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08 - Heroism - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · Logic Library

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Heroism. Paradise is under the shadow of swords, Mahomet, ruby wine is
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drunk by knaves, Sugar spans to fatten slaves, rose and vine leaf deck
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buffoons, thunderclouds are joves, festoons drooping oft in wreaths of dread, lightning
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knotted round his head. The hero is not fed on sweets daily his own
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heart he eats. Chambers of the great are jails and head winds right for
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royal sails. In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays of
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Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a
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noble behavior were as easily marked in the society of their age as cleries in
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our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro or Valerio enters, though he
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be a stranger, the duke or governor exc claims, this is a gentleman
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and proffers civilities without end. But all the rest are slag and refuse in
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harmony. With this delight in personal advantages, there is in their plays a
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certain heroic cast of character and dialogue, as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the
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Mad Lover, the Double Marriage, wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial,
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and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue on the slightest
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additional incident in the plot rises naturally into poetry. Among many texts, take
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the following. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens all but the invincible spirits of
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Sophocles, the Duke of Athens, and dorige in his wife. The beauty
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of the latter inflames Martius, and he seeks to say her husband, But
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Sophocles will not ask his life, although assured that a word will save him,
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and the execution of both proceeds. Valerius bid thy wife, farewell,
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Sophocles. No I will take no leave my Dorigen yonder above about Ariadne's crown.
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My spirit shall hover for thee, pray thee haste Dorigen, stay Sophocles,
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with this tie up my sight, Let not soft nature so transformed be
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and lose her gentler sex humanity to make me see my lord bleed so tis
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well. Never one object underneath the sun will I behold before my Sophocles.
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Farewell. Now teach the Romans how to die? Martius, dost know what
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is to die? Sophocles, Thou dost not, Martius, and therefore not
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what tis to live. To die is to begin to live. It is
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to end an old, stale, weary work, and to commence anewer.
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And the better tis to leave deceitful knaves for the society of gods and goodness.
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Thou thyself must part at last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs,
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and prove thy fortitude. What then twill do? But art not grieved
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nor vexed to leave thy life? Thus why should I grieve or vex for
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being sent to them? I ever loved best? Now I'll kneel, but
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with my back toward thee. Tis the last duty this trunk can do.
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The gods strike, strike Valerius, or Mortius's heart will leap out of his
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mouth. This is a man a woman. Kiss thy Lord and live with
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all the freedom you are wont o love Thou doubly hast afflicted me with virtue
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and with beauty treacherous heart. But my hand shall cast thee quick into my
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urn where thou transgress this not of piety? What ails my brother Marius?
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So Martius, Thou now hast found a way to conquer me o Star of
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Rome. What gratitude can speak fit words to follow such a deed as this,
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This admirable Duke Valerius, with his disdain of fortune and of death,
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captive himself, has captivated me. And though my arm hath taken his body
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here, his soul hath subjugated Martius's soul by Romulus, he is also,
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I think he hath no flesh and spirit cannot be jibed. Then we have
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vanquished nothing. He is free, and Martius walks now in captivity. I
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do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration
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that our press vents in the last few years which goes to the same tune.
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We have a great many flutes and flagioles, but not often the sound
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of any fife. Yet Wordsworth's Laudamia and the Ode of Dion, and some
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sonnets have a certain noble music, and Scott will sometimes draw a stroke like
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the portrait of Lord Evandale given by Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with
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his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has suffered no
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heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pictures. Earlier.
