Success, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. / Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882

SUCCESS 



SUCCESS 

BY 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 




So/ton and New York 

Houghton Mifflin Company 

1912 



Copyright, 1870, by Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Copyright 
2883, 1898, and 1904, by Edward W. Emerson 

All rights reserved 



INTRODUCTION 

SUCCESS, and the varying stand- 
ards of success, seem often to have 
occupied Emerson's mind. In Decem- 
ber, 1858, he lectured upon ' ' Success ' ' 
at Hartford, and the following March 
opened his course at the Freeman Place 
Chapel, Boston, with ' ' The Law of Suc- 
cess." These lectures without doubt 
are essentially the same in substance 
as the present essay, which was first 
printed in Society and Solitude in 187O. 
Long before, however, as Dr. Edward 
Emerson points out in the notes to the 
Centenary Edition of Emerson's writ- 
ings, the notion that success is some- 
thing subjective and, so to speak, acci- 
dental, often the sum of many fail- 
ures, had come into his mind and 
v 



INTRODUCTION 

clung there in connection with the 
course of his own life. 

In the autumn of 1 833, when he had 
left the ministry, and was facing at the 
age of thirty an uncertain future as a 
"free lance," Emerson wrote in his 
diary, "Charles's nai'f censure last 
night provoked me to show him a fact 
apparently entirely new to him, that 
my entire success, such as it is, is com- 
posed wholly of particular failures, 
every public work of mine of the least 
importance having been, probably with- 
out exception, noted at the time as a fail- 
ure. ... I will take Mrs. Barbauld's 
line for my motto [of a brook] 

" And the more falls I get, move faster on." 

But it is not for its autobiographic 
reference that Emerson's essay on 
4 ' Success ' ' has been chosen for separ- 
vi 



INTRODUCTION 

ate publication in the series of River- 
side Press Editions . It has been selected 
rather for its peculiar timeliness. How 
almost of the minute is the accent of 
the terse Concordian wisdom in the 
essay's opening paragraph : 

Our American people cannot be taxed with 
slowness in performance or in praising their 
performance. The earth is shaken by our 
engineries. We are feeling our youth and 
nerve and bone. We have the power of terri- 
tory and of seacoast, and know the use of these. 
We count our census, we read our growing 
valuations, we survey our map, which be- 
comes old in a year or two. Our eyes run 
approvingly along the lengthened lines of rail- 
road and telegraph. We have gone nearest to 
the Pole. We have discovered the Antarctic 
continent. We interfere in Central and South 
America, at Canton and in Japan; we are 
adding to an already enormous territory. Our 

vii 



INTRODUCTION 

political constitution is the hope of the 
world, and we value ourselves on all these 
feats. 

We are no slower now than we were 
in 1 870, either in performance or in the 
praising of it; shaking the earth by our 
engineries has not ceased, and we have 
territories and seacoasts in the antipo- 
des. The lines of railroad and telegraph 
are still lengthening. We have not only 
gone nearest to the Pole, but an Ameri- 
can explorer, amid the plaudits of the 
press and the contestation of compet- 
itors, has stood upon it. Our political 
constitution may not be now so unani- 
mously the hope of the world . We feel 
our youth less, perhaps, our nerve 
and bone. Yet still we value ourselves 
on these feats and symbols of objective 
success, and the Emersonian maxims 
have a pertinence deeper and more far- 
viii 



INTRODUCTION 

reaching than they could have had for 
audiences in 1858, or readers in 187O. 
Many writers since Emerson's time 
have exalted sensibility over talent in 
the scale of powers, but no one not 
even Walter Pater so persuasively. 
Yet not a little of the attractiveness of 
the Emersonian view of success lies in 
the fact that it is by no means limited 
to the intangible achievements. Like 
all true New Englanders, or perhaps 
we might say like all true Transcend- 
entalists, Emerson valued that success 
which the neighbors can see, though 
he valued more enormously more 
that respect for ourselves which comes, 
as he says, if we have succeeded. It is 
this self-respect springing from "quiet 
wise perception ' ' that Emerson exalts 
and expounds both subtly and convinc- 
ingly in the following pages . Who can 
ix 



INTRODUCTION 

say that in the scramble of business big 
and little, tri-partite politics, conver- 
sational culture, science that is applied, 
education that is vocational, and a re- 
ligion that ' ' pays dividends ' ' there is no 
room for "the tranquil, well-founded, 
far-seeing soul" which, as Emerson 
says, ' c is no express-rider, no attorney, 
no magistrate ' ' ; which l 4 lies in the 
sun and broods on the world." 

F. G. 

OCTOBER 11, 1912. 



SUCCESS 



One thing is for ever good; 

'That one thing is Success , 

Dear to the Eumenides y 

And to all the heavenly brood. 

Who bides at home, nor looks abroad. 

Carries the eagles and masters the sword. 



