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GREATNESS
from
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
THERE is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power and goodness we
have, so much more the energy of that aim. Every human being has a right to it,
and in the pursuit we do not stand in each other's way. For it has a long scale
of degrees, a wide variety of views, and every aspirant, by his success in the
pursuit, does not hinder but helps his competitors. I might call it
completeness, but that is later, ---perhaps adjourned for ages. I prefer to call
it Greatness. It is the fulfilment of a natural tendency in each man. It is a
fruitful study. It is the best tonic to the young soul. And no man is unrelated;
therefore we admire eminent men, not for themselves, but as representatives. It
is very certain that we ought not to be and shall not be contented with any goal
we have reached. Our aim is no less than greatness; that which invites all,
belongs to us all, to which we are all sometimes untrue, cowardly, faithless,
but of which we never quite despair, and which, in every sane moment, we resolve
to make our own. It is also the only platform on which all men can meet. What
anecdotes of any man do we wish to hear or read? Only the best. Certainly not
those in which he was degraded to the level of dulness or vice, but those in
which he rose above all competition by obeying a light that shone to him alone.
This is the worthiest history of the world.
Greatness,---what is it? Is there not some injury to us, some insult in the
word? What we commonly call greatness is only such in our barbarous or infant
experience. 'T is not the soldier, not Alexander or Bonaparte or Count Moltke
surely, who represent the highest force of mankind; not the strong hand, but
wisdom and civility, the creation of laws, institutions, letters and art. These
we call by distinction the humanities; these, and not the strong arm and brave
heart, which are also indispensable to their defence. For the scholars represent
the intellect, by which man is man; the intellect and the moral sentiment,-which
in the last analysis can never be separated. Who can doubt the potency of an
individual mind, who sees the shock given to torpid races---torpid for ages---by
Mahornet; a vibration propagated over Asia and Africa? What of Menu? What of
Buddha? of Shakspeare? of Newton? of Franklin?
There are certain points of identity in which these masters agree. Self-respect
is the early form in which greatness appears. The man in the tavern maintains
his opinion, though the whole crowd takes the other side; we are at once drawn
to him. The porter or truckman refuses a reward for finding your purse, or for
pulling you drowning out of the river. Thereby, with the service, you have got a
moral lift. You say of some new person, That man will go far,-for you see in his
manners that the recognition of him by others is not necessary to him. And what
a bittersweet sensation when we have gone to pour out our acknowledgment of a
man's nobleness, and found him quite indifferent to our good opinion! They may
well fear Fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim; but he who rests on what
he is, has a destiny above destiny, and can make mouths at Fortune. If a man's
centrality is incomprehensible to us, we may as well snub the sun. There is
something in Archimedes or in Luther or Samuel Johnson that needs no protection.
There is somewhat in the true scholar which he cannot be laughed out of, nor be
terrified or bought off from. Stick to your own; don't inculpate yourself in the
local, social or national crime, but follow the path your genius traces like the
galaxy of heaven for you to walk in.
A sensible person will soon see the folly and wickedness of thinking to please.
Sensible men are very rare. A sensible man does not brag, avoids introducing the
names of his creditable companions, omits himself as habitually as another man
obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is content with putting his fact or theme
simply on its ground. You shall not tell me that your commercial house, your
partners or yourself arc of importance; you shall not tell me that you have
learned to know men; you shall make me feel that; your saying so unsays it. You
shall not enumerate your brilliant acquaintances, nor tell me by their titles
what books you have read. I am to infer that you keep good company by your
better information and manners, and to infer your reading from the wealth and
accuracy of your conversation.
Young men think that the manly character requires that they should go to
California, or to India, or into the army. When they have learned that the
parlor and the college and the counting-room demand as much courage as the sea
or the camp, they will be willing to consult their own strength and education in
their choice of place.
There are to each function and department of Nature supplementary men: to
geology, sinewy, out-of-doors men, with a taste for mountains and rocks, a quick
eye for differences and for chemical changes. Give such, first a course in
chemistry, and then a geological survey. Others find a charm and a profession in
the natural history of man and the mammalia or related animals; others in
ornithology, or fishes, or insects; others in plants; others in the elements of
which the whole world is made. These lately have stimulus to their study through
the extraordinary revelations of the spectroscope that the sun and the planets
are made in part or in whole of the same elements as the earth is. Then there is
the boy who is born with a taste for the sea, and must go thither if he has to
run away from his father's house to the forecastle; another longs for travel in
foreign lands; another will be a lawyer; another, an astronomer; an other, a
painter, sculptor, architect or engineer. Thus there is not a piece of Nature in
any kind but a man is born, who, as his genius opens, aims slower or faster to
dedicate himself to that. Then there is the poet, the philosopher, the
politician, the orator, the clergyman, the physician. 'T is gratifying to see
this adaptation of man to the world, and to every part and particle of it.
