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04 - Spiritual Laws - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Spiritual laws, the living heaven, thy prayers, respect, house at once
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and architect quarrying bands, rejected ours, builds, therewith eternal towers, soul
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and self commanded works, fears not undermining days, grows by decays and by
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the famous might that lurks in reaction and recoil, makes flame to freeze and
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ice to boil, forging through swart arms of offense. The silver seat of
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innocence when the act of reflection takes place in the mind. When we look
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at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is imbosomed
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in beauty behind us. As we go, all things assume pleasing forms,
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as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even
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the tragic and terrible are comely as they take their place in the pictures of
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memory. The river bank, the weed at the water side, the old
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house. The foolish person, however, neglected in the passing, have a
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grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has
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added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul will not know either deformity
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or pain. If in the hours of clear reason we should speak the severest
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truth, we should say that we had never made a sacrifice in these hours.
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The mind seems so great that nothing can be taken from us that seems
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much. All loss, all pain is particular. The universe remains to the
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heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No man ever stated
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his griefs as lightly as he might allow for exaggeration in the most patient and
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sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the finite that
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has wrought and suffered the infinites, eyes stretched in smiling repose. The intellectual
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life may be kept clean and healthful if man will live the life of nature,
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and not important to his mind difficulties which are none of his. No
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man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him do and say what strictly
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belongs to him, And though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not
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yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our young people are diseased with the
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theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like.
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These never presented a practical difficulty to any man, never darkened across any
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man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them.
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These are the soul's mumps and measles and whooping coughs, And those who have
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not caught them cannot describe their health and describe a cure. A simple mind
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will not know these enemies. It is quite another thing that he should be
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able to give account of his faith and expound to another the theory of his
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self, union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet without this self
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knowledge there may be a sylvan's strength and integrity in that which he is a
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few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us. My will never gave
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the images in my mind the rank they now take the regular course of studies.
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The years of academical and professional education have not yield me better facts than
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some idle books under the bench at the Latin school. What we do not
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call education is more precious than that which we call, so we form no
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guess at the time of receiving a thought of its comparative value. An education
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often wastes its efforts and attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which
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is sure to select what belongs to it. In like manner, our moral
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nature is vitiated by any interference of our will. People represent virtue as a
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struggle and take to themselves great airs upon their attainments. And the question is
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everywhere vexed when a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not better
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who strives with temptation. But there is no merit in the matter. Either
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God is there or he is not there. We love characters in proportion as
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they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or knows about his
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virtues, the better we like him. Timalayan's victories are the best victories which
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ran and flowed like Homer's verses. Plutarch said, when we see a soul
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whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must
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thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on
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the angel and say cramp is a better man with his grunting resistance to all
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his native devils. Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in
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our practical life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe to it.
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We impute deep laid, far sided plans to seize her and Napoleon,
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but the best of their power was in nature, not in them. Men
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of an extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung not unto
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us, not unto us, according to the faith of their times. They
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have built altars to fortune, or to destiny, or to Saint Julian.
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Their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in
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them an unobstructed channel. And the wonders of which they were the visible conductors
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seemed to the eye their deed did the wires generate the galvanism. It is
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even true that there was less in them on which they could reflect than in
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another. As the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow,
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that which externally seemed will and immovableness was willingness and self annihilation. Could Shakespeare
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give a theory of Shakespeare? Could ever, a man of prodigious mathematical genius,
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convey to others any insight into his methods. If he could communicate that
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secret, it would instantly lose its exaggerated value, blending with the daylight and
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the vital energy the power to stand and to go. The lesson is forcibly
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taught by these observations that our life might be much easier and simpler than we
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make it, that the world might be a happier place than it is,
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that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the
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ringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth. That we miscreate our
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own evils, we interfere with the optimism of nature. For whenever we get
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this vantage ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the present,
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we are able to discern that we are begirt with laws which execute themselves.
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The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not have
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us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning,
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much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of
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the caucus or the bank, or the abolition convention, or the Temperance meeting,
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or the Transcendental Club into the fields and woods, she says to us,
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so hot, my little sir, we are full of mechanical actions.
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We must needs intermeddle and have things in our own way until the sacrifices and
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virtues of society are odious. Love should make joy, but our benevolence is
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unhappy. Our Sunday schools and churches and pauper societies are yokes to the neck.
