The first thing we have to say respecting what are called _newviews_ here in New England, at the present time, is, that they arenot new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of thesenew times. The light is always identical in its composition, but itfalls on a great variety of objects, and by so falling is firstrevealed to us, not in its own form, for it is formless, but intheirs; in like manner, thought only appears in the objects itclassifies. What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, isIdealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind haveever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the firstclass founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the firstclass beginning to think from the data of the senses, the secondclass perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the sensesgive us representations of things, but what are the thingsthemselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, onhistory, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants of man;the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, onmiracle, on individual culture. These two modes of thinking are bothnatural, but the idealist contends that his way of thinking is inhigher nature. He concedes all that the other affirms, admits theimpressions of sense, admits their coherency, their use and beauty,and then asks the materialist for his grounds of assurance thatthings are as his senses represent them. But I, he says, affirmfacts not affected by the illusions of sense, facts which are of thesame nature as the faculty which reports them, and not liable todoubt; facts which in their first appearance to us assume a nativesuperiority to material facts, degrading these into a language bywhich the first are to be spoken; facts which it only needs aretirement from the senses to discern. Every materialist will be anidealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.
The idealist, in speaking of events, sees them as spirits. Hedoes not deny the sensuous fact: by no means; but he will not seethat alone. He does not deny the presence of this table, this chair,and the walls of this room, but he looks at these things as thereverse side of the tapestry, as the _other end_, each being a sequelor completion of a spiritual fact which nearly concerns him. Thismanner of looking at things, transfers every object in nature from anindependent and anomalous position without there, into theconsciousness. Even the materialist Condillac, perhaps the mostlogical expounder of materialism, was constrained to say, "Though weshould soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss,we never go out of ourselves; it is always our own thought that weperceive." What more could an idealist say?
The materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, mocks atfine-spun theories, at star-gazers and dreamers, and believes thathis life is solid, that he at least takes nothing for granted, butknows where he stands, and what he does. Yet how easy it is to showhim, that he also is a phantom walking and working amid phantoms, andthat he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily questions,to find his solid universe growing dim and impalpable before hissense. The sturdy capitalist, no matter how deep and square onblocks of Quincy granite he lays the foundations of his banking-houseor Exchange, must set it, at last, not on a cube corresponding to theangles of his structure, but on a mass of unknown materials andsolidity, red-hot or white-hot, perhaps at the core, which rounds offto an almost perfect sphericity, and lies floating in soft air, andgoes spinning away, dragging bank and banker with it at a rate ofthousands of miles the hour, he knows not whither, -- a bit ofbullet, now glimmering, now darkling through a small cubic space onthe edge of an unimaginable pit of emptiness. And this wild balloon,in which his whole venture is embarked, is a just symbol of his wholestate and faculty. One thing, at least, he says is certain, and doesnot give me the headache, that figures do not lie; the multiplicationtable has been hitherto found unimpeachable truth; and, moreover, ifI put a gold eagle in my safe, I find it again to-morrow; -- but forthese thoughts, I know not whence they are. They change and passaway. But ask him why he believes that an uniform experience willcontinue uniform, or on what grounds he founds his faith in hisfigures, and he will perceive that his mental fabric is built up onjust as strange and quaking foundations as his proud edifice ofstone.
