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10 - Circles - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Circles, Nature centers into balls, and her proud ephemerals fast to surface and
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outside scan the profile of the sphere. Knew they what that signified a new
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genesis were here. The eye is the first circle, the horizon which it
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forms is the second, and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.
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It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. Saint Augustine
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described the nature of God as a circle, who sent her was everywhere,
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and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of
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this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced in considering the circular
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or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace that
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every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth
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that around every circle another can be drawn. That there is no end in
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nature, but every end is a beginning, that there is always another dawn
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risen on mid noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens the fact
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as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the unattainable, the flying perfect
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around which the hands of man can never meet, that once the inspirer and
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the condemner of every success may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human
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power in every department. There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is
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fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen
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by God as a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law
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dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an
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idea, which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us
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rise into another idea, they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted
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away, as if it had been statues of ice here and there, a
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solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flax and scraps of snow left
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in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that
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created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer,
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but already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the
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creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are
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built out of the ruins of an old planet. The new races fed out
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of the decomposition of the foregoing new arch destroy the old. See the investment
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of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics, fortifications by gunpowder, roads and
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nails by railways, sails by steam, steam by electricity. You admire this
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tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little
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waving hand built this huge wall. And that which builds is better than that
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which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster,
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better than the hand, and nimbler was the invisible thought which wrought through it,
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and thus ever behind the coarse effect is a fine cause, which,
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being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. A rich
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estate appears to women, a firm and lasting fact, to a merchant's one
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easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good
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tillage, good grounds seem a fixture like a gold mine or a river to
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a citizen, but to a large farmer not much more fixed than the state
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of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, But it has a
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cause, like all the rest. And when once I comprehend that, will
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these fields stretch so immovably wide. Those leaves hang so individually considerable. Permanence
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is a word of degrees. Everything is medial. Moons are no more bounds
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to spiritual power than bat balls. The key to every man is his thought,
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sturdy and defying though he look. He has a helm which he obeys,
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which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can
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only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The
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life of a man is a self evolving circle which from a ring imperceptibly small,
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rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without
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end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheal,
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will go depends on the force or truth of the individual soul, for it
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is the inert effort of each thoughts, having formed itself into a circular wave
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of circumstance, as for instance, an empire, rules of an art,
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a local usage, a religious right to heap itself on that ridge, and
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to solidify an hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and
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strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides and expands another orbit on
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the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt
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again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned.
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In its first and narrowest pulses. It already trends outward with a vast force,
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and to immense and innumerable expansions. Every ultimate fact is only the first
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of a new series. Every general law only a particular fact of some more
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general law. Presently to disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing
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wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story, how good,
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how final, How it puts a new face on all things. He
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fills the sky. Lo on the other side rises also a man, and
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draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere.
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Then already is our first speaker, not man, but only a first
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speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist,
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And so men do by themselves. The result of to day, which
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haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word,
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and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one
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example of a bolder generalization in the thought of tomorrow there is a power to
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upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures of the nations,
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and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted.
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Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a
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suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.
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Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder. The steps are actions.
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The new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and judged by that
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which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the new. It is
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only limited by the new. The new statement is always hated by the old,
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and to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.
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But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it
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are effects of one cause, and presently all its energy spent, it pales,
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And before the revelation of the new hour, fear not the new generalization.
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Does the fact look crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of
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spirit, Resist it not. It goes to refine and raise thy theory of
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matter. Just as much there are no fixtures to men if we appeal to
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consciousness. Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood, And if there
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is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul,
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I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the
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last closets, he must feel, was never opened. There is always a
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residuum, unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has
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a greater possibility. Our moods do not believe in each other. Today I
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am full of thoughts and can write what I please. I see no reason
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why I should not have the same thing thought, the same power of expression
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tomorrow. What I write, whilst I write, it seems the most natural
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thing in the world. But yesterday I saw a dreary facuity in this direction
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in which now I see so much. And a month hence I doubt not
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I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for
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this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast
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flow. I am God in nature. I am a weed by the wall.
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The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above
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his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations. We thirst for approbation,
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yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is love. Yet
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if I have a friend, I am tormented by my imperfections. The love
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of me accuses the other party. If he were high enough to slight me,
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then could I love him and rise by my affection to new heights.
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A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every
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friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better I thought, as
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I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why should I play
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with them this game of idolatry? I know and see too well, but
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not voluntarily blind the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy, rich,
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noble and great they are by the liberality of our speech. But truth is
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sad, Oh, blessed spirit, to whom I forsake, for these they
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are not thou. Every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state.
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We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure. How often
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must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we find their
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limitations. The only scene is limitation. As soon as you once come up
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with a man's limitations. It is all over with him. Has he talents?
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Has he enterprised? Has he knowledge? It boots? Not infinitely alluring
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and attractive? Was he to you yesterday a great hope, a sea to
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swim in? Now you have found his shores, found it a pond,
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and you care not if you never see it again. Each new step we
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take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant facts as expressions of one law. Aristotle
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and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will
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see that Aristotle platonizes by going one step farther back in thought. Discordant opinions
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are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle. And we
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can never go so far back as to preclude a still vision. Beware,
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when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet, then all things
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are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a
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great city, and no one knows what is safe or where it will end.