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We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at
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the same ends at which these ease aim, but do not arrive. Why
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should all virtue work in one and the same way. Why should all give
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dollars? It is very inconvenient to us, country folk, and we do
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not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars. Merchants
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have let them give them, Farmers will give corn, poets will sing,
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women will sew, laborers will lend a hand, the children will bring flowers.
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And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday school over the whole Christendom?
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It is natural and beautiful. The childhood should inquire, and maturity should
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teach. But it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked.
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Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew and force
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the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will. If we
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look wider, things are all alike. Laws and letters and creeds and modes
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of living seem a travesty of our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery which resembles
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the endless aqueducts which the Romans built over Hill and Dale, and which are
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superseded by the discovery of the law that water rises to the level of its
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source. It is a Chinese wall which any nimble tartar can leap over.
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It is a standing army, not so good as a peace. It is
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a graduated, titled, richly appointed empire, quite superfluous when town meetings are
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found to answer just as well. Let us draw a lesson from nature,
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which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.
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When the fruit is dispatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the
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waters is mere falling. The walking of man in all animals is a falling
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forward. All our manual labor and works of strength as prying, splitting,
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digging, rowing, and so forth, are done by dint of continually falling,
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and the globe earth, moon, comet, sun, star fall forever
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and ever. The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of
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a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out, and thoroughly knows
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how knowledge is acquired and character formed is a pedant. The simplicity of nature
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is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last
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analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a man's wisdom by his
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hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.
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The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations
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with our fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and schools,
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for erudition and piety, and we are all the time Jejune babes. One
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sees very well how pyrrhism grew up. Every man sees that he is that
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middle point whereof everything may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is
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old, he is young, he is very wise, He is altogether ignorant.
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He hears and feels what you say of the seraphim and of the tin
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peddler. There is no permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics.
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We side with the hero, as we read or paint against the coward
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and the robber. But we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and
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shall be again, not in the low circumstance, but in comparison with the
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grandeurs. Possible to the soul. A little consideration of what takes place around
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us every day would show us that a higher low than that of our will
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regulates events, that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless. That only in
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our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong. And by contending ourselves
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with obedience we become divine belief and love. A believing love will relieve us
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of a vast load of care. Oh, my brothers, God exists.
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There is a soul at the center of nature and over the will of every
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man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so
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infused its strong enchantment into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice,
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and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our
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sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes
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to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each
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of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why
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need you choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes of action
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and of entertainment. Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the
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need of balance and wilful election. For you, there is a reality,
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a fit place, and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of a
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stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are
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without effort, impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.
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Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world,
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the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not
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be mar plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters,
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arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now,
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and the heaven, predicted from the beginning of the world, and still
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predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself as do now the
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rose and the air and the sun. I say, do not choose.
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But that is a figure of speech by which I would distinguish what is commonly
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called choice among men, and which is a partial act, the choice of
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the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a whole
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act of the man. But that which I call right or goodness is the
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choice of my constitution. And that which I call heaven and inwardly aspire after
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is the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution, And the action which I,
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in all my years tend to do is the work for my faculties.
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We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft
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or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they
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are the custom of his trade. What business has he with? An evil
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trade? Has he not a calling? In his character? Each man has
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his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in
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which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither
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to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river. He runs
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against obstructions on every side, but one on that side, all obstruction is
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taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.
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This talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in
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which the general's soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which
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is easy to him and good when it is done, but which no other
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man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults
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his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of
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any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. The height of
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the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every man has this
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call of the power to do something unique, and no man has any other
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call. The pretends that he has another call, a summons by name and
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personal election and outward signs that make him extraordinary and not in the role of
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common men, is fanaticism and betrays obtuseness. To perceive that there is one
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mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein. By doing
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his work, he makes the need felt which he can supply, and creates
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the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work, he
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unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it is not
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abandonment somewhere. Not only every orator, but every man should let out all
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the length of all the reins, should find or make a frank and hearty
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expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common experience is that
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the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that
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work or trade he falls into and tends it as a dog turns a spit.