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Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In the Harley and
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Mascellanies, there is an account of the Battle of Lutsen which deserves to be
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read, and Simon Ackley's History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of individual valor
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with admiration. All the more evident on the part of the narrator that he
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seems to think that his place in Christian are Oxford requires of him some proper
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protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the literature of heroism, we shall
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quickly come to Plutarch, who is its doctor and historian. To him we
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owe the Bracidus, the Dion, the Epaminundas, the Scipio of old,
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and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the
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ancient writers. Each of his lives is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice
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of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a stoicism not of
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the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has
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given that book its immense fame. We need books of vistart cathartic virtue more
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than books of political science or of private economy. Life is a festival only
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to the wise seen from the nook and chimney side of prudence, it wears
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a ragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by our
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predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us. Also, the disease and deformity
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around us certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and
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often violation on violation to breed. Such compound misery. A lock jar that
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bends a man's head back to his heels, hydrophobia that makes him bark at
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his wife and babies, insanity that makes him eat grass, War, plague,
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cholera, famine indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it
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had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering.
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Unhappily, no man exists who is not in his own person become to some
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amount of stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share
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in the expiation thow. Culture therefore must not omit the of the man.
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Let him here in season, that he is borne into the state of war,
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and that the commonwealth and his own well being require that he should not
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go dancing in the weeds of peace. But warned, self collected, and
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neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in
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his hand, and with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob.
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By the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behavior towards all
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this external evil, the man within the breast assumes a warlike attitude, and
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affirms his ability to cope single handed with the infinite army of enemies. To
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this military attitude of the soul we give the name of heroism. Its rudest
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form is the contempt for safety and ease which makes the attractiveness of war.
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It is a self trust which slights the restraints of prudence in the plenitude of
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its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is
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a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will. But pleasantly,
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and as it were, merely, he advances to his own music,
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alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is
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something not philosophical in heroism. There is something not wholly in it. It
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seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with it. It
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has pride. It is the extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless, we must
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profoundly revere it. There is something in great actions which does not allow us
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to go behind them. Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always
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right. And although a different breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual activity
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would have modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero that
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thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure
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of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled man that he
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finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of
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life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his
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will is higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists. Heroism
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works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction for a time
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to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is in obedience to a
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sacred impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man can its wisdom
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appear as it does to him. For every man must be supposed to see
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a little farther on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore,
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just and wise men take umbrage at his acts until after some little time be
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passed. Then they see it to be in unison with their acts. All
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prudent men see that the action is clean and contrary to a sensual prosperity.
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For every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good, but
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it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extolled self.
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Trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul
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at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong,
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and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents.
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It speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate,
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scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned, it persists.
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It is of an undaunted boldness and of a fortitude not to be wearied out.
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Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false prudence, which
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dotes on health and wealth, is the butts and merriments of heroism. Heroism,
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like Plutinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say,
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then, to the sugar plums and cat's cradles, to the toilet compliments,
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quarrels, cards, and custard, which rack the wit of all society.
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What joys has kind nature provided for us, dear creatures. There seems
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to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master
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of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes
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the great hoax so innocently works in it, so headlong and believing, is
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born red and dyes gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health,
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laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a
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horse or a rifle, made happy with little gossip or little praise, that
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the great soul cannot use but laugh at such earnest nonsense. Indeed, these
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humble considerations make me out of love with greatness. What a disgrace is it
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to me to take note how many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely
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these and those that were the peach colored ones, Or to bear the inventory
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of thy shirts as one for superfluity and one other for use. Citizens,
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thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their
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fireside reckon narrowly. The loss of time and the unusual display the soul of
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a better quality thrusts back the unseasonable economy into the vaults of life, and
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says, I will obey the God and the sacrifice and the fire he will
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provide. Eben Hanko, the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the
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hospitality of Sogod in Bulgaria. When I was in so Good, I saw
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a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were open and
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fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and
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was told that the house had not been shut night or day for a hundred
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years. Strangers may present themselves at any hour and in whatever number. The
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Master has amply provided for the reception of the men and their animals, and
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is never happier than when they tarry for some time. Nothing of the kind
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have I seen in any other country. The magnanimous know very well that they
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who give time or money or shelter to the stranger, so it be done
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for love and not for ostentation, do as it were put God under obligation
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to them. So perfect are the compensations of the universe. In some way,
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the time they seem to lose is redeemed, and the pains they seemed
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to take remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of human love and raise
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the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But hospitality must be for service and
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not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates
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itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies.
