No More Learning

",


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5421
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(1803-1882)
BY RICHARD GARNETT
OTEWORTHY also,” says Carlyle, “and serviceable for the prog-
ress of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision
into Generations. )
It is indeed the fact that the course of human history admits of
being marked off into periods, which, from their average duration and
the impulse communicated to them by those who enter upon adol-
escence along with them, may be fitly denominated generations, espe-
cially when their opening and closing are signalized by great events
which serve as historical landmarks. No such event, indeed, short of
the Day of Judgment or a universal deluge, can serve as an absolute
line of demarcation; nothing can be more certain than that history
and human life are a perpetual Becoming; and that, although the
progress of development is frequently so startling and unforeseen as
to evoke the poet's exclamation,-
(New endless growth surrounds on every side,
Such as we deemed not earth could ever bear,” -
this growth is but development after all. The association of histor-
ical periods with stages in the mental development of man is never-
theless too convenient to be surrendered; the vision is cleared and
the grasp strengthened by the perception of a well-defined era in
American history, commencing with the election of Andrew Jackson
to the Presidency in 1828 and closing with the death of Abraham
Lincoln in 1865,— a period exactly corresponding with one in English
history measured from the death of Lord Liverpool, the typical rep-
resentative of a bygone political era in the prime of other years,
and that of Lord Palmerston, another such representative, in the lat-
ter. The epoch thus bounded almost precisely corresponds to the
productive period of the two great men who, more than any contem-
poraries, have stood in the conscious attitude of teachers of their
age. With such men as Tennyson and Browning, vast as their influ-
ence has been, the primary impulse has not been didactic, but ar-
tistic; Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and others,
have been chiefly operative upon the succeeding generation; Mill and
the elder Newman rather address special classes than the people at


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5421
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(1803-1882)
BY RICHARD GARNETT
OTEWORTHY also,” says Carlyle, “and serviceable for the prog-
ress of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision
into Generations. ”
It is indeed the fact that the course of human history admits of
being marked off into periods, which, from their average duration and
the impulse communicated to them by those who enter upon adol-
escence along with them, may be fitly denominated generations, espe-
cially when their opening and closing are signalized by great events
which serve as historical landmarks. No such event, indeed, short of
the Day of Judgment or a universal deluge, can serve as an absolute
line of demarcation; nothing can be more certain than that history
and human life are a perpetual Becoming; and that, although the
progress of development is frequently so startling and unforeseen as
to evoke the poet's exclamation,-
«New endless growth surrounds on every side,
Such as we deemed not earth could ever bear,” —
this growth is but development after all. The association of histor-
ical periods with stages in the mental development of man is never-
theless too convenient to be surrendered; the vision is cleared and
the grasp strengthened by the perception of a well-defined era in
American history, commencing with the election of Andrew Jackson
to the Presidency in 1828 and closing with the death of Abraham
Lincoln in 1865,- a period exactly corresponding with one in English
history measured from the death of Lord Liverpool, the typical rep-
resentative of a bygone political era in the prime of other years,
and that of Lord Palmerston, another such representative, in the lat-
ter. The epoch thus bounded almost precisely corresponds to the
productive period of the two great men who, more than any contem-
poraries, have stood in the conscious attitude of teachers of their
age. With such men as Tennyson and Browning, vast as their influ-
ence has been, the primary impulse has not been didactic, but ar-
tistic; Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and others,
have been chiefly operative upon the succeeding generation; Mill and
the elder Newman rather address special classes than the people at


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5422
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
large; and Ruskin and Kingsley would have willingly admitted that
however eloquent the expression of their teaching, its originality
mainly consisted in the application of Carlyle's ideas to subjects
beyond Carlyle's range. Carlyle and Emerson, therefore, stand forth
like Goethe and Schiller as the Dioscuri of their period; the two men
to whom beyond others its better minds looked for guidance, and
who had the largest share in forming the minds from which the suc-
ceeding generation was to take its complexion. Faults and errors
they had; but on the whole it may be said that nations have rarely
been more fortunate in their instructors than the two great English-
speaking peoples during the age of Carlyle and Emerson. Of Carlyle
this is not the place to speak further; but writing on Emerson, it
will be necessary to exhibit what we conceive to have been the spe-
cial value of his teaching; and to attempt some description of the
man himself, in indication of the high place claimed for him.
It has been said of some great man of marked originality that he
was the sole voice among many echoes. This cannot be said of
Emerson; his age was by no means deficient in original voices. But
his may be said with truth to have been the chief verbal utterance
in an age of authorship. It is a trite remark, that many of the men
of thought whose ideas have most influenced the world have shown
little inclination for literary composition. The president of a London
freethinking club in Goldsmith's time supposed himself to be in pos-
session of the works of Socrates, no less than of those of “Tully and
Cicero,” but no other trace of their existence has come to light.
Had Emerson lived in any age but his own, it is doubtful whether,
any more than Socrates, he would have figured as an author.
write," he tells Carlyle, “with very little system, and as far as
regards composition, with most fragmentary result - paragraphs in-
comprehensible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle. We
also hear of his going forth into the woods to hunt a thought as a
boy might hunt a butterfly, except that the thought had flown with
him from home, and that his business was not so much to capture it
as to materialize it and make it tangible. This peculiarity serves to
classify Emerson among the ancient sages, men like Socrates and
Buddha, whose instructions were not merely oral but unmethodical
and unsystematic; who spoke as the casual emergency of the day
dictated, and left their observations to be collected by their disciples.
An excellent plan in so far as it accomplishes the endowment of
the sage's word with his own individuality; exceptionable when a
doubt arises whether the utterance belongs to the master or the dis-
ciple, and in the case of diametrically opposite versions, whether
Socrates has been represented more truly by the prose of Xenophon
or the poetry of Plato. We may be thankful that the spirit of Emer-
son's age, and the exigencies of his own affairs, irresistibly impelled


