Let
me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am
persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
It
is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for
yourselves.
Trust Yourself
It seems to me, brethren, that a great calamity with which men are contending after all the preaching of Christianity is their distrust in themselves. They do not know because they have not tried the spiritual force that belongs to them. If a man has a soul he has an infinite spiritual estate. He has a responsibility that is tremendous, simply in the view of the duration of its being, but far more so in the view of its nature and connections. If god has made us with such intention as revelation discloses, then it must be that there are in each of us all the elements of moral and intellectual excellence, that is to say, if you act out yourself you will attain and exhibit a perfect character. Our saviour in the confidence of all the worth which his instructions supposed in human nature, says to his diciples, "What has a man profited that has gained the whole world and lose his own soul?" The lesson that may be gathered from this scripture, is to value our own souls, to have them in such estimation as never to offend them. And this is the theme of the present discourse...
I wish to enforce the doctrine that a man should trust himself . He should have a perfect confidence that there is no defect or inferiority in his nature. When he discovers in himself different powers, opinions, or manners from others whom he loves and respects, she should not think himself in that degree inferior but only different. For every defect there is some compensation provided in his system. Wherever there is manifest imperfection in his character it springs from his own neglect to cultivate some part of his mind.
I am afraid of this great tendency to uniformity of action and conversation among men. I am afraid of the great evil done to so sacred a property as a mans own soul by an imitation arising out of an unthinking admiration of others. I believe god gave to every man the germ of a peculuiar character. The ends of an action are the same but the means and the manner are infinately various. As every man occupies a position in some respects singular, every man has thoughts that probly never entered the mind of another man. Cast your thoughts around upon your different aquaintences and see if any two present the same character to your imagination. The more finished the caracter the more stiking is its individuallity and the better the state of the world. The more unlike will be mens characters and the more similar their purposes.
To be wholly independant of other men's judgements does not mean to come under their censure by any extravagance of action. It is only those that are so that can bear the severest scrutiny of other men's judgements. It is by following other mens opinions that we are misled and depraved. it is those whol have steadily listened to their own who have found out the great truths of the the salvation of the human soul. My friends let me beseech you to remember that it is only by looking inward that the outward means of knowledge can be made of any avail. The Soul, the Soul is full of Truth.
the body we inhabit shall shortly be laid in the dust but the soul assures us with the voice of god to confirm it tha it will not die. let this strange and awful being that we possess have the reverence that is due from us. let us leave this immoderate regard to meats and drinks , dress and pleasure, and unfound praise. Let us go alone and converse with ourselves and the world of god in us. what that bids us do let us do with unshaken firmness and what it bids us borbear les us forbear. let us love and respecct each other as thosee who can assist us in understanding ourselves and let us hear the sdistince voice of scripture which has tought us to forsake the world and its vanities and deceptions and seek god who is to be worshipped in our hearts.
Find Your Calling
On account of the very remarkable effect which particular situations and duties have had on some men a great deal more power has been ascribed to things outward than belongs to them. We hear a great deal of the empire of circustances over the mind, but not enough of the empire of the mind over circumstances, that the mind is capable of exerting this power.
But observe on the other hand, ho stong is the effect of individual character in each man to change the complexion of the same pursuits in his hands. In a degree he always is affectted by the nation, age, family, profession, friendship he falls upon; but he exerts influence as well as receives it. and that, in proportion to the strenth of his character.
Even now we occasionally see an individual forsake all the usual paths of life and show men a new one better fitted than any other to his own powers. and as any man discovers a taste of any new kind , any new combination of powers, he tends toward such places and duties as well give occcasion for their exercise. This is because great powers will not sleep in a mans breast. Everything was made for use. Great powers demand to be put in action, the greater they are with the more urgency. Every man is uneasy until every power of his mind is in freedom and in action. Whence arises a constant effort to take that attitude which will admit of this action.
Let a man have that profession for which God formed him that he may be useful to mankind to the whole extent of his powers. May he find delight in the excercise of his powers. May he do what he does with the fulll consent of his own mind. Everyone knows well what difference ther is in the doing things that we have with all ones heart and the doing them against ones will. If every man were engaged in those innocent things that he best loved, would not the wheels of society move with better speed and surer effect? Would not more be done and all be done better? and what an increase of happiness! for all labor would be pleasure.