Many readers re member that Sir Humphry Davy said, when he was praised for his
important discoveries, "My best discovery was Michael Faraday." In 1848 I had
the privilege of hearing Professor Faraday deliver, in the Royal Institution in
London, a lecture on what he called Diamagnetism, -by which he meant
cross-magnetism; and he showed us various experiments on certain gases, to prove
that whilst ordinarily magnetism of steel is from north to south, in other
substances, gases, it acts from east to west. And further experiments led him to
the theory that every chemical substance would be found to have its own, and a
different, polarity. I do not know how far his experiments and others have been
pushed in this matter, but one fact is clear to me, that diamagnetism is a law
of the mind, to the full extent of Faraday's idea; namely, that every mind has a
new compass, a new north, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius
and aim from every other mind; as every man, with whatever family re semblances,
has a new countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts and new character.
Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason and the moral sentiment,
there is a teaching for him from within which is leading him in a new path, and,
the more it is trusted, separates and signalizes him, while it makes him more
important and necessary to society. We call this specialty the bias of each
individual. And none of us will ever accomplish any thing excellent or
commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
Swedenborg called it the pro prium, ---not a thought shared with others, but
constitutional to the man. A point of education that I can never too much insist
upon is this tenet that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and
that it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains
his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points
always in one direction to his proper path, with more or less variation from any
other man's. He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it; learns to
be at home with himself; learns to watch the delicate hints and insights that
come to him, and to have the entire assurance of his own mind. And in this
self-respect or hearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may
say, or need never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect,
genius; in practice, talent;-not to imitate or surpass a particular man in his
way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method, style, wit,
eloquence. It is easy for a commander to command. Clinging to Nature, or to that
province of Nature which he knows, he makes no mistakes, but works after her
laws and at her own pace, so that his doing, which is perfectly natural, appears
miraculous to dull people. Montluc, the great marshal of France, says of the
Genoese admiral, Andrew Doria, "It seemed as if the sea stood in awe of this
man." And a kindred genius, Nelson, said, "I feel that I am fitter to do the
action than to de scribe it." Therefore I will say that another trait of
greatness is facility.
This necessity of resting on the real, of speaking your private thought and
experience, few young men apprehend. Set ten men to write their journal for one
day, and nine of them will leave out their thought, or proper result, that is,
their net experience,---and lose themselves in misreporting the supposed
experience of other people. Indeed I think it an essential caution to young
writers, that they shall not in their discourse leave out the one thing which
the discourse was written to say. Let that belief which you hold alone, have
free course. I have observed that in all public speaking, the rule of the orator
begins, not in the array of his facts, but when his deep conviction, and the
right and necessity he feels to convey that conviction to his audience,-when
these shine and burn in his address; when the thought which he stands for gives
its own authority to him, adds to him a grander personality, gives him valor,
breadth and new intellectual power, so that not he, but mankind, seems to speak
through his lips. There is a certain transfiguration; all great orators have it,
and men who wish to be orators simulate it.
If we should ask ourselves what is this self-respect, it would carry us to the
highest problems. It is our practical perception of the Deity in man. It has its
deep foundations in religion. If you have ever known a good mind among the
Quakers, you will have found that is the element of their faith. As they express
it, it might be thus: "I do not pretend to any commandment or large revelation,
but if at any time I form some plan, propose a journey or a course of conduct, I
perhaps find a silent obstacle in my mind that I cannot account for. Very
well,-I let it lie, thinking it may pass away, but if it do not pass away I
yield to it, obey it. You ask me to describe it. I cannot describe it. It is not
an oracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, nor a law; it is too simple to be
described, it is but a grain of mustard-seed, but such as it is, it is something
which the contradiction of all mankind could not shake, and which the consent of
all mankind could not confirm."
You are rightly fond of certain books or men that you have found to excite your
reverence and emulation. But none of these can compare with the greatness of
that counsel which is open to you in happy solitude. I mean that there is for
you the following of an inward leader, -a slow discrimination that there is for
each a Best Counsel which enjoins the fit word and the fit act for every moment.
And the path of each, pursued, leads to greatness. How grateful to find in man
or woman a new emphasis of their own.
But if the first rule is to obey your native bias, to accept that work for which
you were inwardly formed,-the second rule is concentration, which doubles its
force. Thus if you are a scholar, be that. The same laws hold for you as for the
laborer. The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else. Let the
student mind his own charge; sedulously wait every morning for the news
concerning the structure of the world which the spirit will give him.
