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08 - Heroism - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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