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There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned
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tomorrow. There is not any literary reputation, not the so called eternal names
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of fame that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man,
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the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and
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morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization
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is always a new influx of the Divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill
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that attends it valor consists in the power of self recovery, so that a
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man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out generaled. But put him
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where you will he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to
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his past apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it from whatever quarter,
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the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity,
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his world may at any time be superseded and decease. There are degrees
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in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet
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was once a toy. Then we see, in the heyday of youth and
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poetry, that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and
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fragments. Then its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it
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must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn that
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God is, that He is in me, and that all things are shadows
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of him. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism
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of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact that all
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nature is the rapid efflux of goodness, executing and organizing itself. Much more,
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obviously, is history and the state of the world at any one time
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directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in the minds of men. The
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things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the
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ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order
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of things. As a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture
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would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits. Conversation is a game of
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circles. In conversation we pluck up the terminy which bound the common of silence
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on every side. The parties are not to be judged by the spirit they
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partake and even express under this Pentecost. Tomorrow they will have receded from this
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high water mark. Tomorrow you shall find them stooping under the old pack saddles.
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Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls.
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When each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the expression of
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the last speaker, to oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own
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thought, then yields us to another redeemer. We seem to recover our rights
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to become men. Oh, what truths profound and executable only in ages and
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orbs are supposed in the announcement of every truth In common hours, society sits
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cold and satuesque. We all stand waiting empty, knowing possibly that we can
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be full, surrounded by mighty symbols, which are not symbols to us but
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prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the God and converts the statues into fiery
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men, and by a flash of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded
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all things. And the meaning of the very furniture of cup and saucer,
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of chair, and clock and tester is manifest. The facts which loom so
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large in the fogs of yesterday. Property, climates, breeding, personal beauty,
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and the like have strangely changed their proportions. All that we reckoned,
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settled, shakes and rattles, and literatures, cities, climates, religions leave
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their foundations and dance before our eyes. And yet here again see the swift
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circumspection. Good as is discourse, Silence is better and shames it. The
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length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer.
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If they were at perfect understanding in any parts, no words would be
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necessary thereon, If at one in all parts, no words would be sufferd.
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Literature is a point outside of our hodinal circle, though through which a
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new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford us a
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platform, whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase
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by which we may move it. We fill ourselves with ancient learning, install
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ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses only
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that we may wiselier see French, English, and American houses and modes of
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living. In like manner, we see literature best from the midst of wild
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nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion.
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The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have
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his diameter of the Earth's orbit as a base to find the parallax of any
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star. Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom
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is not in the encyclopedia or the treatise on Metaphysics, or the Body of
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Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work,
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I incline to repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force,
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in the power of change and reform. But some patriarch or ariostow,
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filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a
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brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites and arouses me
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with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I
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opened my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings to the sides of
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all the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once more
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of choosing a straight path. In theory and practice, we have the same
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need to command a view of the religion of the world. We can't never
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see Christianity from the Catechism, from the pastures, from a boat in the
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pond, from amidst the songs of wooden birds. We possibly may cleansed by
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the elemental light and wind. Steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the
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field offers us, we may chance to cast a right glance back upon biography.
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Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind. Yet was there never
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a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian Church by whom the brave
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text of Paul's was not specially prized. Then shall also the sun be subject
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unto him who put all things under him, that God may be all in
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all. Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome.
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The instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and
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gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots. With this generous word out of
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the book itself. The natural world may be conceived of as a system of
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concentric circles, And we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations which apprise
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us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed but sliding.
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These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these metals and animals which
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seem to stand there for their own sake, are means and methods only are
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words of God, and as fugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or
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chemist learn his craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective
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affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law? Whereof this is only
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a partial or approximate statement, namely that like draws to like, and that
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the goods which belong to you gravitate to you and need not be pursued with
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pains and cost. Yet is that statement approximate also and not final? Omnipresence
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is a higher fact. Not through subtle subterranean channels. Need friend and fact
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be drawn to their counterpart. But rightly considered, these things proceed from the
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eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effects are two sides of one fact.
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The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues and
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extinguishes each in the light of a better The great man will not be prudent
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in the popular sense. All his prudence will be so much deduction from his
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grandeur. But it behooves each to see when he sacrifices prudence to what God
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he devotes it, If to ease and pleasure he had better be prudent.
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Still, if it to a great trust, he can well spare his mule
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and panniers. Who has a winged chariot inside? Geoffrey draws on his boots
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to go through the woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite
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of snakes. Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In many years,
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neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to me that with
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every precaution you take against such an evil, you put yourselves into the power
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of the evil. I suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest prudence.
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Is this too sudden a rushing from the center to the verge of our orbits?
