613


Waldo Emendoro


Wal
LEDER

1999
O
WS
NOndeerporeneque INDOLO
James Hardy ROPES
Harvard Divinity School
THE GIFT OF
ALICE · LOWELL · ROPES
1933
ANDOVER-HARVARD .
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY











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JOURNALS
OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
1820-1872
VOL. V











Ralph Waldo Emerson, about 1846





JOURNALS
OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
WITH ANNOTATIONS
EDITED BY
EDWARD WALDO EMERSON
AND
WALDO EMERSON FORBES
1838–1841

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1911


ANDOVER-HARVARD
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY EDWARD WALDO EMERSON
ALL'RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November 1911


CONTENTS
JOURNAL XXIX
(Continued)
1838
(From Journal D)
Botany with George B. Emerson. Bible misused. Rail-
ing. Herbert's Poems. Never Compare. Good Schol-
ars. Tennyson. Speaking. Rare Genius. The true
Jesus. Rivalry. The momentary object; trees. Waldo.
Dartmouth College Address. Persons, not things.
Always Beauty. Frugal Nature. Joy in composition.
Limitation. Sanity rare. Mathematics and ethics. The
Understanding. Outgoing virtue. Seeing pictures;
Thorwaldsen, Greeks, Raphael's angel, sibyls. Wo-
inan’s tragedy. Lecture topics. Dr. Ripley's prayer.
Book-readers. Distraction. Perceivers and Recorders.
Joy in others' gifts. Want of Harmony. The might of
Sympathy. Dr. Ripley. Orator. Eyes. Faithful writ-
ing. Duties of Libraries. Evening parties. Landor.
Scholar must have ideal. The Church clock. Samuel
Hoar. The common thought. Pathos of form, of
women. Heeren's Egypt; Tragedy of the Negro.
Wise spending; gardens and architecture. Doctrine
of Benefits. Questions. Cathedral; the Problem. O BK
day; signs of ndium; the scholar's freedom; the hos-


CONTENTS
tile array; the ride home. Lottery of visits. Landscape
art. Censure. Living times. Professor Andrews Nor-
ton's attack. George P. Bradford. Proverbs. Ignore
the personal. The salt fish. Others' books. Boys and
girls. Sin. Proposal for a Journal. A human book.
Beauty shuns sermons. License of reform, its relief.
Culture and cheer. Sympathy is missed. Silken per-
secution. Limit. The Scholar's lot; not accountable
for his vision. Use of facts. Otherism. Concord min-
isters. Despondents, their remedy. Sunset from the
hill. A stranger. The Vast. The eloquent man.
Housekeeping a college . . . . . . . . 3-50
Look outward. Alcott. Nomads. Man a stranger in his
body. Nomad and Pivot. The proud mushroom. Man
and Book. Facts detached. Dr. Palfrey baptizing. Pro-
verbs. W. H. Channing. Originality. Teeth. Su-
perior Nature. Tennyson. Nature a deist, a resource,
no fool. Races. Le Blaie. Goethe's naming. Irreli-
gious intellect. Your turn. Walk with John L. Russell.
Casella's song. Nature's insurance. Cause and effect.
Heroes provided. Sickness. Famed books. Order of
wonder. Apples and men. Faction. Letter to Mar-
garet Fuller; writing history. On inconsistencies. Na-
ture forces interchange. The abstract practical. Literary
warfare. The blessed wife. Education for adversity;
for princes. Rich and poor. Vice. Tokens. Letter
to W. Silsbee; ideas of God; truth. Definitions. Books
secondary. Hostile reviews. Compensations. Higher
riches. Van Burenism. Politics; overvalued facts; de-
bate; election. Faces. Facts settle into place. Turns.
Fertilized eloquence. Truth shunned. Swedenbor-


CONTENTS
vii
gianism. Direct speech saves; cant; scholar must be
fearless. Part means strife; whole, peace, silence.
Awakening thought. Doctors. Hold your own. Mea-
sure yourself; result. Poet's powers. Potatoes. Edward
Palmer; no-money reform; his practice; another view;
quoting texts. The Peace manifesto. Facts or doctrines.
The living Now sought in antiquity. One mind. The
wife's counsel. New science looks within. Story
hunger. Idols. Letters to Aunt Mary; ideals and
society. Laughing dangerous. Jones Very's visit; be
hospitable to souls. Vocabularies. Scholar must not
stop for attacks . . . . . . . . . . 51-100
Winning fate. The Grahamite gospel. On literature.
Man and Thought; Tragedy of light that does not guide.
Mrs. Sarah Alden Ripley. Shakespeare must be real-
ized. Jones Very's attitude of protest; spiritual state;
manners. Travelling. Coincidences. O'Connell and
the Slaveholder. Example. Fear of the New Lights,
but Soul must win. A catechism. Tone. Grief.
Jones Very rebukes. Soirées. “ Charity.” Culture.
The Trismegisti. Summons to poets. Weans and
wife. Living with scholars. Autobiographical; bereave-
ment. Ideal society. Chaucer. Argument. Numeri-
cal religion. Insanity; repose. A divine man; beauty;
deep joy in Nature. Not Hope, but Trust. Freedom.
Asylums of the Mind; Natural Science, Fancy, In-
vention, Music. Beauty. Instinct to adorn life. Obe-
dience. True Society. Don't play the Martyr. Time
and Space illusions. Lear and Hamlet; not owed to
book-learning. Expression of faces. The wonder of
Shakespeare. Henry Thoreau; Talk on Property and


viii
CONTENTS
on Writing. Always pay. The man of Will; the
magnetic maiden Incalculable Man; great men. Walk
with H. G. O. Blake; enchantment of Memory. Fire,
water, woods, birds good company. The miraculous.
Love of the Child. Slavery to words, yet God now,
here, face to face. Man thankful for sympathy. Musi-
cal eyes. Be hospitable to thought. One wise word.
Keep the Will true. Books. Soul. « The Travellers.”
Poets. Nature soothes. Tone shows advance. Swe-
denborgian chains. Alfred Haven. Dr. Ripley. Teach-
ers from within and from without. Genius must charm;
respect your impressions; Swedenborg; Beethoven.
Scholar in fashionable society; autobiographical. Sir
Thomas Browne. Boys and Girls. Hunger for thought;
its joy; yet the Masters hold their own." Beware The-
ory. Cant. Fear of light; peace of insight. Illicit
Studies. One mind. A test. Man's history unwritten;
Creation going on. Reading . . . . . 101-153
JOURNAL XXX
1839
(From Journals D and E)
Lectures on Human Life. The Lord's Supper; far-
reaching Genius. Naming the Pond. Plymouth. Blessed
warmth. Stewart Newton's sketches. Children's toys.
Falling. Demonology; its traces in Christianity. Epam-
inondas. Ellen Tucker. The Pathetic.' My Ambi-
tion. Tax tests honesty. Waldo's sayings. Ellen's birth.
Memory fixes rank. The Solo songstress. “Sym-


CONTENTS
posium” meets. No age in talk. Heads. A gentle-
man. Lectures in Plymouth. Early Poems. Lesson
of warlike energy. Gates and Burgoyne. Books.
Church must respect the Soul; a Sabbath. Vanity.
“ Another State”; foolish preaching; thoughts in
church; self-trust. Right conversation. Institutions
illusory. Sure compensation. Growth or stagnation.
Peeping. Art. Content. Thought visible, eternal,
universal. At home in Nature. Cousins. A confession
of St. Augustine. Low religion; spiritual teaching.
Art strong from within. Housekeeping. Ali in each;
the Foreworld. John Fletcher; “ Bonduca,” “The
Coxcombs," “ The False One”; Cæsar, Poet's use
of heroes. Men are photometers. Secure isolation
through elevation. Music masses; utterance by indi-
rection. Books as gardens of delight. Artificial mem-
ory; value of catalogue; annals of thought. Know one
to know all. Self-trust; serious visitors. Praise. Lan-
dor's Pericles and Aspasia. Elegance. Neighbour
Sam Staples. Respect the philanthropies. “Sympo-
sium.” Conversation. Present, Past, Future, Theist
or Atheist. Epochs of Life. Propriety. Pictures.
Formal preaching; speak things, or be silent. 154-200
No hiding. Keep in tune. “Symposium,” Fear in-
structs. Landor, Germany and America. A fancied
college. Character. Allston's pictures; American gen-
ius unreal. Hedge; Dualism. The poor and rich mind.
Slow consolations. A timid people. Brave Henry
Thoreau. The potato mine. Biography; individuals
new. Idolaters. Eternity. The foam of the Infinite,
“So hot, little Sir.” Friendship. Virtues of labor.


CONTENTS
Domestic conqueror. Child has poetry of life. The
Lotus-eaters; perspective of Reform. Be natural. Com-
pression. Rich men of language. Slackness of scholars.
The Sabbath. The Reforming Age. Living Conver-
sation. Life a May-game. Love's miracles. A great
man's light. Types of man. Guido's Aurora. Analy-
sis. Absolutions. Iteration. Calming labor. Allston's
pictures. Repetitions of history. God. Cherish Free-
dom. Contrasted characters. Jones Very. Goethe's
help. The Savant. Be sacred. History is biography.
The Divine. Beauty a sword and shield. Composi-
tion necessary. Aroma. Rhyme, its privilege of truth;
may need a spur, Pindaric, warlike, daring. Reli-
gion now looks to life. Boston Athenæum. Limited
belief. Referred life. Prop the world! Boston chances;
beards; pictures. Puling virtue. Edward Palmer.
The Lecture a new organ. Reforms teach; the No-
money doctrine. Drunk with party. Beauty needs
faith. Miracles. Cathedral. Reform's source. The
verbs painted. Possible great men. Wood-thrush. All
elements needed. Bettina von Arnim. Two-headed
Nature; good in evil. The child's power. Strawber-
ries. The home sweet, but sacred. “ Abandon."
Manners demonological. Night's pageant. Thoreau's
“Sympathy.” Friends fated. Immortality falsely
taught; the soul affirms. Carlyle sees Webster. Uni-
tarian weakness. Burke's rhetoric. Manners have no
hurry. New Hampshire; hills and lakes; poverty;
Calvinism; men disappoint; the Profile; the horn's echo.
Poor health. Margaret Fuller and F. H. Hedge;
George Bradford. Help for the day from books. Days.
Horace Mann; Education . . . . . . . 201-250


CONTENTS
The Thoreaus' voyage; the farm as school; the Aurora in
vain. Lackof zeal for reform; pledges avoided. Common
people interest. Futile college. Age of words, vain re-
petition. Things and men. Teamsters versus railroads.
Two singers, voice and taste. Poor literary meetings.
Accident of Riches. Writing dialogue. Water ; home
tasks. Speech or writing. Be Shakspeare. Sad tales and
convicting books. False temperance. Purgatory. The
band of Protesters. Friendship. Oliver Twist. Chil-
dren foreigners. Cromwell apud Forster. Woods, a
prose sonnet. Usefulness honorable; Raphael, Dante.
Unripe power. Walk to Fairhaven Hill. Mankind
awards fame. Sorrow and Age; God equal to the cure.
Lethe and Beauty. Military eye. The village singer.
Faces. All in Man. Hospitalities. Autobiographical.
Cant. Memory, not wit. Re-reading old sermons.
Renouncing soul's birthright the madness of Chris-
tendom; yet shun denial; true help of Jesus. Noviciate.
Ebb tide of the day. Organization. Aristocracy and
idealism. The solemn Ego. Some progress; the time's
woes. Anna Barker. The Lyceum's opportunity.
The Boston bells. Horace Walpole. Matter. Books
of all time, the annals of Soul, inspired. Dangers of
commerce. No age in good writing. Waiting for a
friend. Weather. Poem-making. My lecturing. Obey
the Spirit. The Cornwallis and its teaching. Visit of
Alcott and Margaret Fuller. Trust thy time. Confi-
dences. Enlisting in reforms. The soul heir of all.
Books, the universal light in them. Interpreting of Fact;
lectures. Michel Angelo. Truth of character. Tem-
perance · · · · · · · · · · · 251–300


CONTENTS
Our Twofold nature. Our varied teachers; health not
squeamish. Rest and Love. The Past. William Lloyd
Garrison; Non-Resistance. The Present teaches the
law. Letter to S. G. Ward. Art and Letters. Prin-
ciples not details. Kant; What is the Age ? Keep
young. Michel Angelo, Phidias, Raphael. Nature's in-
dulgence; health. Innocence. Vision. Nose and teeth.
City and country. Our generation's problem. Reason
above Understanding. Ideal when practised alarms.
John Sterling. Subject. Raphael; tone. Reign of Pru-
dence. Gustavus Adolphus; Cavendish, Harleian
Miscellanies; American standards. Linnæus and French
novels. Our spurs to work. Effect of books. Advancing
men humble; stagnant talent shines. Fashionists barom-
eters. Ideal men ? Praise a bad omen. Do your work.
True men. The over-anxious host. Alcott. The city
of the Muse. Our Age our all. Margaret Fuller
complains of the intervening gulf. Mimicry. One
Mind. Systems; autobiographical. Analysis may be
sublime; idleness the danger. Nature's analogies. Union
and Constitution, but Man is above measures. The
annoyers. Justice. Politics; measures or popular opin-
ion? Sabbath. Death. The boarder. Homerides; suc-
cessive ideas working. Temperance. The Bible, a
foundation, primary; so all Scriptures of the nations.
Eyes of women and men. Comparisons. Scholar and
Soldier. The Clerisy or learned class to-day; their prob-
lems. The woods a temple. The best literature makes
death incredible. Raphael's Four Sibyls; Guido's Au-
rora; the Capitoline Endymion. Sun-spiced diet. Un-
conscious writing. Disunited self, worthy and unwor-


CONTENTS
X111
thy. Poetry makes its pertinence. Shelley never true
poet; other modern British poets. Genius shirks re-
form. Man's eating repulsive; camping. Keats. True
and false subjective. Coldness as disguise. Michel
Angelo's giants created by the Jewish idea. Nature.
Society. Shaking off forms. Swedenborg's force 301-350
Hope works. The Age alive. Opposition good. Ster-
ling and Carlyle. True revelations. The Present Age.
Use our own tests. Influences shed; longanimity.
Proportion. Advertisements, Man's dignity and op-
portunity; God our force; true citizen. Treat poet-
ically. Love a reflection. Writing on the Age, eter-
nity's fruit. Ideal and circumstance. The wise man.
Woman's attraction. Reverent friendship; its tides.
Reading . . . . . . . . . . . 350-364
JOURNAL XXXI
1840
(From Journals E and F)
Guy learns friendship. Man before measure; Character
brings Theocracy. Plato's “ Politician.” Estimating
nations. One miracle. Scholar. Church's poverty.
Balzac. Character plus sensibility. Course on The
Present Age; disappointment in it. The maiden;
gems. The elect. Wealth in thought and senses.
Bible priceless, yet not final. Shakespeare. Things
the divine language. Instinct speaks for Immortality.
Nature flows. Writing and speech. Confessions help.
Power of manners, yet humanity greater. Death in


xiv
CONTENTS
story. Dollars. Allston. Cry for Religion; individu-
ality accepted everywhere else. Walk in Autumn
woods with Jones Very; “ The Romans still masters”;
insane? New playthings. Egotism's Nemesis. « Un-
conscious” inspiration explained. New thought.
The new journal's (Dial) position. Waldo. Superla-
tive. Alcott's ground. Man — Jesus — no institution.
Foresight. Farming ; follow your calling. Influence
of Authors. Men will seek out knowledge and fac-
ulty. Animal food. Stars. Spontaneous thought. The
soul. Europe. Wordsworth makes sane. The Thinker
let loose. Life's means and ends. Goethe's service.
Architecture. Apple-blossom. A grand aim saves.
Simple life; hands or head. Latent joy. Criticism must
be transcendental. Helpless cosmogonies; Society pre-
fers secondaries. The Golden Age. Be slow to print.
The Circus. Reformers. Unmagnetic men.“ Fa-
ther” Edward Taylor, his power and charm. Old
Age. Reform, ideas. Books like birds. Advertising
for a master. Nature clears eyes. Buddhist hospital-
ity. Man's capital. Standing. Bat and ball. How
to see pictures. Waldo. Composure. Love. Intoxica-
tions. Diet whims. Scots. How to drive a bargain.
The scythe. Thoreau on diet. Friendship . 365-415
Originality the test of man. Respect a friend's heights.
Power exhilarates. Crude poetry. Love's picturing.
All in each. Hive facts. Originality. Montaigne.
New chapter « Nature" ; her cipher. Magic of
heat. Assets not taxed. The house and the poor-house.
The Democrats magnetic. The day at the Cliff; river,
rock and flower Immortality. Poet must teach citi-


CONTENTS
ху
zen. Symbols of Harrison campaign. Inviting com-
pany. Our perilous foundation. Immersed in a river.
Increase our faith; trifle of diet. Our expense. Society.
Time and Fate fix relations. The Man behind the
sentence. Practical man and prophet. Egotism. Love
and intellect. Osman, his endowment and his fortune.
Self-trust. The Greeks ; no time in the antique. Chil-
dren's speech. The gloomy comrade. The woodman's
real thought. Prometheus ; Æschylus. Memory.
Nature's counsel. Graces of sleep. Carlyle has power
and wit ; no philosopher; exhaustive. Life and poems.
Education raises man above circumstance. Fine Be-
havior. Sun and shade. Genius bids work. The
woods a temple; Love be thy art. Question for schol-
ars. The short visit. Miss Martineau's Deerbrook.
Character. Pericles and Aspasia. A woman's criticism.
The Dial's purposes. All history personal. The old
in the new. Poet needs good and bad chances. Clouds.
Love makes us children. Be, not say. Exacting friends.
Ovid. Gaston de Foy. Love of friends. Talk of what
you know. Christianity now insists on persons, not
ideas. Courts. Truth. The forest. Oblique training.
The Lonely Society. Gardening. Character comes
out. Experiments in Community. Sarah Clarke. New
questions. Property. Sleep. Toiling terribly. Con-
version of a woman. Experimenting in life. Life all
emblems; the angle. Trust the God within; Light
coming ; Nature's teaching; she is all-musical; has
no shock. I love your virtue . . . . . . 416-464
Saccharine faces. Broadcast virtue. Rhetoric's charm.
The soul. Whigs. Reform looks not back. Property.


xvi.
CONTENTS
True friendship. Marriage of friends. Life’s romantic
power; waiting; Nature reassures and rewards. The
riddle of the landscape. A timesworth. Attacks are
compliments to Dial; exhortation to it. Brook Farm.
project does not attract. “ Bonduca.” Society con-
stricts, — Obey your Call; draw on Nature; wild
poetry. Let the elemental laws work. Life present;
Swedenborg. Each supposes another himself. Crea-
tion, not gold. History of Jesus typical. Moods.
Church horns. A wedding gift. Dignity. Self-reli-
ance again. Saccharine principle. Osman and the fine
folk. Soul will win; infinite Time. Essence of a
book. Life shows your compass. Elemental death.
Excess of directions; God drives us on ever. The poet
who gives wisdom and faith. Useful swearing. Rule
of transformation. Thought's twilight. The angel's
command. Vision of retribution. Dependent and in-
dependent. Joy not pain endures. Literature's excuse.
Imitation. In Nature all equal. Working power of
Art. The Moon's phases and the Spirit’s; yet strive
on. Gleams from Nature; moments. Godlike calm.
French novels. Cırcles. Nitrous oxide. Jesus's com-
mand of silence. Man finds what he is. Self-service
elegant. Thoughts during music. Wrinkles. The great
circles. Nature's message derided, yet true. Beauty
cannot be held. How to treat a genius? The Flow-
ing; heed the lesson. Crowns waiting us. Waldo's
prayer. Real or absurd immortality; your share of
God. The living God neglected. Dream of debate on
Marriage; solution. Be Universalists. Love of Jesus
and of the great scriptures reasonable. Reading 465-503


CONTENTS
xvii
JOURNAL XXXII
1841
(From Journals E, F, G, H, and J)
Thoreau as helpful friend. The First Essays. Goethe;
Beethoven. Nature's continence. The Confessional.
Nature's song ever new. The memory of progress.
Influence. Progress of Knowledge. Plotinus listening
for the oracle. Man a link. Snow and woods. Na-
ture's sublime law. God gives facts; find their reason.
Forest thoughts. Ecstasy and the soul. To-day; its
shining remembrance. Novels, Quentin Durward,
Wilhelm Meister, their moral; diaries and autobio-
graphies. Half-sickness. The Concert, Magic chest
of tea. Labor and letters; marriage, wife's protection.
No time; hurry. Spring. Experience not valid against
soul's possibility. Friends given Essays. Poet and
Poem; the sincere dissembler. French. Iamblichus
on Pythagoras. Mexican views. Nature; Man the
receiver, to recreate. Social tests for all, their fruit.
Nichol's astronomy and Saint-Simon's Mémoires. Re-
wards. Poems. The Café. Precepts to children. Pre-
sent literature abroad and here; rejection, discontent,
slight reformers. Samuel G. Ward. Life of talent or
following your own sacred path. Polite war. The
advancing West. Animals. The scholar's courage.
Man sacred. Hold to your quest. Opportunity. God
in man. Vitality, ascendency; subservient scholars. Re-
vealing eyes. Balance. Beauty goes with truth. North
End picturesqueness stirs the painter within; each


xviii
CONTENTS
has power of expression. Aunt Mary's original, wild
genius; family quotations; her letter to Charles ; Water-
ford. New England's old religion, its dignity and
worth. The brothers Edward and Charles. 504-545
Edward's high tone; Charles's attraction; family history;
New England's Old Religion; Aunt Mary; Milton
and Young. The Sabbath of the Woods. Gentleman
and Christian. President Harrison. The Dew. Weeds
and Men. Age and Grief wrong; all flowing, Reli-
gion too; Man receives to give; Pantheism; hospi-
tality. The heart a gate. Genius draws the curtain;
keep impressionable. Saints' worship dangerous; keep
thy soul. Manners; good sense. Thoreau as poet and
helper. Night's enchantment, the river, liquid sun-
set; stars and moon, animated Law. “Chaldæan
Oracles.” Tree and Man. Books beguile. Critics
borers. Poet (“ Hafiz”) transforms surroundings.
The Actual; waste power. Osman and Schill, simple
life, Nature's elegance. Constancy. The great ages;
real life; man's dimensions. Variety. Yearnings.
Trees teach the planter. Sixteen-hour days. Piety's
sins. Meeting your soul. Alterity. Success's depriva-
tion. Asiatic genius. The unpardoned sin. Carlyle's
rhetoric. . . . . . . . . . . 546-571


ILLUSTRATIONS
Ralph WALDO EMERSON . . . . . . . Frontispiece
From a crayon, about 1846, by either Hildreth or
Johnston.
.
.
. 352
John STERLING . . . . . . .
After a painting by Delacour in 1830.
Amos Bronson Alcott . . . . . . . . . 388
Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE . . . . . . . . 528
From a drawing by Daniel Maclise.





JOURNAL
DIVINITY SCHOOL ADDRESS
ABIDING THE STORM
DARTMOUTH ADDRESS
COURSE ON HUMAN LIFE





JOURNAL XXIX
(Continued)
1838
(From Journal D)
[All page references to passages from the Journals used by
Mr. Emerson in his published works are to the Centenary
Edition, 1903-05.]
Sunday, July 1, 1838.
In Boston, Friday, and rode to Charlestown,
and afterward to the Cambridge bushes with
George B. Emerson. A beautiful thicket like a
mat of South American vegetation. Arcadian
ladders did the dead vines of the smilax make;
a delicate fruit the Pyrus villosus offered; the
azalea was in profuse flower; the tupelo tree and
the Ilex canadensis I had never seen before. It
seemed not June, but August or September.
The pines have a growth and twisted appear-
ance that I do not remember elsewhere. Hama-
melis. Asper indentatus. Aralia nudicaulis.
[During July and the exciting events con-
nected with the delivery of the Divinity School


JOURNAL
(AGE 35
Address and its reception, Mr. Emerson did
not forget to care for the interests of his friend
Carlyle in this country. (See the Correspond-
ence, vol. i, letters xxv to xxxii.)]
Most of the commonplaces spoken in churches
every Sunday respecting the Bible and the life
of Christ, are grossly superstitious. Would not,
for example, would not any person unacquainted
with the Bible, always draw from the pulpit
the impression that the New Testament unfolded
a system ? and, in the second place, that the his-
tory of the life and teachings of Jesus were
greatly more copious than they are? Do let the
new generation speak the truth, and let our
grandfathers die. Let go, if you please, the old
notions about responsibility for the souls of your
parishioners, but do feel that Sunday is their
only time for thought and do not defraud them
of that, as miserably as two men have me today.
Our time is worth too much than that we can
go to church twice until you have something to
announce there.
If you rail at bodies of men, at institutions,
and use vulgar watchwards, as bank; aristo-
cracy; agrarianism ; etc., I do not believe you.


1838] HERBERT. COMPARISON
5
I can expect no fruit. The true reformer sees
that a soul is an infinite, and addresses himself
to one mind.
Look for a thing in its place and you will find
it, or tidings of it. The red leaf of the straw-
berry-vines is mistaken for a berry; but go to
it and you will find a real berry close by.
Read Herbert. What eggs, ellipses, acrostics,
forward, backward and across, could not his
liquid genius run into, and be genius still and
angelic love? And without soul, the freedom of
our Unitarianism here becomes cold, barren and
odious.
Never compare. God is our name for the last
generalization to which we can arrive, and, of
course, its sense differs today and tomorrow.
But never compare your generalization with
your neighbor's. Speak now, and let him hear
you and go his way. Tomorrow, or next year,
let him speak, and answer thou not. So shall
you both speak truth and be of one mind; but
insist on comparing your two thoughts; or in-
sist on hearing in order of battle, and instantly
you are struck with blindness, and will grope
and stagger like a drunken man.


JOURNAL [AGE 35
We think too lowly altogether of the schol-
ar's vocation. To be a good scholar as English-
men are, to have as much learning as our con-
temporaries, to have written a successful book,
satisfies us, and we say, “Now, Lord, we depart
in peace !” A true man will think rather, All
literature is yet to be written. ...
I think Tennyson got his inspiration in gar-
dens, and that in this country, where there are
no gardens, his musky verses could not be writ-
ten. The Villa d’Este is a memorable poem in
my life.
There is a limit to the effect of written elo-
quence. It may do much, but the miracles of
eloquence can only be expected from the man
who thinks on his legs. He who thinks may
thunder; on him the Holy Ghost may fall, and
from him pass.
July 2.
The price of the picture indicates the com-
mon sense of men in regard to the chance there
is for the appearance of equal genius. The
chances are millions to one that no new Raphael
is born today, and therefore pictures as great as
the actual Raphael painted express that chance


THE TRUE JESUS
in their nominal value. But it is beautiful to see
that when genius does arrive, it writes itself out
in every word and deed and manner, as truly
and self-same as in its masterpiece. A leaf in the
forest, or a flower, as a violet, would be as highly
prized as the Transfiguration, if they were the
solitary productions of human genius, and would
administer the same gratification and the same
culture.
July 8.
We shun to say that which shocks the reli-
gious ear of the people and to take away titles
even of false honor from Jesus. But this fear is
an impotency to commend the moral sentiment.
For if I can so imbibe that wisdom as to utter
it well, instantly love and awe take place. The
reverence for Jesus is only reverence for this,
and if you can carry this home to any man's
heart, instantly he feels that all is made good
and that God sits once more on the throne. But
when I have as clear a sense as now that I am
speaking simple truth without any bias, any for-
eign interest in the matter, — all railing, all un-
willingness to hear, all danger of injury to the
conscience, dwindles and disappears. I refer now
to the discourse now growing under my eye to
the Divinity School.


JOURNAL
(AGE 35
July to.
A true man can never feel rivalry. All men
are ministers to him, servants to bring him ma-
terials, but none, nor all, can possibly do what
he must do, he alone is privy,- nor even is he
yet privy to his own secret.. They can never
know until he has shown them what that is.
Let them mind their own.
a mo
[On July 15, Mr. Emerson delivered before
the graduating class at the Divinity School in
Cambridge the address which raised such a
storm of dissent. Now a memorial tablet to
him may be seen on the walls of the Divinity
School Chapel.]
July 16.
The object catches your eye today, and be-
gets in you lively thought and emotion which,
perchance, arrives at expression. Tomorrow,
you pass the same object, - it is quite indiffer-
ent: you do not see it, although once you have
been religious upon it, and seen God through
it, as we worship the moon with all the muses
at midnight, and, when the day breaks, we do
not even see that scanty patch of light that is
fading in the west. They who have heard your
poetry upon the thing are surprised at your


1838) TREES AND MEN. WALDO 9
negligence of a thing they have learned from you
· to respect. Tonight I saw fine trees. Trees
look to me like imperfect men. It is the same
soul that makes me, which, by a feebler effort,
arrives at these graceful portraits of life. I think
we all feel so. I think we all feel a certain pity
in beholding a tree: rooted there, the would-be-
Man is beautiful, but patient and helpless. His
boughs and long leaves droop and weep his
strait imprisonment.
Little Waldo cheers the whole house by his
moving calls to the cat, to the birds, to the
flies, –“ Pussy-cat, come see Waddow ! Liddle
Birdy, come see Waddow ! Fies! Fies! come
see Waddow !” His mother shows us the two
apples that his grandfather gave him,' and which
he brought home in each hand and did not be-
gin to eat till he got nearly home. “See where
the dear little angel has gnawed them. They
are worth a barrel of apples that he has not
touched.”
July 17.
In preparing to go to Cambridge with my
speech to the young men, day before yesterday,
it occurred with force that I had no right to
i Dr. Ripley.


10
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
go unless I were equally willing to be prevented
from going
Mr. Emerson drove in a chaise from Con-
cord to Hanover, New Hampshire, to deliver
the“ Literary Ethics” address, with John Keyes,
Esq., a leading citizen and lawyer of Concord,
and a Dartmouth graduate, and the young son
of the latter, John Shepard Keyes, later United
States Marshal under Lincoln, and Justice of
the Middlesex Central District Court, who died
in 1910. The northward journey must have
taken three days. It is interesting to consider
that, although the Divinity School Address
had startled the clergy and the Harvard pro-
fessors into denunciation of the views therein
expressed, no ripple of the storm at Cambridge
seems to have reached the orthodox New
Hampshire college six days later, and Mr.
Emerson was kindly received.]
iew
August 6.
At Dartmouth College, Tuesday, 24 July.
Lidian wonders what the phrenologists would
pronounce on little Waldo's head. I reply that
his head pronounces on phrenology.


1838] PERSONS, NOT THINGS 11
It is bad of poverty that it hangs on, after
its lesson is taught, and it has a bad side ; pov-
erty makes pirates. The senses would make
things of all persons; of women, for example,
or of the poor. The selfishness in the woman,
which hunts her betrayer, demands money of
him, exposes him, swears a child on him, etc.,
is only the superficial appearance of Soul in
her, resisting forevermore conversion into a
thing.
As they said that men heard the music of the
spheres always and never, so are we drunk with
beauty of the whole and notice no particular.'
August 9.
[The entry of this date is the criticism on
Wordsworth with which the Dial paper, “Eu-
rope and European Books,” opens.]
The poet demands all gifts, and not one or
two only. Yet see the frugality of nature. The
men of strength and crowded sense run into
1 The two twilights of the day
Fold us, Music-drunken, in.
Poems, “ Merlin,” II.
2 Natural History of Intellect, pp. 365, 366.


12
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
affectation. The men of simplicity have no den-
sity of meaning.
August 10.
If that worthy ancient king, in the school-
books, who offered a reward to the inventor of
a new pleasure could make his proclamation
anew, I should put in for the first prize. I would
tell him to write an oration, and then print it,
and, setting himself diligently to the correction,
let him strike out a blunder and insert the right
word just ere the press falls, and he shall know
a new pleasure.
Hateful is animal life resembling vegetable,
as when a pear-worm is mistaken for a twig of
the tree, or a snake for a stick.
Limitation.— I told Mr. Withington at the
Medical Rooms in Hanover that this melan-
choly show of bones of distortions and diseases
was one of the limitations which the man must
recognize to draw his plan true.
August 14.
Sanity is very rare: every man almost, and
every woman, has a dash of madness, and the
combinations of society continually detect it. See
how many experiments at the perfect man. One


1838] THE UNDERSTANDING 13
thousand million, they say, is the population of
the globe. So many experiments then. Well, a
few times in history a well-mixed character tran-
spires. Look in the hundreds of persons that
each of us knows. Only a few whom we regard
with great complacency; a few sanities.
Herbert's piece called “Constancy” is noble,
and seems to have suggested Wordsworth's
“Happy Warrior.”
August 15.
The sun and the moon are the great formalists.
I woke this morning with saying or thinking
in my dream that every truth appealed to a
heroic character. This does not seem to hold of
mathematical as of ethical science.
The Understanding possesses the world. It
fortifies itself in History, in Laws, in Institu-
tions, in Property, in the prejudice of Birth, of
Majorities, in Libraries, in Creeds, in Names ;
Reason, on the other hand, contents himself
with animating a clod of clay somewhere for a
moment, and through a word withering all these
to old dry cobwebs.
The little girl comes by with the brimming
pail of whortleberries, but the wealth of her pail


14
JOURNAL (Age 35
ne.
has passed out of her little body, and she is
spent and languid. So is it with the toiling poet
who publishes his splendid composition, but
the poet is pale and thin.
August 17.
Saw beautiful pictures yesterday. Miss Fuller
brought with her a portfolio of Sam Ward's,
containing a chalk sketch of one of Raphael's
Sibyls, of Cardinal Bembo, and the angel in
Heliodorus's profanation; and Thorwaldsen's
Entry of Alexander, etc., etc. I have said some-
times that it depends little on the object, much
on the mood, in art. I have enjoyed more from
mediocre pictures, casually seen when the mind
was in equilibrium, and have reaped a true
benefit of the art of painting, — the stimulus of
color, the idealizing of common life into this
gentle, elegant, unoffending fairy-land of a pic-
ture, than from many masterpieces seen with
much expectation and tutoring, and so not with
equipoise of mind. The mastery of a great pic-
ture comes slowly over the mind. If I see a
fine picture with other people, I am driven al-
most into inevitable affectations. The scanty
vocabulary of praise is quickly exhausted, and
we lose our common sense, and, much worse,
our reason, in our superlative degrees. But these


1838] SCULPTURE. RAPHAEL 15
pictures I looked at with leisure and with profit.
In the antiques I love that grand style - the
first noble remove from the Egyptian block-
like images, and before yet freedom had become
too free. The Phocion, the Aristeides, and the
like. The Dying Gladiator, too, is of an archi-
tectural strength. What support of limbs in
these works, and what rest therefore for the
eye! A head of Julius Cæsar suggested in-
stantly “the terror of his beak, the lightning of
his eye,” a face of command, and which pre-
supposed legions and hostile nations.
Thorwaldsen is noble and inventive, and his
figures are grand, and his marchers march, but I
see in him all the time the Greeks again. I could
wish him a modern subject, and then an igno-
rance of Greek sculpture. Besides, it seemed to
me that Alexander wanted a divine head.
Raphael's heads seem to show more excellent
models in his time than any we have now. His
angel driving out Heliodorus is an ideal. The
purity, the unity of the face is such that it is in-
stantly suggested, here is a vessel of God. Here
is one emptied of individuality, nothing can be
more impersonal. This is no Gabriel nor Uriel,
with passages of private experience, and a long
biography,— but is a dazzling creation of the


16
JOURNAL [AGE 35
moment, a divine wrath, as the resisted wave
bursts into dazzling foam. Again the expression
of the face intimates authority impossible to dis-
pute.
The crest of the angel's helmet is so remark-
able, that, but for the extraordinary energy of
the face, it would draw the eye too much; but
the countenance of this god subordinates it, and
we see it not.
The Sibyl to whom the Messiah is announced
is a noble, daring picture with a radiant eye and
a lovely youthful outline of head, and admon-
ishes us that there is a higher style of beauty than
we live in sight of.
The Persian Sibyl of Guercino is an intellec-
tual beauty. A single expression lights the whole
picture.
How much a fine picture seems to say ! It
knows the whole world. How good an office it
performs! What authentic messengers are these
of a wise soul, which thus stamped its thought,
and sends it out distinct, undecayed, unadulter-
ated to me, at the end of centuries, and at the
ends of the earth.
Life is a pretty tragedy, especially for women.
On comes a gay dame, of manners and tone so


1838] WOMAN. LECTURE THEMES 17
fine and haughty that all defer to her as to a
countess, and she seems the dictator of society.
Sit down by her, and talk of her own life in ear-
nest, and she is some stricken soul with care and
sorrow at her vitals, and wisdom or charity can-
not see any way of escape for her from remedi-
less evils. She envies her companion in return,
until she also disburdens into her ear the story of
ber misery, as deep and hopeless as her own.
August 18.
It would give me new scope to write on topics
proper to this age and read discourses on Goethe,
Carlyle, Wordsworth, Canova, Thorwaldsen,
Tennyson, O'Connell, Baring, Channing, and
Webster. To these I must write up. If I arrived
at causes and new generalizations, they would be
truly valuable, and would be telescopes into the
Future. Elizabeth Hoar says, Add the topic
of the rights of woman; and Margaret Fuller
testifies that women are slaves.
[Here follow quotations from Heeren's Ideas
on the Politics, Mutual Relations and Commerce of
the Leading Peoples of the Ancient World, which
are used in “History” in the First Series of
Essays.]


18
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
Dr. Ripley prays for rain with great explicit-
ness on Sunday, and on Monday the showers
fell. When I spoke of the speed with which his
prayers were answered, the good man looked
modest.
I think it must be conceded to books that they
are grown so numerous and so valuable that they
deserve to have imperfect characters, half-witted
persons, and the like persons who are confessedly
incapable of working out their own salvation, ap-
pointed to study these, and render account of
them. For want of a learned class, here, I am in
ignorance where valuable facts and theories are
found until years after their promulgation.
August 19.
Always that work is the more pleasant to the
imagination which is not now required. Ah! how
wistfully, when I have been going somewhere to
preach, I looked upon the distant hills!
A scholar is a selecting principle.' . .. So in
every community where aught new or good is
going on, God sets down one of these Perceivers
i Here follows the passage in “Spiritual Laws” thus
beginning, with the simile of the lumber-boom. Essays, First
Series, p. 144.


1838] GIFTS OF OTHERS 19
and Recorders. What he hears is homogeneous
ever with what he announces.
I think myself more a man than some men I
know, inasmuch as I see myself to be open to
the enjoyment of talents and deeds of other men,
as they are not. When a talent comes by, which
I cannot appreciate and other men can, I in-
stantly am inferior. With all my ears I cannot
detect unity or plan in a strain of Beethoven.
Here is a man who draws from it a frank delight.
So much is he more a man than I.
I noticed in fine pictures that the head sub-
ordinated the limbs and gave them all the ex-
pression of the face. In poor pictures, the limbs
and trunk degrade the face. So in women, you
shall see one whose bonnet and dress are one
thing, and the lady herself quite another and
wearing withal an expression of meek submission
to her bonnet and dress; another whose dress
obeys and heightens the expression of her form.
Sympathy. - He whose sympathy goes lowest,
- dread him, 0 kings ! I say to you, dread
him. See you a man who can find pleasures
everywhere, in a camp, in a barn, in a school-


20
JOURNAL (Age 35
house, in a stage-coach, in a bar-room, so that
he needs no philosophy, but drops into heaven
wherever he goes, because of the great range of
his affinities; who is an observer of boys and
admires so much the strokes of nature they deal,
that he feels himself their inferior whilst he
watches them; who is an observer of girls and
lacks countenance to speak to them, so warm is
his interest in their well-being ; who is so alive
to every presence that the approbation of no
porter, groom or child is quite indifferent to
him, and a man of merit is an object of so much
love as to be a fear to him — see you such a
man, and is he a worshipper also of truth and
of Virtue ? then mark him well, for the whole
world converts itself into that man and through
him as through a lens, the rays of the universe
shall converge, whithersoever he turns, on a
point.
Dr. Ripley preached from the noble text,
“Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean
not to thine own understanding. In all thy
ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy
paths.” When he was to speak of its reason-
ableness he said, “Reasonableness! It is all
Reason.”


1838) ORATOR. EYES. PRINTING 21
In perfect eloquence, the hearer would lose
the sense of dualism, of hearing from another;
would cease to distinguish between the orator
and himself; would have the sense only of high
activity and progress.'
... What makers are our eyes ! In yonder
boat on the pond the two boys, no doubt, find
prose enough. Yet to us, as we sit here on the
shore, it is quite another sort of canoe, a piece
of fairy timber which the light loves and the
wind, and the wave, - a piece of sunshine and
beauty.
August 21.
The address to the Divinity School is pub-
lished, and they are printing the Dartmouth
Oration. The correction of these two pieces for
the press has cost me no small labor, now nearly
ended. There goes a great deal of work into a
correct literary paper, though of few pages. Of
course, it cannot be overseen and exhausted ex-
cept by analysis as faithful as this synthesis.
But negligence in the author is inexcusable. I
know and will know no such thing as haste in
composition. All the foregoing hours of a man's
1 This entry is followed by the passage on Eyes, printed in
“ Behavior" (Conduct of Life, pp. 178, 179).
W no


22
JOURNAL (AGE 35
life do stretch forth a finger and a pen and in-
scribe their several line or word into the page
he writes to-day. I remember the impatience
Charles expressed of the frolicking youth who
had finished his college oration a fortnight be-
fore the day and went about at his ease; re-
membering the pale boys who worked all the
days and weeks of the interval between the ap-
pointment and the exhibition, and dreamed by
nights of the verses and images of the day.
Providence Library. - It seems to me that
every library should respect the culture of a
scholar and a poet. Let it not then want those
books in which the English language has its
teeth and bones and muscles largestand strongest,
namely, all the eminent books from the acces-
sion of Elizabeth to the death of Charles II, -
Shakspear, Bacon, Jonson, Marlowe, Herrick,
Beaumont and Fletcher, North, Sidney, Milton,
Taylor, Dryden, Cotton, the translator of Mon-
taigne, Donne, Marvell. Not only in the masters,
but in the general style of the pulpit and the
history of that time, there is greater freedom,
less affectation, greater emphasis, bolder figure
and homelier idiom than in books of the same
classes at the present day.


1838) PARTIES. LANDOR 23
Bell's Bridgewater Treatise on the Hand.
Davy's Elements of Chemistry.
Herschel.
Cudworth.
Landor.
Taylor's Plato.
August 22.
I decline invitations to evening parties chiefly
because, besides the time spent, commonly ill, in
the party, the hours preceding and succeeding
the visit are lost for any solid use, as I am put
out of tune for writing or reading. That makes
my objection to many employments that seem
trifles to a bystander, as packing a trunk, or
any small handiwork, or correcting proof-sheets,
that they put me out of tune.
Landor has the merit of knowing the mean-
ing of character. I know no modern writer who
gives traits of character with more distinct
knowledge than he. He has also the merit of
not explaining. He writes for the immortals
only.
In a hot-house, should be a lotus, a man-
drake, a century plant, a banian, a papyrus.


24
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
The great difference between educated men
is that one class acknowledge an ideal standard
and the other class do not. We demand of an
intellectual man, be his defects what they may,
and his practice what it may, faith in the pos-
sible improvement of man.
August 25.
What is more alive among works of art than
our plain old wooden church, built a century
and a quarter ago, with the ancient New Eng-
land spire? I pass it at night, and stand and
listen to the beats of the clock — like heart-beats;
not sounding, as Elizabeth Hoar well observed,
so much like tickings, as like a step. It is the
step of Time. You catch the sound first by
looking up at the clock-face, and then you see
this wooden tower rising thus alone, but stable
and aged, towards the midnight stars. It has
affiance and privilege with them. Not less than
the marble cathedral it had its origin in sublime
aspirations, in the august religion of man. Not
less than those stars to which it points, it began
to be in the soul.
Samuel Hoar.— I know a man who tries
time. The expression of his face is that of a
patient judge who has nowise made up his


1838] THE COMMON THOUGHT 25
opinion, who fears nothing, and even hopes
nothing, but puts nature on its merits. He will
hear the case out, and then decide.
The manners of society indicate every hour
the consciousness of one soul. Put three or four
educated people together who have not seen each
other for years, and perhaps they shall be unable
to converse aloud without force. Each predicts
the opinion of the other, so that talking becomes
tedious. All know what each would say. Why
should I officiously and emphatically offer a pail
of water to my neighbor Minot? He has a well
of his own that sucks the same springs at the
same level that mine does. Why should I drum
on his tympanum with my words to convey
thoughts to which he has access equally with me?
How expressive is form! I see by night the
shadow of a poor woman against a window-cur-
tain that instantly tells a story of so much meek-
ness, affection, and labor, as almost to draw
tears.
Almost every woman described to you by a
woman presents a tragic idea, and not an idea of
well-being. One most deserving person whom I
commiserated last night with my friends, has such
CON


26
JOURNAL [AGE 35
peculiar and unfortunate habits of conversation
that she can say nothing agreeable to me. Say
what she will, — rare and accomplished person
that she is, — I hear her never, but only wait
until she is done. I think with a profound pity
of her family. Were she my sister, I should sail
for Australasia and put the earth's diameter
between us.
[Here follow long quotations from Heeren on
the architecture of Egypt, its might, its dignity
and repose, of which one is given below. Many
are on the Ethiopians.]
“Since our acquaintance with these wonders
wrought in the highest style of perfection, we feel
convinced that so just and noble a taste could
never have been formed under the rod of tyrants,
but that there must have been a period, and in-
deed a long one, however different the form of
government from ours, during which the mind
could unfold its faculties freely and undisturbed,
and could soar to a height in certain points never
attained by any other.”
The whole History of the negro is tragedy.
By what accursed violation did they first exist that
they should suffer always.' ... I think they are
i Here follow other quotations from Heeren, which were


1838] NEGRO. WISE SPENDING 27
more pitiable when rich than when poor. Of what
use are riches to them? They never go out with-
out being insulted. Yesterday I saw a family of
negroes riding in a coach. How pathetic!
The Negro has been from the earliest times
an article of luxury.
It is very fit that man should build good
houses. Such an irritable, susceptible, invalid,
beauty-loving creature as he is, should not
dwell in a pen. His understanding, his eye, his
hand are fitly employed on Persian Terraces,
Egyptian Temples, and European Palaces. The
wise man will prize and obtain the luxu-
ries of baths, of ventilated houses, of gardens,
of clean linen, of digestible meats and drinks,
and thereon will spend time and money, and
not on fine clothes, equipage, and rich living.
Is not thought freer and fairer in a house with
apartments that admit of easy solitude than in
a foul room where all miscellaneous persons are
thrown together, cheek by jowl, heads and
points? I look upon the stately architecture of
used by Mr. Emerson in his address on Emancipation in the
British West Indies.
In his poem “ Voluntaries” the tragedy of the negro is por-
trayed.


28
JOURNAL [AGE 35
Persia and of Egypt as a real part of the human
heaven as much as a poem or a charity. Justice
can be administered on a heath, and God can
be worshipped in a barn. It is, nevertheless, fit
that Justice should be administered in a stately
hall open to the sun and air and to nations;
and that God should be honored in temples
whose proportion and decoration harmonize
rather with the works of nature than with the
sheds we build for the domestic animals.
It is a comfort to me, who neither build nor
see built, that Egypt builded. It was done by
the family : and I had as lief my brother did it
as I. Is it great? Then the task that falls to
me in the division of labor may be greatly done,
as well.
How charming is the ignorance of children!
August 27.
A good subject for a sermon would be the
Doctrine of Benefits. Benefit is the end of na-
ture. Benefit is done to all by all, by good and
bad, voluntarily and involuntarily. Air, water,
sun and moon, stone, plant, animal, man, devil,
disease, poison, war, vice, — all serve. But man
is a voluntary benefactor. The meaning of good


1838] BENEFITS. QUESTIONS 29
and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping
or hurting. 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 benefits
we receive must be rendered again line for line,
deed for deed to somebody.
There is history somewhere worth knowing,
as, for example, Whence came the negro? Who
were those primeval artists that in each nation
converted mountains of earth or stone into
forms of architecture or sculpture? What is the
genealogy of languages ? and when and what is
the genesis of man?
“A man and his wife,” says Menu, “consti-
tute but one person; a perfect man consists of
himself, his wife, and his son.”
August 28.
It is very grateful to my feelings to go into
a Roman cathedral, yet I look as my country-
men do at the Roman priesthood. It is very
1 The rest of the passage thus beginning is in « Compen-
sation” (Essays, First Series, p. 113).


30
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
grateful to me to go into an English church and
hear the liturgy read. Yet nothing would in-
duce me to be the English priest. I find an un-
pleasant dilemma in this nearer home. I dislike
to be a clergy man and refuse to be one. Yet
how rich a music would be to me a holy clergy-
man in my town. It seems to me he cannot be
a man, quite and whole; yet how plain is the
need of one, and how high, yes, highest, is the
function. Here is division of labor that I like
not. A man must sacrifice his manhood for the
social good. Something is wrong, I see not
what.
August 31.
Yesterday at 0 B K anniversary. Steady,
steady. I am convinced that if a man will be
a true scholar, he shall have perfect freedom.
The young people and the mature hint at odium,
and aversion of faces to be presently encoun-
tered in society. I say, No: I fear it not. No
scholar need fear it. For if it be true that he is
merely an observer, a dispassionate reporter, no
partisan, a singer merely for the love of music,
his is a position of perfect immunity: to him no
disgusts can attach: he is invulnerable. The
1 This passage is the theme of " The Problem,” in the
Poems.


1838) THE SCHOLAR'S FREEDOM 31
vulgar think he would found a sect, and would
be installed and made much of. He knows bet-
ter, and much prefers his melons and his woods.
Society has no bribe for me, neither in politics,
nor church, nor college, nor city. My resources
are far from exhausted. If they will not hear
me lecture, I shall have leisure for my book
which wants me. Besides it is an universal
maxim worthy of all acceptation that a man
may have that allowance which he takes. Take
the place and attitude to which you see your
unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce.
Who are these murmurers, these haters, these
revilers? Men of no knowledge, and therefore
no stability. The scholar, on the contrary, is
sure of his point, is fast-rooted, and can se-
curely predict the hour when all this roaring
multitude shall roar for him. Analyze the
chiding opposition, and it is made up of such
timidities, uncertainties and no opinions, that it
is not worth dispersing.'
i A scrap of verse, of uncertain date, in which Mr. Em-
erson expressed the same idea, but with regard rather to mobs
than inquisitors, may be here given :-
Look danger in the eye — it vanishes :
Anatomize the roaring populace,
Big, dire and overwhelming as they seem,
Piecemeal 't is nothing. Some of them [but] scream,


32
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
We came home, Elizabeth Hoar and I, at
night from Waltham. The moon and stars and
night wind made coolness and tranquillity grate-
ful after the crowd and the festival. Elizabeth,
in Lincoln woods, said that the woods always
looked as if they waited whilst you passed by
- waited for you to be gone. But as you draw
near home you descend from the great self-
abandonment to Nature, and begin to ask,
What's o'clock? And will Abel be awake and
our own doors unlocked ?
A topic touched at Waltham was the meta-
physics of the antagonisms, or, shall I say, elective
affinities observed in conversation. Sometimes
we have nothing to say to persons with whom
we can talk well enough at other hours. What
a lottery, for instance, are my own visits at
Waltham. But it is one of the blessings of old
friends that you can afford to be stupid with
Fearing the others; some are lookers-on;
One of them hectic day by day consumes,
And one will die tomorrow of the Aux.
One of them has already changed his mind
And falls out with the ringleaders, and one
Has seen his creditor amidst the crowd
And Aies. And there are heavy eyes
That miss their sleep and meditate retreat.
A few malignant heads keep up the din,
The rest are idle boys.


1838)
LANDSCAPE PAINTING
33
them; whilst these visits are lotteries, the in-
tercourse with others, as George Bradford, never
is. He makes my Commencement Holiday usu-
ally : so that this year I feel poor in his absence
at Bangor.
September 1.
Looked over S. G. Ward's portfolio of draw-
ings and prints. In landscapes it ought to be
that the painter should give us not surely the
enjoyment of a real landscape, — for air, light,
motion, life, dampness, heat, and actual infinite
space he cannot give us, — but the suggestion
of a better, fairer creation than we know; he
should crowd a greater number of beautiful ef-
fects into his picture than co-exist in any real
landscape. All the details, all the prose of na-
ture, he should omit, and give us only the spirit
and splendor. So that we should find his land-
scape more exalting to the inner man than is
Walden Pond or the Pays de Vaud. All spirit-
ual activity is abridgement, selection.'
September 3.
I have usually read that a man suffered more
from one hard word than he enjoyed from ten
i A portion of this paragraph is found in the opening pas.
sage of “ Art” (Essays, First Series).


34
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
good ones. My own experience does not con-
firm the saying. The censure (I either know or
fancy) does not hit me; and the praise is very
good.
Is it not better to live in Revolution than to
live in dead times? Are we not little and low
out of good nature now, when, if our compan-
ions were noble, or the crisis fit for heroes, we
should be great also ?
September 5.
How rare is the skill of writing? I detected a
certain unusual unity of purpose in the para-
graph levelled at me in the Daily Advertiser,
and I now learn it is the old tyrant of the Cam-
bridge Parnassus himself, Mr. Norton,' who
wrote it. One cannot compliment the power
and culture of his community so much as to
think it holds a hundred writers; but no, if
1 Andrews Norton, Professor of Sacred Literature in the
Harvard Divinity School, a strong writer and good man. He
was the father of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, Mr. Emer-
son's valued friend. A year after the latter's Address at the
Divinity School, Professor Norton gave an address before its
Alumni Association on “ The Latest Form of Infidelity,” an
attack upon the « Transcendental Movement." For an ac-
count of this, see George Willis Cooke's Ralph Waldo Emer-
son : His Life, Writings, and Philosophy.


1838) CAMBRIDGE ADDRESS 35
there is information and tenacity of purpose,
what Bacon calls longanimity, it must be in-
stantly traced home to some one known hand.'
George Bradford has been here, to my great
contentment, and to him I have owed the peace
and pleasure of two strolls, one to Walden water,
and one to the river and north meadows. I like
the abandon of a saunter with my friend. It is a
balsam unparalleled. George says his intellect
approves the doctrine'of the Cambridge Address,
but his affections do not. I tell him I would
write for his epitaph, “Pity 't is 't is true.”
I saw a maiden so pure that she exchanged
glances only with the stars.
Of proverbs, although the greater part have
so the smell of current bank-bills that one seems
to get the savor of all the marketmen's pockets,
and no lady's mouth may they soil, yet are some
so beautiful that they may be spoken by fairest
lips unblamed; and this is certain, — that they
i This is followed by another passage, printed in “ The
Tragic," as to actions, opinions, prayers, loves, etc., being
few in life, and therefore composure and readiness being all
that it demands (Natural History of Intellect, pp. 412, 413).


36
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
give comfort and encouragement, aid and abet-
ting to daily action. For example: “There are
as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,”
is a piece of trust in the riches of nature and
God, which helps all men always. Is it so?
Is there another Shakspeare? Is there another
Ellen ?
September 8.
That which is individual and remains indi-
vidual in my experience is of no value. What is
fit to engage me, and so engage others perma-
nently, is what has put off its weeds of time and
place and personal relation. Therefore all that
befals me in the way of criticism and extreme
blame and praise, drawing me out of equili-
brium, — putting me for a time in a false posi-
tion to people, and disallowing the spontaneous
sentiments, — wastes my time, bereaves me of
thoughts, and shuts me up within poor personal
considerations. Therefore, I hate to be conspicu-
ous for blame or praise. It spoils thought.
Henry Thoreau told a good story of Deacon
Parkman, who lived in the house he now occu-
pies, and kept a store close by. He hung out a
salt fish for a sign, and it hung so long and grew
so hard, black and deformed, that the deacon


1838] OTHERS' BOOKS
37
forgot what thing it was, and nobody in town
knew, but being examined chemically it proved
to be salt fish. But duly every morning the
deacon hung it on its peg.
September 9.
How attractive is the book in my friend's'
house which I should not read in my own! At
Waltham, I took up Jouffroy, and if they had
left me alone an hour, should have read it well.
But Goethe, Schleiermacher, lie at home un-
read. Many books are not so good as a few.
Once, a youth at college, with what joy and
profit I read the Edinburgh Review. Now, a
man, the Edinburgh Review, and Heeren, and
Blackwood, and Goethe get a languid attention.
September 10.
Fancy relates to color; imagination to form.
Stetson, talking of Webster this morning,
says, “He commits great sins sometimes, but
without any guilt.”
How is a boy, a girl, the master, the mistress
of society, independent, irresponsible, — Gore
Ripley, for example, or A. P., or any other,
i Mrs. Ripley was an eager reader of every new work on
science.


38
JOURNAL (Age 35
looks out from his corner on such people and
facts as pass by; tries, and sentences them on
their merits, as good, bad, interesting, silly, elo-
quent, troublesome.' ...
Teachers' Meetings everywhere are disturbed
by the question whether . . . any sin can be re-
pented of so as to place the sinner where he had
been if he had not sinned at all. ...
The question is answered by the consideration
of the nature of Spirit. It is one and not mani-
fold: when God returns and enters into a man, he
does hallow him wholly, and in bringing him one
good, brings him all good."
September 12.
Yesterday, the Middlesex Association met
here, with two or three old friends beside. Yet
talking this morning in detail with two friends
of the proposition often made of a journal to meet
the wants of the time, it seemed melancholy as
soon as it came to the details.3 ...
1 The above and a long passage which continues it are
printed in “ Self-Reliance” (Essays, First Series, p. 49).
2 Here follows the sentence about tacit reference to a third
party in conversation (« The Over-Soul,” Essays, First Series,
p. 277),
3 This is followed by the passage on “ The painful kingdom
of time and place” (“ Love," Essays, First Series, p. 171).


1838) HUMAN BOOK, SERMONS 39
Alcott wants a historical record of conversa-
tions holden by you and me and him. I say, how
joyful rather is some Montaigne's book which is
full of fun, poetry, business, divinity, philoso-
phy, anecdote, smut, which dealing of bone and
marrow, of cornbarn and flour barrel, of wife,
and friend, and valet, of things nearest and next,
never names names, or gives you the glooms of
a recent date or relation, but hangs there in the
heaven of letters, unrelated, untimed, a joy and
a sign, an autumnal star.
mar
n autu
A sermon, my own, I read never with joy,
though sincerely written; an oration, a poem,
another's or my own, I read with joy. Is it
that from the first species of writing, we cannot
banish tradition, convention, and that the last
is more easily genuine? Or is it that the last,
being dedicated to Beauty, and the first to
Goodness, to Duty, the Spirit flies with hilarity
and delight to the last; with domestic obliga-
tion and observance only to the first? Or is
it that the sentiment of Duty, and the Divinity,
shun demonstration, and do retreat into silence;
they would pervade all, but they will not be
unfolded, exhibited apart, and as matter of
science?


JOURNAL
(AGE 35
September 13.
Licence. — Consider that always a licence at-
tends reformation. We say your actions are not
registered in a book by a recording angel for an
invisible king ; Action No. 1, No. 2, up to No.
1,000,000, — but the retribution that shall be is
the same retribution that now is : Base action
makes you base : holy action hallows you. In-
stantly the man is relieved from a terror that
girded him like a belt, has lost the energy that
terror gave him, and when now the temptation
is strong, he will taste the sin and know. Now
I hate the loss of the tonic. The end is so val-
uable, — to have escaped the degradation of a
crime is in itself so pure a benefit, that I should
not be very scrupulous as to the means. I would
thank any blunder, any sleep, any bigot, any fool,
that misled me into such a good. And yet (as
William Henry Channing said yesterday in re-
ply to my remark), there is a certain intimation
that joy is the home of the mind, in this new
licence.
The analogous evil may be seen in literature.
We say now, with Wordsworth, to the scholar,
Leave your old books; come forth into the light
of things ; let Nature be your teacher; out upon
your pedantic cartloads of grammars and diction-


1838) CULTURE AND CHEER 41
aries and archæologies; the Now is all. Instantly
the indolence and self-indulgence of the scholar
is armed with an apology:- Tush, I will have a
good time.
answ
SOU
Culture. – A cheerful face makes society ; a
cheerful, intelligent face shows the present end
of nature and education answered ; a sour face,
a waiting face, dissatisfaction, unrest: impatience
of the rain, of the company, suspense, care, be-
tray imperfect culture or uncultivation. Cannot
a man have so various parts of his nature un-
folded that he shall have a resource when con-
versation flags, and dull men come, and there are
no books or letters ? Cannot he play? Can he
not be domestical and affectionate, and crack nuts
and jokes ?
It is easy enough for a firm man who knows
the world to brook the rage of the cultivated
classes. . . . Yet it is difficult not to be affected
by sour faces. Sympathy is a supporting atmos-
phere, and in it we unfold easily and well. But
climb into this thin, iced, difficult air of Andes
of reform, and sympathy leaves you and hatred
comes. The state is so new and strange and un-
i Here follows most of the matter, though differently ar-
ranged, that is found on p. 56 of "Self-Reliance” (Essays,
First Series).


42
(Age 35
JOURNAL
pleasing that a man will, maugre all his resolu-
tions, lose his sweetness and his flesh, he will
pine and fret.
we
CSS
The person that has acted, fears; the person
that looks on is formidable.
The Silken Persecution. — Martyrs with
thumb-screws, martyrs sawn asunder, martyrs
eaten by dogs, may claim with gory stumps a
crown. But the martyrs in silk stockings and
barouches, with venison and champagne, in
ballrooms and picture galleries, make me sick
— self-pitying.
OW
. After thirty, a man is too sensible of the strait
limitations which his physical constitution sets to
his activity. The stream feels its banks, which it
had forgotten in the run and overflow of the first
meadows.
True Science. — I do not wish to know that my
shell is a strombus or my moth a vanessa, but I
wish to unite the shell and the moth to my being.
September 15.
A disinclination to society will keep out more
visitors than a good bolt.


1838] THE SCHOLAR’S LOT 43
I please myself with the thought that my ac-
cidental freedom by means of a permanent in-
come is nowise essential to my habits, that my
tastes, my direction of thought is so strong that
I should do the same things,- should contrive
to spend the best part of my time in the same
way as now, rich or poor. If I did not think so,
I should never dare to urge the doctrines of hu-
man culture on young men. The farmer, the
laborer, has the extreme satisfaction of seeing that
the same livelihood he earns is within reach of
every man. The lawyer, the author, the singer,
has not.'
Society seems to have lost all remembrance of
the irresponsibility of a writer on human and
divine nature. They forget that he is only a re-
porter, and not at all accountable for the fact
he reports. If, in the best use of my eyes, I see
not something which people say is there, and
see somewhat which they do not say is there,
instantly they call me to account as if I had un-
i It was only for a short time that Mr. Emerson's perma-
nent income was equal to the needs of his modest housekeeping
and large hospitality. It was absolutely necessary in later years
that he spend most of the winter in lecturing far and near for
modest fees to carry him through the year.


44
JOURNAL [AGE 35
made or made the things spoken of. They seem
to say, Society is in conspiracy to maintain such
and such propositions: and wo betide you if
you blab. This diffidence of society in authors
seems to show that it has very little experience
of any true observers, - of any who did not mix
up their personality with their record. The
Arabs of the desert would not forgive Belzoni
with his spyglass for bringing their camp near
to him.
Not the fact avails, but the use you make of
it. People would stare to know on what slight
single observations those laws were inferred
which wise men promulgate and which society
receives later and writes down as canons. A
single flute heard out of a village window, a
single prevailing strain of a village maid, will
teach a susceptible man as much as others learn
from the orchestra of the Academy. One book
as good as the Bodleian Library.
I have learned in my own practice to take
advantage of the aforesaid otherism' that makes
other people's bread and butter taste better than
1 The reference is to one reading books in a friend's house
while ours at home are neglected.


1838) OTHERISM. DESPONDENCY 45
our own, and books read better elsewhere than
at home; and now, if I cannot read my German
book, I take it into the wood, and there a few
sentences have nothing lumpish, but the sense
is transparent and broad, and when I come back
I can proceed with better heart. So in travelling,
how grateful at taverns is Goethe !
September 16.
Dr. Ripley prays, “ that the lightning may
not lick up our spirits.”
Mr. Frost' said very happily in today's ser-
mon, “We see God in nature as we see the
soul of our friend in his countenance.”
You must read a great book to know how
poor are all books. Shakspear suggests a wealth
that beggars his own. ...
It does seem as if history gave no intima-
tion of any society in which despondency
came so readily to heart as we see it and feel it
in ours. Young men, young women, at thirty
i Rev. Barzillai Frost, Dr. Ripley's colleague and suc-
cessor as minister of the First Church in Concord.
2 The rest of the passage occurs in « The Over-Soul”
(p. 289).


86
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
a
and even earlier seem to have lost all spring
and vivacity, and if they fail in their first enter-
prise, the rest is rock and shallow.' Is the Stoic
in the soul dead in these late stages? I cannot
understand it. Our people are surrounded with
greater external prosperity and general well-be-
ing than Indians or Saxons: more resources,
outlets, asylums: yet we are sad, and these were
not. Why should it be? Has not Reflection any
remedy for her own diseases ? Assume the Im-
mortality. Say boldly, there is no trifle. I see
before me the bended horizon. There hangs on
high a lovely purple cloud. I accept these sub-
lime pledges by which creative Love and Wis-
dom yet speak to you and say to you, I am.
The memory assures me I have lived. Nature
affirms that God is still with me. Then how
can I doubt that as good and fair things remain
for me as yet I have known? . . . Sadness is
always the comparison of the Idea with the Act.
Sunday eve.
I went at sundown to the top of Dr. Ripley's
hill and renewed my vows to the Genius of that
place. Somewhat of awe, somewhat grand and
1 The beginning of this paragraph is printed in « The
Tragic" (Natural History of Intellect, p. 406).


ny
1838] THE SUNSET. STRANGERS 47
solemn mingles with the beauty that shines afar
around. In the West, where the sun was sink-
ing behind clouds, one pit of splendour lay as
in a desert of space, - a deposit of still light,
not radiant. Then I beheld the river, like God's
love, journeying out of the grey past on into
the green future.
Yet sweet and native as all those fair impres-
sions on that summit fall on the eye and ear,
they are not yet mine. I cannot tell why I
should feel myself such a stranger in nature. I
am a tangent to their sphere, and do not lie
level with this beauty. And yet the dictate of
the hour is to forget all I have mislearned ; to
cease from man, and to cast myself into the vast
mould of nature.
A Stranger. — It is singular how slight and
indescribable are the tokens by which we antici-
pate the qualities of sanity, of prudence, of
probity, in the countenance of a stranger.
We see with a certain degree of terror the.
new physique of a foreign man; as a Japanese,
a New Zealander, a Calabrian. In a new coun-
try how should we look at a large Indian moving
in the landscape on his own errand. He would
be to us as a lion or a wild elephant.
Oun-
IC


48
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
In such proximity stand the virtues and de-
fects of character that a disgust at some foible
will blind men oftener to a grandeur in the same
soul. In describing the character of his wife a
man may even omit to name a sensibility which
is the costliest of attributes, which gives the
person who hath it an universal life, and mir-
rors all nature in her face.
Is not the Vast an element in man? Yet what
teaching or book of today appeals to the vast?
When the preacher begins to talk of mira-
cles, I think immediately of the Capuchins.
The mural crown for an argument, the tri-
umphal crown for one just and noble image.
Pericles was not yet ready. To keep order and
to give him time, a man of business was in the
rostrum mumbling long initial statements of the
facts before the people, and the state of Greek
affairs. After what seemed a very long time, the
people grew nervous and noisy, and, at a move-
ment behind him, he sat down. Pericles arose
and occupied the rostrum. His voice was like
the stroke of a silver shield. A cold, mathemat-


1838] HOUSEKEEPING
49
ical statement warmed by imperceptible degrees
into earnest announcements of a heroic soul.
He conversed with the people, he told stories,
he enumerated names and dates and particulars;
he played; he joked, though coldly and reserv-
edly, as it seemed to me; then having thus, as
it seemed, drawn his breath, and made himself
master of his place and work, he began to deal
out his thoughts to the people: the conclusions
of his periods were like far-rattling storms. Every
word was a ball of fire.
September 18.
A Stranger. – What is the meaning of that?
The fork falling sticks upright in the floor, and
the children say, a stranger is coming. A stran-
ger is expected or announced, and an uneasiness
betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts
of a household.' . ..
Housekeeping. — If my garden had only made
me acquainted with the muckworm, the bugs,
the grasses and the swamp of plenty in August,
I should willingly pay a free tuition. But every
process is lucrative to me beyond its economy.
For the like reason keep house. Whoso does,
Here follows the long passage thus beginning in “ Friend-
ship” (Essays, First Series, pp. 192, 193).


50
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
opens a shop in the heart of all trades, profes-
sions and arts, so that upon him these shall all
play. By keeping house I go to an universal
school where all knowledges are taught me, and
the price of tuition is my annual expense. Thus,
I want my stove set up. I only want a piece of
sheet-iron 31 inches by 33. But that want en-
titles me to call on the professors of tin and iron
in the village, Messrs. Wilson and Dean, and
inquire of them the kinds of iron they have or
can procure, the cost of production of a pound
of cast or wrought metal, and any other related
information they possess, and furthermore to
lead the conversation to the practical experiment
of the use of their apparatus for the benefit of
my funnel and blower, —all which they courte-
ously do for a small fee. In like manner, I play
the chemist with ashes, soap, beer, vinegar, ma-
nure, medicines; the naturalist with trees, shrubs,
hens, pigs, cows, horses, fishes, bees, canker-
worms, wood and coal; the politician with the
selectmen, the assessors, the probate court, the
town meeting.
Is not the beauty that piques us in every ob-
ject, in a straw, an old nail, a cobble-stone in the
road, the announcement that always our road


91
51
- 1838] ALCOTT. NOMADS
lies out into nature, and not inward to the weari-
some, odious anatomy of ourselves and compar-
ison of me with thee, and accusation of me, and
ambition to take this from thee and add it to
me?
Alcott is a ray of the oldest light. As they
say the light of some stars that parted from the
orb at the deluge of Noah has only now reached
us.
Nomads. — We are all nomads and all chim-
ney ornaments by turns, and pretty rapid turns.'
I fancy the chief difference that gives one man
the name of a rover, and one of a fixture, is the
faculty of rapid domestication, the power to find
his chair and bed everywhere, which one man
has, and another has not. In Paris, a man needs
not to go home ever. He can find in any part
of the city his coffee, his dinner, his newspaper,
his company, his theatre, and his bed, as good
as those he left.
A new degree is taken in scholarship as soon
as a man has learned to read in the wood as well
as he reads in the study.
i Compare the pages on the Nomad tendency in « History”
(Essays, First Series).


52 : JOURNAL [AGE 35
This afternoon the eclipse. Peter Howe did
not like it, for his rowan would not make hay:
and he said, “The sun looked as if a nigger was
putting his head into it.”
The people say, when you shudder, that some-
one is walking over your grave: they describe
and feel a murder and the insults done to a mur-
dered body as a successful revenge ; and to pluck
out the quivering heart is thought to consum-
mate the harm. They do not see that a man is
as much a stranger in his own body as another
man is.'
The Nomad and the Pivot are two poles,
quite essential both to the intellectual culture.
The intellectual nomadism is the faculty of ob-
jectiveness, or of Eyes which everywhere feed
themselves. Who hath such eyes, everywhere
falls into true relations to his fellow men. Every
man, every object, is a prize, a study, a property
to him, and this love smooths his brow, joins
him to men and makes him beautiful and be-
loved in their sight. His house is a wagon, he
1 This is followed by the passage in “ Self-Reliance,”
p. 57, about bringing the past into the thousand - eyed pre-
sent.