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Then he is a part of the machine he moves. The man is
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lost until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and
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proportion. He does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that
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an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to their
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eyes. If the labor is mean, let him, by his thinking and
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character, make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his
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apprehension is worth doing that, let him communicate, or men will never know
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and honor him. Aright foolish. Whenever you take the meanness and formality of
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that thing, you do instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle of your
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character and aims. We like only such actions as have already long had the
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praise of men, and do not perceive that anything man can do may be
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divinely done. We think greatness entailed or organized in some places, or duties
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in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that pagan can extract rapture
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from a catgut an eulenstein from a jew's harp, and a nimble fingered lad
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out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and landseer out of swine and
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the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden.
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What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry
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is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned
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as any in our estimates. Let us take a lesson from kings the parts
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of hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a
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thousand other things royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will
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to make habitually a new estimate. That is elevation. What a man does
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that he has, What has he to do with hope or fear? In
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himself? Is his might. Let him regard are no good as solid,
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but that which is in his nature, and which must grow out of him
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as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like
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summer leaves. Let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of
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his infinite productiveness. He may have his own. A man's genius the quality
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that differences him from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences,
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the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit
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determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method,
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a progressive arrangement, a selecting principle, gathering his like to him. Wherever
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he goes, he takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and
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circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out
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from the shore on rivers to catch driftwood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters
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of steel. These facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory
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without his being able to say why, remain because they have a relation to
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him, not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of
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value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would
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vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds. What
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attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who
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knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons as worthy go by it,
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to whom I give no regard. It is enough that these particulars speak to
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me. A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners face,
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a few incidents have an emphasis in your memory. Out of all the proportion
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to their apparent significance. If you measure them by the ordinary standards they relate
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to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them
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and cast about for illustratetionation and facts more usual in literature. What your heart
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thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right over all things that
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are agreeable to his nature and genius. The man has the highest right everywhere
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he may take what belongs to his spiritual estate. Nor can he take anything
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else, though all doors are open, nor can all the force of men
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hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to attempt to keep a
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secret from one who has a right to know it. It will tell itself
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that mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion over us.
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To the thoughts of that state of mind. He has a right all the
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secrets of that state of mind he can compel. This is a law which
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statesmen use in practice. All the terrors of the French Republic, which held
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Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon said to
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be a monsieur de Narbon, one of the old noblesse with the morals,
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manners, and name of that interest, saying that it was indispensable to send
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the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which in fact constitutes
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a sort of freemasonry. Monsieur de Narbond, in less than a fortnight penetrated
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all the secrets of the Imperial Cabinet. Nothing seems so easy as to speak
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and to be understood. Yet a man may come to find that the strongest
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of defenses and of ties that he has been understood, and he who has
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received an opinion may come to find it the most inconvenient of bonds. If
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a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become
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as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes. If you pour
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water into a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to say
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I will poet only into this, or that it will find its level in
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All men feel and act the consequences of your doctrine, without being able to
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show you how they follow. Show us an arc of the curve, and
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a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. We are always reasoning from
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the scene to the unseen. Hence the perfect intelligence that subsists between wise men
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of remote ages. A man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book,
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but time and like minded men will find them. Plato had a secret
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doctrine, had he what secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon of
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Montaigne of Kantes. Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, they are published
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and not published. No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning.
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However, near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell
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his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser.
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The secrets he would not utter to a campus for an estate. God
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screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden, that we cannot
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see things that stare us in the face until the hour arrives when the mind
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is ripened. Then we behold them. And the time when we saw them
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not is like a dream. Not in nature, but in man is all
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the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is
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indebted to this gliding exalted soul for all its pride. Earth fills her lap
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with splendors not her own. The veil of Tempe, Tivoli and Rome are
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earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as good earth and water
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in a thousand places. Yet, how unaffecting people are not the better for
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the sun and moon, the horizon and the trees. As it is not
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observed that the keepers of Rome Roman galleries, where the valets of painters,
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have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are wiser men than others.
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There are graces in the demeanor of a polished and noble person which are lost
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upon the eye of a churl. These are like the stars whose lights has
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not yet reached us. He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are
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the sequel of our waking knowledge. The visions of the night bear some proportion
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to the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of
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the day. We see our evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the
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Alps. The traveler sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified to a giant, so
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that every gesture of his hand is terrific. My children, said an old
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man to his boys, scared by a figure in the dark entry. My
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children, you will never see anything worse than yourselves, as in dreams,
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So in the scarcely less fluidve of the world, every man sees himself in
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colossal without knowing that it is himself the good compared to the evil, which
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he sees is as his own good to his own evil. Every quality of
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his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of his heart
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in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees which counts five east,
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west, north or south, or an initial, medial and terminal acrostic.
