Complete Prose Works

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In saner hours far different are the amounts of these things from
what, at first sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt important who
is elected governor, mayor, or legislator, (and full of dismay when
incompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do,) there are
other, quieter contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c.,
will always be the show, like ocean's scum; enough, if waters deep
and clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroider'd
shoddy gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp
and weft are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that
the race, the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could
also put it down. The average man of a land at last only is important.
He, in these States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving good
uses, somehow, out of any sort of servant in office, even the basest;
(certain universal requisites, and their settled regularity and
protection, being first secured,) a nation like ours, in a sort of
geological formation state, trying continually new experiments,
choosing new delegations, is not served by the best men only, but
sometimes more by those that provoke it--by the combats they arouse.
Thus national rage, fury, discussions, &c., better than content. Thus,
also, the warning signals, invaluable for after times.

What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen repeated, and
doubtless long shall see--the popular judgment taking the successful
candidates on trial in the offices--standing off, as it were, and
observing them and their doings for a while, and always giving,
finally, the fit, exactly due reward? I think, after all, the
sublimest part of political history, and its culmination, is currently
issuing from the American people. I know nothing grander, better
exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the
triumphant result of faith in human-kind, than a well-contested
American national election.

Then still the thought returns, (like the thread-passage in
overtures,) giving the key and echo to these pages. When I pass to and
fro, different latitudes, different seasons, beholding the crowds of
the great cities, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago,
St. Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore--when I mix with
these interminable swarms of alert, turbulent, good-natured,
independent citizens, mechanics, clerks, young persons--at the idea
of this mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a
singular awe falls upon me. I feel, with dejection and amazement, that
among our geniuses and talented writers or speakers, few or none have
yet really spoken to this people, created a single image-making work
for them, or absorb'd the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies which
are theirs--and which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain entirely
uncelebrated, unexpress'd.

Dominion strong is the body's; dominion stronger is the mind's. What
has fill'd, and fills to-day our intellect, our fancy, furnishing
the standards therein, is yet foreign. The great poems, Shakspere
included, are poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of
the common people, the life-blood of democracy. The models of our
literature, as we get it from other lands, ultra-marine, have had
their birth in courts, and bask'd and grown in castle sunshine; all
smells of princes' favors. Of workers of a certain sort, we have,
indeed, plenty, contributing after their kind; many elegant, many
learn'd, all complacent. But touch'd by the national test, or tried by
the standards of democratic personality, they wither to ashes. I say I
have not seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what-not, that
has confronted the voiceless but ever erect and active, pervading,
underlying will and typic aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindred
to itself. Do you call those genteel little creatures American poets?
Do you term that perpetual, pistareen, paste-pot work, American art,
American drama, taste, verse? I think I hear, echoed as from some
mountain-top afar in the west, the scornful laugh of the Genius of
these States.

Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals, not of
literature and art only--not of men only, but of women. The idea of
the women of America, (extricated from this daze, this fossil and
unhealthy air which hangs about the word _lady_,) develop'd, raised to
become the robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical
and political deciders with the men--greater than man, we may admit,
through their divine maternity, always their towering, emblematical
attribute--but great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or,
rather, capable of being so, soon as they realize it, and can bring
themselves to give up toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do,
amid real, independent, stormy life.

Then, as towards our thought's finale, (and, in that, overarching the
true scholar's lesson,) we have to say there can be no complete or
epical presentation of democracy in the aggregate, or anything like
it, at this day, because its doctrines will only be effectually
incarnated in any one branch, when, in all, their spirit is at the
root and centre. Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our Vistas!
How much is still to be disentangled, freed! How long it takes to make
this American world see that it is, in itself, the final authority and
reliance!

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for
politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there
that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in
the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs--in
religion, literature, colleges, and schools--democracy in all public
and private life, and in the army and navy.[26] I have intimated
that, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers and
believers. I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to
noted propagandists or champions, or has been essentially help'd,
though often harm'd, by them. It has been and is carried on by all the
moral forces, and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications,
and, in fact, by all the developments of history, and can no more be
stopp'd than the tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also, it
resides, crude and latent, well down in the hearts of the fair average
of the American-born people, mainly in the agricultural regions. But
it is not yet, there or anywhere, the fully-receiv'd, the fervid, the
absolute faith.

