gods; and sad to live, if there
be none."
And so I think that the last lesson of life, the choral song which rises
from all elements and all angels, is, a voluntary obedience, a necessitated
freedom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world is, he shares the same
impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when
his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and
does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure. The religion which is
to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be
intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science. "There
are two things," said Mahomet, "which I abhor, the learned in his
infidelities, and the fool in his devotions." Our times are impatient of both,
and specially of the last. Let us have nothing now which is not its own
evidence. There is surely enough for the heart and imagination in the religion
itself. Let us not be pestered with assertions and half - truths, with
emotions and snuffle.
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and
naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law,
the church of men to come, without shawms or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will
have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and
illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was
never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home
to his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, and make
him know that much of the time he must have himself to his friend. He shall
expect no cooperation, he shall walk with no companion. The nameless Thought,
the nameless Power, the superpersonal Heart, - he shall repose alone on that.
He needs only his own verdict. No good fame can help, no bad fame can hurt
him. The Laws are his consolers, the good Laws themselves are alive, they know
if he have kept them, they animate him with the leading of great duty, and an
endless horizon. Honor and fortune exist to him who always recognizes the
neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high
causes.
|