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5423
him to write: nevertheless the fact remains that with him Man
Thinking is not so much Man Writing as Man Speaking, and that
although the omnipotent machinery of the modern social system
caught him too, and forced him into line with the rest, we have in
him a nearer approach to the voice, apart from the disturbing and
modifying habits of literary composition, than in any other eminent
modern thinker. This annuls one of the most weighty criticisms
upon Emerson, so long as he is regarded merely as an author,— his
want of continuity, and consequent want of logic. Had he attempted
to establish a philosophical system, this would have been fatal.
But such an undertaking is of all things furthest from his thoughts.
He does not seek to demonstrate, he announces. Ideas have come to
him which, as viewed by the inward light, appear important and
| profitable. He brings these forward to be tested by the light of
other men. He does not seek to connect these ideas together, except
in so far as their common physiognomy bespeaks their common par-
entage. Nor does he seek to fortify them by reasoning, or subject
them to any test save the faculty by which the unprejudiced soul
discerns good from evil. If his jewel will scratch glass, it is suffi-
ciently evinced a diamond.
It follows that although Emerson did not write most frequently
or best in verse, he is, as regards the general constitution of his
intellect, rather to be classed with poets than with philosophers.
Poetry cannot indeed dispense with the accurate observation of
nature and mankind, but poetic genius essentially depends on intu-
ition and inspiration. There is no gulf between the philosopher and
the poet; some of the greatest of poets have also been among the
most powerful of reasoners; but their claim to poetical rank would
not have been impaired if their ratiocination had been ever so illogi-
cal. Similarly, a great thinker may have no more taste for poetry
than was vouchsafed to Darwin or the elder Mill, without any im-
peachment of his power of intellect. The two spheres of action are
fundamentally distinct, though the very highest geniuses, such as
Shakespeare and Goethe, have sometimes almost succeeded in making
them appear as one. To determine to which of them a man actually
belongs, we must look beyond the externalities of literary form, and
inquire whether he obtains his ideas by intuition, or by observation
and reflection. No mind will be either entirely intuitive or entirely
reflective, but there will usually be a decided inclination to one or
other of the processes; and in the comparatively few cases in which
thoughts and feelings seem to come to it unconsciously, as leaves to
a tree, we may consider that we have a poet, though perhaps not a
writer of poetry.
If indeed the man writes at all, he will very
probably write prose, but this prose will be impregnated with poetic


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5424
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
quality. From this point of view we are able to set Emerson much
higher than if we regarded him simply as a teacher. He is greater
as the American Wordsworth than as the American Carlyle. We
shall understand his position best by comparing him with other men
of genius who are poets too, but not pre-eminently so. In beauty of
language and power of imagination, John Henry Newman and James
Martineau, though they have written little in verse, yield to few
poets. But throughout all their writings the didactic impulse is
plainly the preponderating one, their poetry merely auxiliary and
ornamental; hence they are not reckoned among poets. With Emer-
son the case is reversed: the revealer is first in him, the reasoner
second; oral speech is his most congenial form of expression, and he
submits to appear in print because the circumstances of his age'
render print the most effectual medium for the dissemination of his
thought. It will be observed that whenever possible he resorts to
the medium of oration or lecture; it may be further remarked that
his essays, often originally delivered as lectures, are very like his
discourses, and his discourses very like his essays. In neither, so far
as regards the literary form of the entire composition, distinguished
from the force and felicity of individual sentences, can he be con-
sidered as a classic model. The essay need not be too severely logi-
cal, yet a just conception of its nature requires a more harmonious
proportion and more symmetrical construction, as well as a more
consistent and intelligent direction towards a single definite end, than
we usually find in Emerson. The orator is less easy to criticize
than the essayist, for oratory involves an element of personal mag-
netism which resists all critical analysis. Hence posterity frequently
reverses (or rather seems to reverse, for the decision upon a speech
mutilated of voice and action cannot be really conclusive) the verdicts
of contemporaries upon oratory. « What will our descendants think
of the Parliamentary oratory of our age? ” asked a contemporary of
Burke's, “when they are told that in his own time this man was
accounted neither the first, nor the second, nor even the third
speaker ? ” Transferred to the tribunal of the library, Burke's oratory
bears away the palm from Pitt and Fox and Sheridan; yet, unless we
had heard the living voices of them all, it would be unsafe for us to
challenge the contemporary verdict. We cannot say, with the lover
in Goethe, that the word printed appears dull and soulless, but it
certainly wants much which conduced to the efficacy of the word
spoken:
“Ach wie traurig sieht in Lettern,
Schwarz auf weiss, das Lied mich an,
Das aus deinem Mund vergöttern,
Das ein Herz zerreissen kann! »