In the order of thought, the materialist takes his departurefrom the external world, and esteems a man as one product of that.The idealist takes his departure from his consciousness, and reckonsthe world an appearance. The materialist respects sensible masses,Society, Government, social art, and luxury, every establishment,every mass, whether majority of numbers, or extent of space, oramount of objects, every social action. The idealist has anothermeasure, which is metaphysical, namely, the _rank_ which thingsthemselves take in his consciousness; not at all, the size orappearance. Mind is the only reality, of which men and all othernatures are better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, history,are only subjective phenomena. Although in his action overpowered bythe laws of action, and so, warmly cooperating with men, evenpreferring them to himself, yet when he speaks scientifically, orafter the order of thought, he is constrained to degrade persons intorepresentatives of truths. He does not respect labor, or theproducts of labor, namely, property, otherwise than as a manifoldsymbol, illustrating with wonderful fidelity of details the laws ofbeing; he does not respect government, except as far as it reiteratesthe law of his mind; nor the church; nor charities; nor arts, forthemselves; but hears, as at a vast distance, what they say, as ifhis consciousness would speak to him through a pantomimic scene. Histhought, -- that is the Universe. His experience inclines him tobehold the procession of facts you call the world, as flowingperpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself,centre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard allthings as having a subjective or relative existence, relative to thataforesaid Unknown Centre of him.
From this transfer of the world into the consciousness, thisbeholding of all things in the mind, follow easily his whole ethics.It is simpler to be self-dependent. The height, the deity of man is,to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society isgood when it does not violate me; but best when it is likest tosolitude. Everything real is self-existent. Everything divineshares the self-existence of Deity. All that you call the world isthe shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation ofthe powers of thought, of those that are dependent and of those thatare independent of your will. Do not cumber yourself with fruitlesspains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, andall things will go well. You think me the child of my circumstances:I make my circumstance. Let any thought or motive of mine bedifferent from that they are, the difference will transform mycondition and economy. I -- this thought which is called I, -- isthe mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. The mouldis invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould. You callit the power of circumstance, but it is the power of me. Am I inharmony with myself? my position will seem to you just andcommanding. Am I vicious and insane? my fortunes will seem to youobscure and descending. As I am, so shall I associate, and, so shallI act; Caesar's history will paint out Caesar. Jesus acted so,because he thought so. I do not wish to overlook or to gainsay anyreality; I say, I make my circumstance: but if you ask me, Whence amI? I feel like other men my relation to that Fact which cannot bespoken, or defined, nor even thought, but which exists, and willexist.
The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritualdoctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of thehuman mind to new influx of light and power; he believes ininspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principleshould be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possibleapplications to the state of man, without the admission of anythingunspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus,the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, andnever, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm otherrules and measures on the spirit than its own.
In action, he easily incurs the charge of antinomianism by hisavowal that he, who has the Lawgiver, may with safety not onlyneglect, but even contravene every written commandment. In the playof Othello, the expiring Desdemona absolves her husband of themurder, to her attendant Emilia. Afterwards, when Emilia charges himwith the crime, Othello exclaims,
"You heard her say herself it was not I."
Emilia replies,
"The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil."
Of this fine incident, Jacobi, the Transcendental moralist,makes use, with other parallel instances, in his reply to Fichte.Jacobi, refusing all measure of right and wrong except thedeterminations of the private spirit, remarks that there is no crimebut has sometimes been a virtue. "I," he says, "am that atheist,that godless person who, in opposition to an imaginary doctrine ofcalculation, would lie as the dying Desdemona lied; would lie anddeceive, as Pylades when he personated Orestes; would assassinatelike Timoleon; would perjure myself like Epaminondas, and John deWitt; I would resolve on suicide like Cato; I would commit sacrilegewith David; yea, and pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, for no otherreason than that I was fainting for lack of food. For, I haveassurance in myself, that, in pardoning these faults according to theletter, man exerts the sovereign right which the majesty of his beingconfers on him; he sets the seal of his divine nature to the grace heaccords."
In like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in humanthought or virtue, any reliance on the vast, the unknown; anypresentiment; any extravagance of faith, the spiritualist adopts itas most in nature. The oriental mind has always tended to thislargeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. The Buddhist who thanksno man, who says, "do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in hisconviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape itsreward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he hasdone more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.
You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as aTranscendental _party_; that there is no pure Transcendentalist; thatwe know of none but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; thatall who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side indoctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had manyharbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, historyhas afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leanedentirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting tohis sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working foruniversal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed,sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by hisown hands. Only in the instinct of the lower animals, we find thesuggestion of the methods of it, and something higher than ourunderstanding. The squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey,without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for withoutselfishness or disgrace.
Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is the Saturnalia orexcess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in hisintegrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders thesatisfaction of his wish. Nature is transcendental, existsprimarily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet takes no thoughtfor the morrow. Man owns the dignity of the life which throbs aroundhim in chemistry, and tree, and animal, and in the involuntaryfunctions of his own body; yet he is balked when he tries to flinghimself into this enchanted circle, where all is done withoutdegradation. Yet genius and virtue predict in man the same absenceof private ends, and of condescension to circumstances, united withevery trait and talent of beauty and power.
This way of thinking, falling on Roman times, made Stoicphilosophers; falling on despotic times, made patriot Catos andBrutuses; falling on superstitious times, made prophets and apostles;on popish times, made protestants and ascetic monks, preachers ofFaith against the preachers of Works; on prelatical times, madePuritans and Quakers; and falling on Unitarian and commercial times,makes the peculiar shades of Idealism which we know.
It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism ofthe present day acquired the name of Transcendental, from the use ofthat term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to theskeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothingin the intellect which was not previously in the experience of thesenses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas, orimperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through whichexperience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the minditself; and he denominated them _Transcendental_ forms. Theextraordinary profoundness and precision of that man's thinking havegiven vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, to thatextent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought, ispopularly called at the present day _Transcendental_.
Although, as we have said, there is no pure Transcendentalist,yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them, atleast in our creed, all authority over our experience, has deeplycolored the conversation and poetry of the present day; and thehistory of genius and of religion in these times, though impure, andas yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, will be the historyof this tendency.
It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsestobserver, that many intelligent and religious persons withdrawthemselves from the common labors and competitions of the market andthe caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and criticalway of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justifytheir separation. They hold themselves aloof: they feel thedisproportion between their faculties and the work offered them, andthey prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to thedegradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city canpropose to them. They are striking work, and crying out for somewhatworthy to do! What they do, is done only because they areoverpowered by the humanities that speak on all sides; and theyconsent to such labor as is open to them, though to their lofty dreamthe writing of Iliads or Hamlets, or the building of cities orempires seems drudgery.
Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, andthese must. The question, which a wise man and a student of modernhistory will ask, is, what that kind is? And truly, as inecclesiastical history we take so much pains to know what theGnostics, what the Essenes, what the Manichees, and what theReformers believed, it would not misbecome us to inquire nearer home,what these companions and contemporaries of ours think and do, atleast so far as these thoughts and actions appear to be notaccidental and personal, but common to many, and the inevitableflower of the Tree of Time. Our American literature and spiritualhistory are, we confess, in the optative mood; but whoso knows theseseething brains, these admirable radicals, these unsocialworshippers, these talkers who talk the sun and moon away, willbelieve that this heresy cannot pass away without leaving its mark.
They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversationis lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; theyincline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house, to live inthe country rather than in the town, and to find their tasks andamusements in solitude. Society, to be sure, does not like this verywell; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; hedeclareth all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil,nay, insulting; Society will retaliate. Meantime, this retirementdoes not proceed from any whim on the part of these separators; butif any one will take pains to talk with them, he will find that thispart is chosen both from temperament and from principle; with someunwillingness, too, and as a choice of the less of two evils; forthese persons are not by nature melancholy, sour, and unsocial, --they are not stockish or brute, -- but joyous; susceptible,affectionate; they have even more than others a great wish to beloved. Like the young Mozart, they are rather ready to cry ten timesa day, "But are you sure you love me?" Nay, if they tell you theirwhole thought, they will own that love seems to them the last andhighest gift of nature; that there are persons whom in their heartsthey daily thank for existing, -- persons whose faces are perhapsunknown to them, but whose fame and spirit have penetrated theirsolitude, -- and for whose sake they wish to exist. To behold thebeauty of another character, which inspires a new interest in ourown; to behold the beauty lodged in a human being, with such vivacityof apprehension, that I am instantly forced home to inquire if I amnot deformity itself: to behold in another the expression of a loveso high that it assures itself, -- assures itself also to me againstevery possible casualty except my unworthiness; -- these are degreeson the scale of human happiness, to which they have ascended; and itis a fidelity to this sentiment which has made common associationdistasteful to them. They wish a just and even fellowship, or none.They cannot gossip with you, and they do not wish, as they aresincere and religious, to gratify any mere curiosity which you mayentertain. Like fairies, they do not wish to be spoken of. Love me,they say, but do not ask who is my cousin and my uncle. If you donot need to hear my thought, because you can read it in my face andbehavior, then I will tell it you from sunrise to sunset. If youcannot divine it, you would not understand what I say. I will notmolest myself for you. I do not wish to be profaned.