1838] THE PROUD MUSHROOM 53
roams through all latitudes as easily as a Cal-
muc.' He must meantime abide by his inward
Law as the Calmuc by his Khan.
We are by nature observers, and so learners.2
as
September 19.
I found in the wood this afternoon the drollest
mushroom, tall, stately, pretending, uprearing
its vast dome as if to say, “Well I am some-
thing ! Burst, ye beholders ! thou luck-beholder !
with wonder.” Its dome was a deep yellow
ground with fantastic, starlike ornaments richly
overwrought; so shabby genteel, so negrofine,
the St. Peter's of the beetles and pismires. Such
ostentation in petto I never did see. I touched
the white column with my stick, -it nodded
like old Troy, and so eagerly recovered the per-
pendicular as seemed to plead piteously with
me not to burst the fabric of its pride. Shall I
confess it? I could almost hear my little Waldo
at home begging me, as when I have menaced
his little block-house, and the little puff-ball
i Compare stanza in « The Poet” (Poems, Appendix,
p. 311).
2 Here occurs the passage so beginning in the last para-
graph of “ Love” (Essays, First Series).


54
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
seemed to say, “Don't, Papa, pull it down!”
So, after due admiration of this blister, this
cupola of midges, I left the little scaramouch
alone in its glory. Good-bye, Vanity, good-
bye, Nothing! Certainly there is comedy in the
Divine Mind when these little vegetable self-
conceits front the day as well as Newton or
Goethe, with such impressive emptiness.
The greater is the man, the less are books to
him. Day by day he lessens the distance between
him and his authors, and soon finds very few to
whom he can pay so high a compliment as to
read them.
September 20.
The fact detached is ugly. Replace it in its
series of cause and effect, and it is beautiful. Pu-
trefaction is loathsome; but putrefaction seen as
a step in the circle of nature, pleases. A mean
or malicious act vexes me; but if I can raise my-
self to see how it stands related to past and future
in the biography of the doer, it becomes comic,
1 The first entries under this date are the passage in “ Self-
Reliance,” p. 48, about the boy who can speak strongly to
his mates, and that in “ Friendship,” p. 200, about the pro-
tection of delicate souls by the husk of bashfulness, etc.


1838] NAMES, PROVERBS 55
pleasant, fair, and prophetic. The laws of disease
are the laws of health masked.
case
All affections to persons are partial and super-
ficial.
Aunts. -
All Peggy heard she deemed exceeding good,
But chiefly praised the parts she understood.
Jane TAYLOR.
They say Dr. Palfrey lost his countenance
once at the baptismal font when the affectionate
father whispered in his ear the name of his babe,
Jacob Adonis. 'Tis poor fun, but sometimes
resistless -odd names. Zephaniah Tearsheet;
Beelzebub Edwards, not the distinguished Beel-
zebub.
Every homely proverb covers a single and
grand fact. Two of these are often in my head
lately : “Every dog his day,” which covers this
fact of otherism, or rotation of merits; and
“There are as many good fish in the sea as ever
came out of it”; which was Nelson's adage of
merit, and all men's of marriage. My third pro-
verb is as deficient in superficial melody as either


56
(Age 35
JOURNAL
of the others: “The Devil is an ass.” The sea-
men use another which has much true divinity :
“Every man for himself and God for us all.”
September 21.
The equinox.
Subjectiveness. “I wish I could forget there
is any such person as William Channing,” said
my friend William Henry Channing the other
day.
Originality. — How easy to repeat, how mys-
teriously problematic to begin an action! To sit
upon the merits of Plato, of Voltaire, of Shaks-
pear, and simply judge them from our station
seems very easy when it is done, and as fast as
the author names his subjects it is half done. Yet
we do it not. “Where's kitty ?”.
Teeth. — The greatest expression of limitation
in the human frame is in the teeth. “Thus far,"
says the face; “ No farther,” say the teeth. I
mean that, whilst the face of the child expresses
an excellent possibility, as soon as he opens his
1 Mrs. Emerson was in the habit of diverting the child
Waldo when he hurt himself, by saying, “ Where's kitty ?”;
80 when the conversation took a tone of reproof disagreeable
to him, he said to his mother, “ Where's kitty ?"


1838] NATURE. TENNYSON 57
mouth, you have an expression of defined qual-
ities. I like him best with his mouth shut.
Scale. – Man, says Goethe, loves the uncon-
ditional. All or nothing, in blame, in praise. I
like the scale, and hate the neglect of the scale,
and, as I tell some of my friends who love the
superlative, one day an angel will bring them a
golden Gunter.
Inferior Nature. — The excursions of Poetry
into lower nature, into the winds, waters, beast,
bird, fish, insect, plant-tribes, are Man taking
possession of the world on one side, as the clas-
sifications of Science are on another side, and the
taming of animals and their economical use-on
a third side.
Tennyson is a beautiful half of a poet.
September 22.
Nature a Deist. — The thermometer, the mi-
croscope, the prism are little deists. They stand
like pagans, have a very pagan look when the
creed and catechism begin; they are little better
than profane: and so a doctor of medicine, a
chemist, an astronomer do never remind one of
St. Athanasius.


58
JOURNAL [AGE 35
September 24.
Nature a Resource. - Nature is the beautiful
asylum to which we look in all the years of
striving and conflict as the assured resource
when we shall be driven out of society by
ennui or chagrin or persecution or defect of char-
acter. I say, as I go up the hill and through
the wood and see the soliciting plants, I care
not for you, mosses and lichens, and for you,
fugitive birds, or secular rocks! Grow, fly, or
sleep there in your order, which I know is
beautiful, though I perceive it not; I am con-
tent not to perceive it. Now have I entertain-
ment enough with things nearer, homelier.
Things wherein passion enters, and hope and
fear have not yet become too dangerous, too
insipid, for me to handle. But by and by, if
men shall drive me out, if books have become
stale, I see gladly that the door of your palace
of magic stands ajar,
and my age
Shall find the antique hermitage
The hairy gown and mossy cell.
CON-
Nature-knowing.— Nature is no fool. She
knows the world. She has calculated the chances
of her success, and if her seeds do not vegetate,


1838] ABORIGINAL. GOETHE 59
she will not be chagrined and bereft. She has
another arrow left, another card to play, her
harvest is insured. From her oak she scatters
down a thousand seeds, and if nine hundred
rot, the forest is still perpetuated for a century.
Every man projects his character before him,
praises it, worships it.
The Indians say, the negro is older than
they, and they older than the white man. The
negro is the pre-Adamite. But the great-grand-
father of all the races, the oldest inhabitant,
seems to be the trilobite.
Le Blaie was a man who never printed a let-
ter but straightway every country curate must
read it, and, without saying a word, run to his
barn, tackle up his old horse and chaise and
take the road to Paris to know what he must
think of this.
It is of great entertainment to read Goethe's
notices of Kepler, Roger Bacon, Galileo, New-
ton, Voltaire. Yet they consist of the simplest
description, almost merely naming of the per-
sons from his point of view. Nothing was easier


60
JOURNAL [AGE 35
than to strike them off. It implied no such la-
bor as to write a Faust or an Egmont. Before
it is done, one shrinks from such a dark prob-
lem as the estimate of a great genius, a Vol-
taire, a Newton. Yet he has only to address
himself to it, to utter the name of the man in
a self-contained, self-centred way, and the prob-
lem is solved.'
A religious culture to the intellect of men is
needed. The intellect has been irreligious these
many years, or ages.
The antique expresses the moral sentiment
without cant.
Your Turn. — “Each Dog,” etc. In child-
hood, in youth, each man has had many checks
and censures, and thinks modestly enough of
his own endowment. When, by and by, he
comes to unfold it in propitious circumstance,
it fills his eye and it fills the eye of all. It seems
the only talent. He is surprised and delighted
with his success, and carries that out also into
the infinite, as man will, and accounts himself
1 The continuation of this passage, written four days later,
on Goethe's mention of " the grandees of European Scientific
history" from his own point of view, occurs in Representative
Men (“Goethe," p. 287).


1838) J. L. RUSSELL. LOVE 61
already the fellow of the great. But he goes
into company, into a banking house, into a
mob, into a mechanic's shop, into a society of
scholars, a camp, a ship, a laboratory; and in
each new place he is a fool; other talents take
place and rule the hour, and his presumption,
cowed and whipped, goes back to the timid con-
dition of the boy. For every talent of man runs
out to the horizon as well as his.
September 25.
The kiss of the Dryads is not soft; the kiss
of the Oreads is still. A good woodland day or
two with John Lewis Russell who came here,
and showed me mushrooms, lichens and mosses,
a man in whose mind things stand in the order
of cause and effect, and not in the order of a
shop, or even of a cabinet.
Casella' sang of love. A song of love that
gave us to know and own the natural and the
heavenly or divine — that were indeed uplifting
music. It seems to me that in the procession
of the soul from within outward it enlarges its
1 When Dante met his friend, the beautiful singer, in Pur-
gatory, he begged him to sing, and the souls Alocked to hear.
– Purgatorio, Canto II.


62
(AGB 35
PNAL
JOURNAL
circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond
or the light proceeding from an orb.' ...
Nature insures herself. Nobody cares for
planting the poor fungus. So she shakes down
from the gills of one agaric countless spores,
any one of which, being preserved, transmits
new billions of spores tomorrow or next day.2...
Let the scholar know that the veneration of
man always attaches to him who perceives and
utters things in the order of cause and effect.
The divine soul takes care for heroes. It in-
spires not only every animal body with sagacity
and appetite that shall secure food to its belly;
and several individuals in every society, with
skill to organize social labor, to build the dam,
the road, and the boat; to make the law and
mend it; but it transcends the zones of appetite
and of prudence, and darts into some souls
gleams out of the deeper heaven. So that here
i Here follows the long passage thus beginning, printed in
“ Love” (Essays, First Series, pp. 183–186), although
combined with sentences written in Journal C the previous
year.
2 The long paragraph follows, which is printed in - The
Poet” (Essays, Second Series, pp. 23-25).


1838] SICKNESS. FAMED BOOKS 63
came B. R. and said he never planted anything
which he expected to reap, except corn. He
plants forest trees and arranges improvements
of water and land which will be good for children
and towns to come.
September 28.
Like-minded. — Nothing seems so easy as to
speak and to be understood.' ...
Sickness. — Our health is our sound relation
to external objects ; our sympathy with external
being. A man wakes in the morning sick with
fever; and he perceives at once he has lost his
just relation to the world. Every sound in the
lower parts of the house, or in the street, falls
faint and foreign on his ear. He begins to hear
the frigid doom of cold Obstruction, “Thou
shalt have no part in anything that is done under
the sun.”
Famed Books. — It is always an economy of
time to read old and famed books." ..
Order of Wonder. — If you desire to arrest
attention, to surprise, do not give me facts in the
I “Spiritual Laws” (Essays, First Series, p. 146).
2 See « Books” (Society and Solitude, pp. 195, 196).


64
[Age 35
JOURNAL
order of cause and effect, but drop one or two
links in the chain, and give me with a cause, an
effect two or three times removed."
ses
Apples and Men. — The St. Michael's pear-
tree of the present day is a vast forest scattered
throughout the gardens of North America and
England, yet subject in all the quarters of its
dispersion to the diseases incident to the parent
stock, and like a disease or an animal race, or any
one natural state, it wears out, and will have an
end. Each race of man resembles an apple or
a pear, the Nubian, the Negro, the Tartar, the
Greek; he vegetates, thrives, and multiplies,
usurps all the soil and nutriment, and so kills
the weaker races; he receives all the benefit of
culture under many zones and experiments, but
his doom was in nature as well as his thrift, and
overtakes him at last with the certainty of grav-
itation.
“ Faction.” – A foolish formula is “the spirit
of faction,” as it is used in books old and new.
Can you not get any nearer to the fact than that,
1 This was Mr. Emerson's own method in lectures, to keep
attention on the stretch, and give the hearer the creative plea-
sure of supplying the link.


1838] LONGANIMITY 65
you old granny? It is like the answer of children,
who, when you ask them the subject of the ser-
mon, say, It was about Religion.
Why need you choose?? ...
I wrote Margaret Fuller today, that, seeing
how entirely the value of facts is in the classifica-
tion of the eye that sees them, I desire to study,
I desire longanimity, to use Bacon's word. I ver-
ily believe that a philosophy of history is possi-
ble out of the materials that litter and stuff the
world that would raise the meaning of Book and
Literature. “Cause and effect forever,” say I.
Those old Egyptians built vast temples and halls
in some proportion to the globe on which they
were erected, and to the numbers of the nation
who were to hold their solemnities within the
walls. They built them, not in a day, nor in a
single century. So let us with inveterate pur-
pose write our history. Let us not, as now we
do, write a history for display and make it after
our own image and likeness, — three or four
crude notions of our own, and very many crude
notions of old historians, hunted out and patched
i Here follows the passage thus beginning in “Spiritual
Laws."


66
JOURNAL [Age 35
together without coherence or proportion, and no
thought of the necessity of proportion and unity
dreamed of by the writer, a great conglomerate;
or, at best, an arabesque, a grotesque, contain-
ing no necessary reason for its being, nor inscrib-
ing itself in our memory like the name and life
of a friend. But let us go to the facts of chro-
nology, as Newton went to those of physics,
knowing well that they are already bound to-
gether of old, and perfectly, and he surveys
them that he may detect the bond. Let us learn
with the patience and affection of a naturalist
all the facts, and looking out all the time for the
reason that was, for the law that prevailed, and
made the facts such ; not for one that we can
supply and make the facts plausibly sustain. We
should then find abundant aperçus or lights self-
kindled amid the antiquities we explored. Why
should not history be godly written, out of the
highest Faith and with a study of what really
was? We should then have Ideas which would
command and marshal the facts, and show the
history of a nation as accurately proportioned
and necessary in every part as an animal. The
connexion of Commerce and Religion explains
the history of Africa from the beginning until
now. Nomadism is a law of nature, and Asia,


1838] CAUSE AND EFFECT 67
Africa, Europe present different pictures of it.
The architecture of each nation had its root in
nature. How ample the materials show, when
once we have the true Idea that explains all!
Then the modern man, the geography, the ruins,
the geology, the traditions as well as authentic
history, recite and confirm the tale. I said above,
Cause and Effect forever! in the thought that
out of such incongruous patchwork, thought-
lessly put together as our histories are, nothing
can come but incongruous impressions, obscure,
unsatisfactory to the mind; but that views ob-
tained by patient wisdom drudging amidst facts
would give an analogous impression to the
landscape. They say the sublime silent desert
now testifies through the mouths of Bruce,
Lyon, Caillaud, Burkhardt, to the truth of the
calumniated Herodotus.
September 29.
I have a full quiver of facts under that Sap-
phic and Adonian text of “Every Dog,” etc.
We are ungrateful creatures. There is nothing
we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to
draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend
it. We sneer at ignorance and the life of the
senses and the ridicule of never thinking, and
then goes by a fine girl like M. R., a piece of


68
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
life, gay because she is happy and making these
very commonalities beautiful by the energy and
heart with which she does them, and seeing this,
straightway we admire and love her and them,
say, “Lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth,
not blasé, not flétri by books, philosophy, reli-
gion or care ”; insinuating by these very words
a treachery and contempt for all that we had
so long loved and wrought in ourselves and
others.
[Many quotations from the writings of Ar-
nold L. Heeren on Asia and Africa occur in this
Journal, some of which are used in “History”
and other essays.]
course a
As Nature enforces intercourse among men
by putting salt and dates and gold and slaves in
the desert, and corn in the fields, and hides on
the mountains, and fishes in the sea, and these
cannot be had but by going thither where they
are, so various circles of society possess facts
which cannot be had by the student without re-
pairing to them, and they are people he does
not like and cannot approach without prepara-
tion; Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Talley-
rand, Esterhazy, Metternich, merchants, lovers


1838) LITERARY WARFARE
69
of art, owners of picture galleries at home, the
physician and the master mechanics.
I once wrote that the most abstract truth is
the most practical. See how quickly the whole
community is touched by an academical dis-
course on theism. At an imagined assault of a
cardinal truth, the very mud boils. Literary men
amuse themselves with speculations which do not
go into the abstract and absolute, but linger in
the conditional and verbal. Wit, old poetry, old
philosophy, mathematics are favorite amuse-
ments, for they have no claws, no dangers.
.
Censure and Praise.' — I hate to be defended
in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said
against me, I feel a certain sublime assurance of
success, but as soon as honied words of praise
are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unpro-
tected before his enemies.
i This passage is printed in “ Compensation” (p. 118),
but it is given here with those immediately preceding and fol-
lowing it, because this was a stormy period with a doubtful
future to Mr. Emerson and his wife, for the “ Divinity School
Address” had excited a storm of criticism. It seemed a ques-
tion whether Mr. Emerson's lectures would be attended. The
attacks of Professor Andrews Norton and others drew out
replies from George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, Theophilus
Parsons, and James Freeman Clarke.


70
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
Blessed be the wife, that in the talk to-night
shared no vulgar sentiment, but said, “ In the
gossip and excitement of the hour, be as one
blind and deaf to it; know it not. Do as if no-
thing had befallen.” And when it was said by
the friend, “ The end is not yet: wait till it is
done,” she said, “It is done in Eternity.”
Blessed be the wife! I, as always, venerate the
oracular nature of woman. The sentiment which
the man thinks he came unto gradually through
the events of years, to his surprise he finds wo-
man dwelling there in the same, as in her native
home.
September 30.
Nearness and distinctness seem to be con-
vertible. A noise, a jar, a rumble, is infinitely
far off from my nature, though it be within a few
inches of the tympanum, but a voice speaking
the most intelligible of propositions is so near
as to be already a part of myself.
It seems as if a man should learn to fish, to
plant, or to hunt, that he might secure his sub-
sistence if he were cast out from society and not
be painful to his friends and fellow men.'
1 This was more than an abstract speculation to Mr. Em-
erson at this crisis.


1838] EDUCATION. CLASSES 71
Royal Education. — It would seem that in the
ancient Eastern kingdoms better views of an
education at court prevailed than in the king-
doms of modern Europe. “And the king spake
unto Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that
he should bring certain of the children of Israel
and of the king's seed and of the princes; chil-
dren in whom was no blemish, but well favoured
and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in know-
ledge, and understanding science, and such as
had ability in them, to stand in the king's pal-
ace, and whom they might teach the learning
and tongue of the Chaldeans.” DANIEL, i, 3, 4.
Rich and Poor. — My grandfather, John Has-
kins, was wont to say, “that the poor ought to
pray for the prosperity of the rich, for, in that
lay their own.” Not so thinks the Globe.
e
neces-
Every vice is only an exaggeration of a neces-
sary and virtuous function.
We love to hear in the midst of society some
word that nothing but austerest solitude and
conversation with God, with love and death,
could ever have uttered. Such, too, is the sin-
cerest joy of fine society to meet in its princes


72
(Age 35
JOURNAL
and princesses some authentic token of the
Eternal Beauty.
October 4.
Letter to W. Silsbee. – I read in your letter
the expressions of an earnest character of faith,
of hope, with extreme interest; and if I can con-
tribute any aid by sympathy or suggestion to
the solution of the great problems that occupy
you, I shall be glad. But I think it must be
done by degrees. I am not sufficiently master
of the little truth I see, to know how to state it
in forms so general as shall put every mind in
possession of my point of view. We generalize
and rectify our expressions by continual efforts
from day to day, from month to month, to re-
concile our own sight with that of our compan-
ions. So shall two inquirers have the best mu-
tual action on each other. But I should never
attempt a direct answer to such questions as
yours. I have no language that could shortly
present my state of mind in regard to each
of them with any fidelity; for my state of
mind on each is nowise final and detached, but
tentative, progressive, and strictly connected
with the whole circle of my thoughts. It seems
to me that to understand any man's thoughts
respecting the Supreme Being, we need an in-
ever


1838] IDEAS OF GOD. TRUTH 73
sight into the general habit and tendency of his
speculations : for, every man's idea of God is
the last or most comprehensive generalization at
which he has arrived. — But besides the extreme
difficulty of stating our results on such ques-
tions in a few propositions, I think, my dear sir,
that a certain religious feeling deters us from the
attempt. I do not gladly utter any deep convic-
tion of the soul in any company where I think
it will be contested, no, nor unless I think it
will be welcome. Truth has already ceased to
be itself if polemically said; and if the soul would
utter oracles, as every soul should, it must live
for itself, keep itself right-minded, - observe
with such awe its own law as to concern itself
very little with the engrossing topics of the
hour, unless they be its own. I believe that
most of the speculative difficulties which infest
us, we must thank ourselves for; each mind, if
true to itself, will, by living forthright, and not
importing into it the doubts of other men, dis-
solve all difficulties, as the sun at midsummer
burns up the clouds. Hence I think the aid we
can give each other is only incidental, lateral,
and sympathetic. If we are true and benevo-
lent, we reënforce each other by every act and
word. Your heroism stimulates mine; your light
mer


74
[ACE 35
JOURNAL
kindles mine. And the end of all this is, that I
thank you heartily for the confidence of your
letter, and beg you to use your earliest leisure
to come and see me. It is very possible that I
shall not be able to give you one definition, but
I will show you with joy what I strive after and
what I worship, as far as I can. Meantime, I
shall be very glad to hear from you by letter.
October 5.
Once I thought it a defect peculiar to me,
that I was confounded by interrogatories and
when put on my wits for a definition was unable
to reply without injuring my own truth: but
now, I believe it proper to man to be unable to
answer in terms the great problems put by his
fellow: it is enough if he can live his own defini-
tions. A problem appears to me. I cannot solve
it with all my wits : but leave it there ; let it lie
awhile: I can by patient, faithful truth live at
last its uttermost darkness into light.
Books. — It seems meritorious to read: but
from everything but history or the works of
the old commanding writers I come back with
a conviction that the slightest wood-thought, the
least significant. native emotion of my own, is
more to me.


75
ve as a
1838] HOSTILE REVIEWS
Compensation.—How soon the sunk spirits rise
again, how quick the little wounds of fortune
skin over and are forgotten. I am sensitive as a
leaf to impressions from abroad, and under this
night's beautiful heaven I have forgotten thatever
I was reviewed. It is strange how superficial are
our views of these matters, seeing we are all
writers and philosophers. A man thinks it of
importance what the great sheet or pamphlet of
to-day proclaims of him to all the reading town;
and if he sees graceful compliments, he relishes
his dinner; and if he sees threatening paragraphs
and odious nicknames, it becomes a solemn, de-
pressing fact and sables his whole thoughts until
bedtime. But in truth the effect of these para-
graphs is mathematically measureable by their
depth of thought. How much water do they
draw? If they awaken you to think — if they lift
you from your feet with the great voice of elo-
quence — then their effect is to be wide, slow,
permanent over the minds of men: but if they
instruct you not, they will die like flies in an
hour.
October 9.
They put their finger on their lip, — the
Powers above.'
1 The opening line of “ Eros" (Poems, Appendix, p. 362).


76
JOURNAL (Age 35
I have intimations of my riches much more
than possession, as is the lot of other heirs.
Every object suggests to me in certain moods
a dim anticipation of profound meaning, as if,
by and by, it would appear to me why the
apple-tree, why the meadow, why the stump
stand there, and what they signify to me.
Van Burenism. - I passed by the shop and
saw my spruce neighbor, the dictator of our
rural Jacobins, teaching his little circle of vil-
lagers their political lessons. And here, thought
I, is one who loves what I hate: here is one
wholly reversing my code. I hate persons who
are nothing but persons. I hate numbers. He
cares for nothing but numbers and persons.
All the qualities of man, all his accomplish-
ments, affections, enterprises, except solely the
ticket he votes for, are nothing to this philoso-
pher. Numbers of majorities are all he sees in
the newspaper. All of North or South, all in
Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania or New Eng-
land that this man considers is, What is the re-
lation of Mr. Clay, or of Mr. Van Buren, to
those mighty mountain chains, those vast, fruit-
ful champaigns, those expanding nations of men.
What an existence is this, to have no home, no


1838) POLITICAL BUGBEARS 77
heart, but to feed on the very refuse and old
straw and chaff of man,—the numbers and
names of voters !
One thing deserves the thought of the modern
Jacobin. It seems the relations of society, the
position of classes, irk and sting him.'...
In our vulgar politics the knowing men have
a good deal to say about the “moral effect " of
a victory and a defeat. The fact that the city
of New York has gone for the Whigs, though
only by a slender majority, is of the utmost
importance to the Whig party about to vote in
a distant state. Why? because it is a fact, a
presentable fact. States of mind we care not for;
we ignore them ; but a mere fact, though prov-
ing a less favorable state of mind than we have
a right to infer, we overvalue. A man writes a
book which displeases somebody, who writes an
angry paragraph about it in the next newspaper.
That solitary paragraph, whilst it stands unan-
swered, seems the voice of the world. Hundreds
of passive readers read it with such passiveness
that it becomes their voice. The man that made
i The rest of the passage thus beginning on the Offence
of Superiority in persons” is in “ Aristocracy” (Lectures and
Biographical Sketches, p. 35).


78
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
the book and his friends are superstitious about
it. They cannot put it out of their heads. Their
entire relations to society seem changed. What
was yesterday a warm, convenient, hospitable
world, soliciting all the talents of all its children,
looks bleak and hostile, and our native tendency
to complete any view we take carries the imagi-
nation out at once to images of persecution, hatred
and want.
In debate, the last speaker always carries with
him such a prevailing air that all seems to be
over and the question settled when he con-
cludes; so that, if a new man arise and state
with nonchalance a new and opposite view, we
draw our breath freely and hear with a marked
surprise this suspension of fate.
An Election. — The fact of having been elected
to a conspicuous office, as President, King, Gov-
ernor, etc., even though we know the paltry
machinery by which it was brought about, is, not-
withstanding, a certificate of value to the person
in all men's eyes, ever after.
The courage of men is shown in resisting this
fact and preferring the state of mind.' The poet
i Compare Thoreau's attitude. “Thoreau ” (Lectures
and Biographical Sketches, p. 471).


1838) FACES. FACTS. TURNS
79
must set over against the lampoon his conviction
of divine light, the patriot his deep devotion
to the country against the mere hurra of the
boys in the street.
Faces. — A domestic warning we have against
degradation in the face of a man whilst he speaks
his best and whilst he speaks his basest senti-
ment. Now, uttering his genuine life, he is strong
as the world, and his face is manly, but instantly,
on his expression of a mean thought, his coun-
tenance is changed to a pitiful, ridden, bestial
portrait.
If a man live in the saddle, the saddle some-
how will come to live in him. Tick, tack.
Any single fact considered by itself confounds,
misleads us. Let it lie awhile. It will find its
place, by and by, in God's chain; its golden
brothers will come, one on the right hand and
one on the left, and in an instant it will be the
simplest, gladdest, friendliest of things.
Turns. It is a beautiful fact that every spot
of earth, every dog, pebble, and ash-heap, as well
as every palace and every man, is whirled round
in turn to the meridian.


80
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
Eloquence. - I thought I saw the sun and
moon fall into his head, as seeds fall into the
ground, that they might quicken and bring forth
new worlds to fill nature.'
October 11.
It is not true that educated men desire truth.
The medical committee decline proffered op-
portunities of witnessing experiments in animal
magnetism.
Swedenborgianism is one of the many forms
of Manichæism. It denies the omnipotence of
God or pure spirit.
October 12.
If it were possible to speak to the virtue
in each of our friends in perfect simplicity, then
would society instantly attain its perfection. If
I could say to the young man, the young girl
whom I meet in company,“ Your countenance,
your behaviour please me: I discover in you the
sparkles of a right royal virtue. I entreat you to
revere its sublime intimations ”; and this could
be heard by the other party with a quiet, perfect
trust, then instantly a league is struck between
1 See “ Fragments on the Poet," etc. (Poems, Appendix
v, p. 326), also the last sentence in “ Man the Reformer"
(Nature, Addresses, and Lectures).


1838)
DIRECT SPEECH
81
two souls that makes life grand, and suffering
and sorrow musical. Who would pine under the
endurance of the many heavy hours of incapac-
ity and mere waiting that creep over us? Who
would decline a sacrifice, if once his soul had been
accosted, his virtue recognized, and he was assured
that a Watcher, a Holy One followed him ever
with long, affectionate glances of inexhaustible
love? What then if many simple souls, studious
of science, of botany, of chemistry, natural his-
tory, lovers of all learning, and scorners of all
seeming, should freely say to me,“God keep you,
brother; let us worship virtue,” – by what a
heavenly guard I should feel myself environed !
But the charm is that mere heathens should say
this. They may be lovers of Christ, be sure, but
they must love him heathenly. For if there be
the least smoothness and passive reception in
them, then all their talk is cant, and I quit the
room if they speak to me.
But now I am not sure that the educated class
ever ascend to the idea of virtue; or that they
desire truth: they want safety, utility, decorum.
In order to present the bare idea of virtue, it is
necessary that we should go quite out of our cir-
cumstance and custom, else it will be instantly
confounded with the poor decency and inanition,


82
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
the poor ghost that wears its name in good so-
ciety. Therefore it is that we fly to the pagans
and use the name and relations of Socrates, of
Confucius, Menu, Zoroaster; not that these are
better or as good as Jesus and Paul (for they
have not uttered so deep moralities), but because
they are good algebraic terms, not liable to con-
fusion of thought like those we habitually use.
So Michel Angelo's sonnets addressed to Vit-
toria Colonna, we see to be mere rhapsodies to
Virtue, and in him, a savage Artist, they are as
unsuspicious, uncanting, as if a Spartan or an
Arab spoke them.
It seems not unfit that the scholar should
deal plainly with society and tell them that he
saw well enough before he spoke the conse-
quence of his speaking; that up there in his si-
lent study, by his dim lamp, he fore-heard this
Babel of outeries. The nature of man he knew,
the insanity that comes of inaction and tradi-
tion, and knew well that when their dream and
routine were disturbed, like bats and owls and
nocturnal beasts they would howl and shriek
and fly at the torch-bearer. But he saw plainly
that under this their distressing disguise of bird-
form and beast form, the divine features of man


1838]
BRAVE PROTEST
83
were hidden, and he felt that he would dare to
be so much their friend as to do them this vio-
lence to drag them to the day and to the healthy
air and water of God, that the unclean spirits
that had possessed them might be exorcised and
depart. The taunts and cries of hatred and
anger, the very epithets you bestow on me, are
so familiar long ago in my reading that they
sound to me ridiculously old and stale. The
same thing has happened so many times over
(that is, with the appearance of every original
observer) that, if people were not very ignorant
of literary history, they would be struck with the
exact coincidence. I, whilst I see this, that you
must have been shocked and must cry out at
what I have said, I see too that we cannot
easily be reconciled, for I have a great deal more
to say that will shock you out of all patience.
Every day I am struck with new particulars
of the antagonism between your habits of
thought and action, and the divine law of your
being, and as fast as these become clear to me
you may depend on my proclaiming them.
um
11
Succession, division, parts, particles, - this is
the condition, this the tragedy of man. All
things cohere and unite. Man studies the parts,


84
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
strives to tear the part from its connexion, to
magnify it, and make it a whole. He sides with
the part against other parts; and fights for
parts, fights for lies, and his whole mind be-
comes an inflamed part, an amputated member,
a wound, an offence. Meantime within him is
the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the Uni-
versal Beauty to which every part and particle
is equally related, the eternal one. Speech is
the sign of partiality, difference, ignorance, and
the more perfect the understanding between
men, the less need of words. And when I know
all, I shall cease to commend any part. An ig-
norant man thinks the divine wisdom is con-
spicuously shown in some fact or creature: a
wise man sees that every fact contains the same.
I should think Water the best invention, if I
were not acquainted with Fire and Earth and
Air. But as we advance, every proposition,
every action, every feeling, runs out into the
infinite. If we go to affirm anything we are
checked in our speech by the need of recogniz-
ing all other things, until speech presently be-
comes rambling, general, indefinite, and merely
tautology. The only speech will at last be ac-
tion, such as Confucius describes the speech of
God.


1838] NEW THOUGHT. DOCTORS 85
October 12.
I wrote Margaret Fuller;- I begin to be
proud of my contemporaries and wish to be-
hold their whole course. Such pictures as you
have sent me now and before exalt our interest
in individual characters and suggest ideas of so-
ciety how lofty and refined! but not now to be
realized.' . . . I see my old gossip Montaigne
is coming up again to honor in these prim, de-
corous days; who would think it? And are you
not struck with a certain subterranean current
of identical thought that bubbles up to day-
light in very remote and dissimilar circles of
thought and culture?
nea
The physician tends always to invert man, to
look upon the body as the cause of the soul, to
look upon man as tyrannized over by his mem-
bers.
October 13.
Do not be a night-chair, a warming-pan, at
sick-beds and rheumatic souls. Do not let them
make a convenience of you. Do not be a pastry-
cook either and give parties.
1 Here follows the passage in “ Friendship” about sub-
tle antagonisms, etc. (Essays, First Series, p. 199).


JOURNAL
(Age 35
October 14.
Measure your present habit of thought and
action by all your external standards, if you will;
by the remembrance of your dead; by the remem-
brance of the three or four great men who are yet
alive; by the image of your distant friends; by
the lives and precepts of the heroes and philoso-
phers; these all are only shadows of the primary
sentiment at home in your old soul.
The talent of the poet seems to consist in pre-
sence of mind, the ability to seize the fact and
image which all others know very well, but can-
not collect themselves sufficiently to use in the
right time.
October 16.
Reform and potatoes seem to have a pretty
strict understanding. Most venerable plant! thou
sturdy republican, abolitionist, anti-money, teeto-
taller! Does a man hear of Temperance or Peace,
or Embargo, or Slavery, or domestic hired Ser-
vice, or the rise of the poor against the rich; of
any revolution or project of perfection? — he
thinks directly on blue-noses and long-reds.
Here came on Sunday morning (14th) Edward
Palmer and departed today, a gentle, faithful,


S
1838) EDWARD PALMER 87
sensible, well-balanced man for an enthusiast. He
has renounced, since a year ago last April, the
use of money. When he travels, he stops at night
at a house and asks if it would give them any
satisfaction to lodge a traveller without money
or price. If they do not give him a hospitable
answer, hegoes on, but generally finds the country
people free and willing. When he goes away,
he gives them his papers or tracts. He has some-
times found it necessary to go twenty-four hours
without food, and all night without lodging.
Once he found a wagon with a good buffalo under
a shed, and had a very good nap. By the sea-
shore he finds it difficult to travel, as they are
inhospitable. He presents his views with great
gentleness; and is not troubled if he cannot show
the way in which the destruction of money is to
be brought about; he feels no responsibility to
show or know the details. It is enough for him
that he is sure it must fall, and that he clears
himself of the institution altogether.
Why should not I, if a man comes and asks
me for a book, give it him? If he asks me to
write a letter for him, write it? If he ask me to
write a poem or a discourse which I can fitly write,
why should I not? And if my neighbor is as skil-
ful in making cloth, why should not all of us who
ca-


88
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
have wool send it to him to make for the com-
mon benefit, and when we want ten yards or
twenty yards go to him and ask for so much, and
he, like a gentleman gives us exactly what we ask
without hesitation, and so let every house keep
a store-room in which they place their super-
fluity of what they produce, and open it with
ready confidence to the wants of the neighbor-
hood, and without an account of debtor and
credit?' Edward Palmer asks if it would be a
good plan for a family of brothers and sisters to
keep an account of debtor and creditor of their
good turns, and expect an exact balance? And
is not the human race a family? Does not kind-
ness disarm?
It is plain that if perfect confidence reigned,
then it would be possible, and he asks how is
confidence to be promoted but by reposing con-
fidence? It seems to me that I have a perfect
claim on the community for the supply of all my
wants if I have worked hard all day, or if I have
spent my day well, have done what I could,
though no meat, shoes, cloth, or utensils, have
been made by me; yet if I have spent my time
in the best manner I could, I must have bene-
nan race
i The above seems to be Mr. Emerson's abstract of Palmer's
theory, considerately stated.


1838] THE MONEY SYSTEM 89
fitted the world in some manner that will appear
and be felt somewhere. If we all do so, we shall
all find ourselves able to ask and able to bestow
with confidence. It seems, too, that we should
be able to say to the lazy, “You are lazy; you
should work and cure this disease. I will not
give you all you ask, but only a part. Pinch
yourself today and ask me for more when you
have laboured more, as your brothers do, for
them.”
However, I incline to think that among
angels the money or certificate system might
have some important convenience, not for thy
satisfaction of whom I borrow, but for my sat-
isfaction that I have not exceeded carelessly any
proper wants, - have not overdrawn.
The devil can quote texts. There is one rule
that should regulate the appeal, often so inde-
corous and irrational, to Scripture: You may
quote the example of Paul or Jesus to a better
sentiment or practice than the one proposed, but
never to a worse. Thus, if it is acknowledged
or felt that there would be a superior purity in
using water to using wine, – do not quote
Jesus as using wine. If it would be nobler to
appeal to the love of men when you want bread


90
(Age 35
JOURNAL
or shoes than to give them a pledge of restor-
ing them (which money is) do not quote Jesus
or Paul as paying taxes or living in “mine own
hired home.”
It was said in conversation at Mr. B's, that
the world owes the world more than the world
can pay, so that the world had better fail and
settle up.
Edward Palmer said that it usually happened
at farmhouses where he stopped, that, “when
he came in conversation to unfold his views to
the people, they were interested in his plan.”
Thus each reformer carries about in him a piece
of me, and as soon as I know it, I am perforce
his kinsman and brother. I must feel that he is
pleading my cause and shall account myself
serving myself in giving him what he lacketh.
October 18.
Sent a letter today to T. Carlyle, per Royal
William.'
1 This is Letter XXVIII in the Carlyle-Emerson Corre-
spondence, in which Mr. Emerson asks Carlyle to postpone
his intended visit and the lecturing scheme in America until
the storm which the “ Divinity School Address" had raised up


as
1838] PRESENT SKEPTICISM 91
Today came Washburn, Lippitt, Ellis, and
Atkins to dine."
October 19.
Let me add of quoting Scripture, to what was
said above, that I hate to meet this slavish cus-
tom in a solemn expression of sentiment, like
the late manifesto of the Peace Convention. It
seems to deny, with the multitude, the omni-
presence and the eternity of God. Once, he
spoke through good men these special words.
Now, if we have aught high and holy to do,
we must wrench somehow their words to speak
it in. We have none of our own. Humbly
rather let us go and ask God's leave to use the
Hour and Language that now is. Cannot you
ransack the grave-yards and get your great-grand-
father's clothes also ? It is like the single coat in
Sainte Lucie in which the islanders one by one
paid their respects to the new governor. It is
a poor-spirited age. The great army of cowards
who bellow and bully from their bed-chamber
windows have no confidence in truth or God.
should abate, for he felt that Carlyle's prospects would suffer
thereby.
i Edward A. Washburn, George Warren Lippitt, Rufus
Ellis, and Benjamin F. Atkins ; the first three, having gradu-
ated at Harvard that year, were divinity students.


92
JOURNAL (AGE 35
Truth will not maintain itself, they fancy, unless
they bolster it up, and whip and stone the as-
sailants ; and the religion of God, the being of
God, they seem to think dependent on what
we say of it. The feminine vehemence with
which the A. N.' of the Daily Advertiser be-
seeches the dear people to whip that naughty
heretic is the natural feeling in the mind whose
religion is external. It cannot subsist; it suffers
shipwreck if its faith is not confirmed by all
surrounding persons. A believer, a mind whose
faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because
other persons do not yet see the fact which
he sees.
It is plain that there are two classes in our
educated community : first, those who confine
themselves to the facts in their consciousness;
and secondly, those who superadd sundry pro-
positions. The aim of a true teacher now would
be to bring men back to a trust in God and
destroy before their eyes these idolatrous pro-
positions: to teach the doctrine of the per-
petual revelation.
October 20.
All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity re-
1 Andrews Norton.


1838) THE LIVING NOW 93
specting the Pyramids ... is simply and at
last the desire to do away this wild savage pre-
posterous Then, introduce in its place the Now:
it is to banish the not me and supply the me;
it is to abolish difference and restore unity.'...
And this is also the aim in all science, in
the unprofitable abysses of entomology, in
the gigantic masses of geology, and spaces of
astronomy, simply to transport our conscious-
ness of cause and effect into those remote and
by us uninhabited members, and see that they
all proceed from “ causes now in operation,”
from one mind, and that ours.
Steady, steady! When this fog of good and
evil affections falls, it is hard to see and walk
straight.
One Mind. — The ancients exchanged their
names with their friends, signifying that in
their friend they loved their own soul.
What said my brave Asia? concerning the
paragraph writers, today? that “this whole
i Here occurs the paragraph so beginning in “ History"
(p. 11).
2 One of Mr. Emerson's names for his wife.


94
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
practice of self-justification and recrimination.
betwixt literary men seemed every whit as low
as the quarrels of the Paddies.”
Then said I, “But what will you say, excel-
lent Asia, when my smart article comes out in
the paper, in reply to Mr. A. and Dr. B.? ” —
“Why, then," answered she, “ I shall feel the
first emotion of fear and sorrow on your ac-
count.” –“But do you know," I asked,“ how
many fine things I have thought of to say to
these fighters? They are too good to be lost.”
-“Then,” rejoined the queen, “there is some
merit in being silent.”
It is plain from all the noise that there is
atheism somewhere ; the only question is now,
Which is the atheist?
It is observable, as I have written before,
that even the science of the day is introver-
sive. The microscope is carried to perfection.
And Geology looks no longer in written his-
tories, but examines the earth that it may be
its own chronicle.
“ Please, papa, tell me a story,” says the
child of two years; who will say then that the
novel has not a foundation in nature ?


95
1838] IDOLS. LETTER
Idols. — Men are not units but poor mixtures.
... They accept how weary a load of tradition
from their elders and more forcible neighbors.
By and by, as the divine effort of creation and
growth begins in them, new loves, new aver-
sions, take effect, — the first radiation of their
own soul amidst things. Yet each of these out-
bursts of the central life is partial, and leaves
abundance of traditions still in force. Each
soul has its idols.' ...
But the new expansion and upthrusting from
the centre shall classify our facts by new radia-
tion and will show us idols in how many things
which now we esteem part and parcel of our
constitution and lot in nature. Property, Gov-
ernment, Books, Systems of Education and of
Religion, will successively detach themselves
from the growing spirit. I call an Idol any-
thing which a man honors, which the constitu-
tion of his mind does not necessitate him to
honor.
TO MISS EMERSON
October 21.
Is the ideal society always to be only a dream,
a song, a luxury of thought, and never a step
1 Here follows the passage on the idol of Italy, of travelling,
etc. (“Self-Reliance,” pp. 80, 81).


96
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
taken to realize the vision for living and indi-
gent men without misgivings within and wildest
ridicule abroad? Between poetry and prose must
the great gulf yawn ever, and they who try to
bridge it over be lunatics or hypocrites ? And
yet the too dark ground of history is starred
over with solitary heroes who dared to believe
better of their brothers, and who prevailed by
actually executing the law (the high ideal) in
their own life, and, though a hissing and an
offence to their contemporaries, yet they became
a celestial sign to all succeeding souls as they
journeyed through nature. How shine the names
of Abraham, Diogenes, Pythagoras, and the
transcendent Jesus, in antiquity! And now, in
our turn, shall we esteem the elegant decorum
of our world, and what is called greatness and
splendor in it, of such a vast and outweighing
worth, as to reckon all aspirations after the Bet-
ter fanciful or pitiable, and all aspirants pert
and loathsome? There is a limit, and (as in
some hours we fancy) a pretty speedy limit, to
the value of what is called success in life. The
great world, too, always bears unexpected witness
to the rhapsodies of the idealists. The fine and
gay people are often disconcerted when the Re-
former points out examples of his doctrine in


1838) SUCCESS AND REFORM
97
the midst of what is finest and gayest. Thus
always the Christian humility was aped by the
protestations of courtesy, and always the great-
hearted children of fortune, - the Cæsars, Cleo-
patras, Alcibiadeses, Essexes and Sidneys within
their own proud pale have treated fortune and
the popular estimates with a certain defiance
and contempt. Irregular glimpses they had of
the real Good and Fair which added a more
than royal loftiness to their behavior and to
their dealing with houses and lands.
Is it not droll, though, that these porcelain
creatures should turn as quick as the fashionable
mob on the poor cobblers, peasants and school-
masters who preached the good and fair to man-
kind, and be willing to burn them up with the
rays of aristocratic majesty ?
I, for my part, am very well pleased to see
the variety and velocity of the movements that
all over our broad land, in spots and corners,
agitate society. War, slavery, alcohol, animal
food, domestic hired service, colleges, creeds,
and now at last money, also, have their spirited
and unweariable assailants, and must pass out of
use or must learn a law.
Mine Asia' says, A human being should be-
i Mrs. Emerson.


98
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
ware how he laughs, for then he shows all his
faults.
A great colossal soul, I fancy, was Sweden-
borg.' ..
Edward Palmer asked me if I liked two serv-
ices in a Sabbath. I told him, Not very well.
If the sermon was good I wished to think of it;
if it was bad, one was enough.
October 26.
Jones Very came hither, two days since, and
gave occasion to many thoughts on his peculiar
state of mind and his relation to society. His
position accuses society as much as society names
it false and morbid; and much of his discourse
concerning society, the church, and the college
was perfectly just.
Entertain every thought, every character, that
goes by with the hospitality of your soul. Give
him the freedom of your inner house. He shall
make you wise to the extent of his own utter-
most receivings.
1 Here occurs the passage beginning similarly in Represent-
ative Men, p. 102. It is followed by the passage in the same
volume (p. 204) as to the effect of Shakspear's work on
German thought.


1838] MONOTONES. SOULS 99
Especially if one of these monotones, whereof,
as my friends think, I have a savage society,
like a menagerie of monsters, come to you, re-
ceive him. For the partial action of his mind in
one direction is a telescope for the objects on
which it is pointed. And as we know that every
path we take is but a radius of our sphere, and
we may dive as deep in every other direction as
we have in that, a far insight of one evil sug-
gests instantly the immense extent of that revo-
lution that must be wrought before He whose
right it is shall reign, the all in all.
we
Vocabularies. — In going through Italy i
speak Italian, through Arabia, Arabic: I say the
same things, but have altered my speech. But
ignorant people think a foreigner speaking a
foreign tongue a formidable, odious nature, alien
to the backbone. So is it with our brothers.
Our journey, the journey of the soul, is through
different regions of thought, and to each its own
vocabulary. As soon as we hear a new vocabu-
lary from our own, at once we exaggerate the
alarming differences, — account the man sus-
picious, a thief, a pagan, and set no bounds to
our disgust or hatred, and, late in life, perhaps
too late, we find he was loving and hating, doing


100
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
and thinking the same things as we, under his
own vocabulary.
Scholar. — Every word, every striking word
that occurs in the pages of an original genius,
will provoke attack and be the subject of twenty
pamphlets and a hundred paragraphs. Should
he be so duped as to stop and listen? Rather,
let him know that the page he writes today will
contain a new subject for the pamphleteers, and
that which he writes tomorrow, more. Let him
not be misled to give it any more than the no-
tice due from him, viz., just that which it had in
his first page, before the controversy. The ex-
aggeration of the notice is right for them, false
for him. Every word that he quite naturally
writes is as prodigious and offensive. So write
on, and, by and by, will come a reader and an
age that will justify all your contest. Do not
even look behind. Leave that bone for them to
pick and welcome.
Let me study and work contentedly and faith-
fully; I do not remember my critics. I forget
them, - I depart from them by every step I
take. If I think then of them, it is a bad sign.
to
In my weak hours I look fondly to Europe


18381 TIME. PERSUASION
101
and think how gladly I would live in Florence
and Rome. In my manly hours, I defy these
leanings, these lingering looks bebind, these
flesh-pots of Egypt, and feel that my duty is
my place and that the merrymen of circum-
stance should follow as they might. ...
Quand on a raison, on a souvent beaucoup plus
raison qu'on ne croit. — Guizot.
We refer all things to time, as we refer the
immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere,
and so we say that the Judgment is near.'...
C. had a persuasion to win fate to his pur-
pose; make that which was seem to the be-
holders not to be, and his tongue did lick the
four elements away.
Converse with a soul which is grandly simple,
and literature looks like word-catching. ...
O, worthy Mr. Graham, poet of bran-bread
and pumpkins, there is a limit to the revolu-
i Here follows a long passage printed in « The Over-
Soul,” beginning thus (Essays, First Series, p. 273).
2 Here occurs the long passage so beginning in « The
Over-Soul ” (pp. 291, 292).


102
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
tions of a pumpkin, project it along the ground
with what force soever. It is not a winged orb
like the Egyptian symbol of dominion, but an
unfeathered, ridgy, yellow pumpkin, and will
quickly come to a standstill."
Literature is a heap of verbs and nouns en-
closing an intuition or two, a few ideas and a
few fables.
Literature is a subterfuge.
One man might have writ all the first rate
pieces we call English literature.
Literature is eaves-dropping.
Literature is an amusement; virtue is the
business of the universe.
We must use the language of facts, and not
be superstitiously abstract.
October 27.
The ray of light passes invisible through
space, and only when it falls on an object, is it
seen. So your spiritual energy is barren and
useless until it is directed on something out-
ward : then is it a thought: the relation between
1 This apostrophe is to Mr. Sylvester Graham, the diet
reformer, whose book, Bread and Bread-Making, had a great
influence among dyspeptics and reformers in those days.


1838) TRUE LIGHT OR FALSE 103
you and it first makes you, the value of you,
apparent to me.
It is the tragedy of life that the highest gifts
are not secure. What purer efflux of the God-
head than the ray of the moral sentiment? Yet
it comes before me so pure as to consent in
language to all the tests we can apply, and yet
is it morbid, painful, unwise. My faith is per-
fect that what is from God shall be more wise,
more fair, more gracious, more manifold, more
rejoicing than aught the soul had already. How
sad to behold aught coming in that name (self
delighted too that it comes from him), which
gives no light, which confounds only, which
shines on nothing, affirming meantime that it is
all light; which does nothing, affirming steadily
that it does and is all.
Mrs. Ripley is superior to all she knows.
She reminds one of a steam-mill of great activ-
ity and power which must be fed, and she grinds
German, Italian, Greek, Chemistry, Metaphys-
ics, Theology, with utter indifference which, -
something she must have to keep the machine
from tearing itself.
The influence of an original genius is matter


104
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
seen
of literary history. It seems as if the Shakspear
could not be admired, could not even be seer
until his living, conversing and writing had dif-
fused his spirit into the young and acquiring
class so that he had multiplied himself into a
thousand sons, a thousand Shakspears and so
understands himself.
October 28.
Jones Very says it is with him a day of hate ;
that he discerns the bad element in every person
whom he meets, which repels him : he even
shrinks a little to give the hand, — that sign of
receiving. The institutions, the cities which men
have built the world over, look to him like a
huge blot of ink. His own only guard in going
to see men is that he goes to do them good, else
they would injure him (spiritually). He lives
in the sight that he who made him, made the
things he sees.
He would as soon embrace a black Egyptian
mummy as Socrates. He would obey, obey. He
is not disposed to attack religions and charities,
though false. The bruised reed he would not
break; the smoking flax he would not quench.
To Lidian he says, “Your thought speaks
there, and not your life.” And he is very sensible
of interference in thought and act. A very accurate


1838) JONES VERY
105
discernment of spirits belongs to his state, and
he detects at once the presence of an alien ele-
ment, though he cannot tell whence, how, or
whereto it is. He thinks me covetous in my hold
of truth, of seeing truth separate, and of receiv-
ing or taking it, instead of merely obeying. The
Will is to him all, as to me (after my own showing)
Truth. He is sensible in me of a little colder
air than that he breathes. He says, “ You do not
disobey because you do the wrong act; but you
do the wrong act, because you disobey; and you
do not obey because you do the good action, but
you do the good action because you first obey."
He has nothing to do with time, because he
obeys. A man who is busy says he has no time;
- he does not recognize that element. A man
who is idle says he does not know what to do
with his time. Obedience is in eternity. He says,
It is the necessity of the spirit to speak with au-
thority. What led him to study Shakspear was
the fact that all young men say, Shakspear was
no saint, — yet see what genius! He wished to
solve that problem.
He had the manners of a man, one, that is,
to whom life was more than meat, the body than
raiment. He felt it an honor, he said, to wash
his face, being, as it was, the temple of the spirit.
1-


106
JOURNAL (AGE 35
And he is gone into the multitude as solitary as
Jesus. In dismissing him I seem to have dis-
charged an arrow into the heart of society.
Wherever that young enthusiast goes he will as-
tonish and disconcert men by dividing for them
the cloud that covers the profound gulf that is
in man.
October 29.
We are wiser, I see well, than we know.'...
Travelling foolish. We imagine that in Ger-
many is the aliment which the mind seeks, or in
this reading, or in that. But go to Germany, and
you shall not find it. They have sent it to Amer-
ica. It is not without, but within: it is not in
geography, but in the soul.
Sincerity is the highest compliment you can
pay. Jones Very charmed us all by telling us he
hated us all.
October 30.
And I am to seek to solve for my fellows the
problem of Human Life, in words, — for that is
i Here follows the sentences in “ The Over-Soul” about
not interfering with the thought, and the soul's being a sepa-
rating sword (Essays, First Series, p. 280); and that on the
Divine thought demolishing centuries, witness Christ's teach-
ing (p. 273).


1838] O'CONNELL ON SLAVERY 107
the subject advertised for my lectures presently.
Well, boy, what canst thou say ? Knowest thou
its law? its way? its equipoise? its endless end?
Seest thou the inevitable conditions which all
seek to dodge?' ...
There is reason enough for the coincidences,
the signs, the presentiments which astonish every
person now and then in the course of his life.
For, as every spirit makes its own condition and
history, the reason of the event is always latent
in the life.
The correspondence of O'Connell and our
American Stevenson indicates a new step taken
in civilization. Our haughty, feudal Virginian
suddenly finds his rights to enter the society of
gentlemen questioned, and he obliged to mince
and shuffle and equivocate in his sentences, to
deny that he is a slave-breeder without denying
that he is a slave-owner. He finds that the eyes
of men have got so far opened that they must
see well the distinction between a cavalier and
the cavalier's negro-driver, a race abhorred.
i Here follow the passages in “ Compensation ” thus be-
ginning (p. 105), and on the price exacted for eminence, for
light, wealth, and fame (pp. 99, 100, 104).


108
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
The men you meet and seek to raise to higher
thought know as well as you know that you are
of them, and that you stand yet on the ground,
whilst you say to them sincerely, let us arise, let
us fly. But once fly yourself, and they will look
up to you.
There is no terror like that of being known.
The world lies in night of sin. It hears not the
cock crowing: it sees not the grey streak in the
East. At the first entering ray of light, society
is shaken with fear and anger from side to side.
Who opened that shutter? they cry, Wo to him!
They belie it, they call it darkness that comes in,
affirming that they were in light before. Before
the man who has spoken to them the dread word,
they tremble and flee. They flee to new topics,
to their learning, to the solid institutions about
them, to their great men, to their windows, and
look-out on the road and passengers, to their
very furniture, and meats, and drinks, -any-
where, anyhow to escape the apparition. The
wild horse has heard the whisper of the tamer :
the maniac has caught the glance of the keeper.
They try to forget the memory of the speaker,
to put him down into the same obscure place
he occupied in their minds before he spake to


1838] DREADED REFORM
109
them. It is all in vain. They even flatter them-
selves that they have killed and buried the en-
emy, when they have magisterially denied and
denounced him. But vain, vain, all vain. It was
but the first mutter of the distant storm they
heard, - it was the first cry of the Revolution,
- it was the touch, the palpitation that goes
before the earthquake. Even now society is
shaken because a thought or two have been
thrown into the midst. The sects, the colleges,
the church, the statesmen all have forebodings.
It now works only in a handful. What does
State Street and Wall Street and the Royal Ex-
change and the Bourse at Paris care for these
few thoughts and these few men ? Very little;
truly; most truly. But the doom of State Street,
and Wall Street, of London, and France, of the
whole world, is advertised by those thoughts;
is in the procession of the Soul which comes
after those few thoughts.
Does a man wish to remain concealed? A few
questions (who does not see?) determine a man's
whole connexion and place. Does he read Words-
worth, Goethe, Swedenborg, Bentham or Spurz-
heim ? Botany? Geology? Abolition? Diet?
Shakspear? Coleridge ?


UIO
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
The tone a man takes indicates his right
ascension.
Swedenborgianism introduces unnecessary
machinery.
Young men rough and unmelodious.
The point of absolute rest in communion
with God.
Nature is loved by what is best in us.' ...
There are some men above grief and some
men below it.
I ought not to omit recording the astonish-
ment which seized all the company when our
brave saint, the other day, fronted the presid-
ing preacher. The preacher began to tower and
dogmatize with many words. Instantly I fore-
saw that his doom was fixed; and as quick as he
ceased speaking, the saint set right and blew
away all his words in an instant, — un horsed
him, I may say, and tumbled him along the
ground in utter dismay, like my angel of Heli-
odorus. Never was discomfiture more complete.
In tones of genuine pathos he “bid him wonder
1 The passage thus beginning occurs in “ Nature"
(Essays, Second Series, p. 178).
2 Jones Very.
erW
d


W
1838) JONES VERY. SOIRÉES III
at the Love which suffered him to speak there
in his chair, of things he knew nothing of; one
might expect to see the book taken from his
hands and him thrust out of the room, -and
yet he was allowed to sit and talk, whilst every
word he spoke was a step of departure from the
truth, and of this he commanded himself to
bear witness !”
October 31.
Yesterday evening L- 's soirée. As soon
as the party is broken up, I shrink and wince,
and try to forget it. ...
When I look at life, and see the patches of
thought, the gleams of goodness here and there
amid the wide and wild madness, I seem to be
a god dreaming; and when shall I awake and
dissipate these fumes and phantoms?
November 2.
Heard I not that a fair girl said, She would
not be “charitable” as she wished to, because it
looked to her so like feeding? Rem acu tetigisti.
To all let us be men, and not pastry-cooks.
Culture thorough. - I see in the lip of the
speaker the presence or absence of Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Shakspear, and the mighty masters.


II2
JOURNAL (Age 35
November 3.
The Trismegisti. — There is always a higher
region of thought, — soar as high as you will;
and in literature very few words are found touch-
ing the best thought; Laodamia; James Nay-
ler's dying words; the Address of the parlia-
mentary soldier to the army, in Coleridge's
Friend; and Sampson Reed's oration; these
are of the highest moral class.
Come on, ye angels who are to write with
pens of flame the poetry of the new age. The
old heathens who have written for us will not
budge one step, — neither Plato nor Shakspear,
- until a natural majesty equal to their own,
and purer, and of a higher strain, shall appear.
Goethe will die hard. Even Scott dares stand
his ground.
a
Henry IV of France a nascent Napoleon
and the first European king.
Weans and Wife. — That's the true pathos
and sublime of human life.
We owe a good many valuable observations
to people who are not very acute or profound,


1838] LIVING WITH SCHOLARS 113
and who say the thing without effort which we
want and have been long toiling for in vain.'
This and that other fact, that we kindle each
other's interest so fast in what happen to be our
present studies, and the rapid communication of
results thatis obviously possible between scholars
of various pursuit, – lead me to think that ac-
quisition would be increased by literary society:
that I could read more, learn faster, by associa-
tion with good scholars, than I do or can alone.
There are few scholars. The mob of so-called
scholars are unapt peasants caught late, coated
over merely with a thin varnish of Latin and read-
ing-room literature, but unlearned and unintel-
ligent: they sleep in the afternoons, read little,
and cannot be said to have faith or hope. For this
reason, I think the reading of Sir William Jones's
Life, or the life of Gibbon, or the letters of Goethe,
might serve the purpose of shaming us into an
emulating industry.
I should not dare to tell all my story. A great
deal of it I do not yet understand. How much
of it is incomplete. In my strait and decorous
way of living, native to my family and to my
country, and more strictly proper to me, is no-
1 This sentence is printed in “ The Over-Soul.”


114
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
thing extravagant or flowing. I content myself
with moderate, languid actions, and never trans-
gress the staidness of village manners. Herein I
consult the poorness of my powers. More cul-
ture would come out of great virtues and vices
perhaps, but I am not up to that. Should I
obey an irregular impulse, and establish every
new relation that my fancy prompted with the
men and women I see, I should not be followed
by my faculties; they would play me false in mak-
ing good their very suggestions. They delight in
inceptions, but they warrant nothing else. I see
very well the beauty of sincerity, and tend that
way, but if I should obey the impulse so far as
to say to my fashionable acquaintance, “you are
a coxcomb, — I dislike your manners — I pray
you avoid my sight," — I should not serve him
nor me, and still less the truth; I should act quite
unworthy of the truth, for I could not carry out
the declaration with a sustained, even-minded
frankness and love, which alone could save such
a speech from rant and absurdity.
We must tend ever to the good life.
I told Jones Very that I had never suffered,
that I could scarce bring myself to feel a concern
for the safety and life of my nearest friends that


1838] GRIEF'S CURE. WOMEN 115
would satisfy them; that I saw clearly that if my
wife, my child, my mother, should be taken from
me, I should still remain whole, with the same
capacity of cheap enjoyment from all things. I
should not grieve enough, although I love them.
But could I make them feel what I feel, — the
boundless resources of the soul,— remaining
entire when particular threads of relation are
snapped, - I should then dismiss forever the
little remains of uneasiness I have in regard to
them.
November 4.
I wish society to be a Congress of Sovereigns
without the pride, but with the power. There-
fore I do not like to see a worthy woman resemble
those flowers that cannot bear transportation,
and when I behold her in a foreign house per-
ceive instantly that she has lost an inch or two
of height — her manners not so tall as they were
at home. A woman should always challenge our
respect, and never move our compassion. If
they be great only on their own ground, and de-
mure and restless in a new house, they have all
to learn. If people were all true, we should feel
that all persons were infinitely deep natures. But
now in an evening party you have no variety of
persons, but only one person. For, say what you


116
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
will, to whom you will, — they shall all render
one and the same answer, without thought, with-
out heart, — a conversation of the lips. ...
Chaucer. — The religion of the early English
wits is anomalous ; so devout, and so blasphe-
mous, in the same breath. The merriest tale con-
cludes —
Thus endeth here my tale of Januarie, -
God blesse us, and his moder, Seinte Marie.
CHAUCER.
Chaucer's canon had such wit and art, that he
could turn upside down all the ground between
here and Canterbury, and pave it with silver and
gold, yet was “his overest sloppe not worth a
mite.”
He is too wise, in faith, as I believe;
Thing that is overdone, it will not preve
Aright, as clerkés say; it is a vice.
Wherefore in that I hold him lewd and nice;
For, when a man hath over great a wit,
Full oft it happeth to misusen it.
We do not justice to ourselves in conver-
sation. An agreeable instance of this I have
repeatedly remarked, — when a man warmly op-
poses in conversation your opinion, even to an


1838] NUMBERS. SANITY. 117
extreme, and afterwards, in his public discourse,
tempers his opposition so freely with your
thought that it is scarcely opposition.
Religion. Our religion stands on numbers of
believers. A very bad sign. Whenever the appeal
is made, no matter how indirectly, to numbers, –
proclamation is then and there made that religion
is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping
thought to him, never counts his company.
Insanity. — Swedenborg said insanity was a
screen; so I think are the active trades and pro-
fessions that employ and educate and restrain so
many thousands of unbelievers. We are screened
from premature ideas.
One of the tests of sanity is repose. I demand
of a great spirit entire self-command. He must
be free and detached, and take the world up into
him, and not suggest the idea of a restless soul
bestridden alway by an invisible rider. He must
not be feverish, but free.
A divine man, be assured, will not be impu-
dent. An angel may indeed come to Helio-
dorus all wrath, but its terror will be beautiful."
1 Mr. Emerson took great delight in the head of the aveng-
ing angel in Raphael's stanza in the Vatican.


118
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
I am very sensible to beauty in the human
form, in children, in boys, in girls, in old men,
and old women. No trait of beauty I think es-
capes me. So am I to beauty in nature: a clump
of flags in a stream, a hill, a wood, a path run-
ning into the woods, captivate me as I pass. If
you please to tell me that I have no just relish
for the beauty of man or of nature, it would not
disturb me certainly. I do not know but it may
be so, and that you have so much juster, deeper,
richer knowledge, as that I, when I come to know
it, shall say the same thing. But now your tell-
ing me that I do not love nature will not in the
least annoy me. I should still have a perfect con-
viction that, love it, or love it not, every bough
that waved, every cloud that floated, every water
ripple is and must remain a minister to me of
mysterious joy. But I hear occasionally young
people dwelling with emphasis on beauties of
nature, which may be there or may not, but which
I do not catch, and blind, at the same time, to
the objects which give me most pleasure. I am
quite unable to tell the difference, only I see that
they are less easily satisfied than I; that they talk
where I would be silent, and clamorously demand
my delight where it is not spontaneous. I fancy
the love of nature of such persons is rhetorical.


1838] LOVING NATURE. TRUST 119
If, however, I tell them, as I am moved to do,
that I think they are not susceptible of this plea-
sure, straightway they are offended, and set them-
selves at once to prove to me with many words
that they always had a remarkable delight in soli-
tude and in nature. They even affirm it with
tears. Then can I not resist the belief that the
sense of joy from every pebble, stake, and dry
leaf is not yet opened in them.
“Hope, the master element of a command-
ing genius.” — Coleridge, “Macbeth.”
I doubt the statement. There is somewhat low
in hope. Faith or Trust, yes, Trust, the con-
viction that all is well, that Good and God is at
the centre, will always rest as basis to the intel-
lectual and outward activity of a great man, but
this may coexist with great despondence and
apathy as to the present order of things and of
persons.
November 7.
Freedom. — I will, I think, no longer do things
unfit for me. Why should I act the part of the
silly women who send out invitations to many
persons, and receive each billet of acceptance as
if it were a pistol-shot? Why should I read lec-
tures with care and pain and afflict myself with


120
JOURNAL
(Age 35
all the meanness of ticket-mongering, when I
might sit, as God in his goodness has enabled
me, a free, poor man with wholesome bread and
warm clothes, though without cakes or gew-gaws,
and write and speak the beautiful and formid-
able words of a free man? If you cannot be free,
be as free as you can.
November 8.
The Asylums of the Mind.— I have said on a
former page that natural science always stands
open to us as any asylum, and that, in the con-
flict with the common cares, we throw an occa-
sional affectionate glance at lichen and fungus,
barometer and microscope, as cities of refuge to
which we can one day flee, if the worst come to
the worst. Another asylum is in the exercise of
the fancy. Puck and Oberon, Tam O'Shanter
and Lili's Park, the Troubadours and old bal-
lads are bowers of joy that beguile us of our woes,
catch us up into short heavens and drown all re-
membrance, and that too without a death-tramp
of Eumenides being heard close behind, as be-
hind other revels. Better still it is to soar into
the heaven of invention, and coin fancies of our
own, - weave a web of dreams as gay and beauti-
ful as any of these our brothers have done, and
learn by bold attempt our own riches. As the


re
1838) THE MIND'S ASYLUMS 121
body is rested and refreshed by riding in the
saddle after walking, and by walking again after
the saddle, or as new muscles are called into play
in climbing a hill, and then in descending, or walk-
ing on the plain, an analogous joy and strength
flows from this exercise. Let no man despise
these entertainments as if it were mere luxury and
the drunkard's bowl. These airy realms of per-
petual joy are also in nature, and what they are
may well move the deep wonder and inquisition
of the coldest and surliest philosopher.
So is music an asylum. It takes us out of the
actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle
our wonder as to who weare, and for what, whence,
and whereto. All the great interrogatories, like
questioning angels, float in onits waves of sound.
“Away, away,” said Richter to it, “thou speak-
est to me of things which in all my endless being
I have found not and shall not find.”
So is Beauty an asylum.
Asylums; Books, Natural Science, Fancy,
Music, Beauty.
Everything must have its flower or effort at
the beautiful, finer or coarser according to its
stuff. The architect not only makes sewers and
offices, but halls and chapels. The carpenter


122
JOURNAL (Age 35
of a village farmhouse expends his taste and
ornament on the front door; the cook rejoices
in his dinner, the laborer has his Sunday clothes,
the poorest Irish scullion has her ribbon and
tags of finery. And in society the senses, the
appetites, the life of the actual world, has also
its virtues or seemings. Thus, in the Planting
States, where the whole culture is a culture of
appearance, exists what is called a romantic state
of society, and the wine-bibber and drabber is
yet required to meet blow with blow, and pistol
with pistol. ...
It makes little difference, the circumstance.'
Obedience or disobedience is all. We read Lear
and hate the unkind daughters. But meantime
perhaps our fathers and mothers find us hard
and forgetful. We swell the cry of horror at the
slave-holder, and we treat our laborer or grocer
or farmer as a thing, and so hold slaves our-
selves.
Not always shall we need to avoid society.
When many men have been bred with God they
are able to know God in each other. Yea, who-
1 This is preceded by several sentences used in the first
few pages of " History.”


1838]
COMPENSATIONS
123
ever has come to a steady communion with Him
can well come into society. Remember Hamp-
den's letter to Eliot.
am
er a
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake
of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I
am contradicted. No man, I think, had ever a
greater well-being with a less desert than I. I
can very well afford to be accounted bad or fool-
ish by a few dozen or a few hundred persons, –
I who see myself greeted by the good expecta-
tion of so many friends far beyond any power
of thought or communication of thought resid-
ing in me. Besides, I own, I am often inclined
to take part with those who say I am bad or
foolish, for I fear I am both. I believe and
know there must be a perfect compensation. I
know too well my own dark spots. Not having
myself attained, not satisfied myself, far from a
holy obedience, — how can I expect to satisfy
others, to command their love? A few sour faces,
a few biting paragraphs,—is but a cheap expia-
tion for all these short-comings of mine.
November 9.
With the vision of this world the fugitive
measures of Time and Space shall vanish. Spirits


124
JOURNAL :
[AGE 35
Can crowd eternity into an hour,
Or stretch an hour to eternity."
ers
This superstition about magnitude and dura-
tion is a classification for beginners introductory
to the real classification of cause and. effect, as
the Linnæan botany gives way to the natural
classes of Jussieu. Why should that complex
fact we call Assyria, with its hundreds of years,
its thousands of miles, its millions of souls, be
to me more than a violet which I pluck out of
the grass? It stands for about so much; it
awakens perchance not so much emotion and
thought. I surely shall not cumber myself to
make it more. Everything passes for what it is
worth.
Shakspear.- Read Lear yesterday and Ham-
let today with new wonder, and mused much on
the great soul whose authentic signs flashed on
my sight in the broad continuous daylight of
these poems. Especially I wonder at the perfect
reception this wit and immense knowledge of
life and intellectual superiority find in us all in
connexion with our utter incapacity to produce
anything like it. The superior tone of Hamlet
1 The editors have not been able to find the source of this
quotation which occurs also in « The Over-Soul.”


1838] HAMLET AND LEAR 125
in all the conversations how perfectly preserved,
without any mediocrity, much less any dulness
in the other speakers.
How real the loftiness! an inborn gentleman;
and above that, an exalted intellect. What in-
cessant growth and plenitude of thought, paus-
ing on itself never an instant; and each sally of
wit sufficient to save the play. How true then
and unerring the earnest of the dialogue, as
when Hamlet talks with the Queen! How ter-
rible his discourse!
What less can be said of the perfect mastery,
as by a superior being, of the conduct of the
drama, as the free introduction of this capital
advice to the players; the commanding good
sense which never retreats except before the god-
head which inspires certain passages, — the
more I think of it, the more I wonder. I will
think nothing impossible to man. No Parthe-
non, no sculpture, no picture, no architecture
can be named beside this. All this is perfectly
visible to me and to many, — the wonderful
truth and mastery of this work, of these works,
- yet for our lives could not I, or any man, or
all men, produce anything comparable to one
scene in Hamlet or Lear. With all my admir-
ation of this life-like picture, - set me to pro-


126
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
ducing a match for it, and I should instantly
depart into mouthing rhetoric.
Now why is this, that we know so much
better than we do? that we do not yet possess
ourselves, and know at the same time that we
are much more? '...
One other fact Shakspear presents us; that
not by books are great poets made. Somewhat,
and much he unquestionably owes to his books;
but you could not find in his circumstances the
history of his poem. It was made without hands
in his invisible world. A mightier magic than
any learning, the deep logic of cause and effect
he studied : its roots were cast so deep, there-
fore it flung out its branches so high.
I find no good lives. I would live well, I seem
to be free to do so, yet I think with very little
respect of my way of living; it is weak, partial,
not full and not progressive. But I do not see
any other that suits me better. The scholars are
shiftless and the merchants are dull.
Expression of Faces. — In many faces we are
1 The rest of the passage is printed in « The Over-Soul,”
as to Jove nodding to Jove, and the Arab Sheiks (Essays, First
Series, p. 278).