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5425
Emerson's orations are no less delightful and profitable reading
than his essays, so long as they can be treated as his essays were
intended to be treated when they came into print; that is, read
deliberately, with travelings backward when needed, and frequent
pauses of thought. But if we consider them as discourses to be lis-
tened to, we shall find some difficulty in reconciling their popularity
and influence with their apparent disconnectedness, and some reason
to apprehend that, occasional flashes of epigram excepted, they must
speedily have passed from the minds of the hearers. The apparent
defect was probably remedied in delivery by the magnetic power of
the speaker; not that sort of power which “wields at will the fierce
democraty,” but that which convinces the hearer that he is listening
to a message from a region not as yet accessible to himself. The
impassioned orator usually provokes the suspicion that he is speaking
from a briefNot so Emerson: above all other speakers he inspires
the confidence that he declares a thing to be, not because he wishes,
but because he perceives it to be so. His quiet, unpretending, but
perfectly unembarrassed manner, as of a man with a message which
he simply delivers and goes away, must have greatly aided to supply
the absence of vigorous reasoning and skillful oratorical construction.
We could not expect a spirit commissioned to teach us to condescend
to such methods; and Emerson's discourse, whether in oration or
essay, though by no means deficient in human feeling nor of the
“blessed Glendoveer” order, frequently does sound like that of a
being from another sphere, simply because he derived his ideas
from a higher world; as must always be the case with the man of
spiritual, not of course with the man of practical genius. It mat-
ters nothing whether this is really so, or whether what wears the
aspect of imparted revelation is but a fortifying of the natural eye,
qualifying it to look a little deeper than neighboring eyes into things
around. In either case the person so endowed stands a degree nearer
to the essential truth of things than his fellows; and the conscious-
ness of the fact, transpiring through his personality, gives him a
weight which might otherwise seem inexplicable. Nothing can be
more surprising than the deference with which the learned and intel-
ligent contemporaries ‘of the humble and obscure Spinoza resort to
his judgment before he has so much as written a book.
This estimate of Emerson as an American Wordsworth, one who
like Wordsworth not merely enforced but practically demonstrated
the proposition that
«One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can,”
IX-340


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5426
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
is controverted by many who can see in him nothing but a polisher
and stringer of epigrammatic sayings. It is impossible to argue with
any who cannot recognize the deep vitality of Nature,' of the two
series of Essays first published, and of most of the early orations and
discourses; but it may be conceded that Emerson's fountain of inspira-
tion was no more perennial than Wordsworth's, and that in his latter
years his gift of epigrammatic statement enabled him to avoid both
the Scylla and the Charybdis of men of genius whose fount of
inspiration has run low. In some such cases, such as Wordsworth's,
the author simply goes on producing, with less and less geniality at
every successive effort. In others, such as Browning's, he escapes
inanity by violent exaggeration of his characteristic mannerisms.
Neither of these remarks applies to Emerson: he does not, in ceasing
to be original, become insipid, nor can it be said that he is any more
mannered at the last than at the first. This is a clear proof that his
peculiarity of speech is not mannerism but manner; that consequently
he is not an artificial writer, and that, since the treatment of his
themes as he has chosen to treat them admits of no compromise
between nature and rhetoric, he has the especial distinction of sim-
plicity where simplicity is difficult and rare. That such is the case
will appear from an examination of his earlier and more truly pro-
phetic writings.
Of these, the first in importance as in time is the tract Nature,'
commenced in 1833, rewritten, completed, and published in 1836.
Of all Emerson's writings this is the most individual, and the most
adapted for a general introduction to his ideas. These ideas are
not in fact peculiar to him; and yet the little book is one of the
most original ever written, and one of those most likely to effect an
intellectual revolution in the mind capable of apprehending it. The
reason is mainly the intense vitality of the manner, and the transla-
tion of abstract arguments into concrete shapes of witchery and
beauty. It contains scarcely a sentence that is not beautiful, — not
with the cold beauty of art, but with the radiance and warmth of feel-
ing. Its dominant note is rapture, like the joy of one who has found
an enchanted realm, or who has convinced himself that old stories
deemed too beautiful to be true are true indeed. Yet it is exempt
from extravagance, the splendor of the language is chastened by
taste, and the gladness and significance of the author's announce-
ments would justify an even more ardent enthusiasm. They may be
briefly summed up as the statements that Nature is not mechanical,
but vital; that the Universe is not dead, but alive; that God is not
remote, but omnipresent. There was of course no novelty in these
assertions, nor can Emerson bring them by a hair's-breadth nearer
demonstration than they had always been. He simply re-states them