But if thou do thy best, 
Without remission, without rest. 
And invite the sunbeam, 
And abhor to feign or seem 
Even to those who thee should love 
And thy behavior approve; 
If thou go in thine own likeness, 
Be it health or be it sickness ; 
If thou go as thy father s son, 
If thou wear no mask or lie, 
Dealing purely and nakedly; 



SUCCESS 

OUR American people cannot 
be taxed with slowness in 
performance or in praising their 
performance. The earth is shaken 
by our engineries. We are feel- 
ing our youth and nerve and bone. 
We have the power of territory 
and of seacoast, and know the use 
of these. We count our census, we 
read our growing valuations, we 
survey our map, which becomes 
old in a year or two. Our eyes run 
approvingly along the lengthened 
lines of railroad and telegraph. 



SUCCESS 



We have gone nearest to the Pole. 
We have discovered the Antarctic 
continent. We interfere in Central 
and South America, at Canton 
and in Japan ; we are adding to an 
already enormous territory. Our 
political constitution is the hope 
of the world, and we value our- 
selves on all these feats. 

'T is the way of the world ; 't is 
the law of youth, and of unfold- 
ing strength. Men are made each 
with some triumphant superiority, 
which, through some adaptation of 
fingers or ear or eye or ciphering 
or pugilistic or musical or literary 
craft, enriches the community with 



SUCCESS 



a new art; and not only we, but 
all men of European stock, value 
these certificates. Giotto could 
draw a perfect circle: Erwin of 
Steinbach could build a minster; 
Olaf, king of Norway, could run 
round his galley on the blades of 
the oars of the rowers when the 
ship was in motion; Ojeda could 
run out swiftly on a plank pro- 
jected from the top of a tower, 
turn round swiftly and come back ; 
Evelyn writes from Rome: "Ber- 
nini, the Florentine sculptor, archi- 
tect, painter and poet, a little before 
my coming to Rome, gave a pub- 
lic opera, wherein he painted the 
3 



SUCCESS 



scenes, cut the statues, invented 
the engines, composed the music, 
writ the comedy and built the 
theatre." 

" There is nothing in war/' said 
Napoleon, " which I cannot do by 
my own hands. If there is nobody 
to make gunpowder, I can manu- 
facture it. The gun-carriages I 
know how to construct. If it is 
necessary to make cannons at the 
forge, I can make them. The de- 
tails of working them in battle, if it 
is necessary to teach, I shall teach 
them. In administration, it is I 
alone who have arranged the fi- 
nances, as you know/' 
4 



SUCCESS 



It is recorded of Linnaeus, among 
many proofs of his beneficent skill, 
that when the timber in the ship- 
yards of Sweden was ruined by 
rot, Linnaeus was desired by the 
government to find a remedy. He 
studied the insects that infested the 
timber, and found that they laid 
their eggs in the logs within cer- 
tain days in April, and he directed 
that during ten days at that season 
the logs should be immersed under 
water in the docks; which being 
done, the timber was found to be 
uninjured. 

Columbus at Veragua found 
plenty of gold; but leaving the 
5 



SUCCESS 



coast, the ship full of one hundred 
and fifty skilful seamen, some 
of them old pilots, and with too 
much experience of their craft and 
treachery to him, the wise ad- 
miral kept his private record of his 
homeward path. And when he 
reached Spain he told the King and 
Queen that " they may ask all the 
pilots who came with him where is 
Veragua. Let them answer and 
say if they know where Veragua 
lies. I assert that they can give no 
other account than that they went 
to lands where there was an abun- 
dance of gold, but they do not 
know the way to return thither, 
6 



SUCCESS 



but would be obliged to go on a 
voyage of discovery as much as if 
they had never been there before. 
There is a mode of reckoning," he 
proudly adds, "derived from as- 
tronomy, which is sure and safe to 
any one who understands it." 

Hippocrates in Greece knew 
how to stay the devouring plague 
which ravaged Athens in his time, 
and his skill died with him. Dr. 
Benjamin Rush, in Philadelphia, 
carried that city heroically through 
the yellow fever of the year 1793- 
Leverrier carried the Copernican 
system in his head, and knew 
where to look for the new planet. 
7 



SUCCESS 



We have seen an American wo- 
man write a novel of which a 
million copies were sold, in all lan- 
guages, and which had one merit, 
of speaking to the universal heart, 
and was read with equal interest 
to three audiences, namely, in the 
parlor, in the kitchen, and in the 
nursery of every house. We have 
seen women who could institute 
hospitals and schools in armies. 
We have seen a woman who by 
pure song could melt the souls of 
whole populations . And there is no 
limit to these varieties of talent. 

These are arts to be thankful 
for, each one as it is a new 
8 



SUCCESS 



direction of human power. We 
cannot choose but respect them. 
Our civilization is made up of a 
million contributions of this kind. 
For success, to be sure we esteem 
it a test in other people, since we 
do first in ourselves. We respect 
ourselves more if we have suc- 
ceeded. Neither do we grudge 
to each of these benefactors the 
praise or the profit which accrues 
from his industry. 