And yet, it seems as if this loneliness, and not this love,would prevail in their circumstances, because of the extravagantdemand they make on human nature. That, indeed, constitutes a newfeature in their portrait, that they are the most exacting andextortionate critics. Their quarrel with every man they meet, is notwith his kind, but with his degree. There is not enough of him, --that is the only fault. They prolong their privilege of childhood inthis wise, of doing nothing, -- but making immense demands on all thegladiators in the lists of action and fame. They make us feel thestrange disappointment which overcasts every human youth. So manypromising youths, and never a finished man! The profound nature willhave a savage rudeness; the delicate one will be shallow, or thevictim of sensibility; the richly accomplished will have some capitalabsurdity; and so every piece has a crack. 'T is strange, but thismasterpiece is a result of such an extreme delicacy, that the mostunobserved flaw in the boy will neutralize the most aspiring genius,and spoil the work. Talk with a seaman of the hazards to life in hisprofession, and he will ask you, "Where are the old sailors? do younot see that all are young men?" And we, on this sea of humanthought, in like manner inquire, Where are the old idealists? whereare they who represented to the last generation that extravaganthope, which a few happy aspirants suggest to ours? In looking at theclass of counsel, and power, and wealth, and at the matronage of theland, amidst all the prudence and all the triviality, one asks, Whereare they who represented genius, virtue, the invisible and heavenlyworld, to these? Are they dead, -- taken in early ripeness to thegods, -- as ancient wisdom foretold their fate? Or did the high ideadie out of them, and leave their unperfumed body as its tomb andtablet, announcing to all that the celestial inhabitant, who oncegave them beauty, had departed? Will it be better with the newgeneration? We easily predict a fair future to each new candidatewho enters the lists, but we are frivolous and volatile, and by lowaims and ill example do what we can to defeat this hope. Then theseyouths bring us a rough but effectual aid. By their unconcealeddissatisfaction, they expose our poverty, and the insignificance ofman to man. A man is a poor limitary benefactor. He ought to be ashower of benefits -- a great influence, which should never let hisbrother go, but should refresh old merits continually with new ones;so that, though absent, he should never be out of my mind, his namenever far from my lips; but if the earth should open at my side, ormy last hour were come, his name should be the prayer I should utterto the Universe. But in our experience, man is cheap, and friendshipwants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in theirabsence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, theylet us go. These exacting children advertise us of our wants. Thereis no compliment, no smooth speech with them; they pay you only thisone compliment, of insatiable expectation; they aspire, they severelyexact, and if they only stand fast in this watch-tower, and persistin demanding unto the end, and without end, then are they terriblefriends, whereof poet and priest cannot choose but stand in awe; andwhat if they eat clouds, and drink wind, they have not been withoutservice to the race of man.
