1849
REPRESENTATIVE MEN
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
USES OF GREAT MEN
IT IS NATURAL to believe in great men. If the companions of our
childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal it
would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the
circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount.
In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth and found
it deliciously sweet.
Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by
the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who
lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and
tolerable only in our belief in such society; and, actually or
ideally, we manage to live with superiors. We call our children and
our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of
language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every
circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them.
The search after the great man is the dream of youth and the most
serious occupation of manhood. We travel into foreign parts to find
his works,- if possible, to get a glimpse of him. But we are put off
with fortune instead. You say, the English are practical; the
Germans are hospitable; in Valencia the climate is delicious; and in
the hills of the Sacramento there is gold for the gathering. Yes,
but I do not travel to find comfortable, rich and hospitable people,
or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. But if there were any
magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the
persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, I would sell all
and buy it, and put myself on the road today.
The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge that in the
city is a man who invented the railroad, raises the credit of all
the citizens. But enormous populations, if they be beggars, are
disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants or of fleas,- the
more, the worse.
Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. The gods
of fable are the shining moments of great men. We run all our
vessels into one mould. Our colossal theologies of Judaism, Christism,
Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and structural action of the
human mind. The student of history is like a man going into a
warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new article.
If he go to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still
repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the interior walls
of the pyramids of Thebes. Our theism is the purification of the human
mind. Man can paint, or make, or think, nothing but man. He believes
that the great material elements had their origin from his thought.
And our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed.
If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we derive
from others, let us be warned of the danger of modern studies, and
begin low enough. We must not contend against love, or deny the
substantial existence of other people. I know not what would happen to
us. We have social strengths. Our affection toward others creates a
sort of vantage or purchase which nothing will supply. I can do that
by another which I cannot do alone. I can say to you what I cannot
first say to myself. Other men are lenses through which we read our
own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and
such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the
otherest. The stronger the nature, the more it is reactive. Let us
have the quality pure. A little genius let us leave alone. A main
difference betwixt men is, whether they attend their own affair or
not. Man is that noble endogenous plant which grows, like the palm,
from within outward. His own affair, though impossible to others, he
can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy to sugar to be sweet
and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal of pains to waylay and
entrap that which of itself will fall into our hands. I count him a
great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other
men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see
things in a true light and in large relations, whilst they must make
painful corrections and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of
error. His service to us is of like sort. It costs a beautiful
person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is
that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality
to other men. And every one can do his best thing easiest. "Peu de
moyens, beaucoup d'effet." He is great who is what he is from
nature, and who never reminds us of others.
But he must be related to us, and our life receive from him some
promise of explanation. I cannot tell what I would know; but I have
observed there are persons who, in their character and actions, answer
questions which I have not skill to put. One man answers some question
which none of his contemporaries put, and is isolated. The past and
passing religions and philosophies answer some other questions.
Certain men affect us as rich possibilities, but helpless to
themselves and to their times,- the sport perhaps of some instinct
that rules in the air;- they do not speak to our want. But the great
are near; we know them at sight. They satisfy expectation and fall
into place. What is good is effective, generative; makes for itself
room, food and allies. A sound apple produces seed,- a hybrid does
not. Is a man in his place, he is constructive, fertile, magnetic,
inundating armies with his purpose, which is thus executed. The
river makes its own shores, and each legitimate idea makes its own
channels and welcome,- harvests for food, institutions for expression,
weapons to fight with and disciples to explain it. The true artist has
the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife,
has nothing broader than his own shoes.
Our common discourse respects two kinds of use or service from
superior men. Direct giving is agreeable to the early belief of men;
direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal
youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power and prophecy. The
boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches
believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not much
cognizant of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and education is his
unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical compared with the
discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the
doing, and the effect remains. Right ethics are central and go from
the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. Serving
others is serving us. I must absolve me to myself. "Mind thy
affair," says the spirit:- "coxcomb, would you meddle with the
skies, or with other people?" Indirect service is left. Men have a
pictorial or representative quality, and serve us in the intellect.
Behmen* and Swedenborg saw that things were representative. Men are
also representative; first, of things, and secondly, of ideas.
As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each man
converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of
fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk,
cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the
geometer; the engineer; the musician,- severally make an easy way
for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is by
secret liking connected with some district of nature, whose agent
and interpreter he is; as Linnaeus, of plants; Huber, of bees;
Fries, of lichens; Van Mons, of pears; Dalton, of atomic forms;
Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions.
A man is a centre for nature, running out threads of relation
through every thing, fluid and solid, material and elemental. The
earth rolls; every clod and stone comes to the meridian: so every
organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the
brain. It waits long, but its turn comes. Each plant has its parasite,
and each created thing its lover and poet. Justice has already been
done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine,
to corn and cotton; but how few materials are yet used by our arts The
mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expectant. It
would seem as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy
tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each must be disenchanted and
walk forth to ...
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