Here are already quite different 
degrees of moral merit in these ex- 
amples. I don't know but we and 
our race elsewhere set a higher 
value on wealth, victory and coarse 
9 



SUCCESS 



superiority of all kinds, than other 
men, have less tranquillity of 
mind, are less easily contented. 
The Saxon is taught from his in- 
fancy to wish to be first. The 
Norseman was a restless rider, 
fighter, freebooter. The ancient 
Norse ballads describe him as af- 
flicted with this inextinguishable 
thirst of victory. The mother says 
to her son : 

" Success shall be in thy courser tall, 
Success in thyself, which is best of all, 
Success in thy hand, success in thy foot, 
In struggle with man, in battle with 

brute : 

The holy God and Saint Drothin dear 
Shall never shut eyes on thy career ; 
Look out, look out, Svend Vonved ! " 

1O 



SUCCESS 



These feats that we extol do not 
signify so much as we say. These 
boasted arts are of very recent 
origin. They are local conven- 
iences, but do not really add to 
our stature. The greatest men of 
the world have managed not to 
want them. Newton was a great 
man, without telegraph, or gas, 
or steam-coach, or rubber shoes, 
or lucifer-matches, or ether for 
his pain ; so was Shakspeare and 
Alfred and Scipio and Socrates. 
These are local conveniences, but 
how easy to go now to parts of the 
world where not only all these 
arts are wanting, but where they 
11 



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are despised. The Arabian sheiks, 
the most dignified people in the 
planet, do not want them ; yet 
have as much self-respect as the 
English, and are easily able to 
impress the Frenchman or the 
American who visits them with 
the respect due to a brave and 
sufficient man. 

These feats have to be sure great 
difference of merit, and some of 
them involve power of a high kind. 
But the public values the invention 
more than the inventor does. The 
inventor knows there is much more 
and better where this came from. 
The public sees in it a lucrative 
12 



SUCCESS 



secret. Men see the reward which 
the inventor enjoys, and they think, 
'How shall we win that?' Cause 
and effect are a little tedious ; how 
to leap to the result by short or by 
false means ? We are not scrupu- 
lous. What we ask is victory, with- 
out regard to the cause ; after the 
Rob Roy rule, after the Napoleon 
rule, to be the strongest to-day, 
the way of the Talley rands, pru- 
dent people, whose watches go 
faster than their neighbors', and 
who detect the first moment of de- 
cline and throw themselves on the 
instant on the winning side. I have 
heard that Nelson used to say, 
13 



SUCCESS 



' < Never mind the justice or the 
impudence, only let me succeed." 
Lord Brougham's single duty of 
counsel is, "to get the prisoner 
clear." Fuller says 'tis a maxim 
of lawyers that "a crown once 
worn cleareth all defects of the 
wearer thereof. " Rien ne r'eussit 
mieux que le succes. And we Amer- 
icans are tainted with this insanity, 
as our bankruptcies and our reck- 
less politics may show. We are 
great by exclusion, grasping and 
egotism. Our success takes from 
all what it gives to one. 'Tis a 
haggard, malignant, careworn run- 
ning for luck. 

14 



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Egotism is a kind of buckram 
that gives momentary strength and 
concentration to men, and seems to 
be much used in Nature for fabrics 
in which local and spasmodic en- 
ergy is required. I could point to 
men in this country, of indispensa- 
ble importance to the carrying on 
of American life, of this humor, 
whom we could ill spare; any one 
of them would be a national loss. 
But it spoils conversation. They 
will not try conclusions with you. 
They are ever thrusting this pam- 
pered self between you and them. 
It is plain they have a long educa- 
tion to undergo to reach simplicity 
15 



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and plain-dealing, which are what 
a wise man mainly cares for in his 
companion. Nature knows how to 
convert evil to good ; Nature util- 
izes misers, fanatics, show-men, 
egotists, to accomplish her ends ; 
but we must not think better of 
the foible for that. The passion 
for sudden success is rude and 
puerile, just as war, cannons and 
executions are used to clear the 
ground of bad, lumpish, irreclaim- 
able savages, but always to the 
damage of the conquerors. 

I hate this shallow Americanism 
which hopes to get rich by credit, 
to get knowledge by raps on mid- 
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night tables, to learn the economy 
of the mind by phrenology, or skill 
without study, or mastery without 
apprenticeship, or the sale of goods 
through pretending that they sell, 
or power through making believe 
you are powerful, or through a 
packed jury or caucus, bribery and 
"repeating" votes, or wealth by 
fraud. They think they have got 
it, but they have got something 
else, a crime which calls for 
another crime, and another devil 
behind that ; these are steps to sui- 
cide, infamy, and the harming of 
mankind. We countenance each 
other in this life of show, puffing, 
17 



SUCCESS 



advertisement and manufacture of 
public opinion ; and excellence is 
lost sight of in the hunger for sud- 
den performance and praise. 