Every just act, every proper attention bestowed upon his mind makes this aim more distinct to him. It may be hidden from him for years. Unfavorable associations, bad advice, or his own perversity may fight against it but he wil never be at ease, he will never act with efficiency, until he finds it. Whatever it be, it is his high calling. This is his mark and prize. This is permanent and infinite. All other callings are temporary, only a means to bring out and present this distinctly befor his eyes. many mistakes may be made in the search but every man who consults himself, the intimatioons of devine wisdom in his own mind, will cnstantly approach it. It is that state in which all the powers of the man are put in use. He who steadfastly enlarging his views of what is true, and heroically doing what is right is fast advancing toward this end.
This end, this high calling, let it be sacred in each mans mind. let every mind rise to the perception that it was designed by the great father of all for a puliar good, not to be benefitted only in common with nations or famillies but also as an individual. be content then, humbly and wisely to converse with yourself, to learn what you can do and what you cannot, to be deterred from attemptiong nothing out of respect to the judgemnet of others if it be not confirmed by your own judgement. never take for granted a common opinion against the promptings of your heart, considering that another age will reverse all unfounded opinions and settle them anew. Go forward and accept the gift of the creation and resign yourself to his will by obeying the promptings of the mind.
The more distinctly be become acquainted with our powers ad destiny, the more effectually do we exert ourselves to give that direction to our common employments, the less do we serve our circumstances, and the more do they serve us.
Every man likes to do what he can do well. But his is to do what god made you to do best. it is no trifling, no easy, no short work. it is a work that demands severe exerton, your head and your heart, and it never will be done. but then it brings the strength it needs for it is embraced with the whole affection of the soul. it makes the day bright. It clothes the world with beauty, the face of god with smiles. it is a path without an end, that beginning in the little pursuits of this world leads up to gods right hand, to pleasures forevermore.
The Miracle of our Being
The excercise of reason turns all our evil into good. Thus the moment reason assumes is empire over a man he finds that he has nothing low or inurious in him but it is under this dominion the root of power and beauty. his animal nature is ennobled by serving the soul. that which was deasing him will now prove the sinews of his character. His petulance is the love of order. out of his necessities grows the glorious structure of civilization.
he finds that whatever diadvantages he has labored under, whatever uncommon exertion he has been called to make, whatever poverty what sickness, unpopularity, mistake, even what deep sin he has been given up to commit; when once he is awakened to truth and virtue, penetrated with penitence, touched with the veraton of the almighty father and stung with the insatiable desire of making every day his soul more perfect, then all these the worst calamities, the sorest sorrow are changed, glorified. He owns his deep debt to them and acknowledges in them the omnipresent energy of the god who tranforms all things into the divine.
And wht is this admiration to which we would excite the soul? What is it but a perception of a mans true position in the universe and his consequent obligations. this is the whole moral and end of such views as i present.
Instead of making it his pride to be announced as a person of consideration in the state , or in his proffesion, in the fashionable world, or as rich, travelled, or powerful man, let him delight rather to make himself known in all companies by his action, and by his discourse as one who has attained unto self command; one who has thought in earnest upon the questions of human duty; one who carries with his presence the terrors and the beauty of justice; and who even in a moment when his friends ignorantly censure him is privy to the virtuaous action he has performed and those he has in hand.
Trust Yourself
It seems to me, brethren, that a great calamity with which men are contending after all the preaching of Christianity is their distrust in themselves. They do not know because they have not tried the spiritual force that belongs to them. If a man has a soul he has an infinite spiritual estate. He has a responsibility that is tremendous, simply in the view of the duration of its being, but far more so in the view of its nature and connections. If god has made us with such intention as revelation discloses, then it must be that there are in each of us all the elements of moral and intellectual excellence, that is to say, if you act out yourself you will attain and exhibit a perfect character. Our saviour in the confidence of all the worth which his instructions supposed in human nature, says to his diciples, "What has a man profited that has gained the whole world and lose his own soul?" The lesson that may be gathered from this scripture, is to value our own souls, to have them in such estimation as never to offend them. And this is the theme of the present discourse...