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And why not he cleaves to one person and avoids another according to their
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likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking himself in his associates, and moreover
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in his trade and habits and gestures and meats and drinks, and comes at
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last to be faithfully represented by every view you take of his circumstances. He
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may read what he writes, what can we see or acquire? But what
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we are You have observed a skillful man reading Virgil, Well, that author
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is a thing a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take your book into
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your two hands and read your eyes out. You will never find what I
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find. If any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight
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he gets. He is as secure. And now the book is englished as
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if it were imprisoned in the Pelieu's tongue. It is with a good book
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as it is with good company. Introduce a base person among gentlemen. It
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is all to no purpose. He is not their fellow. Every society protects
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itself. The company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them,
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though his body is in the room. What avails it to fight with
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the eternal laws of mind, which adjust the relation of all persons to each
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other by the mathematical measure of their havings and beings. Gertrude is enamored of
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Guy, How high, how aristocratic, how Roman? Is mean and manners
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to live with him, where life in deed and no purchase is too great,
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and heaven and Earth are moved to that end. Well, Gertrude has
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Guy. But what now avails, how high, how aristocratic, how Roman,
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his mien and manners, If his heart and aims are in the senates,
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in the theater, and in the billion room, and she has no
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aims, no conversation that can enchant her graceful Lord, he shall have his
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own society. We can love nothing but nature. The most wonderful talents,
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the most meritorious exertions, really avail very little with us but nearness or likeness
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of nature. How beautiful is the ease of its victory. Persons approach us,
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famous for their beauty, for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for
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their charms and gifts. They dedicate their whole skill to the hour of the
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company, with very imperfect result. To be sure, it would be ungrateful
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in us not to praise them loudly. Then, when all is done,
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a person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to
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us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were
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the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if someone was gone
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instead of another having come. We are utterly relieved and refreshed. It is
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a sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly think, in our days of sin,
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that we must court friends by compliance to the customs of society, to
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its dress, its breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can
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be my friend, which I encounter on the line of my own march,
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That soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline to
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me, but native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in his own all
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my experience. The scholar forgets himself and apes the customs and costumes of the
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man of the world to deserve the smile of beauty, and follow some giddy
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girl not yet taught by religious passion to know the noble woman with all that
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is serene, oracular and beautiful in her soul. Let him be great,
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and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of
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the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of
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choosing associates by others eyes. He may set his own rate. It is
30:36
a maxim worthy of all acceptation that a man may have that allowance. He
30:41
takes take the place and attitude which belonged to you, and all men acquiesce.
30:48
The world must be just. It leaves every man with profound unconcern to
30:53
set his own rate, hero or driveller. It meddles not in the matter.
31:00
It will certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, Whether
31:03
you sneak about and deny your own name or whether you see your work produced
31:08
to the concave sphere of the heavens one with the revolution of the stars.
31:14
The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may teach by doing and not
31:19
otherwise. If he can communicate himself, he can teach, but not by
31:25
words. He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There is
31:30
no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which
31:36
you are. A transfusion takes place. He is you and you are he.
31:41
Jan is a teaching and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he
31:45
ever quite lose the benefit. But your propositions run out of one ear as
31:51
they ran in at the other. We see it advertised that mister Grand will
31:56
deliver an oration on the fourth of July, and mister hann And before the
32:00
Mechanics Association. And we do not go thither because we know that these gentlemen
32:05
will not communicate their own character and experience to the company. If we had
32:10
reason to expect such a confidence, we should go through all inconvenience and opposition.
32:15
The sick would be carried in litters. But a public oration is an
32:20
escapade, a non committal, an apology, a gag, and not a
32:24
communication, not a speech, not a man alike. Nemesis presides over all
32:31
intellectual works. We have yet to learn that the thing uttered in words is
32:37
not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or
32:42
of oath can give it evidence. The sentence must also contain its own apology
32:46
for being spoken. The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematically
32:52
measurable by its depth of thought. How much water does it draw? If
32:58
it awaken you to think, if it lifts you from your feet with the
33:00
great voice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow,
33:06
permanent over the minds of men. If the pages instruct you not, they
33:10
will die like flies in the hour. The way to speak and write what
33:15
shall not go out of fashion, is to speak and write sincerely. The
33:20
argument, which has not power to reach my own practice, I may well
33:23
doubt, will fail to reach yours. But take Sydney's maxim, look in
33:29
thy heart and write. He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.
