menu_book Chapter 9

Essay No. 9. New England Reformers. Read by Bob Neufeld. In the suburb, in the town, on the railway, in the square, came a beam of goodness down, doubling daylight everywhere. Peace now each for malice takes, beauty for his sinful weeks. For the angel hope, eh, makes him an angel whom she leads.

A lecture read before the Society in Amory Hall on Sunday, March 3, 1844. Whoever has had the opportunity of acquaintance with Society in New England during the last twenty-five years, with those middle and with those leading sections, that may constitute any just representation of the character and aim of the community, will have been struck with the great activity of thought and experimenting. His attention must be commanded by the signs that the

church, or religious party, is falling from the church nominal, and is appearing in temperance and non-resistant societies, in movements of abolitionists and of socialists, and in very significant assemblies called Sabbath and Bible conventions, composed of altruists, of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of descent, and meeting to call in question the authority of the Sabbath, of the priesthood, and of the church. In these movements nothing was more remarkable

than the discontent they begot in the mover. The spirit of protest and of detachment drove the members of these conventions to bear testimony against the church, and immediately afterward to declare their discontent with these conventions, their independence of their colleagues, and their impatience of the methods whereby they were working. They defied each other, like a congress of kings, each of whom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable.

What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! One apostle thought all men should go to farming, and another that no man should buy or sell, that the use of money was the cardinal evil. Another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to fermentation. It was in vain, urged by the housewife, that God made yeast as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as He loves vegetation. That

fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. No, they wish the pure wheat, and will die, but it shall not ferment. Stop, dear nature, these incessant advances of thine, let us scotch these ever-rolling wheels. Others attacked the system of agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming, and the tyranny of man over brute nature. These abuses polluted his food. The ox must be taken

from the plough and the horse from the cart, the hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and man must walk wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the insect world was to be defended. That had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection of groundworms, slugs, and mosquitoes was to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the adepts of homeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their wonderful theories of the

Christian miracles. Others assailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the institution of marriage as the fountain of social evils. Others devoted themselves to the worrying of churches and meetings for public worship. And the fertile forms of antinomianism among the elder Puritans seemed to have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of reform. With this din of

opinion and debate there was a keener scrutiny of institutions and domestic life than any we had known. There was sincere protesting against existing evils, and there were changes of employment dictated by conscience. No doubt there was plentiful vaporing, and cases of backsliding might occur, but in each of these movements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an assertion of the sufficiency of the private man.

Thus it was directly in the spirit and genius of the age what happened in one instance, when a church censured and threatened to excommunicate one of its members on account of the somewhat hostile part to the church which his conscience led him to take in the anti-slavery business. The threatened individual immediately excommunicated the church in a public and formal process. This has been several times repeated. It was excellent when it was done the first time,

but of course loses all value when it is copied. Every project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising, is good when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution, but very dull and suspicious when adopted from another. It is right and beautiful in any man to say, I will take this coat, or this book, or this measure of corn of yours, in whom we see the act to be original, and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him.

for then that taking will have a giving as free and divine but we are very easily disposed to resist the same generosity of speech when we miss originality and truth to character in it there was in all the practical activities of new england for the last quarter of a century a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from the social organizations this is observable throughout the contest between mechanical and spiritual methods but with a steady tendency of the thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief and reliance on spiritual facts in politics for example it is easy to see the progress of dissent the country is full of rebellion the country is full of kings hands off let there be no control and no interference in the administration of the affairs of this kingdom of me hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party of free trade and the willingness to try that experiment in the face of what appear incontestable facts

i confess the motto of the globe newspaper is so attractive to me that i can seldom find much appetite to read what is below it in the columns the world is governed too much so the country is frequently affording solitary examples of resistance to the government solitary nullifiers who throw themselves on their reserved right nay who have reserved all their rights who apply to the assessor and to the clerk of court that they do not know the state and embarrass the courts of law by nonjuring and the commander-in-chief of the militia by nonresistance the same disposition to scrutiny and dissent appeared in civil festive neighbourly and domestic society a restless prying conscientious criticism broke out in unexpected quarters who gave me the money with which i bought my coat why should professional labour and that of the counting-house be paid so disproportionately to the labour of the porter and wood-sawyer