There was a wise man, an Ital- 
ian artist, Michel Angelo, who 
writes thus of himself: "Mean- 
while the Cardinal Ippolito, in 
whom all my best hopes were 
placed, being dead, I began to un- 
derstand that the promises of this 
world are for the most part vain 
phantoms, and that to confide in 
one's self, and become something 
of worth and value, is the best and 
safest course." Now, though I am 
by no means sure that the reader 
18 



SUCCESS 



will assent to all my propositions, 
yet I think we shall agree in my 
first rule for success, that we 
shall drop the brag and the adver- 
tisement, and take Michel An- 
gelo's course, " to confide in one's 
self, and be something of worth 
and value/' 

Each man has an aptitude born 
with him. Do your work. I have 
to say this often, but Nature says 
it oftener. 'T is clownish to insist 
on doing all with one's own hands, 
as if every man should build his 
own clumsy house, forge his ham- 
mer, and bake his dough ; but he 
is to dare to do what he can do 

19 



SUCCESS 



best; not help others as they would 
direct him, but as he knows his 
helpful power to be. To do other- 
wise is to neutralize all those ex- 
traordinary special talents distrib- 
uted among men. Yet whilst this 
self-truth is essential to the exhibi- 
tion of the world and to the growth 
and glory of each mind, it is rare 
to find a man who believes his own 
thought or who speaks that which 
he was created to say. As nothing 
astonishes men so much as common 
sense and plain dealing, so nothing 
is more rare in any man than an act 
of his own. Any work looks won- 
derful to him, except that which he 
20 



SUCCESS 



can do. We do not believe our own 
thought; we must serve somebody; 
we must quote somebody; we dote 
on the old and the distant ; we are 
tickled by great names ; we import 
the religion of other nations ; we 
quote their opinions ; we cite their 
laws. The gravest and learnedest 
courts in this country shudder to 
face a new question, and will wait 
months and years for a case to 
occur that can be tortured into a 
precedent, and thus throw on a 
bolder party the onus of an initia- 
tive. Thus we do not carry a coun- 
sel in our breasts, or do not know 
it; and because we cannot shake off 
21 



SUCCESS 



from our shoes this dust of Europe 
and Asia, the world seems to be 
born old, 'society is under a spell, 
every man is a borrower and a 
mimic, life is theatrical and litera- 
ture a quotation; and hence that 
depression of spirits, that furrow 
of care, said to mark every Ameri- 
can brow. 

Self-trust is the first secret of 
success, the belief that if you are 
here the authorities of the universe 
put you here, and for cause, or with 
some task strictly appointed you in 
your constitution, and so long as 
you work at that you are well and 
successful. It by no means consists 
22 



SUCCESS 



in rushing prematurely to a showy 
feat that shall catch the eye and 
satisfy spectators. It is enough if 
you work in the right direction. So 
far from the performance being the 
real success, it is clear that the suc- 
cess was much earlier than that, 
namely, when all the feats that 
make our civility were the thoughts 
of good heads. The fame of each 
discovery rightly attaches to the 
mind that made the formula which 
contains all the details, and not to 
the manufacturers who now make 
their gain by it; although the mob 
uniformly cheers the publisher, and 
not the inventor. It is the dulness 
23 



SUCCESS 



of the multitude that they cannot 
see the house in the ground-plan ; 
the working, in the model of the 
projector. Whilst it is a thought, 
though it were a new fuel, or a new 
food, or the creation of agriculture, 
it is cried down, it is a chimera ; but 
when it is a fact, and comes in the 
shape of eight per cent, ten per 
cent, a hundred per cent, they cry, 
<It is the voice of God/ Horatio 
Greenough the sculptor said to me 
of Robert Fulton's visit to Paris : 
"Fulton knocked at the door of 
Napoleon with steam, and was re- 
jected ; and Napoleon lived long 
enough to know that he had ex- 
24 



SUCCESS 



eluded a greater power than his 
own." 

Is there no loving of knowledge, 
and of art, and of our design, for 
itself alone ? Cannot we please our- 
selves with performing our work, 
or gaining truth and power, with- 
out being praised for it? I gain my 
point, I gain all points, if I can reach 
my companion with any statement 
which teaches him his own worth. 
The sum of wisdom is, that the 
time is never lost that is devoted to 
work. The good workman never 
says, 'There, that will do'; but, 
' There, that is it : try it, and come 
again, it will last always.' If the art- 
25 



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ist, in whatever art, is well at work 
on his own design, it signifies little 
that he does not yet find orders or 
customers. I pronounce that young 
man happy who is content with 
having acquired the skill which he 
had aimed at, and waits willingly 
when the occasion of making it 
appreciated shall arrive, knowing 
well that it will not loiter. The 
time your rival spends in dressing 
up his work for effect, hastily, and 
for the market, you spend in study 
and experiments towards real 
knowledge and efficiency. He has 
thereby sold his picture or machine, 
or won the prize, or got the ap- 
26 



SUCCESS 



pointment; but you have raised 
yourself into a higher school of 
art, and a few hours will show the 
advantage of the real master over 
the short popularity of the show- 
man. I know it is a nice point to 
discriminate this self-trust, which 
is the pledge of all mental vigor 
and performance, from the disease 
to which it is allied, the exag- 
geration of the part which we can 
play; yet they are two things. 
But it is sanity to know that, over 
my talent or knack, and a million 
times better than any talent, is the 
central intelligence which subordi- 
nates and uses all talents ; and it is 
27 



SUCCESS 



only as a door into this, that any 
talent or the knowledge it gives 
is of value. He only who comes 
into this central intelligence, in 
which no egotism or exaggera- 
tion can be, comes into self-pos- 
session. 