33:35
That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come
33:38
at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject
33:44
from his ear and not from his heart, should know that he has lost
33:47
as much as he seems to have gained. And when the empty book has
33:52
gathered all its praise and half the people say, what poetry, what genius,
33:58
it still needs fueled to make fire. That only profits, which is
34:02
profitable. Life alone can impart life. And though we should burst, we
34:08
can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. There is no luck in
34:14
literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not
34:19
the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears, but a court
34:23
as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated,
34:28
not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame. Only
34:34
those books come down which deserve to last. Gilt edges, Vellum and Morocco,
34:39
and presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation
34:45
beyond its intrinsic date. It must go, with all Walpole's noble and royal
34:50
authors, to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollock may endure for
34:54
a night, but Moses and Homer stand forever. There are not in the
35:00
world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato,
35:06
never enough to pay for an edition of his works. Yet to every
35:09
generation these come duly down for the sake of those few persons, as if
35:15
God brought them in his hand. No book, said Bentley, was ever
35:21
written down by anybody itself. The permanence of all books is fixed by no
35:27
effort, friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity or the intrinsic
35:31
importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. Do not trouble yourself
35:37
too much about the light on your statue, said Michelangelo to the young sculptor.
35:42
The light of the public square will test its value. In like manner,
35:47
the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from
35:51
which it proceeds. The great Man knew not that he was great. It
35:55
took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did he
36:00
did because he must. It was the most natural thing in the world,
36:05
and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. But now everything he did,
36:10
even to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, looks
36:15
large. All related, and is called an institution. These are the demonstrations,
36:21
in a few particulars of the genius of nature. They show the direction
36:23
of the stream. But the stream is blood. Every drop is alive.
36:30
Truth has not single victories. All things are its organs, not only dust
36:35
and stones, but errors and lies. The laws of disease, physicians say,
36:40
are as beautiful as the laws of health. Our philosophy is affirmative and
36:45
readily accepts the testimony of negative facts. As every shadow points to the sun,
36:52
by a divine necessity, every fact in nature is constrained to offer its
36:57
testimony. Character, evermore, publishes itself the most fugitive deed and word,
37:05
the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose expresses character. If
37:10
you act, you show character. If you sit still, if you sleep,
37:15
you shot. You think. Because you have spoken nothing when others spoke,
37:20
and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on
37:23
slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the college,
37:30
on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expected, with curiosity
37:34
as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise your silence answers very loud. You have
37:42
no oracle to utter, and your fellow men have learned that you cannot help
37:45
them. For oracles speak, doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth
37:52
her voice. Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dissimulation.
37:58
Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. Faces never lie, it
38:04
is said, no man need be deceived. Who will study the changes of
38:08
expression. When a man speaks the truth and the spirit of truth, his
38:13
eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends and speaks
38:17
falsely, the eye is muddy. And sometimes, as quint I have heard
38:22
an experienced counselor say that he never feared the effect upon a jury of a
38:28
lawyer who does not believe in his heart that his client ought to have a
38:30
verdict. If he does not believe it, his unbelief will appear to the
38:36
jury despite all his protestations, and will become their unbelief. This is that
38:42
law whereby a work of art of whatever kind, sets us in the same
38:46
state of mind wherein the artist was when he made it. That which we
38:51
do not believe we cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words never
38:55
so often. It was this conviction which Sweden bore expressed when he described a
39:00
group of persons in the spiritual world endeavoring in vain to articulate a proposition which
39:07
they did not believe. But they could not, though they twisted and folded
39:12
their lips, even to indignation. A man passes for that he is worth
39:20
very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear
39:24
of remaining unknown is not less. So if a man know that he can
39:29
do anything that he can do better than anyone else, he has a pledge
39:34
of the acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. The world is full of
39:38
judgment days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action
39:44
he attempts, he is gaged and stamped. In every troop of boys that
39:49
whoop and run in each yard and square, a newcomer is as well and
39:53
accurately weighed in the course of a few days, and stamped with his right
39:58
number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, speed,
40:01
and temper. A stranger comes from a distant school, with better dress,
40:07
with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and pretensions. An older boy
40:10
says to himself, it's of no use. We shall find him out tomorrow.