this whole business of trade gives me to pause and think as it constitutes false relations between men inasmuch as i am prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person whom i pay with money whereas if i had not that commodity i should be put on my good behaviour in all companies and man would be a benefactor to man as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other am i not too protected a person is there not a wide disparity between the lot of me and the lot of thee my poor brother my poor sister am i not defrauded of my best culture in the loss of those gymnastics which manual labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute i find nothing healthful or exulting in the smooth conventions of society i do not like the close air of saloons i begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner though treated with all this courtesy and luxury i pay a destructive tax in my conformity

the same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts for the reform of education the popular education has been taxed with a want of truth and nature it was complained that an education to things was not given we are students of words we are shut up in schools and colleges and recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years and come out at last with a bag of wind a memory of words and do not know a thing we cannot use our hands or our legs or our eyes or our arms we do not know an edible root in the woods we cannot tell our course by the stars nor the hour of the day by the sun it is well if we can swim and skate we are afraid of a horse of a cow of a dog of a snake of a spider the roman rule was to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing the old english rule was all summer in the field and all winter in the study and it seems as if a man should learn to plant or to fish or to hunt that he might secure his subsistence at all events and not be painful to his friends and fellow-men

the lessons of science should be experimental also the sight of the planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all the theories the taste of the nitrous oxide the firing of an artificial volcano are better than volumes of chemistry the ancient languages with great beauty of structure contain wonderful remains of genius which draw and always will draw certain like-minded men greek men and roman men in all countries to their study but by a wonderful drowsiness of usage they had exacted the study of all men once say two centuries ago latin and greek had a strict relation to all the science and culture there was in europe and the mathematics had a momentary importance at some era of activity in physical science these things became stereotyped as education as the manner of men is but the good spirit never cared for the colleges and though all men and boys were now drilled in latin greek and mathematics it had quite left these shells high and dry on the beach and was now creating and feeding other matters at other ends of the world but in a hundred high schools and colleges this warfare against common sense still goes on

four or six or ten years the pupil is parsing greek and latin and as soon as he leaves the university as it is ludicrously called he shuts those books for the last time some thousands of young men are graduated at our colleges in this country every year and the persons who at forty years still read greek can be counted on your hand i never met with ten four or five persons i have seen who read plato but is this not absurd that the whole liberal talent of this country should be directed in its best years on studies which lead to nothing what was the consequence some intelligent persons said or thought is that greek or latin some spell to conjure with and not words of reason if the physician the lawyer the divine never use it to come at their ends i need never learn it to come at mine conjuring is gone out of fashion and i will omit this conjugating and go straight to affairs so they jumped the greek and latin and read law medicine and sermons without it to the astonishment of all the self-made men took even ground at once with the oldest of the regular graduates

and in a few months the most conservative circles of boston and new york had quite forgotten who of their gownsmen was college-bred and who was not one tendency appears alike in the philosophical speculation and in the rudest democratical movements through all the petulance and all the puerility the wish namely to cast aside the superfluous and arrive at short methods urged as i suppose by an intuition that the human spirit is equal to all emergencies alone and that man is more often injured than helped by the means he uses i conceive this gradual casting off of material aids and the indication of growing trust in the private self-supplied powers of the individual to be the affirmative principle of the recent philosophy and that it is feeling its own profound truth and is reaching forward at this very hour to the happiest conclusions i readily concede that in this as in every period of intellectual activity

there has been a noise of denial and protest much was to be resisted much was to be got rid of by those who were reared in the old before they could begin to affirm and to construct many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish and that makes the offensiveness of the class they are partial they are not equal to the work they pretend they lose their way in the assault on the kingdom of darkness they expend all their energy on some accidental evil and lose their sanity and power of benefit it is of little moment that one or two or twenty errors of our social system be corrected but of much that the man be in his senses the criticism and attack on institutions which we have witnessed has made one thing plain that society gains nothing whilst a man not himself renovated attempts to renovate things round him he has become tediously good in some particular but negligent or narrow in the rest and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result

it is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment and conduct that in the best manner than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement without supporting it by a total regeneration Do not be so vain of your one objection. Do you think there is only one? Alas, my good friend, there is no part of society or of life better than any other part. All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike. Do you complain of our marriage? Our marriage is no worse than our education, our diet, our trade, our social

customs? Do you complain of the laws of property? It is a pedantry to give such importance to them. Can we not play the game of life with these counters as well as those, in the institution of property as well as out of it? No one gives the impression of superiority to the institution which he must give who will reform it. It makes no difference what you say. You must make me feel that you are aloof from it. By your natural and supernatural advantages do easily see to the end

of it. Do see how man can do without it. Now all men are on one side. No man deserves to be heard against property. Only love, only an idea, is against property as we hold it. I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all my time in attacks. If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The street is as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech,