No way has been found for making heroism easy, even for the scholar. Labor, iron
labor, is for him. The world was created as an audience for him; the atoms of
which it is made are opportunities. Read the performance of Bentley, of Gibbon,
of Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Laplace. "He can toil terribly," said Cecil
of Sir Walter Raleigh. These few words sting and bite and lash us when we are
frivolous. Let us get out of the way of their blows by making them true of
ourselves. There is so much to be done that we ought to begin quickly to bestir
ourselves. This day-labor of ours, we confess, has hitherto a certain emblematic
air, like the annual ploughing and sewing of the Emperor of China. Let us make
it an honest sweat. Let the scholar measure his valor by his power to cope with
intellectual giants. Leave others to count votes and calculate stocks. His
courage is to weigh Plato, judge Laplace, know Newton, Faraday, judge of Darwin,
criticise Kant and Swedenborg, and on all these arouse the central courage of
insight. The scholar's courage should be as terrible as the Cid's, though it
grow out of spiritual nature, not out of brawn. Nature, when she adds
difficulty, adds brain.
With this respect to the bias of the individual mind add, what is consistent
with it, the most catholic receptivity for the genius of others. The day will
come when no badge, uniform or medal will be worn; when the eye, which carries
in it planetary influences from all the stars, will indicate rank fast enough by
exerting power. For it is true that the stratification of crusts in geology is
not more precise than the degrees of rank in minds. A man will say: "I am born
to this position; I must take it, and neither you nor I can help or hinder me.
Surely, then, I need not fret myself to guard my own dignity." The great man
loves the conversation or the book that convicts him, not that which soothes or
flatters him. He makes himself of no reputation; he conceals his learning,
conceals his charity. For the highest wisdom does not concern itself with
particular men, but with man enamoured with the law and the Eternal Source. Say
with Antoninus, "If the picture is good, who cares who made it? What matters it
by whom the good is done, by yourself or an other?" If it is the truth, what
matters who said it? If it was right, what signifies who did it? All greatness
is in degree, and there is more above than below. Where were your own intellect,
if greater had not lived? And do you know what the right meaning of Fame is? It
is that sympathy, rather that fine element by which the good become partners of
the greatness of their superiors.
Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility.
No aristocrat, no prince born to the purple, can begin to compare with the
self-respect of the saint. Why is he so lowly, but that he knows that he can
well afford it, resting on the largeness of God in him? I have read in an old
book that Barcena the Jesuit confessed to another of his order that when the
Devil appeared to him in his cell one night, out of his profound humility he
rose up to meet him, and prayed him to sit down in his chair, for he was more
worthy to sit there than himself.
Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is
my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. The .populace will say,
with Horne Tooke, "If you would be powerful, pretend to be powerful." I prefer
to say, with the old Hebrew prophet, "Seekest thou great things? seek them not;"
or, what was said of the Spanish prince, "The more you took from him, the
greater he appeared," Plus on lui ote, plus it est grand.
Scintillations of greatness appear here and there in men of unequal character,
and arc by no means confined to the cultivated and so-called moral class. It is
easy to draw traits from Napoleon, who was not generous nor just, but was
intellectual and knew the law of things. Napoleon commands our respect by his
enormous self-trust, the habit of seeing with his own eyes, never the surface,
but to the heart of the matter, whether it was a road, a cannon, a character, an
officer, or a king,-and by the speed and security of his action in the premises,
always new. He has left a library of manuscripts, a multitude of sayings, every
one of widest application. He was a man who always fell on his feet. When one of
his favorite schemes missed, he had the faculty of taking up his genius, as he
said, and of carrying it somewhere else. "Whatever they may tell you, believe
that one fights with cannon as with fists; when once the fire is begun, the
least want of ammunition renders what you have done already useless." I find it
easy to translate all his technics into all of mine, and his official advices
are to me more literary and philosophical than the memoirs of the Academy. His
advice to his brother, King Joseph of Spain, was: "I have only one counsel for
you,-Be Master." Depth of intellect relieves even the ink of crime with a fringe
of light. We perhaps look on its crimes as experiments of a universal student;
as he may read any book who reads all books, and as the English judge in old
times, when learning was rare, forgave a culprit who could read and write. It is
difficult to find greatness pure. Well, I please myself with its diffusion; to
find a spark of true fire amid much corruption. It is some guaranty. I hope, for
the health of the soul which has this generous blood. How many men, detested in
contemporary hostile history, of whom, now that the mists have rolled away, we
have learned to correct our old estimates, and to see them as, on the whole,
instruments of great benefit. Diderot was no model, but unclean as the society
in which he lived; yet was he the best-natured man in France, and would help any
wretch at a pinch. His humanity knew no bounds. A poor scribbler who had written
a lampoon against him and wished to dedicate it to a pious Duc d'Orleans, came
with it in his poverty to Diderot, and Diderot, pitying the creature, wrote the
dedication for him, and so raised five-and-twenty louis to save his famishing
lampooner alive.