I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a
grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound
and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see
in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a
deep, integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from which
issued laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities,
poems, (hitherto unequall'd,) faithfully partaking of their source,
and indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of
that varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute--so,
long ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an
equal retrospect, an equal history for the democratic principle. It
too must be adorn'd, credited with its results--then, when it, with
imperial power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind--has been
the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political,
and religious expressions and institutes of the civilized world--has
begotten them in spirit and in form, and has carried them to its
own unprecedented heights--has had, (it is possible,) monastics and
ascetics, more numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of
all previous creeds--has sway'd the ages with a breadth and rectitude
tallying Nature's own--has fashion'd, systematized, and triumphantly
finish'd and carried out, in its own interest, and with unparallel'd
success, a new earth and a new man.

Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and
travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth are
upon us; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strong
formations, doubts, suspense--for then the afflatus of such themes
haply may fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot from surrounding
war and revolution, our speech, though without polish'd coherence, and
a failure by the standard called criticism, comes forth, real at least
as the lightnings.

And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own reward--(for there are
yet some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged.) Though not for
us the joy of entering at the last the conquer'd city--not ours the
chance ever to see with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid
_eclat_ of the democratic principle, arriv'd at meridian, filling the
world with effulgence and majesty far beyond those of past history's
kings, or all dynastic sway--there is yet, to whoever is eligible
among us, the prophetic vision, the joy of being toss'd in the brave
turmoil of these times--the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly
reverent to the voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which
others see not, hear not--with the proud consciousness that amid
whatever clouds, seductions, or heart-wearying postponements, we have
never deserted, never despair'd, never abandon'd the faith.

So much contributed, to be conn'd well, to help prepare and brace our
edifice, our plann'd Idea--we still proceed to give it in another
of its aspects--perhaps the main, the high facade of all. For to
democracy, the leveler, the unyielding principle of the average, is
surely join'd another principle, equally unyielding, closely tracking
the first, indispensable to it, opposite, (as the sexes are opposite,)
and whose existence, confronting and ever modifying the other, often
clashing, paradoxical, yet neither of highest avail without the other,
plainly supplies to these grand cosmic politics of ours, and to the
launch'd-forth mortal dangers of republicanism, to-day or any day, the
counterpart and offset whereby Nature restrains the deadly original
relentlessness of all her first-class laws. This second principle is
individuality, the pride and centripetal isolation of a human being in
himself--identity--personalism. Whatever the name, its acceptance and
thorough infusion through the organizations of political commonalty
now shooting Aurora-like about the world, are of utmost importance, as
the principle itself is needed for very life's sake. It forms, in a
sort, or is to form, the compensating balance-wheel of the successful
working machinery of aggregate America.

And, if we think of it, what does civilization itself rest upon--and
what object has it, with its religions, arts, schools, &c., but rich,
luxuriant, varied personalism? To that, all bends; and it is because
toward such result democracy alone, on anything like Nature's scale,
breaks up the limitless fallows of humankind, and plants the seed, and
gives fair play, that its claims now precede the rest. The literature,
songs, esthetics, &c., of a country are of importance principally
because they furnish the materials and suggestions of personality for
the women and men of that country, and enforce them in a thousand
effective ways.[27] As the topmost claim of a strong consolidating
of the nationality of these States, is, that only by such powerful
compaction can the separate States secure that full and free swing
within their spheres, which is becoming to them, each after its kind,
so will individuality, with unimpeded branchings, flourish best under
imperial republican forms.

Assuming Democracy to be at present in its embryo condition, and that
the only large and satisfactory justification of it resides in the
future, mainly through the copious production of perfect characters
among the people, and through the advent of a sane and pervading
religiousness, it is with regard to the atmosphere and spaciousness
fit for such characters, and of certain nutriment and cartoon-draftings
proper for them, and indicating them for New-World purposes, that I
continue the present statement--an exploration, as of new ground,
wherein, like other primitive surveyors, I must do the best I can,
leaving it to those who come after me to do much better. (The service,
in fact, if any, must be to break a sort of first path or track, no
matter how rude and ungeometrical.)