I have not got away from the lie. When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is virtue piecemeal? This is a jewel amidst the rags of a beggar. In another way the right will be vindicated, in the midst of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false churches, alike in one place and in another, wherever, namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself,

there it will do what is next at hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth, it shall abrogate that old condition, law, or school in which it stands, before the law of its own mind. If partiality was one fault of the movement party, the other defect was their reliance on association. Doubts such as those I have intimated drove many good persons to agitate the questions of social reform. But the revolt against the spirit of commerce, the spirit of

aristocracy, and the inveterate abuses of cities did not appear possible to individuals, and to do battle against numbers they armed themselves with numbers, and against concert they relied on new concert. Following or advancing beyond the ideas of St. Simon, of Fourier, and of Owen, three communities have already been formed in Massachusetts on kindred plans, and many more in the country at large. They aim to give every member a share in the manual labor, to give an

equal reward to labor and to talent, and to unite a liberal culture with an education to labor. The scheme offers, by the economies of associated labor and expense, to make every member rich, on the same amount of property that in separate families would leave every member poor. These new associations are composed of men and women of superior talents and sentiments. Yet it may easily be questioned whether such a community will draw, except in its beginnings, the able

and the good. Whether those who have energy will not prefer their chance of superiority and power in the world to the humble certainties of the association. Whether such a retreat does not promise to become an asylum to those who have tried and failed rather than a field to the strong and whether the members will not necessarily be fractious of men because each finds that he cannot enter it without some compromise friendship and association are a very fine thing and a grand phalanx of the best of the human race banded for some catholic object yes excellent but remember that no society can ever be as large as one man he in his friendship in his natural and momentary associations doubles or multiplies himself but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty

he dwarfs himself below the stature of one but the men of less faith could not thus believe and to such concert appears the sole specific of strength i have failed and you have failed but perhaps together we shall not fail our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us but perhaps a phalanx a community might be many of us have differed in opinion and we could find no man who could make the truth plain but possibly a college or an ecclesiastical council might i have not been able either to persuade my brother or to prevail on myself to disuse the traffic or the potation of brandy but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence might effectually restrain us the candidate my party votes for is not to be trusted with a dollar but he will be honest in the senate for we can bring public opinion to bear on him thus concert was the specific in all cases

but concert is neither better nor worse neither more or less potent than individual force all the men in the world cannot make a statue walk and speak cannot make a drop of blood or a blade of grass any more than any one man can but let there be one man let there be truth in two men in ten men then is concert for the first time possible because the force which moves the world is a new quality and can never be furnished by adding whatever quantities of a different kind What is the use of the concert of the false and the disunited? There can be no concert in two where there is no concert in one. When the individual is not individual, but is dual,

when his thoughts look one way and his actions another, when his faith is traversed by his habits, when his will, enlightened by reason, is warped by his sense, when with one hand he rose and with the other backs water, what concert can be. I do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire.

The world is awaking to the idea of union, and these experiments show what it is thinking of. It is, and will be, magic. Men will live and communicate, and plough and reap and govern, as by added ethereal power, when once they are united, as in a celebrated experiment, by expiration and respiration exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man from the ground by a little finger only, and without sense of weight. But this union must be inward, and not one of the

covenants, and it is to be reached by a reverse of the methods they use. The union is only perfect when all the uniters are isolated. It is the union of friends who live in different streets or towns. Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion, and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul. He will go up and down

doing the works of a true member, and to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke. Government will be adamantine without any governor. The union must be ideal in actual individualism. In alluding just now to our system of education, I spoke of the deadness of its details. But it is open to graver criticism than the palsy of its members. It is a system of despair. The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith.