1838] THE FACE. SHAKSPEAR 127
struck with the fact that magnitude is nothing,
- proportion is all. A brow may be so formed
that in its few square inches I may receive the
impression of vast spaces: what amplitude ! what
fields of magnanimity! of trust! of humanity!
November 10.
[The opening entry of this date is the passage
in “History” (page 6) as to our reading as
superior beings and in the grandest strokes of
the author feeling most at home. Also about
our sympathy with riches and character. This
is followed by the passage in “Intellect” as to
our being draughtsmen in dreams (Essays, First
Series, p. 337).]
Shakspear fills us with wonder the first time
we approach him. We go away and work and
think, for years, and come again,- he aston-
ishes us anew. Then having drank deeply and
saturated us with his genius, we lose sight of
him for another period of years. By and by we
return, and there he stands immeasurable as at
first. We have grown wiser, but only that we
should see him wiser than ever. He resembles
a high mountain which the traveller sees in the
morning and thinks he shall quickly near it and


128
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JOURNAL
pass it and leave it behind. But he journeys
all day till noon, till night. There still is the
dim mountain close by him, having scarce al-
tered its bearings since the morning light.
My brave Henry Thoreau walked with me
to Walden this afternoon and complained of
the proprietors who compelled him, to whom,
as much as to any, the whole world belonged,
to walk in a strip of road and crowded him out
of all the rest of God's earth. He must not get
over the fence: but to the building of that fence
he was no party. Suppose, he said, some great
proprietor, before he was born, had bought up
the whole globe. So had he been hustled out
of nature. Not having been privy to any of
these arrangements, he does not feel called on
to consent to them, and so cuts fishpoles in the
woods without asking who has a better title to
the wood than he. I defended, of course, the
good institution as a scheme, not good, but the
best that could be hit on for making the woods
and waters and fields available to wit and worth,
and for restraining the bold, bad man. At all
events, I begged him, having this maggot of
Freedom and Humanity in his brain, to write
it out into good poetry and so clear himself of


1838] THOREAU. PROPERTY 129
it. He replied, that he feared that that was not
the best way, that in doing justice to the thought,
the man did not always do justice to himself,
the poem ought to sing itself: if the man took
too much pains with the expression, he was not
any longer the Idea himself. I acceded and con-
fessed that this was the tragedy of Art that the
artist was at the expense of the man; and hence,
in the first age, as they tell, the sons of God
printed no epics, carved no stone, painted no
pictures, built no railroad; for the sculpture,
the poetry, the music, and architecture, were in
the man. And truly Bolts and Bars do not seem
to me the most exalted or exalting of our insti-
tutions. And what other spirit reigns in our
intellectual works? We have literary property.
The very recording of a thought betrays a dis-
trust that there is any more, or much more, as
good for us. If we felt that the universe was
ours, that we dwelled in eternity, and advance
into all wisdom, we should be less covetous of
these sparks and cinders. Why should we cov-
etously build a Saint Peter's, if we had the seeing
Eye which beheld all the radiance of beauty
and majesty in the matted grass and the over-
arching boughs? Why should a man spend
years upon the carving an Apollo, who looked


130
JOURNAL
(Age 35
Apollos into the landscape with every glance he
threw?'
Always pay, for first or last you must pay
your entire expense.” . .
Should not the will be dramatised in a man
who, put him where you would, commanded,
and who saw what he willed come to pass? 3...
A supreme commander over all his passions
and affections as much as Hampden, yet the
secret of his power is higher than that. It is
God in the hands. Men and women are his
game: where they are, he cannot be without re-
source. Shall I introduce you to Mr. R? to
Madame B? “No,” he replies, “introduction is
for dolls: I have business with A and with B.”.
i This walk with Thoreau seems to have suggested the
conversation in "The Conservative," between the protesting
youth and the men of the established order (Nature, Ad-
dresses, and Lectures, pp. 306, 307).
2 Here follows the sentence thus beginning in “ Compen-
sation” (p. 113). It is immediately followed by the conclud-
ing sentences in “Self-Reliance,” as to easy days being de-
ceptive, peace only to come from yourself.
3 Here follows the long passage about Cæsar and men
of that stamp in “ Eloquence” (Society and Solitude, pp.
78, 79).


1838] WILL WOMAN'S POWER 131
Will never consults the law, or prudence, or
uses any paltry expedient, like that falsely as-
cribed to Saint Paul about the unknown God.
Tricks, saith Will, for little folks. I am dearer
to you than your laws, for which neither you
nor I care a pin. He is a cool fellow. Every-
body in the street reminds us of somewhat else.
Will or Reality reminds you of nothing else.
It takes place of the whole creation.
“ He'd harpit a fish out of saut water,
Or water out of a stone,
Or milk out of a maiden's breast
That bairn had never none."
The counterpart to this master in my Drama
should be a maiden, one of those natural mag-
nets who make place and a court where they
are. She should serve in menial office and they
who saw her should not know it, for what she
touched she decorated, and what she did the
stars and moon do stoop to see. But this mag-
netism should not be meant for him and he
should only honor it as he went by. It is to
work on others, on another as a balance to him,
or, if I may refine so far, another Richmond, a
I “Glenkindie,” in Child's English and Scottish Ballads.
2 " I think there be six Richmonds in the field.”
SHAKSPEAR, Richard III, last scene.


132
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
transmuted will infused into form and now un-
conscious, yet omnipotent as before and in a
sweeter way.
November 12.
I could forgive your want of faith if you had
any knowledge of the uttermost that man could
be and do, if arithmetic could predict the last
possibilities of instinct. But men are not made
like boxes, a hundred or thousand to order, and
all exactly alike, of known dimension, and all
their properties known; but no, they come into
nature through a nine months' astonishment,
and of a character, each one, incalculable, and of
extravagant possibilities. Out of darkness and
out of the awful Cause they come to be caught
up into this vision of a seeing, partaking, acting
and suffering life, not foreknown, not fore-esti-
mable, but slowly or speedily they unfold new,
unknown, mighty traits : not boxes, but these
machines are alive, agitated, fearing, sorrowing.
Great Men.— I like the rare, extravagant
spirits who disclose to me new facts in nature.
Always, I doubt not, men of God have, from
time to time, walked among men and made
their commission felt in the heart and soul of
the commonest hearer. Hence evidently the tri-


1838]
THE GREAT
133
pod, the priest, the inspired priestess with the di-
vine afflatus. They saw it was not of the common,
natural life; they felt its consonance with the in-
most constitution of man and revered it, without
the attempt to reconcile it to the actual life.
Swedenborg is now scarce yet appreciable.
Shakspear has for the first time in our time
found adequate criticism, if indeed ye have yet
found it. Coleridge, Lamb, Schlegel, Goethe,
Very, Herder.
The great facts of history are four or five
names : Homer, Phidias, Jesus, Shakspear, —
one or two names more I will not add, but see
what these names stand for. All civil history
and all philosophy consists of endeavors more
or less vain to explain these persons.
November 13.
Yesterday H.G.O. Blake'spent with me; and
departed this morning. We walked in the woods
to the Cliff, to the spring, and had social music.
Ah, Memory, dear daughter of God! Thy
1 Harrison Gray Otis Blake of Worcester, Thoreau's friend
and correspondent, and the editor of some of his works. He
was a man of great sincerity, modesty, refinement, and per-
sonal charm.


134
JOURNAL (Age 35
blessing is million-fold. The poor, short, lone
fact that dies at the birth, thou catchest up and
bathest in immortal waters. Then a thousand
times over it lives and acts again, each time
transfigured, ennobled. Then in solitude and
darkness, I walk over again my sunny walks ;
in streets behold again the shadows of my grey
birches in the still river; hear the joyful voices
of my brothers, a thousand times over; and
vibrate anew to the tenderness and dainty music
of the early poetry I fed upon in boyhood. As
fair to me the clump of flags that bent over the
water, as if to see its own beauty below, one
evening last summer, as any plants that are
growing there today. At this hour, the stream
is flowing, though I hear it not; the plants are
drinking their accustomed life, and repaying it
with their beautiful forms, but I need not wan-
der thither. It flows for me, and they grow for
me in the returning images of former summers.
“Fire,” Aunt Mary said, “was a great deal
of company”; and so is there company, I find,
in water. It animates the solitude. Then some-
what nearer to human society is in the hermit
birds that harbor in the wood. I can do well
for weeks with no other society than the partridge
and the jay, my daily company.
SO


1838] CHILDREN. WORD-BLIGHT 135
“The miraculous,” said Sampson Reed, “is
the measure of our alienation from God.” It is
so in persons as much as in facts. ...
The child is a realization of a remembrance,
and our love of the child is an acknowledgment
of the beauty of human nature. The soul sub-
tends the same angle in the child and in the
man. The proportion of each is the same, and
the central power and magnitude, whether of
space or time, disappears in the eye of God.
Gladly I would solve, if I could, this prob-
lem of a vocabulary which, like some treach-
erous, wide shoal, waylays the tall bark, the
goodly soul, and there it founders and suffers
shipwreck. In common life, every man is led
by the nose by a verb. Even the great and
gifted do not escape, but with great talents and
partial inspiration have local cramps, withered
arms and mortification. Proportion is not. Every
man is lobsided, and even holding in his hands
some authentic token and gift of God, holds it
awry. It must be from everlasting and from the
infinitude of God, that when God speaketh, he
should then and there exist; should fill the
world with his voice, should scatter forth light,


136
JOURNAL
[ACE 35
nature, time, souls, from the centre of the pre-
sent thought; and new date and new create the
whole.'...
The present hour is the descending God, and
all things obey: all the past exists to it as sub-
ordinate: all the future is contained in it. All
things are made sacred by relation to it, one
thing as much as another. It smooths down the
mountainous differences of appearance, and
breathes one life through creation from side
to side. . . . If a man interposes betwixt you
and your Maker, himself or some other person
or persons, believe him not: God has better
things for you. This should be plain enough; yet
see how great and vivacious souls, with grand
truths in their keeping, do fail in faith to see God
face to face, to see Time pass away and be no
more, and to utter directly from him that which
he would give them to say; but rather imprison
it in the old Hebrew language, mimick David,
Jeremiah and Paul and disbelieve that God,
who maketh the stars and stones sing, can speak
our English tongue in Massachusetts and give
as deep and glad a melody to it as shall make
the whole world and all coming ages ring with
The passage thus beginning occupies most of p. 66, of
“Self-Reliance." Sentences not there given are retained.


1838] THE SOUL'S GRATITUDE 137
the sound. Be assured we shall not always set
so great a price on a few texts, on a few
lives.' ...
November 14.
This palsy of tradition goes so far that when
a soul in which the intellectual activity is a bal-
ance for the veneration (whose excess seems to
generate this love of the old word) renounces
the superstition out of love for the primary
teaching in his heart, the doctors of the church
are not glad, as they ought to be, that a new
and original confirmation comes to the truth,
but they curse and swear because he scorns
their idolatry of the nouns and verbs, the vel-
lum and ink, in which the same teaching was
anciently conveyed. ...
I said, in the wood, to the Soul, that I received
thankfully the reprieve which kind and candid
opinions make to the dark and steep and pain-
ful road which truth must travel, and it seemed
to me the while that man never appears to such
advantage as in the act of acknowledgment with
melting eye and plaintive voice.
i Here follows a long passage to be found in “ Self-Reli-
ance” (pp. 67, 68).
2 The rest of the passage, on the highest truth of this sub-
ject, is mainly to be found in “ Self-Reliance” (p. 68).


138
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
What is the hardest task in the world? To
think.' ...
Musical Eyes. — I think sometimes that my
lack of musical ear is made good to me through
my eyes. That which others hear, I see. All
the soothing, plaintive, brisk or romantic moods
which corresponding melodies waken in them,
I find in the carpet of the wood, in the margin
of the pond, in the shade of the hemlock grove,
or in the infinite variety and rapid dance of the
treetops as I hurry along.
erners
Knowledge of Character. — We are all born
discerners of spirits. ...
November 15.
A pathetic thing it is, that we allow men of
talents, and characters in which we are interested,
to which we are naturally allied, to go by us
without heed and the tribute of our sympathy,
because of our momentary preoccupation with
some nearer object. Use hospitality to thoughts.
One Wise Word. — A single remark indicat-
ing wisdom characterizes the person who made
i See « Intellect” (Essays, First Series, p. 331).
2 For the rest of the passage, see “ The Over-Soul” (pp.
285, 286).


e
a
Te
ani
CO
1838] KEEP THE WILL TRUE 139
it. All we know of him is these dozen words;
yet patiently, with a good assurance, we wait
until he shall make good that pledge in a whole
orbit as grand as that curve.
November 16.
All we are responsible for is the will. But
your will cannot always make you appear well.
In the presence of a man or woman of elegance
and fashionable manners, you do not play a
quite manly part. Where is your wisdom? Why
falters the word of truth on your tongue, and
comes so lamely and inarticulately off? Why do
you defer to such persons? Have you not been
taught of God that all things are yours? Why
should you decline from the state of truth, and
vail your manly supremacy to a woman or a fine
gentleman? It is in vain these questions are
asked: you have asked them yourself. You can-
not do otherwise. Admit your weakness. Do not
be disturbed by it. Keep your will true and erect,
and, by and by, this rebellious blood, this painful
suppleness, this epilepsy of the wit, will pass away
imperceptibly, and the whole man shall be the
faithful organ of the wisdom which is no re-
specter of persons.
Books. – You are wrong in demanding of the


140
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
Bible more than can be in a book. Its only de-
fect is that it is a book, and not alive.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all
these things shall be added unto you.” What!
Art? Hamlets ? Ballads?
The life is more than meat and the body than
raiment.
The Soul. — He judgeth every man, yet is
judged of no man.
November 17.
The Traveller. — It occurs to me that, in re-
membrance of my own extreme needs when I
was in Europe, I ought to keep by me a blank-
book to be called “The Traveller,” and from
time to time insert in it the names and places
of such objects as a student of Art or of natural
Beauty or of History should especially visit.
So shall I have a useful gift for those who, hav-
ing eyes, cross the ocean. I am reminded of this
project by the notice of Giotto's frescoes at Pisa
in Coleridge's Table-Talk, vol. i, pp. 123, 124.
See also ibidem, p. 138.
“Poets are guardians of admiration in the
hearts of the people.” Fine offices are discharged
by the men of literary and poetic faculty every-


2281
1838] BEAUTY SOOTHES 141
where. Each has certain opinions, tastes, shades
of thought, which go at large in the great com-
mon world of men, of books, selecting every
connate fact, particle, word, relation, work of
art, until, by and by, that which was or might
seem a mere whimsy or trifle not worth the en-
tertainment of a thought has grown to some
size and is ready to be born.
Jones Very said to me in the woods, One
might forget here that the world was desart and
empty, all the people wicked, ... and [ignored?]
the whole refreshment or consolatory aspect of
the natural sciences, of the telescope and barom-
eter. In Coleridge's Table-Talk, vol. i, p. 129,
I find the following: “John Thelwall had some-
thing very good in him. We were once sitting
in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks, when I
said to him, “Citizen John, this is a fine place
to talk treason in !' 'Nay, citizen Samuel,' re-
plied he, it is rather a place to make a man
forget that there is any necessity for treason!””
November 18.
The infallible index of true progress is found
in the tone the man takes....
i The rest of this passage occurs in “ The Over-Soul”
(pp. 286, 287).


142
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
The Swedenborgian violates the old law of
rhetoric and philosophy, Nec deus intersit dignus
nisi vindice nodus, in its forcible interposing of
a squadron of angels for the transmission of
thought from God to man. I say, I think, or I
receive, in proportion to my obedience, truth
from God; I put myself aside, and let him be.
The New Churchman says: No; that would
kill you, if God should directly shine into you:
there is an immense continuity of mediation.
As if that bridged the gulf from the infinite to
the finite by so much as one plank. Would he
not kill the highest angel into whom he shone
just as quick?
November 25.
At Portsmouth Mr. Haven described the
passage to the guillotine of Manuel and Gen-
eral Houchard, as he saw it in Paris.
Alfred Haven remarked (when I said that
Universalism certainly covered a truth) that
never a soul was without hope of life everlast-
ing, and of course no soul was ever fully con-
vinced that it deserved hell, and of course God
would justify his act to the soul of the sinner.
rse
C
I remember that when I preached my first
sermon in Concord, “On Showing Piety at


1838] TEACHING FROM WITHIN 143
Home,” Dr. Ripley remarked on the frequent
occurrence of the word Virtue in it, and said his
people would not understand it, for the largest
part of them, when Virtue was spoken of, un-
derstood Chastity. I do not imagine, however,
that the people thought any such thing. It was
an old-school preacher's contractedness.
The great distinction between teachers sacred
or literary; between poets like Herbert and
poets like Warton ; between philosophers like
Coleridge and philosophers like Mackintosh;
between talkers like Reed and Very and talkers
like Walker and Ripley, is, that, one class speak
ab intra, and the other class, ab extra. It is of
no use to preach to me ab extra. I can do that
myself. Jesus preaches always ab intra, and so
infinitely distinguishes himself from all others.
In that is the miracle. That includes the mira-
cle. My soul believes beforehand that it ought
so to be. That is what I mean when I say I
look for a Teacher, as all men do say. If how-
ever you preach ab extra, at least confess it.'
i All of the above entry is, in substance, in « The Over-
Soul” (p. 287), but is here given because of the difference
in the authors named, and because of its relation to what fol-
lows.


144
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
Say, “ Come let us do thus and so,” and not
affect to say, “Come thou up hither.” For thy
pretension deceives nobody. Thy body, I can
see well enough, stands above me in a pulpit:
but thy soul, I can see as well, stands down on
my own, or even a lower level.
That is the essential distinction of genius,
the charm of its every syllable, — that they are
an emanation of that very thing or reality they
tell of, and not merely an echo or picture of it.
See these lines of Edward Powell to Fletcher :
« Fletcher, whose wit
Was not an accident to the soul, but It;
Only diffused; thus we the same Sun call
Moving i’ the sphere or shining on a wall.”
How incalculable and potent seem to me the
strokes and glances of a few mystics, saints and
philosophers whom I have seen and reverenced,
living within the veil of their sanctuaries ! How
feeble and calculable the uttermost that modish
divines, writers, and readers can say! This is
the reason why you must respect all your pri-
vate impressions. A few anecdotes, a few traits
of character, manners, face, - a few incidents,
have an emphasis in your memory out of all
proportion to their apparent significance, if you


1838)
REAL TEACHERS
145
measure them by the ordinary standards of his-
tory. Do not, for this, a moment doubt their
value to you. They relate to you, to your pe-
culiar gift. Let them have all their weight, and
do not reject them and cast about for illus-
tration and facts more usual in English litera-
ture.
Swedenborg taught ab intra; and in music
Beethoven, and whosoever like him grandly re-
nounces all forms, societies and laws as impedi-
ments and lives in, on, and for his genius and
guiding Idea. How great the influence of such !
how it rebukes, how it invites and raises me!
My soul answers them saying, “So it is, even
as I have heard: it is no dream: God is; and
there is a heaven for his saints; and that heaven
is obedience to him, I hear ye what ye say,
great servants of my Lord! I also believe;
Lord, help mine unbelief !” The fine account I
read of Beethoven was translated from Bettina
von Arnim's correspondence with Goethe, in a
notice of that book in the (London) Gentleman's
Magazine for October, 1838.
A man of letters who goes into fashionable
society on their terms and not on his own
makes a fool of himself. Why I should be


146
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
given up to that shame so many times after
so much considered experience, I cannot tell.
Heaven has good purposes in these often mor-
tifications, perchance.
It is strange to me how sensible I am to cir-
cumstances. I know not how it is, but in the
streets I feel mean. If a man should accost me
in Washington Street and call me base fellow!
I should not be sure that I could make him
feel by my answer and behaviour that my ends
were worthy and noble. If the same thing
should occur in the country I should feel no
doubt at all that I could justify myself to his
conscience.
Sir Thomas Browne. - George Haven, at
Portsmouth, read me noble passages in Sir
Thomas Browne's writings. How inward he is!
What a true example of the noble daring of a
thinker who sees that the soul alone is real, and
that it is a true wisdom to launch abroad into
its deep, and push his way as far as any glim-
mer of light is given, though the element and
i Compare what is said of Saadi (used in that place for the
ideal poet) in the verse beginning, “ God only knew how
Saadi dined.” See Poems, Appendix, “Fragments on the
Poet and the Poetic Gift," v, p. 325.


18387 THOUGHT-HUNTING
147
the path be in wild contradiction to any use or
practice of this world.
Boys and Girls. — The strong bent of nature
is very prettily seen in the winning, half-artful,
half-artless ways of young girls in the middle
classes who go into the shops to buy a skein of
silk or a sheet of paper and talk half an hour
about nothing with the broad-faced, good-na-
tured shop-boy.' ....
November 26.
Impotent creatures that we are! Stung by
this desire for thought, we run up and down
into booksellers' shops, into colleges, into Athe-
næums, into the studies of learned men. The
moment we receive a new thought, it is the
identical thing we had before with a new mask,
and therefore, though hailed as authentic, yet
as soon as we have received it, we desire an-
other new one, we are not really enriched. But
when we receive it we are beatified for the time.
We seem to be capable of all thought. We are
on a level then with all Intelligences. We cast
all books and teachers behind us. What have
I to do with means, when I am in the presence
1 Here occurs the passage in “ Love” (p. 173), on
wholesome village boy and girl relations.


148
[AGE 35
JOURNAL
of the Infinite Light? And yet, familiar as that
state of mind is, the books of Bacon and Leib-
nitz still retain their value from age to age. So
impassable is, at last, that thin, imperceptible
boundary between perfect understanding of the
author, perfect fellowship with him, quasi con-
sciousness of the same gifts, - and the faculty
of subordinating that rapture to the Will in
such degree as to be able ourselves to conjoin
and record our states of mind. I have written
above that the price of the picture indicates
the odds that exist against the appearance
of a genius pure as Raphael or Angelo. So is
the glory of the name of Shakspear, Bacon,
Milton, an index of the exceeding difficulty
with which the reader who perfectly under-
stands what they say, and sees no reason why
he should not continue the sentence, - over-
leaps that invisible barrier and continues the
sentence. Whilst he reads, the drawbridge is
down. Nothing hinders that he should pass
with the author. When he assays to write
- lo suddenly! the draw is up, and will not
down.'
i The latter part of this entry occurred in the third lecture
of the course on “Human Life,” called “School.” See Ab-
stracts in Cabot's Memoir, Appendix F, 1838.


1838] THEORY. CANT. FEAR 149
November 27.
The brilliant young student full of philoso-
phy and happy in the faculty of unfolding and
illustrating his theories, should dread his own
theories. They are snares for his own feet. We
put our love where we have put our labor.
Having done so well, having won so much
praise by them, and so many opinions, how can
he turn his back on them and follow the great
light of truth to which these were only porches ?
Yet must you leave your theory, as Joseph his
coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
I have no less disgust than any other at the cant
of spiritualism. I had rather hear a round volley
of Ann Street oaths than the affectation of that
which is divine on the foolish lips of coxcombs.
The man who fears and is therefore intolerant
indicates at once that he is not yet grounded in
the soul: for lack of his natural root, he clings
by tendrils of affection to society, may hap to
what is best and greatest in it, and in calm t
it will not appear that he is adrift and not
moored; but let any disorder take place in
society, any revolution of custom, of law, of
opinion, and instantly his whole type of perma-


150
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
nence is rudely shaken. In the disorder of so-
ciety, universal disorder seems to him to take
place, Chaos is come again, and his despair takes
at first the form of rage and hatred against the
act or actor which has broken the seeming peace
of nature, but the fact is, he was already a driv-
ing wreck before the wind arose, which merely
revealed to him his vagabond state. If a man is
at one with the soul and in all things obeyeth it,
society becomes to him at once a fair show and
reflection of that which he knoweth beforehand
in himself. If anyone affirm a strange doctrine,
or do a wild deed, or if any perversity or profli-
gacy appears in the whole society, he will see it
for what it is, and grieve for it as a man and
member of society, but it will not touch him
with resentment, it will not cast one shadow over
the lofty brow of the soul. The soul will not
grieve. The soul sits behind there in a serene
peace; no jot or tittle of its convictions can
either be shaken or confirmed. It sees already
in the ebullition of sin the simultaneous remedy
arising. This is the city which hath foundations
whose builder and maker is God.
ene
Phrenology and animal magnetism are studied
a little in the spirit in which alchemy and witch-


1838) ONE MIND. TESTS. MAN 151
craft or the black art were, namely, for power.
That vitiates and besmirches them and makes
them black arts. All separation of the soul's
things from the soul is suicidal. So are phre-
nology and animal magnetism damned.'
Extremes meet : the sublime of war in the
Iliad meets the doctrine of one mind. Hector
says to Ajax:— .
Exchange some gift, that Greece and Troy may say,
Not hate, but glory, made these chiefs contend
And each brave foe was in his soul a friend.
Iliad, Book vir.
The test of a religion or philosophy is the
number of things it can explain : so true is it.
But the religion of our churches explains neither
art nor society nor history, but itself needs ex-
planation.
Whence this fact that the natural history of
man has never been written?... Whence, but
because God inhabits man and cannot be known
but by God?
The ancients affirmed the incorruptibility of
i Compare « Demonology” (Lectures and Biographical
Sketches, p. 25).
2 Compare «The Over-Soul” (Essays, First Series, p. 367).


152
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
the world : modern geology teaches the same
doctrine in the perpetual renewing of what is
perpetually consumed. Races pass and perish;
cities rise and fall, like the perpetual succession
of shells on the beach ; and the sound of the
waters and the colors of the flower, cloud, and
the voice of man are as new and affecting today
as at any moment in the vast Past.
COU
[On December 5, Mr. Emerson began his
course of ten lectures in Boston, one a week, the
subject being “Human Life,” as follows:-
I, Doctrine of the Soul (parts of this were
printed later in “The Over-Soul”); II, Home;
III, School; IV, Love; V, Genius; VI, The
Protest; VII, Tragedy; VIII, Comedy; IX,
Duty; X, Demonology.]
AUTHORS or Books QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNAL FOR 1838
[As has been mentioned in a previous volume,
certain standard authors, and the favorites of Mr.
Emerson, most frequently referred to in the
Journals, will be omitted from the lists; viz.,
Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil, Horace,
Juvenal, Montaigne, Bacon, Shakspear, Ben
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Donne, Her-
OUS


1838]
READING
153
rick, Herbert, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy
Taylor, Pascal, Newton, Fénelon, Young, Pope,
Pitt, Johnson, Swedenborg, Gibbon, De Staël,
Wordsworth, Scott, Landor, Coleridge, Byron.
In spite of the frequent mention of Plotinus,
Proclus, and the other neo-platonists, and of the
Oriental Scriptures and poets, these names will
appear in the list, as shedding light on the ques-
tion when Mr. Emerson was reading them.
Goethe and Carlyle will also be mentioned.
The names of the books, which appear year
by year, charged to Mr. Emerson in the record
of the Boston Athenæum Library are also given.
It must be borne in mind that often the au-
thors are not quoted directly, but Mr. Emerson
came upon some passage from their works in
another writer's book.]
de
Menu, Institutes of ; Buddha; Zoroaster; Con-
fucius;
Xenophanes ; Pindar; Herodotus; Thucydi-
des; Polybius ; Terence; Plautus;
Pliny the Elder ; Martial ; Epictetus; Seneca ;
Galen; Hermes Trismegistus; Synesius; Proclus;
Roger Bacon; Dante, Purgatorio; Chaucer,
Griselda ; Erasmus; Michel Angelo, Sonnets; Sir
Thomas More ; Troubadours ; Ballads;


154
JOURNAL (AGE 35
Luther ; Richard Edwards ; Calvin ; Giordano
Bruno;
Richard Hooker ; Sir Philip Sidney; Kepler ;
Boehmen, Aurora; Thomas Hobbes; John
Hampden, Letters to Eliot ; Cudworth;
Marvell; Charles Cotton; Dryden; Pepys,
Diary;
Newton; Leibnitz; Rousseau; Voltaire ;
Spence, Anecdotes; Linnæus; Winckelmann,
History of Art;
Warton; Lessing; James Bruce, Travels ;
Spinoza; Niebuhr; Horne Tooke (John
Horne); Herschel ; Herder;
Sir William Jones, Translations of Asiatic
Poetry; Bentham; Goethe, William Meister,
Farbenlebre, Faust, Iphigenia ; Thomas Taylor;
Burns, Tam O'Shanter; Heeren, Leading Peoples.
of the Ancient World; Fichte; Schleiermacher;
Humboldt; Schlegel; Bettina von Arnim, Let-
ters to Goethe ;
Charles Lamb; O'Connell, Correspondence
with Stevenson ;
Miss Jane Porter, Novels ; Spurzheim; Davy,
Chemistry;
Belzoni, Discoveries in the Pyramids ; Sir
Charles Bell, On the Hand;
Dr. William Ellery Channing; Jane Taylor,


1838]
READING
155
Poems; Daniel Webster; Southey, Kebama;
O'Meara, Napoleon ; Andrews Norton ; Sprague,
Centennial Ode; Guizot; Caillaud, Travels;
Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick, Novels ; Cou-
sin; Sylvester Graham, Bread and Bread-Making;
Jouffroy ; Jussieu ; George B. Emerson ; Car-
lyle; Hugh Williamson; Tennyson ; Dickens,
Oliver Twist; Jones Very; Sampson Reed;
Henry D. Thoreau, Poems; W. Ellery Chan-
ning, Poems;
North American and Edinburgh Reviews, For-
eign Quarterly, London Quarterly, Fraser's and
Blackwood's Magazines.





JOURNAL
BOSTON LECTURES
SYMPOSIA
VISITORS
JONES VERY. EDWARD PALMER
THE WHITE MOUNTAINS





JOURNAL XXX
1839
(From Journals D and E)
For Virtue's whole sum is to know and dare.
Donne.
Still lives the song, though Regnar dies, –
Fill high the cups again!
STERLING
[The course of lectures on “Human Life," be-
gun in December, 1838, lasted until the latter part
of February. It was interfered with by the sleep-
lessness of which Mr. Emerson speaks, and, later,
by weakening colds. These made the course seem
unsatisfactory to him, and he told his audience
that he had meant to round out the series by two
more lectures, one on the limitations of human
activity by the laws of the world, and one on the
intrinsic powers and resources of our nature.
Yet Mr. Alcott, on returning from the sixth
lecture (“The Protest"), wrote in his journal:
“Emerson has triumphed, ... the large hall
in the Temple was filled; and the audience, the
choicest that could begathered in New England.”
Of the closing lecture he wrote: “The perora-


160
JOURNAL
(Age 35
tion was grand. He dwelt for a moment on the
spirit in which his word had been conceived and
uttered; on the inscrutability of the soul, its
marvellous fact; the feeble insight which he had
been suffered to get of it. The audience was
larger than on any former evening.”]
(From D)
January 1, 1839.
Adjourned the promised lecture on Genius
until Wednesday week, on account of my un-
accountable vigils now for four or five nights,
which destroy all power of concentration by day.
Sunday, January 6.
It seemed to me at church today that the Com-
munion service, as it is now and here celebrated,
is a document of the dulness of the race. Then
presently, when I thought of the divine soul of
my Nazarene whose name is used here, and con-
sidered how these my good neighbors, the bend-
ing deacons with their cups and plates, would
have straightened themselves to sturdiness if the
proposition came before them to honor thus a
known fellow-man, I was constrained to feel the
force of Genius that, hallowing once those He-
brew lips, should propagate its influences thus
-n


1839] NAMES. PLYMOUTH. HEAT 161
far and not be quite utterly lost in these ultimate
shoals and shores of our Concord congregation.
January 12.
Set your own rate.' ...
Let us call Goose Pond the Drop, or God's
Pond. Henry Thoreau says, “ No; that will
shock the people; call it Satan's Pond and they
will like it, or still better, Tom Wyman's Pond.”
Alas! say I, for the personality that eats us up.
“Seekest thou great things? Seek them not.”
— JEREMIAH, xiv, 5.
February 3.
Returned last night from Plymouth, where on
Thursday evening, 31 January, I read a lecture
on Genius; on Friday afternoon, one on Home;
and in the evening, one on Being and Seeming.
February 7.
The drunkard retires on a keg and locks him-
self up for a three days' debauch. When I am
sick, I please myself not less in retiring on a
i The sentence thus beginning is in “Spiritual Laws”
(Essays, First Series, p. 151), and is immediately followed
by that about soulin dealing with a child (" The Over-Soul,”
p. 279).


162
JOURNAL (AGE 35
Salamander stove, heaping the chamber with fuel,
and inundating lungs, liver, head and feet with
floods of caloric, heats on heats. It is dainty to
be sick, if you have leisure and convenience for
it. How bland the aspect of all things! One sees
the colors of the carpet and the paper-hangings.
All the housemates have a softer, fainter look
to the debilitated retina.
Yesterday I saw pencil sketches done by
Stewart Newton whilst confined in the Insane
Asylum a little before his death. They seemed
to betray the richest invention, so rich as almost
to say, Why draw any line, since you can draw
all? Genius has given you the freedom of the
universe, why then come within any walls?
[Written to James Freeman Clarke.]
As soon as you once come up against a man's
limitations, it is all over with him;'....
Public speaking, not Realism. — We see it ad-
vertised that Mr. A. will deliver an oration on
the Fourth of July. ...
1 The passage thus beginning occurs in “Circles” (Essays,
First Series, p. 308).
2 The passage following is printed in “Spiritual Laws”
(Essays, First Series, p. 152).


18391 FALLING. DEMONOLOGY 163
As soon as a child has left the room his strown
toys become affecting.
Falling. — “It is as easy as falling.” — In na-
ture nothing is done but in the cheapest way.
When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit
is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the
waters is mere falling: the walking of man and
all animals is a falling forward. All our manual
labor and works of strength, as prying, splitting,
digging, rowing, etc., are done by dint of contin-
ual falling; and the globe and the globes, earth,
moon, sun, comet, star, fall forever and ever.
Nature works by short ways.
February 8.
Memory is
The deaf man's hearing and the blind man's sight.
PLUTARCH’s Morals, vol. iv, p. 47.
February 14.
Demonology seems to me to be the intensa-
tion of the individual nature, the extension of
this beyond its due bounds and into the domain
of the infinite' and universal. The faith in a
Genius; in a family Destiny; in a ghost; in an
amulet, is the projection of that instinctive care
which the individual takes of his individuality
beyond what is meet and into the region where


164
(Age 35
JOURNAL
the individuality is forever bounded by generic,
cosmic and universal laws.
Yet I find traces of this usurpation in very
high places, in Christianity, for example. Chris-
tianity, as it figures now in the history of ages, in-
trudes the element of a limited personality into
the high place which nothing but spiritual energy
can fill, representing that Jesus can come in
where a will is an intrusion, into growth, repent-
ance, reformation.
The divine will, or, the eternal tendency to the
good of the whole, active in every atom, every mo-
ment, is the only will that can be supposed pre-
dominant a single hairbreadth beyond the lines
of individual action and influence, as known to
the experience; but a ghost, a Jupiter, a fairy, a
devil, and not less a saint, an angel, and the God
of popular religion, as of Calvinism, and Roman-
ism, is an aggrandized and monstrous individual
will. The divine will, such as I describe it, is
Spiritual. These other things, though called spir-
itual, are not so, but only demonological; and
fictions.
February 15.
Walking. - In the morning a man walks with
his whole body; in the evening, only with his
legs; the trunk is carried along almost motionless.


1839) PLUTARCH. ELLEN 165
What fine traits Plutarch gives Epaminondas
in his essay on the Demon of Socrates, repre-
senting him as taking no part in a bold attempt
upon Archias and the tyrants because his nature
was averse to it; and, “He loves to be silent,
said his father; he is very cautious how he pro-
poseth anything, but will hear eternally, and is
never weary of an instructive story."
Ellen was never alone. I could not imagine
her poor and solitary. She was like a tree in
flower, so much soft, budding, informing beauty
was society for itself, and she taught the eye that
beheld her why Beauty was ever painted with
loyes and graces attending her steps.
February 22.
I closed on Wednesday evening, 21 February,
my course of lectures at the Masonic Temple
in Boston, on Human Life.
The pathetic lies usually not in miseries, but
petty losses and disappointments, as when the
poor family have spent their little utmost upon
a wedding or a christening festival, and their feast
is dishonoured by some insult or petty disaster,
— the falling of the salver, or the spoiling of a
carpet. When I was a boy I was sent by my


166
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
mother with a dollar bill, to buy me a pair of
shoes at Mr. Baxter's shop, and I lost the bill;
and remember being sent out by my disap-
pointed mother to look among the fallen leaves
under the poplar trees opposite the house for
the lost bank note.
My Ambition.— When I was in college, Robert
Barnwell, the first scholar in my class, put his
hand on the back of my head to feel for the
bump of ambition and pronounced that it was
very, very small.
Would you know if the man is just, ask of
the tax-gatherer.
Bambino. — “Where's the cover that lives in
this box?” asks little Waldo. When he saw the
dead bird, he said, “He was gone by-by”; then
he said, “He was broke.” When Dr. Jackson
smoked a cigar, Waldo said, “See the cobwebs
go up out of the gentleman's mouth.”
February 25.
Yesterday morning, 24 February at 8 o'clock,
a daughter was born to me, a soft, quiet, swarthy
little creature, apparently perfect and healthy.
My sacred child ! Blessings on thy head, little


1839) THE NEW ELLEN. MEMORY 167
winter bud! And comest thou to try thy luck
in this world, and know if the things of God
are things for thee? Well assured, and very soft
and still, the little maiden expresses great con-
tentment with all she finds, and her delicate but
fixed determination to stay where she is, and
grow. So be it, my fair child! Lidian, who mag-
nanimously makes my gods her gods, calls the
babe Ellen. I can hardly ask more for thee, my
babe, than that name implies. Be that vision, and
remain with us, and after us.'
March 3.
The memory plays a great part in settling
the intellectual rank of men. A seneschal of
Parnassus is Mnemosyne. Thus, am I a better
scholar than one of my neighbors who visited
me? I see how it is. We read the same books
a year, two years, ten years ago; we read the
same books this month. Well, that fact which
struck us both, then, with equal force, I still
contemplate. He has lost it. He and the world
have only this fact. I have that and this.
A fine voice in a choir seems to inundate the
i It was the fortune of Ellen to be a joy and comfort to
her father and mother in the home through all the years, and
to take care of them in their last days.


168
[Age 35
JOURNAL
house with spouts and jets and streams of sound,
and to float the old hulk of the choir itself, in-
sinuating itself under all the droning groans and
shrill screams and hurrying them all away, the
spoils of its own stream.
[On March 5, The Symposium met at Mr.
Morse's, the subject of the evening being “Won-
der and Worship.” The next day Mr. Emerson
gave a discourse, “ Intellectual Integrity,” be-
fore the Mechanics' Apprentices' Association.
Again, on March 11, The Symposium gathered
at Mr. Morse's and conversed on “Innocence
and Guilt.”]
Vanity, — We all wish to be of importance in
one way or another. The child coughs with might
and main, since it has no other claims on the
company.
No Age in Talk. — I make no allowance for
youth in talking with my friends. If a youth or
maiden converses with me I forget they are not
as old as I am.
Young Love. — The rude village boy teases
the girls about the schoolhouse door.' ...
1 Here follows the passage thus beginning in “ Love” (Es-
says, First Series, p. 172).


1839) ART HINTS. GENTLEMAN 169
Mountain Heads. — Brant's head in Stone's
Life of Brant reminded me instantly of a moun-
tain head, and the furrows of the brow suggest
the strata of the summit. Gladly I perceive this
fine resemblance, for we like to reconcile man
and the world in all ways. Then I went to Bos-
ton and saw Allston's “Sisters ” at Alexander's
room. There again were human forms more re-
lated to the lights of morning and evening than
to human society as we know it.
Gentleman. - When I consider how much it
is to be a gentleman, how deep the elements of
the gentleman lie in nature, I doubt if I should
find anywhere among the privileged classes, and
the select even of these, anyone who would not
in some point of behaviour suggest vulgarity and
imperfect breeding. Non è nel mondo se non volgo.
es
[On the last day of January and the first of
February Mr. Emerson by invitation gave three
lectures at Plymouth : “ Genius,” “Home,”
and “Being and Seeming.”
In February his friend James Freeman Clarke,
then a young minister in Louisville, Kentucky,
asked for some verses for his newspaper The
Western Messenger, and Mr. Emerson sent him


170
JOURNAL (Age 35
“Good-bye," written in 1823, and “Each and
All,” founded on a boyish experience recorded
in the Journal, May 16, 1834, and turned into
verse later.]
March 9.
The Indo-American war of Brant and Ganse-
voort, etc., illustrate as well as any other the
uninventive, the inventive. Allsit still in the fort,
persuaded that the militia cannot meet the British
regulars and the dreadful Indians. At last comes
a restless, creative man, some General Herkimer,
or Captain Willett, and makes a sally to the
woods to a distant fort, engages the Indians,
beats them, and shows the stupidity of the former
sitting. Instantly “they conquer who believe
they can.” God invents: God advances. The
world, the flesh, and the devil sit and rot. Not
less is all society an optical illusion to the young
adventurer.' ... Stay at home in God, and the
whole population will do homage with cap and
knee.
General Gates behaved with great delicacy to
General Burgoyne when he capitulated, in 1777,
at Saratoga. Burgoyne mentions in a letter to
1 The rest of this passage is found in the first paragraph of
“ Politics” (Essays, First Series).


1839) PREACHER AND HEARER 171
the Earl of Derby, that when the British soldiers
had marched out of their camp to the place where
they were to pile their arms, not a man of the
American troops was to be seen. (See Stone's
Life of Brant.)
Books. — “What's Hecuba to him?”
Byron says of Jack Bunting, “ He knew not
what to say, and so he swore." I may say it
of our preposterous use of books, He knew
not what to do, and so be read.'...
March 10.
I charge the church with a want of respect to
the soul of the worshipper. The question every
worshipper should ask of the preacher is,“ What
is that to me? What have I to do with thee?
What with thy fact; what with thy history; thy
person; thine alleged inclinations, and aver-
sions? I am here. Behold thy tribunal. Come
with thy persons and facts to judgment.” And
the church, the preacher should say, “Soul of
my brother, methinks I have glad tidings for
thee. Methinks I have found something of
thine spoken by one Jesus, by one Zoroaster, by
1 The rest of the paragraph is printed in - Spiritual Laws"
(Essays, First Series, p. 164).


172
JOURNAL [AGE 35
one Penn. Hear and judge. — But now we are a
mob; man does not stand in awe of man ;'..."
I suppose that my desire to retain a church
visible grows out of the present state of society,
and that, in a right state, every meeting for
practical, intellectual, or civic purposes would
be predominated by the sentiment of holiness,
and would yield the precise satisfactions I have
in view, when I ask more Sabbath than the
eternal Sabbath of action.
Vanity. — Do not be so troublesome modest,
you vain fellow. Real modesty still puts the
thing forward and postpones the person, nor
worries me with endless apologies.
“Another State.”—I am weary of hearing at
church of another state. When shall I hear the
prophet of the present state?
Also the preacher admonishes his man not to
bring a dishonor on religion by his misconduct.
Why not ask him not to shut his eyes for fear
of putting out the sunshine ?
Isolation must precede society. I like the
1 The substance of what follows is in "Self-Reliance”
(p. 71).


1839) PEACE BY FIDELITY 173
silent church before the service begins better
than any preaching.' ...
es
At church in the afternoon I doubted whether
that dislocation, disunion, reflex life, second
thought, that mars all our simplicity, be not an
universal disease, and whether all literary pic-
tures of Nathan the Wise, or whatever calm,
placid philosopher, be not false and overcharged.
Howbeit, I thought it best to seek one peace
by fidelity; and at least I would write my pro-
crastinated letters. ... Then again it seemed
wise to sit at home contented with my work
and word, and never rove into other men's
acres more. Why this needless visiting? If you
can really serve them, they will visit you.
One thing more. It is not by running after
Napoleon that the corresponding element, the
Napoleonism in you, is stimulated and matured;
but by withdrawing from him, from all, back on
the deeps of Home. All history is in us.
March 13.
Conversation.— The office of conversation is
to give me self-possession. I lie torpid as a clod.
i The rest of the passage is found in “ Self-Reliance”
(pp. 71, 72).


174
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
Virtue, wisdom, sound to me fabulous, — all
cant. I am an unbeliever. Then comes by a
safe and gentle spirit who spreads out in order
before me his own life and aims, not as ex-
perience, but as the good and desirable. Straight-
way I feel the presence of a new and yet old, a
genial, a native element. I am like a Southerner,
who, having spent the winter in a polar climate,
feels at last the south wind blow, the rigid
fibres relax, and his whole frame expands to the
welcome heats. In this bland, flowing atmos-
phere, I regain, one by one, my faculties, my
organs; life returns to a finger, a hand, a foot.
A new nimbleness, -almost wings, unfold at
my side, — and I see my right to the heaven as
well as to the farthest fields of the earth. The
effect of the conversation resembles the effect
of a beautiful voice in a church choir as I have
noted it above, which insinuates itself as water
into all chinks and cracks and presently floats
the whole discordant choir and holds it in solu-
tion in its melody. Well, I too am a ship aground,
and the bard directs a river to my shoals, re-
lieves me of these perilous rubs and strains, and
at last fairly uplifts me on the waters, and I put
forth my sails, and turn my head to the sea.
Alcott is the only majestic converser I now meet.


18391
INSTITUTIONS. GAIN
175
He gives me leave to be, more than all others.
Alcott is so apprehensive that he does not need
to be learned.
Institutions are optical illusions. All concen-
trates ; let us not rove. A few sounds, a few
sights, suffice and outvalue a multitude. Kings
make their own scale and new write the tariff of
prices. Let us mind our business with a great
heart and never vex ourselves with institutions
or consequences. The great man knew not that
he was great.' ...
Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing
is to the body.' ...
March 19.
Such is my confidence in the compensations
of nature that I no longer wish to find silver
dollars in the road, nor to have the best of the
bargain in my dealings with people, nor that my
property should be increased, — knowing that
all such gains are apparent, and not real; for
they pay the sure tax. But the perception that
1 The rest of this passage occurs in “Spiritual Laws"
(p. 155).
2 The rest of this long passage occurs in “ Art” (Essays,
First Series, p. 336).


176
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
it is not desirable to find the dollar, I enjoy
without any alloy. This is an abiding good:
this is so much accession of Godhead.
Popularity is for dolls; a hero cannot be
popular.
I meet men whose faces instantly assure me
they are where I left them; no new thoughts, new
books, new facts, but facts old and decrepit by
the inaction of the soul. Others I know, who
are new men, in new regions, with faint memory
of their own words and deeds on past occasions.
“It is in bad taste," is the most formidable
word an Englishman can pronounce.
ers.
Peepers and Listeners. — There is other peep-
ing beside setting the eye to chinks and key-
holes ; Reading Goethe's letters, or the History
of the Saracens, for example.'
March 23.
Art. — Each work of art excludes the world,
concentrates attention on itself. For the time it
i Mr. Emerson refers here to a previous page in which he
had spoken of “the preposterous use of books,” also the con-
tinuation of the subject in “ Spiritual Laws” (p. 164).


1839] SELF-TRUST. THOUGHTS 177
is the only thing worth doing, to do just that;
be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline
head of Cæsar, or an oration.' ...
A man must consider what a rich realm he
abdicates when he becomes a conformist.? . ..
March 26.
A good man is contented. I love and honor
Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epami-
nondas.3 ... We are always ducking with our
unseasonable apologies. Shall the priestor priest-
ess on the tripod, full of the God, baulk the
inquirer with nonsense of modesty ?
To Him who Said it Before.— I see my thought
standing, growing, walking, working, out there
in nature. Look where I will, I see it. Yet when
I seek to say it, all men say, “No: it is not.
These are whimsies and dreams!” Then I think
they look at one thing, and I at others. My
1 The substance of what follows is printed in “ Art”
(p. 353).
2 Here follows the passage in “ Self-Reliance” about the
preacher hampered by being an attorney for his sect (pp. 54,
55).
3 Here occurs the long passage so beginning, which is
printed in “Spiritual Laws” (pp. 162, 163).


178
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
thoughts, though not false, are far, as yet, from
simple truth, and I am rebuked by their disap-
probation, nor think of questioning it. Society
is yet too great for me. But I go back to my
library and open my books and lo I read this
word spoken out of immemorial time,“ God is
the unity of men.” Behold, I say, my very
thought! This is what I am rebuked for say-
ing; and here it is and has been for centuries
in this book which circulates among men with-
out reproof, nay, with honor. But behold again
here in another book, “Man is good, but men
are bad.” Why, I have said no more. And here
again, read these words, “Ne te quaesiveris ex-
tra.” What then! I have not been talking non-
sense. These lines of Greek and Latin, which
pass now current in all literatures as proverbs
of old, wise men, are expressions of the very
facts which the sky, the sea, the plant, the
ox, the man, the picture, said daily unto me,
and which I repeated to you. I see that I was
right; that not only I was right, which I could
not doubt, but my language was right: that the
soul has always said these things, and that you
ought to hear it and say the same. And thou,
good ancient brother, who to ancient nations, to
earlier modes of life and politics and religion,


1839) ONE MIND AND LIFE 179
didst utter this my perception of today, I greet
thee with reverence, and give thee joy of that
which thou so long hast held and which today,
a perfect blessing, one and indivisible, yields
itself to me also, yields itself all to me, without
making the possession less.
The perception of identity is a good mercury
of the progress of the mind. I talk with very
accomplished persons who betray instantly that
they are strangers in nature. The cloud, the
tree, the sod, the cat, are not theirs, have no-
thing of them. They are visitors in the world,
and all the proceedings and events are alien,
immeasureable, and across a great gulf. The poet,
the true naturalist, for example, domesticates
himself in nature with a sense of strict consan-
guinity. His own blood is in the rose and the
apple-tree. The Cause of him is Cause of all.
The volcano has its analogies in him. He is in
the chain of magnetic, electric, geologic, meteor-
ologic phenomena, and so he comes to live in
nature and extend his being through all: then
is true science.
April 6.
I have regard to appearance still. So am I
no hero. Do what you are doing with a single


180
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
mind and utter disregard of eyes, and then what
you have done before will justify you now.'...
Cousins. — Would it not dissipate the maid-
en's romance if she foresaw, in the hour of wed-
ding, the arrival of young cousins three, four
years hence at her door, without any work in
their hands, or word in their mouths, dropped
out of the stage-coach like eggs not yet alive, to
spend a fortnight?
“The learning to write and to read was bet-
ter than the Latin lessons in poetry whereby I
was constrained to lay up the follies of I know
not what Æneas, whilst I forgot mine own, and
to bewail Dido dead because she killed herself for
love, whilst in the meantime I, most miserable
creature, did endure myself with dry eyes to de-
part and die from thee, O my God, and my life.”
(ST. AUGUSTINE's Confessions, Book 1, chap. xiii.)
See what I have written above."
April 7.
Popular Christianity is far below, in its tone
of teaching, the poorest moral philosophy that
i The rest of the passage with similar beginning is in
“ Self-Reliance” (p. 59).
2 Mr. Emerson again alludes to what he wrote, on March
9, of the “ preposterous use of books.”


SUCO
1839) LOW RELIGION 181
has been originally taught. The pulpit concedes
that judgment is not executed in this world ;
that the wicked are successful; that the good are
miserable;'... that is to say, these last are to
have their full swing of wine and peaches another
day.... You sin now, we shall sin by and by.
Or we would sin now if we could; not being
successful, we expect our revenge tomorrow.
Of course such teaching degrades the disci-
ple. Can they wonder that every pure, generous
and intelligent man and woman rejects what
they call their gospel ? Every pure mind has
always rejected the popular estimate of men and
things, and made its own. It has not called
bread happiness. It has said, “I am in heaven
when I am true. Poor wanderers, comfort, flat-
ter each other that you are happy because you
have flocks and herds, gardens and cellars, piles
of wood and piles of coin; you are not happy;
I know it; you know it in my presence. All
literature, all grandeur of spirit, testifies for me,
if testimony I needed; but I need none, I affirm,
I am, the fact; and you need none, - confront
us, and you confess!”
i Here follows in nearly the same words the account of
the sermon which disgusted him, that is printed on the second
page of “ Compensation.”


182
JOURNAL
[AGE 35
The teaching that shows this would be spir-
itual; the teaching that shows the omnipotence
of the will, that Heaven proceeds forever from
me outward to all things, and not to me from
coffee and custard. The teaching that concedes
success to sensual good, the teaching of Cal-
vinistic and Unitarian pulpits, is carnal.
n
An opium pill does not teach the doctrine of
the Soul, but the preponderance of structure.
In the prints of Rogers's Italy I am struck in
certain figures which are handsome and unblame-
able, with the quite conventional character.
They are not original. Every outline, however
coarse, from the Phidian marbles, and every
drawing in that book of Salvator Rosa's, is as
original as a man, and strong as a tree or a stone;
but these pretty English pictures look thin and
superficial.
Whatever we travel to see was domestic, and
not the product of travelling; as the Pyramids,
the Parthenon, its marbles; Raphael's and
Michael Angelo's pictures ; Venice, and the res-
idence of Dante, Shakspear, Burns. We shall
never find God out there in the world. Always
he abides fast at home.


1839) HOUSEHOLDS. OUR GIFT 183
[It appears from the letter to Carlyle that, in
April, Mr. Emerson began to put his papers
together in preparation for his first book of
Essays.]
April 9.
Housekeeping. — Unroof any house, and you
must find there confusion. Order is too precious
and divine a thing to dwell with such fools and
sinners as we all are.'... Incredible is it to me
that in any family the work can be despatched
from Monday to Monday again, all the year
round, with sense and system. Then if the house
is well kept, are the relations of the keepers, the
men and women and children well and rever-
ently observed, or are persons made things? On
the whole, I am sure there is no house well kept:
there go too many things to it.
April 11.
“The large utterance of the early gods.”
It is the best part of each writer which has
nothing private in it. That is the best part of
each which he does not know; that which flowed
out of his constitution....
1 Here follows the passage on the disproportion in the sac-
rifice of higher things in homes to good housekeeping, printed
in “ Domestic Life” (Society and Solitude, p. 112).
2 Here occurs the passage thus beginning, printed in
“Compensation ” (p. 108).


184
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
“The large utterance of the early gods.” I
believe, not only in Omnipotence, but in Eter-
nity. And these are not words, but things.
I believe in the omnipresence; that is, that the
All is in each particle; that entire nature reap-
pears in every leaf and moss. I believe in Eter-
nity; that is, I can find Greece and Palestine
and Italy and England and the Islands, — the
genius and creative principle of each and of all
eras, in my own mind.' The primeval world,
the Foreworld, as the Germans say, I can dive
to it in myself as well as grope for it with re-
searching fingers in catacombs, libraries, and the
broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas.
There is, at this moment, there is for me an
utterance undoubtedly bare and grand as that
of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of
the Egyptians, or pen of Moses or Dante, but
different from all these. Not possibly will the
soul deign to repeat itself, but if I can hear what
these patriarchs say, surely I can reply to them
on the same pitch of voice. Dwell up there in
the simple and noble regions of thy life, act
thy heart, and skulk no longer nor respect thy
1 This sentence occurs in “ History" (Essays, First Series,
p. 9).
2 Printed in “ History” (p. 23).


1839) JOHN FLETCHER 185
fears, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld
again.
Realism. — Of Fletcher, William Cartwright
writes, -
Where, in a worthy scorn, he dares refuse
All other gods, and makes the thing his muse.
Fletcher, whose wit
Was not an accident to the soul, but It;
Only diffused; thus we the same sun call
Moving i' the sphere and shining on a wall.
EDWARD Powell.
Nor were thy plays the lotteries of wit,
But like to Dürer's pencil, which first knew
The laws of. faces, and then faces drew.
WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT.
April 13.
Fletcher's Bonduca is a play whose tune goes
manly. Let the professors and reviewers who
prate of strong Saxon speech read this, and write
so. It is short of Shakspear's dire style (as in
Hamlet's dialogue with his mother), but only of
that. Caratach is right great, especially in the
first scene, and the hard knocks which Junius
and Petilius give each other recruit the ear and
heart. These men are not mush.


186
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
Then I read The Coxcombs, a play which is a
just encomium of woman. The situations and
sentiments of Viola are genuinely pathetic and
true. And the true nature of woman in her, when
she asks Valerio,
Pray what is love for I am full of that
I do not know,-
contrasts with that violated nature which Valerio
considers when he says,-
Thy thoughts would be,
Like a thrice married widow, full of ends.
In Bonduca, Caratach [showing the impossibility
of peace] paints the Romans out of Tacitus:-
And with those swords that know no end of battle ;
Those men beside themselves allow no neighbor ;
Those minds, that, where the day is, claim inheritance;
And where the sun makes ripe the fruits, their harvest;
And where they march but measure out more ground
To add to Rome, and here in the bowels on us,-
It must not be.
April 14.
Yesterday, I read Beaumont and Fletcher's
tragedy, The False One, which, instead of tak-
ing its name from Septimius, ought to have been
Cleopatra. A singular fortune is that of the man
nan


1839]
CÆSAR'S NAME 187
Cæsar, to have given name, as he has, to all that
is heroic ambition in the imaginations of paint-
ers and poets. Cæsar must still be the speaking-
trumpet through which this large, wild, com-
manding spirit must always be poured.
The poet would be a great man. His power
is intellectual. Instantly he seizes these hollow
puppets of Cæsar, of Tamerlane, of Boadicea, of
Belisarius, and inflates them with his own vital
air. If he can verily ascend to grandeur, — if his
soul is grand, behold his puppets attest his might,
they are no more puppets, but instant vehicles
of the wine of God; they shine and overflow with
the streams of that universal energy that beamed
from Cæsar's eye, poised itself in Hector's spear,
purer sat with Epaminondas, with Socrates, pur-
est with thee, thou holy child, Jesus!
The poet has used these names and conven-
tions as he would use a flute or a pencil to con-
vey his sense. He does not therefore defer to the
nature of these accidental men, these stock he-
roes.' ... The great names cannot stead him ;
if he have not life himself. Let a man believe in
God, and not in names and places and per-
sons. ...
i The rest of the passage thus beginning forms the conclud-
ing pages of “ Spiritual Laws."


188
JOURNAL
(Age 35
U-
le
We are the photometers, we the irritable
gold-leaf and tinfoil that measure the accumula-
tions of the subtle element. We know the au-
thentic effects of the true fire through every one
of its million disguises. Does it raise and aston-
ish the spirits, does it soar above all custom and
use, and work new in every stroke, yet quietly
and lawfully as rosebuds open, and constrain
thee to greet in its newest and strangest works a
friendly and domestic power, kind to thee as was
thy mother's milk, — then we know the sign of
God. Always it stays at home; never is gadding.
Isolation you must have, but it must not be
mechanical, but spiritual, that is, Elevation.”
The whole world seems to be in conspiracy to
invade you, to vanquish you with emphatic de-
tails, to break you into crumbs, to fritter your
time. Friend, wife, child, mother, fear, want,
charity, all knock at the student's door at the
critical moment, ring larums in his ear, scare
away the Muse, and spoil the poem. Do not spill
1 The sentence above, with which « Spiritual Laws” ends,
is given for the sake of its conclusion in the Journal, which is
omitted there.
2 This passage occurs in “. Self-Reliance” (p. 72), but is
given here to show its original form and different ending.


1839) MUSIC. INDIRECTIONS 189
thy soul, do not all descend, but keep thy state;
stay at home in thine own heaven and let fingers
do the fingers' work. Unite and break not.
Music Masses. — The philosopher has a good
deal of knowledge which cannot be abstractly
imparted, which needs the combinations and
complexity of social action to paint it out, as
many emotions in the soul of Handel and Mo-
zart are thousand-voiced and utterly incapable
of being told in a simpler air on a lute, but must
ride on the mingling whirlwinds and rivers and
storms of sound of the great orchestra of organ,
pipe, sackbut, dulcimer, and all kinds of music.
As the musician avails himself of the concert,
so the philosopher avails himself of the drama,
the epic, the novel, and becomes a poet; for
these complex forms allow of the utterance of
his knowledge of life by indirections as well as in
the didactic way, and can therefore express the
fluxional quantities and values which the thesis
or dissertation could never give. There is the
courage of the cabinet as of the field. There is
the courage of painting and of poetry as well as
of siege and stake.
April 15.
My books are my picture gallery. Every
man has his fine recreations and elegancies


192
JOURNAL [AGE 35
is all in vain, for the way Nature tells her secrets
is by exposing one function in one flower, and
another function in a different plant. If the
spiral vessels are seen in bulbs, the vesicles are
seen in others, stomata in another, pila in an-
other, and chromule in a fifth; and to show all
the parts of the one plant, she leads you all
round the garden.
Self-Reliance. — Ask nothing of men, and in
the endless mutation, thou, only firm column,
must presently appear on a throne, the king of
all men.
April 17.
Am I a hypocrite, who am disgusted by vanity
everywhere and preach self-trust every day?
We give you leave to prefer your work to
the whole world, so long as you remain in it;
but when, uninvited, you come to visit me,
what was the praise of God sounds in my ear
like self-praise.
I will assume that a stranger is judicious and
benevolent. If he is, I will thereby keep him
so. If he is not, it will tend to instruct him.
The author appeals to the judicious reader;
but if he has prevailed so far with any reader
that he is influenced with a desire to behold and


1839) HUMAN RELATION
193
converse with this master, the author is shy,
suspicious and disdainful. Let him go into his
closet and pray the Divinity to make him so
great as to be good-natured.
Philosophy teaches how to be personal with-
out being unparliamentary.
In life it is a great matter to live with the
people you are used to. Go where there is real
affinity and the highest relations for you, and
it serves very well for the short time that
thought and poetry flow, but as soon as the
tea-tray comes in, we feel the yoke of foreigners,
and wish we were at home with our stupid
familiars.
April 21.
How great it is to do a little, as, for instance,
to deserve the praise of good nature, or of hu-
mility, or of punctuality; but to say, This was
a man; he lived wisely; he lived well, - out-
goes all probability. I dare not believe it of
my fellow.
Many thoughts lately on truth of character,
but they are fugitive; so let not the volitions
be, or rather, the preceding instructions of the
soul! I thought how slowly we learn to be single
and meek. If you visit your friend, why need


194
JOURNAL (AGE 35
you apologize for not having visited him and
waste his time and deface your own act? Visit
him now.' . .
In Landor's noble book, Pericles and Aspasia,
is honor and elegance enough to polish a nation
for an age. All the elements of the gentleman
are there, except holiness. Religion in a high
degree he does not know.
What is the substance of elegance but the
will to serve all? How does a benevolent per-
son who has helped, helps, and will help men,
sitting by your side, rise out of all considera-
tions of fashion of the times, of costume, of
birth, decorated only by this primary nobility !
[In the last days of April, Mr. Alcott and
Mr. John S. Dwight, Mr. Emerson's successor
as preacher in East Lexington, came to visit
him. He told them of an engagement at noon
to marry some young people at the Middlesex
Tavern. The bridegroom was Samuel Staples,
then bar-tender, and the bride the landlord's
daughter. This good man, three years later, in
his official capacity, arrested for refusal to pay
1 For the rest of the passage, sce « Spiritual Laws" (pp.
160, 161).


1839)
A NEIGHBOR
195
taxes Alcott, Thoreau, and Charles Lane, the
English friend of the former, and held two of
them in jail until ransomed by friends. It should
be said that he offered to pay Thoreau's tax
himself, but this Thoreau would not allow.
Having come to Concord a boy, with a few
pence in his pocket, and begun as hostler, Mr.
Staples rose through the grades of bar-tender,
clerk, constable and jailer, deputy-sheriff, repre-
sentative to the General Court, auctioneer, real-
estate agent, and gentleman-farmer, to be one
of the most valued and respected fathers of the
village-family. In Mr. Emerson's last years,
Mr. Staples was his next neighbor and good
friend, and came affectionately to bid him good-
bye in the last hours of his life. He once was
commenting to a friend of the family on the
number of visitors that came, some of them
from beyond the seas, and added, “Well, I
suppose there's a great many things that Mr.
Emerson knows that I could n't understand ;
but I know that there's a damn sight of things
that I know that he don't know anything about.”
On May 1, Mr. Emerson read“ Comedy" at
the Concord Lyceum, and after the lecture sev-
eral of the friends and neighbors came to his
home and the talk ran on Conversation. The


196
(Age 35
JOURNAL
next evening Mr. Alcott had a “Conversation”
at the house of Mr. Thoreau.]
May 4.
In reference to the philanthropies of the day,
it seems better to use than to flout them. Shall
it be said of the hero that he opposed all the
contemporary good because it was not grand ?
I think it better to get their humble good and
to catch the golden boon of purity and temper-
ance and mercy from these poor — s and
s and s.
[May 8, The Symposium met at Rev. Cyrus
Bartol's. The company were Alcott, Hedge,
George Ripley, Theodore Parker, Dr. LeBaron
Russell, Rev. Caleb Stetson, Rev. Mr. Osgood,
and Emerson. The subjects were, The Journals,
Property, and Harvard College.]
May 1o.
The best conversation equally, I think, with
the worst, makes me say, I will not seek so-
ciety. At least I wish to hear the thoughts of
men which differ widely in some important
respect from my own. I would hear an artist,
or a wise mechanic, or agriculturist, or states-
man, or historian, or wit, or poet, or scholar,
great in a peculiar department of learning, but


1839) YOURSELF. SINCERITY 197
not one who only gives me in a varied garb my
own daily thoughts. I think it is better to sever
and scatter men of kindred genius than to unite
them.
I hate to quote my friend, who, with all his
superiority, still thinks like me. In quoting
him, I am presently reduced to defend his
opinion. Then I find it not only hard, but im-
possible, to separate his view from mine, and
I am admonished to preach another time from
God and not from a man. Hence comes the
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
May 11.
Two letters from Carlyle, dated 13 and 17
April.
Beasts belong to the hour: they are the litera-
ture of the present moment. Men are the result
or value of the Past. Prophecy alone records
the Eternal.
May 12.
Does it not seem imperative that the soul
should find an articulate utterance, in these days,
on man and religion? All or almost all that I hear
at church is mythological; and of the few books
or preachers or talkers who pretend to have
made some progress, the most are in a transi-


198
(AGE 35
JOURNAL
tion state, Janus-faced, and speak alternately to
the old and the new.
It is manifest in every word the man says
whether he speaks with truth or tradition. You
can tell by his pronunciation of God whether
he is Theist or Atheist.
Our aim in our writings ought to be to make
daylight shine through them.
Once I supposed that only my manner of
living was superficial; that all other men's was
solid. Now I find we are all alike shallow.
May 19.
The Epochs of Life. — God loveth not size:
whale and minnow are of like dimension. But
we call the poet inactive because he is not a
governor, a president, a merchant or a porter.
But real action is in silent moments. The epochs
of our life are not in the visible facts of our
choice of a calling.'...
Propriety. — The propriety which distin-
guishes the great writer is more excellent than any
one profound thought or sublime image, for it
i Here follows the rest of this long passage in Spiritual
Laws” (pp. 161, 162).


1839) PROPRIETY. PICTURES 199
is truth or beauty domesticated, and not now a
sally of the soul, a single wild peal of music,
but so habitual that it modulates every thought
and movement. A plateau or table-land is a
vast collection of mountains with no valleys
between the peaks.
I am struck with the propriety of Shakspear,
Taylor, Burke, Saint Augustine.
Add the humanity of the great writers and
their spontaneity.
I think I gain more from one picture than
from a gallery. One picture gives me, in the
first place, all the agreeable stimulus of color, —
itself a tonic, - that a gallery can. This makes
me brisk, gay, and thoughtful. Then, I see
freely the forms, and dream pleasantly of what
they would say ;-I carry the picture out far
and wide on every side, and I highly enjoy the
unity of the hour: for the picture, of course,
excludes all other things ; and for a long time
afterwards I can well remember the day. I con-
spire with the painter, lend myself willingly to
him, see more than he has done, see what he
meant to do. But the gallery will not permit
this. The eye glances from picture to picture.
Each interferes with the other. Each can only


200
JOURNAL (Age 35
now stand for what it really is, no more. And
the artist is lowered, not exalted, by the be-
holder. At least thus thought I at Allston's
gallery, where I recognized in almost all the
pictures that they gained nothing by Juxtapo-
sition.
It is somewhat so with men. They are less to-
gether than they are apart. They are somewhat
wronged, discrowned and disgraced by being put
many together in one apartment.
At church today I felt how unequal is this
match of words against things. Cease, O thou
unauthorized talker, to prate of consolation, and
resignation, and spiritual joys, in neat and bal-
anced sentences. For I know these men who sit
below, and on the hearing of these words look
up. Hush, quickly: for care and calamity are
things to them. There is Mr. T- , the shoe-
maker, whose daughter is gone mad, and he is
looking up through his spectacles to hear what
you can offer for his case. Here is my friend,
whose scholars are all leaving him, and he knows
not what to turn his hand to, next. Here is my
wife, who has come to church in hope of being
soothed and strengthened after being wounded
by the sharp tongue of a slut in her house. Here


1839) NO HIDING. TUNE 201
is the stage-driver who has the jaundice, and
cannot get well. Here is B., who failed last week,
and he is looking up. O speak things, then, or
hold thy tongue.
There is no such thing as concealment: every
element hangs out its flag. Health is a quality
that cannot lie; so is disease. The wild exotic
which no man can tell of, at last puts out its
flower, its fruit, and the secret can be kept no
longer. Ali may keep the secret of his gold, but
a bit will stick to the wax at the bottom of the
peck measure. You cannot wipe out the foot-
track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to
leave no trace and no inlet. To those who have
crimes to conceal the simplest laws and elements
of nature, fire, water, snow, wind, gravitation,
become penalties, and the sun and the moon are
the frowns of God and lanthorns of his police.'
In fable, again, there is the vindictive circum-
stance in the old age of the immortal Tithon.
In society let this be thy aim, to put men in
tune. Untune nobody. If, O Doctor Prose!
the faces of thy friends do lengthen and quiver
1 Some sentences of this paragraph are in “Compensa-
tion” (p. 116).


202
JOURNAL
(AGE 35
and gape, canst thou not retreat to thine own
lexicons and grammars, to thy spade and poul-
try-yard? The narrowest life is very wide; as
wide as the largest.
[On May 22, The Symposium met at Mr.
George Ripley's, and the talk was on the Genius
and Claims of Jesus. Present, Hedge, Bartol,
Emerson, Alcott (Rev. Ephraim ?), Peabody,
Stetson and Rev. Convers Francis.]
May 23.
The poor madman, whipped through the
world by his thoughts !
Fear is an instructor who has a great talent.
You may learn one thing of him passing well,
this, namely, that there is certainly rottenness
where he appears.' ... If you do not feel plea-
santly toward your workman or workwoman, your
kinsman or townsman, you have not dealt justly.
man
Osn
ver
Landor's Pericles and Aspasia has little reli-
gion, but it speaks to your taste, your honor, and
your wit; then it charms me that he never stoops
to explanation, nor uses seven words where one
will do.
i Here follows the passage thus beginning in “ Compensa-
tion” (pp. 111,112).