My next point is that in the scale 
of powers it is not talent but sens- 
ibility which is best: talent con- 
fines, but the central life puts us in 
relation to all. How often it seems 
the chief good to be born with a 
cheerful temper and well adjusted 
to the tone of the human race. 
Such a man feels himself in har- 
mony, and conscious by his recep- 
28 



SUCCESS 



tivity of an infinite strength. Like 
Alfred, "good fortune accompan- 
ies him like a gift of God/' Feel 
yourself, and be not daunted by 
things. 'Tis the fulness of man 
that runs over into objects, and 
makes his Bibles and Shakspeares 
and Homers so great. The joyful 
reader borrows of his own ideas to 
fill their faulty outline, and knows 
not that he borrows and gives. 

There is something of poverty 
in our criticism. We assume that 
there are few great men, all the 
rest are little ; that there is but one 
Homer, but one Shakspeare, one 
Newton, one Socrates. But the 
29 



SUCCESS 



soul in her beaming hour does not 
acknowledge these usurpations. 
We should know how to praise 
Socrates, or Plato, or Saint John, 
without impoverishing us. In good 
hours we do not find Shakspeare 
or Homer over-great, only to have 
been translators of the happy pre- 
sent, and every man and woman 
divine possibilities. 'T is the good 
reader that makes the good book ; 
a good head cannot read amiss, 
in every book he finds passages 
which seem confidences or asides 
hidden from all else and unmis- 
takably meant for his ear. 

The light by which we see in 
30 



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this world comes out from the soul 
of the observer. Wherever any 
noble sentiment dwelt, it made the 
faces and houses around to shine. 
Nay, the powers of this busy brain 
are miraculous and illimitable. 
Therein are the rules and form- 
ulas by which the whole empire 
of matter is worked. There is no 
prosperity, trade, art, city, or great 
material wealth of any kind, but if 
you trace it home, you will find it 
rooted in a thought of some indi- 
vidual man. 

Is all life a surface affair? 'T is 
curious, but our difference of wit 
appears to be only a difference of 
31 



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impressionability, or power to ap- 
preciate faint, fainter and infinitely 
faintest voices and visions. When 
the scholar or the writer has 
pumped his brain for thoughts and 
verses, and then comes abroad 
into Nature, has he never found 
that there is a better poetry hinted 
in a boy's whistle of a tune, or in 
the piping of a sparrow, than in 
all his literary results ? We call it 
health. What is so admirable as 
the health of youth? with his 
long days because his eyes are 
good, and brisk circulations keep 
him warm in cold rooms, and he 
loves books that speak to the im- 
32 



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agination ; and he can read Plato, 
covered to his chin with a cloak 
in a cold upper chamber, though 
he should associate the Dialogues 
ever after with a woollen smell. 
'T is the bane of life that natural 
effects are continually crowded 
out, and artificial arrangements 
substituted. We remember when 
in early youth the earth spoke 
and the heavens glowed ; when 
an evening, any evening, grim 
and wintry, sleet and snow, was 
enough for us; the houses were 
in the air. Now it costs a rare 
combination of clouds and lights 
to overcome the common and 
33 



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mean. What is it we look for in 
the landscape, in sunsets and sun- 
rises, in the sea and the firma- 
ment? what but a compensation 
for the cramp and pettiness of 
human performances? We bask 
in the day, and the mind finds 
somewhat as great as itself. In 
Nature all is large massive repose. 
Remember what befalls a city boy 
who goes for the first time into the 
October woods. He is suddenly 
initiated into a pomp and glory 
that brings to pass for him the 
dreams of romance. He is the king 
he dreamed he was ; he walks 
through tents of gold, through 
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bowers of crimson, porphyry and 
topaz, pavilion on pavilion, gar- 
landed with vines, flowers and sun- 
beams, with incense and music, 
with so many hints to his aston- 
ished senses ; the leaves twinkle 
and pique and flatter him, and his 
eye and step are tempted on by 
what hazy distances to happier 
solitudes. All this happiness he 
owes only to his finer perception. 
The owner of the wood-lot finds 
only a number of discolored trees, 
and says, < They ought to come 
down ; they are n't growing any 
better; they should be cut and 
corded before spring/ 
35 



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Wordsworth writes of the de- 
lights of the boy in Nature : 

" For never will come back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the 
flower." 

But I have just seen a man, well 
knowing what he spoke of, who 
told me that the verse was not true 
for him; that his eyes opened as 
he grew older, and that every 
spring was more beautiful to him 
than the last. 

