Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works

h College Address: Literary Ethics.-Waterville College Address: The Method of Nature.-Other Addresses: Man the Reform

Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Oversoul, Circles, Intellect, Art.-E

s circles, and led to a controversy, in which Emerson had little more than the part of Patroclus when the Greeks and Trojans fought over his body. In its simplest and broadest

re which must be transferred wit

f birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm of Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour

ll of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon." And this was the prelude of a discourse which, when it came to be printed, fared at the hands of many a theologian, who did not think himself a bigot, as the roll which Baruch wrote with ink from the words of Jeremiah fared at the hands of Jehoiakim, the King of Juda

eresy; if so mild a reproach as that of heresy belonged to this alarming manifesto. And yet, so changed is the whole aspect of the theological world since the time when that discourse was delivered that it is read as

opens and reveals the laws which govern the world of phenomena, it shrinks into a mere fable and illustration of

ne laws.-These laws refuse to be adequately stated.-They elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in each other's faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse.-The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of t

the same spirit, and all things conspire with it." While a man seeks good ends, nature helps him; when he seeks other ends, his being shrinks, "he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolut

in Palestine, where it reached its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India, in China. Europe has always owed to Oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane me

eject it. If the word of another is taken instead of this primary faith, the church, the state, art, letters, life, all suffer degrad

s of Christianity and its Founder, and sufficiently e

uld you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, 'This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhet

kind by monopolizing all virtues for the Christian name. It is only by his holy thoughts that Jesus serves us. "To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation o

as if God were dead."-"The soul is not preached. The church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct.-The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past; that the Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus b

e called the "practical application," some of his young h

ith Deity. Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money are nothing to you

n law over all written or spoken words. But he was assailing the cherished beliefs of those before him, and of Christendom generally; not with hard or bitter words, not with sarcasm or levity, rather as one who felt himself charged with a message from the same divinity who had inspired the prophets and evangelists of old with whatever truth was in their message

nomination. The Rev. Henry Ware, greatly esteemed and honored, whose colleague he had been, addressed a letter to him, in which he expressed the feeling that some

rfect in the substantial truth of the doctrines of this discourse, and is not very new, you will see at once that it must appear very important that it be spoken; and I thought I could not pay the nobleness of my friends so mean a compliment as to suppress my opposition to their supposed views, out of fear of offence. I would rather say to them, these things look thus to me, to you otherwise. Let us

ng the idea of personality to the abstractions of Emerson's philosophy, and sent it to him with a letter, the kindness and true Chris

merson sent the

October

ver esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know there is no scholar less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. I could not give an account of myself, if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands; for I do not know what arguments are in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I se

and telling what I see." But among his listeners and readers was a man of very different mental constitution, not more independent or fearless, but louder and more combative, whose voice soon became heard and whose strength soon began

Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX. Duty; X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs played me false with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed no more on Human Life." Two

*

he two following letters to my kind an

Clarke in the "Western Messenger," from the autograph copy, which begins "Fine humble-bee! fine

Decembe

ay," were not Shakspeare's; I think they are. Beaumont, nor Fletcher, nor both together were ever, I think, visited by such a starry gleam as that stanza. I know it is in "Rollo," but it is in "Measure for Measure" also; and I remember noticing that the Malones, and Stevens, and critical gentry were about evenly

FREEMAN

February

d our brothers are attuned to music. I have heard of a citizen who made an annual joke. I believe I have in April or May an annual poetic conatus rather than afflatus, experimenting to the length of thirty lines or so, if I may judge from the dates of the rhythmical scraps I detect among my MSS. I look upon this incontinence as merely the redundancy of a susceptibility to poetry which makes all the bards my daily treasures, and I can well run the risk of being ridiculous once a year for the benefit of happy reading all the other days. In regard to the Providence Discourse, I have no copy of it; and as far as I remember its contents, I have since used whatever is striking in it; but I will get the MS., if Margaret Fuller has it, and you shall have it if it will pass muster. I shall certainly avail myself of the good order you gave me for twelve copies of the "Carlyle Miscellanies," so soon as they appear. He, T.C., writes in excellent spirits of his American friends and readers.... A new book, he writes, is growing in him, though not to begin until his spring lectures are over (which begin in May). Your sister Sarah was kind enough to carry me the other day to see some pencil sketches done by Stuart Newton when

nate servant,

dience must have been prepared for a much more startling performance than that to which they listened. The bold avowal which fluttered the dovecotes of Cambridge would have sounded like the crash of doom to the cautious old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there we

by one of the Professors, the most estimable and scholarly Dr. Daniel Oliver. Perhaps, however, the extreme difference between the fundamental conceptions of Mr. Emerson and the endemic orthodoxy of that place and time was too great for any hostile feeling to be awakened by the sweet-voiced and peaceful-mannered speaker. There is a kind of harmony between boldly contrasted beliefs like that between c