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5427
1
in a manner entirely his own, and with a charm not perhaps sur-
passing that with which others had previously invested them, but
peculiar and dissimilar. Everything really Emersonian in Emerson's
teaching may be said to spring out of this little book: so copious,
however, were the corollaries deducible from principles apparently
so simple, that the flowers veiled the tree; and precious as the tract
is, as the first and purest draught of the new wine, it is not the most
practically efficient of his works, and might probably have passed
unperceived if it had not been reinforced by a number of auxiliary
compositions, some produced under circumstances which could not
fail to provoke wide discussion and consequent notoriety. The prin-
ciples unfolded in Nature' might probably have passed with civil
acquiescence if Emerson had been content with the mere statement;
but he insisted on carrying them logically out, and this could not be
done without unsettling every school of thought at the time prevalent
in America. The Divine omnipresence, for example, was admitted in
words by all except materialists and anti-theists; but if, as Emerson
maintained, this involved the conception of the Universe as a Divine
incarnation, this in its turn involved an optimistic view of the uni-
versal scheme totally inconsistent with the Calvinism still dominant
in American theology. If all existence was a Divine emanation, no
part of it could be more sacred than another part, — which at once
abolished the mystic significance of religious ceremonies so dear to the
Episcopalians; while the immediate contact of the Universe with the
Deity was no less incompatible with the miraculous interferences on
which Unitarianism reposed its faith. Such were some of the most
important negative results of Emerson's doctrines; in their positive
aspect, by asserting the identity of natural and spiritual laws, they
invested the former with the reverence hitherto accorded only to the
latter, and restored to a mechanical and prosaic society the piety
with which men in the infancy of history had defied the forces of
Nature. Substantially, except for the absence of any definite relation
to literary art, Emerson's mission was very similar to Wordsworth's;
but by natural temperament and actual situation he wanted the
thousand links which bound Wordsworth to the past, and eventually
made the sometime innovator the patron of a return towards the
Middle Ages.
Emerson had no wish to regress, and, almost alone among think-
ers who have reached an advanced age, betrays no symptom of
reaction throughout the whole of his career. The reason may be,
that his scrupulous fairness and frank conceptions to the Conserva-
tive cast of thought had left him nothing to retract or atone for.
He seems to have started on his journey through life with his Con-
servatism and Liberalism ready made up, taking with him just as
!


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5428
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
much of either as he wanted. This is especially manifest in the dis-
course (The Conservative' (1841), in which he deliberately weighs
conservative against progressive tendencies, impersonates each in an
imaginary interlocutor, and endeavors to display their respective just-
ification and shortcomings. Nothing can be more rigidly equitable
or more thoroughly sane than his estimate; and as the issues between
conservatism and reform have broadened and deepened, time has
only added to its value. It is a perfect manual for thoughtful citi-
zens, desirous of understanding the questions that underlie party
issues, and is especially to be commended to young and generous
minds, liable to misguidance in proportion to their generosity.
This celebrated discourse is one of a group including one still
more celebrated, the address to the graduating class of Divinity
College, Cambridge, published as "The Christian Teacher' (1838).
This, says Mr. Cabot, seems to have been struck off at a heat,
which perhaps accounts for its nearer approach than any of his other
addresses to the standard of what is usually recognized as eloquence.
Eloquent in a sense Emerson usually was, but here is something
which could transport a fit audience with enthusiasm. It also pos-
sessed the power of awakening the keenest antagonism; but censure
has long since died away, and nothing that Emerson wrote has been
more thoroughly adopted into the creed of those with whom external
observances and material. symbols find no place. Equally epoch-
making in a different way was the oration on Man Thinking, or
the American Scholar) (1837), entitled by Dr. Holmes our intellect-
ual Declaration of Independence, and of which Mr. Lowell says:
“We were socially and intellectually moored to English thought, till
Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and
glories of blue water. ” In these three great discourses, and in a less
measure in 'The Transcendentalist' and Man the Reformer) (both
in 1841), America may boast of possessing works of the first class,
which could have been produced in no other country, and which
even though, in Emerson's own phrase, wider circles should come to
be drawn around them — will remain permanent landmarks in intel-
lectual history.
These discourses may be regarded as Emerson's public proclama-
tions of his opinions; but he is probably more generally known and
more intimately beloved by the two unobtrusive volumes of Essays,
originally prefaced for England by Carlyle. Most of these, indeed,
were originally delivered as lectures, but to small audiences, and
with little challenge to public attention. It may be doubted whether
they would have succeeded as lectures but for the personal magnet-
ism of the speaker; but their very defects aid them with the reader,
who, once fascinated by their beauty of phrase and depth of spiritual