We live among gods of our 
own creation. Does that deep- 
toned bell, which has shortened 
many a night of ill nerves, ren- 
der to you nothing but acoustic vi- 
36 



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brations ? Is the old church which 
gave you the first lessons of reli- 
gious life, or the village school, or 
the college where you first knew 
the dreams of fancy and joys of 
thought, only boards or brick and 
mortar? Is the house in which 
you were born, or the house in 
which your dearest friend lived, 
only a piece of real estate whose 
value is covered by the Hartford 
insurance? You walk on the beach 
and enjoy the animation of the pic- 
ture. Scoop up a little water in the 
hollow of your palm, take up a 
handful of shore sand; well, these 
are the elements. What is the 
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beach but acres of sand ? what is 
the ocean but cubic miles of wa- 
ter? a little more or less signifies 
nothing. No, it is that this brute 
matter is part of somewhat not 
brute. It is that the sand floor is 
held by spheral gravity, and bent 
to be a part of the round globe, 
under the optical sky, part of 
the astonishing astronomy, and 
existing at last to moral ends and 
from moral causes. 

The world is not made up to 
the eye of figures, that is, only 
half; it is also made of color. How 
that element washes the universe 
with its enchanting waves ! The 
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sculptor had ended his work, and 
behold a new world of dream-like 
glory. 'T is the last stroke of Na- 
ture ; beyond color she cannot go. 
In like manner, life is made up, 
not of knowledge only, but of love 
also. If thought is form, senti- 
ment is color. It clothes the skel- 
eton world with space, variety and 
glow. The hues of sunset make 
life great; so the affections make 
some little web of cottage and fire- 
side populous, important, and fill- 
ing the main space in our history. 
The fundamental fact in our 
metaphysic constitution is the 
correspondence of man to the 
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world, so that every change in that 
writes a record in the mind. The 
mind yields sympathetically to the 
tendencies or law which stream 
through things and make the order 
of Nature; and in the perfection 
of this correspondence or expres- 
siveness, the health and force of 
man consist. If we follow this hint 
into our intellectual education, we 
shall find that it is not proposi- 
tions, not new dogmas and a log- 
ical exposition of the world that 
are our first need; but to watch 
and tenderly cherish the intellect- 
ual and moral sensibilities, those 
fountains of right thought, and 
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woo them to stay and make their 
home with us. Whilst they abide 
with us we shall not think amiss. 
Our perception far outruns our 
talent. We bring a welcome to 
the highest lessons of religion and 
of poetry out of all proportion be- 
yond our skill to teach. And, fur- 
ther, the great hearing and sym- 
pathy of men is more true and wise 
than their speaking is wont to be. 
A deep sympathy is what we re- 
quire for any student of the mind; 
for the chief difference between 
man and man is a difference of im- 
pressionability. Aristotle or Bacon 
or Kant propound some maxim 
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which is the key-note of philoso- 
phy thenceforward. But I am more 
interested to know that when at 
last they have hurled out their 
grand word, it is only some fam- 
iliar experience of every man in 
the street. If it be not, it will never 
be heard of again. 

Ah ! if one could keep this sens- 
ibility, and live in the happy suf- 
ficing present, and find the day 
and its cheap means contenting, 
which only ask receptivity in you, 
and no strained exertion and can- 
kering ambition, overstimulating 
to be at the head of your class and 
the head of society, and to have 
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distinction and laurels and con- 
sumption ! We are not strong by 
our power to penetrate, but by 
our relatedness. The world is en- 
larged for us, not by new objects, 
but by finding more affinities and 
potencies in those we have. 

This sensibility appears in the 
homage to beauty which exalts the 
faculties of youth; in the power 
which form and color exert upon 
the soul ; when we see eyes that are 
a compliment to the human race, 
features that explain the Phid- 
ian sculpture. Fontenelle said : 
"There are three things about 
which I have curiosity, though I 
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know nothing of them, music, 
poetry and love/' The great doc- 
tors of this science are the greatest 
men, Dante, Petrarch, Michel 
Angelo and Shakspeare. The wise 
Socrates treats this matter with a 
certain archness, yet with very 
marked expressions. "I am al- 
ways,'' he says, "asserting that I 
happen to know, I may say, no- 
thing but a mere trifle relating to 
matters of love ; yet in that kind 
of learning I lay claim to be more 
skilled than any one man of the 
pastor present time/' They may 
well speak in this uncertain man- 
ner of their knowledge, and in this 
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confident manner of their will, 
for the secret of it is hard to de- 
tect, so deep it is ; and yet genius 
is measured by its skill in this 
science. 

Who is he in youth or in ma- 
turity or even in old age, who 
does not like to hear of those sens- 
ibilities which turn curled heads 
round at church, and send won- 
derful eye-beams across assem- 
blies, from one to one, never miss- 
ing in the thickest crowd? The 
keen statist reckons by tens and 
hundreds ; the genial man is inter- 
ested in every slipper that comes 
into the assembly. The passion, 
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alike everywhere, creeps under 
the snows of Scandinavia, under 
the fires of the equator, and swims 
in the seas of Polynesia. Lofn is 
as puissant a divinity in the Norse 
Edda as Camadeva in the red vault 
of India, Eros in the Greek, or 
Cupid in the Latin heaven. And 
what is specially true of love is 
that it is a state of extreme im- 
pressionability; the lover has more 
senses and finer senses than oth- 
ers; his eye and ear are tele- 
graphs ; he reads omens on the 
flower, and cloud, and face, and 
form, and gesture, and reads 
them aright. In his surprise at 
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the sudden and entire understand- 
ing that is between him and the 
beloved person, it occurs to him 
that they might somehow meet 
independently of time and place. 
How delicious the belief that he 
could elude all guards, precau- 
tions, ceremonies, means and de- 
lays, and hold instant and sempi- 
ternal communication! In solitude, 
in banishment, the hope returned, 
and the experiment was eagerly 
tried. The supernal powers seem 
to take his part. What was on his 
lips to say is uttered by his friend. 
When he went abroad, he met, by 
wonderful casualties, the one per- 
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son he sought. If in his walk he 
chanced to look back, his friend 
was walking behind him. And it 
has happened that the artist has 
often drawn in his pictures the 
face of the future wife whom he 
had not yet seen. 

