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INSPIRATION
from
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
IT was Watt who told King George III. that he deal in an article of which kings
were said to be fond, Power. 'T is certain that the one thing we wish to know
is, where power is to be bought. But we want a finer kind than that of commerce;
and every reasonable man would give a n y price of house and land and future pro
vision, for condensation, concentration and the recalling at will of high mental
energy. Our money is only a second best. We would jump to buy power with it,
that is, intellectual perception moving the will. That is first best. But we
don't know where the shop is. If Watt knew, he forgot to tell us the number of
the street. There are times when the intellect is so active that everything
seems to run to meet it. Its supplies are found without much thought as to
studies. Knowledge runs to the man, and the man runs to knowledge. In spring,
when the snow melts, the maple-trees flow with sugar, and you cannot get tubs
fast enough; but it is only for a few days. The hunter on the prairie, at the
right season, has no need of choosing his ground; east, west, by the river, by
the timber, he is everywhere near his game. But the favorable conditions are
rather the exception than the rule.
The aboriginal man, in geology and in the dim light of Darwin's microscope, is
not an engaging figure. We are very glad that he ate his fishes and snails and
marrow-bones out of our sight and hearing, and that his doleful experiences were
got through with so very long ago. They combed his mane, they pared his nails,
cut off his tail, set him on end, sent him to school and made him pay taxes,
before he could begin to write his sad story for the compassion or the
repudiation of his descendants, who are all but unanimous to disown him. We must
take him as we find him,-pretty well on in his education, and, in all our
knowledge of him, an interesting creature with a will, an invention, an
imagination, a con science and an inextinguishable hope.
The Hunterian law of arrested development is not confined to vegetable and
animal structure, but reaches the human intellect also. In the savage man,
thought is infantile; and, in the civilized, unequal and ranging up and down a
long scale. In the best races it is rare and imperfect. In happy moments it is
reinforced, and carries out what were rude suggestions to larger scope and to
clear and grand conclusions. The poet cannot see a natural phenomenon which does
not express to him" correspondent fact in his mental experience; he is made
aware of a power to carry on and complete the metamorphosis of natural into
spiritual facts. Everything which we hear for the first time was expected by the
mind: the newest discovery was expected. In the mind we call this enlarged power
Inspiration. I believe that nothing great and lasting can be done except by
inspiration, by leaning on the secret augury. The man's insight and power are
interrupted and occasional; he can see and do this or that cheap task, at will,
but it steads him not beyond. He is fain to make the ulterior step by mechanical
means. It cannot so be done, That ulterior step is to be also by inspiration; if
not through him, then by another man. Every real step is by what a poet called
"lyrical glances," by lyrical facility, and never by main strength and
ignorance. Years of mechanic toil will only seem to do it; it will not so be
done.
Inspiration is like yeast. 'T is no matter in which of half a dozen ways you
procure the infection; you can apply one or the other equally well to your
purpose, and get your loaf of bread. And every earnest workman, in whatever
kind, knows some favorable conditions for his task. When I wish to write on any
topic, 't is of no consequence what kind of book or man gives me a hint or a
motion, nor how far off that is from my topic.
Power is the first good. Rarey can tame a wild horse; but if he could give speed
to a dull horse, were not that better? The toper finds, without asking, the road
to the tavern, but the poet does not know the pitcher that holds his nectar.
Every youth should know the way to prophecy as surely as the miller understands
how to let on the water or the engineer the steam. A rush of thoughts is the
only conceivable prosperity that can come to us. Fine clothes, equipages, villa,
park, social consideration, cannot cover up real poverty and insignificance,
from my own eyes or from others like mine
Thoughts let us into realities. Neither miracle nor magic nor any religious
tradition, not the immortality of the private soul is incredible, after we have
experienced an insight, a thought. I think it comes to some men but once in
their life, sometimes a religious impulse, sometimes an intellectual insight.