I wish to enforce the doctrine that a man should trust himself . He should have a perfect confidence that there is no defect or inferiority in his nature. When he discovers in himself different powers, opinions, or manners from others whom he loves and respects, she should not think himself in that degree inferior but only different. For every defect there is some compensation provided in his system. Wherever there is manifest imperfection in his character it springs from his own neglect to cultivate some part of his mind.
I am afraid of this great tendency to uniformity of action and conversation among men. I am afraid of the great evil done to so sacred a property as a mans own soul by an imitation arising out of an unthinking admiration of others. I believe god gave to every man the germ of a peculuiar character. The ends of an action are the same but the means and the manner are infinately various. As every man occupies a position in some respects singular, every man has thoughts that probly never entered the mind of another man. Cast your thoughts around upon your different aquaintences and see if any two present the same character to your imagination. The more finished the caracter the more stiking is its individuallity and the better the state of the world. The more unlike will be mens characters and the more similar their purposes.
To be wholly independant of other men's judgements does not mean to come under their censure by any extravagance of action. It is only those that are so that can bear the severest scrutiny of other men's judgements. It is by following other mens opinions that we are misled and depraved. it is those whol have steadily listened to their own who have found out the great truths of the the salvation of the human soul. My friends let me beseech you to remember that it is only by looking inward that the outward means of knowledge can be made of any avail. The Soul, the Soul is full of Truth.
the body we inhabit shall shortly be laid in the dust but the soul assures us with the voice of god to confirm it tha it will not die. let this strange and awful being that we possess have the reverence that is due from us. let us leave this immoderate regard to meats and drinks , dress and pleasure, and unfound praise. Let us go alone and converse with ourselves and the world of god in us. what that bids us do let us do with unshaken firmness and what it bids us borbear les us forbear. let us love and respecct each other as thosee who can assist us in understanding ourselves and let us hear the sdistince voice of scripture which has tought us to forsake the world and its vanities and deceptions and seek god who is to be worshipped in our hearts.
Find Your Calling
On account of the very remarkable effect which particular situations and duties have had on some men a great deal more power has been ascribed to things outward than belongs to them. We hear a great deal of the empire of circustances over the mind, but not enough of the empire of the mind over circumstances, that the mind is capable of exerting this power.
But observe on the other hand, ho stong is the effect of individual character in each man to change the complexion of the same pursuits in his hands. In a degree he always is affectted by the nation, age, family, profession, friendship he falls upon; but he exerts influence as well as receives it. and that, in proportion to the strenth of his character.
Even now we occasionally see an individual forsake all the usual paths of life and show men a new one better fitted than any other to his own powers. and as any man discovers a taste of any new kind , any new combination of powers, he tends toward such places and duties as well give occcasion for their exercise. This is because great powers will not sleep in a mans breast. Everything was made for use. Great powers demand to be put in action, the greater they are with the more urgency. Every man is uneasy until every power of his mind is in freedom and in action. Whence arises a constant effort to take that attitude which will admit of this action.
Let a man have that profession for which God formed him that he may be useful to mankind to the whole extent of his powers. May he find delight in the excercise of his powers. May he do what he does with the fulll consent of his own mind. Everyone knows well what difference ther is in the doing things that we have with all ones heart and the doing them against ones will. If every man were engaged in those innocent things that he best loved, would not the wheels of society move with better speed and surer effect? Would not more be done and all be done better? and what an increase of happiness! for all labor would be pleasure.
Every just act, every proper attention bestowed upon his mind makes this aim more distinct to him. It may be hidden from him for years. Unfavorable associations, bad advice, or his own perversity may fight against it but he wil never be at ease, he will never act with efficiency, until he finds it. Whatever it be, it is his high calling. This is his mark and prize. This is permanent and infinite. All other callings are temporary, only a means to bring out and present this distinctly befor his eyes. many mistakes may be made in the search but every man who consults himself, the intimatioons of devine wisdom in his own mind, will cnstantly approach it. It is that state in which all the powers of the man are put in use. He who steadfastly enlarging his views of what is true, and heroically doing what is right is fast advancing toward this end.
