5. Plutarch affirms that " souls are naturally en dowed with the faculty of prediction, and the chief cause that excites this faculty and virtue is a cer tain temperature of air and winds." My anchorite thought it " sad that atmospheric influences should bring to our dust the communion of the soul witli the Infinite." But I am glad that the atmosphere should be an excitant, glad to find the dull rock itself to be deluged with Deity, — to be tlieist, Chris tian, poetic. The fine influences of the morning few can explain, but all will admit. Goethe ac knowledges them in the poem in which he dislodges the nightingale from her place as Leader oi the Muses.
INSPIRATION. 255 MUSAGETES.
" Often in deep midnights I called on the sweet muses. No dawn shines, And no day will appear: But at the right hour The lamp brings me pious light, That it, instead of Aurora or Phoabus, May enliven my quiet industry. But they left me lying in sleep Dull, and not to be enlivened, And after every late morning Followed unprofitable days.
1 ' When now the Spring stirred, I said to the nightingales: ' Dear nightingales, trill Early, 0, early before my lattice, Wake me out of the deep sleep Which mightily chains the young man. But the love-filled singers Poured by night before my window Their sweet melodies, — Kept awake my dear soul, Roused tender new longings In my lately touched bosom, And so the night passed, And Aurora found me sleeping; Yea, hardly did the sun wake me. At last it has become summer, And at the first glimpse of morning The busy early fly stings me Out of my sweet slumber. Unmerciful she returns again: When often the half-awake victim 256 INSPIRATION.
Impatiently drives her off, She calls hither the unscrupulous sisters,.
And from my eyelids Sweet sleep must depart.
Vigorous, I spring from my couch, Seek the beloved Muses, Find them in the beech grove, Pleased to receive me; And I thank the annoying insect For many a golden hour.
Stand, then, for me, ye tormenting creatures, Highly praised by the poet As the true Musagetes."
The French have a proverb to the effect that not the day only, but all things have their morning, — " II riy a que Ic matin en toutcs choscs." And it is a primal rule to defend your morning, to keep all its dews on, and with fine foresight to relieve it from any jangle of affairs, even from the question, Which task? I remember a capital prudence of old Presi dent Quincy, who told me that he never went to bed at night until he had laid out the studies for the next morning. I believe that in our good days a well-ordered mind has a new thought awaiting it every morning. And hence, eminently thoughtful men, from the time of Pythagoras down, have in sisted on an hour of solitude every day to meet their own mind, and learn what oracle it has to im part. If a new view of life or mind gives us joy, so does new arrangement. I don't know but we take as much delight in finding the right place for an old observation, as in a new thought.
INSPIRATION. 257 INSPIRATION. 257 6. Solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, the October woods! I confide that my reader knows these delicious secrets, has perhaps "Slighted Minerva's learned tongue, But leaped with joy when on the wind the shell of Clio rung."
Are you poetical, impatient of trade, tired of labor and affairs? Do you want Monadnoc, Agio- cochook, — or Helvellyn, or Plinlimmon, dear to English song, in your closet? Caerleon, Provence, Ossian, and Cadwallon? Tie a couple of strings across a board and set it in your window, and you have an instrument which no artist's harp can rival. It needs no instructed ear; if you have sensibility, it admits you to sacred interiors; it has the sadness of nature, yet, at the changes, tones of triumph and festal notes ringing out all measures of loftiness. " Did you never observe," says Gray, " ' while rock ing winds are piping loud,' that pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an ^Eolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit." Perhaps you can recall a delight like it, which spoke to the eye, when you have stood by a lake in the woods, in summer, and saw where little flaws of wind whip spots or patches of still water into fleets of ripples, so sudden, so slight, so spiritual, that it was more Q 258 INSPIRATION.
Q 258 INSPIRATION.
like the rippling of the Aurora Borealis, at night, than any spectacle of day.
7. But the solitude of nature is not so essential as solitude of habit. I have found my advantage in going in summer to a country inn, in winter to a city hotel, with a task which would not prosper at home. I thus secured a more absolute seclusion; for it is almost impossible for a housekeeper, who is in the country a small farmer, to exclude interrup tions, and even necessary orders, though I bar out by system all I can, and resolutely omit, to my con stant damage, all that can be omitted. At home, the day is cut into short strips. In the hotel, I have no hours to keep, no visits to make or receive, and I command an astronomic leisure. I forget rain, wind, cold, and heat. At home, I remember in my library the wants of the farm, and have all too much sympathy. I envy the abstraction of some scholars I have known, who could sit on a curbstone in State Street, put up their back, and solve their problem. I have more womanly eyes. All the conditions must be right for my success, slight as that is. What untunes is as bad as what cripples or stuns me. Novelty, surprise, change of scene, refresh the artist, — "break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms," as llatiz said. The sea-shore, and the taste of two metals in contact, and our enlarged powers in the presence, or rather at the approach and at the departure of a friend, INSPIRATION. 259 and the mixture of lie in truth, and the experience of poetic creativeness which is not found in staying at home, nor yet in travelling, but in transitions from one to the other, which must therefore be adroitly managed to present as much transitional surface as possible, — these are the types or con ditions of this power. " A ride near the sea, a sail near the shore," said the ancient. So Montaigne travelled with his books, but did not read in them. " La Nature aime Us croisements," says Fourier.