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5429
insight, imbibes their spirit all the more fully for his ceaseless effort
to mend their deficient logic with his own. Like Love in Dante's son-
net, Emerson enters into and blends with the reader, and his influ-
ence will often be found most potent where it is least acknowledged.
Each of the twenty may be regarded as a fuller working out of
some subject merely hinted at in Nature,'— statues, as it were, for
niches left vacant in the original edifice. The most important and
pregnant with thought are History,' where the same claim is pre-
ferred for history as for the 'material world, that it is not dead but
alive; (Self-Reliance,' a most vigorous assertion of a truth which
Emerson was apt to carry to extremes, the majesty of the individual
soul; Compensation, an exposition of the universe as the incarnation
of unerring truth and absolute justice; Love,' full of beauty and
rapture, yet almost chilling to the young by its assertion of what is
nevertheless true, that even Love in its human semblance only sub-
serves ulterior ends; Circles, the demonstration that this circum-
stance is no way peculiar to Love, that there can be nothing ultimate,
final, or unrelated to ulterior purpose, - nothing around which, in
Emersonian phrase, you cannot draw a circle; (The Over-Soul, a
prose hymn dedicated to an absolutely spiritual religion; The Poet,
a celebration of Poetry as coextensive with Imagination, and in the
highest sense with Reason also; Experience and Character,' valu-
able essays, but evincing that the poetical impulse was becoming
spent, and that Emerson's mind was inore and more tending to ques-
tions of conduct. The least satisfactory of the essays is that on
(Art,' where he is only great on the negative side, Art's inevitable
limitations. The æsthetical faculty, which contemplates Beauty under
the restraints of Form, was evidently weak in him.
(Representative Men,' Emerson's next work of importance (1845),
shows that his parachute was descending; but he makes a highly suc-
cessful compromise by taking up original ideas as reflected in the
actions and thoughts of great typical men, one remove only from
originality of exposition on his own part.
The treatment is neces-
sarily so partial as to exercise a distorting influence on his represent-
ation of the themselves. Napoleon, for example, may have
been from a certain point of view the hero of the middle class, as
Emerson chooses to consider him; but he was much besides, which
cannot even be hinted at in a short lecture. The representation of
such a hero, nevertheless, whether the character precisely fitted Napo-
leon or not, is highly spirited and suggestive; and the same may be
said of the other lectures. That on Shakespeare is the least satisfy-
ing, the consummate art which is half Shakespeare's greatness making
little appeal to Emerson. He appears also at variance with himself
when he speaks of Shakespeare's existence as obscure and profane,”
men


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5430
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
an
such a healthy, homely, unambitious life being precisely what he else-
where extols as a model. The first lecture of the series, Uses of
Great Men,' would seem to have whispered the message more vocifer-
ously repeated by Walt Whitman.
Emerson was yet to write two books of worth, not illumed with
“the light that never was on sea or land,” but valuable complements
to his more characteristic work, and important to mankind as
indisputable proof that a teacher need not be distrusted in ordinary
things because he is a mystic and a poet. (The Conduct of Life
(1851), far inferior to his earlier writings in inspiration, is yet one
of the most popular and widely influential of his works because con-
descending more nearly to the needs and intelligence of the average
reader. It is not less truly Emersonian, less fully impregnated with
his unique genius; but the themes discussed are less interesting, and
the glory and the beauty of the diction are much subdued. Without
it, we should have been in danger of regarding Emerson too exclu-
sively as a transcendental seer, and ignoring the solid ground of
good sense and practical sagacity from which the waving forests of
his imagery drew their nutriment. It greatly promoted his fame and
influence by coming into the hands of successive generations of
readers who naturally inquired for his last book, found the author,
with surprise, so much nearer their own intellectual position than
they had been led to expect, and gradually extended the indorse-
ment which they could not avoid according to the book, to the author
himself. When the Reason and the Understanding have agreed to
legitimate the pretensions of a speculative thinker, these may be con-
sidered stable. Emerson insensibly took rank with the other Amer-
ican institutions; it seemed natural to all, that without the retractation
or modification of a syllable on his part, Harvard should in 1866 confer
her highest honors upon him whose address to her Divinity School had
aroused such fierce opposition in 1838. Emerson's views, being pure
intuitions, rarely admitted of alteration in essence, though supple-
ment or limitation might sometimes be found advisable. The Civil
War, for instance, could not but convince him that in his zeal for
the independence of the individual he had dangerously impaired
the necessary authority of government. His attitude throughout this
great contest was the ideal of self-sacrificing patriotism: in truth, it
might be said of him, as of so few men of genius, that you could not
find a situation for him, public or private, whose obligations he was
not certain to fulfill. He had previously given proof of his insight
into another nation by his 'English Traits,' mainly founded upon the
visit he had paid to England in 1847-48: a book to be read with equal
pleasure and profit by the nation of which and by the nation for
which it was written; while its insight, sanity, and kindliness justify