But what we want is consecutiveness. 'T is with us a flash of light, then a long
darkness, then a flash again. The separation of our days by sleep almost
destroys identity. Could we but turn these fugitive sparkles into an astronomy
of Copernican worlds! With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and
to-day together. Their house and trade and families serve them as ropes to give
a coarse continuity. But they have forgotten the thoughts of yester day; they
say to day what occurs to them, and something else tomorrow. This insecurity of
posses sion, this quick ebb of power,-as if life were a thunder storm wherein
you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see you r hand, - tantalizes
us. We cannot make the inspiration consecutive. A glimpse, a point of view that
by its brightness excludes the purview is granted, but no panorama. A fuller
inspiration should cause the point to flow and become a line, should bend the
line and complete the circle. To-day the electric machine will not work, no
spark will pass; then presently the world is all a cat's back, all sparkle and
shock. Sometimes there is no sea-fire, and again the sea is aglow to the
horizon. Sometimes the Aeolian harp is dumb all day in the window, and again it
is garrulous and tells all the secrets of the world. In June the morning is
noisy with birds; in August they are already getting old and silent.
Hence arises the question, Are these moods in any degree within control? If we
knew how to command them! But where is the Franklin with kite or rod for this
fluid?-a Franklin who can draw off electricity from Jove himself, and convey it
into the arts of life, in spire men, take them off their feet, withdraw them
from the life of trifles and gain and comfort, and make the world transparent,
so that they can read the symbols of Nature? What metaphysician has undertaken
to enumerate the tonics of the torpid mind, the rules for the recovery of
inspiration? That is least within control which is best in them. Of the modus of
inspiration we have no knowledge. But in the experience of meditative men there
is a certain agreement as to the conditions of reception. Plato, in his seventh
Epistle, notes that the perception is only accomplished by long familiarity with
the objects of intellect, and a life according to the things themselves. "Then a
light, as if leaping from a fire, will on a sudden be enkindled in the soul, and
will then itself nourish itself." He said again, "The man who is his own master
knocks in vain at the doors of poetry." The artists must be sacrificed to their
art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. What is a
man good for without enthusiasm? and what is enthusiasts but this daring of ruin
for its object? There are thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls; we are not
the less drawn to them. The moth flies into the flame of the lamp; and
Swedenborg must solve the problems that haunt him, though he be crazed or
killed.
There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'T is the doctrine of faith
over works. The raptures of goodness are as old as history and new with this
morning's sun. The legends of Arabia, Persia and India are of the same
complexion as the Christian. Socrates, Menu, Confucius, Zertusht,--we recognize
in all of them this ardor to solve the hints of thought.
I hold that ecstasy will be found normal, or only an example on a higher plane
of the same gentle gravitation by which stones fall and rivers run. Experience
identifies. Shakspeare seems to you miraculous; but the wonderful
juxtapositions, parallelisms, transfers, which his genius effected, were all to
him locked together as links of a chain, and the mode precisely as conceivable
and familiar to higher intelligence as [ 810 the index-making of the literary
hack. The result of the hack is inconceivable to the type-setter who waits for
it.
We must prize our own youth. Later, we want heat to execute our plans: the good
will, the knowledge, the whole armory of means are all present, but a certain
heat that once used not to fail, refuses its office, and all is vain until this
capricious fuel is supplied. It seems a semi-animal heat; as if tea, or wine, or
sea-air, or mountains, or a genial companion, or a new thought suggested in book
or conversation could fire the train, wake the fancy and the clear perception.