With this passion for what is great and extraordinary, itcannot be wondered at, that they are repelled by vulgarity andfrivolity in people. They say to themselves, It is better to bealone than in bad company. And it is really a wish to be met, -- thewish to find society for their hope and religion, -- which promptsthem to shun what is called society. They feel that they are neverso fit for friendship, as when they have quitted mankind, and takenthemselves to friend. A picture, a book, a favorite spot in thehills or the woods, which they can people with the fair and worthycreation of the fancy, can give them often forms so vivid, that thesefor the time shall seem real, and society the illusion.
But their solitary and fastidious manners not only withdrawthem from the conversation, but from the labors of the world; theyare not good citizens, not good members of society; unwillingly theybear their part of the public and private burdens; they do notwillingly share in the public charities, in the public religiousrites, in the enterprises of education, of missions foreign ordomestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in the temperancesociety. They do not even like to vote. The philanthropists inquirewhether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth: they had as lief hearthat their friend is dead, as that he is a Transcendentalist; forthen is he paralyzed, and can never do anything for humanity. Whatright, cries the good world, has the man of genius to retreat fromwork, and indulge himself? The popular literary creed seems to be,`I am a sublime genius; I ought not therefore to labor.' But geniusis the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius:exalt it. The good, the illuminated, sit apart from the rest,censuring their dulness and vices, as if they thought that, bysitting very grand in their chairs, the very brokers, attorneys, andcongressmen would see the error of their ways, and flock to them.But the good and wise must learn to act, and carry salvation to thecombatants and demagogues in the dusty arena below.
On the part of these children, it is replied, that life andtheir faculty seem to them gifts too rich to be squandered on suchtrifles as you propose to them. What you call your fundamentalinstitutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses,and, when nearly seen, paltry matters. Each `Cause,' as it iscalled, -- say Abolition, Temperance, say Calvinism, or Unitarianism,-- becomes speedily a little shop, where the article, let it havebeen at first never so subtle and ethereal, is now made up intoportable and convenient cakes, and retailed in small quantities tosuit purchasers. You make very free use of these words `great' and`holy,' but few things appear to them such. Few persons have anymagnificence of nature to inspire enthusiasm, and the philanthropiesand charities have a certain air of quackery. As to the generalcourse of living, and the daily employments of men, they cannot seemuch virtue in these, since they are parts of this vicious circle;and, as no great ends are answered by the men, there is nothing noblein the arts by which they are maintained. Nay, they have made theexperiment, and found that, from the liberal professions to thecoarsest manual labor, and from the courtesies of the academy and thecollege to the conventions of the cotillon-room and the morning call,there is a spirit of cowardly compromise and seeming, which intimatesa frightful skepticism, a life without love, and an activity withoutan aim.
Unless the action is necessary, unless it is adequate, I do notwish to perform it. I do not wish to do one thing but once. I donot love routine. Once possessed of the principle, it is equallyeasy to make four or forty thousand applications of it. A great manwill be content to have indicated in any the slightest manner hisperception of the reigning Idea of his time, and will leave to thosewho like it the multiplication of examples. When he has hit thewhite, the rest may shatter the target. Every thing admonishes ushow needlessly long life is. Every moment of a hero so raises andcheers us, that a twelve-month is an age. All that the brave Xanthusbrings home from his wars, is the recollection that, at the stormingof Samos, "in the heat of the battle, Pericles smiled on me, andpassed on to another detachment." It is the quality of the moment,not the number of days, of events, or of actors, that imports.
New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: ifyou want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want ofthe labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest andrust: but we do not like your work.
`Then,' says the world, `show me your own.'
`We have none.'
`What will you do, then?' cries the world.
`We will wait.'
`How long?'
`Until the Universe rises up and calls us to work.'
`But whilst you wait, you grow old and useless.'
`Be it so: I can sit in a corner and _perish_, (as you callit,) but I will not move until I have the highest command. If nocall should come for years, for centuries, then I know that the wantof the Universe is the attestation of faith by my abstinence. Yourvirtuous projects, so called, do not cheer me. I know that whichshall come will cheer me. If I cannot work, at least I need not lie.All that is clearly due to-day is not to lie. In other places, othermen have encountered sharp trials, and have behaved themselves well.The martyrs were sawn asunder, or hung alive on meat-hooks. Cannotwe screw our courage to patience and truth, and without complaint, oreven with good-humor, await our turn of action in the InfiniteCounsels?'