We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often
repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite
unawaken'd, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests
out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a
great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that
history has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of
another great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waits
unwritten. As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in the States,
(and I entirely respect them,) are toward those vast and sweeping
movements, influences, moral and physical, of humanity, now and always
current over the planet, on the scale of the impulses of the elements.
Then it is also good to reduce the whole matter to the consideration
of a single self, a man, a woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the
treatment of the universal, in politics, metaphysics, or anything,
sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary soul.

There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises,
independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining
eternal. This is the thought of identity--yours for you, whoever you
are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most
spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and
only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the
significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of
the Me in the centre,) creeds, conventions, fall away and become of
no account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real
vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf
in the fable, 'once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over the
whole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven.

The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own
central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto--not
criticism by other standards, and adjustments thereto--is the lesson
of Nature. True, the full man wisely gathers, culls, absorbs; but
if, engaged disproportionately in that, he slights or overlays the
precious idiocrasy and special nativity and intention that he is, the
man's self, the main thing, is a failure, however wide his general
cultivation. Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse are not
only attended to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us up, like a
cancer. Already, the democratic genius watches, ill-pleased, these
tendencies. Provision for a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue,
justification of what one has in one's self, whatever it is, is
demanded. Negative qualities, even deficiencies, would be a relief.
Singleness and normal simplicity and separation, amid this more and
more complex, more and more artificialized state of society--how
pensively we yearn for them! how we would welcome their return!

In some such direction, then--at any rate enough to preserve the
balance--we feel called upon to throw what weight we can, not for
absolute reasons, but current ones. To prune, gather, trim, conform,
and ever cram and stuff, and be genteel and proper, is the pressure
of our days. While aware that much can be said even in behalf of all
this, we perceive that we have not now to consider the question of
what is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or set
of nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous
congeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becoming
stifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite
conformity and art. In addition to establish'd sciences, we suggest
a science as it were of healthy average personalism, on
original-universal grounds, the object of which should be to raise up
and supply through the States a copious race of superb American men
and women, cheerful, religious, ahead of any yet known.

America has yet morally and artistically originated nothing. She seems
singularly unaware that the models of persons, books, manners, &c.,
appropriate for former conditions and for European lands, are but
exiles and exotics here. No current of her life, as shown on the
surfaces of what is authoritatively called her society, accepts or
runs into social or esthetic democracy; but all the currents set
squarely against it. Never, in the Old World, was thoroughly
upholster'd exterior appearance and show, mental and other, built
entirely on the idea of caste, and on the sufficiency of mere outside
acquisition--never were glibness, verbal intellect, more the test, the
emulation--more loftily elevated as head and sample--than they are on
the surface of our republican States this day. The writers of a time
hint the mottoes of its gods. The word of the modern, say these
voices, is the word Culture.

We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy. This word
Culture, or what it has come to represent, involves, by contrast, our
whole theme, and has been, indeed, the spur, urging us to engagement.
Certain questions arise. As now taught, accepted and carried out, are
not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious
infidels, who believe in nothing? Shall a man lose himself in
countless masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to
this, that, and the other, that the simply good and healthy and brave
parts of him are reduced and clipp'd away, like the bordering of box
in a garden? You can cultivate corn and roses and orchards--but who
shall cultivate the mountain peaks, the ocean, and the tumbling
gorgeousness of the clouds? Lastly--is the readily-given reply that
culture only seeks to help, systematize, and put in attitude, the
elements of fertility and power, a conclusive reply?

I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I should certainly
insist, for the purposes of these States, on a radical change of
category, in the distribution of precedence. I should demand a
programme of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for
the parlors or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life,
the west, the working-men, the facts of farms and jack-planes and
engineers, and of the broad range of the women also of the middle and
working strata, and with reference to the perfect equality of women,
and of a grand and powerful motherhood. I should demand of this
programme or theory a scope generous enough to include the widest
human area. It must have for its spinal meaning the formation of a
typical personality of character, eligible to the uses of the high
average of men--and _not_ restricted by conditions ineligible to
the masses. The best culture will always be that of the manly
and courageous instincts, and loving perceptions, and of
self-respect--aiming to form, over this continent, an idiocrasy of
universalism, which, true child of America, will bring joy to its
mother, returning to her in her own spirit, recruiting myriads of
offspring, able, natural, perceptive, tolerant, devout believers in
her, America, and with some definite instinct why and for what she has
arisen, most vast, most formidable of historic births, and is, now and
here, with wonderful step, journeying through Time.

