CHAPTER LXXII

IDEALS MUST BE BUILT ON THE REA

1. The common problem, yours, mine, everyone's,
Is-not to fancy what were fair in life,
Provided it could be-but finding first
What may be, then how to make it fair
Up to our means.

GUARD

THE FACT

2. He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the stern facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power, in their noblest associations;

3. And he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his dreams.

4. Where there are things which appear most worthy of our approbation, we ought to lay them bare and strip them of all the words by which they are exalted.

5. For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason, and when thou art most sure that thou art employed about things worth thy pains, it is then that it may cheat the most.

6. The ancient lawgivers received their authority and their code by special interposition, near secret stream or on open mountain top;

7. We look for ours in the heart of man, and through the observation of social phenomena.

8. Play no tricks upon thy soul, O man!

Let fact be fact, and life the thing it can.

FACE UNPLEASANT

9. It is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil.

TRUTHS

10. For, without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil.

11. For men of corrupted minds presuppose that honesty groweth out of simplicity of manners, and believing of preachers, schoolmasters, and men's exterior language.

12. So as, except thou canst make them perceive that thou knowest the utmost reaches of their own corrupt opinions, they despise all morality.

13.

Fear not! Life still

Leaves human effort scope.

But, since life teems with ill,

Nurse no extravagant hope;

Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair.

THE TRUE IDEAL

14. We are deceived by the mere external look of ourselves in some new position, devising wisely and executing well; and forget how different a thing it is to lie still and dream, and to start up and work.

IS PRACTICABLE

P

15. It is not these remote imaginings that renovate the character; but the secret glow of some living point within the soul, the seed-like growth of some noble faith within the heart.

16. Where there is really this inward faith in some deep-seated conviction, the outward obstructions of the lot spontaneously yield to it; and scarcely is there any mountain of difficulty that may not, by this power, be hurled into the sea.

17. There are few that rove to find some ampler lot abroad, who do not first neglect the small husbandry of duty at home.

18. The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man.

19. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free.

20. The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself; thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of; what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic?

21. O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, "here or nowhere," couldst thou only see !

22. Till the common life has been led, and its inward experiences gained, the very materials are out of reach. which thought has to mould into truth.

WE REJOICE THAT NOTHING CAN HAPPEN IN VIOLATION OF NATURAL LAW

1. If we thought men were free in the sense that in a single exception one fantastical will could prevail over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's hand could pull down the

sun.

THE
UNIVERSAL-
ITY OF

CAUSE AND
EFFECT

2. If in the least particular one could derange the order of Nature, who would accept the gift of life?

3. If Nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws;

4. If those principal and mother elements, whereof all things in this world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself;

5. If celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen;

6. If the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should as it were

through a languishing faintness begin to stand and to rest himself;

7. If the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them relief;—what would become of man himself?

THERE

ARE NO CONTINGENCIES

8. Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, which rudely or softly educates man to the perception that there are no contingencies. 9. We have come to look upon the present as the child of the past and the parent of the future; and, as we have excluded chance from a place in the universe, so we ignore, even as a possibility, the notion of any interference with the order of Nature.

10. Whatever may be men's speculative doctrines, it is quite certain that every intelligent person guides his life and risks his fortune upon the belief that the order of Nature is constant, and that the chain of natural causation is never broken.

11. Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her voice is the harmony of the world:

12. All things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power;

13. Men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with