EMERSON. "The friend and aider of those who would live in the Spirit." Matthew Arnold. First Series of Essays. FROM " HISTORY." There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all: Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion which belongs to it, in appropriate events. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philospher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. There is, at the surface, infinite variety of things; at the centre there is simplicity of cause. But if a man is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race; remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him. FROM "SELF-RELIANCE." There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. Trust thyself. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude, Life only avails, not the having lived. The soul becomes. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. With the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of selfreliance; it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins to be repaired. |