Representative Men | Page 6

river of delusions, and are effectually
amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. But life is
a sincerity. In lucid intervals we say, "Let there be an entrance opened for me into
realities; I have worn the fool's cap too long." We will know the meaning of our
economies and politics. Give us the cipher, and, if persons and things are scores of a
celestial music, let us read off the strains. We have been cheated of our reason; yet there
have been sane men, who enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they know, they
know for us. With each new mind, a new secret of nature transpires; nor can the Bible be
closed, until the last great man is born. These men correct the delirium of the animal
spirits, make us considerate, and engage us to new aims and powers. The veneration of
mankind selects these for the highest place. Witness the multitude of statues, pictures,
and memorials which recall their genius in every city, village, house, and ship:--
"Ever their phantoms arise before us. Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; At bed and

table they lord it o'er us, With looks of beauty, and words of good."
How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the service rendered by those who
introduce moral truths into the general mind?--I am plagued, in all my living, with a
perpetual tariff of prices. If I work in my garden, and prune an apple-tree, I am well
enough entertained, and could continue indefinitely in the like occupation. But it comes
to mind that a day is gone, and I have got this precious nothing done. I go to Boston or
New York, and run up and down on my affairs: they are sped, but so is the day. I am
vexed by the recollection of this price I have paid for a trifling advantage. I remember the
_peau d'ane_, on which whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of the skin was
gone for every wish. I go to a convention of philanthropists. Do what I can, I cannot keep
my eyes off the clock. But if there should appear in the company some gentle soul who
knows little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that
disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false
player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any
conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me; I forget the clock.
I pass out of the sore relation to persons. I am healed of my hurts. I am made immortal by
apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods. Here is great competition of rich and
poor. We live in a market, where is only so much wheat, or wool, or land; and if I have so
much more, every other must have so much less. I seem to have no good, without breach
of good manners. Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war,
of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It
is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and
hatreds of his competitors. But in these new fields there is room: here are no self-esteems,
no exclusions.
I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts, and for thoughts; I like rough
and smooth "Scourges of God," and "Darlings of the human race." I like the first Caesar;
and Charles V., of Spain; and Charles XII., of Sweden; Richard Plantagenet; and
Bonaparte, in France. I applaud a sufficient man, an officer, equal to his office; captains,
ministers, senators. I like a master standing firm on legs of iron, well-born, rich,
handsome, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fascination into
tributaries and supporters of his power. Sword and staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like,
carry on the work of the world. But I find him greater, when he can abolish himself, and
all heroes, by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of persons; this subtilizer, and
irresistible upward force, into our thought, destroying individualism; the power so great,
that the potentate is nothing. Then he is a monarch, who gives a constitution to his people;
a pontiff, who preaches the equality of souls, and releases his servants from their
barbarous homages; an emperor, who can spare his empire.
But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or three points of service. Nature
never spares the opium or nepenthe; but wherever she mars her creature with some
deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on