" But Classic," of four books, containing the wis-shall undertake a single work or series for dom of Confucius and Mencius. Also such which he is qualified. For example, how other books as have acquired a semi- attractive is the whole literature of the canonical authority in the world, as ex- Roman de la Rose," the "Fabliaux," and pressing the highest sentiment and hope of the gaie science of the French Troubadours! nations. Such are the "Hermes Trisme- Yet who in Boston has time for that? gistus," pretending to be Egyptian remains; one of our company shall undertake it, shall the "Sentences" of Epictetus; of Marcus study and master it, and shall report on it, Antoninus; the "Vishnu Sarma of the as under oath; shall give us the sincere Hindoos; the " Gulistan of Saadi; the result, as it lies in his mind, adding nothing, "Imitation of Christ" of Thomas à Kempis; keeping nothing back. Another member, and the "Thoughts" of Pascal. meantime, shall as honestly search, sift, and as truly report, on British mythology, the Round Table, the histories of Brut, Merlin, and Welsh poetry; a third on the Saxon Chronicles, Robert of Gloucester, and William of Malmesbury; a fourth, on Mysteries, Early Drama, "Gesta Romanorum," Collier, and Dyce, and the Camden Society. Each shall give us his grains of gold, after the washing; and every other shall then decide whether this is a book indispensable to him also. All these books are the majestic expressions of the universal conscience, and are more to our daily purpose than this year's almanac or this day's newspaper. But they are for the closet, and to be read on the bended knee. Their communications are not to be given or taken with the lips and the end of the tongue, but out of the glow of the cheek, and with the throbbing heart. Friendship should give and take, solitude and time brood and ripen, heroes absorb and enact them. They are not to be held by letters printed on a page, but are living characters translatable into every tongue and form of life. I read them on lichens and bark; I watch them on waves on the beach; they fly in birds, they creep in worms; I detect them in laughter and blushes and eye-sparkles of men and women. These are Scriptures which the missionary might well carry over prairie, desert, and ocean, to Siberia, Japan, Timbuctoo. Yet he will find that the spirit which is in them journeys faster than he, and greets him on his arrival,—was there already long before him. The missionary must be carried by it, and find it there, or he goes in vain. Is there any geography in these things? We call them Asiatic, we call them primeval; but perhaps that is only optical; for Nature is always equal to herself, and there are as good eyes and ears now in the planet as ever were. Only these ejaculations of the soul are uttered one or a few at a time, at long intervals, and it takes millenniums to make a Bible. These are a few of the books which the old and the later times have yielded us, which will reward the time spent on them. In comparing the number of good books with the shortness of life, many might well be read by proxy, if we had good proxies; and it would be well for sincere young men to borrow a hint from the French Institute and the British Association, and, as they divide the whole body into sections, each of which sits upon and reports of certain matters confided to it, so let each scholar associate himself to such persons as he can rely on, in a literary club, in which each CLUBS. WE are delicate machines, and require nice treatment to get from us the maximum of power and pleasure. We need tonics, but must have those that cost little or no reaction. The flame of life burns too fast in pure oxygen, and nature has tempered the air with nitrogen. So thought is the native air of the mind, yet pure it is a poison to our mixed constitution, and soon burns up the bone-house of man, unless tempered with affection and coarse practice in the material world. Varied foods, climates, beautiful objects,-and especially the alternation of a large variety of objects,-are the necessity of this exigent system of ours. But our tonics, our luxuries, are forcepumps which exhaust the strength they pretend to supply; and of all the cordials known to us, the best, safest, and most exhilarating, with the least harm, is society; and every healthy and efficient mind passes a large part of life in the company most easy to him. We seek society with very different aims, and the staple of conversation is widely unlike in its circles. Sometimes it is facts,running from those of daily necessity to the last results of science, -and has all degrees of importance; sometimes it is love, and makes the balm of our early and of our latest days; sometimes it is thought, as from a person who is a mind only some S 258 WORKS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON. times a singing, as if the heart poured out The clergyman walks from house to house See how Nature has secured the communication of knowledge. 