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It gives what it hath and all it hath, but its own majesty can
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lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.
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The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no dishonor to
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the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy, not for
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its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn and denounced with
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bitterness flesh eating or wine drinking, the use of tobacco or opium, or
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tea, or silk or gold. A great man scarcely knows how he dines,
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how he dresses, but without railing or precision, his living is natural
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and poetic. John Eliot the Indian Apostle drank water and said of wine,
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it is a noble, generous liquor, and we shall be humbly thankful for
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it. But as I remember, water was made before it. Better still
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is the temperance of King David, who poured out on the ground under the
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Lord the water which three of his warriors had brought him to drink at the
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peril of their lives. It is told of Brutus that when he fell on
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his sword after the Battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides,
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Oh virtue, I have followed THEE through life, and I find THEE at
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last. But a shade, I doubt not. The hero is slandered by
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this report. The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness.
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It does not ask to dine nicely into sleep warm. The essence of greatness
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is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornaments. It does
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not need plenty, and can vary well abide its loss. But that which
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takes my fancy most in the heroic class is the good humor and hilarity they
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exhibit. It is a height to which common duty can very well attain to.
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Suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion,
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success, and life at so cheap a rate that they may not soothe their
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enemies by petitions or the show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness.
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Scipio, charged with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace
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as to wait for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in
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his hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates condemnation of
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himself to be maintained in all honor in the Britannium during his life, and
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Sir Thomas Moore's playfulness at the scaffold are of the same strain. In Beaumont
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and Fletcher's Sea Voyage, Giuletta tells the stout captain and his company, why
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slaves tis in our power to hang? Ye? Very likely tis in our
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powers then to be hanged and scorn? Ye? These replies are sound,
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and a whole sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The
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Great will not condescend to take anything seriously. All must be as gay as
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the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities or the
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eradication of old and foolish churches and nations which have cumbered the earth long thousands
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of years. Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world behind
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them and play their own game in innocent defiance of the blue laws of the
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world. And such would appear. Could we see the human race assembled in
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vision like little children follocking together, though to the eyes of mankind at large,
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they were a stately and solemn garb of works and influences. The interest
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these fine stories have for us the power of a romance over the boy who
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grasps the forbidden book under his bench at school. Our delight in the hero
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is the main fact to our preface. All these great and transcendent properties are
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ours. If we dilate in beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride.
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It is that we are already domesticating the same sediment. Let us find room
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for this great guest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will
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be to disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times, with number
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and size. Why should these words Athenian, Roman, Asia and England so
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tingle in the ear? Where the heart is there the muses there the gods
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sojourn, and not in any geography of fame Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and
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Boston Bay. You think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign
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and classic topography. But here we are, and if we tarry a little,
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we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only
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that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends,
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angels, and the Supreme Being shall not be absent from the chamber where
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thou sittest. Ipoming on us brave and affectionate. Does not seem to us
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to need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lives very
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well where he is. The Jerseys are handsome ground enough for Washington to tread,
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and London streets for the feet of Milton. A great man makes his
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climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved element of
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all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest which is inhabited by the noblest
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minds. The pictures which fill the imagination. Reading the actions of Pericles,
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Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sydney Hampton teach us how needlessly mean our life
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is. That we, by the depth of our living shall deck it with
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more than regal or national splendor, enact on principles that should interest man and
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nature. In the length of our days. We have seen or heard of
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many extraordinary young men who never ripens, or whose performance in actual life is
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not extraordinary. When we see their air and mean, when we hear them
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speak of society, of books of religion, we admire their superiority. They
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seem to throw contempt on our entire polity in social state. Theirs is the
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tone of a youthful giant who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter
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an active profession, and the forming colossus shrinks to the common size of man.