Pit-coal, -where to find it? 'T is of no use that your engine is made like a
watch, -that you are a good workman, and know how to drive it, if there is no
coal. We are waiting until some tyrannous idea emerging out of heaven shall
seize and bereave us of this liberty with which we are falling abroad. Well, we
have the same hint or suggestion, day by day. "I am not," says the man, "at the
top of my condition to-day, but the favorable hour will come when I can command
all my powers, and when that will be easy to do which is at this moment
impossible." See how the passions augment our force,-anger, love,
ambition'-sometimes sympathy, and the expectation of men. Garrick said that on
the stage his great paroxysms surprised himself as much as his audience. If this
is true on this low plane, it is true on the higher. Swedenborg's genius was the
perception of the doctrine that "The Lord flows into the spirits of angels and
of men;" and all poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when
they were superior to themselves,-when a light, a freedom, a power came to them
which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other
times; so that a religious poet once told me that he valued his poems, not
because they were his, but because they were not. He thought the angels brought
them to him.
Jacob Behmen said: "Art has not wrote here, nor was there any time to consider
how to set it punctually down according to the right understanding of the
letters, but all was ordered according to the direction of the spirit, which
often went on haste,-so that the penman's hand, by reason he was not accustomed
to it, did often shake. And, though I could have written in a more accurate,
fair and plain manner, the burning fire often forced forward with speed, and the
hand and pen must hasten directly after it, for it comes and goes as a sudden
shower. In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many
years together at an university."
The depth of the notes which we accidentally sound on the strings of Nature is
out of all proportion to our taught and ascertained faculty, and might teach us
what strangers and novices we are, vagabond in this universe of pure power, to
which we have only the smallest key. Herrick said--
"'T is not every day that I
Fitted am to prophesy;
No, but when the spirit fills
The fantastic panicles,
Full of fire, then I write
As the Godhead doth indite.
Thus enraged, my lines are hurled,
Like the Sibyl's, through the world:
Look how next the holy fire
Either slakes, or doth retire;
So the fancy cools.-till when
That brave spirit comes again."
Bonaparte said: "There is no man more Pusillanimous than I, when I make a
military plan. I magnify all the dangers, and all the possible mischances. I am
in an agitation utterly painful. That does not prevent me from appearing quite
serene to the persons who surround me. I am like a woman with child, and when my
resolution is taken, all is forgot except whatever can make it succeed."
There are, to be sure, certain risks in this presentiment of the decisive
perception, as in the use of ether or alcohol:
"Great wits to madness nearly are allied;
Both serve to make our poverty our pride."
Aristotle said: "No great genius was ever without some mixture of madness, nor
can anything grand or superior to the voice of common mortals be spoken except
by the agitated soul." W e might say of these memorable moments of life that we
were in them, not they in us. We found our selves by happy for tune in an
illuminated portion of meteorous zone, and passed o u t of it again, so aloof
was it from any will of ours. "It is a principle of war," said Napoleon, "that
when you can use the lightning it is better than cannon."
How many sources of inspiration can we count? As many as our affinities. But to
a practical purpose we may reckon a few of these.
1. Health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air, landscape
and bodily exercise, on the mind. The Arabs say that "Allah does not count from
life the days spent in the chase," that is, those are thrown in. Plato thought
"exercise would almost cure a guilty conscience." Sydney Smith said: "You will
never break down in a speech on the day when you have walked twelve miles."
I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health. Sleep
benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also by dreams,
into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped. Life is in short cycles
or periods; we are quickly tired, but we have rapid rallies. A man is spent by
his work, starved, prostrate; he will not lift his hand to save his life; he can
never think more. He sinks into deep sleep and wakes with renewed youth, with
hope, courage, fertile in resources, and keen for daring adventure.
"Sleep is like death, and after sleep
The world seems new begun:
White thoughts stand luminous and firm,
Like statues in the sun;
Refreshed from supersensuous founts,
The soul to clearer vision mounts,"
A man must be able to escape from his cares and fears, as well as from hunger
and want of sleep; so that another Arabian proverb has its coarse truth: "When
the belly is full, it says to the head, Sing, fellow!" The perfection of writing
is when mind and body are both in key; when the mind finds perfect obedience in
the body. And wine, no doubt, and all fine food, as of delicate fruits, furnish
some elemental wisdom. And the fire, too, as it burns in the chimney; for I
fancy that my logs, which have grown so long in sun and wind by Walden, are a
kind of muses. So of all the particulars of health and exercise and fit
nutriment and tonics. Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry
and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.
