he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in crowded cities find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, his want of knowledge of the nersons he addresses, until he finds that he is the complement of his hearers; — that they drink his words because he fulfils for 15 them their own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public, and universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of every man feels, This is my music; this is myself.

was finished a long time ago. As the
world was plastic and fluid in the hands of
God, so it is ever to so much of his at-
tributes as we bring to it. To ignorance
and sin, it is flint. They adapt themselves
to it as they may; but in proportion as a
man has anything in him divine, the
firmament flows before him and takes his
signet and form. Not he is great who can
alter matter, but he who can alter my 10
state of min They are the kings of the
world who give the color of their present
thought to all nature and all art, and
persuade men by the cheerful serenity of
their carrying the matter, that this thing 15
which they do is the apple which the ages
have desired to pluck, now at last ripe, and
inviting nations to the harvest. The great
man makes the great thing. Wherever
Macdonald sits, there is the head of the 20
.table. Linnæus makes botany the most
alluring of studies, and wins it from the
farmer and the herb-woman; Davy, chem-
istry; and Cuvier, fossils. The day is
always his who works in it with serenity 25
and great aims. The unstable estimates
of men crowd to him whose mind is filled
with a truth, as the heaped waves of the
Atlantic follow the moon.

For this self-trust, the reason is deeper 30
than can be fathomed,- darker than can
be enlightened. I might not carry with
me the feeling of my audience in stating
my own belief. But I have already shown
the ground of my hope, in adverting to 35
the doctrine that man is one. I believe
man has been wronged; he has wronged
himself. He has almost lost the light
that can lead him back to his prerogatives.
Men are become of no account. Men in 40
history, men in the world of to-day, are
bugs, are spawn, and are called the
mass and the herd.' In a century, in
a millennium, one or two men; that is
to say, one or two approximations to the 45
right state of every man. All the rest
behold in the hero or the poet their own
green and crude being.-ripened; yes,
and are content to be less, so that may
attain to its full stature. What a testi- 50
mony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is
borne to the demands of his own nature,
by the poor clansman, the poor partisan,
who rejoices in the glory of his chief.
The poor and the low find some amends to 55
their immense moral capacity, for their
acquiescence in a political and social in-
feriority. They are content to be brushed

like flies from the path of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and 5 glorified. They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him.

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money,- the 'spoils,' so called,' of office.' And why not? for they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strewn along the ground. The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. What is that but saying that we have come up with the point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on. First, one, then another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable_empire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily, and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not to delay longer to add what I have to say of nearer reference to the time and to this country.

Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas which predominate over successive epochs, and there are data for marking the genius of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the Reflec- 10 tive or Philosophical age. With the views I have intimated of the oneness or the identity of the mind through all individuals, I do not much dwell on these differences. In fact, I believe each indi- 15 vidual passes through all three. The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the adult, reflective. I deny not however that a revolution in the leading idea may be distinctly enough traced.

same movement which effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the state, assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect. In5 stead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized. That which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign,- is it not? of new vigor when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask 20 not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; 30 the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of Nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plow, and the ledger referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing;- - and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical; we are embarrassed with second thoughts; we cannot enjoy anything for hankering to know 25 whereof the pleasure consists; we are lined with eyes; we see with our feet; the time is infected with Hamlet's unhappi

ness,

'Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.'

It is so bad then? Sight is the last thing
to be pitied. Would we be blind? Do
we fear lest we should outsee nature and 35
God, and drink truth dry? I look upon
the discontent of the literary class as a
mere announcement of the fact that they
find themselves not in the state of mind of
their fathers, and regret the coming state 40
as untried; as a boy dreads the water be-
fore he has learned that he can swim.
If there is any period one would desire
to be born in, is it not the age of Revolu-
tion; when the old and the new stand side 45
by side and admit of being compared:
when the energies of all men are searched
by fear and by hope; when the historic
glories of the old can be compensated by
the rich possibilities of the new era? 50
This time, like all times, is a very good
one, if we but know what to do with it.

I read with some joy of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through 55 philosophy and science, through church. and state.

One of these signs is the fact that the

This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea they have differently followed and with various success. In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing is bloodwarm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean.

A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.

There is one man of genius who has done much for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated; I mean Emanuel 10 Swedenborg. The most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could surmount. But he saw and showed the connection between nature and the affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual char- 20 acter of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature; he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul ma- 25 terial forms, and has given in epical parables a theory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean and fearful things.

by all preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already sus5 pected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, in15 flated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust; some of them suicides. What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience, patience; with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit: not to be reckoned one character; - not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and friends, please God, ours shall not be So. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul

Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political movement, is 30 the new importance given to the single person. Fverything that tends to insulate the individual,- to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man 35 shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state,- tends to true union as well as greatness. 'I learned,' said the melancholy Pestalozzi, 'that no man in God's wide earth is either willing 40 or able to help any other man.' Help must come from the bosom alone. The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes 45 of the future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be one lesson more than another which should pierce his ear, it is, The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all 50 nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this con- 55 which also inspires all men. fidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy,

(1837)

The American Scholar,

1837.