Men do not believe in a power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people who make up society are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables. A man of good sense, but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me that he liked to have concerts and fairs and churches

and other public amusements go on. I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, if you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused. I notice, too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear. This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats. We do not believe that any education,

any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with inoffensive and comely manners. So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of limitation and inner death we cannot avert. Is it strange that society should be devoured by a secret

melancholy, which breaks through all its smiles and all its gaiety and games? But even one step farther our infidelity has gone. It appears that some doubt is felt by good and wise men, whether really the happiness and probity of men is increased by the culture of the mind in those disciplines to which we give the name of education. Unhappily, too, the doubt comes from scholars, from persons who have tried these methods. In their experience, the scholar was not raised

by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts to a marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous. A canine appetite for knowledge was generated, which must still be fed, but was never satisfied,

and this knowledge, not being drained on action, never took the character of substantial humane truth, blessing those whom it entered. It gave the scholar certain powers of expression, the power of speech, the power of poetry, of literary art, but it did not bring him to peace or to beneficence. When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief. What remedy? Life must be lived on

a higher plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend. there the whole aspect of things changes i resist the scepticism of our education and of our educated men i do not believe that the differences of opinion and character in men are organic i do not recognize beside the class of the good and the wise a permanent class of sceptics or a class of conservatives or of malignants or of materialists i do not believe in two classes you remember the story of the poor woman who importuned king philip of macedon to grant her justice which philip refused the woman exclaimed i appeal the king astonished asked to whom she appealed the woman replied from philip drunk to philip sober the text will suit me very well i believe not in two classes of men but in man in two moods in philip drunk and philip sober

i think according to the good-hearted word of plato unwillingly the soul is deprived of truth iron conservative miser or thief no man is but by a supposed necessity which he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of sight the soul lets no man go without some visitations and holy days of a diviner presence it would be easy to show by a narrow scanning of any man's biography that we are not so wedded to our paltry performances of every kind but that every man has at intervals the grace to scorn his performances in comparing them with his belief of what he should do that he puts himself on the side of his enemies listening gladly to what they say of him and accusing himself of the same things what is it men love in genius but its infinite hope which degrades all it has done genius counts all its miracles poor and short its own idea it never executed the iliad the hamlet the doric column the roman arch the gothic minster the german anthem when they are ended the master casts behind him how sinks the song in the waves of melody which the universe pours over his soul

before that gracious infinite out of which he drew those few strokes how mean they look though the praises of the world attend them from the triumphs of his art he turns with desire to his greater defeat let those admire who will with silent joy he sees himself to be capable of a beauty that eclipses all which his hands have done all which human hands have ever done well we are all the children of genius the children of virtue and feel their inspirations in our happiest hours is not every man sometimes a radical in politics men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious they are conservatives after dinner or before taking their rest when they are sick or aged in the morning or when their intellect or their conscience has been roused when they hear music or when they read poetry they are radicals

In the circle of the rankest Tories that could be collected in England, old or new, let a powerful and stimulating intellect, a man of great heart and mind, act on them, and very quickly these frozen conservators will yield to the friendly influence, these hopeless will begin to hope, these haters will begin to love, these immovable statues will begin to spin and revolve. I cannot help recalling the fine anecdote which Wharton relates of Bishop Berkeley,

when he was preparing to leave England with his plan of planting the gospel among the American savages. Lord Bathurst told me that the members of the Scriblerist Club, being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also his guest, on his scheme at Bermuda's. Berkeley, having listened to the many lively things they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of eloquence

and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and after some pause, rose up altogether with earnestness, exclaiming, Let us all set out with him immediately. Men in all ways are better than they seem. They like flattery for the moment, but they know the truth for their own. It is a foolish cowardice which keeps us from trusting them and speaking to them rude truth. They resent your honesty for an instant. They will thank you for it always. What is it we heartily wish of each

other? Is it to be pleased and flattered? No. But to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts and phantoms. We are weary of gliding ghost-like through the world, which is itself so slight and unreal. We crave a sense of reality, though it come in strokes of pain. I explain so, by this manlike love of truth, those excesses and errors into which souls of great vigor, but not equal insight, often fall.

they feel the poverty at the bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world they know the speed with which they come straight through the thin masquerade and conceive a disgust at the indigence of nature rousseau mirabeau charles fox napoleon byron and i could easily add names nearer home of raging riders who drive their steeds so hard in the violence of living to forget its illusion they would know the worst and tread the floors of hell the heroes of ancient and modern fame chimen themistocles alcibiades alexander caesar have treated life and fortune as a game to be well and skillfully played but the stake not to be so valued but that any time it could be held as a trifle light as air, and thrown up. Caesar, just before the battle of Pharsalia, discourses

with the Egyptian priest concerning the fountains of the Nile, and offers to quit the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, if he will show him those mysterious sources. The same magnanimity shows itself in our social relations, in the preference, namely, which each man gives to the society of superiors over that of his equals. All that a man has will he give for right relations with his mates. All that he has will he give for an erect demeanour in every company and on each occasion.

