About men and things

Preface

These Papers do not pretend to be any very great things. The writer has gathered them and put them out together, because he has been asked to do it by many of his friends ; and he hopes that, however slight they may be, there will be found some things which, in matter of thought, suggestion, or in the way of putting, may be of sufficient interest to repay the perusal.

Contents

PAGE I. SUCCESS IN LIFE 1

II. THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEART 13

III. THE BLUNDER OP NOT HAVING A POLITICAL CON- SCIENCE 25

II. The Blunder Of Being Without A Heart

We moderns have quite changed, and, as we are naturally apt to think, improved upon, the ancient fashion of speaking about the locality of men's affections. Nobody now-a-days hears of the bowels as being the seat of pity, compassion, tenderness, etc., unless it be in the way of quotation from the old scriptural language, or a highly metaphorical and poetical adoption of it. So, too, we no longer ascribe to the liver the function of secreting love as well as bile, as did the old Greeks, and after them, the Romans ; or rather, to state the case more exactly, we no longer follow their fashion of speaking of that organ as inflamed by love. They, indeed, often spoke of the heart as well as the liver as affected by love ; but we have entirely discarded the liver from any function in the matter, and made the heart exclusively the organ of love. In fact, we have reduced the number of localities or seats of whatever goes on in us, or manifests itself out of us, of an intellectual or emotional nature, to two — the Head and the Heart : the Head as the intellectual centre, the Heart as the emotional centre — the Head the mind, the Heart the soul.

I may be told that although we no longer speak of the bowels as the seat of love, compassion, and the like, yet we do not limit these kindly affections exclusively to the heart, but refer them also to the breast and the bosom. This is true, and I had forgotten it. But still what I have said above is in the main right : for the words breast and bosom are only figurative words, both expressing one and the same thing, — namely, the heart, according to the figure of speech called synecdoche by the rhetoricians, whereby the container is put for the thing contained.

Thus when the Honorable Solomon Soft — his health having been drunk with all the honors at a banquet given in his honor — rises to return thanks, and spreading his right hand gracefully over the upper part of his vest, assures the health-drinkers that he has no language to express the gratification and gratitude that are stirred up in his breast, everybody knows that by his breast he does not mean that " soft protuberance on the anterior part of the thorax in man, and some other mamalia, formed by a conglomerate gland for the secretion of milk, situated between the integuments and the muscles " — which is the immortal Webster's definition of breast ! and such a simple and lucid one that the most ignorant and uneducated man has no excuse for not understanding it. The Honorable Solomon means something inside of his vest which lies deeper and farther down than the " soft protuberance." It is Solomon's figurative way of referring to his heart, his figurative word for giving a sort of figurative location to the emotions that struggle in vain for utterance.

Thus, too, when Mr. Frederick Fine, the poet, who writes with such gushing tenderness, tells his admirers that his bosom is ever full and welling over with love for everything fine, that is his way of referring to his heart. He is softer than Soft, or rather, he puts a Fine point upon the matter. — Bosom means breast — " the breast of a human being, and the parts adjacent," as the immortal Webster contents himself with saying. Fine, therefore, does not come so plump to the spot he really means as Soft does ; he is one figurative remove farther off.

So much to make this matter clear and show why I think it right enough for all general purposes to speak of men as composed of Head and Heart,- that what is not of the head is of the heart, and what is not of the heart is of the head, so far as man's intellectual and emotional nature is concerned.

16 THE BLUNDER OF BEING WITHOUT A HEAET.

I know there are some who speak of others (T never knew them speak so of themselves) as having neither head nor heart. But when they speak of persons as having no heads, they don't mean to commit themselves to maintaining that such persons have absolutely nothing on their shoulders. Press them, and they will admit that such persons " have heads, and so has a pin ;" which has always seemed to me a remarkably foolish comparison, because a pin's head (of course a normal pin's head) is just what a pin's head should be, and, rightly considered, it is no disparagement of a man to say of him that as a pin has a head so has he, but the reverse : it is in reality saying that the man has what he should have, a normal head, a man's head. I know those who make the comparison say that when they liken men's heads to pins' heads, they mean (and that I am stupid not to see it ) heads with no more brains in them than pins' heads. Well, I suppose I must knock under to this, and not even ask why they don't say brainless heads, then. But I think if ever I should speak of a man as a headless man and be pressed to tell what I meant by it, I should say straight out that I meant a man whose head had nothing in it, because that would bar the question whether his head was not filled with pudding ; for we all know there are some persons whom their fellow-creatures irreverently speak of as puddiugheaded.