But also in complacencies no- 
wise so strict as this of the pas- 
sion, the man of sensibility counts 
it a delight only to hear a child's 
voice fully addressed to him, or 
to see the beautiful manners of 
the youth of either sex. When 
the event is past and remote, how 
insignificant the greatest com- 
pared with the piquancy of the 
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present ! To-day at the school ex- 
amination the professor interro- 
gates Sylvina in the history class 
about Odoacer and Alaric. Syl- 
vina can't remember, but suggests 
that Odoacer was defeated; and 
the professor tartly replies, * No, 
he defeated the Romans/ But 
'tis plain to the visitor that 'tis 
of no importance at all about Odo- 
acer and 't is a great deal of im- 
portance about Sylvina, and if she 
says he was defeated, why he had 
better a great deal have been de- 
feated than give her a moment's 
annoy. Odoacer, if there was a 
particle of the gentleman in him, 
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would have said, Let me be de- 
feated a thousand times. 

And as our tenderness for youth 
and beauty gives a new and just 
importance to their fresh and man- 
ifold claims, so the like sensibility 
gives welcome to all excellence, 
has eyes and hospitality for mer- 
it in corners. An Englishman of 
marked character and talent, who 
had brought with him hither one 
or two friends and a library of 
mystics, assured me that nobody 
and nothing of possible interest 
was left in England, he had 
brought all that was alive away. 
I was forced to reply: "No, next 
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door to you probably, on the other 
side of the partition in the same 
house, was a greater man than any 
you had seen/' Every man has a 
history worth knowing, if he could 
tell it, or if we could draw it from 
him. Character and wit have their 
own magnetism. Send a deep man 
into any town, and he will find an- 
other deep man there, unknown 
hitherto to his neighbors. That is 
the great happiness of life, to 
add to our high acquaintances. 
The very law of averages might 
have assured you that there will 
be in every hundred heads, say ten 
or five good heads. Morals are 



SUCCESS 



generated as the atmosphere is. 
'T is a secret, the genesis of either; 
but the springs of justice and cour- 
age do not fail any more than salt 
or sulphur springs. 

The world is always opulent, 
the oracles are never silent; but 
the receiver must by a happy 
temperance be brought to that 
top of condition, that frolic health, 
that he can easily take and 
give these fine communications. 
Health is the condition of wis- 
dom, and the sign is cheerfulness, 
an open and noble temper. 
There was never poet who had 
not the heart in the right place. 
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The old trouveur, Pons Capdueil, 
wrote, 

u Oft have I heard, and deem the witness 

true, 

Whom man delights in, God delights in 
too." 

All beauty warms the heart, is 
a sign of health, prosperity and the 
favor of God. Everything lasting 
and fit for men the Divine Power 
has marked with this stamp. What 
delights, what emancipates, not 
what scars and pains us, is wise 
and good in speech and in the arts. 
For, truly, the heart at the centre 
of the universe with every throb 
hurls the flood of happiness into 
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every artery, vein and veinlet, so 
that the whole system is inundated 
with the tides of joy. The plenty 
of the poorest place is too great : 
the harvest cannot be gathered. 
Every sound ends in music. The 
edge of every surface is tinged 
with prismatic rays. 

One more trait of true success. 
The good mind chooses what is 
positive, what is advancing em- 
braces the affirmative. Our sys- 
tem is one of poverty. 'T is pre- 
sumed, as I said, there is but one 
Shakspeare, one Homer, one Je- 
sus, not that all are or shall 
be inspired. But we must begin 
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by affirming. Truth and goodness 
subsist forevermore. It is true 
there is evil and good, night and 
day : but these are not equal. The 
day is great and final. The night 
is for the day, but the day is not 
for the night. What is this im- 
mortal demand for more, which 
belongs to our constitution? this 
enormous ideal ? There is no such 
critic and beggar as this terrible 
Soul. No historical person begins 
to content us. We know the satis- 
factoriness of justice, the suffic- 
iency of truth. We know the an- 
swer that leaves nothing to ask. 
We know the Spirit by its victor- 
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ious tone. The searching tests to 
apply to every new pretender are 
amount and quality, what does 
he add? and what is the state of 
mind he leaves me in? Your the- 
ory is unimportant ; but what new 
stock you can add to humanity, or 
how high you can carry life ? A 
man is a man only as he makes 
life and nature happier to us. 