He aims at such things as his neighbour's prize, and gives his days and nights, his talents and his heart, to strike a good stroke, to acquit himself in all men's sight as a man. The consideration of an eminent citizen, of a noted merchant, of a man of mark in his profession, a navy, a military honor, a general's commission, a marshal's baton, a ducal coronet, the laurel of poets, and anyhow procured the acknowledgment of Emmet Merritt, have this luster for each

candidate, that they enable him to walk erect and unashamed in the presence of some persons before whom he felt himself inferior. Having raised himself to this rank, having established his equality with class after class of those with whom he would live well, he still finds certain others before whom he cannot possess himself, because they have somewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat purer, which extorts homage of him. Is his ambition pure, then will his laurels

and his possessions seem worthless. Instead of avoiding these men who make his fine gold dim, he will cast all behind him, and seek their society only, moo and embrace this his humiliation and mortification, until he shall know why his eye sinks, his voice is husky, and his brilliant talents are paralyzed in this presence. He is sure that the soul which gives the lie to all things will tell none his constitution will not mislead him if it cannot carry itself as it ought high and unmatchable in the presence of any man

if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the sweetness and dignity of his life do here withdraw and accompany him no longer it is time to undervalue what he has valued to dispossess himself of what he has acquired and with caesar to take in his hand the army the empire and cleopatra and say all these will i relinquish if you will show me the fountains of the nile dear to us are those who love us the swift moments we spend with them are a compensation for a great deal of misery they enlarge our life but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy for they add another life they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit and urge us to new and unattempted performances as every man at heart wishes the best and not inferior society wishes to be convicted of his error and to come to himself so he wishes that the same healing should not stop in his thought but should penetrate his will or active power

the selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit what he most wishes is to be lifted to some higher platform that he may see beyond his present fear the transalpine good so that his fear his coldness his custom may be broken up like fragments of ice melted and carried away in the great stream of goodwill do you ask my aid i also wish to be a benefactor i wish more to be a benefactor and servant than you wish to be served by me and surely the greatest good fortune that could befall me is precisely to be so moved by you that i should say take me and all mine and use me and mine freely to your ends for i could not say it otherwise than because a great enlargement had come to my heart and mind which made me superior to my fortunes here we are paralyzed with fear we hold on to our little properties house and land office and money for the bread which they have in our experience yielded us although we confess that our being does not flow through them

we desire to be made great we desire to be touched with that fire which shall command this ice to stream and make our existence a benefit if therefore we start objections to your project o friend of the slave or friend of the poor or of the race understand well that it is because we wish to drive you to drive us into your measures we wish to hear ourselves confuted we are haunted with a belief that you have a secret which it would highest advantage us to learn and we would force you to impart it to us though it should bring us to prison or to worse extremity nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth there is no pure lie no pure malignity in nature the entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation there is no scepticism no atheism but that could it be received into common belief suicide would unpeople the planet it has had a name to live in some dogmatic theology but each man's innocence and his real liking of his neighbor have kept it a dead letter

i remember standing at the polls one day when the anger of the political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the independent electors and a good man at my side looking on the people remarked i am satisfied that the largest part of these men on either side mean to vote right i suppose considerate observers looking at the masses of men in their blameless and in their equivocal actions will assent that in spite of selfishness and frivolity the general purpose in the great number of persons is fidelity the reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion or his aid to your benevolent design is in you he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth because though you think you have it he feels you have it not you have not given him the authentic sign if it were worth while to run into details this general doctrine of the latent but ever soliciting spirit it would be easy to adduce illustration in particulars of a man's equality to the church of his equality to the state and of his equality to every other man it is yet in all men's memory that a few years ago the liberal churches complained that the calvinist church denied to them the name of christian i think the complaint was confession a religious church would not complain

a religious man like beyman fox or swedenborg is not irritated by wanting the sanction of the church but the church feels the accusation of his presence and belief it only needs that a just man should walk in our streets to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial a contrivance is our legislation the man whose part is taken and who does not wait for society in anything has a power which society cannot choose but feel the familiar experiment called the hydrostatic paradox in which a capillary column of water balances the ocean is a symbol of the relation of one man to the whole family of men the wise dandamus on hearing the lives of socrates pythagoras and diogenes read judged them to be great men every way excepting that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws which to second and authorize true virtue must abate very much of its original vigor and as a man is equal to the church and equal to the state so he is equal to every other man the disparities of power in men are superficial