But enough, and perhaps more than enough, about heads — of which I did not intend to say anything when I sat down to write. But how things will sometimes crowd in and run away with one's purpose ! It is very hard to stick to the advice in Kabelais : Better, mon ami, commencez par le commencement. Let me now try to get at my subject, which is the Heart — the centre of man's affections and emotions.

Here, too, we meet with a variety of expressions. It is very common to speak of warm-hearted, softhearted, honest-hearted, bold-hearted, noble-hearted persons. And there is no need of any particular explanation of the terms. Everybody understands their meaning well enough. The same may be said of the opposite expressions : cold-hearted, hard-hearted, hollow-hearted, feeble-hearted, mean-hearted. We all likewise have, I suppose, pretty much the same understanding of what is meant by speaking of a person as a heartless man, a man without a heart. The meaning is not indeed quite so determinate as when we speak of a man as cold or hard or hollow or mean hearted. The term implies rather in a general way simply the opposite of what the Germans by a very expressive word call heartfulness. To speak of one's having no heart implies the absence of that genial, lively sensibility to things which stir and movo and draw the affections and wills of the heartful. Tho generous impulses in behalf of what is right and good which are so powerful with the heartful are not felt by the heartless. The . heartless man is not necessarily one who would commit a crime or any overt punishable act. He may be deterred by the fear of hell or of the gallows or the prison. The man without a heart may have plenty of head to see that, in the large and in the long, honesty is the best policy, and so the honesty of his outward conduct may be dictated by a prudent calculation for his own individual advantage without any internal honest principle. He may not be a miserly, stingy man, who never gives away anything ; on the contrary he may give quite munificently ; but it is for the sake of the credit, general good opinion or other selfish advantages he expects to get by it. He may ally himself to a noble or sacred cause and work energetically for its success ; but it is for ambitious or other personal ends and not at all because he cares, for the nobleness or sacredness of the cause. To this he is simply insensible. Having no heart he has nothing within him that beats with generous, uncalculating, self-sacrificing devotion to the cause he espouses.

Now it is not to be denied that being without a heart has its advantages. The heartless man escapes many of the sufferings to which the heartful are liable. The distresses of others are not distressing to him. He is not afflicted at their afflictions. His heart is not wrung with sorrow for their pains. Nor is he at all troubled at his want of sympathy with the sorrows of others. The ejaculation,

" give me tears for others' woes" —

catch him ever uttering that ! The virtue of resignation — to the calamities of his fellow-men — is one of easy practice for him.

But, on the other hand, there are disadvantages in being without a heart. It has its own special inconveniences. In the first place, the heartless man can never know the sweetness of sympathy from others. If you wish others to weep with you, you must weep with them. Nor can he ever know the joy of loving and being loved. Those as heartless as himself have no hearts to give him. And the heartful heart flows forth only to the heartful heart. Love alone begets love.

Then again, the heartless man is liable to perpetual failures in pursuing his selfish ends, because he is apt to believe the rest of mankind are as heartless as himself, and act only from selfish instincts or calculated policy of personal advantage. This is a very great mistake. Heartless as many persons doubtless are, yet neither all nor the great bulk of mankind are without hearts. The world abounds with heartful folk. And the only way to get along successfully with them, is to have a heart yourself. There is no philosophy in the world practically so mistaken and foolish as that of Rochefoucauld.

Some one in Fouche's presence condemned the execution of the Due D'Enghien by Napoleon as a great crime. "Crime?" said the astute minister of Police, — "crime? It was worse than a crime. It was a blunder T So, leaving entirely out of view the moral monstrousness of it, we may truly say it is a great " blunder " not to have a heart. The want of it, and the consequent inability to understand that other people have it, or what it means for other people to have it, is almost inevitably sure to entail errors in policy and failures in aims. Nowhere is this more notably or eminently seen than in the case of politicians. There is no worse blunder for a politician and no greater misfortune for him than to be without a heart.

Take the case of Deewee. For fifty years he has followed the trade of politician. Yet his life on the whole is a political failure. At the end of his career he is an unsuccessful, disappointed, soured man.