1839] A NEW COLLEGE 203
In that old rotten country of Germany it seems
as if spontaneous character — fresh outbursts of
dear Nature— were less rare than in this coun-
try, called new and free. We are the most timid,
crippled old uncles and aunts that ever hobbled
along the highway without daring to quit the
sidewalk. I have no better sponsors however at
this moment in mind than Beethoven and Bet-
tina.
A College.— My College should have Allston,
Greenough, Bryant, Irving, Webster, Alcott,
summoned for its domestic professors. And if I
must send abroad (and, if we send for dancers
and singers and actors, why not at the same
prices for scholars ?), Carlyle, Hallam, Campbell,
should come and read lectures on History,
Poetry, Letters. I would bid my men come for
the love of God and man, promising them an
open field and a boundless opportunity, and they
should make their own terms. Then I would
open my lecture rooms to the wide nation; and
they should pay, each man, a fee that should
give my professor a remuneration fit and noble.
Then I should see the lecture-room, the college,
filled with life and hope. Students would come
from far; for who would not ride a hundred


204
JOURNAL (AGE 35
miles to hear some one of these men giving his
selectest thoughts to those who received them
with joy? I should see living learning; the Muse
once more in the eye and cheek of the youth.
“If I love you what is that to you?” etc.'
Sa
Sense
Character. – What we value in a man is that
he should give us a sense of mass. Society is
frivolous; cuts up its day into shreds. ...
Two persons lately, very young children of
the most high God, have admonished me by
their silent being. ...
The wise man not only leaves out of his
thought the multitude when he converses on
poetry or on virtue, but also the few.
Tell me not that you are sufficient to your-
self but have nothing to impart. I know and
am assured that whoever is sufficient to himself
will, if only by existing, suffice me also.
i See « Love" (Essays, First Series, p. 180).
2 The entry thus beginning is from a loose sheet in Jour-
nal D. The rest of the passage occurs in “ Experience"
(Essays, Second Series, p. 99).
3 This passage also is from the same loose sheet, and is printed
in “ Experience” (pp. 105, 106).


1839] ALLSTON'S PICTURES 205
May 26.
At Waltham I repeated, with somewhat more
emphasis perhaps than was needed, the im-
pression the Allston gallery makes on me;
that whilst Homer, Phidias, Dante, Shakspear,
Michel Angelo, Milton, Raphael, make a pos-
itive impression, Allston does not. It is an eye-
less face. It is an altar without fire. Beautiful
drawing there is,-a rare merit, — taste there
is; the blandest, selectest forms and circum-
stance; a highly cultivated mind; a beneficent
genial atmosphere; but no man. And this it
does not seem unreasonable or ungrateful to de-
mand, that the artist should pierce the soul;
should command; should not sit aloof and cir-
cumambient merely, but should come and take
me by the hand and lead me somewhither.' ...
Allston's pictures are Elysian; fair, serene,
but unreal.
I extend the remark to all the American gen-
iuses. Irving, Bryant, Greenough, Everett,
Channing, even Webster in his recorded Elo-
quence, all lack nerve and dagger.
i The rest of the passage is printed in “ Art” (Essays,
First Series, bottom of p. 355).


206
JOURNAL
(Age 36
If, as Hedge thinks, I overlook great facts
in stating the absolute laws of the soul; if, as
he seems to represent it, the world is not a dual-
ism, is not a bipolar unity, but is two, is Me
and It, then is there the alien, the unknown,
and all we have believed and chanted out of our
deep instinctive hope is a pretty dream.
The poor mind does not seem to itself to be
anything unless it have an outside oddity, some
Graham diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic
prayer-meeting, or Abolition effort, or any how
some wild, contrasting action, to testify that it
is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and
sleeps, and is Nature. Or why need you rail, or
need a biting criticism on the church and the
college to demonstrate your holiness and your
intellectual aims? Let others draw that infer-
ence which damns the institutions, if they will.
Be thyself too great for enmity and fault-finding.
May 27.
The compensations of calamity are not to be
found by the understanding suddenly, but re-
quire years of time to make them sensible. The
death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, seems


1839] GAIN IN LOSS
207
an unmixed loss.' ... What loss like the loss of
a bridegroom to a bride? The wise and the un-
wise have but one sentiment. There seems no
atonement. Yet, come years after, and see self-
reliance where was frailty and tenderness alone;
come and see character where was only confid-
ing love ; see sweetness and wisdom and endless
benevolent actions instead of a girl's tears. See,
instead of the mother of children, the friend
and lover and high counsellor of all young
maidens, exercising a better than maternal influ-
ence over the fine endowments and good aspi-
rations of a large circle, encouraging, refining,
and hallowing many worthy young persons,—
you may reconcile yourself better to the early
bereavement.
en
A great genius must come and preach self-
reliance. Our people are timid, desponding,
recreant whimperers. If they fail in their first
enterprises they lose all heart. If the young
merchant fails, men say he is RUINED.' . ..
1 The passage thus beginning forms the conclusion of
« Compensation.”
2 Here follows the long passage printed in “Self-Reliance"
(p. 79), of which a few sentences are here given as showing that
they were inspired by the manly young Thoreau.


208
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
S
My brave Henry here who is content to live
now, and feels no shame in not studying any pro-
fession, for he does not postpone his life, but
lives already, — pours contempt on these cry-
babies of routine and Boston. He has not one
chance but a hundred chances. Now let a stern
preacher arise who shall reveal the resources
of man, and tell men they are not leaning wil-
lows. ...
A great act of much import to the new philo-
sophical opinions is the garden discovery that
a potato, put into a hole, in six weeks becomes
ten. This is the miracle of the multiplication of
loaves.
May 28.
There is no history. There is only Biogra-
phy. The attempt to perpetrate, to fix a thought
or principle, fails continually. You can only
live for yourself; your action is good only whilst
it is alive, whilst it is in you. The awkward
imitation of it by your child or your disciple
is not a repetition of it, is not the same thing,
but another thing. The new individual must
work out the whole problem of science, letters
and theology for himself ; can owe his fathers
nothing. There is no history ; only biography,


1839) INFINITE AND FINITE 209
We are idolaters of the old. We do not be-
lieve in the omnipotence of the Soul: we do not
believe there is any force in Today, to rival or
recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in
the ruins of the old tent.' . ..
In proper Eternity there are few believers, that
is, in omnipresence and omnipotence, few.
The finite is the foam of the infinite. We stand
on a shore and see the froth and shells which the
sea has just thrown up, and we call the sea by
the name of that boundary, as, the German
Ocean, the English Channel, the Mediterranean
Sea. We do the like with the Soul. We see the
world which it once has made, and we call that
God, though it was only one moment's produc-
tion, and there have been a thousand moments
and a thousand productions since. But we are to
learn to transfer our view to the Sea instead of
the Shore, the living sea instead of the changing
shore, the energy instead of the limitation, the
Creator instead of the world.
i Here follows the passage so beginning in « Compensa-
tion” (p. 125), which is here immediately followed by that
about the shell-fish crawling out of its beautiful case when out-
grown (pp. 124, 125).


210
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
Nature will not have us fret or fume. When
we come out of the Caucus or the Abolition Con-
vention or the Temperance Meeting, she says to
us, “ So hot, my little Sir!”. I fear the criti-
cism of the sun and moon.
How can I hope for a friend to me who have
never been one ?
May 29.
The laws, literature, religion, at certain times
appear but a sad travestie and caricature of na-
ture, and so do our modes of living.
I think we ought to have manual labor, each
man. Why else this rapid impoverishing which
brings every man continually to the presence of
the fact that bread is by the sweat of the face,
and why this continual necessity in which we all
stand of bodily labor, by walking, riding, fenc-
ing, pitching, shooting, or billiards, if not by
ploughing and mowing. And why this sentiment
of honor and independence which cannot receive
Printed in “Spiritual Laws” (Essays, First Series, p.
135). This passage is followed by the one on holding a man
amenable for choosing an evil occupation (p. 140), and that
on travelling being a fool's paradise. (See “Self-Reliance,”
p. 81.)


21I
S
1839) LABOR. HERO. AGING 211
a pecuniary benefit until the man has suffered
a fatal slackness on his springs. I suppose his
needs of labor are such to the health of his or-
ganization, his life, and his thought, that these
hints are so broad. Labor makes solitude and
makes society. It kills foppery, shattered nerves,
and all kinds of emptiness. It makes life solid.
It puts Pericles and Jack upon a firm ground of
sweet and manly fellowship. But its degeneracy
comes from the too much, the exclusive life of
the senses. It is only human when tempered by
the touches of thought and love.
I think that the heroism which at this day
would make on me the impression of Epami-,
nondas and Phocion must be that of a domestic
conqueror.' ...
May 30.
'Tis pity we should leave with the children
all the romance, all that is daintiest in life, and
reserve for ourselves as we grow old only the
prose. Goethe fell in love in his old age, and I
would never lose the capacity of delicate and
noble sentiments.
1 The rest of the passage forms the conclusion of “ Domes-
tic Life” (Society and Solitude, p. 133).


212
JOURNAL (AGE 36
The Lotus-eaters. — Reform always has this
damper, viz., that a new simplicity can be
preached with equal emphasis (and who shall
deny that it is preached with equal reason too?)
on the simplicity it preaches. Thus, when we
have come to live on the fruits of our own gar-
dens, and begin to boast that we lead a man's life,
then shall come some audacious upstart to up-
braid us with our false and foreign taste, which
steadily plucks up everything which Nature puts
in our soil; and laboriously plants everything not
intended to grow there. Behold, shall that man
of the weeds say, the perpetual broad hint that
Nature gives you. Every day these plants you
destroyed yesterday, appear again; and see a
frost, a rain, drought, has killed this exotic corn
and wheat and beans and beets, which luxurious
man would substitute for his native and allowed
table. Then too will arise the Society for prevent-
ing the murder of worms. And it will be asked
with indignation what right have we to tear our
small fellow citizens out of the sod and put them to
death for eating a morsel of corn, or a melon leaf,
or a bit of apple, whilst it can be proved to any
jury by a surgical examination of their jaws and
forceps and stomachs, that this is the natural
food of this eater. In the same age a man will


213
1839]
STYLE. SPEECH
be reproached with simony and sacrilege because
he took money of the bookseller for his poem
or history.
We see all persons who are not natural with
a certain commiseration. We see that the aven-
gers are on their track and that certain crises
and purgatories they must pass through.
Compression. There is a wide difference be-
tween compression and an elliptical style. The
dense writer has yet ample room and choice of
phrase, and even a gamesome mood often, be-
tween his noble words. There is no disagree-
able contraction in his sentence any more than
there is a human face, where in a square space
of a few inches is found room for command and
love and frolic and wisdom and for the expres-
sion even of great amplitude of surface.
Language is made up of the spoils of all ac-
tions, trades, arts, games, of men. Every word
is a metaphor borrowed from some natural or
mechanical, agricultural or nautical process. The
poorest speaker is like the Indian dressed in a
robe furnished by half a dozen animals. It is
like our marble foot-slab made up of countless
shells and exuviæ of a foreign world.


214
JOURNAL (AGE 36
June 3.
Our young scholars read newspapers, smoke,
and sleep in the afternoons. Goethe, Gibbon,
Bentley might provoke them to industry. Un-
doubtedly the reason why our men are not
learned, why G— , for instance, is not, is be-
cause the genius or the age does not tend that
way. This old learning of Bentley and Gibbon
was the natural fruit of the Traditional age in
philosophy and religion. Ours is the Revolu-
tionary age, when man is coming back to Con-
sciousness, and from afar this mind begets a dis-
relish for lexicons. Alcott, therefore, and Very,
who have this spirit in great exaltation, abhor
books. But at least it behooves those who re-
ject the new ideas, the sticklers of tradition, to
be learned. But they are not.
The Sabbath is painfully consecrated because
the other days are not, and we make prayers in
the morning because we sin all day. And if we
pray not aloud and in form, we are constrained
to excuse ourselves to others with words. O
son of man, thou should'st not excuse thyself
with words. Thy doing or thy abstaining should
preclude words, and make every contrary act
from thine show false and ugly.


1839] REFORM. HAPPY LIFE 215
June 6.
I suppose the number of reforms preached
to this age exceeds the usual measure, and in-
dicates the depth and universality of the move-
ment which betrays itself by such variety of
symptom. Anti-money, anti-war, anti-slavery,
anti-government, anti-Christianity, anti-college;
and, the rights of Woman.
Our conventional style of writing is now so
trite and poor, so little idiomatic, that we have
several foreigners who write in our journals in
a style not to be distinguished from their native
colleagues. As Dr. Follen, Maroncelli, Dr.
Lieber, Græter. But whatever draws on the
language of conversation will not be so easily
imitated, but will speak as the stream flows.
My life is a May game, I will live as I like.
I defy your strait - laced, weary, social ways
and modes. Blue is the sky, green the fields
and groves, fresh the springs, glad the rivers,
and hospitable the splendor of sun and star. I
will play my game out. And if any shall say
me nay, shall come out with swords and staves
against me to prick me to death for their fool-
ish laws, - come and welcome. I will not look


216
(Age 36
JOURNAL
grave for such a fool's matter. I cannot lose
my cheer for such trumpery. Life is a May
game still.
Love is thaumaturgic. It converts a chair,
a box, a scrap of paper, or a line carelessly
drawn on it, a lock of hair, a faded weed, into
amulets worth the world's fee. If we see out
of what straws and nothings he builds his Ely-
sium, we shall read nothing miraculous in the
New Testament.
June 7.
If a great man turn his attention to inferior
natures, he will show the divine in them. ...
The stars to which loving and hoping men have
added such moral splendor are white points to
the dull.
June 8.
I remembered in the wood the profuse Nature
which scatters from her hand all sorts of crea-
tures. At Dartmouth College, last July, was a
good sheriff-like gentleman with a loud voice,
a pompous air, and a fine coat, whose aid, it
seemed, the College annually called in, to mar-
shal their procession. He was in his element; he
commanded us all with such despotic conde-
scension, as put all dignities and talents but his


es
vas
1839] THE AURORA. ANALYSIS 217
own quite aside. He marched before, the Col-
lege followed him like a tame dog.
June 9.
Guido's Aurora for a morning prayer; so wills
and so loves us Thomas Carlyle.'
June 10.
Analysis, too, is legitimate to the poetic soul.
I find analysis not less poetical than synthesis,
but it must be analysis into elements, and not
mechanical division. If I can detect Nature con-
verting water into hydrogen and oxygen, two
beautiful and perfect wholes, I see not that it
is less grand than when she recomposes water,
a new whole. Mechanical analysis picks the
lock: right analysis produces the key.
June 11.
Two Absolutions. — You may fulfil acceptably
your circle of duties by clearing yourself in the
direct or in the reflex way.”
i Carlyle had sent to Mrs. Emerson the engraving of the
Rospigliosi Aurora, which always thereafter hung in the
Emersons' parlor. On it he wrote, “Will the lady of Concord
hang this Italian sun-chariot in her drawing-room and, seeing
it, think of a household which has good reason to remember
hers ?"
2 The rest of this paragraph is in “ Self-Reliance” (p. 74).


218
JOURNAL [AGE 36
Iteration. — Walked to the two ponds yester-
day with C. S. A beautiful afternoon in the
woodlands and waters and aerial waters above.
I thought how charming is always an analogy,
as, for example, the iteration which delights us
in so many parts of nature, the reflection of the
shore and the trees in water; in architecture, in
the repetition of posts in a fence, or windows
or doors or rosettes in the wall, or, still finer,
the pillars of a colonnade; in poetry, rhymes, and
better, the iteration of the sense, as in Milton's
“though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen and evil tongues,” —
and the sublime death of Sisera.' ...
T
June 12.
I know no means of calming the fret and per-
turbation into which too much sitting, too much
talking, brings me, so perfect as labor. I have
no animal spirits; therefore, when surprised by
company and kept in a chair for many hours,
my heart sinks, my brow is clouded and I think
I will run for Acton woods, and live with the
squirrels henceforward. But my garden is nearer,
i (In the song of Deborah and Barak, Judges, v, 27.)
“ At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he
bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.”


1839] GARDEN REVENGE. ALCOTT 219
and my good hoe, as it bites the ground, revenges
my wrongs, and I have less lust to bite my en-
emies. I confess I work at first with a little
venom, lay to a little unnecessary strength. But
by smoothing the rough hillocks, I smooth my
temper; by extracting the long roots of the piper-
grass, I draw out my own splinters; and in a
short time I can hear the bobolink's song and
see the blessed deluge of light and colour that
rolls around me.
In Allston's Lorenzo and Jessica, there is
moonlight, but no moon. In the Jeremiah, the
receiving Baruch is the successful figure. His
best figures read and hear : and always his gen-
ius seems feminine and not masculine.
I said, all History becomes subjective and
repeats itself, Parthia, Macedon, Rome and
Netherlands, in each man's life. And now Al-
cott with his hatred of labor and commanding
contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, makes
good to the Nineteenth Century Simeon the Sty-
lite and the Thebaid, and the first Capuchins."
i Compare in “History" (p. 28) the passage beginning,
“I have seen the first monks and anchorets without crossing
the seas.”


220
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
The prayer of the farmer.' ...
June 14.
Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily
showeth himself so to me in his gifts??
June 16.
Was not the motto of the Welsh bards,
“Those whom truth had made free before the
world”? Certainly the progress of character and
of art teaches to treat all persons with an infinite
freedom. What are persons but certain good or
evil thoughts masquerading before me in curi-
ous frocks of flesh and blood? I were a fool to
mind the color or figure of the frock, and slight
the deep, aboriginal thought which so arrays
itself. In this sense you cannot overestimate
persons. And now in my house, as I see them
pass, or hear their step on the stair, it seems to
me the step of Ages and Nations.
And truly these walls do not lack variety in
the few individuals they hold. Here is Simeon
the Stylite, or John of Patmos in the shape of
Jones Very, religion for religion's sake, religion
i See “ Self-Reliance” (pp. 77, 78).
2 The long passage in “ Friendship” follows, there begin-
ning, “I awoke this morning with dumb thanksgiving for my
friends, the old and new” (Essays, First Series, p. 194).


1839) SAINTS OLD AND NEW 221
divorced, detached from man, from the world,
from science and art; grim, unmarried, in-
sulated, accusing; yet true in itself, and speak-
ing things in every word. The lie is in the de-
tachment; and when he is in the room with other
persons, speech tops as if there were a corpse in
the apartment. Then here is mine Asia, not with-
out a deep tinge herself of the same old land, and
exaggerated and detached pietism, and so she
serves as bridge between Very and the Ameri-
cans. Then comes the lofty maiden who repre-
sents the Hope of these modern days, whom
the “limits of earthly existence, the highest
knowledge, the fairest blessings, cannot in the
slightest degree satisfy,” and whose beautiful im-
patience of these dregs of Romulus predicts to us
a fairer future. And here are the two babes not
yet descended into our sympathy or the world
where we work, not yet therefore individual-
ized and rigid, but a common property to all,
which each can blend with his own ideas.
June 18.
Yesterday departed Jones Very from my house.
In the afternoon departed also C. S. In the
evening came and departed George B. Emerson
and Mr. Adam of Calcutta.


222
JOURNAL [AGE 36
Goethe unlocks the faculties of the artist
more than any writer. He teaches us to treat
all subjects with greater freedom, and to skip
over all obstruction, time, place, name, usage,
and come full and strong on the emphasis of
the fact.
The Savant is formed at the expense of the
man. The naturalists whom I know are dis-
proportioned persons and have nowise learned
to ally their facts to themselves, to see unity.
The office of the naturalist should certainly be
poetic. He should domesticate me in nature.
He should make me feel my kindred to the tree
and bring the rock nearer to my spirit. C. S.
rightly says she cannot draw a child by study-
ing the outlines but by watching for a time his
motions and plays.' . ..
Be sacred. Do not let any man crowd upon
you by peeping into him. No man can come near
me unless I cumber myself about him. Hecomes
too near by my act, not otherwise. Remember
the great sentiment, “What we love that we
have, but by Desire we bereave ourselves of the
1 The rest of the passage occurs in “History” (Essays,
First Series, p. 16).


1839] THE PRIVATE SOUL 223
love," which Schiller said, or said the like. I
must be myself.' . ..
I do with my friends as I do with
books. ...
Idealism. There are degrees in idealism.
We learn first to play with it academically.: ...
There is no history, only biography. The
private soul ascends to transcendental virtue.
Like Very, he works hard without moving
hand or foot; like Agathon, he loves the god-
dess and not the woman; like Alcott, he refuses
to pay a debt without injustice; but this liberty
is not transferable to any disciple, no, nor to the
man himself, when he falls out of his trance and
comes down from the tripod.
I will surrender to the Divine, - to nothing
less : not to Jove, not to ephod or cross.
Beauty.— I seek beauty in the arts and in
song and in emotion for itself, and suddenly I
i The rest of this passage is in “ Self-Reliance” (p. 73).
2 The long passage thus beginning is found in " Friendship”
(pp. 215, 216).
3 For the rest of the passage, see “ Circles" (Essays, First
Series, p. 309).


224
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
find it to be sword and shield. For dwelling
there in its depths I find myself above the region
of Fear, and unassailable, like a god at the Olym-
pian tables.
June 21.
It may be said in defence of this practice of
Composition, which seems to young persons so
mechanical and so uninspired, that to men work-
ing in Time all literary effort must be more or
less of this kind, — to Byron, to Goethe, to De
Staël not less than to Scott and Southey. Suc-
cession, moments, parts, are their destiny, and
not wholes and worlds and eternity. But you
say that so moving and moved on thoughts and
verses, gathered in different parts of a long life,
you sail no straight line, but are perpetually dis-
tracted by new and counter currents, and go a
little way north, then a little way northeast, then
a little northwest, then a little north again, and
so on.
Be it so; Is any motion different? The curve
line is not a curve, but an infinite polygon. The
voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line on a hun-
dred tacks. This is only microscopic criticism.
See the line from a sufficient distance, and it
straightens itself to the average tendency. All
these verses and thoughts were as spontaneous


1839] WEAKNESS. BEING. RHYME 225
at some time to that man as any one was. Being
so, they were not his own, but above him the
voice of simple, necessary, aboriginal nature, and,
coming from so narrow experience as one mor-
tal, they must be strictly related, even the far-
thest ends of his life, and, seen at the perspec-
tive of a few ages, will appear harmonious and
univocal.
June 22.
It is one of the signs of our time, the ill health
of all people. All the young people are near-
sighted in the towns.
That which we are shall certainly teach, not vol-
untarily but involuntarily.' ... Men imagine
that they communicate their virtue or vice only
by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or
vice emit an aroma every moment.
I told Elizabeth Hoar last night that rhyme
resembled music in this advantage, that it has a
privilege of speaking truth which all Philistia is
unable to challenge.”
i For the rest of the passage, see “ The Over-Soul”
(p. 286).
2 For the rest of this passage, see “ Poetry and Imagina-
tion” (Letters and Social Aims, pp. 51, 52).


226
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
It seems to me often as if a little concentration,
perchance within the power of circumstances, -
mountains, war, danger, or love, might give me
that faculty of daring rhyme. I would gladly
exchange my languid life for this drum-beat.
Yet I will not decline a languid life, since also
that seems to be the only pattern fashionable
today.
As I read Ben Jonson the other eve, it seemed
to me, as before, that there is a striking resem-
blance between the poetry of his age and the
painting of the old masters in the depth of the
style. With all the frolic and freedom, the
poetry is not superficial, and with all the weight
of thought, it is not solemn. The beauty is
necessary, and the shadows are transparent.
As I looked into the river, the other after-
noon, it struck me that the Rembrandts and
Salvators who paint the dark pictures probably
copied the reflection of the landscape in water.
Certainly its charm is indescribable, and as I
think, not to be painted.
June 27.
Rhyme. — Rhyme; not tinkling rhyme, but
grand Pindaric strokes, as firm as the tread of
a horse. Rhyme that vindicates itself as an art,


1839) RHYME. LIVE RELIGION 227
the stroke of the bell of a cathedral. Rhyme
which knocks at prose and dullness with the
stroke of a cannon ball. Rhyme which builds
out into Chaos and old night a splendid archi-
tecture to bridge the impassable, and call aloud
on all the children of morning that the Creation
is recommencing.' I wish to write such rhymes
as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise
the wildest freedom.
“ No noble virtue ever was alone.”
Religion does not seem to me to tend now
to a cultus, as heretofore, but to a heroic life.
We find extreme difficulty in conceiving any
church, any liturgy, any rite, that would be
genuine. But all things point at the house and
1 Mr. Emerson's juvenile verses were modelled on the
poets of the eighteenth century; smooth in rhythm, trite in
imagery, the virtues, vices, and motives personified. His
emancipation from tradition and formalism showed in his
verses of the middle period, when he felt that the thought or
image must be roughly hammered out while hot, so to speak.
The wild and irregular song of the Norseman, or of the
Welsh bards, seemed stronger and truer to nature. He softened
as little as possible his first rhapsody for a poem that came to
him in the woods. The verses of the third period were long
kept by him and smoothed and ripened like wine.


228
JOURNAL (AGE 36
mon
the hearth. Let us learn to lead a clean and
manly life. Write your poem, brave man, first
in the earth with a man's hoe, and eat the bread
of your own spade. I have no hope of any good
in this piece of reform from those who only wish
to reform one thing. A partial reform, like Palm-
er's, or Graham's, or the praiser of the coun-
try life, is always an extravaganza. A farm is a
poor place to get a living by, in the common
expectation. A Boston doll who comes out into
the country and takes the hoe that he may have
a good table and a showy parlor may easily be
disappointed. But who takes hold of this great
subject of reform in a generous spirit with the
intent to lead a man's life will find the farm
a proper place. He must join with it simple
diet, and the annihilation by one stroke of his
will of the whole nonsense of living for show;
and he must take Ideas instead of customs. He
must make the life more than meat, and see to
it that“ the intellectual world meets men every-
where,” in his dwelling, in his mode of living.
He must take his life in his hand too. I do not
think this peaceful reform is to be effected by
cowards. He is to front a corrupt society and
speak rude truth, and emergencies may easily
be where collision and suffering must ensue.


1839) REFORMS. RICH WORLD 229
But all the objections to the great projects of
philanthropy are met and answered by a deep
and universal reform. Thus, it is said that, if
money is given up, and a system of universal
trust and largess adopted, the indolent will
prey on the good. Consider that our doctrine
is that the labor of society ought to be shared
by all, and that in a community where labor
was the point of honor, the coxcombs would
labor ; that a mountain of chagrins, inconven-
iences, diseases and sins would sink into the
sea with the uprise of this one doctrine of Labor.
Domestic hired service would go over the dam.
Slavery would fall into the pit. Dyspepsia would
die out. Morning calls would end. Redeunt
Saturnia regna.
Atheneum Gallery.— How rich the world is!
I said on reading a letter of M. M. E.; I say
the same when I hear a new verse of a new
poet. I said the same when I walked about
the Athenæum Gallery the other day and saw
these pictures called Rembrandt, Poussin,
Rubens, etc., painted by God knows who,
- obscure nameless persons yet with such
skill and mastery as to bring connoisseurs in
doubt.


230
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
Belief. — The man I saw believed that his
suspenders would hold up his pantaloons and
that his straps would hold them down. His
creed went little farther.
Progress of the species! why the world is a
treadmill.
A friend looks to the past and the future.'...
June 30.
You dare not say “I think,” “I am,” but
quote St. Paul, or Jesus, or Bacon, or Locke.
Yonder.roses make no reference to former roses
or to better ones. They exist with God today.”
It is proposed to form a very large society
to devise and execute means for propping in
some secure and permanent manner this planet.
It has long filled the minds of the benevolent
and anxious part of the community with lively
emotion, the consideration of the exposed state
of the globe; the danger of its falling and being
1 The passage thus beginning is in “Friendship” (p.
214).
2 The passage is differently expressed in ~ Self-Reliance"
(p. 67).


1839) DANGEROUS PLANET 231
swamped in absolute space; the danger of its
being drawn too near the sun and roasting the
race of mankind, and the daily danger of its
being overturned, and, if a stage-coach overset
costs valuable lives, what will not ensue on the
upset of this omnibus ? It has been thought
that by a strenuous and very extensive concert
aided by a committee of masterbuilders and
blacksmiths, a system of booms and chains might
be set round the exterior surface and that it
might be underpinned in such a manner as to
enable the aged and women and children to
sleep and eat with greater security hencefor-
ward. It is true that there is not a perfect una-
nimity on this subject at present, and it is much
to be regretted. A pert and flippant orator re-
marked to the meeting last Sunday that the
world could stand without linch-pins, and that
even if you should cut all the ropes and knock
away the whole underpinning, it would swing
and poise perfectly, for the poise was in the
globe itself. But this is Transcendentalism.
July 3.
In Boston yesterday and the day before, and
saw the Allston Gallery, and the Athenæum,
and met Margaret Fuller, Miss Clarke, Dwight,


232
JOURNAL
AGE 36
oon a
Muftis anik and the and Apoli.
and young Ward on that ground; and Alcott
on the broader platform. In the Allston Gal-
lery, the Polish Jews are an offence to me;
they degrade and animalize. As soon as a beard
becomes anything but an accident, we have, not
a man, but a Turk, a Jew, a satyr, a dandy, a
goat. So we paint angels, and Jesus, and Apollo,
beardless, and the Greek and the Mohawk;
leave them to Muftis and Monks.
The landscapes pleased me well. I like them
all: he is a fine pastoral poet and invites us to
come again and again. The drawing also of the
figures is always pleasing, but they lack fire, and
the impression of the gallery, though bland, is
faint in the memory. Nothing haunts the mem-
ory from it. It never quickens a pulse of virtue,
it never causes an emulous throb. Herein per-
haps it resembles the genius of Spenser; and is,
as I have said, Elysian.
When I went to Europe, I fancied the great
pictures were great strangers; some new unex-
perienced pomp and show; a foreign wonder;
“barbaric pearl and gold.”....
I now require this of all pictures, that they
domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. All-
i Here follows the long passage printed in “ Art” (Essays,
First Series, pp. 360–362).


1839) ALLSTON. PALMER 233
ston's St. Peter is not yet human enough for
me. It is too picturesque, and like a bronzed
cast of the Socrates or Venus.
July 4.
Once the doctrine of hatred must be preached
as the counteraction of the doctrine of love,
when that pules and whines.' . .. I have no
duties so peremptory as my intellectual duties.
e no
July 5.
Edward Palmer” left my house yesterday morn-
ing after staying here four days. His mind has
grown since he was here last fall. He said he
did not think it necessary for him to write any-
thing, for, he thought he could do everything
that came into his mind and so not need any
record.
Why should we write dramas, and epics, and
sonnets, and novels in two volumes? Why not
i Here follows the long passage about “Whim," and the
“ wicked dollar” in “ Self-Reliance” (pp. 51, 52).
2 This was the young and eager apostle of doing away with
money, as a chief cause of mischief in the world. Mr. Emer-
son tells of him and his reforming schemes in “Life and Let-
ters in New England” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches,
p. 345).


234
JOURNAL (AGE 36
write as variously as we dress and think? A
lecture is a new literature, which leaves aside
all tradition, time, place, circumstance, and ad-
dresses an assembly as mere human beings, no
more. It has never yet been done well. It is
an organ of sublime power, a panharmonicon
for variety of note. But only then is the orator
successful when he is himself agitated, and is as
much a hearer as any of the assembly. In that
office you may and shall (please God!) yet see
the electricity part from the cloud and shine
from one part of heaven to the other.
July 7.
Reform. — The objection to conforming to
usages that have become dead to you is, that
it scatters your force. ...
I owe much to these beneficent reformers of
all colors and qualities. Each one shows me
that there is somewhat I can spare. Shows me
thus how rich I am. Within my trench there
is a wall; if the town be taken, there is yet a
citadel. If the tower be stormed, there is still
the invincible me. I thank Edward Palmer for
this demonstration, and for one other recorded
on the last page.
i The passage is printed in “Self-Reliance” (p. 55).


1839] NO MONEY. PARTISANS 235
In regard to his money movement, however,
discussion always shows that the principle now
and always takes effect, and that it would not
much alter things to take money out of society,
but it would alter things much to put the love in.
Great men have always played with property,
and used it as though they used it not. Spirit is all,
acts indifferent. The sublime is always the true.
Palmer had somewhat great in him, a certain
negligence of statement and extreme careless-
ness whether he was understood or not. He
makes it felt also how surely a sincere person is
raised by a partial into an universal reform.
There is no time to roses.' . .. So shall
man one day live with living nature, happy and
strong in the deep present. There is no time
to just men. The profuse roses blow.
Men are made as drunk by party as by rum.
In this county they have let a proven defaulter be
chosen to Congress over an affectionate, honest,
able gentleman, because, as the lovely philanthro-
pists say, the only question they ask is, “What
is his relation to the slave?” Thus you cease to
be a man that you may be an Abolitionist.
1 For the rest of this passage, see “ Self-Reliance” (p. 67).


236
JOURNAL (AGE 36
There is no art where society is unbelieving,
honeycombed and hollow; but when it tingles
and trembles with earnest, will beauty be born.
Be hospitable to the soul as well as to the
body of thy guest, thou tart hater.
Miracles. — The miracle is always spiritual,
always within the man, affecting his senses from
the soul, so that the lover walks in miracles,
and the man beside him sees nothing. The be-
liever sees nothing as he ever saw it before; the
unbeliever looks at the same facts and reads the
old dull story. The true disciple never there-
fore magnifies the sensible miracle ; he ignores
it also; he says, “I knew a man once, whether
in the body or out of the body I cannot tell,
God knoweth.”
Mass. — Extempore speaking can be good,
and written discourses can be good. A tent is a
very good thing, but so is a cathedral.
Reform. — The past has baked my loaf, and
in the strength of its bread I break up the old
oven.


1839) VERBS. THRUSH. BETTINA 237
A lady, it seems, has painted the auxiliary
verbs, – Do, Ought, Might, Cannot. I gave C.
S. for a subject, The Age, to be represented in
a series of heads; Conservatism, State Street,
Christian Register; Revolt; Protest; Fair Per-
plexity; Dyspepsia ; Warren Chapel.
Wbat Possibilities! — In the country church,
I see the cousins of Napoleon, of Wellington,
of Wilberforce, of Bentham, of Humboldt. A
little air and sunshine, an hour of need, a pro-
voking society, would call out the right fire from
these slumbering peasants.
I went to the woods and heard the wood-
thrush sing, Ab Willie Willie; He Willio, willio!
We want all the elements of our being. High
culture cannot spare one. We want the Exact
and the Vast; we want our Dreams, and our
Mathematics; we want our Folly and Guilt.
Yet a majestic soul never unfolds all these in
speech, they lie at the base of what is said, and
colour the word, but are reserved. You may be
Goethe, but not Bettina.
July 9.
Wonderful Bettina! The rich, inventive gen-
ius of the painter must all be smothered and lost


238
JOURNAL (Age 36
for want of the power of drawing; and when I
walk in Walden wood, as on 4 July, I seem to
myself an inexhaustible poet, if only I could once
break through the fence of silence, and vent
myself in adequate rhyme.
Nature is two - headed. Invoked, or unin-
voked, God will be there. Et vocatus et non
vocatus Deus aderit. It is even capable of a
sublimer extension, that the unhappiness of
hell is overpowered by a happiness. All which
liveth tendeth to good. It cannot be otherwise.
I like my boy, with his endless, sweet solilo-
quies and iterations, and his utter inability to
conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense
business and writing, and come to tie up his toy
horse, as if there was or could be any end to na-
ture beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we
when threatens his whole threat, “ I will not love
you.”
Nature delights in punishing stupid people.
The very strawberry vines are more than a match
for them with all their appetites, and all their
fumbling fingers. The little, defenceless vine
coolly hides the best berry, now under this leaf,
then under that, and keeps the treasure for yon-


1839] HOUSEKEEPING. ABANDON 239
der darling boy with the bright eyes when Booby
is gone.
July 14.
I desire that my housekeeping should be clean
and sweet and that it should not shame or annoy
me. I desire that it should appear in all its ar-
rangements that human culture is the end to
which that house is built and garnished. I wish
my house to be a college, open as the air to all
to whom I spiritually belong, and who belong
to me. But it is not open to others, or for other
purposes. I do not wish that it should be a con-
fectioner's shop wherein eaters and drinkers may
get strawberries and champagne. I do not wish
that it should be a playground or house of en-
tertainment for boys. They do well to play; I
like that they should, but not with me, or in
these precincts.' ...
July 16.
The “abandon" of a scatter-brain, the “aban-
don” of a woman, are no better than calculation;
but the “abandon” of a self-commanding and
reserved mind is like the fire of troops when the
enemy is at the end of the bayonet.
i Portions of this paragraph occur in slightly different form
in “ Domestic Life.”


240
JOURNAL (AGE 36
July 17.
Manners Demonological. — Beauty dwells also
in the will. You plant a tree for your son, or for
mankind in the next age. Decline also the low
suggestion, stablish the lofty purpose in the mo-
ment when it flits so evanescently by, and you
plant bodily beauty for the next age. Who saw
you do the mean act? Ah brother! Your man-
ners saw you, and they shall always report it to
men.
saw
People do not distinguish between perception
and notion.'
July 20.
Night in this enchanting season is not night,
but a miscellany of lights. The journeying twi-
light, the half-moon, the kindling Venus, the
beaming Jove, — Saturn and Mars something
less bright, and, fainter still,“ the common peo-
ple of the sky,” as Crashaw said : then, below,
the meadows and thickets flashing with the fire-
flies, and all around the farms the steadier lamps
of men compose the softest, warmest illumination.
A poet is a Namer. His success is a new
nomenclature.
1 This passage may be found in “ Self-Reliance” (p. 65).


1839) FRIENDS. IMMORTALITY 241
August 1.
Last night came to me a beautiful poem from
Henry Thoreau, “Sympathy.” The purest
strain, and the loftiest, I think, that has yet
pealed from this unpoetic American forest. I
hear his verses with as much triumph as I point
to my Guido when they praise half-poets and
half-painters.
I have no right of nomination in the choice
of my friends. Sir, I should be happy to oblige
you, but my friends must elect themselves.”
A thought is a prison also.3 ...
August 14.
The way in which the doctrine of the immor-
tality of the soul is taught and heard is false.
It is Duration, but there is no warrant for teach-
ing this. There is no promise to Aaron and Ab-
ner that Aaron and Abner shall live. It is only
the soul that, in rare awakenings, saith through
i This was the poem beginning,
“ Lately, alas ! I knew a gentle boy,”
in which disguise Thoreau expressed his disappointment in
love. Guido's Aurora was Carlyle's gift.
2 See “Friendship” (p. 209).
3 The rest of the passage is in “ Intellect” (Essays, First
Series, p. 339).


242
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
all her being, I AM, and Time is below me;
and the awkward Understanding translates the
rapture into English prose, and saith, That
voice came out of a mortal man, and he said
that he should live a good many thousand years.
It will not serve any good purpose to avail
ourselves of the healing formula with which our
wives and the kind-hearted mediate between
the truth - speaker and the churchman, and
affirming that the difference is merely in terms,
that we misunderstand each other, etc., etc., and
inferring that our discrepancy is only on the
threshold of speculation; that after we have
stated our whimsy of Instinct, of the One Mind,
of the potential infinitude of every man, and
the like, our doctrines then become identical
with all orthodoxy, and differences vanish. But
it is not so. It is the peculiarity of Truth that
it must live every moment in the beginning, in
the middle, and onward forever in every stage
of statement. I cannot accept without qualifica-
tion the most indisputable of your axioms. I
see that they are not quite true.
August 16.
Conversation is an evanescent relation, no
more.' ...
i For the rest of the passage, see " Friendship” (p. 208).


1839)
VISION. BURKE
243
With those devouring eyes, with that por-
traying hand, Carlyle has seen Webster.'
August 19.
This old complaint of the Unitarians, that
the Calvinists deny them fellowship and access
to the communion table, is a plain confession
that their religion is nought, that they have no
vision. Whoso has, never begs allowance; he
commands and awes men. Fox and Penn, Swe-
denborg and Very, never complain of not being
admitted, but complain that none come and ask
admittance.
[On August 23, Mr. Emerson set forth for
the hill-country of New Hampshire with a
companion, probably his friend, Mr. George P.
Bradford. The following notes remain on a
loose sheet of paper.]
Centre HARBOR, N. H., August 25.
Burke is a rhetoric, a robe to be always ad-
mired for the beauty with which he drapes facts,
as we love light, or rather colour, which clothes
i Mr. Emerson rejoiced that Carlyle had seen the idol of
his youth. (See the Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, vol. i,
pp. 247, 248 and 255, 256 ; also pp. 16 and 19.)


244
JOURNAL [AGE 36
all things. What rich temperance, what costly
textures, what flowing variety!
Manners need somewhat negligent and even
slow in the perceptions, as Business requires
quick perceptions. Manners must have an ig-
noring eye, a languid, graceful hand; a sluggard
knight who does not see the annoyances, in-
conveniences, shifts, that cloud the brow and
smother the voice of the sensitive.' The popular
men and women are often externally sluggish,
lazy natures, not using superlatives, nor staking
their all on every peppercorn.
August 27.
Yesterday ascended Red Hill and saw our
lake and Squam Lake, Ossipee, Conway, Gun-
stock, and one dim summit which stood to us
for the White Hills. Mrs. Cook lives on this
Red Mountain, half a mile from the top and a
mile from the bottom. We asked her what
brought her here fifty-one years ago. She said,
“Poverty brought and poverty kept her here."
For our parts, we thought that a poor man
could not afford to live here, that it was to in-
i Mr. Emerson would never notice any awkwardnesses in
service or mischances at table, but kept perfect serenity unless
a servant were reproved ; that always troubled him.


1839) POVERTY. CALVINISM 245
crease poverty tenfold, to set one's cabin at this
helpless height. Her son makes 1000 pounds
of maple sugar in a year. They use the coffee-
bean for coffee, and the fever-bush for tea. The
Hedysarum, which they call wild-bean, was the
principal food of the cows when they first came
here until grass grew.
There is no man in mountain or valley, but
only abortions of such, and a degree of absurdity
seems to attach to nature. On Sunday we heard
sulphurous Calvinism. The preacher railed at
Lord Byron. I thought Lord Byron's vice bet-
ter than Rev. Mr. M.'s virtue. He told us of
a man he had seen on Lake Michigan who saw
his ship in danger and said, “If the Almighty
would only stand neuter for six months, it was
all he asked.” In his horror at this sentiment,
the preacher did not perceive that it was the
legitimate inference from his own distorting
creed; that it was the reductio ad absurdum of
Calvinism.
Concord, September 4.
In the journey to the White Mountains from
which I returned Monday evening, 2d Septem-
ber, I found few striking experiences. Nature
seems ashamed of man and stands away from
him, even while he lives from her bounty. The


246
JOURNAL [AGE 36
was
men and women whom we see, live in their sen-
sations, and repeat in memory and talk their
paltriest satisfactions. The Profile Mountain
was a pleasing wonder. I admire the great and
grave expression of this Mountain Bust (where
Nature herself has done what Lysippus (?) and
Michel Angelo projected) which sternly gazes
eastward to the sea. Black eagles were wheeling
over the summit when I saw it. But I believe
the most agreeable circumstance in the tour
was the echo of the horn blown at the door of
the White Mountain Hotel [Fabyan's] which
turned the mountains into an Æolian harp,
and instantly explained the whole Attic my-
thology of Diana and all divine hunters and
huntresses. How lofty, how haughtily beautiful
is a musical note!"
OV
Mr. Emerson had been, thus far in the year,
below his standard of health, and went to the
mountains for strength. On his return, he wrote
to his brother William that he had gained little:
“I am as usual neither sick nor well, but, for
aught I see, as capable of work as ever, let once
my subject stand, like a good ghost, palpable
1 This experience is mentioned in “ Nature” (Essays,
Second Series, p. 175).


1839) NEW HAMPSHIRE 247
before me. But, since I came home, I do not
write much, and writing is always my meter of
health — writing, which a sane philosopher would
say, was the surest index of a diseased mind.”
A depressing circumstance moreover was that
he saw the necessity of preparing another course
of Boston lectures, because of the strain on his
finances due to the advances for the publication
here of his friend Carlyle's books. (See Cabot's
Memoir, vol. ii, pp. 392, 393.)]
September 5.
How tedious is the perpetual self-preservation
of the traveller! His whole road is a comparison
of what he sees and does at home with what he
sees and does now. Not a blessed moment does
he forget himself and, yielding to the new world
of facts that environ him, utter without memory
that which they say. Could he once abandon
himself to the wonder of the landscape, he would
cease to find it strange. In New Hampshire the
dignity of the landscape made more obvious the
meanness of the tavern-haunting men.'
I do not know that I can recall the thought
of last Thursday which made the mountains
greater.
i Compare the poem “ Monadnoc."


248
(Age 36
JOURNAL
Margaret Fuller and Frederic Henry Hedge
must have talent in their associates. And so they
find that they forgive many defects. They do
not require simplicity. I require genius and, if I
find that, I do not need talent: and talent with-
out genius gives me no pleasure. George Brad-
ford's verdict on a poem or a man I should value
more than theirs, for Hedge would like Moore,
and George Bradford not.
I am enlarged by the access of a great senti-
ment, of a virtuous impulse. It is the direct in-
come of God. I am not enlarged by a prodigy,
a raising of Lazarus, a turning water into wine:
open my eyes by new virtue, and I shall see mir-
acles enough in this current moment of time.
You prefer to see a dove descending visibly on
Jesus; I acknowledge his baptism by the spirit
of God. And which is greater and more affect-
ing, — to see some wonderful bird descending
out of the sky, or to see the rays of a heavenly
majesty of the mind and heart emitted from the
countenance of a man?
Good Reading is an art also. I would read the
great action and great passiveness of Fabius, his
perfect equanimity under the popular odium and


1839) DAY NOBLY SPENT 249
general calamity, as the exhortation which the
great God gives me for this day's bread. As
Bonaparte organized victory in the French ar-
mies, I would organize the old eternal heroism
in mine. Society thinks of nothing less than of
appropriating the fine sentiments which are re-
peated in it. They are merely ornaments for
show-days, as when a very wealthy and hard
aristocrat declaims with fine tones, —
“ Let such, such only, tread this sacred foor,
As dare to love their country and be poor.”
The true conciseness of style would be such a
writing as no dictionaries, but events and char-
acter only could illustrate.
September 12.
How to spend a day nobly is the problem to
be solved, beside which all the great reforms
which are preached seem to me trivial. If any
day has not the privilege of a great action, then,
at least, raise it by a wise passion. If thou canst
not do, at least abstain. Now the memory of the
few past little days so works in me that I hardly
dare front a new day when I leave my bed. When
shall I come to the end of these shameful days.
and organize honour in every day?


250
JOURNAL [AGE 36
September 14.
Yesterday Mr. Mann's Address on Educa-
tion. It was full of the modern gloomy view of
our democratical institutions, and hence the in-
ference to the importance of schools. But as far
as it betrayed distrust, it seemed to pray, as do
all our pulpits, for the consolation of Stoicism.
A Life in Plutarch would be a perfect rebuke to
such a sad discourse. If Christianity is effete, let
us try the doctrine of power to endure.
Education. — Sad it was to see the death-cold
convention yesterday morning, as they sat shiv-
ering, a handful of pale men and women in a
large church, for it seems the Law has touched
the business of Education with the point of its
pen, and instantly it has frozen stiff in the uni-
versal congelation of society. An education in
things is not. We all are involved in the con-
demnation of words, an age of words. We are
shut up in schools and college recitation rooms
for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with
a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.' We
1 Although the remainder of the paragraph is printed in
“ New England Reformers," it is given here because of its
connection with the voyage of John and Henry Thoreau on
the Concord and Merrimac rivers, referred to on next page ;


18391 THE THOREAUS VOYAGE 251
cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes,
or our arms. We do not know an edible root
in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the
stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is
well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of
a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider.
Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy
nothing that he could not learn standing.
Now here are my wise young neighbors' who,
instead of getting, like the woodmen, into a rail-
road-car, where they have not even the activity
of holding the reins, have got into a boat which
they have built with their own hands, with sails
which they have contrived to serve as a tent by
night, and gone up the Merrimack to live by their
wits on the fish of the stream and the berries of
the wood. My worthy neighbor Dr. Bartlett ex-
pressed a true parental instinct when he desired
to send his boy with them to learn something.
The farm, the farm, is the right school. The
reason of my deep respect for the farmer is that
he is a realist, and not a dictionary. The farm
is a piece of the world, the school-house is not.
also because of its harmony with the educational trend advo-
cated by many to-day.
John and Henry Thoreau. (See A Week on the Concord
and Merrimack Rivers.)


252
JOURNAL [AGE 36
The farm, by training the physical, rectifies and
invigorates the metaphysical and moral nature.
Now so bad we are that the world is stripped
of love and of terror. Here came the other night
an Aurora so wonderful, a curtain of red and
blue and silver glory, that in any other age or
nation it would have moved the awe and words
of men and mingled with the profoundest senti-
ments of religion and love, — and we all saw it
with cold, arithmetical eyes, we knew how many
colors shone, how many degrees it extended,
how many hours it lasted, and of this heavenly
flower we beheld nothing more: a primrose by
the brim of the river of time.
Shall we not wish back again the Seven Whis-
tlers, the Flying Dutchman, the lucky and un-
lucky days, and the terrors of the Day of
Doom?
I lament that I find in me no enthusiasm, no
resources for the instruction and guidance of the
people, when they shall discover that their pres-
ent guides are blind. This convention of Edu-
cation is cold, but I should perhaps affect a
hope I do not feel, if I were bidden to counsel
it. I hate preaching, whether in pulpits or in
teachers' meetings. Preaching is a pledge, and I


1839) PLEDGES. THE PEOPLE 253
wish to say what I think and feel today, with
the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall con-
tradict it all. Freedom boundless I wish. I will
not pledge myself not to drink wine, not to
drink ink, not to lie, and not to commit adultery,
lest I hanker tomorrow to do these very things
by reason of my having tied my hands. Besides,
man is so poor he cannot afford to part with
any advantages, or bereave himself of the func-
tions even of one hair. I do not like to speak
to the Peace Society, if so I am to restrain me
in so extreme a privilege as the use of the sword
and bullet. For the peace of the man who has
forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not
quite peace, but a canting impotence: but with
knife and pistol in my hands, if I, from greater
bravery and honor, cast them aside; then I know
the glory of peace.
It was a fine corollary of Stoicism that Aris-
totle said that the honour of chastity consisted
in self-sufficiency.
The mob are always interesting. We hate
editors, preachers and all manner of scholars,
and fashionists. A blacksmith, a truckman, a
farmer, we follow into the bar-room and watch
with eagerness what they shall say, for such as


254
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
they do not speak because they are expected to,
but because they have somewhat to say.
rs
How sad a spectacle, so frequent nowadays,
to see a young man after ten years of college
education come out, ready for his voyage of life,
— and to see that the entire ship is made of rot-
ten timber, of rotten, honeycombed, traditional
timber without so much as an inch of new plank
in the hull.
It seems as if the present age of words should
naturally be followed by an age of silence, when
men shall speak only through facts, and so re-
gain their health. We die of words. We are
hanged, drawn and quartered by dictionaries.
We walk in the vale of shadows. It is an age
of hobgoblins. ... When shall we attain to be
real, and be born into the new heaven and earth
of nature and truth?
It is not good sense to repeat an old story
to the same child. Yet the pulpit thinks there
is some piquancy or rag of meat in his para-
graph about the traitor Judas or the good Sa-
maritan.
Things versus Men.- How many men can
measure themselves with a ton of coals ? Over


1839] THINGS. SINGING 255
a thing power and awe hang inseparably. In
every moment and change it represents nature,
but these transformed men are an impotent
canting.
September 18.
The teamsters write on their teams, “No
monopoly. Old Union Line, Fitchburg, Gro-
ton,” etc. On the guide-boards they paint,
“Free trade and teamster's rights.":
With the Past, as past, I have nothing to do;
nor with the Future, as future. I live now, and
will verify all past history in my own moments.
I heard with great pleasure lately the songs
of Jane Tuckerman. The tone of her voice is
not in the first hearing quite pure and agreeable.
The tone of Abby Warren's voice is much more
pure and noble;but the wonderful talent of Miss
Tuckerman, her perfect taste, the sweetness of all
her tones, and the rich variety and the extreme
tenuity with which she spins the thread of sound
1 This seems to have been due to the alarm of the coming
railroad.
2 This was the voice in the village choir that he has praised
before. The lady, as Mrs. Belden, later sang in Park Street
Church.


256
(Age 36
JOURNAL
to a point as fine as a ray of light, makes the ear
listen to her with the most delicious confidence.
Her songs were better with every repetition. I
found my way about in the hollows and alleys
of their music better each time. Yet still her
music was a phenomenon to me. I admired it
as a beautiful curiosity, as a piece of virtu. It
does not marry itself to the mind and become a
part of it. She composes me by the serenity of
her manners.
Allconversation among literary men is muddy.
I derive from literary meetings no satisfaction.
Yet it is pity that meetings for conversation
should end as quickly as they ordinarily do.
They end as soon as the blood is up, and we
are about to say daring and extraordinary things.
They adjourn for a fortnight, and when we are
reassembled we have forgot all we had to say."
1 Under date of September 18, Mr. Alcott wrote in his
Journal: “Symposium met again at Bartol's, Chestnut Street.
We discussed the subject of a journal designed as the organ of
views more in accordance with the Soul. Present, Francis,
Alcott, Hedge, Bartol, W. Channing [William Henry Chan-
ning], Dwight, Ripley, Parker, Bartlett, Russell, Robbins,
Morison, Shattuck, Miss Fuller. A good deal was said about
our journal, but no definite action taken upon it. Its idea and
plan are not defined.”


1839] RICH MAN. NOVELS. WORK 257
The rich man will presently come to be
ashamed of his riches, when he sees he has any
accidental advantage which takes away all the
praise of every good thing he does. The race is
won by no skill or strength of his, but by the
sinews of his good horse. The serene and bene-
ficent life he leads solves the problem of life for
nobody but the rich. His wealth, then, if not the
earning of his own sweat, is his backbiter and
enemy in all men's ears.
It is no easy matter to write a dialogue.
Cooper, Sterling, Dickens, and Hawthorne can-
not.
Water is more agreeable to the imagination
as an article of diet than any other, because it is
a kind of material absolute.
The common household tasks are agreeable
to the imagination: they are the subjects of all
the Greek gems.
How trifling to insist on ex tempore speech, or
spontaneous conversation, and decry the written
poem or dissertation, or the debating club. A
man's deep conviction lies too far down in nature
to be much affected by these trifles. Do what


258
(Age 36
JOURNAL
we can, your genius will speak from you, and
mine from me.
September 20.
It is only by doing without Shakspear that
we can do without his book. Be Shakspear, and
we shall value it no longer. So it is with the holy
men whose life is recorded in the religious books
of the nations.
Children like the story that makes them weep
better than the one that makes them laugh. Men
love the play, or the fight, or the news that
scares or agitates them. And the great man loves
the conversation or the book that convicts him;
not that which soothes and flatters him. For this
opens to him a new and great career, fills him
with hope. Therefore a great man always keeps
before him the transcendent, and humbles him-
self in its presence. Losing this he is no longer
great.
Temperance that knows itself is not temper-
ance. That you cease to drink wine or coffee or
tea is no true temperance if you still desire them
and think of them; there is nothing angelic there.
It is thus far only prudence.


1839) LONELY REVOLUTION 259
The only condition on which I can expect a
better sight is, that I put off all that is foreign.
I am still busy in that initial endeavor, I have not
yet arrived at virtue. I burn in purgatory still.'
“These Men.” — In Massachusetts a number
of young and adult persons are at this moment
the subject of a revolution. They are not organ-
ized into any conspiracy: they do not vote, or
print, or meet together. They do not know each
other's faces or names. They are united only in
a common love of truth and love of its work.
They are of all conditions and natures. They
are, some of them, mean in attire, and some
mean in station, and some mean in body, having
inherited from their parents faces and forms
scrawled with the traits of every vice. Not in
churches, or in courts, or in large assemblies;
not in solemn holidays, where men were met in
festal dress, have these pledged themselves to
new life, but in lonely and obscure places, in
1 The tone of the Journals of this and the next two or
three years seems to show that the widespread awakening and
manifold protests of the period had stirred Mr. Emerson out
of the serenity of the immediately preceding years. The new
lights must be tested as guides to action. It required time and
more solitude than his many visitors left him to regain his
equipoise.
med
me me


260
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
servitude, in solitude, in solitary compunctions
and shames and fears, in disappointments, in
diseases, trudging beside the team in the dusty
road, or drudging, a hireling in other men's corn-
fields, schoolmasters who teach a few children
rudiments for a pittance, ministers of small par-
ishes of the obscurer sects, lone women in de-
pendent condition, matrons and young maidens,
rich and poor, beautiful and hard-favoured, with-
out conceit or proclamation of any kind, have
silently given in their several adherence to a new
hope.
September 24.
Friendship.— I do not wish to treat friend-
ships daintily.' ... I have the most romantic
relations precisely with my oldest friends. ...
Who is rich, who is fashionable, who is high-
bred, has great hindrances to success [in friend-
ships]. Very hardly will he attain to mastery
with all these ribbons, laces and plumes, in a tug
where all the hap depends on eternal facts, on
intrinsic nobleness and the contempt of trifles.
Genius and Virtue, like diamonds, are best plain
set, — set in lead, set in poverty. And the high-
est Beauty should be plain set.
i Here follow several sentences which are printed in
“ Friendship ” (pp. 201, 202).


1839) DICKENS. CHILDREN 261
Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep,
and those only can act or write well who do not
respect the writing or the act.
I have read Oliver Twist in obedience to the
opinions of so many intelligent people as have
praised it. The author has an acute eye for cos-
tume; he sees the expression of dress, of form,
of gait, of personal deformities; of furniture, of
the outside and inside of houses; but his eye
rests always on surfaces; he has no insight into
character. For want of key to the moral powers
the author is fain to strain all his stage trick of
grimace, of bodily terror, of murder, and the most
approved performances of Remorse. It all avails
nothing, there is nothing memorable in the book
except the flash, which is got at a police office,
and the dancing of the madman which strikes a
momentary terror. Like Cooper and Hawthorne
he has no dramatic talent. The moment he at-
tempts dialogue the improbability of life hardens
to wood and stone. And the book begins and
ends without a poetic ray, and so perishes in the
reading.
Children are all foreigners. We treat them as
such. We cannot understand their speech or the


262
JOURNAL
(AGE 36.
mode of life, and so our Education is remote and
accidental and not closely applied to the facts.
Day and Night are vests only of Things.
[Here follows a page or more of anecdotes of
Cromwell.]
I have been reading all this in no bigger book
than a volume of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia,
by Forster. The man is great, though his his-
torian is small. Cromwell is a droll, and always
has a design under his dulness or his horseplay.
It is odd indeed, his talk to the Parliament. He
talks like a porter with his endless expletives and
circumstantial statement of nothings, and affir-
mations that he is telling the truth. He is a new
combination, and suggests, as every strong na-
ture does, how easily those qualities may be com-
bined in the next babe that is born, which we
commonly pronounce incompatible, — the in-
spiration of holiness, for example, with the
shrewdest selfishness. We love force and we care
very little how it is exhibited. State is a great
game which is fit for young natures to play at,
though not for the strongest, for these selfish
fellows never can, in my judgment, compete with
s never


om
rs a
ever re
1839) FORSTER'S CROMWELL 263
the Artist. He draws out of the invisible his ma-
terial, his counters, and then plays his game by
a skill not taught or quickened by his appetites.
The Cromwells and Cæsars are a mob beside him.
Histories are written, like this Forster's, in ri-
diculous deference to all the lowest prejudices.
The simple fact of being the potentate of Eng-
land seems to the good scribe a thing so incred-
ible and venerable that he can never allude to it
without new astonishment and never records a
victory without new bows and duckings and em-
pressements, like a Catholic priest kneeling when-
ever he passes the crucifixin crossing the church.
A gentleman sees empire and victory in every
right action, and makes no ado about the circum-
stances.
“ These applications of the wit and mind are
tender things; they do not fancy the sun and
the cloud, but delight in shade and retirement.
Like noble and delicate maidens, they must
rather be kept safe at home, than brought forth
into engagements and perils.” – Milton to
Cromwell.
Woods. A Prose Sonnet
Wise are ye, O ancient woods! wiser than
man. Whoso goeth in your paths or into your


264
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
thickets where no paths are, readeth the same
cheerful lesson whether he be a young child,
or a hundred years old, comes he in good for-
tune, or bad, -ye say the same things, and from
age to age. Ever the needles of the pine grow
and fall, the acorns on the oak, the maples red-
den in autumn, and at all times of the year the
ground pine and the pyrola bud and root under
foot. What is called fortune and what is called
Time by men — ye know them not. Men have
not language to describe one moment of your
eternal life. This I would ask of you, O sacred
woods, when ye shall next give me somewhat
to say, give me also the tune wherein to say it.
Give me a tune of your own, like your winds
or rains or brooks or birds; for the songs of
men grow old when they have been often re-
peated, but yours, though a man have heard
them for seventy years, are never the same,
but always new, like time itself, or like love.
September 28.
Usefulness is always handsome, uselessness
always vulgar. Hint a little service of the
household, - a lady will instantly do it, a nurse
will toss her foolish head with, “ Lor! I'll call
someone.'


1839) ARTISTS' LIVES. SUNDAY 265
The life of Raffaelle is the catalogue of his
works. The life of a great artist always is thus
inward, a life on no events. Shakespear has no
biography worth speaking. Dante, by how
much he had a biography, is by so much the
worst artist. For Dante is a person of strong
understanding and shares the vulgar pride of
noblemen and fashionists, and seldom a seer.
I love the Sunday morning. I hail it from
afar. I walk with gladness and a holiday feeling
always on that day. The church is ever my
desk. If I did not go thither I should not write
so many of these wayward pages. The better
place, the better deed.
Mr. Dewey said to me that W. C. promised
to be a great man twenty years hence. Mr. Felt,
then one of the parish committee in the First
Church in New York, observed, “Yes, but we
want a minister ready grown; he must have his
growing elsewhere.” So it is with us all. Only
fathers and mothers may contentedly be pres-
ent at the growing. I hate to hear a singer who
is learning, let her voice be never so sweet. I
wish not to be asked in every note whether I
will allow it. I wish every note to command me
with sweet yet perfect empire.


266
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
Also I hate Early Poems.
A lovely Saturday afternoon, and I walked
toward Fairhaven with Henry Thoreau, and
admired autumnal red and yellow and, as of
old, Nature's wonderful boxes in which she
packs, so workmanlike, her pine seed and oak
seed, and not less the keys of frost and rain
and wind with which she unlocks them by and
by.
Mankind have ever a deep common sense
(using that word in the highest style) that guides
their judgments, so that they are always right
in their fames. How strange that Jesus should
stand at the head of history, the first character
of the world without doubt, but the unlikeliest
of all men, one would say, to take such a rank
in such a world. Well then, as if to indemnify
themselves for this vast concession to truth,
they must put up the militia — Alexander, Cæsar,
Napoleon, etc. — into the next place of procla-
mation. Yet it is a pit to Olympus, this fame
by that, or even by the place of Homer, Pin-
dar and Plato.
I can be wise very well for myself, but not


ra
1839) SORROW AND AGE 267
for another, nor among others. I smile and ig-
nore wo, and if that which they call wo shall
come to me I hope and doubt not to smile still.
They smile never and think joy amiss. All
their facts are tinged with gloom, and all my
pains are edged with pleasure. But if I inter-
meddle, if I quit my divine island and seek to
right them in particulars, if I look upon them
as corrigible individuals and their fortunes cura-
ble, I grow giddy and skeptical presently in
their company. Old age is a sad riddle which
this stony Sphinx reads us. How base to live,
as the old, when now their period of outdoor
activity is over, in their sensations; to exist to
trifles; to have the palate and the eye and ear
and skin so ignominiously wise and knowing;
to be a taster, and an inexhaustible quiddle; to
sell the sweet and noble human soul to all the
imps of spite and gloom on the cause of an ill-
done omelet, heavy cakes, or a draught of air.
I can only solve this sad problem by esteeming
it a slide in my lamp. It is a shade which adds
splendor to the lights. But if I intermeddle, if
I esteem it an entity, - already my own hair
grizzles. Age is to be parried and annihilated
to thee, O Son of God, by wrapping thyself in
God's eternal youth. Cast thyself frankly as


268
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
these sweet children do into the beauty and joy
of this moment; do not addle the egg with
thought, but generously sleep in thy sentiment,
in thine act, the arms of the Wise God being
around thee, and thou shalt take thy being
again from him presently, refreshed and exalted.
But seest thou not that in nature every set sun
rises, every loss has a gain, nor shall even this
hated phantom with its evil insignia of bald-
ness, of toothless gums, cracked voice, defaced
face, and fumbling, peevish trifling, stand in the
wide beauty of the universe hopeless. There is
recovery from this lapse, and awaking from this
haggard dream.
But what is old age? what is the Fall? what
Sin? what Death? lying as we do in this eternal
Soul originating benefit forevermore. The dull-
est scholar learns the secret of Space and Time;
learns that Time is infinite; that the instru-
ments of God are all commensurate. Is not that
lesson enough for a life? The Power that deals
with us, the Power which we study and which
we are to inherit as fast as we learn to use it, is,
in sum, dazzling, terrific, inaccessible. It now
benignly shows us in parts and atoms some
arc of its magnificent circle, elements which are
radically ours.


1839) BEAUTY EYES. SONG 269
September 29.
A fair child went by who made me think, as
others have done, that a mixture of Lethe adds
to beauty.
The military eye which I meet so often darkly
sparkling, now under clerical, now under rustic
brows, - e. g., Robert Bartlett, W. Channing,
and our William Shepherd here, — the city of
Lacedæmon; and the poem of Dante, which
seems to me a city of Lacedæmon turned into
verses.
A fine melody again at the Church. I always
thank the gracious Urania when our chorister
selects tunes with solos for my singer. My ear
waits for those sweet modulations, so pure of
all manner and personality, so universal, that
they open on the ear like the rising of the
world.
A walk in the woods is only an exalted dream.
Some faces turn on the pivot of the collar-
bone, with eyes that are shallow beads — no
more: and some on a pivot at least as deep as
the orbit of the sphere, so slow and lazily and
great they move.


270
JOURNAL [AGE 36
A man is a Diamond Edition of the world.
What comedy, or what tragedy, like a John
Barrett or John Brown or Mr. Smith or Mr.
Clark, as we facetiously denominate these in-
carnations, with all he is and has, denoted in his
countenance. The foolish science of Phreno-
logy is yet founded on this very admiration, and
sheds lights. Then my babies are the true acad-
emy of Sculpture.
In every house there is a good deal of false
hospitality. Relatives come thither of all the de-
grees of cousindom and family acquaintances,
who, like cats, frequent the place and not the
man. The hero meets with content all this claim
on time and labor and takes care that his “hos-
pitality run fine to the last,” as Lamb finely said.
But not so the saint. He is so much the ser-
vant of absolute goodness, that he feels the false-
hood of merely feeding and amusing these but-
terflies and beetles, and austerely tells them so.
When I was thirteen years old, my Uncle
Samuel Ripley one day asked me, “How is it,
Ralph, that all the boys dislike you and quarrel
with you, whilst the grown people are fond of
you?” Now am I thirty-six and the fact is re-


1839] CANT. FACT AND IDEAL 271
versed, — the old people suspect and dislike
me,' and the young love me.
Never exhort, only confess. All exhortation,
O thou hoarse preacher ! respects others and not
thyself, respects appearance and not facts, and
therefore is cant.
Shall I not once paint in these pages an ex-
perience so conspicuous to me, and so oft re-
peated in these late years, as the Debating Club,
now under the name of Teachers' Meeting, now
a conference, now an æsthetic club, and now a
religious association, but always bearing for me
the same fruit; a place where my memory works
more than my wit, and so I come away with com-
punction?
In correcting old discourses to retain only
what is alive, I discover a good deal of matter
which a strong common-sense would exclude.
I seem however to discover in the same passages
which I condemn the commendation of the ideal
and holy life, and hence am annoyed by a dis-
crepancy betwixt the two states. I love facts,
and so erase this preaching. But also I vener-
ate the Good, the Better, and did therefore give
1 The natural shyness at bold thought and experiment.


272
JOURNAL
(Age 36
se
it place. Cannot Montaigne and Shakspear con-
sist with Plato and Jesus?
The whole world is in conspiracy against itself
in religious matters. The best experience is beg-
garly when compared with the immense possi-
bilities of man. Divine as the life of Jesus is,
what an outrage to represent it as tantamount
to the universe! To seize one accidental good
man that happened to exist somewhere, at some
time, and say to the new-born soul, Behold thy
pattern ; aim no longer to possess entire nature,
to fill the horizon, to fill the infinite amplitude
of being with great life, to be in sympathy and
relation with all creatures, to lose all private-
ness by sharing all natural action, shining with
the Day, undulating with the sea, growing with
the tree, instinctive with the animals, entranced
in beatific vision with the human reason. Re-
nounce a life so broad and deep as a pretty
dream, and go in the harness of that past indi-
vidual, assume his manners, speak his speech, -
this is the madness of Christendom. The little
bigots of each town and neighborhood seek thus
to subdue the manly and free-born. But, for
this poor, dependent fraction of a life, they be-
reave me of that magnificent destiny which the
young soul has embraced with auguries of im-


1839] KEEP THE SOUL FREE 273
measureable hope. I turn my back on these in-
sane usurpers. The soul always believes in itself.
It affirms the Eternity and Omnipresence of
God which these deny. It knows that all which
hath ever been is now, that the total world is
my inheritance, and the life of all beings I am
to take up into mine. By lowly listening, om-
niscience is for me. By faithful receiving, omni-
potence is for me. But the way of the soul into
its heaven is not to man, but from man. It
leaves every form of life and doctrine that ever
existed. It touches no book, or rite, or crutch,
or guide, or mediator; it gives itself alone, ori-
ginal, pure, to the Lonely Original and Pure,
who, on that condition, inhabits, leads and
speaks through it. Then is it glad, young and
nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all
things. It is not called religious, but it is inno-
cent. It calls the Light its own and shares the
pleasures of all creatures."
And yet I know the dangers of this sort of
speculation. It is somewhat not wholesome to
be said in a detached form. It is not good to say
with too much precision and emphasis that we
are encroached upon by the claims of Jesus in
1 A part of this passage is found in « The Over-Soul”
(p. 296).