This end, this high calling, let it be sacred in each mans mind. let every mind rise to the perception that it was designed by the great father of all for a puliar good, not to be benefitted only in common with nations or famillies but also as an individual. be content then, humbly and wisely to converse with yourself, to learn what you can do and what you cannot, to be deterred from attemptiong nothing out of respect to the judgemnet of others if it be not confirmed by your own judgement. never take for granted a common opinion against the promptings of your heart, considering that another age will reverse all unfounded opinions and settle them anew. Go forward and accept the gift of the creation and resign yourself to his will by obeying the promptings of the mind.
The more distinctly be become acquainted with our powers ad destiny, the more effectually do we exert ourselves to give that direction to our common employments, the less do we serve our circumstances, and the more do they serve us.
Every man likes to do what he can do well. But his is to do what god made you to do best. it is no trifling, no easy, no short work. it is a work that demands severe exerton, your head and your heart, and it never will be done. but then it brings the strength it needs for it is embraced with the whole affection of the soul. it makes the day bright. It clothes the world with beauty, the face of god with smiles. it is a path without an end, that beginning in the little pursuits of this world leads up to gods right hand, to pleasures forevermore.
The Miracle of our Being
The excercise of reason turns all our evil into good. Thus the moment reason assumes is empire over a man he finds that he has nothing low or inurious in him but it is under this dominion the root of power and beauty. his animal nature is ennobled by serving the soul. that which was deasing him will now prove the sinews of his character. His petulance is the love of order. out of his necessities grows the glorious structure of civilization.
he finds that whatever diadvantages he has labored under, whatever uncommon exertion he has been called to make, whatever poverty what sickness, unpopularity, mistake, even what deep sin he has been given up to commit; when once he is awakened to truth and virtue, penetrated with penitence, touched with the veraton of the almighty father and stung with the insatiable desire of making every day his soul more perfect, then all these the worst calamities, the sorest sorrow are changed, glorified. He owns his deep debt to them and acknowledges in them the omnipresent energy of the god who tranforms all things into the divine.
And wht is this admiration to which we would excite the soul? What is it but a perception of a mans true position in the universe and his consequent obligations. this is the whole moral and end of such views as i present.
Instead of making it his pride to be announced as a person of consideration in the state , or in his proffesion, in the fashionable world, or as rich, travelled, or powerful man, let him delight rather to make himself known in all companies by his action, and by his discourse as one who has attained unto self command; one who has thought in earnest upon the questions of human duty; one who carries with his presence the terrors and the beauty of justice; and who even in a moment when his friends ignorantly censure him is privy to the virtuaous action he has performed and those he has in hand.
Nature
Our
age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It
writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing
generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their
eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the
universe. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight
and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the
history of theirs?.... The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the feilds. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can intigrate all the parts, that is the poet.
Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the dearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. to be brothers, acquaintences, master or servant, is then a trible and a disturbance. i am the lover of uncontiaind and immortal beauty. In the wilderness i find something more dear and connate than streets or villages. in the tranquil landscape and especially in the distand line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
The misery of man appears like childish petulance when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this greeen ball which floats him thru the heavens.
The eye is the best of artists.
We are taught by geat actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowery and estate. it is his, if he will. he may divest mimself of it, he may creep into a corner and abdicate his kingdom as most men do but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and willl he takes up the world into himself.
Man is concious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, and Freedom arise and shine. This universal soul he calls Reason. It is not mine or thine but we are its, we are its property and men.
A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth and his desire to communicate it without losss. The corruption of man is followed by the corrution of language.
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. the laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. the visible world and the relation of its parts is the dial plate of the invisible. the axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics.
Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use. when a thing has served an end to the uttermost it is wholy new for an ulteriior service.
The moral law lies at the center of nature and dadiates to the circumference. it is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. all thing with which we deal preach to us.
Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop and impoverish it. An action is the perfection and publication of thought.
Nature is made tto conspire with spirit to emanicipate us.
The sensual man conforms thought to things...the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one estteems nature as rooted and fast ... the other as fluid and impresses his being there on. to him the refractory world is ductile and flexible. He invests dust and stones with humanity and makes them the words of the Reason. The imagination may be defined tto be the use with the reason makes of the material world.
The true philosopher and the true poet arre one and a beauty which is truth and a truth which is beauty is the aim of both.
the nobelest ministry of nature is to stand as the apperition of god. it is the organ thru which the universal spirit speaks to the individual and strives to lead back the individual to it.
The supreme being does not build up nature around us but puts it forth thru us as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves thru the pores of the old. as a plant upon the earth so man rests on the bosom of god. he is nourished by unfailing fountains and draws at his need inexhaustable power. who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? once inhale the upper air being admitted to behold the absolute nature of justice and truth and we learn that man has access to the enitire mind of his creator is himself the creator in the finite. this view wich admonishes me where tthe sources of wisdom and power lie and points to virture as to the golden key which opens tthe palace of eternity. It carries upon its face tthe highestt certificatte of truth because it animates me to create my own world thru the purification of my soul.
Build therefore your own world. as fast ass ou conform your life tto the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions a correspondent reoution in thing will atttend the infux of the spirit.
The American Scholar
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can intigrate all the parts, that is the poet.
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the dearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. to be brothers, acquaintences, master or servant, is then a trible and a disturbance. i am the lover of uncontiaind and immortal beauty. In the wilderness i find something more dear and connate than streets or villages. in the tranquil landscape and especially in the distand line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
The misery of man appears like childish petulance when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this greeen ball which floats him thru the heavens.
The eye is the best of artists.
We are taught by geat actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowery and estate. it is his, if he will. he may divest mimself of it, he may creep into a corner and abdicate his kingdom as most men do but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and willl he takes up the world into himself.
Man is concious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, and Freedom arise and shine. This universal soul he calls Reason. It is not mine or thine but we are its, we are its property and men.
A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth and his desire to communicate it without losss. The corruption of man is followed by the corrution of language.
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. the laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. the visible world and the relation of its parts is the dial plate of the invisible. the axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics.
Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use. when a thing has served an end to the uttermost it is wholy new for an ulteriior service.
The moral law lies at the center of nature and dadiates to the circumference. it is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. all thing with which we deal preach to us.
Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop and impoverish it. An action is the perfection and publication of thought.
Nature is made tto conspire with spirit to emanicipate us.
The sensual man conforms thought to things...the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one estteems nature as rooted and fast ... the other as fluid and impresses his being there on. to him the refractory world is ductile and flexible. He invests dust and stones with humanity and makes them the words of the Reason. The imagination may be defined tto be the use with the reason makes of the material world.
The true philosopher and the true poet arre one and a beauty which is truth and a truth which is beauty is the aim of both.
the nobelest ministry of nature is to stand as the apperition of god. it is the organ thru which the universal spirit speaks to the individual and strives to lead back the individual to it.
The supreme being does not build up nature around us but puts it forth thru us as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves thru the pores of the old. as a plant upon the earth so man rests on the bosom of god. he is nourished by unfailing fountains and draws at his need inexhaustable power. who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? once inhale the upper air being admitted to behold the absolute nature of justice and truth and we learn that man has access to the enitire mind of his creator is himself the creator in the finite. this view wich admonishes me where tthe sources of wisdom and power lie and points to virture as to the golden key which opens tthe palace of eternity. It carries upon its face tthe highestt certificatte of truth because it animates me to create my own world thru the purification of my soul.
Build therefore your own world. as fast ass ou conform your life tto the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions a correspondent reoution in thing will atttend the infux of the spirit.
The American Scholar
We
will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will
speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist,
because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also
inspires all men.
In
how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made
sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are
passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God?
