Part 21 (1/2)
The pulses of her iron heart Go beating through the storm.
No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so weak a creature, of forces so prodigious. I remember I watched, in crossing the sea, the beautiful skill whereby the engine in its constant working was made to produce two hundred gallons of fresh water out of salt water every hour--thereby supplying all the s.h.i.+p's wants.
The skill that pervades complex details; the man that maintains himself; the chimney taught to burn its own smoke; the farm made to produce all that is consumed on it; the very prison compelled to maintain itself and yield a revenue, and, better still, made a reform school, and a manufactory of honest men out of rogues, as the steamer made fresh water out of salt--all these are examples of that tendency to combine antagonisms, and utilize evil, which is the index of high civilization.
Civilization is the result of highly complex organization. In the snake, all the organs are sheathed: no hands, no feet, no fins, no wings. In bird and beast, the organs are released, and begin to play. In man, they are all unbound, and full of joyful action. With this unswaddling he receives the absolute illumination we call Reason, and thereby true liberty.
Climate has much to do with this melioration. The highest civility has never loved the hot zones. Wherever snows falls, there is usually civil freedom. Where the banana grows, the animal system is indolent and pampered at the cost of higher qualities; the man is sensual and cruel.
But this scale is not invariable. High degrees of moral sentiment control the unfavorable influences of climate; and some of our grandest examples of men and of races come from the equatorial regions--as the genius of Egypt, of India, and of Arabia.
These feats are measures or traits of civility; and temperate climate is an important influence, though not quite indispensable; for there have been learning, philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the tropics. But one condition is essential to the social education of man, namely, morality.
There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name, but sometimes the point of honor, as in the inst.i.tution of chivalry; or patriotism, as in the Spartan and Roman republics; or the enthusiasm of some religious act which imputes its virtue to its dogma; or the cabalism, or _esprit de corps_, of a masonic or other a.s.sociation of friends.
The evolution of a highly-destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels. It must be catholic in aims. What is _moral_? It is the respecting in action catholic or universal ends. Hear the definition which Kant gives of moral conduct: ”Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings.”
Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what is higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of the elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad axe chopping upward chips from a beam. How awkward! at what disadvantage he works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness, and s.h.i.+rking to endure from his hand-sawyers, until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel: the river is good-natured, and never hints an objection.
We had letters to send: couriers could not go fast enough, nor far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity, and always going our way--just the way we wanted to send. _Would he take a message?_ Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection--he had no carpetbag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread--and it went like a charm.
I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-sh.o.r.e, makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages the a.s.sistance of the moon, like a hired hand, to grind, and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron.
Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his ch.o.r.e done by the G.o.ds themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing.
Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt; as, for example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer, having by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived to put the diameter of the earth's...o...b..t, say two hundred millions of miles, between his first observation and his second, and this line afforded him a respectable base for his triangle.
All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot bring the heavenly powers to us; but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that _they never go out of their road_. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their fore-ordained paths--neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote of dust.
And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and political action leans on principles. To accomplish anything excellent, the will must work for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature, walled in on every side, as Daniel wrote,--
Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
But when his will leans on a principle, when he is the vehicle of ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. ”It was a great instruction,” said a saint in Cromwell's war, ”that the best courages are but beams of the Almighty.” Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not f.a.g in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal.
No G.o.d will help. We shall find all their teams going the other way--Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: every G.o.d will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.
If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by putting our works in the path of the celestial circuits, we can harness also evil agents, the powers of darkness, and force them to serve against their will the ends of wisdom and virtue. Thus, a wise government puts fines and penalties on pleasant vices. What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village, and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? ”He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much.” Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.
These are traits, and measures, and modes; and the true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of man the country turns out. I see the vast advantages of this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate zone. I see the immense material prosperity--towns on towns, states on states, and wealth piled in the ma.s.sive architecture of cities; California quartz mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled architecturally along-sh.o.r.e from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California again.
But it is not New York streets, built by the confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston--not these that make the real estimation. But, when I look over this constellation of cities which animate and ill.u.s.trate the land, and see how little the government has to do with their daily life, how self-helped and self-directed all families are,--knots of men in purely natural societies,--societies of trade, of kindred blood, of habitual hospitality, house and house, man acting on man by weight of opinion of longer or better-directed industry, the refining influence of women, the invitation which experience and permanent causes open to youth and labor,--when I see how much each virtuous and gifted person, whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of excellent people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with great reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue, and in the symmetry and force of their qualities, I see what cubic values America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth.
In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral and intellectual steps.
The appearance of the Hebrew Moses, of the Indian Buddh,--in Greece, of the Seven Wise Masters, of the acute and upright Socrates, and of the Stoic Zeno,--in Judaea, the advent of Jesus,--and in modern Christendom, of the realists Huss, Savonarola, and Luther,--are casual facts which carry forward races to new convictions, and elevate the rule of life. In the presence of these agencies, it is frivolous to insist on the invention of printing or gunpowder, of steam-power or gas-light, percussion-caps and rubber-shoes, which are toys thrown off from that security, freedom, and exhilaration which a healthy morality creates in society. These arts add a comfort and smoothness to house and street life; but a purer morality, which kindles genius, civilizes civilization, casts backward all that we held sacred into the profane, as the flame of oil throws a shadow when s.h.i.+ned upon by the flame of the Bude-light. Not the less the popular measures of progress will ever be the arts and the laws.
But if there be a country which cannot stand any one of these tests--a country where knowledge cannot be diffused without perils of mob-law and statute-law,--where speech is not free,--where the post-office is violated, mailbags opened, and letters tampered with,--where public debts and private debts outside of the State are repudiated,--where liberty is attacked in the primary inst.i.tution of social life,--where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman,--where the arts, such as they have, are all imported, having no indigenous life,--where the laborer is not secured in the earnings of his own hands,--where suffrage is not free or equal,--that country is, in all these respects, not civil, but barbarous; and no advantages of soil, climate, or coast can resist these suicidal mischiefs.
Morality and all the incidents of morality are essential: as, justice to the citizen and personal liberty. Montesquieu says: ”Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free”; and the remark holds not less, but more true, of the culture of men, than of the tillage of land. And the highest proof of civility is, that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.
ILLUSIONS[15]
Flow, flow the waves hated, Accursed, adored, The waves of mutation: No anchorage is.
Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die, live.
House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, Old man and young maid, Day's toil and its guerdon-- They are all vanis.h.i.+ng, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored.
See the stars through them, Through treacherous marbles.