'Tis certain that money does not burn more in a boy's pocket than a piece of news burns in our memory until we can tell it. And, in higher activity of mind, every new perception is attended with a thrill of pleasure, and the imparting of it to others is also attended with pleasure. Thought is the child of the intellect, and this child is conceived with joy and born with joy. engage the mass, and send it jingling down, What are the best days in memory? Those In youth, in the fury of curiosity and acquisition, the day is too short for books and the crowd of thoughts, and we are impatient of interruption. Later, when books "What a bartire, thought has a more languid flow; and the days come when we are alarmed, and say there are no thoughts. ren-witted pate is mine!" the student says; "I will go and learn whether I have lost my He seeks intelligent persons, reason." whether more wise or less wise than he, who give him provocation, and at once and easily the old motion begins in his brain : thoughts, fancies, humours, flow; the cloud lifts; the horizon broadens ; and the infinite opulence of things is again shown him. But the right conditions must be observed. Mainly he must have leave to be himself. Sancho Panza blessed the man who invented sleep. So I prize the good invention whereby everybody is provided with somebody who is glad to see him. If men are less when together than they They kindle each other; and are alone, they are also in some respects enlarged. such is the power of suggestion, that each sprightly story calls out more; and someConversation is the laboratory and work- times a fact that had long slept in the reshop of the student. The affection or sym- cesses of memory hears the voice, is welcomed pathy helps. The wish to speak to the want to daylight, and proves of rare value. of another mind assists to clear your own. Every metaphysician must have observed, A certain truth possesses us, which we in not only that no thought is alone, but all ways strive to utter. Every time we say that thoughts commonly go in pairs; though a thing in conversation, we get a mechanical the related thoughts first appeared in his advantage in detaching it well and deliverly. mind at long distances of time. Things I prize the mechanics of conversation. 'Tis are in pairs; a natural fact has only half pulley and lever and screw. To fairly dis-its value, until a fact in moral nature, its counterpart, is stated. Then they confirm and adorn each other; a story is matched by another story. And that may be the reason why, when a gentleman has told a good thing, he immediately tells it again. Nothing seems so cheap as the benefit of conversation: nothing is more rare. 'Tis wonderful how you are balked and baffled. There is plenty of intelligence, reading, curiosity; but serious, happy discourse, avoiding personalities, dealing with results, is rare and I seldom meet with a reading and thoughtful person but he tells me, as if it were his exceptional mishap, that he has no companion. or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear to any one. On these terms they give information, and please themselves by sallies and chat which are admired by the idlers; and the talker is at his ease and jolly, for he can walk out without ceremony when he pleases. They go rarely to their equals, and then as for their own convenience simply, making too much haste to introduce and impart their new whim or discovery; listen badly, or do not listen to the comment or to the thought by which the company strive to repay them; rather, as soon as their own speech is done, they take their hats. Then there are the gladiators, to whom it is always a battle; 'tis no matter on which side, they fight for victory; then the heady men, the egotists, the monotones, the steriles, and the impracticables. It does not help that you find as good or a better man than yourself, if he is not timed and fitted to you. The greatest sufferers are often those who have the most to say,-men of a delicate sympathy, who are dumb in mixed company. Able people, if they do not know how to make allowance for them, paralyze them. One of those conceited prigs who value nature only as it feeds and exhibits them is equally a pest with the roysterers. There must be large reception as well as giving. How delightful after these disturbers is the radiant, playful wit of-one whom I need not name, for in every society there is his representative. Good-nature is stronger than tomahawks. His conversation is all pictures: he can reproduce whatever he has seen; he tells the best story in the county, and is of such genial temper that he disposes all others irresistibly to good-humour and discourse. Diderot said of the Abbé Galiani : "He was a treasure in rainy days; and if the cabinet-inakers made such things, everybody would have one in the country.' Suppose such a one to go out exploring different circles in search of this wise and genial counterpart,―he might inquire far and wide. Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet. Amidst all the gay banter, sentiment cannot profane itself and venture out. The reply of old Isocrates comes so often to mind,-"The things which are now seasonable I cannot say; and for the things which I can say it is not now the time.' Besides, who can resist the charm of talent? The lover of letters loves power too. Among the men of wit and learning, he could not withhold his homage from the gayety, grasp of memory, luck, splendour, and speed; such exploits of discourse, such feats of society! What new powers, what mines of wealth! But when he came home, his brave sequins were dry leaves. He found either that the fact they had thus dizened and adorned was of no value, or that he already knew all and more than all they had told him. He could not find that he was helped by so much as one thought or principle, one solid fact, one commanding impulse: great was the dazzle, but the gain was small. He uses his occasions; he seeks the company of those who have convivial talent. But the moment they meet, to be sure they begin to be something else than they were; they play pranks, One lesson we learn early,--that, in spite dance jigs, run on each other, pun, tell of seeming difference, men are all of one stories, try many fantastic tricks, under pattern. We readily assume this with our some superstition that there must be ex-mates, and are disappointed and angry if citement and elevation ;-and they kill conversation at once. I know well the rusticity of the shy hermit. No doubt he does not make allowance enough for men of more active blood and habit. But it is only on natural ground that conversation can be rich. It must not begin with uproar and violence. Let it keep the ground, let it feel the connection with the battery. Men must not be off their centres. Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion. We know beforehand that yonder man must think as we do. Has he not two hands,-two feet,— hair and nails? Does he not eat,-bleed,laugh,-cry? His dissent from me is the veriest affectation. This conclusion is at once the logic of persecution and of love. And the ground of our indignation is our conviction that his dissent is some wilfulness he practises on himself. He checks the flow of his opinion, as the cross cow holds up her milk. Yes, and we look into his eye, and see that he knows it and hides his eye from ours. But to come a little nearer to my mark, I am to say that there may easily be obstacles in the way of finding the pure article we are in search of; but when we find it, it is worth the pursuit, for beside its comfort as medicine and cordial, once in the right company, new and vast values do not fail to appear. All that man can do for man is to be found in that market. There are great prizes in this game. Our fortunes in the world are as our mental equipment for this competition is. Yonder is a man who can answer the questions which I cannot. Is it so? Hence comes to me boundless curiosity to know his experiences and his wit. Hence competition for the stakes dearest to man. What is a match at whist, or draughts, or billiards, or chess, to a match of mother-wit, of knowledge, and of resources? However courteously we conceal it, it is social rank and spiritual power that are compared; whether in the parlour, the courts, the caucus, the senate, or the chamber of science,--which are only less or larger theatres for this competition. He that can define, he that can answer a question so as to admit of no further answer, is the best man. This was the meaning of the story of the Sphinx. In the old time conundrums were sent from king to king by ambassadors. The seven wise masters at Periander's banquet spent their time in answering them. The life of Socrates is a propounding and a solution of these. So, in the hagiology of each nation, the lawgiver was in each case some man of eloquent tongue, whose sympathy brought him face to face with the extremes of society. Jesus, Menu, the first Buddhist, Mahomet, Zertusht, Pythagoras, are examples. Jesus spent his life in discoursing with humble people on life and duty, in giving wise answers, showing that he saw at a larger angle of vision, and at least silencing those who were not generous enough to accept his thoughts. Luther spent his life so ; and it is not his theologic works,-his Commentary on the Galatians," and the rest, but his "Table-Talk," which is still read by men. Dr. Johnson was a man of no profound mind, -full of English limitations, English politics, English Church, Oxford philosophy; yet having a large heart, mother-wit, and good sense, which impatiently overleaped his customary bounds, his conversation as reported by Boswell has a lasting charm. Conversation is the vent of character as well as of thought; and Dr. Johnson impresses his company, not only by the point of the remark, but also, when the point fails, because he makes it. His obvious religion or superstition, his deep wish that they should think so or so, weighs with them,-so rare is depth of feeling, or a constitutional value for a thought or opinion, among the light-minded men and women who make up society; and though they know that there is in the speaker a degree of shortcoming, of insincerity, and of talking for victory, yet the existence of character, and habitual reverence for principles over talent or learning, is felt by the frivolous. One of the best records of the great German master, who towered over all his contemporaries in the first thirty years of this century, is his conversations as recorded by Eckermann; and the "Table-Talk" of Coleridge is one of the best remains of his genius. In the Norse legends, the gods of Valhalla, when they meet the Jotuns, converse on the perilous terms that he who cannot answer the other's questions forfeits his own life. Odin comes to the threshold of the Jotun Waftrhudnir in disguise, calling himself Gangrader; is invited into the hall, and told that he cannot go out thence unless he can answer every question Waftrhudnir shall put. Waftrhudnir asks him the name of the god of the sun, and of the god who brings the night; what river separates the dwellings of the sons of the giants from those of the gods; what plain lies between the gods and Surtur, their adversary, etc.; all which the disguised Odin answers satisfactorily. Then it is his turn to interrogate, and he is answered well for a time by the Jotun. At last he puts a question which none but himself could answer: "What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son Balder, when Balder mounted the funeral pile?" The startled giant replied: "None of the gods knows what in the old time THOU saidst in the ear of thy son: with death on my mouth have I spoken the