The
state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation
from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good
finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
The orator distursts at first the the fitness of his frank confesssions. His want of knowledge of the persons he addresses until he finds hat he is the complement of his hearers that they drink his words because he fulfils for them their own nature. The deeper he dives into his privatest secretest presentiment to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptale, most public and universaly true. the people deligght in it tthe beter part of every man feels this is my music this is myself.
in self trust all the virtues are comprehended. free shuld the scholar be. free and brave. free even to the definition of freedom. without any hinderance that does not arise out of his own constitution. brave, for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very fuction puts behind him. fear always springs from ignorance.
the world is his who can see thru its pretension...see it to be a lie and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.
not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind. 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 which they do is the apple which tthe ages have desired to pluck now at last ripe and inviting nations to the harvest.
The unstable estimates of men croud to him whose mind is fillled with a truth as the heaped waves of the atlantic follow the moon
For a man, rightly viewed, comprehends the particular natures of all men. each philosopher, bard, or actor has only done for me as by a delegate what one day i can do for myself.
The orator distursts at first the the fitness of his frank confesssions. His want of knowledge of the persons he addresses until he finds hat he is the complement of his hearers that they drink his words because he fulfils for them their own nature. The deeper he dives into his privatest secretest presentiment to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptale, most public and universaly true. the people deligght in it tthe beter part of every man feels this is my music this is myself.
in self trust all the virtues are comprehended. free shuld the scholar be. free and brave. free even to the definition of freedom. without any hinderance that does not arise out of his own constitution. brave, for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very fuction puts behind him. fear always springs from ignorance.
the world is his who can see thru its pretension...see it to be a lie and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.
not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind. 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 which they do is the apple which tthe ages have desired to pluck now at last ripe and inviting nations to the harvest.
The unstable estimates of men croud to him whose mind is fillled with a truth as the heaped waves of the atlantic follow the moon
For a man, rightly viewed, comprehends the particular natures of all men. each philosopher, bard, or actor has only done for me as by a delegate what one day i can do for myself.
Literary
Ethics
Explore,
and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your
position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept
another's dogmatism. Why
should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of
truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth
also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make
yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and
if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in
all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature,
and in hope.
Thought is
all light,
and publishes itself to the universe.
It will speak, though you were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It
will flow out of your actions, your manners, and your face. It will
bring you friendships. It will impledge you to truth by the love and
expectation of generous minds. By virtue of the laws of that Nature,
which is one and perfect, it shall yield every sincere good that is
in the soul, to the scholar beloved of earth and heaven.
History
Every
revolution was first a thought in
one man's mind and when the same thought occurs in another man, it is
the key to
that era.
There
is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to
the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the
right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has
thought, he may think; what a saint has
felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he
can understand.
Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or
can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
When
the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to
him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then
pierces to the truth through all the confusion of tradition and the
caricature of institutions. Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at
intervals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of
God have, from time to time, walked among men and made their
commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.
Self
Reliance
A
man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we
recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty.
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 though his toil bestowed on that
plot of ground which is given to him to till.the powerr that resides in him is new in nature and none bbut he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
god will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
god will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
Trust
thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place
the divine providence has found for you, the society of your
contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done
so.and confided themselves childlike to the genuis of their age. betrayjg their perception that the absoltely trustworthy was seated at ttheir heart working thru their hands predominating in all their being and werr are now me and must accept in the highest mind the same ttrascendent destiny and not minors and invalieds in a protected corner not cowards fleeing before a revolution but guides redeemers and benefactors oveying the almighty effort and advancing on chaos and the dark.
Society
everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its
members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the
members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each
shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The
virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.
It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
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.
Whoso
would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal
palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore
if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of
your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have
the suffrage of the world.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this, the only right is what is after my constitution, the onlly wrong is what is against it. a man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to hink how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
I cannot consent to pay ffor a privilege where i have instrinsic right.
A man must consider what a blind mans bluff is this game of conformity. If i know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the instituions of his church. Do i not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontanious word? do i not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution hw will do no such thing? do i not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man but as a parish minister? HE is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. well most men have bound their eyes with one or another hankercheif, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. this conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. their every truth is not quite true. thier tow is not the real two their four not the real four so that every word they say chagrins us and we knowe not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to wquip us in the prison uniform of the party to which we adhere. we come to wear one cut of face and figure and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this, the only right is what is after my constitution, the onlly wrong is what is against it. a man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to hink how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
I cannot consent to pay ffor a privilege where i have instrinsic right.