274
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
the current theology. It brings us into a cold,
denying, irreligious state of mind. It is of no
use to say, Quit Jesus and the saints and heroes.
But without the saying, which is proud, and so,
suicidal, let us turn our eyes to the Vast, the
Good, the Eternal. There fasten the eyes, there
build the perpetual hearth and house and altar
of the soul. And dare to try thy pinions by
flights into the Transcendent and the unknown.
Thou awful Cause ! hardly with sincerity can I
ask that my eye may learn to keep upward, so
prone is it ever to things around and below.
I was about to say and omitted it in the
middle of the last page, — that we have nothing
to do with Jesus in our progress, nothing to do
with any past soul. The only way in which the
life of Jesus or other holy person helps us is
this, - that as we advance without reference to
persons on a new, unknown, sublime path, we
at each new ascent verify the experiences of Jesus
and such souls as have obeyed God before. We
take up into our proper life at that moment his
act and word, and do not copy Jesus, but really
are Jesus, just as Jesus in that moment of his
life was us. Say rather, it was neither him nor
us, but a man at this and at that time saw the
truth, and was transformed into its likeness.
ons on a
S


1839] NOVICIATE. PROBLEMS 275
I must not bait my hook to draw men to me.
I must angle with myself and use no lower means.
Be Dion to Dion.
As much may be gleaned as gathered in straw-
berry-beds, grape-vines and books.
ere
October 2.
It is strange how long our noviciate lasts;
that the period of our mastership still loiters,
that as long as we remain growing, and do not
inveterate, we are always subject to circum-
stances and do not control them. All the chem-
ical agents act with energy on us, and we come,
greenhorns, to every conversation. The young,
the knowing, the fashionable, the practical, the
political, the belle, the Pharisee and the Sad-
ducee, all overact on us, and make us dumb.
Sad the complaints of the young people,
sad their despondency and skepticism which
seem to spread every day. The young girl asks,
What shall I do? How shall I live? And there
is none to answer. It is vain to point them to
the uncultivated and pious. Could they bear the
ordeal of cultivation and leisure? If not, as
E. H. says, “I do not wish to be whipped by


276
JOURNAL (AGE 36
toil all day, and whipped to bed at night.” They
must learn this fact, – that their sorrows are
the ebbs of a happiness so delicate and spiritual,
and if they are proportionate to the preceding
flux, so are they also the preparation of a new
tide.
Organization. — A chaste woman is indeed a
poetic institution, but when you organize that
idea by a stone convent with grated windows,
shorn hair, dreadful vows, and terrific penalties,
it is not chastity, but unchastity. The heart of
a soldier is an impregnable castle, but if it be
not, you add no strength with moats and mor-
tars, ramparts, and cannon.
Aristocracy and Idealism. — 1. Society in our
bright hours seems not to claim equality, but
ought to be treated like children to whom we
administer camomile and magnesia on our own
judgment, without consultation. What we can
do is law enough for them. And we glance for
sanction at the historical position of scholars in
all ages, whom we commend in proportion to
their self-reliance. But when our own light
beams less steadily and flickers in the socket,
the pupil seems suddenly riper and more fro-
cell
ISS


en assume
1839] IDEALISTS. SOLEMN EGO 277
ward, and even assumes the mien of a patron
whom we must court.
2. Do you say that all the good retreat from
men and do not work strongly and lovingly
with them? Very well; it is fit and necessary that
they should treat men as ghosts and phantoms
here for our behoof, here to teach us dramati-
cally, as long as they have not yet attained to
a real existence, existence in their own right,
that is to say, until the uprise of the soul in
them. Then instantly we shall, without tedi-
ous degrees, treat them as ourselves. Now
they are not ourselves : why should we say
they are?
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we
have left their presence, as the greatest chemical
energy of the prismatic spectrum is a little out
of the spectrum.
How we hate this solemn Ego that accom-
panies the learned, like a double, wherever he
goes ! Let us be ravished by the fact and the
thought, as these beautiful children are by the
acorn, the hobby-horse and the doll, - rush into
the object, nor think of our existence; though
by the laws of nature, forever and ever, only


278
JOURNAL [AGE 36
the subject is consulted, let the objects be as
many and as grand as they will.
I discern degrees in the proficiency of the
malcontents of the day. I see some who, though
not arrived at the chamber called Peace, have
yet such redundant health that no poverty or
unfriendly circumstance could much affect them;
and others who are still seeking in the saloons
of the city what not even solitude can give them.
IS
The Transcendent is Economy also.
The woes of the time, – is not that topic
enough? He that can enumerate their symp-
toms, expose their cause and show how they
contain their remedies, comes to men from
heaven with a palm branch in his hand.
October 7.
Only this strip of paper remains to me to
record my introduction to Anna Barker last
Friday at Jamaica Plains.' A new person is to
1 This lady became soon after the wife of Mr. Emerson's
valued friend Samuel Gray Ward of Boston. She was bred a
Quaker, but was born to adorn society. Though an invalid
during the greater part of her long life, she was a person of
great charm and beauty of character, and a strong influence in


279
1839) ANNA BARKER
me ever a great event, and few days of my quiet
life are so illustrated and cheered as were these
two in which I enjoyed the frank and generous
confidence of a being so lovely, so fortunate,
and so remote from my own experiences. She
seemed to me a woman singularly healthful and
entire. She had no detached parts or powers.
She had not talents, or affections, or accomplish-
ments, or single features, of conspicuous beauty,
but was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever
she did became her, whether she walked or sat
or spoke. She had an instinctive elegance. She
had too much warmth and sympathy and desire
to please than that you could say her manners
were marked with dignity, yet no princess could
surpass her clear and erect demeanour on each
occasion. She is not an intellectual beauty, but
is of that class who in society are designated as
having a great deal of Soul, that is, the predomi-
nating character of her nature is not thought, but
emotion or sympathy, and of course she is not
of my class, does not resemble the women whom
I have most admired and loved, but she is so
perfect in her own nature as to meet these by the
the lives of many persons, the young especially. In middle life
she joined the Church of Rome, and was the means of bring-
ing many into that Communion.


280
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
fulness of her heart, and does not distance me,
as I believe all others of that cast of character
do. She does not sit at home in her mind, as my
angels are wont to do, but instantly goes abroad
into the minds of others, takes possession of so-
ciety and warms it with noble sentiments. Her
simple faith seemed to be, that by dealing nobly
with all, all would show themselves noble, and so
her conversation is the frankest I ever heard. She
can afford to be sincere. The wind is not purer
than she is.
(From a loose sheet)
Eloquence. Lyceum. — Here is all the true or- '
ator will ask, for here is a convertible audience,
and here are no stiff conventions that prescribe
a method, a style, a limited quotation of books
and an exact respect to certain books, persons or
opinions. No, here everything is admissible,
philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry,
humor, fun, mimicry, anecdotes, jokes ventrilo-
quism, all the breadth and versatility of the most
liberal conversation ; highest, lowest, personal,
local topics, all are permitted, and all may be
combined in one speech; - it is a panharmoni-
con, - every note on the longest gamut, from
the explosion of cannon, to the tinkle of a guitar.
CO


1839) LYCEUM. BOSTON BELLS 281
Let us try if Folly, Custom, Convention and
Phlegm cannot hear our sharp artillery. Here is
a pulpit that makes other pulpits tame and inef-
fectual — with their cold, mechanical preparation
for a delivery the most decorous, - fine things,
pretty things, wise things, but no arrows, no axes,
no nectar, no growling, no transpiercing, no lov-
ing, no enchantment.
Here he may lay himself out utterly, large,
enormous, prodigal, on the subject of the hour.
Here he may dare to hope for ecstasy and elo-
quence.
(From Journal E)
Concord, October 11.
At Waltham, last Sunday, on the hill near the
old meeting-house, I heard music so soft that I
fancied it was a pianoforte in some neighbouring
farmhouse, but on listening more attentively I
found it was the church bells in Boston, nine
miles distant, which were playing for me this soft
tune.
CO
II.
Horace Walpole, whose letters I read so at-
tentively in the past summer, is a type of the
dominant Englishman at this day. He has taste,
common sense, love of facts, impatience of hum-
bug, love of history, love of splendor, love of


282
JOURNAL [AGE 36
justice, and the sentiment of honour among gen-
tlemen, but no life whatever of the higher facul-
ties, no faith, no hope, no aspiration, no question
even touching the secret of nature.
“ Matter, which is itself privation, often scat-
ters and dissolves what a more excellent Being
than herself had wrought,” says Plutarch (vol.
iv, p. 12, “ On Oracles").
Those books which are for all time are written
indifferently at any time. How can the age be a
bad one which conveys to me the joys of litera-
ture? I can read Plutarch, and Augustine, and
Beaumont and Fletcher, and Landor's Pericles,
and with no very dissimilar feeling the verses of
my young contemporaries Thoreau and Chan-
ning. Let those, then, make much of the different
genius of different periods who suffer by them.
I who seek enjoyments which proceed not out
of time, but out of thought, will celebrate on this
lofty Sabbath morn the day without night, the
beautiful Ocean which hath no tides.
And yet literature, too, this magical man-pro-
voking talisman, is in some sort a creature of
time. It is begotten by Time on the Soul. And
one day we shall forget this primer. But how
10


1839) BOOKS OF ALL TIME 283
obviously initial it is to the writer. It is only his
priming. The books of the nations, the universal
books, are long ago forgotten of him who spake
them. We must learn to judge books by abso-
lute standards. Criticism, too, must be transcen-
dental. Society wishes to assign subjects and
method to its writers. But neither it nor you may
intermeddle. You cannot reason at will in this
and that other vein, but only as you must. You
cannot make quaint combinations, and bring to
the crucible and alembic of truth things far-
fetched or fantastic or popular, but your method
and your subject are foreordained in your nature,
and in all nature, or ever the earth was — or it
has no worth. All that gives currency still to any
book published to-day by Little and Brown is
the remains of faith in the breast of men that
not adroit book-makers, but the inextinguishable
soul of the Universe, reports of itself in articulate
discourse through this and that other man, to-
day, as of old. The ancients strongly expressed
their sense of the unmanageableness of these
words of the God, by saying that the God made
his priest insane, took him hither and thither as
leaves are whirled by the tempest. But we sing
as we are bid. Our inspirations are very man-
ageable and tame. Death and Sin have whispered


284
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
in the ear of our wild horses and they are become
drays and hacks.
It is very easy to hint keen replies to these
statements of the independency of writers. It is
easy to make persons ridiculous. Let us all, or
any who say so, be ridiculous. Grant that we
have been vain, boastful, cunning, covering our
wretched pride with this claim of inspiration.
Still the fact holds for ever and ever, that the
soul doth so speak, and that the law of literature,
giving its exact worth to every ballad and spoken
sentence, is thus transcendent and only self-con-
tained.
It certainly is never vitiated by any affectation,
cant, dulness, or crime of those who speak for
it. Their lie or folly recoils on them. Point out
what abuses you will that might flow from the
reception of this doctrine in weak and wicked
heads, — the wind will still blow where it listeth,
and the Eternal Soul will overpower the men
who are its organs, and enchant the ears of those
who hear them by the same right and energy by
which long ago and now it enchants the moun-
tains, and the sea, the air and the globes in their
musical dance. “ Thou shalt not plant a palm
tree,” said Pythagoras, intimating that, as that
tree comes up best out of the ground self-sown,


1839) TRUST. SOUL. TRADE 285
so Virtue and Wisdom are the direct proceeding
of God, and are not to be overlaid and distorted
by indiscreet meddling and art.
Men have yet to learn the beauty and depth
of the doctrine of Trusts. O believe as thou
livest that every sound that is spoken over the
round world which thou oughtest to hear will
vibrate on thine ear.' ...
In all particulars the doctrine of the Soul
must be taught. Men must be accustomed to
ask if the thing they say of God holds. For the
Father is with them.
A question which well deserves examination
now is the Dangers of Commerce. This inva-
sion of Nature by Trade with its Money, its
Credit, its Steam, its Railroad, threatens to up-
set the balance of man, and establish a new, uni-
versal Monarchy more tyrannical than Babylon
or Rome. Very faint and few are the poets or
men of God. Those who remain are so antag-
onistic to this tyranny that they appear mad or
morbid, and are treated as such. Sensible of this
i Here follows the passage thus beginning in “The Over-
Soul” (Essays, First Series, pp. 293, 294). It was originally a
part of a sermon preached by Mr. Emerson at East Lexington.


286
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
extreme unfitness they suspect themselves. And
all of us apologize when we ought not, and con-
gratulate ourselves when we ought not.'
Plutarch fits me better than Southey or Scott,
therefore I say, there is no age to good writing.
Could I write as I would, I suppose the piece
would be no nearer to Boston in 1839 than to
Athens in the fiftieth Olympiad. Good thought,
however expressed, saith to us, “ Come out of
time, come to me in the Eternal.”
We wish the man should show himself for
what he is, though he be Iscariot. If the hu-
mour is in the blood, bring it out to the skin
by all means.
October 16.
Friendship. - What needs greater magnanim-
ity than the waiting for a friend, a lover, for
years? We see the noble afar off.? ... How
sadly true all over human life is the saying,
“To him that hath shall be given ; from him
that hath not shall be taken.” Attentions are
showered on the powerful, who needs them not.
1 This passage is followed by the greater part of the open-
ing paragraph of Art (Essays, Second Series).
· 2 What follows is printed in “ Friendship” (Essays, First
Series, p. 212).


1839) PLUTARCH. SLEEP. POEM 287
Friends abound for the self-trusting, and he re-
treats to his cliff.
Weather.— “If it be true that souls are natu-
rally endued with the faculty of prediction, and
that the chief cause that excites this faculty and
virtue is a certain temperature of air and winds,”
etc. — PLUTARCH, De Oraculis.
“Hermes played at dice with the moon and
won of her the seventieth part of each of her
revolutions with which he made five new days
and added to the year that Osiris might be born.”
- PLUTARCH, Isis and Osiris.'
re
Said Lidian, “How we covet insensibility!
my boy whines and wails if I wake him.” We
are Buddhists all.
Nature mixes facts and thought to evoke a
poem from the poet, but our philosophy would
be androgynous, and itself generate poems with-
out aid of experience.
October 18.
Lectures. - In these golden days it behooves
me once more to make my annual inventory of
i This myth is alluded to in “ Experience” (Essays, Sec-
ond Series, p. 46).


288
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
the world. For the five last years I have read
each winter a new course of lectures in Boston,
and each was my creed and confession of faith.
Each told all I thought of the past, the present
and the future. Once more I must renew my
work, and I think only once in the same form,
though I see that he who thinks he does some-
thing for the last time ought not to do it at all.
Yet my objection is not to the thing, but with
the form : and the concatenation of errors called
society to which I still consent, until my plumes
be grown, makes even a duty of this concession
also. So I submit to sell tickets again.
But the form is neither here nor there. What
shall be the substance of my shrift? Adam in
the garden, I am to new name all the beasts in
the field and all the gods in the sky. I am to
invite men drenched in Time to recover them-
selves and come out of time, and taste their na-
tive immortal air. I am to fire with what skill
I can the artillery of sympathy and emotion. I
am to indicate constantly, though all unworthy,
the Ideal and Holy Life, the life within life, the
Forgotten Good, the Unknown Cause in which
we sprawl and sin. I am to try the magic of sin-
cerity, that luxury permitted only to kings and
poets. Tam to celebrate the spiritual powers in


1839) HEED THE SPIRIT 289
their infinite contrast to the mechanical powers
and the mechanical philosophy of this time. I
am to console the brave sufferers under evils
whose end they cannot see by appeals to the
great optimism, self-affirmed in all bosoms.
Jones Very only repeated, in a form not agree-
able, the thought which agitated me in earlier
years, when he said, “The same spirit which
brings me to your door prepares my welcome.”
Shall I not say this in its extent of sense to the
men and institutions of today? Think, and you
annihilate the times. Drink of the cup which
God proffers to your lips and these storming,
anxious, contradicting, threatening crowds which
surround you, mad with debt and credit, with
banks and politics, with books and churches and
meats and drinks, shall all flee away like ghosts
from the new-born soul. They are much to you
while the same blood flows in your veins and
theirs. But let the man put off the merchant in
you, and all this shall be pictures merely.
October 19.
Another day; the old game; up again, this
wonderful but unhandsome machine, with thy
hopes and shames; poor boasting augur, who


290
JOURNAL (AGE 36
sufferest as many misgivings on the edge of suc-
cess as on the brink of failure, and tremblest with
as many hopes on the eve of misfortune as on
thy best day. And hark, New Day! they batter
the grey cheek of thy morning with booming of
cannon, and now with lively clatter of bells and
whooping of all the village boys. An unwonted
holiday in our quiet meadows and sandy valleys,
and Cornwallis must surrender today.' Without
sympathy with the merry crowd, the pale student
must yet listen and perchance even go abroad
to beg a look at the sun.
Who can blame men for seeking excitement?
They are polar, and would you have them sleep
in a dull eternity of equilibrium? Religion, love,
ambition, money, war, brandy,—some fierce an-
tagonism must break the round of perfect circula-
i A popular and attractive feature in the annual Musters
of the State Militia as late as 1856 was a representation of the
surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. Some jovial coun-
try colonel in blue and buff took the part of Washington, and an-
other powdered red-coated officer, as the British general, gave
up his sword to him. Old costumes and weapons from garrets
lent an antiquarian interest to the historic farce.
" Recollect what fun we had, you 'n' I and Ezry Hollis,
Up there to Waltham Plain, last fall, along o' the Cornwallis ?".
Lowell, Biglow Papers, First Series.


1
1839) THE CORNWALLIS 291
tion or no spark, no joy, no event can be. As
good not be. In the country, the lover of nature
dreaming through the wood would never awake
to thought if the scream of an eagle, the cries of
a crow or a curlew near his head, did not break
the continuity. Nay, if the truth must out,
the finest lyrics of the poet come of this coarse
parentage; the imps of matter beget such child
on the Soul, fair daughter of God.
And so I went to the Sham-Fight and saw the
whole show with pleasure. The officer instantly
appears through all this masquerade and buffoon-
ery. I thought when I first went to the field that
it was the high tide of nonsense, and indeed the
rag-tag and bobtail of the county were there in
all the wigs, old hats, and aged finery of the last
generations. Then the faces were like the dresses,
so exaggerated, - noses, chins and mouths,-
that one could not reconcile them with any other
dress than that frippery they wore. Yet presently
Nature broke out in her old beauty and strength
through all this scurf. The man of skill makes
his jacket invisible. Two or three natural sol-
diers among these merry captains played out their
habitual energy so well that order and reason
appeared as much at home in a farce as in a
legislature. Meantime the buffoons of a sham


292
JOURNAL (AGE 36
fight are soon felt to be as impertinent there as
elsewhere. This organization suffices to bring
pioneers, soldiers, outlaws and homicides distinct
to view, and I saw Washington, Napoleon and
Marat come strongly out of the mottled crew.
October 21.
How can I not record, though now with sleepy
eye and flagging spirits, so fair a fact as the visit
of Alcott and Margaret Fuller, who came hither
yesterday and departed this morning? Very
friendly influences these, each and both. Cold
as I am, they are almost dear. I shall not, how-
ever, fill my page with the gifts or merits of
either. They brought nothing but good spirits
and good tidings with them of new literary plans
here, and good fellowship and recognition abroad.
And then to my private ear a chronicle of sweet
romance, of love and nobleness which have in-
spired the beautiful and brave. What is good to
make me happy is not however good to make
me write. Life too near paralyses art. Long these
things refuse to be recorded except in the invisi-
ble colors of memory:
Trust thy time also. What a fatal prodigality
to contemn our age. One would say we could


1839) TRUST THY TIME 293
well afford to slight all other ages if only we
value this one. Not for nothing it dawns out of
Everlasting Peace, this pretty Discord, this great
Discontent, this self-accusing Reflection. What
apology, what praise, can equal the fact that here
it is; therefore certainly in the vast Optimism
here it ought to be? The great will seize with
eagerness this novel crisis when the old and the
new stand face to face, and reflection is for a
time possible, and faith in the eternal stands in
close neighborhood to exhausting analysis of the
economical.
The very time sees for us, thinks for us ; it
is a microscope such as philosophy never had.
Insight is for us which was never for any. And
doubt not the moment and the opportunity are
divine. He who shall represent the genius of
this day, he who shall, standing in this great
cleft of Past and Future, understand the dignity
and power of his position so well as to write the
laws of Criticism, of Ethics, of History, will be
found, an age hence, neither false nor unfortu-
nate, but will rank immediately and equally with
all the masters whom we now acknowledge.
I heard with joy that which thou toldest me,
O eloquent lady, of thy friends and mine, yet


294
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
with my joy mingled a shade of discontent.
Things must not be too fine. Parian marble
will not stand exposure to our New England
weather, and, though I cannot doubt the ster-
ling sincerity of the mood and moment you de-
scribe, and though I am cheered to the bottom
of my heart by these dear magnanimities which
made their way to the light in the neighbourhood
of all that is common, yet I dare not believe
that a mood so delicate can be relied on like a
principle for the wear and tear of years. It will
be succeeded by another and another, and the
new will sport with the old. Yet as it is genuine
today, it will never be nothing.
A part of the protest we are called to make
is to the popular mode of virtuous endeavor.
“Will you not come to this convention and
nominate a Temperance ticket? Let me show
you the immense importance of the step.” Nay,
my friend, I do not work with those tools. The
principles on which your church and state are
built are false, and a portion of this virus vitiates
the smallest detail even of your charity and re-
ligion. Though I own I sympathize with your
desire and abhor your adversaries, yet I shall
persist in wearing this robe, all loose and unbe-


1839] THE SOUL HEIR OF ALL 295
coming as it is, of inaction, this wise passiveness
until my hour comes when I can see how to act
with truth as well as to refuse.
ness
It pleases the great soul, that the present per-
ception should arise in the universal heart of
man of the Soul's all - sufficiency and so that
literature, art, persons, space, time should be un-
dervalued. Do not doubt that this mood is one
sign in Heaven's eternal zodiack, or mistake
the spirit of piety in which this old noblesse is
assailed. It is not, as old men fancy, in a brag-
ging spirit, that philosophy now tends to dispar-
age books, and affirm that the reader of Shaks-
pear is also a Shakspear, or he could find no
joy in the page. Nor does the young student
persuade himself that he could bodily restore
the Parthenon, whilst he affirms the ultimate
identity of the artist and the spectator; but only
in the spirit of a child who says, I am but a
child, but I am the heir of all. Certainly we
concede that nothing has yet been greatly done,
but we will not therefore distrust this great faith.
Its boundlessness is already a grandeur. The
greatness of this age is in its Prayer. You say
you see no Miltons or Dantes, and only are
disgusted by the flippant pretenders who decry


296
JOURNAL
(Age 36
them. But take the same view of your poets
[that] we do whom this vision of God makes
happy, use your literature more impersonally,
strip it of this accurate individuality. Take all
that you call Dante, the whole mass of images,
thoughts and emotions, and believe, what is
certainly true, that it is not poorly confined to
certain Florentine flesh and blood, but that it is
an eternal flower of the world, a state of thought
indigenous in all souls, because in the One Soul
a sign of your zodiack, and so shall you in your
progress learn at last that the deified Alighieri
was only a type of the great class of divine
shapes to which he led you, the book a brute
harp-string which, vibrating on your ear, causes
you to see God and his angels, and that you
have a right, not derived, but original, to all the
pomp of real nature to which the name of Dante
was frontispiece. Observe, then, that this hu-
mour which offended you as brag is not so,
but is only a different manner of considering
literature, and leaves in the pupil as much
veneration for Shakspear and Homer as be-
fore; only they are made still alive, their power
still accessible and not a sepulchre to him.
Books. - In the statements we make so freely


1839) THE CHRISTIAN EPOCH 297
that books are for idle hours' and when we flout
all particular books as initial merely, we truly
express the privilege of spiritual nature, but alas
not the fact and fortune of this low Concord and
Boston, of these humble Octobers and Novem-
bers of mortal life. ...
The Christianity represents no absolute fact
in history, but only the present and recent state
of thought. The traditional or conventional lan-
guage on the subject is very ignorant. We choose
to speak as if only in one book, or one life, was
the pure light; but the wise know better; the ex-
perience of each intelligent reader belies the tale.
Whenever we are wise, every book we read
streams with an universal light. Whenever we are
wise, the whole world is wise and emblematic. The
great books do in that hour give us in every
page the most authentic tokens that they also
recognize the holiest law, the Unutterable. They
do not preach; they recognize it in strains of pure
melody. The Greek mythology - what a won-
1 See « The American Scholar”(Nature, Addresses and
Lectures, p. 91).
2 The rest of this long passage is the opening paragraph of
« Thoughts on Modern Literature," printed in the Dial, and
included in Natural History of Intellect, pp. 309, 310.


298
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
derful example is that of profound sense over-
mastering the finite speakers and writers of the
fables ! Always and never the world is wise.
October 23.
Fact is better than fiction if only we could get
pure fact. Do you think any rhetoric or any ro-
mance would get your ear from one who could
tell, straight on, the history of man, who could
reconcile your moral character and your natural
history, who could explain your misfortunes,
your fevers, your debts, your temperament, your
habits of thought, your tastes, and in every ex-
planation not sever you from the Whole, butunite
you to it? Is it not plain that, not in senates, or
courts, or chambers of commerce, but in the con-
versation of a true philosopher, the eloquence
must be found that can agitate, convict, inspire
and possess us and guide us to a true peace?' I
look upon the Lecture-room as the true church
of today and as the home of a richer eloquence
than Faneuil Hall or the Capitol ever knew.
1 All of this entry, thus far, is printed in “ Domestic Life.”
(See Society and Solitude, pp. 107, 108.) It is reproduced
here because of the curious change in the text in the printed
volume, seeming to show the mellowing of the author's char-
acter. There “the dwelling house" takes the place of the
conversation of a true philosopher.”


1839]
MICHEL ANGELO 299
Michel Angelo is as well entitled to the sur-
name Colossal as Charles to his Magne, or Alfred
to his Great.
The genius of Michel aims at Strength in all
figures, not in gods and prophets alone, but in
women and in children; a divine Strength, ti-
tanic, aboriginal before the world was; a strength
anterior to all disease. The colossal in him is not
in the outline or particular drawing, but is in-
trinsic; and so appears in all; to this, Beauty
is made incidental.
Michel esteemed the human form the best
ornament, and so uses no other in each cornice
or compartment, only a new and wondrous atti-
tude of sleep or energy.
See a knot of country people working out
their road-tax or laying a new bridge. How close
are they to their work. How they sympathize
with every log, and foreknow its every nod and
stir with chain and crowbar, and seem to see
through the ground all the accidents of preser-
vation and decay.
Truth of Character. Temperance. — Truth will
cure all our ails. I hate the giving of the hand
unless the whole man accompanies it. I hate
giving seven pounds of rice or sugar to a poor


300
JOURNAL (Age 36
person whose whole character is disagreeable to
me.' ...
But now men are multiplex. The good offices
they do are not their genuine aim, the mere
flower and perfume of their nature, but are a
compliance and a compliment, and contradicted
by other actions on the same day. Their tem-
perance is a plume, a feather in the cap, this os-
tentatious glass of cold water and dry, raw, vege-
table diet that makes your blood run cold to
see, is not the joyful sign that they have ceased
to care for food in nobler cares, but no, they
peak and pine and know all they renounce.
Temperance when it is only the sign of intrin-
sic virtue is graceful as the bloom on the cheek
that betokens health, but temperance that is
nothing else but temperance is phlegm or con-
ceit. Is it not better they should do bad offices
and be intemperate so long as that is their rul-
ing love? So at least they should not be hypo-
crites. Also I lament that people without char-
acter, seeing the homage that is paid to character,
demand the homage, and feel seriously injured
and bewail themselves if it is withholden; and
then the silly friends affect to yield that homage,
1 The rest is in “ Domestic Life” (Society and Solitude,
p. 109).


1839) FACETS OF LIFE 301
and so lie and steal and transform themselves
into the similitude of apes and serpents.
October 26.
There is that in us which mutters and that
which groans and that which chants and that
which aspires.
The piano educates, and the evening game, as
well as the sciences and afflictions. Abolition is
poetic, has produced good verses, Whittier's, for
example; phrenology never one, but prose only.
There are facts which turn curled heads round
at church and send wonderful eyebeams across
assemblies, from one to one, never missing in
the thickest crowd, which it behooves the phi-
losopher also to remember. One must not in
scrutiny.of causes forget, any more, that a large
part of the content of men in institutions which
poets esteem odious arises from the rude health
of men, a health which makes a hard board pew
as soft a seat as an ottoman in a palace, and the
drowsiest sermon as agreeable a circumstance as
music and dancing to another man.
Rest and Love. — There are two elements of
which our nature is mixed, most unequally in


302
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
different individuals. The first is Rest, predomi-
nant in manifold facts, from the vision of reason,
the contemplation of the infinite, to the simple
satisfaction in permanence, the love of whatis old,
Old Age itself, Sleep and Death. The second
is Love.
The Past. — The Centuries are conspirators
against the sanity and majesty of the soul. The
greatness of Greece consists in this, that no
Greece preceded it.
October 27.
Garrison. — Don't seek to vamp and abut
principles. They were before you were born,
and will be when you are rotten. You might as
well paint the sky blue with a bluebag.
The old thought which I loved in my youth
when the roar of politics fell harshest on my
ear, that presently government would cease to
be sought by gentlemen and would be de-
spatched by a few clerks, is now embodied, and,
as far as I heard last night, very ably and truly
preached by the Non-Resistants with Garrison
at their head, a man of great ability in conversa-
tion, of a certain longsightedness in debate which
is a great excellence, a tenacity of his proposition
which no accidents or ramblings in the con-


1839]
GARRISON
303
versation can divert, a calmness and method in un-
folding the details of his argument, and an elo-
quence of illustration, which contents the ear and
the mind, — thus armed with all the weapons
of a great apostle — no, not yet, until I have re-
membered his religion, which is manifest, his
religious trust in his principles, and his clearness
from any taint of private end. And yet the man
teases me by his continual wearisome trick of
quoting texts of Scripture and his Judaical Chris-
tianity, and then by the continual eye to num-
bers, to societies. Himself is not enough for him.
But to the principle of non-resistance again,
Trust it. Give up the government without too
solicitously inquiring whether roads can be still
built, letters carried, and title - deeds secured
when the government of force is at an end.'...
Again it seems clear that we should never
cumber ourselves with maintaining either popu-
lar religion or popular Sabbaths or popular
Laws, if we do not want them ourselves. Are
they now maintained by [us] because the world
needs them? Let the world maintain them.
And you shall find, if the deacons and the
1 The continuation of this passage is found in “ Politics”
(Essays, Second Series, p. 220).


304
JOURNAL (AGE 36
priests all fail, the bank presidents and the
chambers of commerce, yea, the very inn-hold-
ers and democrats of the county would muster
with fury to their support.
Prophecy is not more sacred than the know-
ledge of the present. It is only the fixing the eye
on the hill-top before you, instead of the fields
around. Believe thy faintest presentiment, and
thou art a prophet. And how all my experience
admonishes me not to throw up an abstraction
because I cannot solve to flesh and blood the
objections they make to it. I am always sure to
see those objections highly solved, self-solved,
by cleaving to the law. A law has eagle-wings,
and its own path to heaven and to earth.
In our modern reforms there's a little too much
commentary on the movement by the mover.
It is not to be contested that a selfish com-
merce and government have got possession of
the masses. Whilst we plead for the Ideal we
do not pretend that we have the majority."
I wrote to S. G. Ward, “There are fewer
1 The passage thus beginning occurs in “ Thoughts on
Modern Literature,” first printed in the Dial (National His-
tory of Intellect, p. 317).


1839)
POEM OR PICTURE
305
painters than poets.”Ten men can awaken
me by words to new hope and fruitful musing
for one that can achieve the miracle by forms.
Besides, I think the pleasure of the poem lasts
longer. And yet the expressive arts ought to go
abreast and as much genius find its way to light
in design as in song, and probably does, so far
as the artist is concerned, but the eye is a
speedier student than the ear. By a grand or a
lovely form it is astonished or delighted once
for all, and quickly appeased, whilst the sense of
a verse steals slowly on the mind and suggests a
hundred fine fancies before its precise import is
settled. Or is this wholly unjust to the noble
art of design and only showing that I have a hun-
gry ear but a dull eye? Will you let me say that
I have conceived more highly of the possibili-
ties of the art sometimes in looking at weather-
stains on a wall, or fantastic shapes which the
eye makes out of shadows by lamplight, than
from really majestic and finished pictures ?
i See Letters from Ralph Waldo Emerson to a Friend,
1838–1853 (edited by Charles Eliot Norton ; Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., 1899). Mr. Ward had lent his friend a
portfolio containing the large engravings of Michel Angelo's
frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.
2 This coincides with the advice of Leonardo da Vinci
to artists in his Treatise on Painting.


306
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
clails,
October 28.
The world can never be learned by learning
all its details.
Variety of topic and of illustration may be a
sign of poverty and not of wealth, as the double
and treble plots of Spanish plays, and the over-
crowding of action, indicate a lack of genius to
expand one action to just and majestic issues.
The Age. — One would say that the present
Reflective Period had not reached its meridian
and will endure for some time yet, who consid-
ered that no great analyst except Kant has yet
appeared, and Kant is rather a technical analyst
than an universal one such as the times tend to
form.
The Age, what is it? It is what the being is
who uses it, - a dead routine to me, and the
vista of Eternity to thee. One man's view of
the age is confined to his shop and the mar-
ket, and another's sees the roots of Today in all
the Past and beneath the Past in the Necessary
and Eternal. Let us not dwell so fondly on
the characteristics of a single Epoch as to be-
reave ourselves of the permanent privileges of
nian,


IIIIIN
1839] KEEP YOUNG. ANGELO 307
We ought never to lose our youth. In all
natural and necessary labors, as in the work of
a farm, in digging, in splitting, rowing, drawing
water, a man always appears young- is still a
boy. So in doing anything which is still above
him, which asks all his strength and more;
somewhat commensurate with his ability, so
that he works up to it, not down upon it, - he
is still a youth. But if his work is unseasonable,
as botany and shells or the Greek verbs at eighty
years of age, or playing Blindman's Buff, we
say, Go up, thou baldhead!
Best Gift.— The dreams of youth, the pas-
sion of love are the constant reproduction of the
vision of the Ideal, which God will not suffer
a moment to remit its presence or to relax its
energy as a coagent in history.
October 31.
No article so rare in New England as Tone.
W
November 3.
In Boston I visited the gallery of Sculpture
and saw the Day and Night of Michel Angelo.
I find in Michel more abandon than in Mil-
ton. . . . Wonderful figure and head of Day.
The head suggests not only, as when I first saw
it in Florence, the sun new risen resting over the


308
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
brow of a hill, but, when better seen, a whole
rough landscape of woods and mountains. I see
reason for this figure being called Day: and I
called the Night, Night.
The Jove of Phidias pleases me well. In the
afternoon I visited Alcott and in the evening
Ward came to see me, and the next morning
again brought me Raphael's designs to show
me that Raphael was greater than Angelo, great
as Shakspear. But in making this scale we must
be very passive. The gods and demigods must
seat themselves without seneschal in our Olym-
pus, and as they can instal themselves by sen-
iority divine, so will I worship them, and not
otherwise. I had told Alcott that my First Class
stood, for today, perhaps thus : Phidias, Jesus,
Angelo, Shakspear; or if I must sift more
sternly still, — Jesus and Shakspear were two
men of genius.
The common reply to the physician is, — “See
how many healthy men use the foods and liquors
and practices which you reprehend.” And men
see in this fact a treachery in Nature herself, in-
stead of esteeming it the bending goodness of
the god, the resistance of the Soul, the moral
purchase, the intercession of the spirit, the elas-


1839) HEALTH. INNOCENCE 309
ticity straining still against the noxious wrong
and giving the poor victim still another and yet
another chance of self-recovery and escape.
Health. — Is it becoming or agreeable to your
imagination that the bursts of divine poetry, that
the new delineations of God and his world should
be the inspirations of opium or tea?
It is the condition of inspiration - Marry
Nature, and not use her for pleasure.
He who has not yet departed from his inno-
cence stands in the highway which all souls must
travel, and, solitary as he may at moments seem
to himself, he is lovely, and that which we seek
in society : so that he appears to all beholders to
stand betwixt them and the sun, a transparent
object, and whoso journeys towards that person,
journeys towards the sun. But he who departs
from his innocency must be loved for himself
and not for virtue: the time given to courting
his affection is lost to any other object, and
the affection itself is a false and fugitive affec-
tion.
It is only known to Plato that we can do with-
out Plato.


310
JOURNAL (Age 36
Older! Older! We wish sign, in praising or
describing aught, that the eye has seen other
things. Deep eyes that have drank more of this
wine than others.
Nose and Teeth. - I saw at the Athenæum
with great pleasure that old head of Jove attrib-
uted to Phidias. It is sublime in general and in
all the details except the nose, which did not be-
seem the father of the gods. Indeed, it is not easy
to imagine the shaping of that feature (long ago
excluded from epic poetry) worthily for such a
form. And this is strange. Yet the nose of Cæsar
and of Pitt suggest “ the terrors of the beak.” I
have mentioned elsewhere that the teeth in the
physiognomy express limitation. For that reason
it is very plain that no painter could dare to show
the teeth in the head of Jupiter.
The City delights the Understanding. It is
made up of finites: short, sharp, mathematical
lines, all calculable. It is full of varieties, of suc-
cessions, of contrivances. The Country, on the
contrary, offers an unbroken horizon, the mo-
notony of an endless road, of vast uniform plains,
of distant mountains, the melancholy of uniform
and infinite vegetation; the objects on the road


1839 OUR GENERATION'S DUTY 311
are few and worthless, the eye is invited ever to
the horizon and the clouds. It is the school of
Reason.
The problem which belongs to us to solve is
new and untried. Born in the age of calculation
and criticism, we are to carry it, with all its tri-
umphs, and yield it captive to the universal
Reason. Educated in the very shop and the mill,
taught that nature exists for use and the raw
material of art, conveyed, clothed, fed by steam,
educated in traditions, and working in state, in
church, in education, and in charities by mechan-
ical methods, we are yet made to hear the au-
guries and prophecies of the Soul, which makes
light of all these proud mechanisms, breathes on
them and they become ashes and shadows, and
calls us to the Holy and the Eternal, not by the
Past, but by the Present, not by men, but alone,
not by Bibles, but through thought and lowliest
submission of heart. I see already this effort in
eminent individuals. They are renouncing that
which had been their pride: they encounter scorn
and live with scorned men. They acquire a se-
rener, heavenlier eye and brow. They avow and
defend what yesterday they contradicted; and
gain daily a reliance on principles and the habit


312
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
cessant
of reposing child-like on the lap of the incessant
Soul.
The greatness of all our heroes is to be re-
vised. All reputations each age revises. Very
few immutable men has History to show. We
are to issue a Quo warranto and revoke the char-
ters of fame. There are all degrees of greatness,
and this foolish praising, so vague and superla-
tive, must be retrenched. ...
November 6.
People hold to you as long as you please
yourself with the Ideal life only as a pretty
dream and concede a resistless force to the lim-
itations of the same, to structure, or organiza-
tion, and to society. But as quickly as you
profess your unlimited allegiance to the first, so
far as to be no longer contented with doing the
best you can in the circumstances, but demand
that these mountain circumstances should skip
like rams and the little hills like lambs before
the presence of the Soul, then they distrust your
wisdom and defy your resolutions. And yet Na-
ture is in earnest. That aspiration in every heart
which they like that you should paint, or carve,
or chaunt, — anything but enact, - is not a cas-
tle in the air. They moreover admit it in the
moral world ; they concede that a perfect jus-


1839)
IDEALS.. ALARM
313
tice should be sought and done; but an intel-
lectual equality, an intellectual society, a mode
of domestic life, in which trifles should at last
descend to their place, confectionery should come
down, and character, art, and joy ascend, this is
an incredible proposition. But what they con-
cede destroys the force of their denial. Nature
is unique throughout. The prayer of the soul
predicts its own answer in facts. The moral na-
ture is not a patch of light here, whilst the social
world is a lump of darkness there, but tends in-
cessantly to rectify and ennoble the whole cir-
cumference of facts.
Never was anything gained by admitting the
omnipotence of limitations, but all immortal ac-
tion is an overstepping of these busy rules. In
Rome, a consul was thanked by the Senate be-
cause he had not despaired of the Republic.
Today a letter came to me from John Ster-
ling. So have I two friends in England to make
the heart and mind glad.'
A great man stands on God. A small man
stands on a great man.
i See Correspondence of John Sterling and Emerson ;
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1897.


314
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
A man's subject always lies in his recent
thought and habits, and is to be found by just
observations, not in odd moments, but in sane
moments.
Honor him whose life is a perpetual vic-
tory.' ... Virtue was never yet a good Whig.
Ward showed me a volume of Raphael's de-
signs by way of evincing Raphael's title to stand
in the first class of men of genius. The book
did certainly surprise me with the opulence of
his genius, and if this were a question in which
details of power had any place, this would be un-
exceptionable evidence. But it is a question not
of talents but of tone, and not particular merits,
but the mood of mind into which one and an-
other can bring us is the only relevant testimony.
Prudence governs the world, and not Religion
or Science or Art. Mr. Cunard sends the steam-
packet from Boston to England, and not I. In
order that principles should rig and man and
sail the ship, it needs to begin far back, and
bring about a new state of society. At present,
1 What follows is printed in “Worship” (Conduct of
Life, p. 237).


1839] HARLEIAN MISCELLANY 315
a right-minded individual can only live so as to
point at these ends, to imply Love and Art and
Knowledge in every moment of his life.
An admirable account of the Battle of Lüt-
zen is contained in the fourth volume of the
Harleian Miscellany, translated from the French,
though, if it were not so stated, I should not
suspect a translation. The piece was printed
1633, 4to, 45 pages, — far superior to any-
thing I remember in Schiller's War.
The story of the Battle of Lützen is worthy
of Plutarch.“ Gustavus was never weary though
ever busied, as if action had been his nourish-
ment.” “He would often say “That he was
willing to bear with others' infirmities, as the
phlegm of some and the wine of others, and
that therefore reciprocally his choler deserved
some support.' And, to say truth, this passion
may challenge and win connivance from him
who shall duly consider his working spirit never
weakened though ever bended,” etc., etc.
In the same volume is Cavendish's “Nego-
tiations of Cardinal Wolsey," printed in Lon-
don 1641.
Cavendish, who was Wolsey's Gentleman
Usher, being sent before him when in France


316
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
to secure Lodgings at Champaigne, relates that
on his arriving at Champaigne, being sat at din-
ner in his inn over against the market place, he
“ heard a great noise and clattering of bills and
looking out I saw the officers of the town bring-
ing a prisoner to execution, and with a sword
cut off his head. I demanded what was the
offence. They answered me, 'For killing of red
deer in the forest near adjoining.' And inconti-
nently they held the poor man's head upon a
pole in the market place between the stag's
horns, and his four quarters set up in four
places of the forest.”
Certainly this anecdote is not a specimen of
Law as we know it in America. Government is
here less ferocious, but it has not yet become
amiable. Does the Custom House, does the Stat-
ute Book associate itself with any idea of Glad-
ness, of Genius, of Holiness, of the progress of
man? When we look at a plant, at a gem, at a
landscape, we behold somewhat accordant with,
though inferior to, our own nature. But I ask
if a man should go to walk in the woods and
should there find suspended on the oaks or bul-
rushes electioneering placards setting forth the
pretensions of Mr. Van Buren or Mr. Harri-
son, whether the new train of thoughts thus


1839]
BOOKS. HELPS
317
awakened would harmonize with the place, or
would exalt his meditation?
Is not the breast of man the home of the
Vast and the Awful, as well as the gay and con-
venient? The (Holy) Ideal still soars above us,
let us mount as we will, and is as far from the
heights of thought as from the chaffering of the
market.
Our moods do not believe in each other.'...
Books. — Linnæus's Tour in Lapland, and two
French novels. I read the first as White's Sel-
borne, or Plutarch, or Elgin marbles, or the cold,
moist morn itself. The latter is lamp-smoke
and indigestion.
November 9.
We are helped along by good and bad ; am-
bition, want, vanity, and such canaille spur us
to industry. I have no love for Lord Brougham,
yet the recital of his immense and unweariable
activity inspires good resolutions in me.
So comes ever the question whether our pro-
fane mode of educating children even up to man-
hood by emulation is purely noxious....
1 The rest of the passage is printed in “ Circles” (Essays,
First Series, p. 306).
2 The long passage in “ Education," including the dis-


318
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
And yet the familiar observation of the uni-
versal compensations might suggest the fear that
so summary a step of a bad humour was more
jeopardous than its continuance; it is driven
into the constitution and has infected the brain
and the heart.
The same difference is between the Revival
of Religion or the partaking of the Lord's Sup-
per, and the life of spiritual obedience.
The book that alarms one man, threatening
the disorganization of society, is heard of by
one of higher principle with no more emotion
than the cheeping of a mouse in the wall.
The question between men is, Are they still
advancing? or, are the seals set to their charac-
ter and they now making a merchandise simply
of that which they can do? In general, men of
genius who know no period are incapable of
any perfect exhibition, because, however agreea-
ble it may be to them to act on the public, it is
always a secondary matter. They are humble,
self-accusing, moody men, whose worship is
toward the Ideal Beauty which chooses to be
cussion of corporal punishment, follows (Letters aud Biograpb-
ical Sketches, p. 154).


1839] ADVANCE. FASHIONISTS 319
courted in sylvan solitudes, in retired libraries,
in nocturnal conversations with a few; with one
companion, or in silent meditation. Their face
is forward and their heart is in this heaven. By
so much are they disqualified for a perfect suc-
cess in any of the arenas of ambition to which
they can give only a divided affection. But the
man of talents, who has attained and has ceased
to advance, has every advantage in the contro-
versy. He can give that cool and commanding
attention to the thing to be done, as shall secure
its just performance.
e
Fashionists. — Do not be afraid of cold water,
nor cold weather, nor cold countenances. Frost
is wholesome and hardens the constitution.
There will always be in society certain persons
who are very mercuries of its approbation and
so whose glance will at any time determine for
the curious their standing in the world. These
are the mercuries of the lesser gods. Accept
their coldness as a good omen of grace with
the loftier deities. And be not so weak as to
quarrel with these functionaries. They are
clear in their office, nor could they be there
and thus formidable to you without their own
merits.


320 . JOURNAL
(Age 36
Our exaggeration of all fine characters arises
from the fact that we identify each in turn with
the soul. Presently the individual warps and
shrinks away and we accuse him. It it very hard
to find an ideal in history. By courtesy we call
saints and heroes such, but they are very defec-
tive characters.' I cannot easily find a man I
would be.
It is only low merits that can be enumerated.
Fear when your friends say to you what you
have done well, and say it through. But when
they cannot say it, when they stand beside you
with uncertain, timid looks of respect and yet
half dislike, inclined to suspend their judgment
of you for years to come, then you may begin
to hope and to trust.
November 13.
Do something; it matters little or not at all
whether it be in the way of what you call your
profession or not, so it be in the plane or coinci-
dent with the axis of your character. The reaction
is always proportioned to the action, and it is the
reaction that we want. Strike the hardest blow
you can, and you can always do this by work
i Compare what is said to this effect in the third page of
“ Nominalist and Realist” (Essays, Second Series).


1839) TRUE MEN. COMPANY 321
which is agreeable to your nature. This is econ-
omy.
Self-culture. — In hard times, cultivate your-
self, and you cannot lose your labor. A just man,
a wise man, is always good property; the world
cannot do without him, be the fashions or the
laws or the harvest what they may. But if he seek
to suit the times he miserably fails. Even Plato
and Kant can hardly be trusted to write of God. As
soon as one sets out to write in the course of his
book of the Divine mind, the love of System
vitiates his perception. He grows a little limitary.
The truest account of that Idea would be got by
an observation and record of the incidental ex-
pressions of the most intelligent men when they
speak of God quite simply and without any
second thought.
Hospitality, — Who is timid and uneasy and
fleeting but the master of the house, when his
house is full of company? He should be glad that
such brave and wise men are happy around his
hearth, and he is tormented instead with fantas-
tic supposition. He hates every civil thing that
is said to him, as if it implied that their freedom
was less than he had wished it. He scorns to treat


322
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
any one with particular kindness, as if it were
some encroachment on that rude freedom he de-
sires should prevail. It would give him some
contentment if they would put his real gener-
osity to the proof by hard knocks and abusive
personalities levelled at himself. What a fine sen-
timent lay under the bold usage of the Romans
when they set buffoons and satirists about the
triumphing consul to warn and insult him! So
they took off this slight delirium and vacillation
of success, and gave to the day a solid content.
Alcott seems to need a pure success. If the
men and women whose opinion is fame could
see him as he is and could express heartily as
these English correspondents their joy in his
genius, I think his genius would be exalted and
relieved of some spots, with which a sense of
injustice and loneliness has shaded it.'
I Alcott's Records of a School awakened the lively interest
of several earnest Englishmen, who wrote letters welcoming
his high ideas on Education. First of these was John Pierpont
Greaves, a merchant, who, when his trade was ruined by
Napoleon's wars, went to Switzerland and became the friend
of Pestalozzi, and in England worked for Infant Schools and
Emancipation. Other correspondents were W. Oldham,
John Heraud, who conducted the Monthly Magazine, which
took notice of the American Transcendentalists, and Charles


1839) INSPIRED WRITING 323
But no great man will ever drill. None will
ever solve the problem of his character accord-
ing to our preconceived notions or wishes, but
only in his own high, unprecedented way.
eve
m
A good sentence, a noble verse which I meet
in my reading, are an epoch in my life. From
month to month, from year to year, they re-
main fresh and memorable. Yet when we once
in our writing come out into the free air of
thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is
easier than to continue this communication at
pleasure indefinitely. Up, down, around, the
kingdom of thought has no enclosures, but the
Muse makes us free of her city. Well, the
world has a million writers. One would think
then that thought would be as familiar as the
air and water, and the gifts of each new hour
exclude the repetition of those of the last. Yet
I remember a beautiful verse for twenty years.
air
November 14.
We cannot overvalue our Age. All religious
considerations lead us to prefer it. Then it is
our all. It is the world. As the wandering sea-
Lane and Henry G. Wright, masters of the school founded in
Alcott's honor in Surrey, England, and named for him.


324
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
bird which, crossing the ocean, alights on some
rock or islet to rest for a moment its wings and
to look back on the wilderness of waves behind
and forward to the wilderness of waters before,
so stand we perched on this rock or shoal of
Time arrived out of the Immensity of the Past
and bound and road-ready to plunge into im-
mensity again.
Generosity does not consist in giving money
or money's worth.'
The poor therefore are only they who feel
poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor.' ...
S. M. F. writes me that she waits for the
Lectures, seeing well, after much intercourse,
that the best of me is there. She says very
truly; and I thought it a good remark which
somebody repeated here from S. S.,' that I
“always seemed to be on stilts.” It is even so.
Most of the persons whom I see in my own
house I see across a gulf. I cannot go to them
1 The rest of the passage is found in “ Domestic Life"
(Society and Solitude, pp. 114, 115).
2 The rest of this passage is in “ Domestic Life” (p. 118).
3 Perhaps Sarah Shaw, later the wife of Mr. George R.
Russell of Boston.


re
1839) THE GULF. MIMICRY 325
nor they come to me. Nothing can exceed the
frigidity and labor of my speech with such. You
night turn a yoke of oxen between every pair
of words; and the behavior is as awkward and
proud. I see the ludicrousness of the plight as
well as they. But, having never found any
remedy, I am very patient with this folly or
shame, patient of my churl's mask, in the be-
lief that this privation has certain rich compen-
sations, inasmuch as it makes my solitude dearer,
and the impersonal God is shed abroad in my
heart more richly, and more lowly welcome for
this porcupine impossibility of contact with
men. And yet in one who sets his mark so
high, who presumes so vast an elevation as the
birthright of man, is it not a little sad to be a
mere mill or pump yielding one wholesome
product at the mouth in one particular mode,
but as impertinent and worthless in any other
place or purpose as a pump or a coffee-mill
would be in a parlor or a chapel? I make rock-
ets: must I therefore be a good senator?
ma
Mimicry. - We cannot hear anyone mimic
the notes and sounds of the lower animals, as
frogs, birds, insects, without instantly con-
ceiving a new and immense extension possi-


326
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
ble to the descriptiveness and energy of lan-
guage.
One Mind. — All languages are inter-trans-
lateable.
er
Systems.— I need hardly say to anyone ac-
quainted with my thoughts that I have no Sys-
tem. When I was quite young, I fancied that
by keeping a manuscript Journal by me, over
whose pages I wrote a list of the great topics
of human study, as, Religion, Poetry, Politics,
Love, etc., in the course of a few years I should
be able to complete a sort of encyclopædia
containing the net value of all the definitions at
which the world had yet arrived. But at the end
of a couple of years, my Cabinet Cyclopædia,
though much enlarged, was no nearer to a com-
pleteness than on its first day. Nay, somehow
the whole plan of it needed alteration, nor did
the following months promise any speedier term
to it than the foregoing. At last I discovered
that my curve was a parabola whose arcs would
never meet, and came to acquiesce in the per-
ception that, although no diligence can rebuild
the universe in a model by the best accumula-
tion of disposition of details, yet does the world


1839] ANALYSIS. ANALOGY 327
reproduce itself in miniature in every event that
transpires, so that all the laws of nature may be
read in the smallest fact. So that the truth-
speaker may dismiss all solicitude as to the pro-
portion and congruency of the aggregate of his
thoughts, so long as he is a faithful reporter of
particular impressions.'
Literature is now critical. Well, analysis may
be poetic. People find out they have faces, and
write Physiognomy; sculls, and write Phreno-
logy; mysteries of volition and supervolition,
and explore Somnambulism. Chemistry is criti-
cism on an apple, and a drop of water, and the
glassy air, which to our fathers were wholes,
but which we have resolved. Is not the sub-
lime felt in an analysis as well as in a creation?
ur-
in-
Nature loves analogies, not repetitions. And
those eclectics are doomed to an agreeable sur-
prise who have fancied the Creator so poor in in-
vention that he can produce but three or four
Ages or Schools of thought, and having run
through so short a gamut, must needs repeat the
old tune to infinity.
Once more, it is not the analyst who is un-
happy or who desponds. It is the idler who
in-


328
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
does not the work of the time, who is not in its
spirit, the frivolous and sensual who have the
vices of their class, modified, of course, by the
character of the era, and so we have frivolity and
sensuality with cant, because the time is decor-
ous, and with a smattering of letters and philo-
sophy, because the time is social and analytic.
It is not when I analyse that I am unhappy.
That is common to all men, and independent of
circumstances; in so much that the peculiar dis-
advantages of any time or mode sink into no-
thing beside it. The real danger of American
scholars is not analysis, but sleep, or that they
be not scholars. There is a town in which it
is said all the inhabitants are on their backs
at 2 P.M.
November 15.
We are accustomed to speak of our National
Union and our Constitution as of somewhat
sacred. Individual character and culture are sa-
cred, but these bands are trivial in the compari-
son. The language of the newspapers will un-
dergo a great change in fifty years. The precious
metals are not quite so precious as they have
been esteemed. The spirit of political economy
is low and degrading. Man exists for his own
sake and not to add a laborer to the State. There-


18391 MAN ABOVE MEASURES 329
fore, I never can forgive a great man who suc-
cumbs so far to the mere forms of his day as
to peril his integrity for the sake of adding to
the weight of his personal character the author-
ity of office, or making a real government titular.
Adams, Clay and Webster electioneer. And Na-
ture does not forgive them, for thus they com-
promise their proper majesty, and are farther than
ever from obtaining the adventitious.
Our life is infested by unjust persons, by fools,
by paltry fellows who win a political importance
— by all these tormentors who exercise a power
of annoyance sadly disproportioned to the short-
ness of the term in which we converse with the
Ideas of Religion, Wisdom and Society. Yet the
power to annoy which is given to these agents
for a season, we give. It is merely an outward
or reflex exhibition of our defects. With the up-
rise of the soul these recede and decay.
In the beginning of thought we discriminate
between all those means and labors which con-
tribute to a well-being of the senses, and those
in which the means and the end are one, or which
seek an absolute good, as, Justice. Whatever
proposes this end without end is sacred in our


330
JOURNAL
'[AGE 36
eyes. All the mechanic arts contribute nothing
to this end. The commerce of the world forwards
this end no more than the Indian and his wam-
pum belt. The forms of government- an East-
ern despotism and a Western Democracy — are
indifferent to it. But Love, Friendship, Poetry,
Solitude are friendly to the Conscience.
You would have me at advantage, O friend;
you would come to face me by having first
wronged me. You would cheat me of the ma-
jesty which belongs to every human being.
November 16.
Politics. It is plain that the statesman occu-
pies himself only with the measure, not with the
opinion of the people. By directing all his un-
derstanding and affection on the fact, and not
allowing the people or their enemies to arrest it,
he is able to make his hands meet to come at his
end. If the people must meddle with what they
don't understand, he reprimands them if they
would check, he encourages them if they would
distrust his movement. Is it not plain then that
when the eye of the political agent veers too fre-
quently from the measure to the opinion of the
people, and in course of time fastens on the opin-


1839) SABBATH. DEATH 331
ion mainly, he must lose just so much steadiness
of conduct and therewith so much success ?
In this country there is no measure attempted
for itself by legislatures, but the opinion of the
people is courted in the first place, and the
measures are perfunctorily carried through as sec-
ondary.
Extra fortunam est quicquid donatur amicis.
J. C. SCALIGER.
November 17.
The Sabbath, ... that frankincense out of
a sacred antiquity!
Why should they call me good-natured? I too,
like puss, have a retractile claw.
What just theology is in the popular proverb,
« Every man for himself and the Lord for us
all.”
Death. — And where is he now? O, he is dead,
poor fellow! That is the sentiment of mankind
upon death, that the dead, be he never so wise,
able, or contented, is a poor fellow.
Men kill themselves. And run the risk of
great absurdity; for our faculties fail us here to


332
JOURNAL [AGE 36
say what is the amount of this freedom, this only
door left open in all the padlocked secrets of
nature, ... this main entry and royal staircase
admitting apparently to the Presence-Chamber,
yet so designedly it seems left wide. It may be
that he who sheathes his knife in his own heart
does an act of grand issues, and it may be a pre-
posterous one. I think I would not try it until
I had first satisfied myself that I did not baulk
and fool myself. The question is whether it is
the way out, or the way in.
Board. — L. C. B. went to board in the coun-
try, and complained that she got bad air, bad
light, bad water, bad fire, bad sound, bad food,
and bad company. The house shook with rats
and mice, smelt of onions, the oil in the lamp
would not burn, the water was foul, the wood on
the fire was soggy and made no flame, the chil-
dren stunned her, the table was poverty itself,
and the people vulgar and knavish, and when she
would walk abroad she could not draw the bolt.
I advised her to publish her adventures under
the name of Bad Board, or the Baroness Trenck.
Homerides. - It is strange how hard we find
it to conceive of the organization of any other


1839) HOMERIDES. TEMPERANCE 333
Ideas than those under which we live. We do not
see that what we call Church, State, School, are
only ideas embodied which have succeeded to
other ideas and must give place hereafter to new.
A new thought will orb itself in a moment. Our
savants cannot believe that the Greek bards
should be able to carry in the memory several
thousand lines, as the Iliad and the Odyssey;
for we have no need of such memories. As lit-
tle could one of these minstrels conceive of the
faculty of one of Whitwell and Bond's clerks,
who, I have heard, can add up five columns
of figures by one numeration instead of five.
Mr. Chase, a clerk of Waterston, Pray and Co.,
will with a ruler add up any number of columns,
- three, four, or five figures at one ascent of
the column.
Temperance. - Who argues so sourly for beef
and mutton against the man of herbs and grains ?
The fat and ruddy eater who hath just wiped his
lips from feeding on a sirloin, whose blood is
spouting in his veins, and whose strength kindles
that evil fire in his eye. It is not then the voice
of man that I hear, but it is the beef and brandy
that roar and rail for beef and brandy. But shall
these play the judge in their own cause?


334
JOURNAL [AGE 36
The Bible. — The transcendent, I have said,
is economy also. Literary accomplishments, skill
in grammar, logic and rhetoric can never coun-
tervail the want of things that demand voice.
Literature is but a poor trick when it busies
itself to make words pass for things. The most
original book in the world is the Bible. This old
collection of the ejaculations of love and dread,
of the supreme desires and contritions of men,
proceeding out of the region of the grand and
eternal, by whatsoever different mouths spoken,
and through a wide extent of times and coun-
tries, seems the alphabet of the nations, and all
posterior literature either the chronicle of facts
under very inferior Ideas, or, when it rises to
sentiment, the combinations, analogies or degra-
dations of this.
It is in the nature of things that the highest
originality must be moral. The only person who
can be entirely independent of this fountain of
literature and equal to it, must be a prophet in
his own proper person. Shakspear, the first lit-
erary genius of the world, leans on the Bible : his
poetry supposes it. If we examine this brilliant
influence, Shakspear, as it lies in our minds, we
shall find it reverent, deeply indebted to the tra-
ditional morality, - in short, compared with the
en


1839] SCRIPTURES. EYES 335
tone of the prophets, Secondary. On the other
hand, the Prophets do not imply the existence
of Shakspear or Homer, — advert to no books
or arts, — only to dread Ideas and emotions.
People imagine that the place which the Bible
holds in the world, it owes to miracles. It owes
it simply to the fact that it came out of a pro-
founder depth of thought than any other book,
and the effect must be precisely proportionate.
Gibbon fancied combinations of circumstances
that gave Christianity its place in history. But
in nature it takes an ounce to balance an ounce.
I have used in the above remarks the Bible
for the Ethical Revelation considered generally,
including, that is, the Vedas, the Sacred writings
of every nation, and not of the Hebrews alone;
although these last, for the very reason I have
given, precede all similar writings so far as to be
commonly called The Book, or Bible, alone.
SON
2
Eyes. — Women see better than men. Men
see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women
see quite without any wish to act. Men of gen-
ius are said to partake of the masculine and fem-
inine traits. They have this feminine eye, a
function so rich that it contents itself without
asking any aid of the hand. Trifles may well be
Ini
ni


336
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
studied by him, for he sees nothing insulated;
the plaid of a cloak, the plaits of a ruffle, the
wrinkles of a face, absorb his attention and
lead it to the root of these matters in universal
Laws.
NOBLESSE
Quoique je ferme un corps, je ne suis qu'une idée :
Plus ma beauté vieillit, plus elle est decidée:
Il faut, pour me trouver, ignorer d'où je viens :
Je tiens tout de lui qui reduit tout à rien.
MME. DU DEFFAND,
Letters of H. Walpole.
November 18.
We are constrained to compare continually
the inspiration of Shakspear with that of Isaiah,
and each new fact with an old standard. Com-
parisons are odious, we say, and we feel a cer-
tain poverty of mind in a too sudden reference of
some new merit to one or a few measures. Yet
who does not see in this inevitable instinct which
forces the rudest to compare, the confession of
one Substance, of one Cause, of one mind?
Scholar and Soldier. — Unius ætatis sunt qui
fortiter fiunt; quæ, vero, pro utilitate reipub-
licæ scribuntur, æterna
VEGETIUS.


se
1839)
THE CLERISY
337
Animal Magnetism. — “Extasi omnia prædi-
cere.” — See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,
vol. I, p. 12.
November 19.
Society quarrels with the Clerisy, or learned
class, if they shall sell their wisdom for money.
But Society compels them to this course. Once,
before Malthus was in vogue, the world thought
its health and grace consisted in its clerisy. The
state magnificently maintained them. No one
could spend money so well, of course, as the
most cultivated. The state took care that the
best qualified should be the richest benefactors.
But times are changed. The church is not now
the resort of all or almost all this class. They
are gone out hence, and the ecclesiastics are not
drawn to the church by their nature, but by
convenience. Of course the church has lost the
veneration of the people ; and they do not like
to pay for its support. Meantime the scholars
out of the church have the same needs as be-
fore: the same fitness to be the almoners of the
state: for all the expenditure of a truly culti-
vated man is like the expenditure of a temple,
religious and public. They have a right, — have
they not?- in proportion to their enlarged sight
to exert a large power, to direct the means of
ven


338
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
NOT
the community, to select and aid and enrich the
youth of genius and virtue. Shall they then,
since the state is no state, gives them no place,
desert also their function in the commonwealth,
untimely deny themselves and those whom they
ought to serve the first means of education?
Shall they kill, through a fatal economy, every
generous proposition of culture to the commu-
nity, forbear assembling themselves together,
grudge the miles of travel that will bring them
face to face with poets and sages, deny them-
selves the sight of a picture, a statue, and a
concert of music, a correspondence with distant
philosophers and the interchange of books and
apparatus ?
Or shall they forsake their duties, since they
are so straitened by your penury, and go dig
in the fields and buy and sell in the markets, to
the detriment of all learning and civility in the
commonwealth, in order that they may have that
share of external power which their insight has
made a higher need to them? If not, then leave
open to them the resource of selling the works
which are the only vendible product of so many
laborious days and watching nights, and whose
price ought to be esteemed sacred, and not
vile.


ve
1839] NATURE'S WORD 339
Death.—“When people are going to die their
faults come out,” was one of Aunt Mary's old
sayings.
November 20.
Ah, Nature! the very look of the woods is
heroical and stimulating. This afternoon in a
very thick grove where Henry Thoreau showed
me the bush of mountain laurel, the first I have
seen in Concord, the stems of pine and hem-
lock and oak almost gleamed like steel upon
the excited eye. How old, how aboriginal these
trees appear, though not many years older than
I. They seem parts of the eternal chain of des-
tiny whereof this sundered will of man is the
victim. Is he proud, high-thoughted and re-
served sometimes? Let him match if he can the
incommunicableness of these lofty natures, beau-
tiful in growth, in strength, in age, in decay. The
invitation which these fine savages give, as you
stand in the hollows of the forest, works strangely
on the imagination. Little say they in recom-
mendation of towns or a civil, Christian life.
Live with us, they say, and forsake these weari-
nesses of yesterday. Here no history or church
or state is interpolated on the divine sky and the
immortal year.


340
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
O Lord! unhappy is the man whom man can
make unhappy.
caco-
This country is not an aristocracy, but a caco-
cracy rather. This town is governed in Wes-
son's bar-room; and the Country in bar-rooms.
November 21.
The best of Literature is in the feeling of
Immortality it awakens. The names of Scaliger,
Cardan, Galen, Sallust, Livy, suggest ideas
of immortal leisure, of elegance and Olympian
thoughts. And the reading these books, or the
exercise of the same faculties in compositions
of our own, makes, for the time, death some-
what incredible and out of nature.
You teach your boy to walk, but he learns to
run himself.
I am charmed with the pensive beauty of the
younger Sibyl of Raphael's Four Sibyls, as I see
the single head in this fine chalk drawing in
Ward's portfolio. What delights me especially
is to observe that in a drawing so wonderfully
bold and yet precise, the face has a liquid soft-
ness. Genius must have copied what genius
drew.


str
1839) AURORA. ENDYMION 341
In Guido's Aurora I enjoy the distinct ex-
pression of morning health and earnestness. It
breathes the dawn. What profound health these
Hours have and how firmly they tread the
clouds. With the most masculine force in every
part of the picture, there is no convulsion, no
straining, no foam, no ado, but the most flow-
ing grace and ease. What fine propriety in all
the details, in the arrangement of the horses, in
the disposition of the group, in the variation of
the attitude and drapery of the figures on the
foreground. Then the horse is nothing but a
morning cloud. The little sea-landscape in the
corner is matutinal also.
November 26.
Ward has given me the Endymion with
friendliest letter.' It shall hang by Carlyle's
Guido.
1 Of this beautiful copy, in a warm reddish sepia, of the
bas-relief in the Capitoline Museum of the sleeping Endymion
and his dog, Mr. Emerson wrote, “I confess I have difi-
culty in accepting the superb drawing which you ask me to
keep. In taking it from the portfolio, I take it from its god-
like companions to put it where it must shine alone. Besides,
I have identified your collection with the collector ; I have been
glad to learn to know you through your friends. They tell me
very eloquently what you love, and a portfolio seems to me a
more expressive vehicle of taste and character than a bunch


342
JOURNAL (AGE 36
Temperance. — The caterpillar and cow and
robin mix the sun and blue sky with their diet.
We hide our bread in cellars and basements.
It matters not how plain is the fare which is
spiced by the sun and sky, as mountaineers and
Indians know.
November 27.
Unconsciousness. — Happy is he who in look-
ing at the compositions of an earlier date knows
that the moment wrote them, and feels no more
call or right to alter them than to alter his re-
collections of a day or a fact. We pretend some-
times to find somewhat of this sacredness in our
scrolls; but I speak of one who should know it.
When once and again the regard and friend-
ship of the noble-minded is offered me, I am
made sensible of my disunion with myself. The
head is of gold, the feet are of clay. In my worthi-
ness I have such confidence, that I can court
solitude. I know that if my aspirations should
demonstrate themselves, angels would not dis-
dain me. Of my unworthiness, the first person
I meet shall apprize me. I shall have so little
of flowers. This beautiful Endymion deserves to be looked on
by instructed eyes.” - See Letters from Ralph Waldo Emer.
son to a Friend, p. 15.


SECT
1839) FRIENDSHIP'S TROUBLES 343
presence, such pitiful, gingerbread considerations,
so many calculations, and such unconcealable
weariness of my company, — that in my heart I
beseech them begone, and I flee to the secretest
hemlock shade in Walden woods to recover my
self-respect. Patimur quisque suos manes! But
when I have shriven myself to the partridges, I
am gay again and content to be alone. Then
I am let into the secret, daily history of
others to whom that grace and conversation I
covet is given, and find such savage melancholy,
such passion, discontent and despair, that sud-
denly I count myself the happiest of men, and
will know the sweetness of bread and water, and
live with the jays and sparrows still.
November 28.
It seems a matter of indifference what, and
how, and how much, you write, if you write
poetry. Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a
single stanza outweighs a book of prose. One
stanza is complete. But one sentence of prose
is not. But it must be poetry.
I do not wish to read the verses of a poetic
mind, but only of a poet. I do not wish to be
shown early poems, or any steps of progress. I
wish my poet to be born adult. I do not find


344
JOURNAL
(Age 36
youth or age in Shakespear, Milton, Herbert,
and I dread minors.
Shelley is never a poet. His mind is uni-
formly imitative; all his poems composite. A
fine English scholar he is, with taste, ear, and
memory; but imagination, the original authen-
tic fire of the bard, he has not. He is clearly
modern, and shares with Wordsworth and Cole-
ridge, Byron, and Hemans the feeling of the
Infinite, which so labors for expression in their
different genius. But all his lines are arbitrary,
not necessary, and therefore, though evidently
a devout and brave man, I can never read his
verses.
The same secondariness pervades Wilson's
poetry. Scott and Crabbe are objective and have
not the feeling of the Infinite. But from Crabbe's
poems may the Muses preserve me!...
Genius and Reform. — And where were the men
of genius whilst these coarse missionaries were
1 This judgment of Shelley was printed in the Dial in 1840
(see « Thoughts on Modern Literature,” in Natural History
of Intellect, p. 319), but in that paper Richter, Chateaubriand,
and Manzoni are associated with Wordsworth, instead of Cole-
ridge, Byron, and Hemans, as here.


1839] GENIUS VS. REFORM DIET 345
making odious the high doctrines of temperance,
love, and the life of nature, which they had first
broached in solemn hymns ? Alas, master, the
Devil put them in their own keeping ; their own
mouths. For their fine organization the plea-
sures of sense were doubly attractive. Palaces,
sofas and delicious tables amused them like
other men, and more than other men, and in
their holiday they forgot to resume their task.
I saw them each taking himself in charge, to
keep himself silent, nor plague the world longer
with the harsh counsel of reform, drugging and
quieting, how he best could, the nerves that were
once harpstrings on which every sunbeam played
music.
Why is our diet and table not agreeable to
the imagination, whilst all other creatures eat
without shame? We paint the bird pecking at
fruit, the browsing ox, the lion leaping on his
prey, but no painter ever ventured to draw a
man eating. The difference seems to consist in
the presence or absence of the world at the feast.
The diet is base, be it what it may, that is hid-
den in caves or cellars or houses. . . . Did you
ever eat your bread on the top of a mountain,
or drink water there? Did you ever camp out


346
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
with lumbermen or travellers in the prairie?
Did you ever eat the poorest rye or oatcake with
a beautiful maiden in the wilderness? and did
you not find that the mixture of sun and sky
with your bread gave it a certain mundane sa-
vour and comeliness?
November 30.
Keats. —
“ And scarce three steps ere Music's golden tongue
Flattered to tears this aged man and poor.” :
“So Saturn as he walked into the midst
Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest,
But that he met Enceladus's eye
Whose mightiness and awe of him at once
Came like an inspiration.”? —
i Mr. Emerson loved to repeat these lines, as also the Saturn
passage given in the text. In the Journal he also copied the
passages beginning —
“ As when upon a trancèd summer night" —
and
“ As Heaven and earth are fairer, — fairer far,-
Than Chaos and blank Darkness" -
and
“One avenue was shaded from thine eyes."
2 Here follow the greater part of two long paragraphs first
printed in the Dial « Thoughts on Modern Literature," and
included in the volume Natural History of Intellect, pp.
314-316.


1839) TRUE SUBJECTIVE 347
December 1.
We are misled by an ambiguity in the use of
the term Subjective. It is made to cover two
things, a good and a bad. The great always
introduce us to facts; small men introduce us
always to themselves. ...
Would you know the genius of the Writer,
do not enumerate his talents or his feats, but
ask thyself what spirit he is of? Has he led thee
to Nature because his own soul was too happy
in beholding her power and love? or has he only
shown you stars and mountains, woods and
lovely forms as his bouse, bribing you by the
splendor of his palace to come and see him?
What has Lord Byron at the bottom of his
poetry, but, I am Byron, the noble poet, who am
very clever, but not popular in London? The
little can see nothing in nature but their
own stake, and their most discursive regards
are still economical. And as Scaliger says, in
reference to Montaigne's gossiping account of
himself, that he likes red wine, but never drinks
white, “ Who the devil wants to know what
wine you drink?”
The water we wash with never speaks of it-
self, nor does fire, or wind, or tree. Neither does
the noble natural man; he yields himself to your


348
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
occasion and use, but his act expresses a refer-
ence to universal good.
Rob was tender and timid as a fawn in his
affections, yet he passed for a man of calcula-
tion and cold heart. He assumed coldness only
to hide his woman's heart. There is a play in which
the sister is enamoured of her brother, and when
they embrace, she exclaims, “ J'ai froid."
In taking, this afternoon, farewell looks at the
sibyls and prophets of Michel Angelo, I fancied
that they all looked not free, but necessitated; rid-
den by a superior will, by an Idea which they
could not shake off. It sits in their life. The
heads of Raphael look freer certainly, but this
obedience of Michel's figures contrasts strangely
with the living forms of this age. These old
giants are still under the grasp of that terrific Jew-
ish Idea before which ages were driven like sifted
snow, which all the literatures of the world-
Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, English –
tingle with; but we sleek, dapper men have
quite got free of that old reverence, have heard
new facts on metaphysics, and they are quite
ready to join any new church. We are travellers,
and not responsible.


