The Atlantic Monthly | Page 3

make a world in which we walk continually up and down. In it we find friends and enemies, we love and are loved, we travel and build. In it we are kings; we ordain and arrange everything, and never come away worsted from any encounter. For this sphere arises in answer to the practical question, What can I be and do? It is an embodiment of the force that is in me. Every dreamer, therefore, goes on to see himself among men and things which he can understand and master, with which he can deal securely. The stable-boy has hid an old volume among the straw, and he walks with Portia and Desdemona while he grooms the horses. Already in his smock-frock he is a companion for princes and queens. But the rich man's son, well born, as we say, in the great house yonder, has one only ambition in life,--to turn stable-boy, to own a fast team and a trotting-wagon, to vie with gamesters upon the road. That is an activity to which he is equal, in which his value will appear. Both boys, and all boys, are looking upward, only from widely different levels and to different heights.
The young blasphemer does not love blasphemy, but to have his head and be let alone by Old Aunty, who combs his hair as if he were a girl. So always there is some ideal aim in the mixed motive. Out of six gay young men who drive and drink together, only one cares for the meat and the bottle. With the rest this feasting gallantly on the best, regardless of expense, is part of a system. It is in good style, is convivial. For these green-horns of society to live together, to be conviv?, is not to think and labor together, as wise men use, but to laugh and be drunken in company.
Into the lowest courses there enters something to keep the filth from overwhelming self-respect. The advocates of slavery have not, as it appears, lost all pretence of honor and honesty. Thieves are sustained by a sense of the injustice of society. They do but right an old wrong, taking bravely what was accumulated by cautious cunning. They cultivate many virtues, and, like the best of us, make much of these, identify themselves with these. If a man is harsh and tyrannical, he regrets that he has too much force of character. And it is not safe to accuse a harlot of stealing and lying. She has her ideal also, and strives to keep the ulcer of sin within bounds,--to save a sweet side from corruption.
Is this stooping very low to look for the Ideal Tendency? The greater gain, if we find it prevailing in these depths. We may doubt whether thieves and harlots are subject to the same law which irresistibly lifts us, for we know that our own sin is not quite like other sin. But I must not offer all the cheerful hope I feel for the worst offenders, because too much faith passes for levity or impiety; and men thank God only for deliverance from great dangers, not for preservation from all danger. For gratitude we must not escape too easily and clean, but with some smell of fire upon us.
Yet in our own experience this planning what we shall do and become is constant, and always we escape from the present into larger air. The boy will not be content with that skill in skating which occupies his mind to-day. That belongs to the day and place, but next year he goes to the academy and fresh exploits engage him. He works gallantly in this new field and harness, because his thought has gone forward again, and he sees through these studies the man of thought. Already as a student he is a philosopher, a poet, a servant of the Muse. Bacon and Milton look kindly on him in invitation, he is walking to their company and in their company. The young hero-worshipper cannot remain satisfied with mere physical or warlike prowess. He soon sees the superiority of mental and moral mastery, of creation of good counsel. He will reverence the valiant reformer who brings justice in his train, the saint in whom goodness is enamored of goodness, the gentleman whose heart-beat is courtesy, the prophet in whom a religion is born, all who have been inspired with liberal, not dragged by sordid aims.
How beautiful to him is the society of poets! He reads with idolatry the letters and anecdotes of Coleridge and Wordsworth, Goethe and Schiller, Beethoven and Raphael. Look at the private thought of these men in familiar intercourse: no plotting for lucre, but a conspiracy to reach the best in life. The saints are even more ardent in aspiration, for their