Mr. Emerson's orations. But these discourses were both written and delivered in the freshness of his complete manhood. They were produced at a time when his mind had learned its powers and the work to which it was called, in the strugg

f mankind. "Men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought." For all this he offers those correctives which in various forms underlie all his teachings. "The resources of the sch

ne of advance. Say to the man of letters, that he cannot paint a Transfiguration, or build a steamboat, or be a grand-marshal, and he will not seem to himself depreciated. But deny to him any quality of literary or met

ing the genius of their betters were denied to the me

st. I give you the universe a virgin to-day.'" And in the same way he would have the scholar look at history, at philosophy. The world belongs to the student, but he must put himself into harmony with the constitution of things. "He must embrace solitude as a bride." Not super

t eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;'-then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men.-Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair

od of Nature," before the Society of the Adelphi

My whole philosophy-which is very real-teaches acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see how much work is to be done, what room for a poet-for any spiritualist-in this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America, I

title is "The Method of Nature." He begins with congratulation

e rapid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansion of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; this luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to im

anner of Carlyle in this Address th

esty. Here art thou with whom so long the universe travailed in labor; darest thou think meanly of thyself whom

rted into character,"-all this is strongly enforced and richly illustrated in this Oration. Just how easily it was followed by the audience, just how far they were satisfied with its large principles wrought into a few broad precepts, it would be easier at this time

ring reception,-reception that becomes giving in its turn as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in infancy."-"It is God in us which checks the language of petition by gra

can any man,-speak precisely of things so sublime; but it seems to me the wit of man, his strength,

ve to be man, than yonder burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a globe, and parent of new stars." "In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that impression nature makes on us is this, that it does not exist to any one, or to any number o

passages which seem too long for the mus

as but the representative of thee, O rich and various Man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night

itself in many of the extracts already giv

reassemble in equal activity in a similar frame, or whether they have before had a natural history like that of this body you see before you; but this one thing I know, that the

e many expressions in this Address which must have sounded strangely and vaguely to his Christian audience. "Are there not moments in the history of heaven when the human race was not counted by i

an end."-"I say to you plainly there is no end to which your practical faculty can aim so sacred or so large, that if pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an offence to the nostril. The im

called "Man the Reformer," and another called "Lecture on the Times." In the first he preaches the dignity and virtue of manual labor; that "a man should have a farm, or a mechanical craft for his culture."-That he cannot give up labor without suffering some loss of power. "How can the man who has learned but one art procure all the conveniences of life honestly? Shall we say all we think?-Perhaps wi

s working in Thoreau's mind and was suggested to Emerson by him, is of no great consequence. Emerson, to whom he owed so much, may well have adopted some of those fancies which Thoreau entertained, and afterwards worked out in practice. He was at the philanthropic centre of a good many movements which he watched others carrying out, as a calm and kindly spectator, witho

h and Hope, Enthusiasm and Love, are the burden of this Address. But he would regulate these qualiti

e effect which a nearer contact with the class of men

timent with personal and party heats, with measureless exaggerations, and the blindness that prefers some darling measure to justice and truth. Those who are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefit of mankind are narrow, self-pleasing, conceited men, and affect us as

, except in view of some larger and loftier principle. The charm of his imagination and the music of his words took away all the sting from the thoughts that penetrated to the very marrow of the entranced listeners. Sometimes it was a splendid hyperbole that illuminated a

when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we possess

uld have taken a long while to get rid of slavery if some of Emerson's teachings in this lecture had been

d not of to-day, not of the times, but of the Everlasting, are to stand for it; and the highest co

disciples. It has a proper philosophical meaning, and it has also a local and accidental application to the individuals of a group which came together very much as any literary club might collec

ond on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themse

an as one product of that. The idealist takes his departure from his consciou

who looked on or got their knowledge of it at second hand. Emerson was closely associated with these "same Transcendentalists," and a leading contributor to "The Dial," which was their organ. The movement borrowed its inspiration more

lectual movements which led to the development of the "new views" above mentioned. "There are always two p

after five years of study in Europe. Edward Everett is already to a great extent a tradition, somewhat as Rufus Choate is, a voice, a fading echo, as must be the memory of every great orator. These wondrous personalities have their truest and warmest life in a few old men's memories. It is therefore with delight that one who remembers Everett in his robes of rhetorical splendor, who recalls his full-blown, high-colored, double-flowered periods, the