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5431
what has been said on occasion of another of Emerson's writings:
«The ideologist judges the man of action more shrewdly and justly
than the man of action judges the ideologist. ” This was the secret
of Napoleon's bitter animosity to “ideologists”: he felt instinctively
that the man of ideas could see into him and through him, and recog-
nize and declare his place in the scheme of the universe as an
astronomer might a planet's. He would have wished to be an incal-
culable, original, elemental force; and it vexed him to feel that he
was something whose course could be mapped and whose constitution
defined by a mere mortal like a Coleridge or a De Staël, who could
treat him like the incarnate Thought he was, and show him, as Em-
erson showed the banker, “that he also was a phantom walking and
working amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or
two beyond his daily questions to find his solid universe proving dim
and impalpable before his sense. ”
The later writings of Emerson, though exhibiting few or no traces
of mental decay, are in general repetitions or at least confirmations
of what had once been announcements and discoveries. This can
scarcely be otherwise when the mind's productions are derived from
its own stuff and substance. Emerson's contemporary Longfellow
could renovate and indeed augment his poetical power by resort in
his old age to Italy; but change of environment brings no reinforce-
ment of energy to the speculative thinker. Events however may
come to his aid; and when Einerson was called before the people by
a momentous incident like the death of President Lincoln, he rose
fully to the height of the occasion. His last verses, also, are among
his best. We have spoken of him as primarily and above all things
a poet; but his claim to that great distinction is to be sought rather
in the poetical spirit which informs all his really inspired writings,
than in the comparatively restricted region of rhyme and metre. It
might have been otherwise. Many of his detached passages are the
very best things in verse yet written in America: but though a
maker, he is not a fashioner. The artistic instinct is deficient in
him;Nhe is seldom capable of combining his thoughts into a harmoni-
ous whole. No one's expression is better when he aims at convey-
ing a single thought with gnomic terseness, as in the mottoes to his
essays; few are more obscure when he attempts continuous composi-
tion. Sometimes, as in the admirable sta zas on the Bunker Hill
dedication, the subject has enforced the due clearness and compression
of thought; sometimes, as in the glorious lines beginning Not from
a vain or shallow thought,” he is guided unerringly by a divine
rapture; in one instance at least, “The Rhodora,' where he is writing
of beauty, the instinct of beauty has given his lines the symmetry as
well as the sparkle of the diamond. Could he have always written


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5432
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
like this, he would have been supreme among American poets in
metre; as it is, comparison seems unfair both to him and to them.
What we have to learn from Emerson is chiefly the Divine imma-
nence in the world, with all its corollaries; no discovery of his, but
re-stated by him in the fashion most suitable to his age, and with a
cogency and attractiveness rivaled by no contemporary. If we tried
to sum up his message in a phrase, we might perhaps find this in
Keats's famous Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty'; only, while Keats
was evidently more concerned for Beauty than for Truth, Emerson
held an impartial balance. These are with him the tests of each
other: whatever is really true is also beautiful, whatever is really
beautiful is also true. Hence his especial value to a world whose
more refined spirits are continually setting up types of asthetic
beauty which must needs be delusive, as discordant with beauty con-
templated under the aspect of morality; while the mass never think
of bringing social and political arrangements to the no less infallible
test of conformity to an ideally beautiful standard. Hence the seem-
ing idealist is of all men the rnost practical; and Emerson's gospel
of beauty should be especially precious to a country like his own,
where circumstances must for so long tell in favor of the more ma-
terial phases of civilization. Even more important is that aspect of
his teaching which deals with the unalterableness of spiritual laws,
the impossibility of evading Truth and Fact in the long run, or of
wronging any one without at the same time wronging oneself.
Happy would it be for the United States if Emerson's essay on
Compensation in particular could be impressed upon the con-
science, where there is any, of every political leader; and interwoven
with the very texture of the mind of every one who has a vote to
cast at the polls!
The special adaptation of Emerson's teaching to the needs of
America is, nevertheless, far from the greatest obligation under
which he has laid his countrymen. His greatest service is to have
embodied a specially American type of thought and feeling. It is
the test of real greatness in a nation to be individual, to produce
something in the world of intellect peculiar to itself and indefeasi-
bly its own. Such intellectual growths were indeed to be found in
America' before Emerson's time, but they were not of the highest
class. Franklin was a great sage, but his wisdom was worldly wis-
dom. Emerson gives us, in his own phrase, morality on fire with emo-
tion,- the only morality which in the long run will really influence the
heart of man. Man is after all too noble a being to be permanently
actuated by enlightened selfishness; and when we compare Emer-
son with even so truly eminent a character as Franklin, we see, as
he saw when he compared Carlyle with Johnson, how great a stride


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5433
forward his country had taken in the mean time. But he could do
for America what Carlyle could not do for Great Britain, for it was
done already: he could and did create a type of wisdom especially
national, as distinctive of the West as Buddha's of the East.
A. Gamett.
All the following citations from Emerson's works are reprinted by special
arrangement with, and the kind permission of, Mr. Emerson's family,
and Messrs. Houghton, Miffin & Co. , publishers, Boston, Mass.
THE TIMES
From the Lecture on (The Times, 1841
BT
UT the subject of the Times is not an abstract question. We
talk of the world, but we mean a few men and women.
If you speak of the age, you mean your own platoon of
people, as Dante and Milton painted in colossal their platoons,
and called them Heaven and Hell. In our idea of progress we
do not go out of this personal picture. We do not think the sky
will be bluer, or honey sweeter, or our climate more temperate,
but only that our relation to our fellows will be simpler and
happier. What is the reason to be given for this extreme attrac-
tion which persons have for us, but that they are the Age? They
are the results of the Past; they are the heralds of the Future.
They indicate — these witty, suffering, blushing, intimidating fig-
ures of the only race in which there are individuals or changes
- how far on the Fate has gone, and what it drives at. As
trees make scenery, and constitute the hospitality of the land-
scape, so persons are the world to persons.
These
are the pungent instructors who thrill the heart of each of us,
and make all other teaching formal and cold. How I follow
them with aching heart, with pining desire! I count myself
nothing before them. I would die for them with joy. They
can do what they will with me. How they lash us with those
tongues! How they make the tears start, make us blush and
turn pale, and lap us in Elysium to soothing dreams and castles
in the air! By tones of triumph, of dear love, by threats, by
pride that freezes, these have the skill to make the world look
•


