"And as in respect to property so also in respect to persons it takes an ounce to balance an ounce; the fair house of Seem is never an equivalent for the house of Be. Nor can the loudest Pretension supply the place of the smallest piece of Performance. A just view of human nature would convince men of that truth (how hard to learn) that it is the man makes the place. Alfred, Washington, Lafayette, appear half divine to the people followed in their office by a nation's eye. Ambitious but pitiful persons see them and think it is the place alone that makes them great, and that if they sat in the same chairs they would be as much admired. All means are used to this end; all sorts of shame accumulated; and by and by perhaps they sit in the high seat only to make subtleness and pitifulness quite bare to the view of all men.

"In our own times, without satire, this mistake is so common that all society and government seems to be making believe, when we see such ignorant persons with a grave countenance taking their places as legislators and statesmen. This could not be, but that at intervals throughout society there are real men intermixed, whose natural basis is broad enough to sustain the paper men in common times, as the carpenter puts one iron rod in his banister to five or six wooden ones. But inexorable time, which brings opportunity once to every man, brings also to every man the hour of trial to prove him whether he is genuine, or whether he is counterfeit.

The last ages have been characterized in history by the immense creation of property. The population of the globe, by the nations of western Europe in whom the superiority of intellect and organization seems to reside, has set at work so many skilful hands that great wealth is added. Now no dollar of property is created without some direct communication with nature, and of course some acquisition of knowledge and

practical power. The creation of all this property, and that by millions, not by a few, involves necessarily so much education of the minds of the proprietors. With power always comes the consciousness of power, and therefore indomitable millions have demanded forms of government more suited to the facts. Throughout Europe, throughout America, the struggle exists between those who claim new forms at all hazards, and those who prefer the old forms to the hazard of change. Of course on the whole is a steady progress of innovation. In London, they write on the fences, Of what use are the Lords?' In Spain and in Portugal, the liberal monarchists can scarce hold out against the mob. The South American States are too unsettled than that an ordinary memory can keep the run of the powers that be.

"The era seems marked in many countries by the separation of real power from its forms, and the continual interference of the popular opinion between the executive and its will. A levity before unknown follows. The word Revolution' is stripped of its terrors, and they may have many in a year. They say in Paris, There will be no revolution to-day, for it rains.

"The struggle is envenomed by the great admixture of ignorance and selfishness on both sides which always depraves human affairs, and also prevents the war from being one purely of ideas. The innovators are led not by the best, but by the boldest, and often by the worst, who drive their private trade on, take advantage of the march of the principle. The conservatives make up for weakness by wiles and oppose indiscriminately the good and evil measures of their antagonists. Meantime Party, that bellowing hound that barks or fawns, that defamer and bargainer and unreasoning self-lover, distorts all facts and blinds all eyes. Party counts popularity success. Its whole aim ever is to get the hurrah on our side. . At infects

from the bar-room and ward-caucus up, all the veins of the state, stealing even into literature and religion; and in our age every Party has written history for itself as Gibbon, Lingard, Brodie, Hume, Hallam, Mitford.

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"Meantime if we rise above the hubbub of parties, and the uncovered selfishness of many of the actors, we shall see that humanity is always the gainer, that the production of property has been the education of the producers, that the creation of so many new households and so many forcible and propertied citizens, has been the creation of lovers of order, knowledge and peace, and hating war. Trade and war are always antagonists. The progress of trade has been the death of war, versally. In these days nations have stretched out the hand to each other. In our times, it is said for the first time, has the word International' been compounded. Some progress has been made by national compact in hindering offences against all the world as piracy and kidnapping, Mediation is made to supersede armies and navies. The projects with which the minds of philanthropists teem, are themselves a sure mark of progress. The black colony at Liberia, the proposition of the congress of nations to arbitrate controversies arising between two states, and so to prevent war or at least aid the right cause by the moral force of a decision, these are projects the bare starting of which in any practicable shape, proves civilization and Christianity. The mutual helpfulness of nations and the sympathy of all in the projects of each and the continual approximation by means of mechanical improvements seem to point at stricter union and simpler legislation, at a legislation more purely official, such as shall not hold out such bribes to vanity and avarice.

"The philosopher must console himself amidst the harsh discord of what is called politics by the reflection that its errors,

like the errors of the planets, are periodic; that a firm bound is set by counterchecks in man to every excess, that the discipline which the events of every day administer to every man, tend always to make him a better citizen, and to make him independent of the mutations of parties and states."

Page 208, note 1. As the inventor by a mechanical device shows man's previous stupid waste of energy, and the man of science shows by his heresies the errors of the church's teaching, so Mr. Emerson held good men to their duty of protest against unjust law. Six years later the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law brought this question home to every brave man of the North, and this is what Mr. Emerson said to his Concord neighbors of the duty of the hour :

"The last year has forced us all into politics. There is infamy in the air. I wake in the morning with a painful sensation which I carry about all day, and which, when traced home, is the odious remembrance of that ignominy which has fallen on Massachusetts. I have lived all my life in this State and never had any experience of personal inconvenience from the laws until now. They never came near me to my discomfort before. But the Act of Congress of September 18th, 1850, is a law which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion, a law which no man can obey, or abet the obeying, without loss of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of a gentleman."

Page 215, note 1. Mr. Cabot, in the Appendix F to his Memoir, giving an account of the lecture Politics," printed the following passage as omitted in the essay. I cannot find it in the manuscript, and suppose it may have dropped out:

The State and Church guard their purlieus with jealous decorum. I sometimes wonder where their books find readers among mere mortals, who must sometimes laugh, and are lia

ble to the infirmity of sleep. Yet politics rest on real founda-
tions and cannot be treated with levity. But the foundation is
not numbers or force, but character. Men do not see that all
force comes from this, and that the disuse of force is the edu-
cation of men to do without it. Character is the true theocracy.
It will one day suffice for the government of the world. Ab-
solutely speaking, I can only work for myself. The fight of
Leonidas, the hemlock of Socrates, the cross of Christ, is not
personal sacrifice for others, but fulfils a high necessity of his
proper character: the benefit to others is merely contingent."

Page 215, note 2. In dealing with his children after they
began to grow up, Mr. Emerson held to his theory. He did
not command or forbid, but laid principles and facts before us
and left the case in our hands, a helpful confidence.

Page 215, note 3. His townsman, Squire Hoar, was an
exception. "When I talked with him one day of some ine-
quality of taxes in the town, he said it was his practice to pay
whatever was demanded; for, though he might think the tax-
ation large and very unequally proportioned, yet he thought
the money might as well go in this way as any other."
"Samuel Hoar," Lectures and Biographical Sketches.

Page 216, note I. When the question arose what epitaph
to put upon the stone over Emerson's grave, a young man who
had often been his guest wrote suggesting that much of the
foregoing paragraph would be fitting, beginning "The wise
needs no library," etc.

man

Page 217, note I.

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His instant thought a poet spoke,

And filled the age his fame ;

An inch of ground the lightning strook,

But lit the sky with flame.

Fragments on the Poet," Poems, Appendix.

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