But, to come a little closer to the secret of these persons, wemust say, that to them it seems a very easy matter to answer theobjections of the man of the world, but not so easy to dispose of thedoubts and objections that occur to themselves. They are exercisedin their own spirit with queries, which acquaint them with alladversity, and with the trials of the bravest heroes. When I askedthem concerning their private experience, they answered somewhat inthis wise: It is not to be denied that there must be some widedifference between my faith and other faith; and mine is a certainbrief experience, which surprised me in the highway or in the market,in some place, at some time, -- whether in the body or out of thebody, God knoweth, -- and made me aware that I had played the foolwith fools all this time, but that law existed for me and for all;that to me belonged trust, a child's trust and obedience, and theworship of ideas, and I should never be fool more. Well, in thespace of an hour, probably, I was let down from this height; I was atmy old tricks, the selfish member of a selfish society. My life issuperficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall Idie, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing an Universewhich I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faithfor continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.
These two states of thought diverge every moment, and stand inwild contrast. To him who looks at his life from these moments ofillumination, it will seem that he skulks and plays a mean,shiftless, and subaltern part in the world. That is to be done whichhe has not skill to do, or to be said which others can say better,and he lies by, or occupies his hands with some plaything, until hishour comes again. Much of our reading, much of our labor, seems merewaiting: it was not that we were born for. Any other could do it aswell, or better. So little skill enters into these works, so littledo they mix with the divine life, that it really signifies littlewhat we do, whether we turn a grindstone, or ride, or run, or makefortunes, or govern the state. The worst feature of this doubleconsciousness is, that the two lives, of the understanding and of thesoul, which we lead, really show very little relation to each other,never meet and measure each other: one prevails now, all buzz anddin; and the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; and,with the progress of life, the two discover no greater disposition toreconcile themselves. Yet, what is my faith? What am I? What but athought of serenity and independence, an abode in the deep blue sky?Presently the clouds shut down again; yet we retain the belief thatthis petty web we weave will at last be overshot and reticulated withveins of the blue, and that the moments will characterize the days.Patience, then, is for us, is it not? Patience, and still patience.When we pass, as presently we shall, into some new infinitude, out ofthis Iceland of negations, it will please us to reflect that, thoughwe had few virtues or consolations, we bore with our indigence, noronce strove to repair it with hypocrisy or false heat of any kind.
But this class are not sufficiently characterized, if we omitto add that they are lovers and worshippers of Beauty. In theeternal trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, each in itsperfection including the three, they prefer to make Beauty the signand head. Something of the same taste is observable in all the moralmovements of the time, in the religious and benevolent enterprises.They have a liberal, even an aesthetic spirit. A reference to Beautyin action sounds, to be sure, a little hollow and ridiculous in theears of the old church. In politics, it has often sufficed, whenthey treated of justice, if they kept the bounds of selfishcalculation. If they granted restitution, it was prudence whichgranted it. But the justice which is now claimed for the black, andthe pauper, and the drunkard is for Beauty, -- is for a necessity tothe soul of the agent, not of the beneficiary. I say, this is thetendency, not yet the realization. Our virtue totters and trips,does not yet walk firmly. Its representatives are austere; theypreach and denounce; their rectitude is not yet a grace. They arestill liable to that slight taint of burlesque which, in our strangeworld, attaches to the zealot. A saint should be as dear as theapple of the eye. Yet we are tempted to smile, and we flee from theworking to the speculative reformer, to escape that same slightridicule. Alas for these days of derision and criticism! We callthe Beautiful the highest, because it appears to us the golden mean,escaping the dowdiness of the good, and the heartlessness of thetrue. -- They are lovers of nature also, and find an indemnity inthe inviolable order of the world for the violated order and grace ofman.