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
bleak and inhospitable, or seem the nest of tenderness and joy.
I do not wonder at the miracles which poetry attributes to the
music of Orpheus, when I remember what I have experienced
from the varied notes of the human voice. They are an incal-
culable energy which countervails all other forces in nature, be-
cause they are the channel of supernatural powers. There is no
interest or institution so poor and withered but if a new strong
man could be born into it he would immediately redeem and
replace it. A personal ascendency,- that is the only fact much
worth considering. I remember, some years ago, somebody
shocked a circle of friends of order here in Boston, who sup-
posed that our people were identified with their religious denomi-
nations, by declaring that an eloquent man — let him be of what
sect soever — would be ordained at once in one of our metro-
politan churches, To be sure he would; and not only in ours
but in any church, mosque, or temple on the planet: but he
must be eloquent, able to supplant our method and classification
by the superior beauty of his own. Every fact we have was
brought here by some person; and there is none that will not
change and pass away before a person whose nature is broader
than the person whom the fact in question represents. And so
I find the Age walking about in happy and hopeful natures, in
strong eyes and pleasant thoughts, and think I read it nearer
and truer so than in the statute-book, or in the investments of
capital, which rather celebrate with mournful music the obse-
quies of the last age. In the brain of a fanatic; in the wild
hope of a mountain boy, called by city boys very ignorant, be-
cause they do not know what his hope has certainly apprised
him shall be; in the love-glance of a girl; in the hair-splitting
conscientiousness of some eccentric person who has found some
new scruple to embarrass himself and his neighbors withal,- is
to be found that which shall constitute the times to come, more
than in the now organized and accredited oracles. For whatever
is affirmative and now advancing contains it. I think that only
is real which men love and rejoice in; not what they tolerate,
but what they choose; what they embrace and avow, and not
the things which chill, benumb, and terrify them.
And so why not draw for these times a portrait gallery? Let
us paint the painters. Whilst the daguerreotypist, with camera-
obscura and silver plate, begins now to traverse the land, let us
set up our camera also, and let the sun paint the people. Let


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5435
us paint the agitator, and the man of the old school, and the mem-
ber of Congress, and the college professor, the formidable editor,
the priest, and reformer, the contemplative girl, and the fair
aspirant for fashion and opportunities, the woman of the world
who has tried and knows — let us examine how well she knows.
Could we indicate the indicators, indicate those who most accu-
rately represent every good and evil tendency of the general mind,
in the just order which they take on this canvas of time, so that
all witnesses should recognize a spiritual law, as each well-
known form flitted for a moment across the wall, we should have
a series of sketches which would report to the next ages the color
and quality of ours.
Certainly I think if this were done there would be much to
admire as well as to condemn; souls of as lofty a port as any in
Greek or Roman fame might appear; men of great heart, of
strong hand, and of persuasive speech; subtle thinkers, and men
of wide sympathy, and an apprehension which looks over all his-
tory and everywhere recognizes its own. To be sure, there will
be fragments and hints of men, more than enough; bloated prom-
ises, which end in nothing or little. And then, truly great men,
but with some defect in their composition which neutralizes their
whole force. Here is a Damascus blade, such as you may search
through nature in vain to parallel, laid up on the shelf in some
village to rust and ruin. And how many seem not quite avail-
able for that idea which they represent!
Now and then comes a
bolder spirit, I should rather say, a more surrendered soul, more
informed and led by God, which is much in advance of the rest,
quite beyond their sympathy, but predicts what shall soon be the
general fullness; as when we stand by the sea-shore, whilst the
tide is coming in, a wave comes up the beach far higher than
any foregoing one, and recedes; and for a long while none comes
up to that mark; but after some time the whole sea is there and
beyond it.
FRIENDSHIP
F
RIENDSHIP may be said to require natures so rare and costly,
each so well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal
so circumstanced (for even in that particular, a poet says,
love demands that the parties be altogether paired), that its
satisfaction can very seldom be assured. It cannot subsist in its


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
perfection, say some of those who are learned in this warm lore
of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not quite so strict in
my terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a fellow-
ship as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of
godlike men and women variously related to each other, and be-
tween whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this law of
one to one peremptory for conversation, which is the practice and
consummation of friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The
best mix as ill as good and bad. You shall have very useful and
cheering discourse at several times with two several men, but let
all three of you come together and you shall not have one new
and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three
cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and search-
ing sort. In good company there is never such discourse between
two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone.
In good company the individuals merge their egotism into a social
soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses there
present.
Unrelated men give little joy to each other, will never suspect
the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent
for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some in-
dividuals. Conversation is an evanescent relation,
A
man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all
that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his
silence with as much reason as they would blame the insig-
nificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the
hour. Among those who enjoy his thought he will regain his
tongue.
Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and un-
likeness that piques each with the presence of power and of con-
sent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the
world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or
a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism
and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself.
The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is
mine. \I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance or at least
a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. “Better be a
nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition
which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That
high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very
two before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two
no more.