40:15
What has he done is the divine question which searches men and transpierces every
40:22
false reputation. A fop may sit in any share of the world, nor
40:27
be distinguished for his hour from Homer and Washington. But there need never be
40:31
any doubt concerning the respective ability of human beings. Pretension may sit still,
40:37
but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never
40:45
wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor
40:50
abolished slavery. As much virtue as there is so much appears, as much
40:57
goodness as there is so much reverence. It commands all the devils respect virtue.
41:02
The high, the generous, the self devoted sect will always instruct and
41:07
command mankind. Never was a sincere word utterly lost, Never a magnanimity fell
41:15
to the ground. But there is some heart to greet and accept it.
41:17
Unexpectedly. A man passes for that he is worth what he is, engraves
41:24
itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in letters
41:29
of light. Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There is confession in
41:35
the glances of our eyes, in our smiles, in salutations, and the
41:38
grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression.
41:45
Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust
41:50
him. His vice glasses, his eyes cuts lines of mean expression in his
41:54
cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast. On the
41:58
back of the head. He writes, O fool, fool, on the
42:01
forehead of a king. If you would not be known to do anything,
42:07
never do it. A man may play the fool in the drifts of a
42:12
desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be
42:15
a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken complexion,
42:22
a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the want of due knowledge.
42:25
All blab can a cook, a chiffinch, and a chiesmo be mistaken for
42:31
Zeno or Paul? Confucius exclaimed, how can a man be concealed? How
42:38
can a man be concealed? On the other hand, the hero fears not
42:44
that if he withhold the avowal of a just and brave act, it will
42:47
go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it himself, and he is pledged by
42:53
it to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in
42:59
the end of better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident. Virtue
43:05
is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of
43:08
things makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of being foreseeing and
43:15
with sublime propriety. God is described as saying, I am The lesson which
43:23
these observations convey is be and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us
43:30
take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let us
43:36
unlearn our wisdom in the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's power
43:40
and learn that truth alone makes rich and great. If you visit your friend,
43:46
why need you apologize for not having visited him and waste his time and
43:52
deface your own act. Visit him now, let him feel that the highest
43:57
love has come to see him in thee it's lower? Or why need you
44:01
torment yourself and friend by secret self reproaches that you have not assisted him or
44:07
complimented him with gifts and salutations. Heretofore be a gift and a benediction shine
44:14
with real lights, and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common men
44:19
are apologies for men. They bow their head, excuse themselves with products reasons,
44:24
and accumulate appearances because the substance is not. We are full of these
44:30
superstitions of sense, the worship of magnitude. We call the poet inactive,
44:36
because he is not a president, a merchant, or reporter. We adore
44:40
our institution and do not see that it is founded on a thought which we
44:45
have. But real action is in silent moments. The epics of our life
44:51
are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage,
44:54
our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent
44:58
thought, by the wayside as we walk, a thought which revises our entire
45:02
manner of life, and says, thust hast thou done? But it were
45:07
better thus, and all our after years like menials serve and wait on this,
45:14
and according to their ability, execute its will. This revisal or correction
45:20
is a constant force which, as a tendency, reaches through our lifetime.
45:25
The object of the man, the aim of these moments, is to make
45:30
daylight shine through him. To suffer the law to traverse his whole being without
45:35
obstruction, so that on what pointsoever of his doing, your eye falls,
45:39
it shall report truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his
45:44
house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his votes,
45:49
his opposition. Now he is not homogenious, but heterogeneous. And the ray
45:54
does not traverse. There are no thorough lights, but the eye of the
46:00
beholder is puzzled, detecting many unlike tendencies, and a life not yet at
46:05
one. Why should we make it a point, with our false modesty,
46:09
to disparage that man we are, and that form of being assigned to us
46:15
a good man is contented. I love and honor Epiminundas, but I do
46:20
not wish to be Epiminundas. I hold it more just to love the world
46:24
of this hour than the world of his hour. Nor can you, if
46:29
I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by saying he acted,
46:35
and thou sittest still. I see action to be good when the need is,
46:39
and sitting still to be also good. Epaminundas, if he was the
46:44
man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace,
46:49
if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large and affords space for all
46:54
modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busy? Bodies and superserviceable
47:00
action and inaction are alike to the true. One piece of a tree is
47:06
cut by a weather cock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge.