2. The experience of writing letters is one of the keys to the modus of
inspiration. When we have ceased for a long time to have any fulness of thoughts
that once made a diary a joy as well as a necessity, and have come to believe
that an image or a happy turn of expression is no longer at our command, in
writing a letter to a friend we may find that we rise to thought and to a
cordial power of expression that costs no effort, and it seems to us that this
facility may be indefinitely applied and resumed. The wealth of the mind in this
respect of seeing is like that of a looking-glass, which is never tired or worn
by any multitude of objects which it reflects, You may carry it all round the
world, it is ready and perfect as ever for new millions.
3. Another consideration, though it will not so much interest young men, will
cheer the heart of older scholars, namely that there is diurnal and secular
rest. As there is this daily renovation of sensibility, so it sometimes if
rarely happens that after a season of decay or eclipse, darkening months or
years, the faculties revive to their fullest force. One of the best facts I know
in metaphysical science is Niebuhr's joyful record that after his genius for
interpreting history had failed him for several years, this divination returned
to him, As this rejoiced me, so does Herbert's poem The Flower, His health had
broken down early, he had lost his muse, and in this poem he says:
"And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write:
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: 0 my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night."
His poem called The Forerunners also has supreme interest. I understand The
Harbingers to refer to the signs of age and decay which he detects in himself,
not only in his constitution, but in his fancy and his facility and grace in
writing verse; and he signalizes his delight in this skill, and his pain that
the Herricks, Lovelaces and Marlowes, or whoever else, should use the like
genius in language to sensual purpose, and consoles himself that his own faith
and the divine life in him remain to him unchanged, unharmed.
4. The power of the will is sometimes sublime; and what is will for, if it
cannot help us in emergencies? Seneca says of an almost fatal sickness that
befell him, "The thought of my father, who could not have sustained such a blow
as my death, restrained me; I commanded myself to live." Goethe said to
Eckermann, "I work more easily when the barometer is high than when it is low.
Since I know this, I endeavor, when the barometer is low, to counteract the
injurious effect by greater exertion, and my attempt is successful."
"To the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift." Yes, for they know
how to give you in one moment the solution of the riddle you have pondered for
months. "Had I not lived with Mirabeau," says Dumont, "I never should have known
all that can be done in one day, or, rather, in an interval of twelve hours. A
day to him was of more value than a week or a month to others. To-morrow to him
was not the same impostor as to most others."
5. Plutarch affirms that "souls are naturally endowed with the faculty of
prediction, and the chief cause that excites this faculty and virtue is a
certain temperature of air and winds." My anchorite thought it "sad that
atmospheric influences should bring to our dust the communion of the soul with
the Infinite." But I am glad that the atmosphere should be an excitant, glad to
find the dull rock itself to be deluged with Deity, to be theist, Christian,
poetic. The fine influences of the morning few can explain, but all will admit.
Goethe acknowledges them in the poem in which he dislodges the nightingale from
her place as Leader of the Muses:
MUSAGETES
"Often in deep midnights
I called on the sweet muses.
No dawn shines,
And no day will appear:
But at the right hour
The lamp brings me pious light,
That it, instead of Aurora or Phoebus,
May enliven my quiet industry.
But they left me lying in sleep
Dull, and not to be enlivened,
And after every late morning
Followed unprofitable days.
When now the Spring stirred,
I said to the nightingales:
'Dear nightingales, trill
Early, 0, early before my lattice,
Wake me out of the deep sleep
Which mightily chains the young man.'
But the love-filled singers
Poured by night before my window
Their sweet melodies,---
Kept awake my dear soul,
Roused tender new longings
In my lately touched bosom,
And so the night passed,
And Aurora found me sleeping:
Yea, hardly did the sun wake me.
