It occurred last night in groping after the elements we derive from literary compositions, that is like the pleasure which the prince Le Boo received from seeing himself for the first time in a mirror,—a mysterious & delightful surprise. A poem, a sentence causes us to see ourselves. I be & I see my being, at the same time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:278
Inaction.
The Mind is very wise could it be roused into action. But the life of most men is aptly signified by the poet’s personification ‘Death in life.’ We walk about in a sleep. A few moments in the year or in our lifetime we truly live; we’re at the top of our being; we are pervaded, yea, dissolved by the Mind: but we fall back again presently. Those who are styled ‘Practical men’ are not awake, for they do not exercise the reason; if their sleep is restless. The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive. We bow low to the noted merchants whose influence is felt not only in their native cities, but in most parts of the globe; but our respect does them & ourselves great injustice for their trade is without system, their affairs unfold themselves after no law of the mind: but are bubble built on bubble without end; a work of arithmetic not of commerce, much less, of humanity. They add voyage to voyage, & buy stocks—that they may buy stocks, and no ulterior purpose is thought of. When you see their dexterity in particulars, you cannot overestimate the resources of good sense, and when you find how empty they are of all remote aims, You cannot underestimate their philosophy.
The man of letters puts the same cheat upon us, bestirring himself immensely to keep the secret of his littleness. He spins his most seeming surface directly before the eye, to conceal the universe of his ignorance. To what end his languages, his correspondence, his academic discourses, his printed volumes? Newton said that if this porous world were made solid, it would lie in a nutshell. And if the amount that Voltaire or Swift or Goethe have added to known truth, he sharply stated, less than three hundred volumes would hold it.
All our writings are variations of one air. Books, for the most part, are such expedients as his who makes an errand for the sake of exercise. And for the sincere great men, the wisest passages they have writ, the infinite conclusions to which they owe their fame, are only confessions. Throughout their works the good ear hears the undersong of confession & amazement, the apothegm of Socrates, the recantation of man.
Statesmen are solitary. At no time do they form a class. Governments, for the most part, are carried on by political merchants, quite without principle, & according to the maxims of trade & huckster. What was said of merchants is therefore true of public officers.
Such is the inaction of men. We have an obscure consciousness of our attributes. We stand on the edge of all that is great, yet are restrained in inactivity & unacquaintance with our powers like neuters of the hive every one of which is capable of transformation into the Queen bee. We are always on the brink of an ocean into which we do not yet swim. We talk of the powers of apprehending & using truth as our powers but they are prerogatives we are hindered from using. We are always in the precincts, never admitted. There is much preparation—great ado of machinery, plans of life, traveling, studies, profession, solitude, often with little fruit. But suddenly in any place, in the street, in the chamber, will the heaven open, and the regions of wisdom be uncovered, as if to show how thin the veil, how null the circumstances. As quickly, a Lethean stream washes through us and bereaves us of ourselves. After exercising the powers of reflexion for fugitive moments, we move about without them, quite under their sphere, quite unclothed.
What a benefit if a rule could be given whereby the mind draining amidst the gross fogs of matter, could at any moment east itself and find the Sun. But the common life is an endless succession of phantasms. And long after we have deemed ourselves recovered & sound, light breaks in upon us & we find we have yet had no sane hour. Another morn rises on mid-noon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:274
One mind.
Once more. As to what was said on last page. There is One Mind, & therefore the best minds who love truth for its own sake, think much less of property in truth. Thankfully they accept it everywhere & it do not carefully label & ticket it with any man’s name for it is theirs long beforehand. Is theirs from eternity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks
Pleasant walk yesterday, the most pleasant of days. At Walden Pond, I found a musical instrument which I call the ice-harp. It’s a thin coat of ice covered a part of the pond but melted around the edge of the shore. I threw a stone upon the ice which rebounded with a shrill sound, & falling again & again, repeated the note with pleasing modulation. I thought at first it was the ‘peep’ ‘peep’ of a bird I had scared. I was so taken with the music that I threw down my stick & spent twenty minutes throwing stones single or in handfuls on this crystal drum.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:265
I thought as I rode in the cold pleasant light of Sunday morning how silent & passive nature offers, every morn, her wealth to man; she is immensely rich, he is welcome to her entire goods, which he speaks no word, only leaves over doors ajar, hall, store room, & cellar. He may do as he will: if he takes her hint & uses her goods, she speaks no word; if he blunders & starves, she says nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:253
Here are two or three facts plain & clear. That histories are not yet history; that the historian should be a philosopher, for surely he can describe the outward event better if assisted by the sight of the cause; historians are men of talents, & of the market, & not devout, benevolent, with eyes that make walls no walls; that history is written to enhance the present hour; that all history is to be written from man, is all to be explained from individual history or must remain words. We as we read must be Romans, Greeks, Barbarians, priest & king, martyr & executioner, or we shall see nothing, keep nothing, learn nothing. There is nothing but is related to us; nothing that does not interest the historian in its relation; tree, horse, iron, that the roots of all things are in man & therefore the philosophy of history is a consideration of science, art, literature, religion, as well as politics.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:252
Talking tonight with E. H. I sought to illustrate the sunny side of every man as compared with his sour & pompous side by the two entrances of all our Concord houses. The front door is very fair to see, painted green, with a knocker, but it is always bolted, & you might as well beat on the wall as tap there; but the farmer slides round the house into a quiet back door that admits him at once to his warm fire & loaded table.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:252
The philosopher has his consolation in his pursuits that if they do not interest all men now, yet they will, sooner or later. However alone, or in what small minority may now stand, every single individual will sometime do him justice & recall his image with grateful & honorable remembrance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:251