the writings of Channing,-he left it to others to say of Emerson,-all had their part in this intellectual, or if we may call it so, spiritual revival. He describes with that exquisite sense of the ridiculous which was a part of his mental ballast, the first attempt at organizing an associati

rowned by excellent wines [this must have been before Dr. Warren's temperance

had the honor to be present.-Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Dr. Convers Francis, Theodore Parker, Dr. Hedge, Mr. Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, Wi

and inspired his companions only in proportion as they were intelle

there was no concert, and only here and there two or three men and women who read and wrote, each alone, with unusual vivacity. Perhaps they only agreed in having fallen upon Coleridge and Wordsworth and Goethe, then on Carlyle, with pleasure and sympathy. Otherwise their educ

of his is so peculiar as to suggest certa

it as most in nature. The Oriental mind has always tended to this largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. The Buddhist, who thanks no man, who says, 'Do not flatter your benefactors,' but

ion; they aspire, they severely exact, and if they only stand fast in this watch-tower, and persist in demanding unto the end, and without end, then are they terribl

alist, but is known colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or strang

sonable,-so much occasionally that their pretensions became ridiculous. One was tempted to ask: "What forlorn hope have you led? What immortal book have you written? What great discovery have you made? What heroic task of any kind have you performed?" There was too much talk about earnestness and too little real wor

ons" who belonged to the "Transcendentalist" communion, the reader must rem

they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprise of education, of missi

or spiritual beliefs in this way, he summons them to pl

id of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. We are mise

he world, 'sho

ave n

do, then?' cr

ill w

w l

rse beckons and

wait you grow

in a corner and peris

ntil I have the h

this unhappy creation goes on wi

for indolence than "the Everlasting No." The chimney-corner is the true arena for this class of philosophers, and the pipe and mug furnish their all-sufficient panoply. Emerson undoubtedly met with some of them among his disciples. His wise counsel did not always find listeners in a fitting condition to receive it. He was a sower who went forth

delicate wit which warns its objects rather than wounds them. B

weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the by-stander. Perhaps too there might be room for the exciters and monitors; collectors of the heavenly spark, with power to co

e naturally still more obvious to those outside of their charmed circle, and some prejudice, very possibly, mingled with their critical ju

ry still further, and found that the Transcendentalists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or, I should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has written a volume of Essays, in which, among much that is dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying so), there is much more that is true and manly, honest

as to the reformer. He sees the fanaticism of the one as well as that of the other. "Conservatism tends to universal seeming and treachery; believes in a negative fate; believes that men's tempers govern them; that for me it avails not to trust in principles, they will fail me, I must bend a little; it distrusts Nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular application,-law for all that does not inclu

e loves fair play, and though he sides with the party of th

had learned in the evening that some young men proposed to issue a journal, to be called 'The Transcendentalist,' as the organ of a spiritual philo

confidence that it could be made to secure him a support. It is that project which I mentioned to you in a letter by Mr. Barnard,-a book to be called 'The Transcendentalist;'

concert of singing mice with a savage and hungry old grimalkin as leader of the orchestra! I

n interesting symptom. There must be things not dreamt of over in that Transoceanic parish! I

d the interest which he took in the other, in which many of his friends were more deeply concerned. These were the periodical just spoken of as a possibility realized, and the industrial commun

, and her sister Mrs. Caroline Tappan. Unequal as the contributions are in merit, the periodical is of singular interest. It was conceived and carried on in a spirit of boundless hope and enthusiasm. Time and a narrowing subscription list proved too hard a trial, and its four volumes remain stranded, like some rare and curiously patterned shell which a storm of yesterday has left beyond the reach of the receding waves. Thoreau wrote for nearly every number. Margaret Fuller, less attractive in print than in conversation, did her part as a contributor as well as

and sucklings was to come forth strength. The feeling that intuition was discovering a new heaven and a new earth was the inspiration of these "young people" to whom Emerson refers. He has to apologize for the first number. "It is not yet much," he says; "indeed, though no copy has come to me, I know it is far short of what it should be, for they have suffered puffs and dulness to creep in for the sake of the complement of

periodical had been published a c

rst number contains scarce anything considerable or even visible, is just now honored by attacks from almost

merson's readily,-the rest he speaks of as the work of [Greek: oi polloi] for the most part. "But it is all good and very good as a soul; wants only a body, which want means a great deal." And aga

rtain class of men and women, though few, an object of tenderness and religion." So, when Margaret Fuller gave it up, at the end of the second volume, Emerson

xt letter

h alone, ugly as it is, can I find any anchorage, and soaring away after Ideas, Beliefs, Revelations and such like,-into perilous altitudes, as I think; b