Meantime we hate snivelling. I do not wish you to surpass others in any narrow
or professional or monkish way. We like the natural greatness of health and wild
power. I confess that I am as much taken by it in boys, and sometimes in people
not normal, nor educated, nor presentable, nor church-members, ---even in
persons open to the suspicion of irregular and immoral living, in Bohemians,-as
in more orderly examples. For we must remember that [ in the lives of soldiers,
sailors and men of large adventure, many of the stays and guards of our
household life are wanting, and yet the opportunities and incentives to sublime
daring and performance are often close at hand. We must have some charity for
the sense of the people, which admires natural power, and will elect it over
virtuous men who have less. It has this excuse, that natural is really allied to
moral power, and may always be expected to approach it by its own instincts.
Intellect at least is not stupid, and will see the force of morals over men, if
it does not itself obey. Henry VII.of England was a wise king. When Gerald, Earl
of Kildare, who was in rebellion against him, was brought to London, and
examined before the Privy Council, one said, "All Ireland cannot govern this
Earl." "Then let this Earl govern all Ireland," replied the King.
It is noted of some scholars, like Swift and Gibbon and Donne, that they
pretended to vices which they had not, so much did they hate hypocrisy. William
Blake the artist frankly says, "I never knew a bad man in whom there was not
something very good." Bret Harte has pleased himself with noting and recording
the sudden virtue blazing in the wild reprobates of the ranches and mines of
California.
Men are ennobled by morals and by intellect; but those two elements know each
other and always beckon to each other, until at last they meet in the man, if be
is to be truly great. The man who sells you a lamp shows you that the flame of
oil, which contented you before, casts a strong shade in the path of the
petroleum which he lights behind it; and this again casts a shadow in the path
of the electric light. So does intellect when brought into the presence of
character; character puts out that light. Goethe, in his correspondence with his
Grand Duke of Weimar, does not shine. We can see that the Prince had the
advantage of the Olympian genius. It is more plainly seen in the correspondence
between Voltaire and Frederick of Prussia. Voltaire is brilliant, nimble and
various, but Frederick has the superior tone. But it is curious that Byron
writes down to Scott; Scott writes up to him. The Greeks surpass all men till
they face the Romans, when Roman character prevails over Greek genius. Whilst
degrees of intellect interest only classes of men who pursue the same studies,
as chemists or astronomers, mathematicians or linguists, and have no attraction
for the crowd, there are always men who have a more catholic genius, are really
great as men, and inspire universal enthusiasm. A great style of hero draws
equally all classes, all the extremes of society, till we say the very dogs
believe in him. We have had such examples in this country, in Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, and the seamen's preacher, Father Taylor; in England, Charles James
Fox; in Scotland, Robert Burns; and in France, though it is less intelligible to
us, Voltaire. Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the most remarkable example of this
class that we have seen,---a man who was at home and welcome with the humblest,
and with a spirit and a practical vein in the times of terror that commanded the
admiration of the wisest. His heart was as great as the world, but there was no
room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.
These may serve as local examples to indicate a magnetism which is probably
known better and finer to each scholar in the little Olympus of his own
favorites, and which makes him require geniality and humanity in his heroes.
What are these but the promise and the preparation of a day when the air of the
world shall be purified by nobler society, when the measure of greatness shall
be usefulness in the highest sense, greatness consisting in truth, reverence and
good will?
Life is made of illusions, and a very common one is the opinion you hear
expressed in every village: "0 yes, if I lived in New York or Philadelphia,
Cambridge or New Haven or Boston or Andover, there might be fit society; but it
happens that there are no fine young men, no superior women in my town." You may
hear this every day; but it is a shallow remark. Ah! have you yet to learn that
the eye altering alters all; that "the world is an echo which returns to each of
us what we say?" It is not examples of greatness, but sensibility to see them,
that is wanting. The good botanist will find flowers between the street
pavements, and any man filled with an idea or a purpose will find examples and
illustrations and coadjutors wherever he goes. Wit is a magnet to find wit, and
character to find character. Do you not know that people are as those with whom
they converse? And if all or any are heavy to me, that fact accuses me. Why
complain, as if a man's debt to his inferiors were not at least equal to his
debt to his superiors? If men were equals, the waters would not move; but the
difference of level which makes Niagara a cataract, makes eloquence,
indignation, poetry, in him who finds there is much to communicate. With
self-respect then there must be in the aspirant the strong fellow feeling, the
humanity, which makes men of all classes warm to him as their leader and
representative.
We are thus forced to express our instinct of the truth by exposing the failures
of experience. The man whom we have not seen, in whom no regard of self degraded
the adorer of the laws, -who by governing himself governed others; sportive in
manner, but inexorable in act; who sees longevity in his cause; whose aim is
always distinct to him; who is suffered to be himself in society; who carries
fate in his eye;-he it is whom we seek, encouraged in every good hour that here
or hereafter he shall be found.
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