47:09
The virtue of the wood is apparent in both. I desire not to disgrace
47:15
the soul. The fact that I am here certainly shows me that the soul
47:21
had need of an organ. Here. Shall I not assume the post?
47:24
Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies and vain modesty,
47:30
And imagine my being here impertinent, less permanent than Epaminondas or Homer being there,
47:37
that the soul did not know its own needs. Besides, without any
47:43
reasoning on the matter, I have no discontent. The good soul nourishes me
47:47
and unlocks new magazines of power and enjoyment to me every day. I will
47:53
not meanly decline the immensity of good, because I have heard that it has
47:58
come to others in another shape. Besides, why should we be cowed by
48:04
the name of action? Tis a trick of the senses, No more we
48:07
know that the ancestor of every action is a thought. The poor mind does
48:13
not seem to itself to be anything unless it have an outside badge, some
48:17
Gentoo diet or Quaker coat, or Calvinist prayer meeting, or philanthropic society,
48:23
or a great donation or a high office, or anyhow some wild contrasting action
48:30
to testify that it is something. The rich mind lies in the sun and
48:35
sleeps, and is nature. To think is to act. Let us,
48:39
if we must have great actions, make our own soul. All action is
48:45
of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial
48:51
air until it eclipses the Sun and moon. Let us seek one piece by
48:55
fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding into the
49:01
scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history before I have justified myself to my
49:07
benefactors. How dare I read Washington's campaigns when I have not answered the letters
49:13
of my own correspondence? Is not that a just objection to much of our
49:17
reading. It is the pusillanimous desertion of our work. To gaze after our
49:22
neighbors. It is peeping Byron says of Jack Bunting, he knew not what
49:29
to say, and so he swore, I may say it of our preposterous
49:35
use of books. He knew not what to do, and so he read.
49:40
I can think of nothing to fill my time with, and I find
49:44
the life of Brandt. It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to Brandt,
49:50
or to General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time should be
49:53
as good as their time, my facts, my net of relations, as
49:58
good as theirs, or either of theirs. Rather, let me do my
50:01
work so well that other idlers, if they choose, may compare my texture
50:07
with the texture of these, and find it identical with the best. This
50:13
overestimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, this underestimate of our own,
50:19
comes from a neglect of the fact of an identical nature. Bonaparte knew but
50:24
one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way, the good soldier,
50:29
the good astronomer, the good poets, the good player. The poet
50:34
uses the names of Caesar of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius. The
50:38
painter uses the conventional story of the Virgin Mary, of Paul of Peter.
50:44
It does not therefore defer to the nature of these accidental men, of these
50:49
stock heroes. If the poet write a true drama, then he is Caesar,
50:53
and not the player of Caesar. Then the self same strain of thoughts,
51:00
ocean as pure, wit, as subtle, motions, as swift,
51:04
mounting, extravagant, and the heart as great, self sufficing, dauntless,
51:08
which, on the waves of its love and hope can uplift all that is
51:12
reckoned, solid and precious in the world, palaces, gardens, money,
51:16
navies, kingdoms, making its own incomparable worth by the slight it casts on
51:22
these gods of men, these are all His, and by the power of
51:28
these he rouses the nations. Let a man believe in God and not in
51:34
names and places and persons. Let the great Soul, incarnated in some woman's
51:39
form, poor and sad and single in some dolly or joan, go out
51:45
of service and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent day beams cannot
51:51
be muffled or hid, But to sweep and scour will instantly appear supreme in
51:55
beautiful actions the top and radiance of human life, and all people will get
52:00
mops and brooms, until lo, suddenly the great Soul has enshrined itself in
52:08
some other form, and done some other deed, and that is now the
52:13
flower and head of all living nature. We are the photometers, We the
52:19
irritable gold leaf and tinfoil that measure the accumulations of the subtle element. We
52:24
know the authentic effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises,
52:32
and of spiritual laws.