elf as a critic,-but he was not alwa

did not pretend to give any satisfactory answer, but his plea of g

d girls in New England, quite ignorant of each other, take the world so, and come and make confession to fathers and mothers,-the boys, that they do not wish to go into trade, the girls, that they do not like morning calls and evening

nd," and "'The Dial' dying of inanition!" I

and am resolved to live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and the book. One man renounces

severe to say, intellectual sans-culottism, an impatience of the formal routinary character of our educational, religious, social, and economical life in Massachusetts." The reader will find a full detailed account of the Brook Farm experiment in Mr. Frothingham's "Life of George Ripley," its founder, and the first President of the Association. Emerson had only tangential relations with the experiment, and tells its story in his "Historic Notes" very kindly and respectfully, but with that sense of the ridiculous in the aspect of som

benevolent

of means of thought and instruction, art, music, poetry, reading, masquerade, did not permit sluggishness or despondency; broke up routine. There is agreement in the testimony that it was, to most of the associates, education; to many, the most important period of their life, the birth of valued friendships, their

oyed by fire in 1846. The Association never recovered

owing Essays: History; Self-Reliance; Compensation; Spiritual Laws; Love; Friendship; Prudence; Heroism; The Over-So

vating as read, and almost entrancing as listened to by the teachable disciple. The reader must be prepared for occasional extravagances. Take the Essay on History, in the first series of Essays, for instance. "Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One

of either of these worlds of life?-How many times we must say Rome and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these nei

e story-teller. "Rome in her proudest days never had a waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high! Greece in her palmiest days never had a waterfa

idea of the interdependence of all that exists in nature is far from ridiculous. Emerson says, not absurdly or extravagantly

where recognized that the divine voice which speaks authoritatively in the soul of man is the source of all our wisdom. It is a man's true self, so that

st himself for a task-master. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be

ening to a sermon from a preacher esteemed for his orthodoxy, in which it was assumed that judgment is not executed in thi

man is never

s gone, another

man in their true spiritual characters, with a noble scorn of the preacher's low stand

itual Laws" is ful

n names and places and persons. Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent day-beams cannot be hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly app

Herbert's. The Essay on "Love" is poetical, but the three poems, "Initial," "Dae

which suggests some personal relation of Emerson

er troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.... Yet these things may hardly be

Emerson's most hospitable roof. "You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house." How could they have got on together? Emerson was well-bred, and Carlyle was wanting

ly me, far as

een us and who

son, perhaps some "crude and cold companion" among his discip

s not claim for himself, and nobly on "Heroism," which wa

own America, for Massachusetts and Connecticut River and Boston Bay, in spite of our love for the names of foreign and classic top

ubjugated in him. Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with

ious of this fact as the reader of his rhapsody,-nay, he is more profoundly penetrated with it than

sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even

he shadows of symbols, varying with the position and intensity of the light of the individual intelligence. It is a curious amusement to trace many of these thoughts and expressions to Plato, or Plotinus, or Proclus, or Porphyry, to Spinoza or Schelling, but the same tune is a different thing according to the instrument on which it is played. There are songs without words, and

th him as against utterances which he will not defend. There can be no doubt that he would have confessed as much wi

m only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as

Emerson, we might borrow Goethe's language about Spi

I feel myself very near to him, though hi

stem has stood clear in view before me. But when I look into him I seem to understand him,-that is, he always appears to m

restoring, enkindling, vivifying, are felt by many of his readers who would have to confess, like Dr. Walter C

," "Art," would furnish us a harvest of good sayings, some of which

loose a thinker on this planet

private door into

ind its choice between

se,-you can ne

world over to find t

h us, or we

uct the Hanging Garden

by

mode of life in thes

dated May

me and go abroad at my own instance. I have food, warmth, leisure, books, friends. Go away from home, I am rich no longer. I never have a dollar to spend on a fancy. As no wise man, I suppose, ever was rich in the sense of freedom to spend, because of the inundation of claims, so neither am I, who am not wise. But at home, I am rich,-rich enough for ten brothers. My wife Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity,-I call her Asia,-and keeps my philosophy from Antinomianism; my mother, whit

life. On the 30th of October, 1841, he wrote to Carlyle: "My little boy

he 28th of February, 184

the poorest of all. What would it avail to tell you anecdotes of a sweet and wonderful boy, such as we solace and sadden ourselves with at home every morning and evening? From a perfect health and as happy a life and as happy influences as ever child enjoyed, he was hurried out of my arms in three short days by scarlatina. We have two babes yet, one girl o

lament not unworthy of comparison with Lycidas for dignity, but full of the simple pathos of Cowper's well-