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5437
son.
iarge, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, be-
fore yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these
disparities unites them.
He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure
that greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift
to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with
this. Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accel-
erate the births of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious
treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-
elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a
spectacle. Of course he has merits that are not yours, and that
you cannot honor if you must needs hold him close to your per-
Stand aside; give those merits room; let them mount and
expand. Are you the friend of your friend's buttons, or of his
thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thou-
sand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground.
Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to
such a short and all-confounding pleasure instead of the noblest
benefit.
Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation.
Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding
on them? 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 claw-
ing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sin-
cerity, 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 grass
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 hoard and tell them all. 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


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5438
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
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 nobody.
It profanes nobody. In these warm
lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and
pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals
of heroism have yet made good.
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, of
follies, of blunders and of shame, is passed 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
god attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the
little you gain the great.
NATURE
T"
HERE are days which occur in this climate, at almost any sea-
son of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection;
when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a
harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when, in these
bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we
have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining
hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives
sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem
to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be
looked for with a little more assurance in that
weather which we distinguish by the name of the Indian Sum-
mer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills
and warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny
hours seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem
quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of
the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and
small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his
back with the first step he takes into these precincts. Here is
pure October


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5439
sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits
our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which
dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men
that come to her. We have crept out of our close and crowded
houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic
beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would
escape the barriers which render them comparatively impotent,
escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature
to intrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like a per-
petual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently
reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines,
hemlocks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye.
The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with
them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or
church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the
immortal year.
How easily we might walk onward into the
opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures and by thoughts
fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of
home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by
the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by
nature.
These enchantments are medicinal; they sober and heal us.
These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come to
our own, and make friends with matter which the ambitious
chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We never
can part with it; the mind loves its old home: as water to our
thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes and hands and feet.
It is firm water; it is cold flame: what health, what affinity!
Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother when we
chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest face, and
takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our nonsense.
Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily
and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much
scope, just as we need water for our bath. There are all degrees
of natural influence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up
to her dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagination and
the soul. There is the bucket of cold water from the spring, the
wood fire to which the chilled traveler rushes for safety, -and
there is the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle
in nature, and draw our living as parasites from her roots and
grains; and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which


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5440
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
call us to solitude, and foretell the remotest future. The blue
zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. I think
if we should be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, and
should converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be
all that would remain of our furniture.
It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we
have given heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes
in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the
blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the
waving rye field; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose
innummerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the re-
flections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical steam-
ing odorous south wind, which converts all trees to wind-harps;
the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames, or of pine
logs, which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sitting-
room, — these are the music and pictures of the most ancient
religion. My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and
on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the
shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I
leave the village politics and personalities,- yes, and the world of
villages and personalities, — behind, and pass into a delicate realm
of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to
enter without novitiate and probation. We penetrate bodily this
incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; our
eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggi-
atura, a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival
that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed,
establishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these deli-
cately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances,
signify it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our inven-
tion, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have
early learned that they must work as enchantment and sequel to
this original beauty. I am over-instructed for my return. Hence-
forth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am
grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no longer live without
elegance; but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He
who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are
in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to
come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Only
as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their
aid, can they reach the height of magnificence.


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5441
COMPENSATION
A
MAN cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or
against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his
companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him
who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but the
other end remains in the thrower's bag Or rather, it is a har-
poon thrown at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in
the boat; and if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it
will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain or to sink the boat.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. “No man had
ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke.
The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes
himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The
exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of
heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men as
pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you
leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The senses would
make things of all persons; of women, of children, of the poor.
The vulgar proverb “I will get it from his purse or get it from
his skin,” is sound philosophy.
All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are
speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand
in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in
meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents
of air mix, — with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature.
But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and at-
tempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my
neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have
shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war be-
tween us; there is hate in him and fear in me.
All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all un-
just accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the
same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the
herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, - that there is
rottenness where he appears.
He is a carrion crow; and though
you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere.
Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes
are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered
IX-341


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5442
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
over government and property. That obscene bird is not there
for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be revised.
Of the like nature is that expectation of change which in-
stantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. The
terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, the awe of
prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to impose
on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the
tremblings of the balance of justice through the heart and mind
of man.
Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best
to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a man often pays
dear for a small frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt.
Has a man gained anything who has received a hundred favors
and rendered none ? Has he gained by borrowing, through indo-
lence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money?
There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit
on the one part and of debt on the other; that is, of superiority
and inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory of him-
self and his neighbor, and every new transaction alters according
to its nature their relation to each other. He may soon come to
see that he had better have broken his own bones than to have
ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that “the highest price he can
pay for a thing is to ask for it. ”
A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and
know that it is the part of prudence to face every claimant and
pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart.
Always pay; for first or last you must pay your entire debt.
Persons and events may stand for a time between you and
justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last
your own debt. If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity
which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature.
But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is
great who confers the most benefits. He is base — and that is
the one base thing in the universe — to receive favors and render
none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those
from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit
we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed,
cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying
in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms.
Pay it
away quickly in some sort.


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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
5443
LOVE
H*
ERE let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influence
which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty,
whose revelation to man we now celebrate, welcome as the
sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases everybody with
it and with themselves, seems sufficient to itself.