And why ? Mainly because, having no heart himself he has not given the people the credit of having one, or, has failed to understand the popular heart, and get into relation with it as the heartful only can. He has mostly acted on the notion that the people act from purely selfish impulses and are to be successfully acted on by skilfully managing those impulses, and that by adroit management he could move them to his purpose like pawns on a chess board.

Now, the great body of the people are not without heart. There is great truth and great force in the words " the great heart of the people." Deep down below the political surface on which the host of trading politicians — selfish, ambitious, heartless — ply their unscrupulous arts to mislead and use the people to their ends — deep down lies this great heart, seldom stirred, but which yet in great crises, when sacred principles of justice and a nation's life are in question, will be found to beat true to the cause of right, will be roused to a loyal patriotic enthusiasm, astounding and confounding heartless politicians, and making their machinations as flimsy as the meshes of a spider's web.

It may be said, that if the politician has no heart himself he can still get along if he has the sagacity to understand that the people have a heart and —

22 THE BLUNDER OE BEING WITHOUT A HEART.

when that heart is stirred and moved — to shape his plans upon the fact, to simulate a heart for himself, to act as if he had one in sympathy with theirs. This may be true to a certain extent — provided he can do so. But it is a hard thing to do. It requires great sagacity — a sagacity that cannot come from the understanding alone, but requires a very considerable gift of the imaginative faculty — more than is generally possessed by heartless politicians.

Besides, this imaginative sagacity and making believe having a heart — this analagon of a heart — can succeed only in a limited degree. It is for the politician's mere political ends a long, long way from being so good as the true real heart. It is not so easy to impose upon mankind with a simulated heart. There is an intuitive sense of its unreality. People distrust it; whereas they discern instinctively the great, true, noble-hearted patriotic public man, and trust themselves to his guidance. The people like to be led, and gladly let themselves be led by such leaders. And God be thanked that in times of need, when sacred principles, when national well-being and national existence are in peril, He generally raises up such leaders.

In spite, then of any thing that may be said in favor of a make-believe heart as a substitute for a real one, I maintain that for the politician and for everybody the best possible condition and means of getting along successfully with one's fellow-men is to have a heart ; the want of it is a great blunder. It entails inconveniences and disadvantages the most skilfully simulated heart cannot save a man from.

I might go on further — with a number of special considerations the subject suggests. One for instance is the question as to the proper relation between the head and the heart. On this it is certainly right to say it is not best to be all heart without a head any more than all head without a heart. It is true that when a man is said to be " all heart," it does not necessarily imply nor is it understood to imply that he is without a head or has very little head. On the contrary it is often applied to designate persons of a peculiarly rich and generous nature, full of warm, lively sensibilities, or deep, noble affections — and at the same time not at all wanting in intellectual power.

The question, which is best to have, most of head or most of heart — where both exist — is best answered by saying that a due balance of both is better than any overpoise of either , although most good people would prefer those in whom the heart rather than the head predominates, if there must needs be a predominance of either.

There are some persons who are quite apt to tell you they have " too much heart." I have learned to keep shy of such persons — unless duty obliges me otherwise. Those who tell you so generally speak of it as their misfortune — exposing them to sufferings and sorrows of soul from which persons of less heart are exempt. But you will always find that they secretly pique themselves on their "too much heart" as a singular and superior grace and excellence, the indication of a higher, finer, more delicate nature. This conceit makes them among the most unreasonable people in the world — the hardest to get along comfortably with. When their " tender and sensitive souls " get into one of their frequent states of wounded feeling or passionate heart-sorrow of any kind with no reason at all, or with no sufficient reason, you can do nothing with them, but to leave. them.to themselves. To have too much heart of this sort is a very great misfortune. It is no blunder not to have it.

In fine, the best thing that we can do is to have hearts full of love to God and man, and then to use our heads as wisely as we can for our guidance, through life — seeking always the wisdom that is given liberally to all who honestly ask for it.

III. The Blunder Of Not Haying A Politi- Cal Conscience

It is not of the moral defect, monstrousness, criminality, or guilt of not having a conscience that I have anything now to say, but only of the blunder of it. It is a very great blunder, and generally in the long run a fatal blunder, for a politician not to have a conscience.