At last it has become summer,
And at the first glimpse of morning
The busy early fly stings me
Out of my sweet slumber.
Unmerciful she returns again:
When often the half-awake victim
Impatiently drives her off.
She calls hither the unscrupulous sisters,
And from my eyelids
Sweet sleep must depart.
Vigorous, I spring from my couch,
Seek the beloved Muses,
Find them in the beech grove.
Pleased to receive me;
And I thank the annoying insect
For many a golden hour.
Stand, then, for me, ye tormenting creatures,
Highly praised by the poet
As the true Musagetes."
The French have a proverb to the effect that not the day only, but all things
have their morning, --"Il n'y a que le matin en routes choses." And it is a
primal rule to defend your morning, to keep all its dews on, and with fine
foresight to relieve it from any jangle of affairs-even from the question, Which
task? I remember a capital prudence of old President Quincy, who told me that he
never went to bed at night until he had laid out the studies for the next
morning. I believe that in our good days a well-ordered mind has a new thought
awaiting it every morning. And hence, eminently thoughtful men, from the time of
Pythagoras down, have insisted on an hour of solitude every day, to meet their
own mind and learn what oracle it has to impart. If a new view of life or mind
gives us joy, so does new arrangement. I don't know but we take as much delight,
in finding the right place for an old observation, as in a new thought.
6. Solitary converse with Nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful
words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, the
October woods! I confide that my reader knows these delicious secrets, has
perhaps
Slighted Minerva's learned tongue,
But leaped with joy when on the wind the shell
of Clio rung.
Are you poetical, impatient of trade, tired of labor and affairs? Do you want
Monadnoc, Agiocochook, or Helvellyn, or Plinlimmon, dear to English song, in
your closet? Caerleon, Provence, Ossian and Cadwallon? Tie a couple of strings
across a board and set it in your window, and you have an instrument which no
artist's harp can rival. It needs no instructed ear; if you have sensibility, it
admits you to sacred interiors; it has the sadness of Nature, yet, at the
changes, tones of triumph and festal notes ringing out all measures of
loftiness. "Did you never observe," says Gray, "'while rock ing winds arc piping
loud,' that pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear
in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Aeolian harp? I do assure
you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit." Perhaps you
can recall a delight like it, which spoke to the eye, when you have stood by a
lake in the woods in summer, and saw where little flaws of wind whip spots or
patches of still water into fleets of ripples,-so sudden, so slight, so
spiritual, that it was more like the rippling of the Aurora Borealis at night
than any spectacle of day.
7. But the solitude of Nature is not so essential as solitude of habit. I have
found my advantage in going in summer to a country inn, in winter to a city
hotel, with a task which would not prosper at home. I thus secured a more
absolute seclusion; for it is almost impossible for a housekeeper who is in the
country a small farmer, to exclude interruptions and even necessary orders,
though I bar out by system all I can, and resolutely omit, to my constant
damage, all that can be omitted. At home, the day is cut into short strips. In
the hotel, I have no hours to keep, no visits to make or receive, and I command
an astronomic leisure. I forget rain, wind, cold and heat. At home, I remember
in my library the wants of the farm, and have all too much sympathy. I envy the
abstraction of some scholars I have known, who could sit on a curbstone in State
Street, put up their back, and solve their problem. I have more womanly eyes.
All the conditions must be right for my success, slight a s that is. What un
tunes is as bad as what cripples or stuns me. Novelty, surprise, change of
scene, refresh the artist, ---"break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new
forms," as Hafiz said. The seashore and the taste of two metals in contact, and
our enlarged powers in the presence, or rather at the approach and at the
departure of a friend, and the mixture of lie in truth, and the experience of
poetic creativeness which is not found in staying at home nor yet in travelling,
but in transitions from one to the other, which must therefore be adroitly
managed to present as much transitional surface as possible,-these are the types
or conditions of this power. "A ride near the sea, a sail near the shore," said
the ancient. So Montaigne travelled with his books, but did not read in them.