There is, no doubt, a great deal of well-founded objection tobe spoken or felt against the sayings and doings of this class, someof whose traits we have selected; no doubt, they will lay themselvesopen to criticism and to lampoons, and as ridiculous stories will beto be told of them as of any. There will be cant and pretension;there will be subtilty and moonshine. These persons are of unequalstrength, and do not all prosper. They complain that everythingaround them must be denied; and if feeble, it takes all theirstrength to deny, before they can begin to lead their own life.Grave seniors insist on their respect to this institution, and thatusage; to an obsolete history; to some vocation, or college, oretiquette, or beneficiary, or charity, or morning or evening call,which they resist, as what does not concern them. But it costs suchsleepless nights, alienations and misgivings, -- they have so manymoods about it; -- these old guardians never change _their_ minds;they have but one mood on the subject, namely, that Antony is veryperverse, -- that it is quite as much as Antony can do, to assert hisrights, abstain from what he thinks foolish, and keep his temper. Hecannot help the reaction of this injustice in his own mind. He isbraced-up and stilted; all freedom and flowing genius, all sallies ofwit and frolic nature are quite out of the question; it is well if hecan keep from lying, injustice, and suicide. This is no time forgaiety and grace. His strength and spirits are wasted in rejection.But the strong spirits overpower those around them without effort.Their thought and emotion comes in like a flood, quite withdraws themfrom all notice of these carping critics; they surrender themselveswith glad heart to the heavenly guide, and only by implication rejectthe clamorous nonsense of the hour. Grave seniors talk to the deaf,-- church and old book mumble and ritualize to an unheeding,preoccupied and advancing mind, and thus they by happiness of greatermomentum lose no time, but take the right road at first.
But all these of whom I speak are not proficients; they arenovices; they only show the road in which man should travel, when thesoul has greater health and prowess. Yet let them feel the dignityof their charge, and deserve a larger power. Their heart is the arkin which the fire is concealed, which shall burn in a broader anduniversal flame. Let them obey the Genius then most when his impulseis wildest; then most when he seems to lead to uninhabitable desartsof thought and life; for the path which the hero travels alone is thehighway of health and benefit to mankind. What is the privilege andnobility of our nature, but its persistency, through its power toattach itself to what is permanent?
Society also has its duties in reference to this class, andmust behold them with what charity it can. Possibly some benefit mayyet accrue from them to the state. In our Mechanics' Fair, theremust be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenters' planes, and bakingtroughs, but also some few finer instruments, -- raingauges,thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers,sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire keptspecially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine,detecting instinct, who betray the smallest accumulations of wit andfeeling in the bystander. Perhaps too there might be room for theexciters and monitors; collectors of the heavenly spark with power toconvey the electricity to others. Or, as the storm-tossed vessel atsea speaks the frigate or `line packet' to learn its longitude, so itmay not be without its advantage that we should now and thenencounter rare and gifted men, to compare the points of our spiritualcompass, and verify our bearings from superior chronometers.
Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, whenevery voice is raised for a new road or another statute, or asubscription of stock, for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry,for a new house or a larger business, for a political party, or thedivision of an estate, -- will you not tolerate one or two solitaryvoices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles notmarketable or perishable? Soon these improvements and mechanicalinventions will be superseded; these modes of living lost out ofmemory; these cities rotted, ruined by war, by new inventions, by newseats of trade, or the geologic changes: -- all gone, like the shellswhich sprinkle the seabeach with a white colony to-day, foreverrenewed to be forever destroyed. But the thoughts which these fewhermits strove to proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, not onlyby what they did, but by what they forbore to do, shall abide inbeauty and strength, to reorganize themselves in nature, to investthemselves anew in other, perhaps higher endowed and happier mixedclay than ours, in fuller union with the surrounding system.