and all frank and searching conversation in which a man lays himself open to his brother apprises each of their radical unity when two persons sit and converse in a thoroughly good understanding the remark is sure to be made see how we have disputed about words let a clear apprehensive mind such as every man knows among his friends converse with the most commanding poetic genius i think it would appear that there was no inequality such as men fancy between them that a perfect understanding alike receiving alike perceiving abolished differences and the poet would confess that his creative imagination gave him no deep advantage but only the superficial one that he could express himself and the other could not that his advantage was a knack which might impose on indolent men but could not impose on lovers of truth for they know the tax of talent or what a price of greatness the power of expression too often pays i believe it is the conviction of the purest men that the net amount of man and man does not much vary each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty his want of skill in other directions has added to his fitness for his own work

each seems to have some compensation yielded to him by his infirmity and every hindrance operates as a concentration of his force these and the like experiences intimate that man stands in strict connection with a higher fact never yet manifested there is power over and behind us and we are the channels of its communications we seek to say thus and so and over our head some spirit sits which contradicts what we say we would persuade our fellow to this or that another self within our eyes dissuades him that which we keep back this reveals in vain we compose our faces and our words it holds uncontrollable communication with the enemy and he answers civilly to us but believes the spirit we exclaim there's a traitor in the house but at last it appears that he is the true man and i am the traitor this open channel to the highest life is the first and last reality so subtle so quiet yet so tenacious that although i have never expressed the truth and although i have never heard the expression of it from any other i know that the whole truth is here for me

what if i cannot answer your question i am not pained that i cannot frame a reply to the question what is the operation we call providence there lies the unspoken thing present omnipresent every time we converse we seek to translate it into speech but whether we hit or whether we miss we have the fact every discourse is an approximate answer but it is of small consequence that we do not get it into verbs and nouns whilst it abides for contemplation for ever if the auguries of the prophesying heart shall make themselves good in time the man who shall be born whose advent men and events prepare and foreshow is one who shall enjoy his connection with the higher life with the man within man shall destroy distrust by his trust shall use his native but forgotten methods shall not take counsel of flesh and blood but shall rely on the law alive and beautiful which works over our heads and under our feet

pitiless it avails itself of our success when we obey it and of our ruin when we contravene it men are all secret believers in it else the word justice would have no meaning they believe that the best is the true that right is done at last or chaos would come it rewards actions after their nature and not after the design of the agent work it saith the man in every hour paid or unpaid see only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward whether thy work be fine or coarse planting corn or writing epics so only it be honest work done to thine own approbation it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought no matter how often defeated you are born to victory the reward of a thing well done is to have done it as soon as a man is wanted to look beyond surfaces and to see how high this will prevails without an exception or an interval he settles himself into serenity

he can already rely on the laws of gravity that every stone will fall where it is due the good globe is faithful and carries us securely through the celestial spaces anxious or resigned we need not interfere to help it on and he will learn one day the mild lesson they teach that our own orbit is all our task and we need not assist the administration of the universe do not be so impatient to set the town right concerning the unfounded pretensions and the false reputation of certain men of standing they are laboring harder to set the town right concerning themselves and will certainly succeed suppress for a few days your criticism on the insufficiency of this or that teacher or experimenter and he will have demonstrated his insufficiency to all men's eyes in like manner let a man fall into the divine circuits and he is enlarged obedience to his genius is the only liberating influence we wish to escape from subjection and a sense of inferiority and we make self-denying ordinances we drink water we eat grass we refuse the laws we go to jail

it is all in vain only by obedience to his genius only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him does an angel seem to arise before a man and lead him by the hand out of the wards of the prison that which befits us embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are is cheerfulness and courage and the endeavour to realise our aspirations the life of man is the true romance which when it is valiantly conducted will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction All around us what powers are wrapped up under the coarse maddings of custom, and all wonder prevented? It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that it is just as wonderful that he should see with them, and that is ever

the difference between the wise and the unwise. The latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual. Shall not the heart which has received so much trust the power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past. May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much,

secure that the future will be worthy of the past. End of essay number nine.