fate-words of the generation of the Æsir: with Odin contended I in wise words. Thou must ever the wisest be." And still the gods and giants are so known, and still they play the same game in all the million mansions of heaven and of earth; at all tables, clubs, and tête-à-têtes, the lawyers in the court-house, the senators in the capitol, the doctors in the academy, the wits in the hotel. Best is he who gives an answer that cannot be answered again. Omnis definitio periculosa est, and only wit has the secret. The same thing took place when Leibnitz came to visit Newton; when Schiller came to Goethe; when France, in We the person of Madame de Staël, visited These masters can make good their own Goethe and Schiller; when Hegel was the place, and need no patron. Every variety guest of Victor Cousin in Paris; when Lin- of gift-science, religion, politics, letters, næus was the guest of Jussieu. It happened art, prudence, war, or love-has its vent and many years ago, that an American chemist exchange in conversation. Conversation is carried a letter of introduction to Dr. Dalton the Olympic games whither every superior of Manchester, England, the author of the gift resorts to assert and approve itself,theory of atomic proportions, and was coolly and, of course, the inspirations of powerful enough received by the Doctor in the labo- and public men, with the rest. But it is not ratory where he was engaged. Only Dr. this class,-whom the splendour of their Dalton scratched a formula on a scrap of accomplishment almost inevitably guides paper and pushed it towards the guest, into the vortex of ambition, makes them "Had he seen that?" The visitor scratched chancellors and commanders of council and on another paper a formula describing some of action, and makes them at last fatalists,— results of his own with sulphuric acid, and not these whom we now consider. pushed it across the table,- -"Had he seen consider those who are interested in thoughts, that?" The attention of the English chemist their own and other men's, and who delight was instantly arrested, and they became in comparing them, who think it the highest rapidly acquainted. To answer a question compliment they can pay a man, to deal so as to admit of no reply, is the test of a with him as an intellect, to expose to him man,-to touch bottom every time. Hyde, the grand and cheerful secrets perhaps never Earl of Rochester, asked Lord-Keeper opened to their daily companions, to share Guilford, "Do you not think I could under- with him the sphere of freedom and the stand any business in England in a month?" simplicity of truth. 'Yes, my lord," replied the other, but I think you would understand it better in two months. When Edward I. claimed to be acknowledged by the Scotch (1292) as lord paramount, the nobles of Scotland replied, No answer can be made while the throne is vacant. When Henry III. (1217) plead duress against his people demanding confirmation and execution of the Charter, the reply was: "If this were admitted, civil wars could never close but by the extirpation of one of the contending parties." " What can you do with one of these sharp respondents? What can you do with an eloquent man? No rules of debate, no contempt of court, no exclusions, no gag-laws can be contrived, that his first syllable will not set aside or overstep and annul. You can shut out the light, it may be; but can you shut out gravitation? You may condemn his book; but can you fight against his thought? That is always too nimble for you, anticipates you, and breaks out victorious in some other quarter. Can you stop the motions of good sense? What can you do with Beaumarchais, who converts the censor whom the court has appointed to stifle his play into an ardent advocate? The court appoints another censor, who shall crush it this time. Beaumarchals persuades him to defend it. The court successively appoints three more severe inquisitors; Beaumarchais converts them all into triumphant vindicators of the play which is to bring in the Revolution. Who can stop the mouth of Luther,—of Newton? -of Franklin,-of Mirabeau,-of Talleyrand But the best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds,-as a religious or intellectual seeker,-finds himself a stranger and alien. It is possible that the best conversation is between two persons who can talk only to each other. Even Montesquieu confessed that, in conversation, if he perceived he was listened to by a third person, it seemed to him from that moment the whole question vanished from his mind. I have known persons of rare ability who were heavy company to good, social men who knew well enough how to draw out others of retiring habit; and, moreover, were heavy to intellectual men who ought to have known them. And does it never occur that we, perhaps, live with people too superior to be seen,-as there are musical notes too high for the scale of most ears? There are men who are great only to one or two companions of more opportunity, or more adapted. It was to meet these wants that in all civil nations attempts have been made to organize conversation by bringing together cultivated people under the most favourable conditions. 'Tis certain there was liberal and refined conversation in the Greek, in the Roman, and in the Middle Age. There was a time when in France a revolution occurred in domestic architecture; when the houses of the nobility, which, up to that time, had been constructed on feudal necessities, in a hollow square,-the groundfloor being resigned to offices and stables, and the floors above to rooms of state and |