I know, indeed, a quite notorious politician and (by the grace of the " Tammany Ring") once a very high official, who does not hesitate to assert — and he does so quite squarely, firmly and without any notion (unless he belies himself) that he is saying anything he ought to be ashamed of — that "politics and morals have nothing to do with each other." According to him politics and morals are heterogenous — do not fall within each other's sphere nor under any common sphere ; they are entirely disparate — not to be compared together any more than a smell and a color, and to call any political action an

26 THE BLUNDER OF NOT HAYING

immoral or blameworthy action — no matter how corrupt, flagitious and scoundrelly it may be called by those who know no better — is just as absurd as to talk of a -virtuous potato or a criminal cabbage, except in an improper or highly figurative way.

I know other politicians who avow the same doctrine as this Tammany man, and presumably therefore act upon it, or at least can have no conscientious scruples about acting upon it ; and I am afraid there are a great many others who do not avow it, but yet believe and act upon it.

Now whether the theory of our Tammany man and those who hold with him, be true ou not, it is a very great and foolish blunder to act upon it and a still greater and more foolish blunder to avow it — so long as the bulk of mankind hold a contrary doctrine. But on this point more by and by ; for there are other sorts of persons who are wanting hi political conscience.

There, are a great many who do not believe our Tammany man's doctrine, who yet act upon the doctrine and try in a sort of blind, self-stultifying way, to persuade themselves that political immoralities are somehow less guilty, more excusable, than immoralities in the ordinary relations of social life.

There are others who without denying that political rascalities are rascalities, immoral and wrong,

A POLITICAL CONSCIENCE. 27

and without tiwing to make themselves or others believe that they are any more excusable than any other rascalities, smile in serene indifference, or snap their fingers in sublime contempt, and say they don't care a fig whether their political conduct be immoral or not so long as it serves their ends.

Finally, there are those who neither justify nor excuse immoral practices in politics, nor are able to rise into the sublime sphere of contempt for moral distinctions, but still have no conscience to any practical purpose in politics, because they do not act from their sense of moral obligation, but habitually run counter to its dictates, under the pressure of the temptations which beset the selfish politician's path.

Now whatever may be said as to the moral defect, monstrousness, criminality or guilt of this want of conscience, I leave it to philosophical and religious moralists to say it. I speak only of the blunder of it. I say it is the foolishest thing in the world for a politician not to have a conscience and to act upon it in his political conduct ; and, on the other hand, it is just the wisest thing in the world for him to have one and obey its dictates.

I mean, of course, a good, sincere, honest, sound, enlightened, wide-reaching, large-grasping conscience — one which recognizes that right is right because it is right, and wrong is wrong because it is wrong ;

28 THE BLUNDER OF NOT HAYING

that right ought absolutely to be always done because it is right, and wrong ought never to be done because it is wrong ; a conscience, moreover, which understands that as nothing in the universe — and of course nothing in the sphere of politics — can force a man to do wrong, so nothing in the universe— and of course nothing in the political sphere — can justify a man iu doing what he knows to be wrong or even doubts about being right ; and in fine a conscience which will lead a man to suffer himself to be torn asunder by wild horses rather than do wrong. A pretty high standard this ! But inasmuch as the universe is a moral one, and inasmuch as there is a deep-seated and ineffaceable idea of right and wrong, duty and obligation in the universal consciousness of the human race, so on the whole and in the long run, it is the wisest thing even for a politician to have such a conscience, and a great blunder not to have it. He may consult and practice all sorts of wise political expediences for the accomplishment of great public ends, (this he should do) or even for his own personal advancement (this he may do) — provided they involve nothing wrong. But to do any thing mean, base, false, dishonest, fraudulent, wicked — this is as much a blunder as it is wrong.

IV. Caeeying One's Flag Unfueled

Nearly everybody, I presume, has heard of the whimsical adventure undertaken some four or five years ago, after the close of the late civil war, by one Sergeant Bates, a Union soldier in the war. He engaged to go on foot and unarmed through every one of the states lately in insurrection, travelling only in the da} T -tinie, and carrying the flag of the United States aloft and unfurled throughout his march — beginning at Vicksburg and ending at "Washington. He arrived at the latter place after some time, having fulfilled his engagement without meeting anywhere either harm or insult to himself, or any tokens of disrespect to the flag he bore ; on the contrary mostly good will and cheers, and in several places quite lively ovations ; due, perhaps, in many instances, quite as much, to an amused sense of the jolly humor of his whimsical feat, and the pluck and confidence implied in it, as to any political sentiment on the part of the people through whom he passed.