I fear the popular notion of suc- 
cess stands in direct opposition in 
all points to the real and whole- 
some success. One adores public 
opinion, the other private opinion ; 
one fame, the other desert; one 
feats, the other humility ; one lu- 
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ere, the other love; one mono- 
poly, and the other hospitality of 
mind. 

We may apply this affirmative 
law to letters, to manners, to art, 
to the decorations of our houses, 
etc. I do not find executions or 
tortures or lazar-houses, or grisly 
photographs of the field on the 
day after the battle, fit subjects for 
cabinet pictures. I think that some 
so-called "sacred subjects" must 
be treated with more genius than 
I have seen in the masters of Ital- 
ian or Spanish art to be right 
pictures for houses and churches. 
Nature does not invite such ex- 
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hibition. Nature lays the ground- 
plan for each creature accurately, 
sternly fit for all his functions ; 
then veils it scrupulously. See 
how carefully she covers up the 
skeleton. The eye shall not see it ; 
the sun shall not shine on it. She 
weaves her tissues and integu- 
ments of flesh and skin and hair 
and beautiful colors of the day 
over it, and forces death down un- 
derground, and makes haste to 
cover it up with leaves and vines, 
and wipes carefully out every trace 
by new creation. Who and what 
are you that would lay the ghastly 
anatomy bare ? 

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Don't hang a dismal picture on 
the wall, and do not daub with 
sables and glooms in your conver- 
sation. Don't be a cynic and dis- 
consolate preacher. Don't bewail 
and bemoan. Omit the negative 
propositions. Nerve us with in- 
cessant affirmatives. Don't waste 
yourself in rejection, nor bark 
against the bad, but chant the 
beauty of the good. When that 
is spoken which has a right to be 
spoken, the chatter and the crit- 
icism will stop. Set down nothing 
that will not help somebody ; 

" For every gift of noble origin 
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual 
breath." 

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The affirmative of affirmatives 
is love. As much love, so much 
perception. As caloric to matter, 
so is love to mind ; so it enlarges, 
and so it empowers it. Good will 
makes insight, as one finds his 
way to the sea by embarking on 
a river. I have seen scores of peo- 
ple who can silence me, but I 
seek one who shall make me for- 
get or overcome the frigidities 
and imbecilities into which I fall. 
The painter Giotto, Vasari tells 
us, renewed art because he put 
more goodness into his heads. To 
awake in man and to raise the 
sense of worth, to educate his 
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feeling and judgment so that he 
shall scorn himself for a bad ac- 
tion, that is the only aim. 

'T is cheap and easy to destroy. 
There is not a joyful boy or an 
innocent girl buoyant with fine 
purposes of duty, in all the street 
full of eager and rosy faces, but 
a cynic can chill and dishearten 
with a single word. Despondency 
comes readily enough to the most 
sanguine. The cynic has only to 
follow their hint with his bitter 
confirmation, and they check that 
eager courageous pace and go 
home with heavier step and pre- 
mature age. They will them- 
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selves quickly enough give the 
hint he wants to the cold wretch. 
Which of them has not failed to 
please where they most wished 
it ? or blundered where they were 
most ambitious of success? or 
found themselves awkward or 
tedious or incapable of study, 
thought or heroism, and only 
hoped by good sense and fidelity 
to do what they could and pass 
unblamed? And this witty male- 
factor makes their little hope less 
with satire and skepticism, and 
slackens the springs of endeavor. 
Yes, this is easy ; but to help the 
young soul, add energy, inspire 
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hope and blow the coals into a 
useful flame ; to redeem defeat by 
new thought, by firm action, that 
is not easy, that is the work of 
divine men. 

We live on different planes or 
platforms. There is an external 
life, which is educated at school, 
taught to read, write, cipher and 
trade ; taught to grasp all the boy 
can get, urging him to put himself 
forward, to make himself useful 
and agreeable in the world, to 
ride, run, argue and contend, un- 
fold his talents, shine, conquer and 
possess. 

But the inner life sits at home, 
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and does not learn to do things, 
nor value these feats at all. 'T is 
a quiet, wise perception. It loves 
truth, because it is itself real; it 
loves right, it knows nothing else ; 
but it makes no progress; was as 
wise in our first memory of it as 
now; is just the same now in ma- 
turity and hereafter in age, it was 
in youth. We have grown to man- 
hood and womanhood; we have 
powers, connection, children, re- 
putations, professions: this makes 
no account of them all. It lives in 
the great present; it makes the 
present great. This tranquil, well- 
founded, wide-seeing soul is no ex- 
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press-rider, no attorney, no mag- 
istrate : it lies in the sun and broods 
on the world. A person of this 
temper once said to a man of 
much activity, " I will pardon you 
that you do so much, and you me 
that I do nothing." And Euripides 
says that " Zeus hates busybodies 
and those who do too much." 



FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY NUMBERED 

COPIES PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., IN NOVEMBER, 1912 

NO. 



UNIVERSITY CFCSlffflRMAUBW