A man must consider what a blind mans bluff is this game of conformity. If i know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the instituions of his church. Do i not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontanious word? do i not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution hw will do no such thing? do i not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man but as a parish minister? HE is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. well most men have bound their eyes with one or another hankercheif, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. this conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. their every truth is not quite true. thier tow is not the real two their four not the real four so that every word they say chagrins us and we knowe not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to wquip us in the prison uniform of the party to which we adhere. we come to wear one cut of face and figure and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.
Virtues
are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule.
There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good
action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a
fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are
done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, —
as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are
penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for
itself and not for a spectacle.
Ordinarily,
every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other
person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes
place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must
make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a
country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time
fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his
steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after
we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow
and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the
possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man
... and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of
a few stout and earnest persons
A
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 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 to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though
it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be
sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be
misunderstood? Pythagoras was
misunderstood, and Socrates,
and Jesus,
andLuther,
and Copernicus,
and Galileo,
and Newton,
and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is
to be misunderstood.
These
roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better
ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There
is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every
moment of its existence. Before
a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower
there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature
is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man
postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that
surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be
happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above
time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not whatDavid, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, —painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. the genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, tthe bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable are demonstrations of the self sufficing and there fore self relying soul.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not whatDavid, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, —painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. the genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, tthe bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable are demonstrations of the self sufficing and there fore self relying soul.
Henceforward
I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no
law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but
proximities.
I
must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If
you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you
cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide
my tastes or aversions. 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. If you are noble, I will
love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by
hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the
same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I
do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your
interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in
lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You
will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and,
if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.
Prayer looks abroad and askes for some foreign addition to come thru some foriegn virtue and loses itself in enless mazes of natural and supernatural and meiatorial and miraculous. 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. It is the spirit of god pronouncing his works good. but prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. it supposes dualism and not a unity in nature and conciousness. as soon as the man is at one with god he will not beg. he will then see prayer in all action.
as mens prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. the say with those foolish isrealites "let not god speak to us lest we die. speak thou speak any man with us and we will obey." Everywhere i am hindered of meeting god in my brother, because he has shut his own tmeple doors and recites fables merely of his brothers or his brothers brothers god.
The pupil takes the same delight in subordinationg everything to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. it will happen for a time that the pupil will find his intellectual power hs grown by the study of his masters mind but in all unbalanced minds the classification is idolized passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustable means, so htat the walls of the systtem blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe. the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. they cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see. how you can see " it must be that you somehow stole the light from us" they do not yet percieve that light unsystematic, indomitable will break into any cabin, even into theirs. let them chirp awhile and call it their own. if they are honest and do well, presently thier neat new pinfold will be ttoo strait and low. it will crack lean, rot and vanish while the immortal light, all young and joyful, million orbed million colored will beam over the universe as on the first morning.
Circles
There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.
the heart refuses to be imprisoned. in its first and narrowest pulse it already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and innumerable expasions.
Beware when the great god lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. it is as when a conflagration hs broken out in a great city and no man knows what is safe or where it will end.
The very hopes of man the thoughts of his heart the religion of nations the manners and morals of mankind are all the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind.
Has the naturalist or the chemist learned his raft who has e,plored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities who hass not yet discerned the deeper law wherof this is only a partial or approximate statement. nameley that like draws to like and the goods which belong to you gravitate to you nd need not be pursued with pains and cost?
I cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded knowledge as vacant and vain. Now for the first time seem i to know any thing rightly. The simplest words, we do not know what they mean exept when we love and aspire.
True conquest is the causing the black event to fade and dissapper as an early cloud of insignificant reseult in a history so large and advancing. the one thing witch we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be suprised out of our proprietyto lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why, in short to draw a new circle.
A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.