"La Nature aime les croisements," says Fourier.
I know there is room for whims here; but in regard to some apparent trifles
there is great agreement as to their annoyance. And the machine with which we
are dealing is of such an inconceivable delicacy that whims also must be
respected. Fire must lend its aid. We not only want time, but warm time. George
Sand says, "I have no enthusiasm for Nature which the slightest chill will not I
instantly destroy." And I remember Thoreau, with his robust will, yet found
certain trifles disturbing the delicacy of that health which composition
exacted,-namely, the slightest irregularity, even to the drinking too much water
on the preceding day. Even a steel pen is a nuisance to some writers. Some of us
may remember, years ago, in the English journals, the petition, signed by
Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Dickens and other writers in London, against the
license of the organ-grinders, who infested the streets near their houses, to
levy on them blackmail.
Certain localities, as mountain - tops, the seaside, the shores of rivers and
rapid brooks, natural parks of oak and pine, where the ground is smooth and
unencumbered, are excitants of the muse. Every artist knows well some favorite
retirement. And yet the experience of some good artists has taught them to
prefer the smallest and plainest chamber, with one chair and table and with no
outlook, to these picturesque liberties. William Blake said, "Natural objects
always did and do weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me." And Sir
Joshua Reynolds had no pleasure in Richmond; he used to say "the human face was
his landscape." These indulgences are to be used with great caution. Allston
rarely left his studio by day. An old friend took him, one fine afternoon, a
spacious circuit into the country, and he painted two or three pictures as the
fruits of that drive, But he made it a rule not to go to the city on two
consecutive days. One was rest; more was lost time. The times of force must be
well husbanded, and the wise student will remember the prudence of Sir Tristram
in Morte d'Arthur, who, having received from the fairy an enchantment of six
hours of growing strength every day, took care to fight in the hours when his
strength increased; since from noon to night his strength abated. What prudence
again does every artist, every scholar need in the security of his easel or his
desk! These must be remote from the work of the house, and from all knowledge of
the feet that come and go therein. Allston, it is said, had two or three rooms
in different parts of Boston, where he could not be found. For the delicate
muses lose their head if their attention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were
successful abroad in talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to
your book-shelf and your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to
publish some commandment, it makes you odious to men and men odious to you, and
you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the lamp, and
you must solve those questions though you die.
8. Conversation, which, when it is best, is a series of intoxications. Not
Aristotle, not Kant or Hegel, but conversation, is the right metaphysical
professor. This is the true school of philosophy,-this the college where you
learn what thoughts are, what powers lurk in those fugitive gleams, and what
becomes of them; how they make history. A wise man goes to this game to play
upon others and to be played upon, and at least as curious to know what can be
drawn from himself as what can be drawn from them. For, in discourse with a
friend, our thought, hitherto wrapped in our consciousness, detaches itself, and
allows itself to be seen as a thought, in a manner as new and entertaining to us
as to our companions. For provocation of thought, we use ourselves and use each
other. Some perceptions-I think the best-are granted to the single soul; they
come from the depth and go to the depth and are the permanent and controlling
ones. Others it takes two to find. We must be warmed by the fire of sympathy, to
be brought into the right conditions and angles of vision. Conversation; for
intellectual activity is contagious. We are emulous. If the tone of the
companion is higher than ours, we delight in rising to it. 'T is a historic
observation that a writer must find an audience up to his thought, or he will no
longer care to impart it, but will sink to their level or be silent. Homer said,
"When two come together, one apprehends before the other;" but it is because one
thought well that the other thinks better: and two men of good mind will excite
each other's activity, each attempting still to cap the other's thought. In
enlarged conversation we have suggestions that require new ways of living, new
books, new men, new arts and sciences. By sympathy, each opens to the eloquence,
and begins to see with the eyes of his mind. We were all lonely, thoughtless;
and now a principle appears to all: we see new relations, many truths; every
mind seizes them as they pass; each catches by the mane one of these strong
coursers like horses of the prairie, and rides up and down in the world of the
intellect. We live day by day under the illusion that it is the fact or event
that imports, whilst really it is not that which signifies, but the use we put
it to, or what we think of it. We esteem nations important, until we discover
that a few individuals much more concern us; then, later, that it is not at last
a few individuals, or any sacred heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, the
large equality to truth of a single mind,-as if in the narrow walls of a human
heart the whole realm of truth, the world of morals, the tribunal by which the
universe is judged, found room to exist.