I know there is room for whims here; but in regard to some apparent trifles there is great agree ment as to their annoyance. And the machine with which we are dealing is of such an inconceiv able delicacy that whims also must be respected. Fire must lend its aid. We not only want time, but warm time. George Sand says, "I have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy." And I remember that Tho- reau, with his robust will, yet found certain trifles disturbing the delicacy of that health which compo sition exacted, — namely, the slightest irregularity, even to the drinking too much water on the pre ceding day. Even a steel pen is a nuisance to some writers. Some of us may remember, years ago, in the English journals, the petition, signed by Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, and other writers in London, against the license of the organ- grinders, who infested the streets near their houses, to levy on them blackmail.
260 INSPIRATION.
Certain localities, as mountain-tops, the sea-side, the shores of rivers and rapid brooks, natural parks of oak and pine, where the ground is smooth and unencumbered, are excitants of the muse. Every artist knows well some favorite retirement. And yet the experience of some good artists has taught them to prefer the smallest and plainest chamber, with one chair and table, and with no outlook, to these picturesque liberties. "William Blake said, " Natural objects always did and do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me." And Sir Joshua Eeynolds had no pleasure in Eichmond; he used to say " the human face was his landscape." These indulgences are to be used with great caution. Allston rarely left his studio by day. An old friend took him, one fine afternoon, a spacious cir cuit into the country, and he painted two or three pictures as the fruits of that drive. But he made it a rule not to go to the city on two consecutive days. One was rest; more was lost time. The times of force must be well husbanded, and the wise student will remember the prudence of Sir Tristram in Morte cC Arthur, who, having received from the fairy an enchantment of six hours of growing strength every day, took care to fight in the hours when his strength increased; since from noon to night his strength abated. What prudence, again, does every artist, every scholar, need in the security of his easel or his desk! These must be INSPIRATION. 261 remote from the work of the house, and from all knowledge of the feet that come and go therein. Allston, it is said, had two or three rooms in differ ent parts of Boston, where he could not be found. For the delicate muses lose their head, if their attention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad in talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your book-shelf and your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish some commandment, it makes you odious to men, and men odious to you, and you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the lamp, and you must solve those questions though you die.
8. Conversation, which, when it is best, is a series of intoxications. Not Aristotle, not Kant or Hegel, but conversation, is the right metaphysical professor. This is the true school of philosophy, — this the college where you learn what thoughts are, what powers lurk in those fugitive gleams, and what becomes of them; how they make history. A wise man goes to this game to play upon others, and to be played upon, and at least as curious to know what can be drawn from himself as what can be drawn from them. For, in discourse with a friend, our thought, hitherto wrapped in our con sciousness, detaches itself, and allows itself to be seen as a thought, in a manner as new and enter taining to us as to our companions. For provoca- 2G2 INSPIRATION.
tion of thought, we use ourselves and use each other. Some perceptions — I tl link the best — are granted to the single soul; they come from the depth, and go to the depth, and are the permanent and controlling ones. Others it takes two to find. We must he warmed by the fire of sympathy to be brought into the right conditions and angles of vision. Conversation; for intellectual activity is contagious. We are emulous. If the tone of the companion is higher than ours, we delight in rising to it. 'T is a historic observation that a writer must find an audience up to his thought, or he will no longer care to impart it, but will sink to their level, or be silent. Homer said, "When two come together, one apprehends before the other"; but it is because one thought well that the other thinks better: and two men of good mind will excite each other's activity, each attempting still to cap the other's thought. In enlarged conversation we have suggestions that require ne\v ways of living, new books, new men, new arts and sciences. P>y sym pathy, each opens to the eloquence, and begins to see with the eyes of his mind. We were all lonely, thoughtless; and now a principle appears to all: we see new relations, many truths; every mind seizes them as they pass; each catches by the mane one of these strong coursers like horses of the prairie, and rides up and down in the world of the intellect. We live day by day under the illusion that it is the INSPIRATION. 263 fact or event that imports, whilst really it is not that which signifies, but the use we put it to, or what we think of it. We esteem nations important, until we discover that a -few individuals much more concern us; then, later, that it is not at last a few individuals, or any sacred heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, the large' equality to truth, of a single mind, — as if in the narrow walls of a human heart the whole realm of truth, the world of morals, the tribunal by which the universe is judged, found room to exist.