Prayer looks abroad and askes for some foreign addition to come thru some foriegn virtue and loses itself in enless mazes of natural and supernatural and meiatorial and miraculous. 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. It is the spirit of god pronouncing his works good. but prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. it supposes dualism and not a unity in nature and conciousness. as soon as the man is at one with god he will not beg. he will then see prayer in all action.
as mens prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. the say with those foolish isrealites "let not god speak to us lest we die. speak thou speak any man with us and we will obey." Everywhere i am hindered of meeting god in my brother, because he has shut his own tmeple doors and recites fables merely of his brothers or his brothers brothers god.
The pupil takes the same delight in subordinationg everything to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. it will happen for a time that the pupil will find his intellectual power hs grown by the study of his masters mind but in all unbalanced minds the classification is idolized passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustable means, so htat the walls of the systtem blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe. the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. they cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see. how you can see " it must be that you somehow stole the light from us" they do not yet percieve that light unsystematic, indomitable will break into any cabin, even into theirs. let them chirp awhile and call it their own. if they are honest and do well, presently thier neat new pinfold will be ttoo strait and low. it will crack lean, rot and vanish while the immortal light, all young and joyful, million orbed million colored will beam over the universe as on the first morning.
Circles
There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.
the heart refuses to be imprisoned. in its first and narrowest pulse it already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and innumerable expasions.
Beware when the great god lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. it is as when a conflagration hs broken out in a great city and no man knows what is safe or where it will end.
The very hopes of man the thoughts of his heart the religion of nations the manners and morals of mankind are all the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind.
Has the naturalist or the chemist learned his raft who has e,plored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities who hass not yet discerned the deeper law wherof this is only a partial or approximate statement. nameley that like draws to like and the goods which belong to you gravitate to you nd need not be pursued with pains and cost?
I cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded knowledge as vacant and vain. Now for the first time seem i to know any thing rightly. The simplest words, we do not know what they mean exept when we love and aspire.
True conquest is the causing the black event to fade and dissapper as an early cloud of insignificant reseult in a history so large and advancing. the one thing witch we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be suprised out of our proprietyto lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why, in short to draw a new circle.
A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.
Politics
Every
actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.
What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed
in the word Politic, which now for ages has
signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick?
The
less government we
have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less
confided power. The
antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of
private character, the growth of the Individual.
New
England Reformers
"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."
The
Conduct of Life
In
different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors,
as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, —
seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the
variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.
Shallow
men believe in luck, believe in circumstances...Strong men believe in
cause and effect.
People
seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession
of character.
Life
and Letters in New England
There
are always two parties, the party of the Past and the party of the
Future: the Establishment and the Movement. At times the
resistance is reanimated, the schism runs under the world and appears
in Literature, Philosophy, Church, State and social customs.
- The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself. Men grew reflective and intellectual. There was a new consciousness. The former generations acted under the belief that a shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world.
This perception is a sword such as was never drawn before. It divides and detaches bone and marrow, soul and body, yea, almost the man from himself. It is the age of severance, of dissociation, of freedom, of analysis, of detachment. Every man for himself. The public speaker disclaims speaking for any other; he answers only for himself. The social sentiments are weak; the sentiment of patriotism is weak; veneration is low; the natural affections feebler than they were. People grow philosophical about native land and parents and. relations. There is an universal resistance to ties rand ligaments once supposed essential to civil society. The new race is stiff, heady and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost laws. They have a neck of unspeakable tenderness; it winces at a hair. They rebel against theological as against political dogmas; against mediation, or saints, or any nobility in the unseen.
The age tends to solitude. The association of the time is accidental and momentary and hypocritical, the detachment intrinsic and progressive. The association is for power, merely, — for means; the end being the enlargement and independency of the individual.
- The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.
Civilization
The
end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
civilization
Books
Consider
what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest
and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in
a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their
learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible,
solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the
thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here
written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.
Misc.
The
virtues of society are the vices of the saints.
The
faith that stands on authority is not faith.
Can
anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
I
see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were
of one religion.
No comments:
Post a Comment