Now everybody knows — at least I am not writing for anybody who does not know — that Sergeant Bates carried with him a great deal more than merely a piece of cloth with alternate white and red stripes, and a certain number of stars figured on a blue ground, fastened to a pole. He carried aloft the expression of a great spiritual significance, the symbol of ideas for which hundreds of thousands had not long before shed their blood, the symbol of the sovereign majesty and power of the Union, to uphold which they went gladly to battle and to death.

Great are ideas ! Great are the symbols that express great ideas, and great is their power to stir men's souls to heroic doing and suffering. The symbols of sacred ideas become themselves sacred to the lofty in mind and noble in heart. The flag of their country is something ever to be saluted, ever to be maintained aloft, on land and sea, amidst the roar of cannon, the rattle of musketry and the -clash of swords, never to be deserted, never to be given up but with life. What a bead-roll of glory could be made of those who have fallen on the battle-field, clutching in death the flag they carried, and to keep which they died.

Of symbols much might be said that I have not time or room to say. Only somewhat in the way of suggestion.

Without symbols the spiritual universe would be quite bald and bare. The spiritual needs form. The mind needs clothes as much as the body. In truth it is more for the sake of the mind than of the body that we clothe the body itself. This is something many persons have never thought of. I do not agree with Herr Professor Teufelsdrock in ascribing the origin of clothes to a wish, not for warmth or for decency, but for ornament; a theory, however, not without some ground, many will be apt to think, who recall the laughable images presented to their fancy in so many travellers' accounts of savages strutting off in high satisfaction with the gift of a laced hat on their heads or a spur on their heels for their only clothing, yet caring for no other dress. But with more reason does the professor speak in his peculiar style of clothes as a " mystic, grove-encircled shrine for the holy in man," giving us individuality, distinction, and social polity — " making men of us." Some of the professor's fancies about " a world out of clothes," which he gives only as instances of the " physical or psychical infirmity " of his nature, are to me full of deep suggestion. " A naked duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords " would be in my view a spectacle of intellectual savagery more than of bodily nakedness. The black chiefs and nobles, of whom some recent African

32 CAERYING ONE'S FLAG UNFUELED,

explorer's book that I have read contains full-length portraits, of remarkable nudeness, were doubtless as bare in soul as their bodies were bare of breeches.

Then, too, without symbols how terribly dry and hard our human speech would be, and with how little comparatively of power to stir and kindle men's souls. Ideas, the greatest, the loftiest, the noblest, the fullest of soul-stirring significance, are hard to be grasped in all their contents and felt in all their power by the great mass of mankind if they are presented only in abstract expression. They must be embodied, incarnated, take some living or some concrete form. Put tliem into such expression, and the bulk of men will apprehend and feel them as they never otherwise would. Here is the power of symbolical expression. Put these great ideas into symbols and how effective they become.

The Sovereign Majesty of the State — that is an idea. Only the few that reflect and think can grasp it and feel it in its abstract form. But a living representation of it in the person of " our Sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria," in royal robes, enthroned, and crowned, and invested with sceptre and sword of state, carries the idea in a living way home to thousands of unreflecting British minds, and stirs the sentiment of loyalty in thousands of British hearts.

The idea, too, of Law and the sacreclness of Law

— is it not undeniable that when men see this embodied in the persons of ermined judges, and in the old august and solemn forms of a High Court of Justice, they are far more likely to recognize the force of the idea and bow in reverence to it, than when it is presented (as it is said to be) in some of our courts ; where hirsute and unkempt judges, in their shirtsleeves, with red bandanna neckerchief knotted under their ears, and feet above their heads, dispense at once justice and tobacco-juice ?

But enough about the philosophy of symbols. I have gone farther away from Sergeant Bates than I intended, and must come to the purpose I had in view in introducing him and his flag of the Union and what it symbolizes, to my readers. It was to say that Everybody ought to have a flag — something sacred, something to live by and die by, convictions that one is not only not ashamed of, but counts it an honor and a glory to avow. Everybody should carry his flag aloft and unfurled, ready to maintain and defend it, to suffer and to die for it if need be. The man who has no flag, or does not carry it unfurled where duty, honor and manliness bid him do so, is a thoroughly base and mean man. He is fit neither to live nor to die. So far from having any thing heroic in him, he lacks the essential ingredients of tolerable respectability of character. What is the worth of a man