9. New poetry; by which I mean chiefly, old poetry that is new to the reader. I
have heard from persons who had practice in rhyming, that it was sufficient to
set them on writing verses, to read any original poetry. What is best in
literature is the affirming, prophesying, spermatic words of men - making poets.
Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me.
Words used in a new sense and figuratively, dart a delightful lustre; and every
word admits a new use, and hints ulterior meanings. We have not learned the law
of the mind,---cannot control and domesticate at will the high states of
contemplation and continuous thought. "Neither by sea nor by land," said Pindar,
"canst thou find the way to the Hyperboreans;" neither by idle wishing, nor by
rule of three or rule of thumb. Yet I find a mitigation or solace by providing
always a good book for my journeys, as Horace or Martial or Goethe, ---some book
which lifts me quite out of prosaic surroundings, and from which I draw some
lasting knowledge. A Greek epigram out of the anthology, a verse of Herrick or
Lovelace, are in harmony both with sense and spirit.
You shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels, nor Montaigne, nor the
newest French book. You may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus, Hindoo mythology and
ethics. You may read Chaucer, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, and Milton's prose
as his verse; read Collins and Gray; read Hafiz and the Trouveurs; nay, Welsh
and British mythology of Arthur, and (in your ear) Ossian; fact-books, which all
geniuses prize as raw material, and as antidote to verbiage and false poetry.
Fact-books, if the facts be well and thoroughly told, are much more nearly
allied to poetry than many books are that are written in rhyme. Only our newest
knowledge works as a source of inspiration and thought, as only the outmost
layer of Tiber on the tree. Books of natural science, especially those written
by the ancients,-geography, botany, agriculture, explorations of the sea, of
meteors, of astronomy,-all the better if written without literary aim or
ambition. Every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working mood.
The deep book, no matter how remote the subject, helps us best.
Neither are these all the sources, nor can I name all. The receptivity is rare.
The occasions or predisposing circumstances I could never tabulate; but now one,
now another landscape, form, color, or companion, or perhaps one kind of
sounding word or syllable, "strikes the electric chain with which we are darkly
bound," and it is impossible to detect and wilfully repeat the fine conditions
to which we have owed our happiest frames of mind. The day is good in which we
have had the most perceptions. The analysis is the more difficult, because
poppy-leaves are strewn when a generalization is made; for I can never remember
the circumstances to which I owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or put
myself in the conditions:---
"'T is the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain."
I value literary biography for the hints it furnishes from so many scholars, in
so many countries, of what hygiene, what ascetic, what gymnastic, what social
practices their experience suggested and approved. They are, for the most part,
men who needed only a little wealth. Large estates, political relations, great
hospitalities, would have been impediments to them. They are men whom a book
could entertain, a new thought intoxicate and hold them prisoners for years
perhaps. Aubrey and Burton and Wood tell me incidents which I find not
insignificant.
These are some hints towards what is in all education a chief necessity,-the
right government, or, shall I not say? the right obedience to the powers of the
human soul. Itself is the dictator: the mind itself the awful oracle. All our
power, all our happiness consists in our reception of its hints, which ever
become clearer and grander as they are obeyed.
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