9. New poetry; by which I mean chiefly, old poetry that is new to the reader. I have heard from persons who had practice in rhyming, that it was sufficient to set them on writing verses, to read any original poetry. What is best in literature is the affirming, prophesying, spermatic words of men- making poets. Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me.
Words used in a new sense, and figuratively, dart a delightful lustre; and every word admits a new use, and hints ulterior meanings. We have not learned the law of the mind, — cannot control and domesticate at will the high states of contempla tion and continuous thought. " Neither by sea nor by land," said Pindar, "canst thou find the way to the Hyperboreans "; neither by idle wishing, nor by rule of three or rale of thumb. Yet I find a mitigation or solace by providing always 264 INSPIRATION.
a good book for my journeys, as Horace or Mar tial or Goethe, — some book which lifts me quite out of prosaic surroundings, and from which I draw some lasting knowledge. A Greek epigram out of the anthology, a verse of Herrick or Love lace, are in harmony both with sense and spirit.
You shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels, nor Montaigne, nor the newest French book. You may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus, Hindoo my thology, and ethics. You may read Chaucer, Shak- speare, Ben Jonson, Milton, — and Milton's prose as his verse; read Collins and Gray; read llafiz and the Trouveurs; nay, "\Velsh and British mythol ogy of Arthur, and (in your ear) Ossian; fact- books, which all geniuses prize as raw material, and as. antidote to verbiage and false poetry. Fact- books, if the facts be well and thoroughly told, are much more nearly allied to poetry than many books are that are written in rhyme. Only our newest knowledge works as a source of inspiration and thought, as only the outmost layer of liber on the tree. Books of natural science, especially those written by the ancients, — geography, botany, agricul ture, explorations of the sea, of meteors, of astron omy, — all the better if written without literary aim or ambition. Every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working mood. The deep book, no matter how remote the subject, helps us best.
INSPIRATION. 265 INSPIRATION. 265 Neither are these all the sources, nor can I name all. The receptivity is rare. The occasions or pre disposing circumstances I could never tabulate; but now one, now another landscape, form, color, or companion, or perhaps one kind of sounding word or syllable, " strikes the electric chain with which we are darkly bound," and it is impossible to detect and wilfully repeat the fine conditions to which we have owed our happiest frames of mind. The day is good in which we have had the most perceptions. The analysis is the more difficult, because poppy- leaves are strewn when a generalization is made; for I can never remember the circumstances to which I owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or put myself in the conditions.
" 'T is the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain."
I value literary biography for the hints it fur nishes from so many scholars, in so many countries, of what hygiene, what ascetic, what gymnastic, what social practices their experience suggested and approved. They are, for the most part, men who needed only a little wealth. Large estates, political relations, great hospitalities, would have been im pediments to them. They are men whom a book could entertain, a new thought intoxicate, and hold them prisoners for years perhaps. Aubrey and Burton and Wood tell me incidents which I find not insignificant.
12 2G6 INSPIRATION.
These are some hints towards what is in all education a chief necessity, the right government, or, shall I not say, the right obedience to the powers of the human soul. Itself is the dictator; the mind itself the awful oracle. All our power, all our happiness, consists in our reception of its hints, which ever become clearer and grander as they are obeyed.
GKEATNESS.
GREATNESS.
THERE is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power and goodness we have, so much more the energy of that aim. Every human being has a right to it, and in the pursuit we do not stand in each other's way. For it has a long scale of degrees, a wide variety of views, and every aspirant, by his success in the pursuit, does not hinder but helps his competitors. I might call it completeness, but that is later, — perhaps adjourned for ages. I prefer to call it Greatness. It is the fulfilment of a natural tendency in each man. It is a fruitful study. It is the best tonic.to the young soul. And no man is unrelated; therefore we admire eminent men, not for themselves, but as representatives. It is very cer tain that we ought not to be, and shall not be con tented with any goal we have reached. Our aim is no less than greatness; that which invites all, belongs to us all, — to which we are all sometimes untrue, cowardly, faithless, but of which we never quite despair, and which, in every sane moment, we resolve to make our own. It is also the only plat- 270 GREATNESS.
270 GREATNESS.
form on which all men can meet. What anecdotes of any man do we wish to hear or read? Only the best. Certainly not those in which lie was degrad ed to the level of dulness or vice, but those in which he rose above all competition by obeying a light that shone to him alone. This is the worthi est history of the world.