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Think how many times we shall fall back into pitiful calculations before we take
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up our rest in the great sentiment, or make the verge of today the
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new center. Besides your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. The
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poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy.
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As well as you, blessed, be nothing, and the worse things are,
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the better they are. Are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life.
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One man's justice is another's injustice. One man's beauty, another's ugliness,
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one man's wisdom another's fat, as one beholds the same objects from a higher
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point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure
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in his abhorrence of another, who is very remiss in this duty, and
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makes the creditor wait tediously. But the second man, has his own way
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of looking at things, asks himself, which debt must I pay? First?
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The debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor, the
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debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind of genius to nature.
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For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic from
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me, commerces of trivial import love, faith, truth of character, the
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aspiration of man. These are sacred. Nor can I detach one duty,
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like you from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment
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of moneys. Let me live onward. You shall find that, though slower,
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the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher
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claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would
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not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money, And are
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all claims on him to be postponed to a landlords or a banker's. There
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is no virtue which is final. All are initial. The virtues of society
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are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we
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must cast away our virtues or but we have always esteemed such into the same
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pit that has consumed our grosser vices. Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues
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too. These smaller faults half converts to the right. It is the highest
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power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions. Also, I accuse myself
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of sloth and unprofitable nest day by day. But when these waves of God
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flow into me, I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly
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compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year.
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For these moments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of
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duration, but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work
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to be done without time. And thus, o circular philosopher, I hear
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some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine pyrhanism at an equivalence and
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indifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that if we are true,
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forsooth our crimes shall be lively stones out of which we shall construct the
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temple of the True God. I am not careful to justify myself I own.
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I am gladdened by seeing the predominance of the Saccarin principle throughout vegetable nature,
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and not less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of the principle of
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good into every chink and whole, that selfishness has left open yea into selfishness
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and sin itself, so that no evil is pure, no hell itself without
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its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any when I have my own
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head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only
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an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or
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the least discredit on what I do. Not as if I pretended to settle
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anything as true or false, I unsettle all things. No facts are to
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me sacred, nana profane. I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no
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past at my back. Yet this incessant movement and progression, which all things
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partake, could never become sensible to us, but by contrast to some principle
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or fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds,
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the eternal generator abides that central life is somewhat superior to creation, superior
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to knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles forever It labors to create
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a life and thought as large and excellent as itself, but in vain,
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for that which is made instructs how to make it better. Thus there is
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no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renewed, germinate
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in spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour?
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Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease. All things
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rut into this one. We call it by many names. Fever in temperance,
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insanity, stupidity, and crime. They are all forms of old age.
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They are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia, not newness, not
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the way onward we grizzle every day. I see no need of it.
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Whilst we converse with what is above us. We do not grow old,
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but grow young infancy. Youth, receptive, aspiring with religious eyes looking upward,
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counts itself nothing and abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides.
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But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all. They have outlived
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their hope. They renounce aspiration except the actual for the necessary, and talk
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down to the young. Let them then become organs of the Holy ghost.
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Let them be lovers, Let them behold truth, and their eyes are uplifted,
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their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power. This
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old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature, every
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moment is new. The past is always swallowed and forgotten. The coming only
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is sacred. But nothing is secure but life transition, the energizing spirit.
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No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher
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love. No truth so sublime, but it may be trivial tomorrow in the
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light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled. Only as far as
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they are unsettled, is there any hope for them? Life is a series
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of surprises. We do not guess today, the mood, the pleasure,
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the power of tomorrow. When we are building up our being of lower states,
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of acts of routine and sense. We can tell somewhat, But the
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masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements of the soul he hideth,
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they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful,
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But how now it shall help me? I can have no guess, For
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so to be is the sole inlet of so to know. The new position
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of the advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet has them
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all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies of the past.
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It is itself an exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new
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moment, all my once hoarded knowledge as vacant and vain. Now, for
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the first time, seem I to know anything rightly. The simplest words we
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do not know what they mean, except when we love and aspire. The
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difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round,
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and power and courage to make a new road to new and better goals.
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Character makes an overpowering presence, a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all
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the company by making them see that much is possible and excellent. That was
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not thought of character dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the
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conqueror, we do not think much of any one battle or success. We
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see that we had exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The
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great man is not convulsible or tomentable. Events pass over him without much impression.
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People say, sometimes, see what I have overcome. See how cheerful
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I am. See how completely I have triumphs over these black events, Not
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if they still remind me of the black events. True conquest is the causing
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the calamity to fade and disappear as an early cloud of insignificant result. In
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a history so large and advancing, the one thing which we seek with insatiable
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desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to
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lose our sep paternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why,
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in shorts to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without
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enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful. It is by abandonment. The
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great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas,
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as the works of genius and religion. A man said Oliver Cramwell never rises
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so high as when he knows not whither he is going. Dreams and drunkenness,
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the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular
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genius, and hence their dangerous attraction from men. For the like reason they
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ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war to ape in
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some manner, these flames and generosities of the heart end of circles