1839) NATURE. SOCIETY 349
Let the painter unroll his canvas. Millions
of eyes look through his.
canvas.
We are not at home in nature. We confess
our unworthiness inadvertently in all we say of
it. The unusual beauty of the sunset attracts
us and the soul dares not say, “Behold my
peace passed into nature also!” but we mendi-
cantly say, “What a scene for a painter or
for a poet!” or more superficially still, “What
an Italian sky!”
“Society," like wealth, is good for those who
understand it. It is a foolish waste of time for
any who do not. It seems impossible for any-
one to expand in the crowd to his natural
dimensions. It seems vain to expect any senti-
ment, any truth and human encouragement.
All character seems to fade away from all the
accomplices. Every woman seems to be suffer-
ing for a chair, and you accuse yourself and
commiserate those you talk to.... He must
be rich, and of a commanding constitution, who
can stand this malaria. It spoils the best per-
sons for me.
I will never quarrel with a man because he
makes little of the forms, laws, and usages of


350
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
the world. He cannot do so, if he be thoughtful
and earnest, but by the force of his perception.
He sees that the soul is a creator, and instantly
makes light of all your present works, since he
knows it can very easily make more when these
are gone; a secret which others do not know,
and so contradict him with petulance.
It is very pleasant to me to hear of any fine
person that he or she is a reader of Swedenborg.
It is an uncomputed force, — his influence on
this age, his genius still unmeasured. He is the
fabulist, the Cebes, the better Æsop of the last
ages. How bland, how warm, how renovating
it works on the cold crudities of Calvinism or
Unitarianism!
Gather yourself into a ball to be thrown at a
mark.
Lectures.- In Boston, December 4, I read
the first lecture of my course on the Present
Age; with the old experience that when it was
done, and the time had come to read it, I was
then first ready to begin to write.'
1 The lectures of this course, lasting into February of the
following year, were as follows: I, Introductory; II and III,


1839) HOPE. THE AGE ALIVE 351
There is no hope so bright but it is the be-
ginning of its own fulfilment. The dearer it is
to us, the more it engages the hands to work for
it, and approaching by nature to its object in
proportion to its justice, it enlists heaven and
earth to work in its behalf.
O Age! he who embraces thee heartily finds
all ages in thee. The magazine of the gods,
which every age dispenses in its own way, is
now thine, and thou hast thine own expendi-
ture.
And lo! how fast the great Critic, who now
instructs, — discerns, separates the dead from
the living, the flesh from the spirit! See the
living veins and strata run, detaching as bark
and burr what we thought was stock and pith.
See laws to be no laws, and religions to become
impieties, and great sciences mistakes, and great
men perverters.
CCS
It is in the order of nature one of the curbs
and ligaments, that great good is first contended
against before it is heartily appropriated, as the
Literature; IV, Politics; V, Private Life; VI, Reforms;
VII, Religion; VIII, Ethics; IX, Education; X, Ten-
dencies.


352
JOURNAL [AGE 36
heroes first made war against the Amazons whom
they afterwards married.
mor
Sunday, December 8.
My Friends.— I read with joy Sterling's noble
critique on Carlyle in the Westminster Review.
All intellectual ability seems to have somewhat
impersonal and destructive of personality; and
yet I read with warm pride because a man who
has offered me friendship gives this unequivocal
certificate of his equality to that office. O friend!
you have given me that sign which high friend
ship demands, namely, ability to do without it.
Pass on, we shall meet again. ... I woke this
morn with devout thanksgiving for my friends,
the old and the new. I think no man in the
planet has a circle more noble. They have come
to me unsought: the great God gave them to
me. Will they separate themselves from me
again, or some of them? I know not, but I fear
it not, for my relation to them is so pure that
we hold by simple affinity; and the Genius of
my life being thus social, the same affinity will
exert its energy on whosoever is as noble as these
men and women, wherever I may be."
1 Although the last three sentences are printed ("Friend-
ship," Essays, First Series, p. 194), they are given here



JOHN STERLING





1839) TRUE REVELATIONS 353
A man with his thoughts about him dis-
tinguishes at first sight those fancies which are
momentary, and the revelations of the soul:
knows among his reveries which is a circum-
stance and which is a thought, a flower, as well
as a man walking knows which is the wall and
which is the road. Well, thus among my fancies
it occurs that the mind of this Age will endure
no miracle, and this, not because of unbelief,
but because of belief. It begins to be that the
sun and the moon and the man who walks under
them are miracles that puzzle all analysis; and
that to quit these and go gazing for I know not
what parish circumstances or Jewish prodigies
is to quit the eternal signs scrawled by God
along the dizzy spaces of the Zodiack, for a
show of puppets and wax lights.
I say how the world looks to me without
reference to Blair's Rhetoric or Johnson's Lives.
And I call my thoughts The Present Age, be-
because of their connection with Emerson's high friendship with
Sterling, continued until his death, four years later. Emerson
and he never met in the flesh, but their lives had run strangely
parallel up to this time, and their religious experiences, their
desire to become poets, and their noble humanity showed
that they might have been more to each other at closer range
than Carlyle and Emerson could ever have been.


354
JOURNAL
(Age 36
cause I use no will in the matter, but honestly
record such impressions as things make. So
transform I myself into a dial, and my shadow
will tell where the sun is.
It is dangerous to “crush the sweet poison
of misused wine” of the affections....
[December 11, after the general lecture, Mr.
Alcott mentions in his journal that Mr. and
Mrs. Emerson came to his house with several
of the persons who had attended the lecture,
Margaret Fuller, Miss White (probably later
the wife of Lowell), Mr. Bartlett (Sidney?),
Mr. Wilson and Mr. Palmer.]
December 21,
All things that speak of heaven speak of peace : .
Peace hath more might than war: high brows are calm:
Great thoughts are still as stars : and truths, like suns,
Stir not, but many systems tend around them.
BAILEY, Festus.
.
December 22.
I do not care what you write, but only that
you should show yourself a man by writing.
1 For the rest of the passage, see “ Friendship” (Essays,
First Series, p. 195).


355
1839] SELF-CRITICISM
Why should we go to our grandfathers for
all our rules and tests for measuring the Age
and our state of Society, and not rather take
those that are near and dear to us? Do not I
know what I want? Must I ask thee, Reverend
Doctor of Divinity, or thee, O learned Chief
Justice of the Bench? ...
It is the necessity of my nature to shed all
influences. Who can come near to Kehama?
Neither the rain, neither the warm ray of love,
nor the touch of human hand. It seemed, as I
mused in the street in Boston on the unpropi-
tious effect of the town on my humor, that there
needs a certain deliberation and tenacity in the
entertainment of a thought, - a certain longa-
nimity to make that confidence and stability
which can meet the demand others make on us.
I am too quick-eyed and unstable. My thoughts
are too short, as they say my sentences are. I
step along from stone to stone over the Lethe
which gurgles around my path, but the odds
are that my companion encounters me just as
I leave one stone and before my foot has well
reached the other, and down I tumble into Lethe
water. But the man of long wind, the man who
receives his thought with a certain phlegmatic


356
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
entertainment and unites himself to it for the
time, as a sailor to his boat, has a better princi-
ple of poise and is not easily moved from the
perpendicular.
The material is nothing, - bitumen, wood, or
stone; the proportion is all. Proportion makes
permanence, beauty, grandeur. So is it with this
daily life; here lie the same materials for all
men, the common day, the common men, the
common woes, necessities, and, deep under all,
the uplifting sentiment of the Good. Out of
these selfsame elements the sot builds his sty,
and the hero his prevailing character,— Pan-
theon, shall I say.
In my dream I saw a man reading in the Li-
brary at Cambridge, and one who stood by said,
“He readeth advertisements," meaning that he
read for the market only, and not for truth.
Then I said, Do I read advertisements ?
Unbecoming is this shamefacedness of ours,
this fear of poverty, — for presently the wonder-
ful spectacle of the universe will withdraw from
us; we shall be old, blind, deaf, and die. Yet
though we be brave, let us not be ungraceful.


1839) GOD OUR FORCE 357
Let us stand too much in regard of the beauty
of nature to be pert or foolish. Hide, from a
great motive, or not at all. We are brothers,
and the worst of us is a miracle beyond analy-
sis.
Let us only not be frivolous or vulgar. Let
not the sun shine and the infinitude of moral
nature exist in vain for us. If we have seen that
under our wooden or brick houses the living
magical Earth lay, yet lay not still a moment, but
whirled forever on in its orbit, true to the orbs
of its system, and its system just to its vast sym-
pathy with nature; if we have seen that under
our ridiculous routine of selfish trade and gov-
ernment bloomed unhurt the life of God, and
found ever and anon vent in our consciousness
and in our action, that we have not set our-
selves systematically and invariably to stifle it,
and so kill ourselves, but in sane moments have
opened it a passage into the laws and institu-
tions, have let our private bark follow the course
of the river, and be blown in the path of the
monsoon, have not selected for honour the mean
and the dead in whom no virtue lived, and such
therefore as honour could not cleanse or great
aims enliven, but have let our votes follow Ideas,
and our elections express our character and as-


358
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
piration, so that the highest sentiment cheered
us in the assembly of the people, and the bal-
lot was a voice of truth and veneration, then
the State will stand, then the Laws will be
memorable and beautiful for long thousands of
years, — will shine by intrinsic light as easily
through many as through a few ages. Should
not a man be ennobled by his vote? Is it not a
prayer? Now he and his candidate are both de-
graded.
Treat Things Poetically. — Everything should
be treated poetically, -law, politics, housekeep-
ing, money. A judge and a banker must drive
their craft poetically as well as a dancer or a
scribe. That is, they must exert that higher vi-
sion which causes the object to become fluid and
plastic. Then they are inventive, they detect its
capabilities. If they do not this, they have nothing
that can be called success, but the work and the
workman become blockish and near the point
of everlasting congelation. All human affairs
need the perpetual intervention of this elastic
principle to preserve them supple and alive, as
the earth needs the presence of caloric through
its pores to resist the tendency to absolute so-
lidity. If you would write a code, or logarithms,
ne


1839) HEROIC FIRE. BOOKS 359
or a cookbook, you cannot spare the poetic im-
pulse. We must not only have hydrogen in
balloons, and steel springs under coaches, but
we must have fire under the Andes at the core
of the world. No one will doubt that battles
must be fought poetically who reads Plutarch
or Las Casas. Economy must be poetical, in-
ventive, alive: that is its essence, and therein is
it distinguished from mere parsimony, which is
a poor, dead, base thing: but economy inspires
respect, — is clean and accomplishes much.
IS
Love is only the reflection of a man's own
worthiness from other men.
Some books leave us free and some books
make us free.
December 24.
We are to write on this topic not by black
art of any kind, not by trick, or journey work,
or direction; not stimulated by strong waters,
or by fashion, or by praise, or money, but feel-
ing the power of the Past Ages laid on our hand.
We are to stand all-related, all accomplished,
having covenanted with truth that we will bear
witness for it, though by our silence.
Let us not rashly judge an age shallow,-so


360
JOURNAL (AGE 36
we accuse only ourselves. For not by might or
disease of man came in this posture of affairs
and thoughts we call Today, but it is the fruit
towards which a whole past eternity has flowered
and ripened, and it is not weak, but the sprouting
seed of all that shall ever be.
December 25.
All life is a compromise. We are haunted by
an ambition of a celestial greatness, and baulked
of it by all manner of paltry impediments. But
each of us can do somewhat marked, either lu-
crative or graceful or kind or wise or formid-
able.' ...
December 26.
The whole world travails to ripen and bear
the sufficiency of one man. The wise man is the
State. Louis XIV was right. The wise man
needs no army, fort, or navy: he loves men too
well. Even if they turn on him, he is invulner-
able. He needs no bribe or feast or palace to
1 This sentence and a long passage which follows it are
printed in “ Politics” (Essays, Second Series, pp. 217-219).
2 Although much of the following paragraph has been printed
(see “ Politics,” Essays, Second Series, p. 216), it is fuller
here, and is given therefore, and also because of its beauty.
One of Mr. Emerson's friends suggested that much of the
passage would be most appropriate for his epitaph.


1839) THE WISE MAN 361
draw friends to him. He is supremely fair. He
angles with himself and with no other bait. He
asks no vantage ground, no favorable circum-
stance. The obedient universe bends around
him, and all stars lend their ray to the hour and
the man. Nature speaks ex tempore to him and
lights up a sudden festival whithersoever he
bends his steps. He needs no library, for he
has not done thinking; no church, for he is
himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath
the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself;
no road, for he is at home where he is; no
experience, for the life of the Creator shoots
through him, and from him animates brute
things and turns them immediately to their de-
sired ends. He has no personal friends, for he
does not need to husband and educate a few to
share with him a select and poetic life, who has
the spell to draw the select prayer and piety of
all men unto him. His relation to all men is
angelic. His memory 'is myrrh to them, his
presence frankincense and flowers.
I have heard that it is not usually beauty
which inspires the strongest passion. I can even
believe that Aspasia was not beautiful, seen tête-
à-tête, but almost plain and homely, yet in a


362
JOURNAL (AGE 36
circle of dames in a gallery or across the apart-
ment, hers was the only face on which the eye
would fix, and when all were gone, the only one
whose form and behaviour the heart would re-
member.
Treat your friend as a spectacle.' ... Be not
so much his friend that you can never know your
man, like fond mammas who shut up their boy in
the house until he is almost grown a girl. Rever-
ence is a great part of friendship. There must
be very two before there can be very one.' ...
Whoso sees Law does not despond.). ..
Pleasant these jets of affection that relume a
young world for me again. Delicious is a just
and firm encounter of two in a thought, in a
feeling. But we must be tormented presently
by baffled blows, by sudden unseasonable apa-
thies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits
in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our
faculties do not play us true.
i The rest of the passage is in “Friendship” (Essays,
First Series, p. 209).
2 See • Friendship,” pp. 208, 209.
3 See “ Considerations by the Way" (Conduct of Life, p.
264). This passage is followed by others from “ Friendship.”


1839)
READING
363
THORSO
KS
OTED OR REFERRED TO
RNAL FOR
AUTHORS OR Books QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNAL FOR 1839
Vedas; Pythagoras; Cebes ; Aristotle; Galen;
Livy; Sallust; Vegetius apud Burton ; Saint
Augustine, Confessions ;
The Welsh Bards; Dante, Purgatorio, Par-
adiso ; Petrarch ; Michel Angelo; Melancthon,
Cardan and Scaliger, apud Burton;
William Cartwright and Edward Powell, On
John Fletcher ;
Donne; Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy;
Bentley; William Penn; Linnæus, Tours in Lap-
land; Blair, Rhetoric;
Gilbert White, Natural History of Selborne;
Harleian Miscellany, French Account of Battle
of Lützen, Cavendish on Negotiations of Car-
dinal Wolsey;
Walpole, Letters of Madame du Deffand;
Bentley; Crabbe;
Burns ; Samuel Rogers ; Campbell;
Humboldt; Chateaubriand; Hazlitt, Re-
mains; Wilson ;
Hallam, Literature of Europe; Las Casas ;
Manzoni; Maroncelli;
· Keats, Hyperion ; Shelley ; Mrs. Hemans;


364
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
Southey; Cooper; Irving ; Everett; Stone, Life
of Brant;
Lieber; Dr. Follen ; Graeter;
Dickens, Oliver Twist; Forster, Cromwell;
Bailey, Festus;
John Sterling; Bryant; Horace Mann; Haw-
thorne ; Jones Very; W. Ellery Channing,
Fredrick H. Hedge;
Fraser's Magazine.


JOURNAL
PREPARATION OF ESSAYS
SYMPOSIA
FRIENDS
THE DIAL APPEARS
BROOK FARM PROJECT





JOURNAL XXXI
1840
(From Journals E and F)
Se mai continga che 'l poema sacro
Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
Si che m'ha fatto per piu anni macro,
Dante, Il Paradiso, xxv.
(From F)
January, 1840.
Guy wished all his friends dead on very slight
occasion. Whoever was privy to one of his
gaucheries had the honour of this Stygian op-
tation. Had Jove heard all his prayers, the planet
would soon have been unpeopled. At last it
occurred to Guy that, instead of wringing this
hecatomb of friends' necks every morning, he
would dine better if he gave as much life as he
now took. He found to his astonishment the em-
bryos of a thousand friends hid under his own
heart, and that for every offence he forgave, and
for every great choice he made, suddenly from
afar a noble stranger knocked at his street gate.


368
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
What is the State ?
The Hero is the State:
The Soul should legislate,
Postponing still the measure to the man;
One sage outweighs all China and Japan.
No man may have any measure which is to be
preferred a moment to the man itself. The State
may avail as long as it can be treated as wise
man. After that, stop. Coax it not. Lie not
unto it nor for it.
The influence of character, that is the Theo-
cracy. It is never nothing. It is never omni-
potent, but in the inspired moments of each
people prevails. In each of our towns and
cities, there are periods when the influence of
genius predominates for a season over a circle
of minds. (The power of Swedenborg at this
moment is an impure theocracy.) The influence
of a preacher, of a book, of a character of sin-
gular worth, exerts this magnetism: the recip-
ients feel that they do not so much borrow the
light as find the same light in their breast which
flames so high from this inspired brother. The
effect of Jesus on men, after an immense deduction
is made for false reception of all kinds, is an
impure theocracy.
But character is scarcely allowed any rule at
season
Ove


rns
1840] CHARACTER. PLATO 369
all. Everything governs but that. It is a force
not yet known. Rarely a young man, a young
woman, reckoned fastidious and whimsical, goes
alone, doth somewhat, or forbears somewhat,
in contradiction to all custom, out of private
motions, — hath insuperable reluctances which
are not to be expressed, or invincible urgencies
to particular action. But this is a spirit which
does not love much the old, hard people, but
rather haunts childhood and tender youth. There
is a great deal of theocracy in a blush. Nothing
is incredible of this power. Its feeblest mo-
tion is a counterbalance for mightiest monar-
chies.
I have read Plato's Dialogue, “The Politi-
cian,” in Cousin. He seems to me, as before, to
owe his fame to the fact that he is a great Aver-
age Man.' ...
It is pedantry to estimate nations by the
census, or the geographical extent, by coin, or
antiquity. We compromise ourselves when we
depart from necessary standards, – that is, from
their importance to the mind of the period. If
i For the rest of this passage, see “ Plato” (Representative
Men, p. 61).


370
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
Russia is a scarecrow, that fact at least tells
somewhat of them whom it scares. If England,
France and Italy draw the steps of all travel-
lers, that fact characterizes at least the traveller.
But to measure miles and count hands is brute,
- indicates hopeless formalism.
We want one miracle by way of evidence;
this, namely, that a mind not profound should
become profound. The teaching which has that
miracle to show will go round the world.
Man of genius belongs to Monarchy, Aris-
tocracy and Democracy equally.
The scholar verifies the Duke of Ormond's
experience, who went to court because there
only he could see his equals, and stayed away
because there he could see a superior.
Genius avails always itself of a fact as lan-
guage for its abstractions. .
The capital crime with which the church stands
charged is its Poverty. Truth is always rich,
all-related, all explaining. But our church is a
little byeway, an eddy, a nook, wherein you hear


1840) CAUSES. FRIENDSHIP 371
some words and notions you will hear of no-
where else, and which will not explain to the
handcart-man, his cart, nor to me my pen and
ink, my sex, my form and face.
“Les événements ont des causes dans lesquelles
ils sont préconçus, comme nos actions sont ac-
complies dans notre pensée, avant de se repro-
duire, au dehors ; et les pressentiments, les
prophéties sont l'aperçu de ces causes.” Louis
Lambert's psychological maxim at fifteen years
of age in Balzac's Le Livre Mystique.
February 3.
Every man passes his life in the search after
friendship, and here is the letter which he writes
to each candidate for his love.'...
i Here follows the letter printed in “ Friendship” (Essays,
First Series, p. 198). In December, Mr. Emerson had sent
to his friend Samuel G. Ward, in Boston, at his request, a
paper on Burke, but, in his letter, said, “I think I might
qualify this anodyne by sending you one of last winter's com-
position, a piece which I wrote in good heart, and trust you
may find some sparks still alive in the cinders. The argu-
ment were fitter for rhyme ; but that comes only by special
favor of the skies.” This was probably “Friendship," as
would appear from Mr. Emerson's next letter. (See Emer-
son's Letters to a friend. Letters VI and VII.)


372
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
Character plus Sensibility. — They were self-
centred: Willow was not. He went to them
more than was due. He would be poised, and
they should pass and repass. Yet was this mo-
bility of his only superficial, and in manners.
The flintiest brow in the hall did not surmount
a purpose as fast as his to its natural objects, or
· one as impatient of a false position. He was a
rocking stone, always tilting, but never over-
thrown.
[Here follows the dialogue between Xenos
and Iole, which occurs in “Character” (Essays,
Second Series, p. 90).]
February 19.
I closed last Wednesday, 12th instant, my
course of lectures in Boston, on “The Present
Age,” which were read on ten consecutive
Wednesday evenings (except Christmas even-
ing).
I. Introductory. (4 December.)
II. Literature.
III. Literature.
IV. Politics.
V. Private Life.
VI. Reforms.
VII. Religion.


ca
in
1840) THE LECTURE COURSE 373
VIII. Ethics.
IX. Education.
X. Tendencies.
I judge from the account rendered me by the
sellers of tickets, added to an account of my own
distribution of tickets to my friends, that the
average audience at a lecture consisted of about
400 persons. 256 course tickets were sold and
305 evening tickets or passes. I distributed
about 110 to 120 course tickets.
These lectures give me little pleasure. I have
not done what I hoped when I said, I will try
it once more. I have not once transcended the
coldest self-possession. I said I will agitate others,
being agitated myself, I dared to hope for
extasy and eloquence. A new theatre, a new
art, I said, is mine. Let us see if philosophy,
if ethics, if chiromancy, if the discovery of the
divine in the house and the barn, in all works
and all plays, cannot make the cheek blush, the
lip quiver, and the tear start. I will not waste
myself. On the strength of Things I will be
borne, and try if Folly, Custom, Convention,
and Phlegm cannot be made to hear our sharp
artillery. Alas! alas! I have not the recollec-
tion of one strong moment. A cold mechanical
preparation for a delivery as decorous, — fine


374
JOURNAL (Age 36
things, pretty things, wise things, — but no
arrows, no axes, no nectar, no growling, no
transpiercing, no loving, no enchantment.
And why?
I seem to lack constitutional vigor to attempt
each topic as I ought. I ought to seek to lay
myself out utterly,- large, enormous, prodigal,
upon the subject of the week. But a hateful
experience has taught me that I can only ex-
pend, say, twenty-one hours on each lecture, if
I would also be ready and able for the next.
Of course, I spend myself prudently; I econo-
mize; I cheapen ; whereof nothing grand ever
grew. Could I spend sixty hours on each, or,
what is better, had I such energy that I could
rally the lights and mights of sixty hours into
twenty, I should hate myself less, I should help
my friend.
I ought to be equal to every relation.'...
I saw a maiden, the other day, dressed so
prettily and fancifully that she gave the eye the
same sort of pleasure that a gem does, – a fine
opal, or the coloured stones. When I remem-
i Here follows the paragraph thus beginning in “ Friend-
ship” (Essays, First Series, p. 200).


1840] PERSONS. THOUGHTS. MAN 375
ber what fairy pleasure I found in some cor-
nelians or agates which I saw for an hour when
a very little boy, I think none but children and
savages enjoy gems.
I wrote S. G. Ward :-
I see persons whom I think the world would
be richer for losing: and I see persons whose
existence makes the world rich. But blessed be
the Eternal Power for those whom my lawless
fancy, even, cannot strip of beauty, and who
never for a moment seem to me profane.
(From F)
How much we augur in seeing an unusual
natural phenomenon, as, for instance, an electric
spark. Already we are groping for its ethics.
What absence of all sadness in the drops of
the snow-bank.
What nimble, gigantic creatures our thoughts
are. What Saurians, what palæotheria these?
"O moikilos, rich, leopard-skinned man! who
art a palace of sweet sounds and sights, and car-
riest in thy brain the City of God; in thy cun-
ning senses the morning and the night; the un-
fathomable galaxy and the realms of Right and
Wrong.


376
(Age 36
JOURNAL
Rich past! One word of the old book is so
penetrating to my imagination. What shall I
say of thy world of old words and virtues and
crucifixions and gifts to men? And yet, poor
and thoughtless though today is, I count this
instinct sacred which bids me slight thy admir-
able wealth, even in my starving poverty, as a
testimony to my faith in my more admirable
possibilities.
February 21.
Self-respect is demanded of us by the most
general considerations. We stand here for na-
ture and humanity. They bid us make them
comely and honorable.
The aim of art is always at somewhat better
than nature, but the work of art is always in-
ferior to nature.
The book only characterizes the reader. Is
Shakspear the delight of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury? That fact shows whereabouts we are in
the ecliptic of the Soul.
Ah! that I could reach with my words the
force of that rhetoric of things in which the
Divine mind is conveyed to me, day by day, in
what I call my life; a loaf of bread, an errand


CMS
1840) IMMORTALITY
377
to the town, a temperate man, an industrious
man.
PROVIDENCE, March 28.'
Send Very's Poems to Carlyle and Words-
worth.
PROVIDENCE, March 30.
When the materialist represents mind as the
result of body and, at the perishing of body,
deceasing — he tells us that this is true, though
not so satisfactory to our pride. This last re-
mark is a fatal concession. Nature is always
true, there is no lie, no betrayal in it, and yet,
it seems in all the individuals there arises this
feeling, on hearing his statement, that it is less
satisfactory to our pride than something else.
In other words, all the individuals feel, Here
is some wrong, some crack; something else is
desirable than that you say is done, something
else is best. Then surely something else must
be true.
Nature is in continual flux. Everybody is
an hourly mercury of the state of its Soul. So
much for phrenology and physiognomy.
i Mr. Emerson seems to have been giving several lectures
there at about this time.


378
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
Some men write better than they speak. Of
such I had rather see the manuscript than see
the man. For what he speaks he says to me,
but what he writes he says to God.
I said to C. S., The difference between per-
sons is not in Wisdom, but in knack.' ...
(From E)
April.
By confession we help each other; by clean
shrift, and not by dictation.
I like manners and their aristocracy better
than the morgue of wealth. It is a gay chivalry,
a merit, and indicates certainly the presence of
a sense of beauty. I am always a fool to these
mannered men at the first encounter. The South-
erner holds me at arm's length; he will not let
me measure him, and after twenty-four hours
my opinion shall still not be worth the telling,
— such a cloak is his politesse. And yet, O
stately friend, do not presume on this gay priv-
ilege of thine. Yonder simple countryman, on
whom you have yet bestowed no smile, strikes
down all your glittering and serried points with
1 The paragraph thus beginning (with “ art” substituted
for “ knack”) occurs in “ Intellect” (Essays, First Series,
P.333).


1840) DEATH. THE DOLLAR 379
a wave of his hand, and overawes you, as does some
grey friar a circle of armed barons. He oversteps
with a free stride all your spaces marked with
ribbons and etiquette, for he does not respect
them; he is dignified by a higher thought, viz.,
by a humanity which slights all this, and over-
stands it, as a sane man an insane.
ver-
Death in a novel, or a poem, is but the me-
chanical sublime, manage it how you will. Lay
any emphasis on it, and it only betrays the pov-
erty of the writer ; the feeblest action, the faint-
est thought must always be superior to the most
imposing death in fable.
Ah, my poor countrymen! Yankees and Dol-
lars have such inextricable association that the
words ought to rhyme. In New York, in Bos-
ton, in Providence, you cannot pass two men in
the street without the word escaping them in the
very moment of encounter, “dollars,” “two
and a half per cent," "three per cent.”
April 7.
What does that fact signify, that nobody in
this country can draw a hand except Allston?
asserted by Mr. Cole, I think.


380
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
At Providence I was made very sensible of
the desire of all open minds for religious teach-
ing. The young men and several good women
freely expressed to me their wish for more light,
their sympathy in whatever promised a better
life. They inquired about the new Journal of next
July. I was compelled to tell them that the aims
of that paper were rather literary than psycho-
logical or religious. But the inquiry and the
tone of these inquirers showed plainly what one
may easily see in Boston and Cambridge and the
villages also — that what men want is a Religion.
Ver
The railroad makes a man a chattel, trans-
ports him by the box and the ton; he waits on
it. He feels that he pays a high price for his
speed in this compromise of all his will. I think
the man who walks looks down on us who ride.
I see with great pleasure this growing incli-
nation in all persons who aim to speak the truth,
for manual labor and the farm.'
In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine,
namely, the infinitude of the private man. This
the people accept readily enough, and even with
Here follow passages printed in “ Man the Reformer"
( Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, pp. 233, 238).


1840) THE LABORER. WALDEN 381
loud commendation, as long as I call the lecture
Art, or Politics, or Literature, or the House-
hold; but the moment I call it Religion, they
are shocked, though it be only the application
of the same truth which they receive everywhere
else, to a new class of facts.
The case of the menaced and insulted mon-
arch is not quite aloof from our own experi-
ence. We have tasted that cup too. For see this
wide society, in which we walk, of laboring men.
We allow ourselves to be served by them. We
pay them money and then turn our backs on
them.' ...
. (From F)
April 9.
We walked this afternoon to Edmund Hos-
mer's and Walden Pond. The South wind blew
and filled with bland and warm light the dry
sunny woods. The last year's leaves flew like
birds through the air. As I sat on the bank of the
Drop, or God's Pond, and saw the amplitude of
the little water, what space, what verge, the little
scudding fleets of ripples found to scatter and
spread from side to side and take so much time to
1 For the rest of this long passage on Service, see " Man the
Reformer” (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, pp. 252, 253).


382
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
cross the pond, and saw how the water seemed
made for the wind, and the wind for the water,
dear play fellows for each other, — I said to my
companion, I declare this world is so beautiful
that I can hardly believe it exists. At Walden
Pond the waves were larger and the whole lake in
pretty uproar. Jones Very said, “ See how each
wave rises from the midst with an original force,
at the same time that it partakes the general
movement!”
He said that he went to Cambridge, and found
his brother reading Livy. “I asked him if the
Romans were masters of the world? My brother
said they had been : I told him they were still.
Then I went into the room of a senior who lived
opposite, and found him writing a theme. I
asked him what was his subject? And he said,
Cicero's Vanity. I asked him if the Romans were
masters of the world? He replied they had been:
I told him they were still. This was in the garret
of Mr. Ware's house. Then I went down into
Mr. Ware's study, and found him reading
Bishop Butler, and I asked him if the Romans
were masters of the world? He said they had
been: I told him they were still.” 1
1 An interesting memoir of Very was written by Mr.
W. P. Andrews, and several of his poems were printed at the
were


18401 VERY. CHILD'S DESIRES 383
Very obvious is the one advantage which this
singular man has attained unto, that of bringing
every man to true relations with him. No man
would think of speaking falsely to him. But
every man will face him, and what love of nature
or what symbol of truth he has, he will certainly
show him. But to most of us the society shows
not its face and eye, but its side and its back.
To stand in true relations with men in a false
age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?'
(From E) April 27.
My little boy says, “I want something to
play with which I never saw before," and thus
lives over already in his experience the procla-
mation of Xerxes advertising a reward for a
new pleasure. I tell him that the sun and moon
are good playthings still, though they are very
old; they are as good as new. So are eating and
drinking, though rather dangerous toys, very
good amusements, though old ones; so is water
which we wash and play with ; but he is not per-
suaded by my eloquence.
end. Mr. Emerson used to praise « The Strangers” and “The
Barberry,” and included them in his Parnassus.
i The last paragraph is printed in “ Friendship” (p. 203),
but it seemed better to let it stand here in its connection.


384
JOURNAL
[AGE 36
SO
There seems a strange propensity to egotism
in the mind of several eminent spiritualists whom
I have known, disproportion, a sad exaggera-
tion which disables them from putting their act
and word aloof from them, detaching it, and
seeing it as a pitiful, shrivelled apple, at its best
a disgrace to the tree and to nature; and this in
souls of unquestionable power and greater near-
ness to the secret of God than others. It is
sadly punished too, and that speedily, inasmuch
as this habit always leads men to humour it, to
treat the patient tenderly, not roundly, and so
shut him up gradually in a narrower selfism,
and exclude him from the great world of God's
cheerful, though fallible, men and women. I
had rather be insulted whilst I am insultable.
James Naylor, George Fox, Luther, are emi-
nent examples of it long ago; and now we have
poets, critics, abolitionists, prophets, and phi-
losophers infected with the same elephantiasis.
ISI
narr
There is an important équivoque in our use
of the word unconscious, a word which is much
played upon in the psychology of the present
day. We say that our virtue and genius are un-
conscious, that they are the influx of God, and
the like. The objector replies that to represent


1840) UNCONSCIOUSNESS 385
the Divine Being as an unconscious somewhat
is abhorrent, etc. But the unconsciousness we
spake of was merely relative to us; we speak,
we act, from we know not what higher princi-
ple, and we describe its circumambient quality
by confessing the subjection of our perception
to it, we cannot overtop, oversee it, — not see
at all its channel into us. But in saying this, we
predicate nothing of its consciousness or uncon-
sciousness in relation to itself. We see at once
that we have no language subtle enough for dis-
tinctions in that inaccessible region. That air is
too rare for the wings of words. We cannot say,
God is self-conscious, or not self-conscious; for
the moment we cast our eye on that dread na-
ture, we see that it is the wisdom of wisdom,
the love of love, the power of power, and soars
infinitely out of all definition and dazzles all
inquest.
True Criticism is inexhaustible. Every new
thought supersedes all foregone thought and
makes a new light on the whole world.
All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all
else. It is for those who come after to find its
relation to other thoughts.


386
[Age 36
JOURNAL
If there be need of a new Journal, that need
is its introduction : it wants no preface. It pro-
ceeds at once to its own ends, which it well
knows, and answers now for the first time. That
consummated fitness is a triumphant apology.
It will ignore all the old, long constituted public
or publics which newspapers and magazines ad-
dress. It ignores all newspapers and magazines.
It is so real, so full of its own authentic aim
which it exists to attain, that it knows them not;
not seeing them to fill any place which this mind
esteems real, it has no thought to waste on them.
It speaks to a public of its own, a newborn class
long already waiting. They, least of all, need
from it any letters of recommendation.
It is of course too confident in its tone to
comprehend an objection, and so builds no out-
works for possible defence against contingent
enemies. It has the step of Fate, and goes on
existing, like an oak or a river, because it must.
If the projected Journal be what we anticipate,
- and, if not, we should not care for it, - it does
not now know itself in the way of accustomed crit-
icism; it cannot foretell in orderly proportions
what it shall do; its criticism is to be poetic, not
the peeping, but the broad glance of the Amer-
ican man on the books and things of this hour.


1840) DIAL. WALDO. GLORY 387
Its brow is not wrinkled with circumspection,
but serene, cheerful, adoring. It has all things
to say, and no less than all the world for its final
audience.
There are, no doubt, many dogs barking at
the moon, and many owls hooting in this Satur-
day night of the world, but the fair moon knows
nothing of either.
April 30.
Waldo looks out today from my study win-
dow and says, “These are not the woods I like
to look at.” –“And what woods do you like to
look at?” — “Those that I see from the win-
dow of the nursery.”
May 4.
Waldo says, “God is very glorious, he always
says his prayers, and never 'haves (behaves)
naughty.”
May 6.
Yesterday with the Club' at Medford.
Superlative. - It is somewhat sad that a word
of such sacred meaning as Glory should now be
the emptiest of all words, and scarcely in a life-
time shall we hear it used without disgust.
1 “Symposium.”


388
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
· In conversation, Alcott will meet no man
who will take a superior tone. Let the other
party say what he will, Alcott unerringly takes
the highest moral ground and commands the
other's position, and cannot be outgeneralled.
And this because, whilst he lives in his moral
perception, his sympathies with the present
company are not troublesome to him, never
embarrass for a moment his perception. He is
cool, bland, urbane, yet with his eye fixed on
the highest fact. With me it is not so. In all
companies I sympathize too much. If they are
'ordinary and mean, I am. If the company were
great, I should soar: in all mere mortal parties,
I take the contagion of their views and lose my
own. I cannot outsee them, or correct, or raise
them. As soon as they are gone, the Muse re-
turns; I see the facts as all cultivated men al-
ways have seen them, and am a great man alone.
Every man supposes himself not to be fully
understood or appreciated.' . ..
Strange how hard it is for cultivated men to
free themselves from the optical illusion by
1 The rest of the passage is printed in “ Circles" (Essays,
First Series, p. 306).



A. BRONSON ALCOTT





1840) JESUS NO INSTITUTION 389
which a great man appears an institution. They
know and have observed in particular instances
that the demonstration of a strong will, of a
vast thought, at once arrested the eyes and
magnetized the wills of men, so that society and
events became secondaries and satellites of a
man; and the genesis of that man's thought is
not now explored after the laws of thought, but
externally in his parentage, in his country, cli-
mate, college, election by his fellow - citizens,
and the like, -as we know is the tenor of vul-
gar biography. And yet, though familiar with
this fact, the moment Jesus is mentioned, they
forget their knowledge, and accept the apparatus
of prophecy, miracle, positive supernatural in-
dication by name and place, and claim on his
part to extraordinary outward relations;—all
these, which are the prismatic hues and lights
which play around any wonderful genius, they
regard as of an adamantine reality, and in the
selectest society where Beauty, Goodness and
the Soul are named, these men talk of “ preach-
ing Christ,” and of “Christ's being the ideal
of man,” etc., etc.
we Se
We are halves: we see the past in Memory,
but do not see the future. They say, that, at


390
JOURNAL [AGE 36
times, this hemisphere completes itself, and
Foresight becomes as perfect as Aftersight.
May 9.
Is it not pedantry to insist that every man
should be a farmer as much as that he should
be a lexicographer? Suppose the doctrine of
the right estate of man finds him at sea, shall
he therefore scrape together what dust and ref-
use he can find on deck, and dibble in a flower-
pot, or shall he learn to use the ropes, to stand
at the wheel, to reef a sail and draw a fish out
of the sea and be a farmer of the sea? In like
manner, if the doctrine of universal labor find
him in the midst of books, whose use he under-
stands, and whose use other men wish to learn
of him, shall he cast away this his skill and use-
fulness to go bungle with hoe and harrow, with
cows and swine which he understands not?
Should he not rather farm his books well and
lose no hour of beneficent activity in that place
where he now is? - The Doctrine of the Farm
is merely this ;'...
Where is the fertile earth? Where the farmer
1 The rest of the passage is printed in “ Man the Re-
former” (Essays, First Series, pp. 240, 241).


1840) BOOKS THAT DRAW YOU 391
is. Where do books become great engines but
where the scholar is?
May 10.
Self-trust. — If you have no talent for scold-
ing, do not scold; if none for explaining, do not
explain ; if none for giving parties, do not give
parties, however graceful or needful these acts
may appear in others.
I said once, that everyone should read
proudly, not too anxious to find himself in
Æschylus or in Spinoza, but quite ready to dis-
miss the book as an inadequate interpreter of his
consciousness. I said again, that the scholar must
not fear the excess of influence of any author, but
follow with heart and strength the master whom
he loved, leaving father and mother, house and
land behind him, and by and by the over-influ-
ence would abate and the light of this would
.blend with the general day. Do these two state-
ments clash ? I think not. Heis to give himself
to that which draws him, because that is his own;
and he is to refuse that which draws him not,
because it draws him not.
The Age. — The age is marked by “an in-
creasing tenderness for human life.”


392
(AGE 36
JOURNAL
If a man knows the law, he may settle himself
in a shanty in the pine forest, and men will and
must find their way to him as readily as if he
lived in the City Hall.
(From F)
I begin to dislike animal food. I had whim-
sies yesterday after dinner which disgusted me
somewhat. The man will not be much better
than the beast he eats.
Conformity is the ape of harmony.
I have supped with Gods to-night,
Shall I come under wooden roofs ?
As I walked on the hills
The great stars did not shine aloof,
But they hurried down from their deep abodes
And hemmed me in their glittering troop.'
All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all
i From 1838 for many years Mr. Emerson's longings to
express himself in verse resulted in fragments (scattered through
some journals, and in his special Verse-books) which he never
published, but which were collected after his death, forming a
fairly connected whole called “- The Poet,” and printed in the
Appendix to the Poems. The lines given here occur in better
form in “The Poet” (Poems, p. 314).


18401 SOUL. TRAVEL. THOUGHT 393
else. It is for those who come after to find its
relation to other thoughts.
The Soul.— I think whenever we are addressed
greatly we greet the brave speaker, and are by him
instantly admonished how we ought to speak.
It is the highest power of divine moments that
they abolish even our contritions.' ...
Can we never extract this maggot of Europe
out of the brains of our countrymen?? Plato and
Pythagoras may travel, for they carry the world
with them and are always at home, but our trav-
ellers are moths and danglers.3
Wordsworth has done as much as any living
man to restore sanity to cultivated society.
Beware when the great God lets loose a new
thinker on this planet. ...
1 Here follows the passage thus beginning in “ Circles"
(Essays, First Series, p. 317).
2 These lines are in “ Culture" (Conduct of Life).
3 This passage is followed by that in “ Friendship” on
European travel (Essays, First Series, p. 214). This is fol-
lowed by the sentences about the brook in “ Nature” (Essays,
Second Series, p. 178).
4 The rest of the passage is printed in “ Circles” (Essays,
First Series, pp. 308, 309).


394
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
But ah, we impute the virtues to our friends,
and afterwards worship the face and feature to
which we ascribe these divine tenants.
Labor with the hands that you may have an-
imal spirits. Be not an opium-eater. Cold water
has no repentance. But do not let debt and the
bondage of housekeeping fret you out of the
knowledge of the value of house, husbandry,
property. Suppose you have reformed, and live
on grains and black-birch bark and muddy water,
that you may have leisure. Well, what then?
What will you do with the long day? Think?
What! All day? Do you not see that instantly
taste and arithmetic and power will plan planta-
tions and build summer-houses and carve gods?
We must have a basis for our delicate entertain-
ments of poetry and philosophy in our handi-
craft. We must have an antagonism in the tough
world for all the variety of our spiritual faculties
or they will not be born.
In regard to this Goethe I have to add that
a man as gifted as he should not leave the world
as he found it.' . ..
1 Much of what follows may be found in “ Thoughts on
Modern Literature," originally printed in the Dial (Lectures
and Biographical Sketches, p. 333).


1840) GOETHE, ARCHITECTURE 395
Yet how is the world better for Goethe? What
load has he lifted from men or from women?
There is Austria, and England, the old and the
new, full of old effete institutions and usages, full
of men born old, and the question still incessantly
asked by the young, “ What shall I do?” with
forlorn aspect. But let some strong Zeno, some
nervous Epaminondas, Moses or Isaiah come
into our society, and see how he defies it, and
enables us to brave it, to come out of it, and re-
make it from the corner-stone. There is hardly
a life in Plutarch that does not infuse a new cour-
age and prowess into the youth and make him
gladder and bolder for his own work.
(From E)
May 17.
In architecture, height and mass have a won-
derful effect because they suggest immediately
a relation to the sphere on which the structure
stands, and so to the gravitating system. The
tower which with such painful solidity soars like
an arrow to heaven apprizes me in an unusual
manner of that law of gravitation, by its truth to
which it can rear aloft into the atmosphere those
dangerous masses of granite, and keep them there
for ages as easily as if it were a feather or a scrap
an a
rro


396
[AGE 36
JOURNAL
of down. Then, great mass, especially in height,
has some appreciable proportion to the size of
the globe, and so appears to us as a splinter of
the orb itself.
The earth is gay in these days with the blos-
soming of all fruit-trees. An apple-tree near at
hand is a great awkward flower, but seen at some
distance it gives a wonderful softness to the
landscape.
There are many things which teach that high
lesson that success depends on the Aim, not on
the means. Look at the mark, not on your ar-
row. And herein is my hope for all reform in
our vicious modes of living. Let a man direct
his inquiry on details in attempting an ameliora-
tion, and he will be met at every step by unan-
swerable objections, insoluble difficulties. But let
him propose to himself a grand Aim, to live a
Prophet, a Helper, a member of the Morning
and of Nature, one whom the flowering tree and
the summer wind and the sovereign stars shall
recal to the remembrance of men, and be the
newborn child of absolute Love,-a pure Power,
a calm and happy Genius through whom, as
through a lens, the rays of the universe converge


1840) AIMS. SIMPLE LIFE 397
to the joy of the eye that seeth, — and I think
he shall be floated into his place of activity and
happiness by might and mind sublime over all
these rocks and shoals that now look insuperable.
Fix his heart on magnificent life, and he need not
know the economical methods: he shall be him-
self astonished at the great solution of the prob-
lem of means.'
Living has got to be too ponderous than that
the poor spirit can drag any longer this unneces-
sary baggage-train. Let us cut the traces. The
bird and the fox can get their food and house
without lies, and why not we? A great Aim
shall bring it, as if ravens brought it, the bread
of love, apples, pomegranates, berries and corn,
not stolen from nature, not.polluted nor pollut-
ing.
There is this plea always considerable when
it is said, Let the bard, the priesthood, receive
no contributions, but be rather tent-makers and
ploughmen as others are; namely, that in the
experience of all sedentary men that degree of
i Compare « The Poet” (Poems, Appendix): –
Means, dear Brother? Ask them not ;
Soul's desire is means enow;
Pure content is angels' lot,
Thine own Theatre art thou.


398
JOURNAL [AGE 36
manual labor which is necessary for the main-
tenance of a family indisposes and disqualifies
for intellectual exertion.' ...
Latent heat performs a great office in nature.
Not less does latent joy in life. You may have
your stock of well-being condensed into extasies,
trances of good fortune and delight, preceded
and followed by blank or painful weeks and
months; or, you may have your joy spread over
all the days in a bland, vague, uniform sense of
power and hope.
Yet is this figure of a stock of well-being only
rhetorical, or rather relative to certain limitations.
For the latent heat of an ounce of wood or stone
is inexhaustible, and the power of happiness of
any soul is not to be computed or drained.
May 18.
Criticism must be transcendental, that is, must
consider literature ephemeral, and easily enter-
tain the supposition of its entire disappearance.
In our ordinary states of mind, we deem not
only letters in general, but most famous books
i The rest of the paragraph is found in “ Man the Re-
former ” (p. 241 ), and is followed by much of the matter on
the next two pages of that lecture.


1840] HELPLESS COSMOGONIES 399
parts of a preëstablished harmony, fatal, unalter-
able, and do not go behind Dante and Shaks-
pear, much less behind Moses, Ezekiel, and
St. John. But man is critic of all these also, and
should treat the entire extant product of the
human intellect as only one age, revisable, cor-
rigible, reversible by him.
ra
We have more traditions than the most reso-
lute skeptic has yet interrogated or even guessed.
How few cosmogonies have we. A few have got
a kind of classical character, and we let them
stand, for a world-builder is a rare man. And
yet what ghosts and hollow, formless, dream-gear
these theories are; how crass and inapplicable;
how little they explain; what a poor handful of
facts in this plentiful universe they touch. Let
me see. — Moses, Hesiod, Egyptian lore of Isis
and Osiris, Zoroaster, Menu — with these few
rude poems, or extracts from rude poems, the
nations have been content when any clever boy,
black or white, has anywhere interrupted the
stupid uproar by a sharp question, “Would
any one please to tell me whence I came hither?”
To be sure that question is contrary to the rules
of good society in all countries. For society is
always secondary, not primary, and delights in


400
JOURNAL
(AGE 36
secondaries. It is gregarious and parasitic and
loves to lay its egg like the cow-troopial in a
nest which other birds have built, and to build
no nest itself. Absolute truths, previous ques-
tions, primary natures, Society loathes the sound
of and the name of. “ Can you not as well say
Christ as say truth?” it asks. “Who are you,
child, that you must needs ask so many ques-
tions? See what a vast procession of your uncles
and aunts who never asked any. Can't you eat
your dinner and read in the books? besides, I
hate conversation, it makes my head ache.” But
if the urchin has wild eyes, and can neither be
coaxed nor chidden into silence, and cares not a
pin for the Greeks and Romans, for art or anti-
quity, for Bible or Government, for politics or
money, and keeps knocking soundly all night
at the gate, then at last the good world conde-
scends to unroll for him these solemn scrolls as
the reports of the Commissioners from the East,
from the South, from the North and the West,
to whom his question had been formerly referred.
If the poor lad got no answer before, he has got
none now. — What birth do these famous books
of Genesis reveal? Do they explain so much as
the nest of a bluebird or the hum of a fly? Can
they tell him the pedigree of the smallest effect?


1840) THE GOLDEN AGE 401
Can they detect the virtue of the feeblest Cause?
Can they give him the least hint of the history
of the eyes he has worshipped, or disclose his
relations to the summer brook and the waving
corn? And yet every man is master of the whole
Fact, and shall one day find himself so.
May 25.'
In the golden age men did not lay up prop-
erty for their children, for the marriages were
equal and the children abler than their parents.
In the golden age men did not study the song
of the bird by writing down, with Nuttall, the
notes in awkward syllables, che, che, che, etc.,
but the chaste and simple hermit found himself
intelligent of the song by the love in his own
heart. Neither did they know too much of bird
or beast, and peep after them; but treating them
brotherly and greatly, they without pains saw
through their being.
In the golden age a brave pleasure was not
purchased too dearly, like a poet's day, by many
leaden days; but every joy was embosomed in
joys like a lupine in the woods.
People wish to be settled. It is only as far
i Mr. Emerson's birthday.


402
JOURNAL [AGE 37
as they are unsettled that there is any hope for
them. You admire this tower of eternal granite
defying the assault of ages. Yet a little waving
hand built this huge wall.' ...
Criticism is timid. ... When shall we dare
to say, only that is poetry which cleanses and
mans me?
Hate this childish haste to print and publish;
for the hours of light come like Days of Judg-
ment at last, and cast their glory backward, for-
ward, above, below. Then, poor child, all the
folly stands confessed in thy scrolls and detaches
itself from the true words.
By help of tea, tea was renounced.
was renouno
I went to the circus. . . . One horse brought
a basket in his teeth, picked up a cap, and se-
lected a card out of four. All wonder comes of
showing an effect at two or three removes from
the cause. Show us the two or three steps by
which the horse was brought to fetch the basket,
i The rest of the passage occurs in “Circles” (Essays,
First Series, pp. 302, 303), and is followed by the passage be-
ginning, “ In the thought of tomorrow,” etc. (P. 305).


18401 UNMAGNETIC WRITERS 403
and the wonder would cease. But I and Waldo
were of one mind when he said, “ It makes me
want to go home.”
ear
A pleasant walk and sail this fine afternoon
with George Bradford. I threatened by way of
earnest-penny in this absorbing Reform to re-
nounce beef and the Daily Advertiser. There is
ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about
earnest, good men. It is very strange, but we
flee to the speculative reformer to escape that
same slight ridicule.
I think it ought to be remembered in every
essay after the Absolute Criticism that one cir-
cumstance goes to modify every work of liter-
ature, this, namely, that books are written gen-
erally by the unmagnetic class of mankind, by
those who have not the active faculties, and who
describe what they have never done. This cir-
cumstance must certainly color what they say
of character and action.
May 28.
At Bartol's, our club was enriched by Ed-
i The story is not all told here. It was when the painted
clown began his fooleries that the little boy said, “ Papa, the
funny man makes me want to go home,” and Mr. Emerson
always cherished this evidence of his refinement.


404
JOURNAL
[AGE 37
no
ward Taylor's presence. I felt in a higher de-
gree the same happiness I have formerly owed
to that man's public discourses, the exhilaration
and cheer of so much love poured out through
so much imagination. For the time, his exceed-
ing life throws all other gifts into deep shade,
“philosophy speculating on its own breath,”
taste, learning and all, — and yet how willingly
every man is willing to be nothing in his pres-
ence, to share this surprising emanation, and be
steeped and ennobled by the new wine of this
eloquence. He gives sign every moment of a
certain prodigious nature. No man instructs like
him in the power of man over men. Instantly
you behold that a man is a Mover, — to the
extent of his being, a Power, and in contrast
with the efficiency thus suggested, our actual life
and society appears a dormitory. We are taught
that earnest, impassioned action is most our own,
and invited to try the deeps of love and wisdom,
— we who have been players and paraders so
long. And yet I think I am most struck with
the beauty of his nature. This hard-featured,
scarred and wrinkled Methodist, whose face is
a system of cordage, becomes whilst he talks a
gentle, a lovely creature — the Amore Greco is
not more beautiful.


1840)
AGE. IDEALISM
405
In conversation we pluck up the eternal Ter-
mini which bound the common of Silence."
Old Age. — Sad spectacle that a man should
live and be fed that he may fill a paragraph
every year in the newspapers for his wonderful
age, as we record the weight and girth of the
Big Ox or Mammoth Girl. We do not count
a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
What can we do in dark hours ? We can ab-
stain. In the bright hours we can impart.
Reform.- The world accuses the Scholar of
a tendency to idealism. And why tends he
thither? he loves the warm sun and the mag-
netic person as well as they, but finding that
your facts and persons are grown unreal and
phantastic by reason of the vice in them, he nears
that most real world of Ideas within him, and
aims to recruit and replenish nature from that
source. Let ideas obtain and establish their
sway again in society, let life again be fair and
poetic, and we shall gladly be objective, lovers,
citizens and philanthropists.
1 The rest of this long passage on this subject is printed in
“ Circles" (Essays, First Series, pp. 310, 311).


406
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
The books of men of genius are divers or
dippers. When they alight on the water, they
soon disappear, but after some space they emerge
again.' Other books are land-birds which, fall-
ing in the water, know well that their own safety
is in keeping at the top, they flutter and chirp
and scream, but if they once get their heads
under they are drowned forever.
May 30.
Wrote letters yesterday by “British Queen”
to John Sterling and Richard Monckton
Milnes.
Was it Æsop or Epictetus who, being sold
for a slave at the market, cried out to all comers,
“ Who'll buy a master?” I should like to buy or
hire that article. My household suffers from too
many servants. My cow milks me. A rope of
sand for Asmodeus to spin I cannot find.3 Now
if so many dollars as I could amass would fetch
the good husband or gardener who would tell
1 This thought appears in verse in « The Poet” (see
Poems, Appendix, pp. 309, 310).
2 Who was reviewing Mr. Emerson's writings in England.
3 Asmodeus is mentioned in the book of Tobit in the Apoc-
rypha, and in the Talmud. This image, the keeping a trouble-
some demon occupied with sand-ropes, occurs in “ Behavior”
(Conduct of Life), and in or Resources” (Letters and Social
ass
Aims).


1840) NATURE GIVES SIGHT 407
me what I ought to do in garden and barnyard,
would summon me out to do it, even with a
little compulsion, when I resisted, — that would
put me well.
May 31.
We can never see Christianity from Christen-
dom; but from the pastures, from a boat in the
pond, from the song of a starling, we possibly
may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind,
steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the
field offers us, we may chance to cast a right
glance back upon biography. We must be great
to see anything truly. Our weak eyes make gob-
lins and monsters. But man thyself, and all
things unfix, dispart, and flee. Nothing will stand
the eye of a man, — neither lion, nor person,
nor planet, nor time, nor condition. Each bul-
lies us for a season; but gaze, and it opens that
most solid seeming wall, yields its secret, re-
ceives us into its depth and advances our front
so much farther on into the recesses of being,
to some new frontier as yet unvisited by the
elder voyagers. And yet alas for this infirm faith,
this will, not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast
flow! I am God in nature, I am a weed by the
wall.


408
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
Has the naturalist and the chemist learned his
craft who has explored the gravity of atoms and
the elective affinities?' ...
The use of literature is to afford us a platform
whence we may command a view of our present
life.? ...
June 1.
The Buddhist expresses the true law of hospi-
tality when he says, “Do not flatter your bene-
factors.” The bread that you give me is not
thine to give, but mine when the great order of
nature has seated me today at your table. Do
not let me deceive you by my thanks into the
notion that you are aught but the moderator of
the company for the hour, though you call your-
self rich man and great benefactor, perhaps.
The capital or stock of man our estimates al-
ways overlook; it is not set down in any invoice.
Ruined ! are you? Have you not earth and water?
Have you not gravity, chemistry, love, cause
and effect, time, fate, men? Do not all these
i Here follows the analogy that all that belongs to men
comes to them. See « Circles” (Essays, First Series, p. 314;
also end of second motto to “ Compensation”).
2 The rest of the paragraph is found in “ Circles” (p.
312).


1840] AMERICA. STANDING 409
circulate through you, and you through them?
What in God do you whimper for? What else
wouldst thou have, O child?
A personal influence is an ignis fatuus.' ...
Our American letters are, we confess, in the
optative mood.? ...
The swallow over my window ought to weave
that straw in his bill through all my web also of
speculations.
Standing.– All men have learned one use of
their feet, - to go; but another use, - to stand,
— few have learned. We lean upon a wall, on a
book, on a man. Is it not strange, too, that, in
French, there should be no word for stand? Is it
that the Frenchman knows only a leaning and
referred existence, and cannot stand?
1 This paragraph is found in - Nominalist and Realist”
(Essays, Second Series, p. 229), except that there the names
of Washington and Franklin are substituted for Dr. Channing
and Garrison in the Journal.
The next entry is that on the Greek sculpture having all
melted away (“ Circles,” p. 302).
2 The rest of the passage occurs in The Transcendentalist”
(Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, p. 342).


410
(Age 37
JOURNAL
All great men have written proudly, nor
cared to explain. They knew that the intelli-
gent reader would come at last, and would thank
them. So did Dante, so did Machiavel. What
else has Goethe done in this hated Meister?'...
Bat and Ball. — Toys, no doubt, have their
philosophy, and who knows how deep is the
origin of a boy's delight in a spinning top? In
playing with bat-balls, perhaps he is charmed
with some recognition of the movement of the
heavenly bodies, and a game of base or cricket
is a course of experimental astronomy, and my
young master tingles with a faint sense of being
a tyrannical Jupiter driving spheres madly from
their orbit.
June 4.
Self-reliance sanctifies the character, for whoso
is of that habit does not gossip or gad; is not
betrayed by excess of sympathy into trifles, but
ignores what he should ignore.
In looking at pictures, you must stop soon.
You may see one or two, but, after turning over
1 The long criticism of Goethe follows, first printed in the
Dial, which may be found in "Thoughts on Modern Litera-
ture” (Natural History of Intellect, pp. 329–333).


1840] WALDO. COMPOSURE. LOVE 411
seven or eight, you see no more. And when
you do chance to see one, bid it good-bye, you
will never see it again.
Waldo says, “The flowers talk when the wind
blows over them.” My little boy grows thin in
the hot summer, and runs all to eyes and eye-
lashes.
ne II.
sa-
Who has more self-repose than I masters me
by eye and manner, though he should not move
a finger; who has less is mastered by me with
the like facility.
I finish this morning transcribing my old
essay on Love, but I see well its inadequate-
ness. I, cold because I am hot, - cold at the
surface only as a sort of guard and compensa-
tion for the fluid tenderness of the core, — have
much more experience than I have written there,
more than I will, more than I can write. In
silence we must wrap much of our life, because
it is too fine for speech, because also we cannot
explain it to others, and because somewhat we
cannot yet understand. We do not live as
angels, eager to introduce each other to new
perfections in our brothers and sisters, and
frankly avowing our delight in each new trait
IS
nor


412
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
se 1
no
of character, in the magic of each new eyebeam,
but that which passes for love in the world gets
official, and instead of embracing, hates all the
divine traits that dare to appear in other per-
sons. A better and holier society will mend this
selfish cowardice, and we shall have brave ties
of affection, not petrified by law, not dated or
ordained by law to last for one year, for five
years, or for life; but drawing their date, like
all friendship, from itself only; brave as I said,
because innocent, and religiously abstinent from
the connubial endearments, being a higher league
on a purely spiritual basis. This nobody be-
lieves possible who is not good. The good
know it is possible. Cows and bulls and pea-
cocks think it nonsense.
Sunday, June 14.
Tranquil and great sailed or slept the clouds
today in the northeastern horizon as I walked
and mused on my friends. I thought, why
should I play with the young people this game
of idolatry?'...
The great man will not be prudent in the
popular sense.? ...
i The rest of the passage is found in “Circles" (Essays,
First Series, p. 307).
2 The rest is found in “ Circles” (pp. 314, 315).


1840] · INTOXICANTS. DIET 413
Our country men love intoxication of some
sort. One is drunk with whiskey, and one with
party, and one with music, and one with tem-
per. Many of them fling themselves into the
excitement of business until their heads whirl
and they become insane. But ambition is for
strong heads, not for weak ones. It is droll that
the Laurel in our woods is called Lamb-kill,
and even the larger laurel Spoon-hunt.
Dr. Abernethy's rule for diet to the invalid
was, “Live on sixpence a day and earn it.”
It is a superstition to insist on vegetable, or
animal, or any special diet. All is made up at
last of the same chemical atoms. The Indian
rule shames the Graham rule. A man can eat
anything, — cats, dogs, snakes, frogs, fishes,
roots and moss. All the religion, all the reason
in the new diet is, that animal food costs too
much. We must spend too much time and
thought in procuring so varied and stimulating
diet and then we become dependent on it.
Admiral Keppel said of the Scots, “They
are excellent soles, but terrible bad upper-
leathers.”


414
JOURNAL (AGE 37
(From F)
June 18.
Edmund Hosmer taught me by his generous
care of my interest, in the matter of the cow,
that the part which each man should look at
in driving a bargain with his neighbor is his
neighbor's interest, and not his own.
What right have I, because there is money
in my pocket, to furnish me with toys and com-
forts on an idle or wicked day? If I have not
in my conscience earned a right to what I desire,
let me not buy; the money is not mine, though
it lie in my drawer.
A gay and pleasant sound is that of the whet-
ting of the scythe. A summer sound. Yet, as
my mowing Dr. Bugbee replied to me, what is
there more lonesome and sad than the sound
of a whetstone or rifle when it is too late in the
season to make hay?
Diet.— I like Henry Thoreau's statement on
Diet: “If a man does not believe that he can
thrive on board nails, I will not talk with him.”
Ye rogues, my company eat turf and talk not;
Timber they can digest and fight upon 't;
Old mats, and mud with spoons, rare meats, - your
shoes, slaves,


1840] ESSAY ON FRIENDSHIP 415
Dare ye cry out of hunger and those extant ?
Suck your sword hilts, ye slaves, if ye be valiant,
Honor will make them marchpane.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, Bonduca.
June 19.
On the 17th June the mercury stood at 96°
in the shade at i o'clock P. M.
(From E)
June 21.
Can we not be so great as to offer tenderness
to our friend,- tenderness with self-trust? Why
should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by
intruding on them?'
[In his letter to Mr. S. G. Ward, of June 22,
Mr. Emerson wrote: “I am just now finish-
ing a Chapter on Friendship (of which one of
my lectures last winter contained a first sketch)
on which I would gladly provoke a commentary.
I have written nothing with more pleasure, and
the piece is already indebted to you, and I wish
to swell my obligations. If I like it when I read
it over, I shall send it to you.”']
i Here follows the long passage, thus beginning, found in
“ Friendship” (pp. 210, 211).
2 Emerson's Letters to a Friend.


416
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
Of a man we should ask, Has he invented a
Day? an action? every act, every moment, every
mode of being he showed us ? Alas! often he
invented nothing: he was a speaking ape; he
did not rise to an original force, - not for an
instant, — and we are hardly able in thought to
detach him from his body, and we talk well
pleased of having put him in the ground.
A lover does not willingly name his mistress;
he speaks of all persons and things beside ; for
she is sacred. So will the friend respect the
name of his friend. Name him for pride and he
is already ceasing to be yours. The base lover
is piqued by the natural dignity of the virgin
which overawes and disconcerts him, do what
he can. He desires to possess her, that so, at
least, he may recover his tongue and his be-
haviour in her presence. Thus he steals the vic-
tory, which he ought greatly to earn by raising
his own character to the royal level of hers. The
same ethics hold of thy friendship. Worship
the superiorities of thy friend. Wish them not
less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all :
they are the uplifting force by which you are to
rise to new degrees of rank.
Self-reliance applied to another person is rev-
Sa


1840] POWER. CHANNING 417
erence, that is, only the self-respecting will be
reverent.
June 24.
The least sense of power, as the newly at-
tained skill to make corn grow, or to row a
boat, raises the spirits, and from it a new wis-
dom immediately flows.
We love to paint those qualities which we do
not possess.'... I, who suffer from excess of
sympathy, proclaim always the merits of self-
reliance.
Channing's poetry and — 's have a certain
merit which unfits them for print. They are
proper manuscript inspirations, honest, great,
but crude. They have never been filed or de-
filed for the eye that studies surface: the writer
was not afraid to write ill; had a great meaning
too much at heart to stand for trifles, and wrote
lordly for his peers alone. This is the right
poetry of hope, no French correctness, but Hans
Sachs and Chaucer rather.”
We are never so fit for friendship as when we
cease to seek for it, and take ourselves to friend.
See “ Prudence," opening paragraph (Essays, First
Series).
2 Yet Channing's refusal to mend his verses was a trial to
his friend.


418.
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
Once I was in love, and whenever I thought
of what should happen to me and the maiden,
we were always travelling ; I could not think
of her otherwise. Again I was in love, and I
always painted this maiden at home.
Why should I wish to do or write many
things, since any one well done contains my
history? Why should I see with regret the fell-
ing of the woods, and fear lest my son should
lack the lessons his father drew from nature,
when I have known myself entertained by a
single dewdrop or an icicle, by a liatris, or a
fungus, and seen God revealed in the shadow
of a leaf? Nature is microscopically rich, as well
as cumulatively. Why should I covet a know-
ledge of new facts and skills, when I know that
they are only other illustration of laws daily
playing before my eyes?' ...
Each new fact I look upon, as this steaming
of hot air from the wide fields upward, is a new
word that I learn and hive, well assured the use
for it will come presently, as the boy learns with
good hope his Latin vocabulary. What is it
i Several sentences, thus introduced are in “The Poet”
( Essays, Second Series, p. 32).


1840) MONTAIGNE. LANGUAGE 419
to be a poet? What are his garland and singing
robes?'
(From a loose sheet)
Originality. – Talent without character is
friskiness. The charm of Montaigne's egotism,
and of his anecdotes, is, that there is a stout
cavalier, a seigneur of France, at home in his
château, responsible for all this chatting. Now
suppose it should be shown and proved that
the famous “Essays” were a jeu d'esprit of
Scaliger, or other scribacious person, written
for the booksellers, and not resting on a real
status, picturesque in the eyes of all men, would
not the book instantly lose almost all its value?
(From E)
Montaigne. — The language of the street is
always strong. What can describe the folly and
emptiness of scolding like the word jawing? I
feel too the force of the double negative, though
clean contrary to our grammar rules. And I con-
fess to some pleasure from the stinging rhetoric
of a rattling oath in the mouth of truckmen
and teamsters. How laconic and brisk it is by
the side of a page of the North American Review.
1 The rest of the passage is in “Poetry and Imagina-
tion” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 36).


420
JOURNAL . (Age 37
CI
Cut these words and they would bleed; they
are vascular and alive; they walk and run. More-
over they who speak them have this elegancy,
that they do not trip in their speech. It is a
shower of bullets, whilst Cambridge men and
Yale men correct themselves and begin again
at every half sentence.'
I know nobody among my contemporaries
except Carlyle who writes with any sinew and
vivacity comparable to Plutarch and Montaigne.
Yet always this profane swearing and bar-room
wit has salt and fire in it. I cannot now read
Webster's speeches. Fuller and Browne and
Milton are quick, but the list is soon ended.
Goethe seems to be well alive, no pedant. Luther
too.
Nature.— I think I must do these eyes of
mine the justice to write a new chapter on
Nature. This delight we all take in every show
of night or day, of field or forest or sea or city,
down to the lowest particulars, is not without
sequel, though we be as yet only wishers and
1 Sentences from the above paragraph occur in the chapter
• Art and Criticism,” printed only in the Centenary Edition
(Natural History of Intellect, p. 288), and in “ Montaigne”
(Representative Men, p. 168).


1840] NATURE'S CIPHER 421
gazers, not at all knowing what we want. We
are predominated herein, as elsewhere, by an
upper wisdom, and resemble those great dis-
coverers who are haunted for years, sometimes
from infancy, with a passion for the fact or class
of facts in which the secret lies which they are
destined to unlock, and they let it not go until
the blessing is won. So these sunsets and star-
lights, these swamps and rocks, these birdnotes
and animal forms off which we cannot get our
eyes and ears, but hover still, as moths, round
a lamp, are no doubt a Sanscrit cipher covering
the whole religious history of the universe, and
presently we shall read it off into action and
character. The pastures are full of ghosts for
me, the morning woods full of angels. Now
and then they give me a broad hint. Every
natural fact is trivial until it becomes symbolical
or moral.
How I am touched and gladly surprised by
hearing the chemist propounding the theory of
heat, viz., that every particle of matter is in con-
stant revolution round its own axis, slower or
faster, alike in a column of smoke, or a stone
jug. Increase the heat, and you accelerate the
revolution by separating the atoms; increase
the heat again, and the particles acquire such


422
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
freedom that the form is changed to liquid ; in-
crease the heat again, and they gyrate in larger
circles and become gas and (as we call it) die, or
enter into the universe again. Shall we not apply
the moral for our consolation to these men of fire
and these men of stone that sit around us? The
dullest lump is yet amenable to this law of fire.
Warm him with love, and he too must begin
to feel new freedom, and presently to become
luminous with thought and glowing with affec-
tion.
No inventory is complete. The farmer does
not count the sparrows and bobolinks that
breed in his meadow in his account of his
poultry, and the selectmen assess on me no tax
for my use of the woods, where I find first
sight, second sight, and insight. The asters and
eupatoriums are maturing their leaves and buds,
the gerardia is getting ready its profuse flowers,
warning me that my book should be ended
before their capsules are filled with seed.
Now for near five years I have been indulged
by the gracious Heaven in my long holiday in
this goodly house of mine, entertaining and en-
tertained by so many worthy and gifted friends,


1840) MAGNETIC MEN. RIVER 423
and all this time poor Nancy Barron, the mad-
woman, has been screaming herself hoarse at the
Poor-house across the brook and I still hear her
whenever I open my window.
The Best are never demoniacal or magnetic,
but all brutes are. The Democratic Party in
this country is more magnetic than the Whig.
Andrew Jackson is an eminent example of it.
Van Buren is not, - but his masters are, who
placed him in his house. Amos Kendall and
Woodbury. Mr. Hoar is entirely destitute of
this element. It is the prince of the power of
the air. The lowest angel is better. It is the
height of the animal; below the region of the
divine.
June 29.
Today at the Cliff we held our Villegiatura.
I saw nothing better than the passage of the
river by the dark clump of trees that line the
bank in one spot for a short distance. There
Nature charmed the eye with her distinct and
perfect painting. As the flowing silver reached
that point, it darkened, and yet every wave cel-
ebrated its passage through the shade by one
sparkle. But ever the direction of the sparkles
was onward, onward. Not one receded. At one


424
JOURNAL
[AGE 37
invariable pace, like marchers in a procession to
solemn music, in perfect time, in perfect order,
they moved onward, onward, and I saw the
warning of their eternal flow.' Then the rock
seemed good to me. I think we can never af-
ford to part with Matter. How dear and beau-
tiful it is to us!? ... The flowers lately, es-
pecially when I see for the first time this season
an old acquaintance, a gerardia, a lespedeza,
have much to say on Life and Death. “You
have much discussion,” they seem to say, “on
Immortality. Here it is: Here are we who have
spoken nothing on the matter.” And as I have
looked from this lofty rock lately, our human
life seemed very short beside this ever renewing
race of trees. Your life, they say, is but a few
spinnings of this top. Forever the forest ger-
minates: forever our solemn strength renews
1 This was the view southwestward from Fairhaven Hill,
and the same sight may be seen now (1911) on a sunny
afternoon, when ripples gleam out of the dark reflection of the
pines on the opposite bank.
Far seen, the river gleams below,
Tossing one sparkle to the eyes.
I catch thy meaning, wizard wave
The river of my Life replies.
2 From “ Peter's Field” (Poems, p. 364). Continued in
“ Nature” (Essays, Second Series, p. 171).