The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New World, is,
under permanent law and order, and after preserving cohesion,
(ensemble-individuality,) at all hazards, to vitalize man's free play
of special Personalism, recognizing in it something that calls ever
more to be consider'd, fed, and adopted as the substratum for the best
that belongs to us, (government indeed is for it,) including the new
esthetics of our future.

To formulate beyond this present vagueness--to help line and put
before us the species, or a specimen of the species, of the democratic
ethnology of the future, is a work toward which the genius of our
land, with peculiar encouragement, invites her well-wishers. Already
certain limnings, more or less grotesque, more or less fading and
watery, have appear'd. We too, (repressing doubts and qualms,) will
try our hand.

Attempting, then, however crudely, a basic model or portrait of
personality for general use for the manliness of the States, (and
doubtless that is most useful which is most simple and comprehensive
for all, and toned low enough,) we should prepare the canvas well
beforehand. Parentage must consider itself in advance. (Will the time
hasten when fatherhood and motherhood shall become a science--and
the noblest science?) To our model, a clear-blooded, strong-fibred
physique, is indispensable; the questions of food, drink, air,
exercise, assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out of
these we descry a well-begotten selfhood--in youth, fresh, ardent,
emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave,
perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent,
neither flippant nor sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements
easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast
expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes
of calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of flashing--and a general
presence that holds its own in the company of the highest. (For it is
native personality, and that alone, that endows a man to stand before
presidents or generals, or in any distinguish'd collection, with
_aplomb_--and _not_ culture, or any knowledge or intellect whatever.)
With regard to the mental-educational part of our model, enlargement
of intellect, stores of cephalic knowledge, &c., the concentration
thitherward of all the customs of our age, especially in America, is
so overweening, and provides so fully for that part, that, important
and necessary as it is, it really needs nothing from us here--except,
indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint. Manners, costumes, too,
though important, we need not dwell upon here. Like beauty, grace of
motion, &c., they are results. Causes, original things, being attended
to, the right manners unerringly follow. Much is said, among artists,
of "the grand style," as if it were a thing by itself. When a man,
artist or whoever, has health, pride, acuteness, noble aspirations,
he has the motive-elements of the grandest style. The rest is but
manipulation, (yet that is no small matter.)

Leaving still unspecified several sterling parts of any model fit for
the future personality of America, I must not fail, again and ever,
to pronounce myself on one, probably the least attended to in modern
times--a hiatus, indeed, threatening its gloomiest consequences after
us. I mean the simple, unsophisticated Conscience, the primary moral
element. If I were asked to specify in what quarter lie the grounds of
darkest dread, respecting the America of our hopes, I should have to
point to this particular. I should demand the invariable application
to individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-true
plumb-rule of persons, eras, nations. Our triumphant modern civilizee,
with his all-schooling and his wondrous appliances, will still show
himself but an amputation while this deficiency remains. Beyond,
(assuming a more hopeful tone,) the vertebration of the manly and
womanly personalism of our western world, can only be, and is, indeed,
to be, (I hope,) its all-penetrating Religiousness.

The ripeness of Religion is doubtless to be looked for in this field
of individuality, and is a result that no organization or church can
ever achieve. As history is poorly retain'd by what the technists call
history, and is not given out from their pages, except the learner has
in himself the sense of the well-wrapt, never yet written, perhaps
impossible to be written, history--so Religion, although casually
arrested, and, after a fashion, preserv'd in the churches and creeds,
does not depend at all upon them, but is a part of the identified
soul, which, when greatest, knows not bibles in the old way, but in
new ways--the identified soul, which can really confront Religion when
it extricates itself entirely from the churches, and not before.

Personalism fuses this, and favors it. I should say, indeed, that only
in the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of individuality may
the spirituality of religion positively come forth at all. Only here,
and on such terms, the meditation, the devout ecstasy, the soaring
flight. Only here, communion with the mysteries, the eternal problems,
whence? whither? Alone, and identity, and the mood--and the soul
emerges, and all statements, churches, sermons, melt away like vapors.
Alone, and silent thought and awe, and aspiration--and then the
interior consciousness, like a hitherto unseen inscription, in magic
ink, beams out its wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey, and
priests expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation of
one's isolated Self, to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the
divine levels, and commune with the unutterable.