Representative Men | Page 5

These are at
once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.
We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see the power and beauty of the
body; there is the like pleasure, and a higher benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of
all kinds; as, feats of memory, of mathematical combination, great power of abstraction,
the transmutings of the imagination, even versatility, and concentration, as these acts
expose the invisible organs and members of the mind, which respond, member for
member, to the parts of the body. For, we thus enter a new gymnasium, and learn to
choose men by their truest marks, taught, with Plato, "to choose those who can, without
aid from the eyes, or any other sense, proceed to truth and to being." Foremost among
these activities, are the summersaults, spells, and resurrections, wrought by the
imagination. When this wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a thousand times his
force. It opens the delicious sense of indeterminate size, and inspires an audacious mental
habit. We are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book, or a word
dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed with
galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the Pit. And this benefit is real, because we are
entitled to these enlargements, and, once having passed the bounds, shall never again be
quite the miserable pedants we were.
The high functions of the intellect are so allied, that some imaginative power usually
appears in all eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in
meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. This class serve us, so that they have the

perception of identity and the perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakespeare,
Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of these laws. The perception of these laws is a
kind of metre of the mind. Little minds are little, through failure to see them.
Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of the
herald. Especially when a mind of powerful method has instructed men, we find the
examples of oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit
of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke,--in religion the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the
sects which have taken the name of each founder, are in point. Alas! every man is such a
victim. The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. It is the delight
of vulgar talent to dazzle and to bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us
from itself. True genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. If a
wise man should appear in our village, he would create, in those who conversed with him,
a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages; he
would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not
be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. The rich
would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes and their resources.
But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is her remedy. The soul is impatient
of masters, and eager for change. Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valuable,
"She has lived with me long enough." We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none
of us complete. We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the law of
nature. When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but
none comes and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite
different field, the next man will appear; not Jefferson, nor Franklin, but now a great
salesman; then a road-contractor; then a student of fishes; then a buffalo-hunting explorer,
or a semi-savage western general. Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but
against the best there is a finer remedy. The power which they communicate is not theirs.
When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which, also,
Plato was debtor.
I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class. Life is a scale of degrees.
Between rank and rank of our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have, in all ages,
attached themselves to a few persons, who, either by the quality of that idea they
embodied, or by the largeness of their reception, were entitled to the position of leaders
and law-givers. These teach us the qualities of primary nature,--admit us to the
constitution of things. We swim, day by day, on a