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The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the actual
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ridiculous. But the tough world had its revenge. The moment they put their
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horses of the sun to plow in its furrow, they found no example and
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no companion, and their heart fainted. What then, the lesson they gave
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in their first aspirations is yet true, and a better valor and a purer
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truth shall one day organize their belief? Or why should a woman liken herself
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to any historical women and think, because sappho or severne, or the stale
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or the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation do not satisfy the imagination
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and the serene tamis. None can certainly not she She has a new and
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unattempted problem to solve, perchance, that of the happiest nature that ever bloomed.
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Let the maiden with erect soul walk serenely on her way except the hint
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of each new experience, search in turn all the objects that solicit her eye,
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that she may learn the power and the charm of her new born being,
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which is the kindling of a new dawn in the recesses of space.
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The fair girl, who repels interference by a decided and proud choice of influences,
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so careless, a pleasing, so wilful and lofty, inspires every beholder
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with something of her own nobleness. The silent heart encourages her, Oh friend,
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never strike, sail to a fear, come into port greatly, or
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sail with God the seas not in vain. You live, for every passing
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eye is cheered and refined by the vision. The characteristic of heroism is its
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persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But
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when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly
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try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common,
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nor the common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy
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of people in those actions whose excellent is that they outrun sympathy and appeal to
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a tardy justice. If you would serve your brother because it is fit for
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you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that
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prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to your own act and congratulate yourself
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if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous
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age. It was a high council that I once heard given to a young
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person. Always do what you are afraid to do. A simple manly character
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need never make an apology, but should regard its past action with the calmness
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of phocion. When he admitted that the event of the battle was happy,
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yet did not regret his dissuasion from the battle. There is no weness or
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exposure for which we cannot find consolation in the thought this is part of my
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constitution, part of my relation, and offers to my fellow creature. Has
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nature covenanted with me that I should never appear to disadvantage, never make a
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ridiculous figure. Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our
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money. Greatness once and forever has done with opinion. We tell our charities
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not because we wish to be praised for them, not because we think they
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have great merit, but for our justification. It is a capital blunder,
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as you discover when another man recites his charities. To speak the truth,
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even with some austerity, to live with some rigor of temperance, or some
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extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which common good nature would appoint
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to those who are at ease and in plenty, in so that they feel
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a brotherhood with the great multitude of suffering men. And not only need we
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breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt,
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of solitude, of unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man to look with
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a bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize
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himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execration and the vision of
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violent death. Times of heroism are generally times of terror. But the day
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never shines in which this element may not work. The circumstances of man,
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we say, are historically somewhat better in this country, and that this hour,
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than perhaps ever before, more freedom exists for culture. He will not
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now run against an axe at the first step out of the beaten track of
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opinion. But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge.
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Human virtue demands her champions at martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.
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It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to
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the bullets of a mob for the rights of free speech and opinion, and
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died when it was better not to live. I see not any road of
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perfect peace which a man can walk. But after the counsel of his own
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bosom, let him quit too much association, let him go home much and
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establish himself in those courses he approves. The unremitting retention of simple and high
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sentiments in obscure duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with
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honor, if need be in the tumults or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages
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have happened to men may befall a man again, and very easily in a
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republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion, coarse slander,
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if fire, tar and feathers and the gibbet, the youth may freely
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bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper he can and
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inquire half fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties.
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Whenever it may please the next newspaper in a sufficient number of his neighbors to
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pronounce his opinions incendiary. It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most
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susceptible heart. To see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost
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infliction of mannice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow
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us. Let them rave Thou art quiet in thy grave, in the gloom
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of our ignorance of what shall be in the hour when we are deaf to
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the higher voices. Who does not envy those who have seen safely to an
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end their manful endeavor, Who that sees the meanness of our politics, but
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only congratulates Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud and forever safe,
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that he has laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not
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yet subjugated in him, who does not sometimes envy the good and brave,
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or no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await
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with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature. And
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yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous, has already made death
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impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps of
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absolute and inextinguishable being and of heroism.