1840] NATURE. POET'S DUTY 425
its knots and nodes and leaf-buds and radicles.
Grass and trees have no individuals, as man
counts individuality. The continuance of their
race is immortality; the continuance of ours is
not. So they triumph over us; and when we
seek to answer, or to say something, the good
tree holds out a bunch of green leaves in your
face, or the woodbine five graceful fingers, and
looks so stupid-beautiful, so innocent of all ar-
gument, that our mouths are stopped and Na-
ture has the last word.
A notice of modern literature ought to in-
clude (ought it not?) a notice of Carlyle, of
Tennyson, of Landor, of Bettina, of Sampson:
Reed.
We chide the citizen because, with all his
honest merits, he does not conceive the delica-
cies and nobility of friendship, but we cannot
forgive the poet if he does not substantiate his
fine romance by the municipal virtues of justice,
fidelity and pity.
The simplest things are always better than
curiosities. The most imposing part of this
Harrison celebration of the Fourth of July in


426
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
Concord, as in Baltimore, was this ball, twelve
or thirteen feet in diameter, which, as it mounts
the little heights and descends the little slopes
of the road, draws all eyes with a certain sub-
lime movement, especially as the imagination
is incessantly addressed with its political signi-
ficancy. So the Log Cabin is a lively watch-
word.'
I think we must give up this superstition of
company to spend weeks and fortnights. Let
my friend come and say that he has to say, and
go his way. Otherwise we live for show. That
happens continually in my house, that I am
expected to play tame lion by readings and
talkings to the friends. The rich live for show:
I will not.
(From F)
July 6.
It is very easy to represent a farm, — which
in most hours stands for the organization of the
1 The political campaign for Harrison and Tyler was at
its height, with its watchword, -
“ Tippecanoe
And Tyler too," –
its Log Cabin, and « Hard Cider”; and it is said that even
venerable citizens helped to keep the ball a-rollin'!” up


1840] A SAFE HOME. HEROISM 427
gravest needs of man, — as a poor trifle of a few
pea-vines, turnips and a henroost.
The name of death was never terrible
To him that knew to live.
Double Marriage.
The rankest materialist must build his house,
– no matter how deep and square on blocks of
granite he lays his foundations, — must set it
last, not on a cube, but on a mass which rounds
off to an almost perfect sphericity and lies float-
ing in soft air and goes spinning away thousands
of miles the hour, — he knows not whither.
Heroism made easy is that for which people
are always seeking to find some recipe. But God
saith, It shall not be. Heroism means difficulty,
postponement of praise, postponement of ease,
introduction of the world into the private apart-
ment, introduction of eternity into the hours
measured by the sitting-room clock.
We see the river glide below us, but we see
not the river that glides over us and envelopes
city streets or along country roads. Mr. Emerson was pleased
with the symbolism, and alludes to it in “ The Poet” (Es-
says, Second Series, p. 16).


428
JOURNAL [AGE 37
new
us in its floods. A month ago, I met myself, as
I was speeding away from some trifle to chase a
new one, and knew that I had eaten lotus and
been a stranger from my home all this time. And
now I see that, with that word and thought in
my mind, another wave took me and washed my
remembrance away, and only now I regain my-
self a little and turn in my sleep.
Increase our Faith. - Practical faith we have
not. Let us believe in unity until our actions are
united. Let us not believe, as we do now, in
means and medicines, but in our action recognize
that the world flows ever from the soul, and, in-
stead of attacking the toothache or the dyspepsia,
or any other symptom, raise the aim of the man,
— and toothache and indigestion, cramp and
croup, pain and poverty, will disappear in troops,
as now in troops these calamities come.
It makes no difference what a saintly soul eats
or drinks; let him eat venison or roots, let him
drink champagne or water, nothing will harm
him or intoxicate or impoverish him; — he eats
as though he eat not, and drinks as though he
drank not. But we are skeptics over our dinner-
table, and therefore our food is noxious and our
i Compare, in the Poems, the “ Two Rivers.”


1840] EXPENSE. MY SERVANTS 429
bodies fat or lean. Looking as we do at means,
and not at grand ends, being in our action dis-
united, our bodies have come to be detached also
from our souls, and we speak of our health.
n OU
Our expense is almost all for conformity. It
is for cake that we all run in debt, — not the
intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship,
that costs us so much.' ...
The ends of Society will appear; now, we live
solitary ; men of genius, being apart, half snore
and spend their time in girding at society for
not thinking as they do, but do nothing to con-
vert it. But these hermits, when brought near
and acting directly on each other, shall sleep no
more, but be put on their mettle.
m
I have better servants than taste and atten-
tion to polish and adjust my relations to my friend,
namely, Time and Fate, or the prevailing har-
mony of nature. These harden, these attemper
and polish my relation to the smoothness and
finish that will weather all accidents and stand
for eternity.
i The rest of this long passage in “ Man the Reformer"
(Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, pp. 244, 245).


430
JOURNAL [AGE 37
Our quarrel with every man we meet is not
with his kind, but with his degree. There is not
enough of him; that is the only fault.
We pretend to our friends that we do not
need direct communication — neither actions,
nor gifts, nor conversation — to keep their in-
fluence whole. But it is a pretence.
no
In
It makes a great difference as to the force of
any sentence whether there be a man behind it
or no.' ...
Filled with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart than idiot with none.
Donne.
No Spring nor Summer's beauty hath such grace
* As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
DONNE.
There is always this impassable gulf between
the men of the world and the men of principle.
The practical man hears the theory or the advice
of the prophet and laughs or is angry at such
raving. For he says, Look at the tools with
which this world of yours is to be built. ...
i The rest of the paragraph is found in “Goethe" (Re-
presentative Men, p. 282).
2 For the rest of this paragraph, see " Man the Reformer"
(Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, p. 252).


1840) EGO. PURE LOVE. OSMAN 431
A man of principles is nature. But the worlds-
man cannot once withdraw his eye from his actual
neighbors, or cease to believe that you are dream-
ing of making them do the deeds of angels, their
wills remaining as they are.
Someone said to me, “But if we were simpler
should we not talk more of ourselves?" I reply,
Not of this named and mortal me. When I have
talked of myself, I am presently punished by a
sense of emptiness, and, as it were, flatulency,
that I have lost all the solemnity and majesty of
being.
Love and intellect, each in their perfection be-
come the other. Love is beautiful in action, but
can never be spoken without some cloying or
fulsomeness until it becomes quite pure, like
Fénelon's, or St. John's. Less than a Saint, it is
but a goody.
Osman. — Osman was a poor and simple man
and was neglected in his youth, being esteemed a
person of narrow intellect, whilst his brothers were
able and ambitious men. His features were mean
and irregular, his form was unproportioned, his
movement was awkward and he had a bass, unmu-


432
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
sical voice. He was, therefore, never instructed
in any trade or art, but was put to household
chares, and later, to aid a small farmer in his
husbandry. Not until he reached the middle age
was he at all remarked, but left in obscurity,
served last, and no notice taken of what he said.
Osman thought no more of himself than others
thought of him, but acquiesced in this low and
menial place which was assigned to him, and
with great respect to others who, he doubted
not, had superior parts, and with great good
humor, did all that was required of him. Much
serving made him very meek and very useful.
He could turn his hand to any ordinary work,
and do it well. As there was no one to serve
him, he learned to serve himself, and, as hap-
pens where a man waits on his own wants, he made
them very few. He was social and affectionate in
his nature as a dog, and readily talked with all
who availed themselves of his hands to end some
odd piece of work. Nobody dreamed of being
either civil or of assuming any airs before poor
Osman, so that he knew everybody for just what
they were, as they all knew him. Although
affable enough, he really spoke little during the
day, and was of a grave, quiet deportment. In
his youth he had been sickly, but these long
ser


1840) OSMAN. SELF-TRUST 433
habits of light daily work established his consti-
tution, and when he had counted thirty-five years
he began to be much considered for his probity
and his wisdom. Everybody who knew him liked
him, as if he had been their brother. The farmers
said he worked like the rain or the wind, which
need nobody's aid, but do their charity them-
selves. He had a strong memory, and having
neither selfishness nor learning to cloud it, it
might be depended on like a thermometer or a
sun-dial. He was temperate in his diet, and, on
account of his ill-health in childhood, had been
bred to prefer a vegetable nutriment."
You must steadily prefer your own native
choices against all argument and all example.
(If you stand by them, they will certainly bring
you out safe into reality and excellence, at last,
i Mr. Emerson, through many years, occasionally diverted
himself by writing the traits and adventures of the imagi-
nary Osman, many of which — by no means all — were auto-
biography. In this instance Osman's experiences are humbler
and more practical and he has a social gift, the absence of
which in himself Mr. Emerson used sometimes to deplore,
and yet often said, “Solitude is my doom, and my strength.”
But in many other cases Osman appears a sublimed self, a sort
of ideal man.


434
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
unworthy and contemptible as they may now
seem.) Defend them against the multitude, and
defend them against the wise. He who told you
of them is wiser than the colleges, wiser than the
holy men.
Cannot you, instead of contributing to Bun-
ker Hill Monument, or the Charity Lecture,
learn to serve yourself? Society is full of infirm,
lazy people who are incessantly calling on others
to serve them.' ...
Whenever I read Plutarch or look at a Greek
vase I am inclined to accept the common opinion
of the learned that the Greeks had cleaner wits
than any other people in the Universe. But there
is anything but Time in my idea of the antique.
A clear and natural expression by word or deed
is that which we mean when we love and praise
the antique. In society I do not find it; in mod-
ern books seldom; but the moment I get into
the pastures I find antiquity again. Once in the
fields with the lowing cattle, the birds, the trees,
the waters and satisfying outlines of the land-
scape, and I cannot tell whether this is Tempe,
Thessaly and Enna, or Concord and Acton.
1 The long paragraph thus beginning is printed in “ Man
the Reformer" (pp. 246, 247).


1840) CHILDREN'S SPEECH 435
What is so bewitching as the experiments of
young children on grammar and language? The
purity of their grammar corrects all the anom-
alies of our irregular verbs and anomalous nouns.
They carry the analogy thorough. Bite makes
bited, and eat, eated in their preterite. Waldo
says there is no “telling” on my microscope,
meaning no name of the maker, as he has seen
on knife-blades, etc. “Where is the wafer that
lives in this box?” etc. They use the strong
double negative which we English have lost from
our books, though we keep it in the street. “I
wish you would not dig your leg,” said Waldo
to me. Ellen calls the grapes “green berries,”
and when I asked, “Does it rain this morning?”
she said, “ There's tears on the window."
But what is so weak and thin as our written
style today in what is called literature? We use
ten words for one of the child's. His strong
speech is made up of nouns and verbs, and names
the facts. Our writers attempt by many words to
suggest, since they cannot describe.
There is a difference between one and another
i The suggestion of a possible unhandiness with the spade
implied was long thrown up against Mr. Emerson in the do-
mestic circle.


436
(Age 37
JOURNAL
moment of life in their authority and subsequent
effect.' ...
Waldo asks if the strings of the harp open
when he touches them!
As for walking with Heraclitus, said Theanor,
I know nothing less interesting ; I had as lief
talk with my own conscience.”
You fancy the stout woodchopper is thinking
always of his poverty, compared with the power
and money of the capitalist who makes the laws.
I will not deny that such things have passed
through his mind, for he has been at a Caucus
with open mouth and ears. But now he is think-
ing of a very different matter, for his horse has
started in the team and pulled with such a spring
that he has cleared himself of the harness -
hames and all — and he, as he mends the broken
tackle, is meditating revenge on the horse. “Well,
you may draw as fast as you like up the mile
hill; You shall have enough of it, if you like to
draw, Damn you !” — the horse, that is, and not
the capitalist.
i Here follows the opening passage of " The Over-Soul.”
2 Possibly a reflection on a recent walk with the sad and
austere Jones Very.


1840] PROMETHEUS. ÆSCHYLUS 437
Let every man shovel out his own snow, and
the whole city will be passable.
Read a translation of the Prometheus Chained.
... It seems to be the first chapter of History
of the Caucasian Race..
It is, besides, a grand effort of Imagination.
Imagination is not good for anything unless there
be enough. That a man can make a verse or
have a poetic thought avails not, unless he has
such a flow of these that he can construct a
poem, a play, a discourse. Symmetry, propor-
tion we demand, and what are these but the fac-
ulty in such intensity or amount as to avail to
create some whole? ...
There is no irregular, auroral shooting in
Æschylus, but calm, equal strength; in Plato
most of all men. But Æschylus treated of
Greek subjects. What should we treat? The
Poet in 1840 and in New England, what does
that signify?
Who shall quarrel with literature as unnatural
and pedantic? What is a man but Nature's
final success in self-explication?'....
i The rest of the passage is printed in “ Art” (Essays,
Second Series, p. 352).


438
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
Prometheus is noble. He is the Jesus of the
old mythology, and plays with much exactness
the part assigned to the Nazarene in the Gene-
van theology. He is the friend of man. Stands
between the unjust justice of the Eternal Father
and the frail race of man; then readily suffers
all things on their account.' It is a pity he
should be so angry. Anger continued and in-
dulged becomes spleen. A single burst of in-
dignation is heroic enough, but a persisting
expression of it degenerates fast into scolding.
Prometheus scolds, and Eteocles in “The
Seven”; and Electra in Sophocles.
[Here is the first thought of the quatrain
“Memory":-]
The dreams of the night
Are shadows of the thoughts of the day
And thy fortunes as they befall thee
Are the ghosts of thy will,
The children of thy spiritual body.
[Here it begins to take form :-)
Let the dreams of night recall
Shadows of the thoughts of day
i The last two sentences occur in “ History”
First Series).
(Essays,


1840) NATURE'S COUNSEL
439
And see thy fortunes as they fall
Each secret of thy will betray.
[The finished poem is in quatrain, “Mem-
ory,” Poems, p. 295.]
(From E)
July 10.
Nature invites to repose, to the dreams of
the Oriental sages; there is no petulance, no
fret; there is eternal resource and a long to-
morrow, rich and strong as yesterday. We
should be believers in Necessity and Compen-
sation, and a man would have the air of pyra-
mids and mountains, if we forsook our petu-
lant mates and kept company with leaves and
waters.
[Here follows the opening passage of “His-
tory” in the first volume of Essays, about the
uniform recognition of gentility in the elder
dramatists.]
All diseases run into one, Old Age. We
grizzle every day.' ...
i Here follows the passage thus beginning in “ Circles"
(Essays, First Series, p. 319).


440
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
“Faith and Hope”; these words are used in
the church as if they were as unmeaning as
Selah and Amen.' ...
July 13.
The Graces of sleep not three, but three
thousand; no man is ever awkward, ever sly,
canting, or otherwise false whilst asleep. Only
one thing they do amiss, the sleepers,—sn-e.
Carlyle shall make a statement of a fact, shall
draw a portrait, shall inlay nice shades of mean-
ing, shall play, shall insinuate, shall banter, shall
paralyze with sarcasm, shall translate, shall sing
a Tyrtæan song, and speak out like the Liturgy,
or the old English Pentateuch, all the secrets of
manhood. This he shall do and much more,
being an upright, plain-dealing, hearty, loving
soul of the clearest eye and of infinite wit, and
using the language like a protean engine which
can cut, thrust, saw, rasp, tickle or pulverize as
occasion may require. But he is not a philoso-
pher: his strength does not lie in the statement of
abstract truth. His contemplation has no wings.
He exhausts his topic. There is no more to be
said when he has ended. He is not suggestive.
1 The rest of the passage is in “ Man the Reformer"
(Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, pp. 249, 250).


1840) DAYS AND POEMS 441
Every new history that shall be written will
be indebted to him. It will not be stately, but
will go now into the street and sitting-room
and the ale-house and kitchen.
What he has said shall be proverb; nobody
shall be able to say it otherwise.
se
OVE
C
It does not need that a poem should be long.
Life, I have written above, is unnecessarily
long, and poems are, as we learn when we meet
with a line
“In the large utterance of the early gods,”
or Milton's “beyond the manhood of a Roman
recovery,” moments of personal relation, smiles
and glances how ample. Borrowers of eternity,
they are. Some mellow, satisfying sessions we
have in the woods in cool summer days.
Education aims to make the man prevail over
the circumstance. The vulgar man is the victim
of the circumstance. In the stagecoach, he is no
man, but a tedious echo of each new accident of
the journey, absorbed in the heat, in the cold,
in the bad horses, in the fret of a crowded car-
riage. In the rain, he can think of nothing but
that he wishes it would stop; in the drought, he


442
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
waits till the rain fall; in debt, he postpones his
being until his note is paid ; in dull company,
until the company is gone; and never rallies him-
self to sink the circumstance and these encroach-
ing trifles into their proper nothingness before
the energies, the sweetness, the riches, the aspira-
tions of a human mind.
The common man has no time. One circum-
stance delivers him over to another. Now he
cannot be, for he is travelling. Then he cannot
be, for he has arrived in a new place; now, be-
cause he labors, then because he rests.
July 15.
Bebaviour. — I like to see a man or a woman
who does not palter or dodge, whose eyes look
straight forward, and who throws the wisdom he
or she has attained into the address and demeanor.
What blandishment in the pronouncing of your
name. Your name is commended to your ear
ever after it has been spoken by a man like Otis
or a woman like A- W- .
July 17.
.
“Sunshine was he
On the cold day
And when the dogstar raged
Shade was he and coolness,"


1840] SUN AND SHADE. WORK 443
says the Arabic poet translated by Goethe
(vol. vi).
The hottest weather, so long continued, that
I have noticed ; — redhot noons,—the mercury
reaches 93° in the shade — the crops are drying
up. Let me be coolness and shade. The gar-
dener floods his vines with water out of the well,
sure that the good Rain will in the year fill his well,
though it delays to feed his garden. So is he
“ coolness and shade.” In the winter he covers
his asparagus with straw, and in the cold spring
his young tomatoes with glass. So is he to them
“Sunshine,” but I weep with the weepers and
fear with the fearers and am not a tower of de-
fence, but a foolish sympathy.
- July 18.
969 Fahrenheit. What right has the man of
genius to retreat from work and indulge himself?
The popular literary creed is:“ I am a man of
genius; I ought not therefore to labor.” But
genius is the power to labor better and more
availably than others. Deserve thy genius. Exalt
it. The good, the illuminated sit apart from the
rest, censuring their dulness and vices, as if they
thought that by sitting very grand in their chairs
the very brokers and congressmen would see the
error of their ways and flock to them. But the


444
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
good, the wise must learn to act and carry this
very salvation to the brokers and the dema-
gogues which they need.
July 26.
Beside the self-repose which manners express
the Alleghanies seem to me the drifting sand.
Tantalus is but a name for you and me. Trans-
migration of Souls: that too is no fable.' ...
Go to the forest, if God has made thee a poet,
and make thy life clean and fragrant as thy office.
True Bramin in the morning meadows wet
Expound the Vedas in the Violet.
Thy love must be thy art. Thy words must
spring from love, and every thought be touched
with love. Only such words fly and endure.
There are two ways of speaking: one, when a
man makes his discourse plausible and round by
considering how it sounds to him who hears it,
and the other mode when his own heart loves
and so infuses grace into all that drops from him.
Only this is living beauty. Nature also must
1 See the passages thus beginning in “ History” (Essays,
First Series, p. 32); and these, in the Journal, are followed
by the image of Proteus, in “ History," p. 31.


1840] CLEAN THE MIND. VISIT 445
teach thee rhetoric. She can teach thee, not only
to speak truth, but to speak it truly. Only poets
advance with every word. In most compositions
there is one thought which was spontaneous, and
many which were added and abutted: but, in the
true, God writes every word.
Shall the scholar write every word in his mind,
-- how bad as well as how good he is, — like
Rabelais and Goethe? or shall he be an eclectic
in his experience? Is there not then cant when
he writes more chastely than he speaks if you
should hear his whispers ? Let him then mend
his manners and bring them within the mark
which he trusts his pen to draw.
I cannot ... travel with parties of pleasure or
with parties of business. The frivolous make me
lonely. Neither can I well go to see those whom
I. esteem, unless they also esteem me, for I can
bęstow my time well at home. I have thus found
that I cannot visit any one with advantage for a
longer time than one or two hours.
Love should always make glad, never gloomy.
We talked of Deerbrook in these days, Miss
Martineau's novel. It is a good book to read :
there is much observation and much heroism in


446
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
it, and people will be the better for reading. Yet
the author is of that class who mistake a private
for an universal experience and venture to re-
cord it. A perfectly sound nature may accept all
his own experience for the uniform experience
of mankind, and so record it. But a man par-
tially sick may not. If he record his morbid pas-
sages they will be accepted only by the sick for
general truths. To the well they will be offen-
sive.
It is a delicate matter - this offering to stand
deputy for the human race, and writing all one's
secret history colossally out as philosophy. Very
agreeable is it in those who succeed: odious in
all others.
It is good when one of these heroines remarks
that all martyrdoms looked mean when they hap-
pened. It is ill when she suggests to a third person
what her lover must have suffered on her account,
for of that a woman can never say little enough.
SA
Character makes an overpowering present, a
cheerful, determined hour which fortifies all the
company by making them see that much is pos-
sible and excellent that was not thought of.'...
i The rest of the paragraph is in “Circles ” (Essays, First
Series, p. 321).


1840) LANDOR. ONE MIND 447
- July 31.
Talked with Elizabeth Hoar last night on
Landor whom I read for a few minutes yester-
day. We agreed that here was a book of Senti-
ment (Pericles and Aspasia), sentiment in the
high and strict sense that one could hardly read
it without learning to write with more elegance.
The inimitable neatness of the sentences and
then the wonderful elegance of suppression and
omission which runs through it might polish a
dunce.
A newspaper in Providence contains some
notice of Transcendentalism, and deplores Mr.
Emerson's doctrine that the argument for im-
mortality betrays weakness. The piece seems
to be written by a woman. It begins with round
sentences, but ends in Ohs and Ahs. Yet can-
not society come to apprehend the doctrine of
One Mind? Can we not satisfy ourselves with
the fact of living for the Universe, of lodging
our beatitude therein ? Patriotism has been
thought great in Sparta, in Rome, in New Eng-
land even, only sixty years ago. How long be-
fore Universalism or Humanity shall be creditable
and beautiful


448
JOURNAL
[AGE 37
[The first number of the Dial was issued in
July, Miss Fuller being the literary editor, and
Mr. George Ripley the business manager. Mr.
Cabot, in his Memoir of Emerson, volume ii,
pp. 403-409, gives an interesting account of
the Dial and Mr. Emerson's relation to it.
And now I think that our Dial ought not to
be a mere literary journal, but that the times
demand of us all a more earnest aim. It ought
,to contain the best advice on the topics of Gov-
ernment, Temperance, Abolition, Trade, and
Domestic Life. It might well add to such com-
positions such poetry and sentiment as now
will constitute its best merit. Yet it ought to
go straight into life with the devoted wisdom
of the best men and women in the land. It
should — should it not?— be a degree nearer
to the hodiurnal facts than my writings are. I
wish to write pure mathematics, and not a culi-
nary almanac, or application of science to the
arts.
Every history in the world is my history. I
can as readily find myself in the tragedy of the
Atrides as in the Saxon Chronicle, in the Vedas
as in the New Testament, in Æsop as in the


1840] THE OLD IN THE NEW 449
Cambridge platform, or the Declaration of In-
dependence. The good eye, the good ear, can
translate fast enough the slight varieties of dia-
lect in these cognate tongues. The wildest fable,
the bloodiest tragedy is all too true.'
Let fiery hope nourish you in the angelic
region.— ZOROASTER.
August 9.
A man of genius or a work of love or beauty
cannot be compounded like a loaf of bread by
the best rules, but is always a new and incalcu-
lable result like health. Do not therefore rattle
your rules in our ears, we must behave and do
as we can. The ancients, the antique ; I see in
all that is excellent under that name somewhat
near to me. It is the genius of the European
family. The discovery and the planting of
America and the American Revolution and me-
chanic arts are Greek, Attic, Antique, in this
sense, as much as the Parthenon or the Pro-
metheus Chained. I can easily see in our peri-
odical literature, for example, a diffused and
weakened Athens.
exa
i The third page in “ History” (Essays, First Series) is
much to this effect.


450
JOURNAL (Age 37
The poet cannot spare any grief or pain or
terror in his experience: he wants every rude
stroke that has been dealt on his irritable tex-
ture. I need my fear and my superstition as
much as my purity and courage to construct
the glossary which opens the Sanscrit of the
world.
C. delights in the beauty of clouds, the shin-
ing people of the sky; and I felt that they, with
their hard and fawn-coloured surface and broad
edges of glory, were the flowers of the upper
element, and the fittest symbols in nature of an
illustrious life. The clock by which we mea-
sured our stay in this field of outsight and up-
sight was one of these splendid clouds which
lost its large dimension and nearly faded in the
air whilst we stood.
[Here follow some verses from a poem by
Mrs. Wells:-
“My own delighted, laughing boy,” etc.]
i Compare « The Poet”:-
Thanked Nature for each stroke she dealt ;
On his tense chords all strokes were felt;
The good, the bad, with equal zeal
He asked, he only asked, to feel.
Poems, Appendix, p. 316.


1840] EXACTING FRIENDS 451
Love makes us little children. We never at-
tain a perfect sincerity in our speech except we
feel a degree of tenderness. And lovers use the
monosyllables and the short and pretty speech
of children. Love takes off the edges and the
ceremonies of speech and says Thee to one,
and you to many.
Do not say things. What you are stands over
you the while and thunders so that I cannot
hear what you say to the contrary.
(From F)
August 16.
After seeing Anna Barker I rode with Mar-
garet [Fuller] to the plains. She taxed me, as
often before, so now more explicitly, with in-
hospitality of Soul. She and C. would gladly be
my friends, yet our intercourse is not friend-
ship, but literary gossip. I count and weigh, but
do not love. They make no progress with me,
but however often we have met, we still meet
as strangers. They feel wronged in such rela-
tion and do not wish to be catechised and criti-
cised. I thought of my experience with several
persons which resembled this : and confessed
that I would not converse with the divinest per-
nverse WIL


452
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
son more than one week. M. insisted that it
was no friendship which was thus so soon ex-
hausted, and that I ought to know how to be
silent and companionable at the same moment.
She would surprise me, — she would have me
say and do what surprised myself. I confess to
all this charge with humility unfeigned. I can
better converse with George Bradford than with
any other. Elizabeth Hoar and I have a beau-
tiful relation, not however quite free from the
same hardness and fences. Yet would nothing
be so grateful to me as to melt once for all these
icy barriers, and unite with these lovers. But
great is the law.... But this survey of my ex-
perience taught me anew that no friend I have
surprises, none exalts me. This then is to be set
down, is it not? to the requirements we make of
the friend, that he shall constrain us to sincerity,
and put under contribution all our faculties.
I read in Rabelais that Thomas Walleys, an
English Dominican friar, published a book in
which he spiritualized Ovid's Metamorphoses.
August 18.
Gaston de Foy was a pleasant man, but he
was no saint. He said he had little faith in


1840] LOVE OF FRIENDS
453
prayer, and never used it but for one class of
persons, namely, his benefactors. Their chance,
he thought, of any return for their kindness was
so small, that, if there was a possibility that a
prayer should be effective, these ought to have
the benefit of it.
September 1.
One fact the fine conversations of the last
week — now already fast fading into oblivion -
revealed to me, not without a certain shudder
of joy, that I must thank what I am, and not
what I do, for the love my friends bear me. I,
conscious all the time of the shortcoming of my
hands, haunted ever with a sense of beauty
which makes all I do and say pitiful to me, and
the occasion of perpetual apologies, assure my-
self to disgust those whom I admire, — and
now suddenly it comes out that they have
been loving me all this time, not at all think-
ing of my hands or my words, but only of
that love of something more beautiful than
the world, which, it seems, being in my heart,
overflowed through my eyes or the tones o
my speech. Gladly I learn that we have these
subterranean, — say rather, these supersensuous
.channels of communication, and that spirits can


454
JOURNAL (AGE 37
meet in their pure upper sky without the help
of organs.'
orn
Granted that my theory of the world born
out of the side of man is a false one, and that it
is pedantry in us helpless and ignorant people to
make this vast pretension, when we do not want
a dollar the less, not a yard of cloth, not a loaf
of bread less than other people who do not talk
of their relations to the universe. Well, you do
not talk of such things, but only of stocks and
streets, the Cunard boats, and the politics of the
new administration. Well, it is just as much
pedantry in you not to talk of that which really
is there, and makes the dignity of politics and
trade, viz., your relation to the world. Each was
a half view; granted. But one half view was
nobler, and therefore truer, than the other.
September 5.
The objection to the popular Christianity is
a philosophical one. It is in the nature of things
that persons can never usurp in our minds the
1 The poem which serves as the motto of “ Manners”
(Essays, Second Series), beginning, —
Grace, Beauty and Caprice
Build this golden portal,
was written in these days.


1840) COURTS. TRUTH. FOREST 455
authority of Ideas. Every man is at last, in his
purest thought, an Idealist, and puts all persons
at an infinite distance from him, as every mor-
alist is at last in his purest thought an Optimist.
Now Christianity goes to invest persons with
the rights of Ideas, which is absurd.
Mr. W. remarked that in the courts of jus-
tice it seemed to him that the judge, the jurors,
and the witnesses, mutually tried each other.
September 8.
We should be very rich if we could speak the
truth, for, since that is the law of our progress,
in proportion to our truth we should coin the
world into our words. If we, dear friends, shall
arrive at speaking the truth to each other we
shall not come away as we went. We shall be
able to bring near and give away to each other
the love and power of all the friends who encircle
each of us, and that society which is the dream
of each shall stablish itself in our midst, and the
fable of Heaven be the fact of God.
(From E)
I went into the woods.' I found myself not
i The substance of what follows occurs in “ Nature"
(Essays, Second Series, pp. 192, 193 and 198), but it seemed
80 attractive in its personal form that it is given here.


456
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
wholly present there. If I looked at a pine-tree or
an aster, that did not seem to be Nature. Nature
was still elsewhere: this, or this was but outskirt
and far-off reflection and echo of the triumph
that had passed by and was now at its glancing
splendor and heyday,– perchance in the neigh-
boring fields, or, if I stood in the field, then in
the adjacent woods. Always the present object
gave me this sense of the stillness that follows
a pageant that has just gone by.
It was the same among men and women as
among the silent trees. Always it was a referred
existence; always an absence; never a presence
and satisfaction. Thus I was looking up to Na-
ture.
Afterwards, I was for a season active, devout
and happy, and, passing through the woods, the
trees and asters looked up at me. There was I,
and there were these placid creatures around, and
the virtue that was in them seemed to pass from
me into them.
Nature is thus a differential thermometer de-
tecting the presence or absence of the divine
spirit in man.
September 1o.
It was the oblique and covert way in which
the good world was training to the discovery
a season


1840] HERMITS. GARDENING 457
that a man must have the saintly and the poetic
character; that by taste he must worship beauty,
and by love of the invisible, if it were only of
Opinion, must carry his life in his hand to be
risked at any instant.
September 11.
Would it not be a good cipher for the seal of
the Lonely Society which forms so fast in these
days, Two porcupines meeting with all their
spines erect, and the motto, “We converse at
the quill's end”?
I would labour cheerfully in my garden every
day, if when I go there it did not seem trifling.
It is so easy to waste hours and hours there in
weeding and hoeing, and as pleasant as any other
play, that I can impute to you no merit that you
labour. Nothing is easier or more epicurean.
Character establishes itself and blows a grand
music through whatever instrument, though it
were an oat pipe or a cornstalk viol. If love be
there, I shall find it out, though I only see you
eat bread or make some trifling but necessary
request. The reform that is ripening in your
mind for the amelioration of the human race I
shall find already in miniature in every direction


458
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
to the domestics, in every conversation with the
assessor, with your creditor, and with your debtor.
The monastery, the convent, did not quite
fail, many and many a stricken soul found peace
and home and scope in those regimens, in those
chapels and cells. The Society of Shakers did
not quite fail, but has proved an agreeable asylum
to many a lonesome farmer and matron. The
College has been dear to many an old bachelor of
learning. What hinders, then, that this Age, better
advised, should endeavor to sift out of these ex-
periments the false, and adopt and embody in a
new form the advantage ?
September 12.
Sarah Clarke,' who left us yesterday, is a true
and high-minded person, but has her full pro-
portion of our native frost. She remarked of the
Dial, that the spirit of many of the pieces was
lonely.
(From F) .
September 16.
The questions which have slept uneasily a
long time are coming up to decision at last.
i Miss Clarke, the sister of Rev. James Freeman Clarke, was
a friend of Mr. Emerson's from the days when she was one of
the scholars in the school in Boston kept by his brother Wil-
liam and himself. She devoted her life to art.


18401 PROPERTY. SLEEP
459
Men will not be long occupied with the Chris-
tian question, for all the babes are born infidels;
they will not care for your abstinences of diet,
or your objections to domestic hired service;
they will find something convenient and amiable
in these. But the question of property will di-
vide us into odious parties. And all of us must
face it and take our part. A good man now
finds himself excluded from all lucrative em-
ployments.' ... There is so much to be done
that we ought to begin quickly to bestir our-
selves. Lidian says well that it is better to work
on institutions by the sun than by the wind.
As Palmer remarked, that he was satisfied what
should be done must proceed from the conces-
sion of the rich, not from the grasping of the
poor. Well then, let us begin by habitual im-
parting. . . . Let my ornamental austerities be-
come natural and dear. The State will frown;
the State must learn to humble itself, repent and
reform.
A sleeping child gives me the impression of a
traveller in a very far country.
In
a
i Here follows the passage beginning thus in “ Man the
Reformer” (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, p. 234).


460
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
“He can toil terribly,” said Cecil of Sir Walter
Raleigh. Is there any sermon on Industry that
will exhort me like these few words? These
sting and bite and kick me. I will get out of the
way of their blows by making them true of my-
self.
The conversion of a woman will be the solid-
est pledge of truth and power.
(From E)
September 17.
I am only an experimenter.' Do not, I pray
you, set the least value on what I do, or the
least discredit on what I do not, as if I had set-
tled anything as true or false. I unsettle all
i Though printed in “ Circles” it seems well to let this
whole passage stand here, among the notes of critical years in
Mr. Emerson's life. As appears in these pages, all usage in
private and public relations was brought to the bar of new
theories of independent, self-reliant action. Reforms were
rampant, everything questioned by the young radicals who
came to Mr. Emerson for backing. To his private journal he
confided, not his settled opinion, but the mood or aspect of
the moment.
The solid virtue in his character and his good sense carried
him safe through the spiritual breakers into serene, happy, and
helpful life.


1840] ALCOTT. ANGLE. TRUST 461
things. No facts are to me sacred, none are pro-
fane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker,
with no past at my back.
Every hour has its morning, noon, and night.
Alcott said, “Who are these people there
is not one of them whom I cannot offend in any
moment."
Ah vast Spirit! I weary of these egotisms. I
see well how puny and limitary they are.
September 19.
Life is emblematic to every good mind and
is equally profound, let the circumstances or
emblems be a kingdom, a camp, a college, or a
farm. It is the angle which the object makes to
the eye which imports.' ...
September 20.
Can we not trust ourselves ? Must we be
such coxcombs as to keep watch and ward over
our noblest sentiments even, lest they also be-
tray us, and God prove a little too divine? Dare
we never say, This time of ours shall be the era
1 The remainder of the passage is found in “ History”
( Essays, First Series,p. 39); and , as to mere transfer of idol.
atry, in “Character” (Essays, Second Series, p. 98). :


462
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
of Discovery? These have been the ages of
darkness. Wide Europe, wide America lieth in
night, turneth in sleep. The morning twilight
is grey in the East: the Columbuses, the Ves-
puccis, the Cabots of moral adventure are loos-
ening their sails and turning their bowsprits to
the main. Men have never loved each other.
See, already they blush with a kindness which
is pure, and Genius, the Inventor, finds in Love
the unknown and inexhaustible continent. Love
which has been exclusive shall now be inclusive.
Love, which once called Genius proud, — be-
hold, they have exchanged names. Love, which
was a fat, stupid Shaker, or a maudlin Metho-
dist, or Moravian, now is a brave and modest
man of light, sight, and conscience. God hateth
the obscure. On the last day, as on the first
day, he still says, Let there be Light. Where
there is progress in character, there is no confu-
sion of sentiment, no diffidence of self, but the
heart sails ever forward in the direction of the
open Sea.
Perhaps after many sad, doubting, idle days,
days of happy, honest labor will at last come
when a man shall have filled up all the hours
from sun to sun with great and equal action,
shall lose sight of this sharp individuality which
W


1840) NATURE AND MAN 463
contrasts now so oddly with nature, and, ceasing
to regard, shall cease to feel his boundaries, but
shall be interfused by nature and shall [so] inter-
fuse nature that the sun shall rise by his will as
much as his own hand or foot do now; and his
eyes or ears or fingers shall not seem to him the
property of a more private will than the sea and
the stars, and he shall feel the meaning of the
growing tree and the evaporating waters with
a more entire and satisfactory intelligence than
now attends the activity of his organs of sense.
Every glance we give to the landscape pre-
dicts a better understanding, by assuring us we
are not right now. When I am quite alone in
my morning walk, if I lift up my eyes, the
goodly green picture I see seems to call me hyp-
ocrite and false teacher — me who stood inno-
cently there with quite other thoughts and had
not spoken a word. For the landscape seems
imperatively to expect a clear mirror, a willing
reception in me, which, not finding, it lies ob-
trusive and discontented on the outward eye,
unable to pass into the inward eye, and breeds
a sense of jar and discord.
The most trivial and gaudy fable, Kehama,
Jack Giant-killer, Red Ridinghood, every grand-
am's nursery rhyme contains, as I have elsewhere
are


464
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
noted, a moral that is true to the core of the
world. It is because Nature is an instrument so
omnipotently musical that the most careless or
stupid hand cannot draw a discord from it. A
devil struck the chords in defiance, and his ma-
levolence was punished by a sweeter melody
than the angels made.
There is no leap - not a shock of violence
throughout nature. Man therefore must be pre-
dicted in the first chemical relation exhibited
by the first atom. If we had eyes to see it, this
bit of quartz would certify us of the necessity
that man must exist as inevitably as the cities
he has actually built.
September 24.
Cities and coaches shall never impose on me
again.'. ..
September 26.
You would have me love you. What shall I
love? Your body? The supposition disgusts
you. What you have thought and said? Well,
whilst you were thinking and saying them, but
not now. I see no possibility of loving anything
but what now is, and is becoming; your cour-
1 See “ Man the Reformer" (Nature, Addresses, and
Lectures, p. 230).


1840] FACES. COMMUNITIES 465
age, your enterprise, your budding affection,
your opening thought, your prayer, I can love,
- but what else?
“ Paradise,” said Mahomet, “is under the
shadow of swords.":
It is easier to distinguish the sweet apples from
the sour in a multitude of human faces than it is
in an orchard. In the good old women one de-
tects at sight the saccharine principle.
Perhaps it is folly, this scheming to bring the
good and like-minded together into families, into
a colony. Better that they should disperse and
so leaven the whole lump of society.
I will not be chidden out of my most trivial
native habit by your distaste, O philosopher, by
your preference for somewhat else. If Rhetoric
has no charm for you, it has for me and my words
are as costly and admirable to me as your deeds
to you. It is all pedantry to prefer one thing that
is alive to another thing which is also alive. The
mystery of God inhabits a nursery tale as deeply
as the laws of a state, or the heart of a man.
i Here other quotations from Simon Ockley's History
of the Saracens are given.


466
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
The Soul. — Do not indulge this rabble of sec-
ond thoughts. Cast yourself on the hour and the
man that now is, nor be so much a littérateur as
to cast about already for the benefits that shall
accrue from this new fact to art. So is your lit-
erature thievish.
The Whigs meet in numerous conventions
and each palpitating heart swells with the cheap
sublime of magnitude and number.' ...
In the history of the world the doctrine of
Reform had never such scope as at the present
hour. . . . Nations will not shield you, neither
will books. ... Vain is the cumulative fame
of Tasso, of Dante, — vain the volumes of Lit-
erature which entrench their sacred rhymes, if
the passing mystic has no glance for them, not
a motion of respect. Alas ! too surely their doom
is sealed.
Lidian gives the true doctrine of property
when she says, “No one should take any more
than his own share, let him be ever so rich.”
i For the rest, see «rSelf-Reliance” (Essays, First Series,
p. 88).
2 See the second page of “ Man the Reformer.”


1840]
ABSORBING PERSONS
467
(From F)
September 30.
Yes, I resent this intrusion of a few persons
on my airy fields of existence. Shall our conver-
sation when we meet, O wife, or sister Eliza-
beth, still return, like a chime of seven bells, to
six or seven names, nor we freemen of nature
be able long to travel out of this narrowed orbit?
Rather I would never name these names again.
They are beautiful, and therefore we have given
them place; but they affront the sun and moon
and the seven stars when they are remembered
once too often. Beware of Walls; let me keep
the open field. Douglas-like, I had rather hear
the lark sing than the mouse cheep. Yet though
I start like a wild Arab at the first suspicion of
confinement, I have drank with great joy the
contents of this golden cup hitherto. With great
pleasure I heard George Bradford say, that this
romance' took from the lustre of the Reform-
ers who alone had interested him before. I felt
that what was private and genuine in these rare
relations was more real, and so more public and
1 This seems to refer to the engagement and coming mar-
riage of Samuel G. Ward and Anna H. Barker. The friendship
with both had made the past year very happy to Mr. Emer-
son.


468
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
universal than conventions for debate, and these
weary speculations on reform. The call of a heart
to a heart, the glad beholding of a new trait of
character, — freedom (derived from the friendly
presence of a fellow being) to do somewhat we
have never done, — freedom to speak what I
could never say, — these are discoveries in the
Ocean of life, they are Perus, Brazils, and Ply-
mouth Rocks, which to me were the more in-
estimable that I had been such a homekeeper,
and knew nothing beyond the limits of my own
forest and village fair.
(From E)
October 5.
On Saturday evening I attended the wedding
of Samuel Gray Ward and Anna Hazard Barker
at the house of Mr. Farrar in Cambridge. Peace
go with you, beautiful, pure, and happy friends,
- peace and beauty and power and the perpe-
tuity and the sure unfolding of all the buds of
joy that so thickly stud your branches.
October 7.
Circumstances are dreams, which, springing
unawares from ourselves, amuse us whilst we
doze and sleep, but when we wake, nothing but


09
1840]
WAITING
469
causes can content us. The life of man is the
true romance which, when it is valiantly con-
ducted and all the stops of the instrument
opened, will go nigh to craze the reader with
anxiety, wonder and love. I am losing all relish
for books and for feats of skill in my delight in
this Power.
Do not accuse me of sloth. Do not ask me
to your philanthropies, charities, and duties, as
you term them ;— mere circumstances, flakes
of the snow-cloud, leaves of the trees; “I sit
at home with the cause, grim or glad. I think
I may never do anything that you shall call a
deed again. I have been writing with some pains
essays on various matters as a sort of apology
to my country for my apparent idleness. But
the poor work has looked poorer daily, as I
strove to end it. My genius seemed to quit me
in such a mechanical work, a seeming wise — a
cold exhibition of dead thoughts. When I write
a letter to anyone whom I love, I have no lack
of words or thoughts. I am wiser than myself
and read my paper with the pleasure of one
who receives a letter, but what I write to fill up
the gaps of a chapter is hard and cold, is gram-
mar and logic; there is no magic in it; I do not
wish to see it again. Settle with yourself your


470
JOURNAL [AGE 37
accusations of me. If I do not please you, ask
me not to please you, but please yourself. What
you call my indolence, Nature does not accuse ;
the twinkling leaves, the sailing fleets of water-
flies, the deep sky, like me well enough and
know me for their own. With them I have no
embarrassments, diffidences or compunctions ;
with them I mean to stay. You think it is be-
cause I have an income which exempts me from
your day-labor, that I waste (as you call it)
my time in sun-gazing and star-gazing. You do
not know me. If my debts, as they threaten,
should consume what money I have, I should
live just as I do now: I should eat worse food,
and wear a coarser coat, and should wander in a
potato patch instead of in the wood, — but it is
I, and not my twelve hundred dollars a year,
that love God.
We feel that every one of those remarkable
effects in landscape which occasionally catch and
delight the eye, as, for example, a long vista in
woods, trees on the shore of a lake coming
quite down to the water, a long reach in a river,
a double or triple row of uplands or mountains
seen one over the other, and whatever of the
like has much affected our fancy, must be the


1840) DEEDS. THE DIAL 471
rhetoric of some thought not yet detached for
the conscious intellect.
Virtues are among men rather the exception
than the rule. They do what is called a good ac-
tion, ... much as they would pay a fine in expia-
tion of daily non-appearance on parade.'...
I do not give you my time, but I give you
that which I have put my time into, namely,
my letter, or my poem, the expression of my
opinion, or better yet an act which in solitude
I have learned to do.
October 17.
A newspaper in a grave and candid tone cen-
sures the Dial as having disappointed the good
expectation of our lovers of literature. I read
the paragraph with much pleasure; for the
moment we come to sense and candor I know
the success of the Dial is sure. The Dial is poor
and low and all unequal to its promise: but that
is not for you to say, O Daily Advertiser! but
The rest of the paragraph beginning thus is in “Self-
Reliance” (Essays, First Series, pp. 52, 53). The very
next entry in the Journal seems a reflex wave after this mis-
prizing of actions.


472
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
for me. It is now better after your manner than
anything else you have; and you do not yet see
that it is, and will soon see and extol it. I see
with regret that it is still after your manner, and
not after mine, and that it is something which
you can praise.
“The saugh’kens the basket-maker's thumb.”
- Scottish Proverb.
Go, dear soul, and be scales and sword, an
accusation and a terror, a Day of doom and a
Future to the world lying in wickedness. The
fat and easy and conceited world, the cultivated
and intellectual world, takes the prophets by the
hand and affects to be of their part and to de-
plore the general ignorance and sensuality which
rejects and derides them. Yet it takes a secret
pleasure in the fact that this reprobation reaches
not to them, instead of finding therein convic-
tion of sin. This derision is a laurel on the
brows of the prophets. This same prelacy, these
men of intellect on good terms with the world,
are glad to speak the sheriff and the constable
fair, for they do not yet see what height and
i Sallow, willow.
2 Perhaps addressed to the Dial.


1840) COMMUNITY DREAMS 473
what debasement are, and that the only asylum
and protection and lordship and empire is vir-
tue. ... Why should I use a means? Why
should I not rush grandly to ends?
Yesterday George and Sophia Ripley, Mar-
garet Fuller and Alcott discussed here the Social
Plans.' I wished to be convinced, to be thawed,
to be made nobly mad by the kindlings before
my eye of a new dawn of human piety. But
this scheme was arithmetic and comfort: this
was a hint borrowed from the Tremont House
and United States Hotel; a rage in our poverty
and politics to live rich and gentlemanlike, an
anchor to leeward against a change of weather;
a prudent forecast on the probable issue of the
great questions of Pauperism and Poverty. And
not once could I be inflamed, but sat aloof and
thoughtless; my voice faltered and fell. It was
not the cave of persecution which is the palace
of spiritual power, but only a room in the Astor
House hired for the Transcendentalists. I do
not wish to remove from my present prison to
a prison a little larger. I wish to break all
1 The project of the Community at Brook Farm. Mr.
Emerson gives some account of it in “Life and Letters in
New England” (Lectures and Biographical Sketches).
mov


474
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
prisons. I have not yet conquered my own
house. It irks and repents me. Shall I raise
the siege of this hencoop, and march baffled
away to a pretended siege of Babylon? It seems
to me that so to do were to dodge the problem
I am set to solve, and to hide my impotency in
the thick of a crowd. I can see too, afar, — that
I should not find myself more than now,- no,
not so much, in that select, but not by me
selected, fraternity. Moreover, to join this body
would be to traverse all my long trumpeted
theory, and the instinct which spoke from it,
that one man is a counterpoise to a city, - that
a man is stronger than a city, that his solitude
is more prevalent and beneficent than the con-
cert of crowds.
an
[Here follow two pages of fine extracts from
Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragedy of Bonduca,
of which three are here given.]
There's not a blow we gave since Julius landed
That was of strength and worth, but, like records,
They file to after ages. Our registers
The Romans are for noble deeds of honour.
Ten times a night
I have swum the rivers when the stars of Rome


18401 DUMB IN COMPANY
475
Shot at me as I loated, and the billows
Tumbled their watery ruins on my shoulders ;
Charging my battered sides with troops of agues.
Ye fools,
Ye should have tied up Death first, when ye con-
quered;
Ye sweat for us in vain else. See him here,
He's ours still, and our friend, laughs at your
pities, –
And we command him with as easy rein
As do our enemies.
(From F)
The old experiences still return. Society,
when I rarely enter the company of my well-
dressed and well-bred fellow creatures, seems
for the time to bereave me of organs, or per-
haps only to acquaint me with my want of them.
The soul swells with new life and seeks expres-
sion with painful desire, but finds no outlets.
Its life is all incommunicable.... Those who
are to me lovely and dear seem for that reason
to multiply and tighten the folds that envelop
and smother my speech.
A dandy, Mr. Pacelise calls, “ Un mille-fleur
Judas.”
We need not do what we cannot. Let us go


476
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
home again, home to our faculties and work. Is
one associate or one circumstance unfit, - in
heaven I should hapless be. We use our virtues
and their fruits as purchase money for our vices.
Not when I walk in the streets of the city, am
I earning the prayers of the young and the
highly endowed, but when I forget Boston and
London in rapid obedience to the Invisible and
Only Spirit. Not by wealth and a city conse-
quence, not by skill in arts, nor by the manners
and address of the world could I, if these I had,
bring any gift worthy of the acceptance of friend-
ship, but only out of a deeper magazine whereto
sities and bankers cannot go, out of the realms
of an unbroken peace, of loving meditation, of
a habitual conversation with nature. Out of
these alone can I draw the natural gold which
universally commands all other goods and is the
royal currency of the world. I love spring water
and wild air, and not the manufacture of the
chemist's shop. I see in a moment, on looking
into our new Dial, which is the wild poetry, and
which the tame, and see that one wild line out
of a private heart saves the whole book.
iver
I wrote C. S. this afternoon that it is not we,
but the elements, the destinies and conscience


1840) ADVANCE. DR. RIPLEY 477
that make places and hours great, they the om-
nipresent:— and if we will only be careful not
to intrude or chatter, the least occasion and the
domestic hour will be grand and fated. We shall
one day wonder that we have ever distinguished
days, or circumstances, or persons.
Life only avails, not the having lived.' . ..
Neither thought nor virtue will keep, but must
be refreshed by new today. But we get forward
by hops and skips. Shall we not learn one day
to walk a firm continuous step?
As nothing will keep, but the soul demands
that all shall be new today, therefore we reject
a past man, or a past man's teaching. Who is
Swedenborg? A man who saw God and Nature
for a fluid moment. His disciples vainly try to
make a fixture of him, his seeing, and his teach-
ing, and coax me to accept it for God and
Nature.
Dependence is the only poverty.
October 18.
Dr. Ripley is no dandy, but speaks with the
greatest simplicity and gravity. He preaches
i Continued in “Self-Reliance” (p. 69).


478
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
however to a congregation of Dr. Ripleys; and
Mr. Frost to a supposed congregation of Bar-
zillai Frosts ;' and Daniel Webster to an as-
sembly of Websters. Could this belief of theirs
be verified in the audience, each would be es-
teemed the best of all speakers.
The acquirer of riches seems to me a man of
energy, good or bad; the inheritor of riches to
be a man lamed by his shoes, crippled by his
crutches. The respect I pay to a poet I under-
stand; the respect I pay to a ship-master, to a
farmer, and to every other conqueror of men
or things; but the deference I pay to wealth is
opaque, and not transparent, is a superstition.
“What news?” asks man of man. The only
teller of news is the poet."
0
The history of Jesus is only the history of
every man written large. The names he be-
stows on Jesus belong to himself, — Mediator,
Redeemer, Saviour.
i Dr. Ripley's successor as pastor of the First Church in
Concord.
2 See « Poetry and Imagination " (Letters and Social
Aims, p. 30).


1840] THE WEDDING GIFT 479
The whole history of the weather is a won-
derfully fit symbol of the varying temper of
man. The moment we come into such relations
to any man or woman that we need consider
their moods, we shall find the whole vocabulary
of a seaman at our tongue's end.
Captain Pitts did not take out his handker-
chief for nothing. The church rung with his
echo.'
I went to a wedding and the Lord said unto
me, Where is thy gift? And I looked and saw
that there was nothing in my hand. Then I
thought of twenty useful or shining things, and
remembered all that I had seen in the gold-
smiths' windows, and considered what book or
gem or trinket I might buy. But the Lord
said, These are no gifts for thee: thy desire for
these is not thy desire, but the desire of others
in thee: thou lookest back on the city and the
people thou hast left. The gift which thou canst
bring, and which thy friends expect at thy hands,
is that which thou alone canst offer them. I
1 Mr. Emerson used to say that the old-fashioned nasal
trumpeting, “ the service of the Lord with trumpets in the
sanctuary,” seemed to have gone by. It perhaps sometimes
uttered comments which church decorum forbade the worship-
per to put into words.


480
JOURNAL
[AGE 37
have given thee a door of the soul to keep: go
in thereat, and hearken to what shall be told
thee, for never man stood in that place before;
and then go to thy friends, and tell them what
thou knowest. They shall hearken to thee and
shall forget all that they ever knew. My word
is all that thou shalt carry in thy hand.
I ought not to allow any man to feel that he
is rich in my presence.'...
October 23.
And must I go and do somewhat if I would
learn new secrets of self-reliance ? for my chap-
ter is not finished. But self-reliance is precisely
that secret, - to make your supposed deficiency
redundancy. If I am true, the theory is, the
very want of action, my very impotency, shall
become a greater excellency than all skill and
toil.
And thus, O Circular philosopher, you have
arrived at a fine pyrrhonism.' ...
The good Swedenborg was aware, I believe,
of this wonderful predominance and excess of
1 See “ Man the Reformer” (Nature, Addresses, and
Lectures, p. 249).
2 See “ Circles” (Essays, First Series, p. 317).


1840] OSMAN. GOOD INCESSANT 481
the saccharine principle in nature, and noticed
that the hells were not without their extreme
satisfactions."
October 24.
Osman. - Fine people do not prosper with
me: they are so curious and busy with their
Claude Lorraine glasses, and their exploration
of doves' necks and peacocks' tails, that they do
not see the road, and the poor men who go up
and down on it. I must go back to my cabin
and be, as before, the trusty associate of those
whom a household and highway experience has
chastened, and be the poor man's poet. I should
break with one fine person, if I did not see, or
think I see, my own rude self hid under the
present mask.
20
What is the Fall, what Sin, what Death, with
this eternal Soul under us originating benefit
forever more? We learn that Time is infinite, if
we learn nothing else. Is not that lesson enough
for a life? The power is dazzling, terrific, inac-
cessible in its impulses. It now calmly shows
us in parts the circle of elements which it also
shows us are radically one.
1 In the passage in “ Circles” (pp. 317, 318) Sweden-
borg's name is not used.


482
JOURNAL (AGE 37
It is rhetoric that takes up so much room:
The result of the book is very small and could
be written down in a very few lines.
To what purpose should you tell me of your
faith, of your happiness, if you do not make
me feel that you are at rest and blessed ? Jones
Very's words were loaded with his fact. What
he said, held; was not personal to him; was no
more disputable than the shining of yonder sun
or the blowing of this south wind. But I do
not know that you are looking at universal
facts.
The fate of the poor shepherd who, blinded
and lost in the snow storm, perishes in a drift
within a few feet of his own cottage door, is a
faithful emblem of the state of man.'...
Out of doors, in the snow, in the fields, death
looks not funereal, but natural, elemental, even
fair. In-doors it looks disagreeable.
The Excess of Direction. — Every promise of
the soul has twenty or twenty thousand fulfil-
1 The passage thus introduced is in “The Poet” (Essays,
Second Series, p. 33).


1840] EXCESS OF DIRECTION 483
ments. The soul forever tends to the satisfaction
of love. It is the promise of all times and of all
the faculties. The first friend the youth finds, he
cries, “Lo! the hour is come and the man; the
promise is fulfilled.” But in a few days he finds
that it was only a quasi-fulfilment, that the total,
inexhaustible longing is there at his heart still;
and is aspiring to grander satisfactions. God will
not be confuted nor silenced. God kindled this
love in me, made me a burning love. I presently
dedicate myself to some single object, and find
the love insatiate still. How contradictory and
unreasonable, you say. Little careth God; he
drives me forth out of my cabin, as before, to
love and to love. He tells me not what that is
I seek,- whether choirs of beatific power and
virtue; or the value of nature shut up in a pri-
vate form; or the total harmony of the universe.
From the beginning this is promised us as the
crisis and consummation of life, but no final in-
formation is ever afforded us.
I value the poet. I think all the argument
and all the learning is not in the Encyclopædia,
or the Treatise on Metaphysics, or the Body of
Divinity, but in the sonnet and the tragedy. In
my daily work, I retrace my old steps and do


484
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
not believe in remedial force, in the power of
change and reform; but some Petrarch or Beau-
mont and Fletcher, filled with the new wine of
their imagination, write me a tale or a dialogue
in which are the sallies and recoveries of the
Soul; they smite and arouse me with the sharp
fife, and I open my eye on my own possibilities.
They clap wings to the side of all the solid old
lumber of the world and I see the old Proteus
is not dead.
What a pity that we cannot curse and swear
in good society! Cannot the stinging dialect of
the sailors be domesticated? It is the best rhet-
oric, and for a hundred occasions those forbid-
den words are the only good ones. My page
about “ Consistency” would be better written
thus: Damn Consistency!
The method of advance in nature is perpetual
transformation. Be ready to emerge from the
chrysalis of today, its thoughts and institutions,
as thou hast come out of the chrysalis of yes-
terday.
Every new thought which makes day in our
souls has its long morning twilight to announce
its coming.


1840]
VISIONS
485
I dreamed that I floated at will in the great
Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far
off, but diminished to the size of an apple. Then
an angel took it in his hand and brought it to
me and said, “This must thou eat.” And I ate
the world.
October 26.
Theanor said that he saw too much; that he
could no longer live at peace with other men for
what he saw and they saw not. He said he went
to the house of a man who in a dark and stormy
night killed his enemy with a sword; “and I,”
said Theanor, “through the darkness and the
storm, sitting myself by the murderer's hearth,
saw him go along the road to his victim's house.
I saw the sword and the thrust that reached his
heart; then new vision came to my eyes and I
saw that the sword had a new length, which he
saw not, beyond its visible point, and bent about
like a cow's horn, and when the short point
struck the sleeping enemy, I saw the elongated
invisible point reach far back to his own house,
in which I sat, and to the body of his own child.
The child started in the adjoining room with a
loud wailing, and when the haggard man came
back his child was dying with black fever. And
another man I knew who solaced himself with


486
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
voluptuous imaginations, and I saw that every
pleasure he seemed to himself to steal from his
paramours he was tearing away from the scanty
stock of his own life.”
When I go into my garden with the spade
and dig : .. I discover that I have been de-
frauding myself all this time in letting others
do for me what I should have done with my
own hands.' ...
I have a pen and learned eyes and acute ears,
yet am ashamed before my wood-chopper, my
ploughman and my cook, for they have some
sort of self-sufficiency. They can contrive with-
out my aid to make a whole day and whole
year; but I depend on them.
Our little romances, into which we fling our-
selves with so much eagerness, end suddenly,
and we are almost sad to find how easily we can
brook the loss. Let us learn at last that the
tragedy of other men, of the sufferers in the old
world, was as slight and medicable. We are made
1 Here follows the long passage on the education and
manliness given by personal work, found in “ Man the Re-
former” (p. 337).


1840] LETTERS, STYLE, NATURE 487
for joy and not for pain. We are full of outlets;
full of resources; made of means, as the infu-
sories are said to be the genetical atoms of which
we are made.
Literature.- O pardon it, for it is the effort
of man to indemnify himself.
Air is matter subdued by heat. Order is mat-
ter subdued by mind.
It does not help the matter much that you
live and write according to Milton, and not ac-
cording to what cheap contemporary models,
what Wordsworth, Carlyle, or Webster, may
happen to stand in your sunlight.
November 5.
In nature there is a mystical equality; nothing
is low. It costs the exertion of the very highest
principle to effect the feeblest function of vege-
table life. The total God meets you everywhere
in the bract or stipule of the most unobserved
weed. The least seed is of new significance to
the oldest cherub as well as to the child; but
every new thought whose light we drink adds
new scores of works of art to the obsolete and
unmeaning.


488
JOURNAL [AGE 37
Art is cant and pedantry; it is not practical
and moral, that is, if it do not make the poor
and uncultivated feel that it addresses them also
and brings with it the oracle of Conscience. And
I find this power of art in the fact that human
power grows with virtue; that virtue transfigures
the face into its own glorious likeness, and of
course redeems and purifies and beautifies pos-
terity. A grand soul flings your gallery into
cold nonsense, and no limits can be assigned to
its prevalency and to its power to adorn.
The past combines with the present in every
object. You admire the graceful convolutions
of the seashell.: ....
The moon keeps its appointment. Will not
the good Spirit? Wherefore have we labored
and fasted, say we, and thou takest no note?
Let him not take note, if he please to hide, -
then it were sublime beyond a poet's dreams
still to labor and abstain and obey, and if thou
canst, to put the good Spirit in the wrong.? That
1 The rest of the paragraph is in - The Conservative”
(Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, p. 300).
2 This passage may be found in pleasing form in “ The
Poet” (Poems, pp. 319, 320).


not per
ke the
Esther:
1840] GLEAMS. MOMENTS 489
were a feat to sing in Elysium, on Olympus,
by the waters of life in the New Jerusalem.
Yet no thought dawns on me. This morning I
woke with a gleam of the true light, but it faded
away as the old trifles reappeared. Will it reap-
pear? Yea. I know something of these mys-
terious approaches of a thought.
Cience :
Chatte
allery
ssigt:
orn.
coluto
laban
Every moment compromises the last; every
moment, but not the man. The fountain is al-
ways superior to the stream, the life to the
phenomena.
Nature delegates her smile to the morning....
I was ashamed before the laborer cutting peat
in the meadow, though I could well see that his
life at last was as superficial as mine, save — if
save — that more necessity entered into it and
made it sublime. How, then, should I not be
ashamed before that pending bulrush into which
Nature had flung her soul? Every moment in-
structs, though we know it not, and call today
trivial, for wisdom is so melted and disguised
into every form that we know not it is wis-
dom.' ...
1 What follows, and the omitted sentence above, are found
in the concluding paragraph of « Nature” (Essays, Second
Series).
Ilde, -
drean
it the
o Top


490
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
It is not irregular hours or irregular diet that
make the romantic life. A sylvan strength, a
united man, whose character leads the circum-
stances, and is not led by them, — this makes
romance, and no condition.
Calmness is fabulous. The most iron men
give to the spiritual eye the impression of lean-
ing, mendicant manners. Calmness is always
Godlike.
Funestes are these French novels with their
pistols.
A career, say the French, — “il aurait en des
talents, de l'ambition, et une carrière.” (Valen-
tine.)
W
Circles, — What avail marble brows and in-
scrutable purposes ? Bring in a new man with a
truth that commands the last, and the marble
brow becomes a rippled wave, the inscrutable
purposes are exposed and scattered.
In Boston, at Dr. Jackson's, I saw five or
six persons take the nitrous-oxide gas. It looked
very much as if the bladder was full of opinions.


1840) JESUS. TEMPTATION 491
When Jesus bade the disciples not tell of this.
or that, he would say, “The last thing you shall
do is to gossip of this; lie low in the Lord's
power. Receive this fact into your mind in si-
lence.” He had no ways of Prudence, as we call
it. The main end to be answered by each man's
working is, his own character; and if what
you call his imprudence, that is, his directness,
thwarts his private ends, it may yet answer this
end; then I call it success.
November 21.
Swedenborg exaggerates the circumstance of
marriage.' . .
is 23
C
I make my own temptations. If I am clean
and sound, the heavens and earth are new and
glorious; they are my hands and feet, my will-
ing instruments, my means, my organ, my ele-
ment, and language. If I am imperfect, every-
thing I touch I turn into an enemy and hurt;
I make the bread I eat and the air I inhale a
temptation.
It is more elegant to answer one's own needs
than to be richly served; inelegant, perhaps, it
i Here follows the substance of two pages in “Sweden-
borg" (Representative Men, pp. 128, 129).


492
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
may look today, and to a few, but elegant for-
ever and to all.
I hear much that is ridiculous in music. You
would laugh to know all that passes through
my head in hearing a concert. Not having an ear
for music, I speculate on the song and guess what
it is saying to other people; what it should say
to me. It is Universal and seems to hint at com-
munication more general than speech, more
general than music also. What mystic obscuri-
ties in every breast do these lovesongs accost?
1
e
How fast these wrinkles come! Adust com-
plexions with burning eyes.
“ Pales filles du Nord ! vous n'êtes pas mes sæurs.” :
The circulation of the waters, the circulation
of sap, the circulation of the blood, the immor-
I With regard to complexions Mr. Emerson was rather a
fatalist. He would remark on the thick, saddle-leather complex-
ion which, with dark coarse hair and a strong jaw, often marked
a Calvinist. He would say of a spirited youth, “Ah, but he
has the hopeless adust complexion which augurs no good.” The
French quotation — its source not given - evidently suggested
his Romany Girl's
Pale Northern girls ! you scorn our race,
You captives of your air-tight halls.


1840] NATURE AN ALLY 493
tality of an animal species through the death of
all the individuals, the balance and periods of
planetary motion ; — these are works of art,
quick, and eternal. In the presence of these his
[man's] proudest works seem to be the puppets
and scratch-cradles and toy-mills which betray
the incessant instinct of his infant hands.
Whatever is divine will share the self-exist-
ence of God. Every true institution will be self-
existent.
Present a poetic design to people and they will
tear it to mammocks. Yet how subtle an auxiliary
is Nature; I knew a man who learned that his
modes of living were false and mean by looking
at the hill covered with wood which formed the
shore of a small but beautiful lake which he
visited in his almost daily walk. He returned to
his gossips and told them his schemes of reform
and they contradicted and chided and laughed
and cried with vexation and contempt and shook
his confidence in his plans. But when he went
to the woods and saw the mist floating over the
trees on the headland which rose out of the
water, instantly his faith revived. But when he
came to his house, he could not find any words
can


494
JOURNAL (AGE 37
to show his friends in what manner the beauti-
ful shores of the lake proved the wisdom of his
economy. He could not show them the least
connexion between the two things. When he
once tried to speak of the bold shore, they stared
as if he were insane. Yet whenever he went to
the place and beheld the landscape his faith was
confirmed.
Beauty can never be clutched; in persons and
in nature is equally inaccessible.' . .. Glory is
not for hands to handle.
I shed all influences. A. is a tedious archangel.
How few have faith enough to treat a man of
genius as an exiled prince of the blood, who must
presently come to his own, and it will then ap-
pear that it had been best to have been of the
same household all the time. Yet if you have not
faith in you, bow can I bave faith in you?
Nature ever flows; stands never still. Motion
or change is her mode of existence. The poetic
eye sees in Man the Brother of the River, and
in Woman the Sister of the River. Their life is
always transition. Hard blockheads only drive
i The substance of what follows is in “ Nature” (Essays,
Second Series).


the best
sion :
on the
thers
he we
1840] NATURE FLOWS AND MAN 495
nails all the time; forever remember; which is
fixing. Heroes do not fix, but flow, bend forward
ever and invent a resource for every moment.
A man is a compendium of nature, an indomi-
table savage; ... as long as he has a temper-
ament of his own, and a hair growing on his skin,
a pulse beating in his veins, he has a physique
which disdains all intrusion, all despotism ; it
lives, wakes, alters, by omnipotent modes, and
is directly related there, amid essences and billets
doux, to Himmaleh mountain chains, wild cedar
swamps, and the interior fires, the molten core
of the globe.
TSONS
Gir
man:
home
hen a
Over every chimney is a star; in every field
is an oaken garland, or a wreath of parsley,
laurel, or wheat-ears. Nature waits to decorate
every child.
Diamond sparks and beryl beads,
Carbuncles and pearls in seeds,
Drops of amber, golden thread
From the rock unravelled, —
Prize not these, thou blessed child,
Be they trampled and defiled;
But the life that in thee flows
Each drop of blood a blessing owes.
Each drop did infinite time distil


496
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
From all the flowers that Nature fill,
From all the hidden crafts that lie
In stone, plant, worm, wave, star, or sky, —
From all the magic light intrudes,
Gilding the starry multitudes. ....
Waldo declines going to church with Mrs.
Mumford, “because Mrs. Mumford is not
beautiful; she has red hands and red face.”
The next week, when reminded that he does
not like Mrs. Mumford, he tells Louisa, “I
have made a little prayer that Mrs. Mumford
might be beautiful, and now I think her beau-
tiful.”
Louisa proposed to carry Waldo to church
with her, and he replies, “I do not wish to go
to Church with you, because you live in the
kitchen."
December 20.
I think nothing is of any value in books
excepting the transcendental and extraordi-
nary.' ...
People are uneasy because the philosopher
seems to compromise their personal immortality.
i The rest of the passage is in « The Poet” (Essays, Sec-
ond Series, p. 32).


1840] THE GOD IN US
497
Mr. Quin thinks that to affirm the eternity of
God and not to affirm the reappearance of Mr.
Quin bodily and mentally with all the appear-
ances and recollections of Mr. Quin, excepting
of course his green surtout and bank-stock scrip,
is to give up the whole ship. But Mr. Quin is
a sick God. All that sin and nonsense of his,
which he parades these many summers and win-
ters so complacently, which seem to him his
life, his stake of being, in losing which he would
lose all, are the scurf and leprosy which do not
perish and smell in the nostril only because the
divine Life has not yet ebbed quite away from
them. But it is the Life, it is the incoming of
God by which that Individual exists. It is the
God only which he values and pleads for, though
to his diseased eye that poor skin and raiment
seem to have an intrinsic price. When that Di-
vine Life shall have more richly entered and
shed itself abroad in him, he will no longer plead
for Life, he will live. Do not imagine that the
Universe is somewhat so vague and aloof that
a man cannot be willing to die for it. If that
lives, I live. I am the Universe. The Universe
is the externisation of God.' ...
i The rest of the paragraph is found in « The Poet” (pp.
14, 15).