Greatness, — what is it? Is there not some in jury to us, some insult in the word? What we commonly call greatness is only such in our bar barous or infant experience. Tis not the soldier, not Alexander or Bonaparte or Count Moltke surely, who represent the highest force of mankind; not the strong hand, but wisdom and civility, the cre ation of laws, institutions, letters, and art. These we call by distinction the humanities; these, and not the strong arm and brave heart, which are also indispensable to their defence. For the scholars represent the intellect, by which man is man; the intellect and the moral sentiment, — which in the last analysis can never be separated. Who can doubt the potency of an individual mind, who sees the shock given to torpid races — torpid for ages — by Mahomet; a vibration propagated over Asia and Africa? What of Menu? what of Buddha? ofShak- speare? of Newton? of Franklin?
There are certain points of identity in which these masters agree. Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears. The man in the tav- GEEATNESS. 271 GEEATNESS. 271 ern maintains his opinion, though the whole crowd takes the other side; we are at once drawn to him. The porter or truckman refuses a reward for finding your purse, or for pulling you drowning out of the river. Thereby, with the service, you have got a moral lift. You say of some new persbn, That man will go far, — for you see in his manners that the recognition of him by others is not necessary to him. And what a bitter-sweet sensation when we have gone to pour out our acknowledgment of a man's nobleness, and found him quite indifferent to our good opinion! They may well fear Fate who have- any infirmity of habit or aim; but he who rests on what he is, has a destiny above destiny, and can make mouths at Fortune. If a man's cen- trality is incomprehensible to us, we may as well snub the sun. There is something in Archimedes or in Luther or Samuel Johnson that needs no pro tection. There is somewhat in the true scholar which he cannot be laughed out of, nor be terrified or bought off from. Stick to your own; don't in culpate yourself in the local, social, or national crime, but follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of heaven, for you to walk in.
A sensible person will soon see the folly and wickedness of thinking to please. Sensible men are very rare. A sensible man does not brag, avoids introducing the names of his creditable companions, omits himself as habitually as another 272 GREATNESS.
man obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is con tent with putting his fact or theme simply on its ground. You shall not tell me that your com mercial house, your partners, or yourself are of importance; you shall not tell me that you have learned to know men; you shall make me feel that; your saying so unsays it. You shall not enumerate your brilliant acquaintances, nor tell me by their titles what books you have read. I am to infer that you keep good company by your better information and manners, and to infer your reading from the wealth and accuracy of your con versation.
Young men think that the manly character re quires that they should go to California, or to India, or into the army. When they have learned that the parlor and the college and the counting-room demand as much courage as the sea or the camp, they will be willing to consult their own strength and education in their choice of place.
There are to each function and department of nature supplementary men: to geology, sinewy, out-of-doors men, with a taste for mountains and rocks, a quick eye for differences and for chemical changes. Give such, first, a course in chemistry, and then a geological survey. Others find a charm and a profession in the natural history of man and the mammalia, or related animals; others in orni thology, or fishes, or insects; others in plants; GREATNESS. 273 GREATNESS. 273 others in the elements of which the whole world is made. These lately have stimulus to their study through the extraordinary revelations of the spec troscope that the sun and the planets are made in part or in whole of the same elements as the earth is. Then there is the boy who is born with a taste for the sea, and must go thither if he has to run away from his father's house to the forecastle; another longs for travel in foreign lands; another will be a lawyer; another, an astronomer; another, a painter, sculptor, architect, or engineer. Thus there is not a piece of nature in any kind, but a man is born, who, as his genius opens, aims slower or faster to dedicate himself to that. Then there is the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the orator, the clergyman, the physician. 'T is gratifying to see this adaptation of man to the world, and to every part and particle of it.
Many readers remember that Sir Humphry Davy said, when he was praised for his important discov eries, "My best discovery was Michael Faraday." In 1848 I had the privilege of hearing Professor Faraday deliver, in the Royal Institution in Lon don, a lecture on what he called Diamagnetism, — by which he meant cross-magnetism; and he showed us various experiments on certain gases, to prove that whilst, ordinarily, magnetism of steel is from north to south, in other substances, gases, it acts from east to west. And further experiments led him to 274 GREATNESS.
the theory that every chemical substance would be found to have its own, and a different, polarity. I do not know how far his experiments and others have been pushed in this matter, but one fact is clear to me, that diainagnetism is a law of the mind, to the full extent of Faraday's idea; namely, that every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other mind; — as every man, with whatever family resemblances, lias a new counte nance, new manner, new voice, msv thoughts, and new character. Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him in a new path, and, the mure it is trusted, separates and signalizes him, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We call this specialty the lias of each individual. And none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. Swedenborg called it the propriam, — not a thought shared with others, but constitutional to the man. A point of education that I can never too much insist upon is this tenet, that every individual man has a bias