498
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
But there is no interval between this percep-
tion of Identity of the growing God and little-
ness. If you do not see your right to all, and
your being reflected to you from all things, then
the world may easily seem to you a hoax, and
man the dupe. Yet the little fellow takes it so
innocently, works in it so earnest and believing,
blushes and turns pale, talks and sweats, is born
red and dies grey, thinking himself an adjunct
to the world which exists from him, that, until
he is explained to himself, he may well look on
himself as the most wronged of victims.
Everything is worshipped in the world but
God. The new inspiration is always rejected.
The world is bowing to a past revelation of
God, to God seen through the lens of time, and
so shorn of his dazzling rays, which offend weak
eyes — diluted by much time; Homer, Jesus,
Shakspear may pass and be suffocated with
incense — Yet by how much these revelations
are old, by so much do they cease to be divine.
The Omnipresent exacts a total devotion to the
present and Impending, — hands and hearts,
and not a lazy gazing at old pictures. Yet
genius always finds itself a century too early.
But let not genius complain of its cold welcome
CO
me


V
1840] THE DROLL DREAM
499
and hard fare. Hath it not God? Let it cease
from man.
A droll dream last night, whereat I ghastly
laughed. A congregation assembled, like some of
our late conventions, to debate the institution
of Marriage; and grave and alarming objections
stated on all hands to the usage; when one speaker
at last rose and began to reply to the arguments,
but suddenly extended his hand and turned on
the audience the spout of an engine which was
copiously supplied from within the wall with
water, and whisking it vigorously about, up,
down, right, and left, he drove all the company
in crowds hither and thither and out of the house.
Whilst I stood watching, astonished and amused
· at the malice and vigor of the orator, I saw the
spout lengthened by a supply of hose behind,
and the man suddenly brought it round a corner
and drenched me as I gazed. I woke up relieved
to find myself quite dry, and well convinced that
the institution of marriage was safe for tonight.
And why, as I have written elsewhere, not be
Universalists, or lovers of the whole world? Why
limit our zeal and charity to such narrow paro-
chial bounds ? Are there black, bilious, sad tem-


500
JOURNAL [AGE 37
peraments? They accuse me and thee. Let us
arise and redeem them and purge this choler and
sediment out of nature by our calmness and
immoveable love.'
(From E)
December 26.
We all know why Jesus serves men so well
for a deity: why pure and sublime souls like A
Kempis and Herbert can expend their genius
and heart so lavishly on his name and history,
and feel no check; why he stands ambassador
or proxy for the sovereign, and receives homage
of the lieges without any cloud of shame dark-
ening the brow of the noblest among them. We
all know, yet we cannot easily tell. It is for the
same reason that the Koran and the Vedas and
Buddhism have their martyrs and their sages.
It is for the same reason that Swedenborg's
Mythus is so coherent and vital and true to
those who dwell within; so arrogant or limitary
to those without.
There is nothing that comes out of the human
heart — the deep aboriginal region — which is
not spheral, mundane, thousand-faced — so re-
This passage is followed by the last two pages of -His-
tory” (Essays, First Series).


501
1840)
READING
lated to all things that if perchance intense
light falls on it and immense study be given
to it, it will admit of being shown to be re-
lated to all things. The rose is a type of youth
and mirth to one eye, of profound melancholy
to another. There is nothing in nature which
is not an exponent of nature. I feel this in
nature constantly.
If you criticise a fine genius, as Burns or
Goethe, the odds are that you are quite out of
your reckoning.'...
AUTHORS OR Books QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN JOURNAL FOR 1840 ?
· Buddha; Vedas ; Zoroaster;
Æschylus, Prometheus Bound, Seven against
Thebes ; Sophocles, Electra; Plato, Politicus, apud
Cousin ; Vitruvius ;
St. Augustine, Confessions ; Koran;
Petrarch; Dante; Thomas à Kempis ; Chau-
cer; Luther; Rabelais; Hans Sachs; Chapman;
i For the rest of this paragraph, see “ Nominalist and
Realist” (Essays, Second Series, p. 241).
2 Including books from the Boston Athenæum charged to
Mr. Emerson.


502
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
Spenser; Donne; Hampden, Memoir by Nu-
gent;
Fuller ; Gilbert Burnet, History of his own
Times;
Count Anthony Hamilton, Mémoires du Comte
de Gramont; Simon Ockley, History of the Sara-
cens; André Michaux, Les Chênes d'Amérique
Septentrionale; D’Abrantès, Mémoires ;
Sir William Jones; Goethe, Wilhelm Meister ;
Lives of Haydn and Mozart; Karoline von
Günderöde; Bettina von Arnim ;
Burns; Dr. Abernethy;
Cousin; Fourier, Social Destiny of Man;
Mignan, Travels in Chaldea ;
Webster, Speeches; Bryant, Ancient Mythology;
Carlyle;
Harriet Martineau, Deerbook; R. H. Dana,
Jr., Two Years Before the Mast;
Tennyson; Balzac, Le Livre Mystique : French
Novels; Valentine; W. Ellery Channing, Poems ;
Mrs. Wells, Poem, “My own delighted, laugh-
ing boy."


JOURNAL
FIRST ESSAYS PRINTED
REFORMS





JOURNAL XXXII
1841
(From Journals E, F, G, H, and J)
[In January, Mr. Emerson— his book of Es-
says sent to the printer- had to prepare the
lecture “Man the Reformer," which he deliv-
ered before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library
Association in Boston on the 25th of the month.
His sedentary work and the severe winter seem
to have left him in bad condition in the spring,
and in April a pleasant and successful alliance
was made with Henry Thoreau, then twenty-
four years old, which lasted for two years. Tho-
reau became, as it were, an elder son in the
family, attended to the gardening, established a
poultry-yard, grafted the trees, and skilfully did
odd jobs and repairs in the house. He was man
of the house during Mr. Emerson's absences,
and was most respectfully attentive to Mrs. Emer-
son, to whom he always looked up as a sort of
lady-abbess. He was a delightful friend to the
children, and had great gifts of amusing and help-
ing them. He reserved what time he wished for


506
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
studies, afield and at home. Sometimes he walked
with Mr. Emerson and showed him Nature's
secrets in the woods or swamps or on the river.
Mr. Emerson's lack of skill in gardening or
household emergencies was admirably supple-
mented by his young friend.]
(From E)
January 1, 1841.
I begin the year by sending my little book
of Essays to the press. What remains to be
done to its imperfect chapters I will seek to do
justly. I see no reason why we may not write
with as much grandeur of spirit as we can serve
or suffer. Let the page be filled with the char-
acter, not with the skill of the writer.
Goethe is right in his mode of treating colors,
i. e., poetically, humanly. Beethoven is too proud,
yet is grand.
(From F)
I wondered at the continence of Nature under
the glittering night sky, and truly Pan ought to
be represented in the Mythology as the most
continent of Gods. But not less admirable is the
phlegm of the good ghost that inhabits it. For
can I, can any, spare the next day, the next year


32
-SE
1841) THE CONFESSIONAL
507
of our lives? Can any consent to die now? Are
we not always expecting that this marvellous
moderation which refuses to blab the secret, and
yields us no rapturous intelligence such as all
feel must lie behind there, will give way at last
to the necessity of imparting the Divine Mir-
acle?
This reserve and taciturnity of time.'
,11
Eins :
eek
notr
can se
g cock
o pro
January 11.
The Confessional. — Does Nature, my friend,
never show you the wrong side of the tapestry?
Never come to look dingy and shabby? Do you
never say, “Old stones! old rain! old landscape!
you have done your best; there is no more to
be said ; praise wearies; you have pushed your
joke a little too far”? – Or, on the other hand,
do you find Nature always transcending and as
good as new every day? I know, I know, how
nimble it is, the good monster. You have
quite exhausted its power to please, and to-day
you come into a new thought, and lo! in an
instant there stands the entire world converted
suddenly into the cipher or exponent of that
i And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.
« The Poet,” Poems, Appendix.
-e unca
e me
e is the


508
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
very thought, and chanting it in full chorus from
every leaf and drop of water. It has been sing-
ing that song every day since the Creation in
your deaf ears.
Away with your prismatics, I want a sper-
matic book. Plato, Plotinus, and Plutarch are
such.
It is necessary in considering the nature of
everything to direct our attention to the purity
of it. (Plotinus.)
Every soul pays a guardian attention to that
which is inanimate. (Plato in Phædrus.)
• Necessity indeed is in intellect, but persua-
sion in soul. (Plotinus.)
(From E)
January 17.
It appears sometimes what Prudence stands
for. The true prudence is no derogation from
the lofty character. The man who moved by
interrupted impulses of virtue would lead a vio-
lent and unfortunate life. These continent, per-
sisting, immoveable persons who are scattered
up and down for the blessing of the world, how-
soever named, Osiris or Washington or Samuel
· Hoar, have in this phlegm or gravity of their


211
509
1841) NEW NATURE
nature a quality which answers to the fly-wheel
in a mill which distributes the motion equably
over all the wheels and hinders it from fall-
ing. unequally and suddenly in destructive
shocks.' ...
He did not get it from the books, but where
the bookmaker got it.
Books lead us from ecstasy.
**
De
We look at the mercury to know the heat,
but Nature is the mercury of our progress. Do
we dissolve the sun or the sun us? do we freeze
the January, or January us?
We have exhausted Nature, but we read one
of the masters and instantly are made aware of
new classes of laws, and the world casts itself
into types so smiling grand and so equal to the
sense that we get a new idea of wealth, and grow
impatient of our words and think we will never
use them again; like boys who have had a rock-
ing-horse or boat and then are mounted on a
live horse or a sailboat — they despise their
toys.
Much of this in substance, but without naming men,
occurs at the end of “ Man the Reformer” (Nature, Ad-
dresses, and Lectures).
0 275
Ciec


510
JOURNAL [AGE 37
Powerful influence should never let us go;
never be out of the mind, sleeping or waking:
his name is on our lips, though we do not fre-
quent his society.
Thou, O Truth, never lettest us go.
The love of Nature, what is that but the
presentiment of intelligence of it? Nature pre-
paring to become a language to us.
DIN
Mechanics easily change their trades, for that
which they learn in their apprenticeship is the
use of tools, and, having learned that, they can
readily turn themselves to any new work. All
knowledge is thus eccentric, and of course the
progress of knowledge geometric. Are there
three rates of increase, arithmetical, geometrical,
and circumferential, or from the centre on all
sides out?
January 20.
Of these unquiet dæmons that fly or gleam
across the brain what trait can I hope to draw
in my sketch-book? Wonderful seemed to me
as I read in Plotinus the calm and grand air of
these few cherubim — great spiritual lords who
have walked in the world - they of the old re-
ligion – dwelling in a worship that makes the


1841] THE HEARING MAN 511
sanctities of Christianity parvenues and merely
popular.' ...
“Blessed,” said the Review which pleased me
so well, “is the man who has no powers,” and,
as I had written long ago, Happy is the man
who hears: unhappy the man who speaks. The
reason is obvious: it is better to be poor and
helpless in doing, because our heart is preoccu-
pied and astonished with the immensities of
God, than to be at leisure to adorn and finish
our trivial works because communication with
the Deity is no longer open to us. Therefore
very wisely did the ancients represent the Muses
as daughters of Memory. But when vision and
union come, there is no leisure for memory or
muses.
The ploughman and the ox, or a rider and
his horse, indicate the natural society of wis-
dom and strength: each is necessary to the
other.
i The rest of this passage on the philosophers of Ancient
Hellas and the Neoplatonists forms the conclusion of “ In-
tellect” (Essays, First Series), and it is, in the Journal,
immediately followed by the opening passage of the same
essay.


512
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
January 21.
A man should think much of himself because
he is a necessary being: a link was wanting be-
tween two craving parts of Nature and he was
hurled into being as the bridge, over that yawn-
ing need.' . .
When I look at the sweeping sleet amid the
pine woods, my sentences look very contempti-
ble, and I think I will never write more: but
the words prompted by an irresistible charity,
the words whose path from the heart to the lips
I cannot follow,- are fairer than the snow. It
is pitiful to be an artist.? ....
We are to come into Nature from a higher
law, and classify it anew. There is no mire, no
dirt to chemistry: the ignorant, the foul, know
of dirt: the chemist sees all dissolved into a
chain of immaterial, immortal, irresistible laws.
Even so must we come into Nature, that is, so
walk and work and build and associate. We
1 The rest of this paragraph is found in “ The Method
of Nature” (Nature, Addresses, etc., p. 207.)
2 The rest is in the above address (p. 110) and is imme-
diately followed here by the concluding passage in “ Man the
Reformer" in the same volume.


1841) GOD'S GIFT OF FACTS 513
must not scold, we must not lay hands on men,
but, being inspired, must awe their violence and
lead them by our eye into harmonic choirs.
A man is a poor, limitary benefactor,' . ..
CODE
STOR
January 31.
God gives us facts and does not tell us why;
but the reason lives in the fact; we are sure their
order is right : there is no interpolation: and
they only await our riper insight to become har-
monious in their order and proportion. God
knows all the while their divine reason. Sweden-
borg writes history after ideas. If he names Jew
or Persian, Moravian or Lutheran, Papist or
African, he gives us the reason in their charac-
ter for the fact he names. I hope that day will
come when no man will pretend to write history
but he who does so by divine right. A man be-
ing born to see the order of certain facts, is born
to write that history. Every other person, not
so qualified, who affects to do this work is a pre-
tender, and the work is not done. ...
12
All my thoughts are foresters. I have scarce
a day-dream on which the breath of the pines
The passage thus beginning is in “ The Transcendental-
ist” (Nature, Addresses, etc., p. 346).
Hae


514
JOURNAL
[AGE 37
has not blown, and their shadows waved. Shall
I not then call my little book Forest Essays?
Ecstasy, religion, are essentially self-relying,
the entranced instantly speak down as from an
immeasureable height to him who but yesterday
was walking at their side. They ask no sym-
pathy. But the soul which enters its noviciate
in the temple, when it has prayed or chaunted
inquires of its old friends, whether this was verily
prayer and music?
The Present. — Cannot all literature, and all
our own remote experience avail to teach us
that the To-day which seems so trivial, the task
which seems so unheroic, the inexpressive blank
look of the Present moment, . . . cannot all
avail to teach us that these are wholly deceptive
appearances, and that as soon as the irrecover-
able Years have placed their Blue between these
and us, these things shall glitter and attract us,
seeming to be the wildest romance, and — as
far as we allowed them in passing to take their
own way and natural shape — the homes of
beauty and poetry?
Novels. — To find a story which I thought
I remembered in Quentin Durward, I turned


1841] DISAPPOINTING NOVELS 515
over the volume until I was fairly caught in the
old foolish trap and read and read to the end
of the novel. Then, as often before, I feel in-
dignant to have been duped and dragged after a
foolish boy and girl, to see them at last married
and portioned, and I instantly turned out of
doors like a beggar that has followed a gay pro-
cession into the castle. Had one noble thought
opening the abysses of the intellect, one senti-
ment from the heart of God been spoken by
them, I had been made a participator of their
triumph, I had been an invited and an eternal
guest, but this reward granted them is property,
all-excluding property, a little cake baked for
them to eat and for none other, nay, which is
rude and insulting to all but the owner.' In
Wilhelm Meister, I am a partaker of the pros-
perity.
Yet a novel may teach one thing as well as
my choosings at the corner of the street which
way to go, - whether to my errand or whether
to the woods, — this, namely, that action in-
spires respect; action makes character, power,
man, God.
i Compare the passage in “ Behaviour," where the same
complaint is made in a more general way (Conduct of Life,
pp. 191, 192).


516
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
These novels will give way, by and by, to
diaries or autobiographies; — captivating books,
if only a man knew how to choose among what
he calls his experiences that which is really his
experience, and how to record truth truly !
or a
February 4.
I am dispirited by the lameness of an organ :
if I have a cold, and the thought I would utter
to my friend comes forth in stony, sepulchral
tones, I am disgusted, and I will not speak more.
But, as the drunkard who cannot walk can run,
so I can speak my oration to an assembly, when
I cannot without pain answer a question in the
parlor. But lately it is a sort of general winter
with me. I am not sick that I know, yet the
names and projects of my friends sound far off
and faint and unaffecting to my ear, as do, when
I am sick, the voices of persons and the sounds
of labor which I overhear in my solitary bed.
A puny, limitary creature am I, with only a
small annuity of vital force to expend, which if
I squander in a few feast-days, I must feed on
water and moss the rest of the time.
I went to the Rainers' concert last night in
our Court-House. When I heard them in Bos-


1841] TOWNSFOLK. TEA. LABOR: 517
ton, I had some dreams about music: last night,
nothing. Last night I enjoyed the audience. I
looked with a great degree of pride and affection
at the company of my townsmen and towns-
women, and dreamed of that kingdom and so-
ciety of Love which we preach.
His virtues were virtues of the senses. You
can't tell how much good nature and generosity
is to be ascribed to a good dinner, and how
much to the character. There is a great deal of
poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. ...
If I judge from my own experience I should
unsay all my fine things, I fear, concerning the
manual labor of literary men. They ought to be
released from every species of public or private
responsibility. To them the grasshopper is a
burden. I guard my moods as anxiously as a
miser his money; for company, business, my
own household chares, untune and disqualify me
for writing. I think then the writer ought not
to be married; ought not to have a family. I think
the Roman Church with its celibate clergy and
its monastic cells was right. If he must marry,
perhaps he should be regarded happiest who
has a shrew for a wife, a sharp-tongued notable


518
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
dame who can and will assume the total economy
of the house, and, having some sense that her
philosopher is best in his study, suffers him not
to intermeddle with her thrift. He shall be mas-
ter but not mistress, as Elizabeth Hoar said.
February 1o.
Prudence. — What right have I to write on
Prudence whereof I have but little and that of
the negative sort?'....
February 12.
There is no Time. — If the world would only
wait one moment, if a day could now and then
be intercalated, which should be no time, but
pause and landing-place, a vacation during which
sun and star, old age and decay, debts and in-
terest of money, claims and duties, should all
intermit and be suspended for the halcyon trance,
so that poor man and woman could throw off
the harness and take a long breath and consider
what was to be done, without being fretted by
the knowledge that new duties are gathering for
them in the moment when they are considering
the too much accumulated old duties ! But this
i The rest of the passage is the opening paragraph of
« Prudence” (Essays, First Series).


ne totalec
e sense that
suffers
We shaltz
h Hoare
1841] HURRY. THE SOUL'S LAW 519
on, on, forever onward, wears out adamant. All
families live in a perpetual hurry. Every rational
thing gets still postponed and is at last slurred and
ill-done or huddled out of sight and memory.
Februn
I to
le and
March 1.
In March many weathers. March always
comes if it do not come till May. May gener-
ally does not come at all.
ebruant
would's
OF
70 time,
during at
ebts zu
, shock
The poorness or recentness of my experience
must not deter me from affirming the law of the
soul: nay, although there was never any life
which in any just manner represented the facts.
We are bound to say what already is, and is ex-
plained and demonstrated by every right and
every wrong of ours, though we are far enough
from that inward health which would make this
true order appear to be the order of our lives.
What a coxcomb is our experience which de-
cides that such a fact or character cannot be be-
cause it has never been, as if that was not the
reason why it should now be.
March 19.
Sentcopies of my essays to Nathaniel L. Froth-
ingham, Sam G. Ward, J.G. Palfrey, N. I. Bow-
ditch, Margaret Fuller, Caroline Sturgis, W. H.
CYON tz
thrort
nd corso
frettes
thering
considera
! Burebis


520
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
Furness, [Rev.] Dr. Francis, Samuel Ripley, F.
H. Hedge, George Ripley, Abel Adams, J. R.
Lowell, Dr. James Jackson, Dr. Charles T. Jack-
son, [Aunt] Mary Moody Emerson, William
Emerson, Henry Ware, Jr., George P. Bradford,
D[avid] H[enry] Thoreau, A. B. Alcott,
W. Ware, Mrs. Lucy C. Brown, F. A. Farley,
Elizabeth Hoar, William Henry Channing, W.
E. Channing, Jr., [Rev.] Barzillai Frost, J. M.
Cheney, Rockwood Hoar, Mother, Lidian,
H. Colman, Thomas W. Haskins, Sarah Searle,
Edward Palmer, William Wordsworth, Thomas
Carlyle, John Sterling, Harriet Martineau, J.
W. Marston, Sophia Peabody [Mrs. Haw-
thorne], Wm. M. Jackson, H. Bulfinch, Mary
Russell, M. W. Willis, N. 7. Review, Knicker-
bocker.
April 10.
Do not judge the poet's life to be sad because
of his plaintive verses and confessions of despair.
Because he was able to cast off his sorrows into
these writings, therefore went he onward free and
serene to new experiences. You must be a poet
also to draw any just inference as to what he was
from all the records, be they never so rich, which
he has left. Did you hear him speak? His speech
did great injustice to his thought. It was either
sorro


1841) POET AND POEM 521
better or worse. He gave you the treasures of
his memory, or he availed himself of a topic rich
in allusions to express hopes gayer than his life
entertains, or sorrows poured out with an energy
and religion which was an intellectual play and not
the habit of his character. You shall not know
his love or his hatred from his speech and be-
haviour. Cold and silent he shall be in the circle
of those friends who, when absent, his heart
walks with and talks with evermore. Face to
face with that friend who for the time is unto him
the essence of night and morning, of the sea and
the land, the only equal and worthy incarnation
of Thought and Faith, — silence and gloom shall
overtake him ; his talk shall be arid and trivial.
There is no deeper dissembler than the sincerest
man. Do not trust his blushes, for he blushes
not at his affection, but at your suspicion. Do
not trust his actions, for they are expiations and
fines often, with which he has amerced himself,
and not the indications of his desire. Do not
conclude his ignorance or his indifference from
his silence. Do not think you have his thought,
when you have heard his speech to the end. Do
not judge him worldly and vulgar, because he
respects the rich and the well-bred, for to him the
glittering symbol has a surpassing beauty which
mar


522
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
e
it has not to other eyes, and fills his eye, and
his heart dances with delight in which no envy
and no meanness are mixed. Him the circum-
stance of life dazzles and overpowers whilst it
passes because he is so delicate a meter of every
influence. You shall find him noble at last, noble
in his chamber.
France. — “But Gymnast said, “My sover-
eign lord, such is the nature and complexion of
the French that they are worth nothing but at
the first push.'” -(Rabelais.)
I read with joy the life of Pythagoras by Iambli-
chus; and the use of certain melodies to awaken
in the disciple now purity, now valor, now gentle
ness. That Life is itself such a melody, and
proper to these holy offices. Especially I admire
the patience and longanimity of the probation
of the novice. His countenance, his gait, his man-
ners, diet, conversation, associates, employments,
were all explored and watched; then the long
discipline, the long silence was imposed, the new
and vast doctrines taught, and then his vivacity
and capability of virtue explored again. — If all
failed, then his property (otherwise made com-
mon) was restored to him, a tomb built to his
ds


1841] PYTHAGOREANS. MEXICO 523
memory, and he was thenceforward spoken of
and regarded by the School as dead. The long
patience in this fugitive world is itself an affect-
ing argument of the eternity of soul, affirms the
faith of those who thus greatly slight our swift
almanacs. He who treats human beings as cen-
tennial, millennial natures, convinces me of his
faith. ... Yet how much I admire their use of
music as a medicine. But for me, with deaf ears,
Order and Self-control are the “melodies” which
I should use to mitigate and tranquillize the fero-
city of my animal and foreign elements.
I saw with great pleasure the plates of the
French artist of the ruins of Palenqua in Mexico:
Cyclopean remains of a simple and original ar-
chitecture that compares at once with what is best
of Egyptian, Doric, or Gothic. Its great value to
the eye is the emancipation of the spirit which
it works. Everything is again possible. We are
no longer forced to reproduce buildings in one
of five or six foolish styles, but are as free as
dreams, free as wishes, free as new necessities can
make us.
Seest thou not how social and intrusive is the
nature of all things ? Ever they seek to penetrate


524
JOURNAL . (Age 37
dan
and overpower each the nature of every other
creature, and itself alone in all modes and
throughout space and spirit to prevail and pos-
sess.' ...
Man is the tender, irritable, susceptible matrix
or receiver. The pollen of all these grand flowers,
these savage forests, blows up and down and is
lodged in him, and he bears a universal varie-
gated blossom, rich with the qualities of every
nature.
There is nothing man meditates but he tends
presently to re- create, — whether a gallery of
sculpture, or economical machines, or a govern-
ment, or a bank, or the starry heaven, or a field
of flowers, — a ship or a picture, music or a farm,
a whaling voyage, or a war. Soft and facile all
images float freely over his retina : the poet is
he who can fix the grandest image and keep the
vividness of a brisk conversation to a millennium.
What are all these artists and masters of com-
merce, war, science, art, who go up and down so
energetically, but the celebrators and worship-
pers and minions, one may say, each of some
substance or relation in Nature? That shining,
alluring property did first sing in his ear a syren
i The rest of this long and striking passage is in “The
Method of Nature" (Nature, Addresses, etc., p. 212).
e


525
1841)
SOCIAL TESTS
song, was his seducer and sycophant, that it
might in the end utterly possess and infuriate
him in its service.
April 13.
In the unwelcome great snowstorm of this
day I must blot a line to acknowledge the value
of those social tests to which we all are brought
in turn to be approved or damned. Precisely
as the chemist submits the new substance to the
action of oxygen, hydrogen, electricity, vegetable
blue, etc., each soul in our little Massachusetts
coterie is passed through the ordinary series of
social re-agents, the market, the church, the par-
lour, the literary circle, writing, speaking, the
ball, the reforms, etc., to ascertain his distinc-
tive powers. Those tests which call out our latent
powers and give us leave to shine, we love and
applaud; those which detect our deficiencies we
hate and malign. The poet who is paralysed in
the company of the young and beautiful, where
he would so gladly shine, revenges himself by
satire and taxing that with emptiness and dis-
play. It is but fair that they for whose friend-
ship we are candidates, and they who are candi-
dates for ours,- and such are all men and all
women, -should have the opportunity of put-
ting and of being put into all the crucibles.


526
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
But when we have been tried and found want-
ing in any one, the wise heart will cherish that
mortification until the flower grows out of the
noisome pit. It will learn that not by seeking to
do, as others do, that thing for which it was
shown that we had no faculty, but by pious wait-
ing from month to month, from year to year,
and ever new effort after greater self-truth, will
the new way at last appear by which we are to
do the correspondent act in our circle.
I read alternately in Doctor Nichol and in
Saint-Simon,' that is, in the Heavens and in the
Earth, and the effect is grotesque enough. ...
I am of the Maker and of the Made. The
vastness of the Universe, the portentous year of
Mizar and Alcor are no vastness, no longevity
to me. In the eternity of truth, in the almighti-
ness of love, I slight these monsters. Through
I The Architecture of the Heavens, by John Pringle
Nichol; Mémoires, Louis de Rouvroi, Duc de Saint-Simon.
2 Here follow the two pages in « The Method of Nature"
as to the consolation she gives by her teachings of Tendency
always working, when we are disgusted with man's present
meanness (Nature, Addresses, etc., pp. 201-203). This is
followed by the passage beginning, “ The whole code of her
[Nature's] law may be written on the thumbnail” (“Na-
ture,” Essays, First Series, p. 180).


1841) REWARD. THE CAFÉ 527
all the running sea of forms, I am truth, I am
love, and immutable I transcend form as I do
time and space.
Is a service of plate a fit reward of a virtuous
action? or, is the friend whom it has won, and
the insight it has given, and the reaction it has
caused, the fit reward? And is Science to be
learned always in laboratories, or will it one day
be eaten and drunken, be smelled and tested,
be digged and swum and walked and dreamed?
Every man tries his hand at poetry some-
where, but most men do not know which their
poems are.
Φυγή μόνου προς μόνον.'
April 19.
Saint-Simon paints Fénelon as he sees him
from the army and the saloons of Versailles, so
that his Fénelon is a Saint-Simon in surplice,
and no Fénelon at all.
I am tempted lately to wish, for the benefit
of our literary society, that we had the friendly
institution of the Café. How much better than
Munroe's bookshop would be a coffee-room
The fight of the Only to the Only.


528
JOURNAL (AGE 37
wherein one was sure at one o'clock to find what
scholars were abroad taking their walk after the
morning studies were ended.
Education. — We assume a certain air of holi-
ness when we go to deal with our children, and
appeal at that moment to a principle to which
we do not appeal at other times. Of course, we
do not succeed: the child feels the fraud. Simply
the Holy Spirit is not there, and the effects can-
not appear.
April 20.
Would it not be well to write for the young
men at Waterville a history of our present liter-
ary and philosophical crisis, a portrait of the par-
ties, and read the augury of the coming hours? In
England, ethics and philosophy have died out.
How solitary is Coleridge and how conspicuous,
not so much from his force as from his solitude.
In this country, a throng of eager persons read and
hear every divine word. Yet for the most part
there is great monotony in the history of our
young men of the liberal or reforming class. They
have only got as far as rejection, not as far as
affirmation. They seem therefore angry and rail-
ers: they have nothing new or memorable to
offer; and that is the vice of their writings,



SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE





1841) AMERICAN CONDITIONS 529
profuse declamation, but no new matter: after
a very short time, this becomes to the reader in-
sufferably wearisome, and the fine young men
and women who looked but the other day in that
direction, with eyes of hope like the first rays of
morning, are turning away with a kind of bitter-
ness from the saturation of talk, of promise, and
of preaching. Silence, personal prowess, cheer-
fulness, solid doing, seem to be the natural cures.
We are a puny and fickle folk. Hesitation
and following are our diseases. The rapid wealth
which hundreds in the community acquire in
trade or by the incessant expansions of our
population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the
rest, the luck of one is the hope of thousands,
and the whole generation is discontented with
the tardy rate of growth which contents every
European community. America is ... the coun-
try of small adventures, of short plans, of dar-
ing risks, not of patience, not of great combi-
nations, not of long, persistent, close-woven
schemes, demanding the utmost fortitude, tem-
per, faith, and poverty. Our books are tents,
not pyramids : our reformers are slight and
wearisome talkers, not man-subduing, immu-
table, all-attracting ; discharging their own task
and so “charming the eye with dread," and per-


530
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
suading without knowing that they do so. There
are no Duke Wellingtons, no George Wash-
ingtons, no Miltons, Bentleys, or Hearns among
our rapid and dashing race; but abundance of
Murats, of Rienzis, of Wallers, and that slight
race who put their whole stake on the first die
they cast.
The great men bequeath never their projects
to their sons to finish: these eat too much
pound cake.
The most interesting class of people are those
who have genius by accident and are powerful
obliquely.' ...
Beautiful to me, among so many ordinary
and mediocre youths as I see, was Sam Ward
when I first fairly encountered him, and in this
way just named.
There are two theories of life, - one, for the
demonstration of our talent, and the other for
the education of the man. The life of politics,
of the college, of the city, is very seductive, as
it invites to the former, but sincerity counts all
the time spent in the former lost, or all but a
little. But obey the Genius when he seems to
1 The rest of the passage is printed in « Experience"
(Essays, Second Series, p. 68).


1841] POLITE WAR. THE WEST 531
lead to uninhabitable deserts, penetrate to the
bottom of the fact which draws you, although
no newspaper, no poet, no man, has ever yet
found life and beauty in that region, and pre-
sently when men are whispered by the gods to
go and hunt in that direction, they shall find
that they cannot get to the point which they
would reach without passing over that highway
which you have built. Your hermit's lodge shall
[be] the Holy City and the Fair of the whole
world.
War was courteously carried on, as a tourna-
ment of the aristocracy, in Louis Quatorze's
time. Duc de Saint-Simon relates that when the
Maréchal de Lorges, general of the army on the
Rhine, fell sick, Louis of Baden, the general of
the enemy, sent by trumpet offers of his physi-
cians, of supplies, and every courtesy and atten-
tion in his power.
April 21.
America, and not Europe, is the rich man.
According to De Tocqueville, the column of
our population on the western frontier from
Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico (twelve
hundred miles as the bird flies) advances every
year a mean distance of seventeen miles. He
1.
a mea


OURNAL
(AGE 37
532
JOURNAL
adds, “This gradual and continuous progress
of the European race towards the Rocky Moun-
tains has the solemnity of a providential event;
it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and
daily driven onward by the hand of God.”
Animals. — Pirates do not live on nuts and
herbs. The use of animal food marks the ex-
tremely narrow limits of our ideas of justice.
We confine our justice to men alone, according
to Porphyry's remark. Certainly our whole life
ought to be a benefit, and the heliotrope and
sweetbriar and thyme should not smell sweeter.
April 22.
Whenever the Church is restored, the culture
of the Intellect will be enjoined in it, not, as
now, with an apology and reservations, but con-
scientiously and to the shame and repentance
of our fat, sluggish, and trivial modes of living.
And I think that the labor in a college should
be as strenuous and rugged, I may say as auda-
cious as any labor that is undertaken in agricul-
ture or in war. And the student ought to feel
a poignant shame if when he reads the marches
of Hannibal or Napoleon across the Alps, or
the hardships of Hudson and Parry in their


1841) THE SCHOLAR'S COURAGE 533
polar voyages, or the patience of Columbus,
these eminent pieces of endurance appear to him
to indicate a greater manhood and resolution,
a more incessant industry, or a ruder courage
than that which he exercises in his silent library.
Does he wish to be a placid smiler, a demure,
inoffensive reader of such books as the news-
papers applaud, to be helped over a fence when
he walks with a man, as if he were a girl (like
my dear Rev. Mr. A.), – I see not how he is
better than a lacquey hired to read, instead of
one hired to wait on table or to polish boots.
His courage is not that of a soldier or a sailor,
but that of a scholar, and as worthy of their
admiration as theirs is worthy of his.
Should not man be sacred to man? What
are these thoughts we utter but the reason of our
incarnation? To utter these thoughts we took
flesh, missionaries of the everlasting Word which
will be spoken.
April 23.
Do not cast about for reasons among their
shop of reasons, but adduce yourself as the only
reason. We forget daily our high call to be
discoverers — we forget that we are embarked
1 i. e., the scholar's should be.
overers -


534
JOURNAL (AGE 37
on a holy, unknown sea in whose blue recesses
we have a secret warrant that we shall yet arrive
at the Fortunate Isles hid from men; and at each
saucy wood-craft or revenue cutter or rum-boat
that hails us, we are astonished, and put off from
our purpose, and ready to return to the rotten
towns we have left, and quit our seeking of the
Virgin Shore.
No great man ever complains of want of op-
portunity,— no, nor of any want except of
being wanting to himself. All that he lays to
the charge of his fortune accuses himself only.
Want of opportunity! Why, did not divine
necessity create him? Did he not come into
being because something must there be, and be
done, which thing he and none other is and
does? If I see, the world is visible enough,
clothed in brightness and prismatic hues. If
again I see from a deeper energy, - I pierce
the gay surface on all sides, and every mountain
and rock and man and operation grows trans-
parent before me.' ....
When I wish, it is permitted me to say, These
hands, this body, this history of Waldo Emerson
are profane and wearisome, but I, I descend not
i The rest of the paragraph is found in - The Method
of Nature” (Nature, Addresses, etc., pp. 207, 208).
an
TO VS trans-


1841) GOD IN MAN. VITALITY 535
to mix myself with that, or with any man. Above
his life, above all creatures, I flow down for-
ever, a sea of benefit into races of individuals.
Nor can the stream ever roll backward, or the
sin or death of a man taint the immutable energy
which distributes itself into men, as the sun into
rays, or the sea into drops."
17
to
encari
When Coleridge converses, or Scott roman-
ces, or Wordsworth writes poems, there is an
admirable fact; and now the activity of the en-
gineer, of the railroad builder, and the manufac-
turer is real and inventive, and deserves regard.
Commerce, speculation overflow their old boun-
daries and run into new paths. Reform is to-day
creative and not slavish. But the only rule and
condition of merit and noteworthiness is not re-
nown, nor number, nor property, nor geography,
but only vitality. Its title to be studied is not to
be measured by anything but persons. . . . If
you would know what was done long ago, ex-
amine the institutions, the millions, the wealth,
the laws. If you would know what God now
hath at heart, behold the bright eye, hear the
melodious speech, mark the irresistible hand
i The doctrine of the Universal Mind or the Over-Soul. See
also “ Pan" in the Appendix to the Poems.
mer


536
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
which that energy now flows into. It matters
not what topic men prefer, but what subject
or instance they select to study the same upon.
Not divination or ethics or astronomy is better
than farriery or the rules of chess, but the one
object of study is a great man. A great personal
ascendancy is an inundation of reason, and
therein they shall read the laws of gods and
men and atoms. But scholars who should be
diviners, Ephori, Judges, Eyes and Souls, bow
to badges and officers, and do not require of
every man whom they meet, that he should be
the Founder of a Family, or a Profession, the
Inventor of a way of life. Geology, Chemistry,
Animal Dynamics, Electricity, the law of day
and night, and of all material relation is being
read aloud.
men
We must distinguish between the hero's great-
ness and his foible, and not consecrate so much
nonsense as we do because it was allowed by
great men. There is none without his foi-
ble.' ...
i Here follow the passages in “ Nominalist and Realist”
(p. 227) about the fear of angels' foibles ; and that in “ New
England Reformers ” (pp. 265, 266), about true and false
concert of men (Essays, Second Series).


1841) REVEALING EYES. BEAUTY 537
April 24.
I beheld him and he turned his eyes on me,
his great serious eyes.' Then a current of spir-
itual power ran through me, and I looked farther
and wider than I was wont, and the visages of
all men were altered and the semblances of things.
The men seemed to me as mountains, and their
faces seamed with thought, and great gulfs be-
tween them, and their tops reached high into the
air. And when I came out of his sight, it seemed
to me as if his eyes were a great river, like the Ohio
or the Danube, which was always pouring a tor-
rent of strong, sad light on some men, wherever
he went, and tingeing them with the quality of
his soul.
The balance must be kept, — the power to
generalize and the power to individualize must
coexist to make a poet; Will and Abandon-
ment, the social and the solitary humour, man
and opportunity.
Beauty is the only sure sign, so that if your
word threatens me, I know it is a bully, I know
it is weak, I know there is a better word discov-
erable and returnable. That word only which is
i Perhaps some vision.
V-


538
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
fair and fragrant, which blooms and rejoices,
which runs before me like verdure and a flower-
ing vine, sowing an Eden in the path, is truth.
I hate, therefore, to hear that a cloud always
hangs on an American's brow.
I frequently find the best part of my ride in
the Concord Coach from my house to Winthrop
Place to be in Prince Street, Charter Street, Ann
Street, and the like places at the North End of
Boston. The dishabille of both men and women,
their unrestrained attitudes and manners, make
pictures greatly more interesting than the clean-
shaved and silk-robed procession in Washington
and Tremont streets. I often see that the atti-
tudes of both men and women engaged in hard
work are more picturesque than any which art
and study could contrive, for the Heart is in these
first. I say picturesque; because when I pass
these groups, I instantly know whence all the
fine pictures I have seen had their origin: I feel
the painter in me: these are the traits which
make us feel the force and eloquence of form
and the sting of color. But the painter is only
in me; it does not come to the fingers' ends.
But whilst I see a true painting, I feel how it
was made; I feel that genius organizes, or it


1841) GOD'S GIFT TO EACH 539
is lost. It is the gift of God; as Fanny Elssler
can dance and Braham can sing, when many a
worthy citizen and his wife, however disposed,
can by no culture either paint, dance, or sing.
Do not let them be so ridiculous as to try, but
know thou, know all, that no citizen, or citi-
zen's wife, no soul, is without organ. Each soul
is a soul or an individual in virtue of its having,
or I may say being, a power to translate the uni-
verse into some particular language of its own:
... into something great, human, and adequate
which, if it do not contain in itself all the dancing,
painting, and poetry that ever was, it is because
the man is faint-hearted and untrue.
Wouldest thou see the wonders of art and the
graces of society without a sense of inferiority,
make thy life secretly beautiful.
[Here follow passages on genius and on tal-
ent, which are printed in “The Method of Na-
ture” (pp. 204 and 218). The following refer-
ence to Miss Mary Moody Emerson occurs, in
the Journal, in the middle of the latter passage.]
May 4.
Aunt Mary, whose letters I read all yesterday


540
JOURNAL (AGE 37
afternoon, is Genius always new, subtle, frolic-
some, musical, unpredictable. All your learning
of all literatures and states of society, Platon-
istic, Calvinistic, English or Chinese, would
never enable you to anticipate one thought or
expression. She is embarrassed by no Moses
or Paul, no Angelo or Shakspeare, after whose
type she is to fashion her speech: her wit is
the wild horse of the desart, who snuffs the si-
rocco and scours the palm-grove without having
learned his paces in the Stadium or at Tatter-
sall's. What liberal, joyful architecture, liberal
and manifold as the vegetation from the earth's
bosom, or the creations of frostwork on the
window! Nothing can excel the freedom and
felicity of her letters, — such nobility is in this
self-rule, this absence of all reference to style
or standard: it is the march of the mountain
winds, the waving of flowers, or the flight of
birds. But a man can hardly be a reader of
books without acquiring their average tone, as
one who walks with a military procession invol-
untarily falls into step.
In every family is its own little body of lit-
erature, divinity, and personal biography, -a
common stock which their education and cir-
common


ve
1841] MARY MOODY EMERSON 541
cumstance have furnished, and from which they
all draw allusion and illustration to their con-
versation whilst it would be unintelligible (at least
in the emphasis given to it) to a stranger. Thus,
in my youth, after we had brought home Don
Juan and learned to pester Aunt Mary with
grave repetition of the lines from the shipwreck:
« They grieved for those who perished in the cutter,
And likewise for the biscuit-casks and butter,”
— these became the byword for the mean spirit
of derision that characterised the present age, in
contrast with the alleged earnest and religious
spirit of the Puritans, and especially the austere
saints of Concord and Malden, she was so swift
to remember.
I find a letter of hers to Charles, dated Water-
ford, October, 1831:-
“O could you be here this afternoon—not
a creature but the dog and me— we don't go to
four-days-meeting. There's been one at the
Methodists', closing to-day, and such a rush
from the other society. But such a day! Here's
one balm-of-gilead tree - but a few leaves left,
as though on purpose to catch the eye to see
them play in the wind day after day, — and the
1 A « Revival” then going on in Waterford, Maine.


542
JOURNAL
[AGE 37
deserted nest. Ah! where are its anxious parents
and their loved brood ? Dead? Where the mys-
terious principle of life? . . . Past nine o'clock.
The vision of beauty has changed a white
mist has risen which hides the venerable mount,'
but shows the trees in fine picturesque, and the
deserted nest is sheltered with a soft pall, like
the oblivion which rests on the miseries of the
wretched. Just after the house was left for the
evening vigils at the chapel, a man came for me
to write a note he was going to carry. The pe-
culiarity of notes here, is, a friend asks for an-
other's conversion — thus the best of human
feelings are brought into action. But note the
Cracker's;' I brought down by mistake the only
pen which is good of the four (one which I don't
use to you or Brother S.3) and I persuaded him to
shorten his petitions; and, as he was satisfied,
surely there was no harm. And here comes a
living voice — the charm too is gone from the
i Bear Mountain, with a beautiful lake at its foot.
2 Perhaps the humble revivalists were so called. The
“ notes” referred to were written requests sent up to the
minister in the pulpit for special remembrance in his prayer in
cases of suffering or death of relatives, or for thanksgiving for
happy events.
3 Rev. Samuel Ripley of Waltham, her half-brother.


1841] EARLY NEW ENGLAND 543
moon — she rides full brightly — the tarn has
gathered her misty wanderers in her bosom, and
the trees stretch their naked arms to the skies
like the scathed martyrs of Persecution.”
New England Theology. — The new relations
we form we are apt to prefer, as our own ties, to
those natural ones which they have supplanted.
Yet how strict these are, we must learn later,
when we recall our childhood and youth with
vivid affection, and feel a poignant solitude,
even in the multitude of modern friends. In
reading these letters of M. M. E. I acknowledge
(with surprise that I could ever forget it) the debt
of myself and my brothers to that old religion
which, in those years, still dwelt like a Sabbath
peace in the country population of New Eng-
land, which taught privation, self-denial, and
sorrow.' A man was born, not for prosperity,
but to suffer for the benefit of others, like the
noble rock-maple tree which all around the vil-
lages bleeds for the service of man. Not praise,
not men's acceptance of our doing, but the Spir-
it's holy errand through us, absorbed the thought.
1 This passage, although much of it is printed in - The
Method of Nature," is so intimate and personal that it is kept
here.


544
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
How dignified is this ! how all that is called
talents and worth in Paris and in Washington
dwindles before it! How our friendships and
the complaisances we use, shame us now, —
they withdraw, they disappear, and the gay and
accomplished associates, - and our elder com-
pany, the dear children and grave relatives with
whom we played and studied and repented,
they return and join hands again. I feel sud-
denly that my life is frivolous and public; I am
as one turned out of doors, I live in a balcony,
or on the street; I would fain quit my present
companions as if they were thieves or pot-com-
panions, and betake myself to some Thebais,
some Mount Athos, in the depths of New
Hampshire or Maine, to bewail my innocency
and to recover it, and with it the power to com-
mune again with these sharers of a more sacred
idea. I value Andover, Yale, and Princeton as
altars of this same old fire, though I fear they
have done burning cedar and sandalwood there
also, and have learned to use chips and pine.
But I meant to say above, that we are sur-
prised to find that we are solitary, that what is
holiest in our character and faculty is unappre-
ciated by those who stand around us, and so
lies uncalled for and dormant, and that it needs


1841)
THE BROTHERS
545
that our dear ghosts should return, or such as
they, to challenge us to right combats.
Charles and Edward. — I ought to record the
pleasure I found, amid all this letter-reading, in
some letters to C. C. E. from his college mates,
in the uniform tone of affection and respect with
which these boys — for such they still were —
accost him. Edward also was respected, admired
by his mates, but, I suspect, never loved, - not
comprehended, not felt, — he puzzled them.
Yet I still remember with joy Charles's remark
when he returned from visiting Edward at Porto
Rico, that the tone of conversation there was
the most frivolous and low that could be, yet
that Edward never suffered anything unworthy
to be said in his presence, without speaking for
the right, and so good-humoredly and so well,
as invariably to command respect, and be a check
on the company.' But Charles always, from his
i Of Edward Emerson, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes thus
spoke at a Meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society in
his tribute to the elder brother, in 1882: —
“Children of the same family, as we well know, do not alike
manifest the best qualities belonging to the race. But the two
brothers of Ralph Waldo Emerson whom I can remember were
of exceptional and superior natural endowments. Edward Bliss
Emerson, next to him in order of birth, was of the highest


546
(AGE 37
JOURNAL
school days, had this following, and that of the
best who were about him; it was true, leal ser-
vice, homage to something noble and superior,
which the giver felt it was a compliment to him-
self to pay. Thus he brought boarders to the
houses where he went, to Danforth's in Cam-
bridge, and Pelletier's in Boston.
May 6.
These letters revive my faded purpose of
writing the oft-requested memoir of Charles.
That certainly would have been unfit: it was right
for the young and the dear friend to ask: it had
been wrong in me to undertake; the very noble-
ness of the promise should make us more reluc-
tant to recite the disappointment of the promise.
Let us not stoop to write the annals of sickness
and disproportion. Charles delighted in strength,
in grace, in poetry, in success ; — shall we wrong
promise, only one evidence of which was his standing at the
head of his college class at graduation. I recall a tender and
most impressive tribute of Mr. Everett's to his memory at one
of our annual 0 B K meetings. He spoke of the blow which
had jarred the strings of his fine intellect and made them return
a sound,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,'
in the saddened tones of that rich, sonorous voice still thrilling
in the ears of many whose hearing is dulled for all the elo-
quence of to-day.”


1841) THE OLD RELIGION 547
him so far as to make him the unwilling object
of pity, the centre of a group of pain, a caryatid
statue in our temple of Destiny? Yet now, as
I read these yellowing letters of Aunt Mary, I
begin to entertain the project in a new form. I
doubt if the interior and spiritual history of New
England could be trulier told than through the
exhibition of family history such as this, the pic-
ture of this group of Aunt Mary and the boys,
mainly Charles. The genius of that woman, the
key to her life is in the conflict of the new and
the old ideas in New England. The heir of
whatever was rich and profound and efficient in
thought and emotion in the old religion which
planted and peopled this land. She strangely
united to this passionate piety the fatal gifts of
penetration, a love of philosophy, an impatience
of words, and was thus a religious skeptic. She
held on with both hands to the faith of the past
generation as to the Palladium of all that was
good and hopeful in the physical and metaphy-
sical worlds; and in all companies, and on all
occasions, and especially with these darling neph-
ews of her hope and pride, extolled and poetised
this beloved Calvinism. Yet all the time she
doubted and denied it, and could not tell whether
to be more glad or sorry to find that these boys


548
[AGE 37
JOURNAL
were irremediably born to the adoption and fur-
therance of the new ideas. She reminds me of
Margaret Graeme, the enthusiast in Scott's
Abbot, who lives to infuse into the young Roland
her enthusiasm for the Roman Church; only that
our Margaret doubted whilst she loved. Milton
and Young were the poets endeared to the gen-
eration she represented. Of Milton they were
proud, but I fancy their religion has never found
so faithful a picture as in the Night Thoughts.
These combined traits in Aunt Mary's charac-
ter gave the new direction to her hope, that these
boys should be richly and holily qualified and
bred to purify the old faith of what narrowness
and error adhered to it, and import all its fire
into the new age, — such a gift should her Pro-
metheus bring to men. She hated the poor, low,
thin, unprofitable, unpoetical Humanitarians as
the devastators of the Church and robbers of
the soul, and never wearies with piling on them
new terms of slight and weariness. “Ah!" she
said, “what a poet would Byron have been, if
he had been born and bred a Calvinist.”
Sunday.
Beautiful, eloquent day, rich with more than
I have skill to tell, though I have attempted it


1841) ADVANCING MAN 549
in verses. We rightly call the woods enchant-
ing, they so confound all our measures, and up-
set our whole system of tradition.' ... Here
reigns eternal Sabbath, and the hours so ample
and profound, they seem to stretch to centuries.
... How far off is man and his works; Baby-
lon and Britain draw very near together, and are
not to be discriminated. The Circumstance is
here emphatically felt to be nothing.
The Present Age will perhaps be character-
ised long hence by the importance now for sev-
eral centuries attached to two words, namely,
Gentleman and Christian. Yet see how this is the
prevalence or inundation of an idea, and not of
any person or purpose. Who did this? Who
elevated these two words to their dignity in the
metaphysical and practical world? Was any man
a party to this exaggeration? Plainly no man,
but all men. Well, there is no fact and no
thought which shall not equally come in turn
to the top and be celebrated.
General Harrison was neither Whig nor Tory,
but the Indignation President; and, what was
i The omitted sentences are in the first pages of “ Nature"
(Essays, Second Series).


550
JOURNAL [AGE 37
not at all surprising in this puny generation, he
could not stand the excitement of seventeen mil-
lions of people, but died of the Presidency in
one month. A man should have a heart and a
trunk vascular and on the scale of the Aque-
ducts or the Cloaca Maxima of Rome to bear
the friction of such a Mississippi stream.
The dew-drops which are only superficial,
what a depth do they give to the aspect of the
morning meadows as you walk! So do manners,
so do social talents to frivolous society.
We know as little of men as we do of plants.
We doubt not that every weed in our soil hath
its uses, and each no doubt excellent and ad-
mirable uses; yet now how poorly they figure
in our Materia Medica ! And is not a man bet-
ter than a mullein or a buckthorn?
I walked in my dream with a pundit who said,
... he could not speak with me many words,
for the life of incarnate natures was short, but
that the vice of men was old age, which they
ought never to know; for, though they should
see ten centuries, yet would they be younger than
the waters, which — hearken unto their sound!


1841) FLOWING RELIGION 551
how young is it, and yet how old ! Neither, said
he, ought men ever to accept grief from any ex-
ternal event; for, poverty, death, deluges, fires,
are flaws of cold wind or a passing vapor which
do not affect a constant soul. He added, that,
as the river flows, and the plant flows (or emits
odours), and the sun flows (or radiates), and the
mind is a stream of thoughts, so was the uni-
verse the emanation of God.' . .. Therefore,
he added, they mistake who seek to find only
one meaning in sacred words and images, in the
name of gods, as Jove, Apollo, Osiris, Vishnu,
Odin : or in the sacred names of Western Eu-
rope and its colonies, as Jesus and the Holy
Ghost: for these symbols are like coins of dif-
ferent countries, adopted from local proximity
or convenience, and getting their cipher from
some forgotten accident, the name of a consul,
or the whim of a goldsmith; but they all repre-
sent the value of corn, wool, and labor, and are
readily convertible into each other, or into the
coin of any new country. That sense which is
conveyed to one man by the name and rites
of Pan or Jehovah, is found by another in the
study of earthquakes and floods, by another in
i The omitted passage about emanations is found in “ The
Method of Nature” (p. 199).
Or


552
JOURNAL
(AGE 37
the forms and habits of animals; by a third in
trade, or in politics; by a fourth in electro-
magnetism. Let a man not resist the law of his
mind and he will be filled with the divinity which
flows through all things. He must emanate; he
must give all he takes, nor desire to appropriate
and to stand still.
He also said, that the doctrine of Pantheism
or the Omnipresence of God would avail to
abolish the respect of circumstance, or the treat-
ing all things after the laws of time and place,
and would accustom men to a profounder in-
sight. Thus Hospitality, he said, was an exter-
nal fact. The troops of guests who succeed each
other as inmates of our houses and messmates
at our tables, week after week, are recording
angels who inspect and report our domestic be-
haviour, our temperance, our conversation, and
manners. Therefore, the pure in heart, having
nothing to hide, are the most hospitable, or
keep always open house. But to those who have
somewhat to conceal, every guest is unwel-
come.
A man is a gate betwixt Hell and Heaven.
Through his heart streams a procession, when
he wills good, of all angels and mights; when he
wills evil, of all cattle and devils. Thou saidst


1841) THE HEART A GATE 553.
of thy heart just now that it was cold, that it
was broken, and thou wonderest why God should
create it to be pained; and other the like things.
What is the Heart, but the power to give and
receive which varies every moment with the ac-
tion? Whoso blesseth all beings or any being,
- to him, to her, bend all the world of Spirits, as
the brothers' sheaves to Joseph's sheaf. Whoso
curseth any, by word or deed, from him, from
her, all spirits in all worlds turn their backs.
You cannot will without turning the key of Na-
ture and opening or shutting the door of Light
and of Darkness. There where you are, create
value, and you publish yourself on the wings of
every wind, every ray of light becomes your ad-
vertisement, and all souls shall bid on you until
your just wages are paid.
I owe to genius always the same debt of lift-
ing the curtain from the common, and showing
me that gods are sitting disguised in this seeming
gang of gypsies and pedlars.' And why should I
owe it to a book or a friend, and not myself
pierce the thin incognito ? A question I may well
ask, but I must ask it of my hands and of my
i This sentence occurs in “ Works and Days” (Society and
Solitude, p. 176).


554
[Ace 37
JOURNAL
will. Holiness is the only stair to the mount of
God. Yet am I continually tempted to sacrifice
genius to talent, the hope and promise of in-
sight (through the sole door of better being) to
the lust of a freer play and demonstration of those
gifts I have. We seek that pleasurable excite-
ment which unbinds our faculties and gives us
every advantage for the display of that skill we
possess, and we buy this freedom to glitter by
the loss of general health. Humility, patience,
abstinence, mortification, nakedness (stripping
off these clothes of law, custom, fortune, and
friends), they can teach a philosophy, a rhetoric,
and a poetry which the world has not heard these
thousand years. Coffee is good for talent, but
genius wants prayer. — Dost thou not fear that
this perception, so keen, of right and wrong
thou hast, of the true and the ridiculous in re-
form, will some time vanish and not be, and dost
thou not wish to hold it to thee? I know thou
dost. Do then what thou knowest.'....
What is strong but goodness, and what is en-
ergetic but the presence of a good man? It is
time that this doctrine of the Presence?...
I « Method of Nature” (p. 222).
2 Ibid. (p. 216).


1841] SAINTS' WORSHIP 555
The crystal sphere of thought is as concen-
trical as the geological globe we inhabit.'...
The various matters which men magnify, as
trade, law, creeds, sciences, paintings, coins, man-
uscripts, histories, poems, are all pieces of virtu
which serve well enough to unfold the talents of the
man, but are all diversions from the insight of the
soul. Saints' worship is one of these, - the worship
of Mahomet or Jesus, — like all the rest, a fine
field of ingenuity wherein to construct theories :
a fine, capacious platform whereon to build in-
stitutions and societies, poetry, eloquence, and
reputation — nay, a drug, a specific for the pre-
sent distress, a crutch for fainting virtue, a loz-
enge for the sick;- but, seriously and sadly
considered, a remedy more dangerous than the
disease. The soul will none of this roving. Why
goest thou boswellizing this saint or that? It is
lèse-majesté, it is the razor to the throat: here
art thou, with whom so long the universe tra-
vailed in labor. Darest thou to think meanly of
thyself — thee whom the stalwart Fate brought
forth to unite his ragged sides; to shoot the gulf;
to reconcile the erst irreconcileable? As long as
thou magnifiest anything, thou accusest thyself
I “Method of Nature” (pp. 195, 196).


556
JOURNAL [AGE 33
e
of trifling, of dallying and postponing thy own
deed, for, when once thou graspest the handles
of thy plough, thou wilt put all names behind
thee as living nature forces us to put all dead
bodies under ground. In the infinite disparity
between the soul and any one incarnation of it,
though holiest and grandest, all differences be-
tween one and another disappear, — they have
no parallax at a distance so vast. "
In every pulse of virtue, in every revelation,
tho’ slightest, of the soul, the soul affirmeth the
kingdom of the universe, the descent of itself
into man.
May 28.
Can I not learn that there is nothing settled
in manners?'...
Good sense is the leader of fashion as of
everything else. A man has strong sense to
write or to command armies, but he makes no
figure in society, simply because there his sense
does not work,- is dismounted by his self-
consciousness, or excessive desire to please, or
some other superstition; but the reason why he
yields so readily to the victors of the carpet is,
(Essays, Second Series,
1 The rest is in “Manners”
pp. 131, 132).


1841)
NIGHT
557
that he feels and sees that they carry the matter
more sensibly than he.
[In his letter to Carlyle, May 30, Mr. Emer-
son said:—
“One reader and friend of yours dwells now
in my house, and, as I hope, for a twelvemonth
to come, - Henry Thoreau, - a poet whom
you may one day be proud of;- a noble, manly
youth, full of melodies and inventions. We work
together day by day in my garden, and I grow
well and strong.” — (Carlyle - Emerson Corre-
spondence, vol. i, Letter LX.)]
June 6.
I am sometimes discontented with my house
because it lies on a dusty road, and with its sills
and cellar almost in the water of the meadow.
But when I creep out of it into the Night or the
Morning and see what majestic and what tender
beauties daily wrap me in their bosom, how near
to me is every transcendent secret of Nature's
love and religion, I see how indifferent it is
where I eat and sleep. This very street of huck-
sters and taverns the moon will transform to a
Palmyra, for she is the apologist of all apolo-
gists, and will kiss the elm trees alone and hides
every meanness in a silver-edged darkness. Then
near


558
(AGE 38
JOURNAL
the good river-god has taken the form of my
valiant Henry Thoreau here and introduced me
to the riches of his shadowy, starlit, moonlit
stream, a lovely new world lying as close and yet
as unknown to this vulgar trite one of streets
and shops as death to life, or poetry to prose.
Through one field only we went to the boat and
then left all time, all science, all history, behind
us, and entered into Nature with one stroke of
a paddle. Take care, good friend! I said, as I
looked west into the sunset overhead and under-
neath, and he with his face toward me rowed
towards it, — take care; you know not what you
do, dipping your wooden oar into this enchanted
liquid, painted with all reds and purples and
yellows, which glows under and behind you.
Presently this glory faded, and the stars came
and said, “Here we are ”; began to cast such
private and ineffable beams as to stop all con-
versation. A holiday villeggiatura, a royal revel,
the proudest, most magnificent, most heart-
rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power
and poetry ever decked and enjoyed — it is here,
it is this. These stars signify it and proffer it:
they gave the idea and the invitation,' ...
i Portions of this passage are printed in "Nature"(Essays,
Second Series, pp. 172-174).


STARS AND MOON
559
these beguiling stars, soothsaying, flattering, per-
suading, who, though their promise was never
yet made good in human experience, are not to
be contradicted, not to be insulted, nay, not even
to be disbelieved by us. All experience is against
them, yet their word is Hope and shall still
forever leave experience a liar. ...
Yes, bright Inviters! I accept your eternal
courtesy.' ...
But on us, sitting darkling or sparkling there
in the boat, presently rose the moon, she cleared
the clouds and sat in her triumph so maidenly
and yet so queenly, so modest yet so strong, that
I wonder not that she ever represents the Fem-
inine to men. There is no envy, no interference
in Nature. The beauty and sovereignty of the
moon, the stars, or the trees, do not envy; they
know how to make it all their own. As we sail
swiftly along, and so cause the moon to go, now
pure through her amber vault, and now through
masses of shade, and now half-hid through the
plumes of an oak or a pine, each moment, each
aspect is sufficient and perfect; there is no better
or worse, no interference, no preference; but
every virtuous act of man or woman accuses other
i Compare lines in “The Poet” (Poems, Appendix,
p. 314).


560
JOURNAL (AGE 38
men and women; shames me; and the person
of every man or woman as in my varying love
slighted or preferred. Blessed is Law. This
moon, the hill, the plant, the air, obey a law,
they are but animated geometry and numbers;
to them is no intemperance; these are through
law born and ripened and ended in beauty: but
we through the transgression of Law sicken and
inveterate.
June 7.
Here follow several sentences from the
“ Chaldæan Oracles” attributed to Zoroaster.]
Things divine are not attainable by mortals who un-
derstand body;
But only as many as are lightly armed arrive at the
summit.
It is not proper to understand the Intelligible with
vehemence
But with the extended Aame of an extended mind
measuring all things
Except that Intelligible. But it profits to understand
. this
For if you incline your mind you will understand it
Not earnestly, but it becomes you to bring with you
a pure and inquiring eye;
To extend the void mind of your soul to the Intelligible
Because it subsists beyond mind.


1841) CULTURE. BOOKS BEGUILE 561
You will not understand it as when understanding
some particular thing.
There is a certain Intelligible which it becomes you
to understand with the flower of the mind.
Let the immortal depth of your soul lead you.
Enlarge not thy destiny.
To every tree its own leaf and fruit, and every
man; are you a juniper or are you an orange :
but if the tree is pruned and exposed to the
South wind and manured, then it will bear a cart-
load of oranges; if neglected, few and bad. So
it seems more the pity if you are a man of gen-
ius, the sweetest of all poets, that you should pine
in bad condition and yield one song in a year.
TOK
sed
ive II
idei es
We are too civil to books. For a few golden
sentences we will turn over and actually read a
volume of four or five hundred pages. Even the
great books, — “Come,” say they, “we will
give you the key to the world.” — Each poet,
each philosopher says this, and we expect to go
like a thunder-bolt to the centre. . . . Ever
and forever Heraclitus is justified, who called
the world an eternal inchoation.
undercut
rstands
Critics. — The borer on our peach trees bores
i See « The Method of Nature” (p. 196).


562
[AGE 38
JOURNAL
that she may deposit an egg : but the borer into
theories and institutions and books bores that
he may bore.
The man of practical or worldly force requires
of the preacher a talent, a force like his own.' ...
You defy anybody to have things as good as
yours. Hafiz” defies you to show him or put
him in a condition inopportune and ignoble.
Take all you will, and leave him but a corner
of Nature, a lane, a den, a cowshed, out of cities,
far from letters and taste and culture; he pro-
mises to win to that scorned spot, the light of
moon and stars, the love of men, the smile of
beauty, the homage of art. It shall be painted,
and carved, and sung and celebrated and visited
by pilgrimage in all time to come.
(From G)
July.
The Actual. – O Protean Nature, whose
energy is change evermore, thou hurlest thyself
i The rest of the passage is printed in « The Preachers”
(Natural History of Intellect, p. 30).
2 Mr. Emerson uses the name of Hafiz, as he more fre-
quently did that of Saadi (Seyd or Said), in describing a poet's
life or ideal. (See “Saadi,” - Beauty,” and “ Fragments on
the Poet and the Poetic Gift" in the Poems.)


1841) WASTE POWER. ASCETIC 563
into a berry or a drop, thou lodgest all thought
in a word, all moral quality in the glance of an
eye, but tell me, art thou only such a creator as
bards and orators ? Is thy power only for dis-
play? Or canst thou change the form of this
waste and unnecessary day into an hour of love
and fitness ? When I see what waste strength
is in friendship and in the writing and reading
of modern society, the world seems to exist to
dilettantism.
OSMAN AND SCHILL'
Schill. No tea! no wine! How are you the
better or how am I the worse?
Osman. You are wise for me now. I am dull
and you are inspired. But I know what you say,
and shall remember it when you cannot.
Schill. How mean you that?
Osman. Time is my friend and not yours.
The vital force is more ductile than gold, and the
coin which you throw into a gambler's hand may
be beaten into a leaf which shall gild the globe.
Schill. Whilst I confess I come eating and
drinking, I praise your self-denial which I also
1 There seems to be no reason to be given for the choice
of the name Schill for one of the interlocutors. It has nothing
to do with the hero of Wordsworth's sonnet.


564
JOURNAL
[AGE 38
think is ton and tournure which makes kings vul-
gar.
Osman. It is no virtue in me, Sir. My father
gave me a good constitution, which makes the
taste of berries as grateful to me as pears or pine-
apples to you; and my temperance is no more to
be imputed to me for righteousness than is the
fact that a straw hat protects my head for all
these years as well as an iron helmet. I think
myself master of Assyrian luxury when I walk
in the woods through sweet-fern and sassafras,
or pass to the leeward of an elder bush in flower,
or blacken my teeth with the betel nuts we have
now plucked. One thing fell from you just now
concerning fashion, which, though I did not
quite understand it, may be the same thing which
I have often thought, — that the best teachers
of elegance are the stars which shine so delicately
in yonder amber sky; and in the presence of the
woodland flowers and the birds, I am ashamed
to be coarse in my costume or behavior.
Character. - A word warm from the heart
written or spoken, that enriches me. I sur-
render at discretion;'...
i For the rest of the passage, see « Character” (Essays,
Second Series, pp. 104, 105).


153co
1841] CONSTANCY. REAL LIFE 565
I value my welfare too much to pay you any
longer the compliment of attentions. I shall not
draw the thinnest veil over my defects, but if you
are here, you shall see me as I am. You will then
see that, though I am full of tenderness, and
born with as large hunger to love and to be loved
as any man can be, yet its demonstrations are
not active and bold, but are passive and tena-
cious. My love has no flood and no ebb, but is
always there under my silence, under displeasure,
under cold, arid, and even weak behavior.
bas
eI:
herk
7 sati
a inc
113 73
I think not of mean ages, but of Chaldæan,
Egyptian, or Teutonic ages, when man was not
featherbrained, or French, or servile, but, if he
stooped, he stooped under Ideas: times when
the earth spoke and the heavens glowed, when
the actions of men indicated vast conceptions,
and men wrote histories of the world in prison,
and builded like Himmaleh and the Alleghany
chains. I think that only is real which men love
and rejoice in.'...
ence
I asked
the i
e. .
Men do not to-day believe in one who ascribes
to man the attributes of the soul: even they who
i Most of what follows is in the « Lecture on the Times”
(Nature, Addresses, etc., p. 264).


566
(AGE 38
JOURNAL
speak that speech will scarcely stick to it, and
if a man assert that great mystery, every little
scribbler in the newspaper shall make great eyes,
and point at his own little brain, and say, He
is mad; and it may and does happen that the man
who spoke it shall flee before the word of this
newspaper written by some shallow boy in the
dark, who wrote he knew not what, dipping his
pen in mire and darkness. And yet night and
morning, earth and heaven, and the soul of man
are not to be so easily disposed of. It is true
that there is another side to man. The other
side, of fugitiveness, of frailty, that man is moth,
or bubble, or gossamer, they readily hear and
say: but that man is necessary and eternal they
unwillingly hear. A man must reach the whole
extent from Heaven to Earth. But it is possible
that a man may come to subsist in some other
way than that which the prudent think of. Hate-
ful it is that transcendent men should only come
to us in obscure and lurid forms, and not like
sunshine and blue sky. Yet when they come,
they will not be reported: they will affect men in
a rapturous and extraordinary way, and the last
thing they will think of will be to take notes.
The Age once more should appear capacious,
undefinable, far retreating, still renewing, as the
en


1841) VARIETY. YEARNINGS 567
depths of the horizon do when seen from the
hills.
You have many coats in your wardrobe, for you
are rich. You need many for your conversation;
and your action I am heartily tired of, — old,
musty, and stale. But Godfrey, who has but one
coat to his back, has as many to his thought as
Nature has days or plants or transformations.
July 6.
Ah, ye old ghosts! Ye builders of dungeons
in the air ! Why do I ever allow you to encroach
on me a moment; a moment, to win me to your
hapless company? In every week there is some
hour when I read my commission in every cipher
of Nature, and know that I was made for another
office, a professor of the Joyous Science, a de-
tector and delineator of occult harmonies and
unpublished beauties, a herald of civility, nobility,
learning, and wisdom; an affirmer of the One
Law, yet as one who should affirm it in music
or dancing. A priest of the Soul, yet one who
would better love to celebrate it through the
beauty of health and harmonious power.
My trees teach me the value of our circum-
stance or limitation. I have a load of manure,


568
[AGE 38
· JOURNAL
and it is mine to say whether I shall turn it into
strawberries, or peaches, or carrots. I have a tree
which produces these golden delicious cones
called Bartlett pears, and I have a plant of strong
common-sense called a Potato. The pear tree
is certainly a fine genius, but with all that won-
derful constructive power it has, of turning air
and dust, yea, the very dung to Hesperian fruit,
it will very easily languish and bear nothing, if I
starve it, give it no southern exposure, and no
protecting neighborhood of other trees. How
differs it with the tree-planter? He too may have
a rare constructive power to make poems, or
characters, or nations, perchance, but though his
power be new and unique, if he be starved of
his needful influences, if he have no love, nobook,
no critic, no external call, no need or market for
that faculty of his, then he may sleep through
dwarfish years and die at last without fruit.
Colombe prefers to take work of Edmund
Hosmer by the job, “ for the days are damn
long.”
1 A French-Canadian laborer. Edmund Hosmer was a
neighbor and friend of Mr. Emerson's, a farmer of the old-
fashioned thrifty type. His virtues are told by Mr. Emerson in
“ Agriculture in Massachusetts," first printed in the Dial, now
included in the Works (Natural History of Intellect, p. 358).


1841) A TEXT. FACING THE SOUL 569
Sunday.
If I were a preacher, I should carry straight
to church the remark Lidian made to-day, that
“she had been more troubled by piety in her help
than with any other fault. The girls that are not
pious, she finds kind and sensible, but the church
members are scorpions, too religious to do their
duties, and full of wrath and horror at her if
she does them.”
re
Every man has had one or two moments of
extraordinary experience, has met his soul, has
thought of something which he never afterwards
forgot, and which revised all his speech, and
moulded all his forms of thought.
I resent this intrusion of alterity. That which
is done, and that which does, is somehow, I know,
part of me. The Unconscious works with the
Conscious, — tells somewhat which I consciously
learn to have been told. What I am has been
conveyed secretly from me to another whilst I
was vainly endeavoring to tell him it. He has
heard from me what I never spoke.
If I should or could record the true experi-
ence of my late years, I should have to say that
I skulk and play a mean, shiftless, subaltern part


570
JOURNAL
(AGE 38
much the largest part of the time. Things are
to be done which I have no skill to do, or are
to be said which others can say better, and I lie
by, or occupy my hands with something which
is only an apology for idleness, until my hour
comes again."
But woe to him who is always successful, who
still speaks the best word, and does the hand-
iest thing, for that man has no heavenly mo-
ment.
I find an analogy also in the Asiatic sentences
to this fact of life. The Oriental genius has no
dramatic or epic turn, but ethical, contempla-
tive, delights in Zoroastrian oracles, in Vedas,
and Menu and Confucius. These all embracing
apophthegms are like these profound moments
of the heavenly life.”
Lidian says that the only sin which people
never forgive in each other is a difference of
opinion.
1 The rest of the passage, in an impersonal form, is found in
“ The Transcendentalist” (Nature, Addresses, etc., pp. 353,
354).
2 The Dial was printing, under the title “ Ethnical Scrip-
tures," sentences from the above sources.


571
1841)
CARLYLE
Carlyle with his inimitable ways of saying the
thing is next best to the inventor of the thing.
“I King Saib built this pyramid. I, when I had
built it, covered it with satin. Let him that com-
eth after me and says he is equal to me cover it
with mats.”
END OF VOLUME V


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