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Title: Politics Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson Date: 1844 Language: en Topics: Individualist Anarchism, individualism, political philosophy, transcendentalism Source: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/politics.html
Gold and iron are good
To buy iron and gold;
All earth's fleece and food
For their like are sold.
Boded Merlin wise,
Proved Napoleon great, --
Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft, and Avarice
Cannot rear a State.
Out of dust to build
What is more than dust, --
Walls Amphion piled
Phoebus stablish must.
When the Muses nine
With the Virtues meet,
Find to their design
An Atlantic seat,
By green orchard boughs
Fended from the heat,
Where the statesman ploughs
Furrow for the wheat;
When the Church is social worth,
When the state-house is the hearth,
Then the perfect State is come,
The republican at home.
In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institution are
not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born: that they are
not superior to the citizen: that every one of them was once the act of
a single man: every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a
particular case: that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make
as good; we may make better. Society is an illusion to the young
citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men,
and institutions, rooted like oak-trees to the centre, round which all
arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that
society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle
may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to
gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or
Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul,
does forever. But politics rest on necessary foundations, and cannot be
treated with levity. Republics abound in young civilians, who believe
that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and
modes of living, and employments of the population, that commerce,
education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure,
though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get
sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish
legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the
State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the
citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who
build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government
which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the
population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We are
superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat: so much life as it has
in the character of living men, is its force. The statute stands there
to say, yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article
today? Our statute is a currency, which we stamp with our own portrait:
it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time will return to
the mint. Nature is not democratic, nor limited-monarchical, but
despotic, and will not be fooled or abated of any jot of her authority,
by the pertest of her sons: and as fast as the public mind is opened to
more intelligence, the code is seen to be brute and stammering. It
speaks not articulately, and must be made to. Meantime the education of
the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are
prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints
today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the
resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and
bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant
law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in
turn, to new prayers and pictures. The history of the State sketches in
coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the
delicacy of culture and of aspiration.
The theory of politics, which has possessed the mind of men, and which
they have expressed the best they could in their laws and in their
revolutions, considers persons and property as the two objects for whose
protection government exists. Of persons, all have equal rights, in
virtue of being identical in nature. This interest, of course, with its
whole power demands a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are
equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are
very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a county. This
accident, depending, primarily, on the skill and virtue of the parties,
of which there is every degree, and, secondarily, on patrimony, falls
unequally, and its rights, of course, are unequal. Personal rights,
universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the
census: property demands a government framed on the ratio of owners and
of owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by
an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off,
and pays a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds, and no fear of
the Midianites, and pays no tax to the officer. It seemed fit that Laban
and Jacob should have equal rights to elect the officer, who is to
defend their persons, but that Laban, and not Jacob, should elect the
officer who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And, if question arise
whether additional officers or watch-towers should be provided, must not
Laban and Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds to buy
protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than
Jacob, who, because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and
not his own.
In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, and so
long as it comes to the owners in the direct way, no other opinion would
arise in any equitable community, than that property should make the law
for property, and persons the law for persons.
But property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not
create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as really the new owner's, as
labor made it the first owner's: in the other case, of patrimony, the
law makes an ownership, which will be valid in each man's view according
to the estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity.
It was not, however, found easy to embody the readily admitted
principle, that property should make law for property, and persons for
persons: since persons and property mixed themselves in every
transaction. At last it seemed settled, that the rightful distinction
was, that the proprietors should have more elective franchise than
non-proprietors, on the Spartan principle of "calling that which is
just, equal; not that which is equal, just."
That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared in former
times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether too much weight had
not been allowed in the laws, to property, and such a structure given to
our usages, as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep
them poor; but mainly, because there is an instinctive sense, however
obscure and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution of property,
on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons
deteriorating and degrading; that truly, the only interest for the
consideration of the State, is persons: that property will always follow
persons; that the highest end of government is the culture of men: and
if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement,
and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land.
If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is
less when we take note of our natural defences. We are kept by better
guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect.
Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons.
The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen,
die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own
newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. With such an ignorant and
deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are
limitations, beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go.
Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled
with. Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is
planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the
chances are a hundred to one, that he will cut and harvest it. Under any
forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They
exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a
pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to
liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound: it will always
attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue of one pound weight;
-- and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will
exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force, --
if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, then against it; with
right, or by might.
The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons
are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under the dominion of an
idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the
religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of
calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest,
can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant
actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the
Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.
In like manner, to every particle of property belongs its own
attraction. A cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn
or other commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal man.
It is so much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land. The
law may do what it will with the owner of property, its just power will
still attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say, that all shall
have power except the owners of property: they shall have no vote.
Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write
every statute that respects property. The non-proprietor will be the
scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do, the whole power of
property will do, either through the law, or else in defiance of it. Of
course, I speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates.
When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it is the joint
treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns
something, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so
has that property to dispose of.
The same necessity which secures the rights of person and property
against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, determines the form
and methods of governing, which are proper to each nation, and to its
habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other states of society. In
this country, we are very vain of our political institutions, which are
singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men,
from the character and condition of the people, which they still express
with sufficient fidelity, -- and we ostentatiously prefer them to any
other in history. They are not better, but only fitter for us. We may be
wise in asserting the advantage in modern times of the democratic form,
but to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the
monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is better for
us, because the religious sentiment of the present time accords better
with it. Born democrats, we are nowise qualified to judge of monarchy,
which, to our fathers living in the monarchical idea, was also
relatively right. But our institutions, though in coincidence with the
spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the practical defects
which have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good
men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal
the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for ages
has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick?
The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in the
parties into which each State divides itself, of opponents and defenders
of the administration of the government. Parties are also founded on
instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the
sagacity of their leaders. They have nothing perverse in their origin,
but rudely mark some real and lasting relation. We might as wisely
reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose
members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but
stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves.
Our quarrel with them begins, when they quit this deep natural ground at
the bidding of some leader, and, obeying personal considerations, throw
themselves into the maintenance and defence of points, nowise belonging
to their system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst
we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same
charity to their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal
of the masses which they direct. Ordinarily, our parties are parties of
circumstance, and not of principle; as, the planting interest in
conflict with the commercial; the party of capitalists, and that of
operatives; parties which are identical in their moral character, and
which can easily change ground with each other, in the support of many
of their measures. Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the
party of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of
abolition of capital punishment, degenerate into personalities, or would
inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our leading parties in this country
(which may be cited as a fair specimen of these societies of opinion)
is, that they do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds
to which they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in
the carrying of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to the
commonwealth. Of the two great parties, which, at this hour, almost
share the nation between them, I should say, that, one has the best
cause, and the other contains the best men. The philosopher, the poet,
or the religious man, will, of course, wish to cast his vote with the
democrat, for free-trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal
cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the
access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and power. But
he can rarely accept the persons whom the so-called popular party
propose to him as representatives of these liberalities. They have not
at heart the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and
virtue are in it. The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive
and aimless: it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but
is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On the other side,
the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and
cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of
property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands
no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write,
nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor
encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or
the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither party, when in power, has the
world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all
commensurate with the resources of the nation.
I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the
mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, human
nature always finds itself cherished, as the children of the convicts at
Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other
children. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic
institutions lapsing into anarchy; and the older and more cautious among
ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with some terror at our
turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of construing the
Constitution, and in the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor;
and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the
sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our
Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when
he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, "that a monarchy is a
merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and
go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink,
but then your feet are always in water." No forms can have any dangerous
importance, whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no
difference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so
long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment the mass
a thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is
equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and
centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activity develops
the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by
strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. `Lynch-law'
prevails only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in
the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency: everybody's interest requires
that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.
We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines
through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as
characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an
abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common
conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.
Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other.
There is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so
many, or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a sanction for his
simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which he calls
Truth and Holiness. In these decisions all the citizens find a perfect
agreement, and only in these; not in what is good to eat, good to wear,
good use of time, or what amount of land, or of public aid, each is
entitled to claim. This truth and justice men presently endeavor to make
application of, to the measuring of land, the apportionment of service,
the protection of life and property. Their first endeavors, no doubt,
are very awkward. Yet absolute right is the first governor; or, every
government is an impure theocracy. The idea, after which each community
is aiming to make and mend its law, is, the will of the wise man. The
wise man, it cannot find in nature, and it makes
awkward but earnest efforts to secure his government by contrivance; as,
by causing the entire people to give their voices on every measure; or,
by a double choice to get the representation of the whole; or, by a
selection of the best citizens; or, to secure the advantages of
efficiency and internal peace, by confiding the government to one, who
may himself select his agents. All forms of government symbolize an
immortal government, common to all dynasties and independent of numbers,
perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is only one man.
Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character
of his fellows. My right and my wrong, is their right and their wrong.
Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my
neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a
time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not
sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep
the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more
skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense
of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love
and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a
practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the
blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the
world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so
intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my
setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody
else act after my views: but when a quarter of the human race assume to
tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances
to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public
ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For, any laws but
those which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in
the place of my child, and we stand in one thought, and see that things
are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both
there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look
over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or
that, he will never obey me. This is the history of governments, -- one
man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be
acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a
part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but
as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are
least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government!
Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these.
Hence, the less government we have, the better, -- the fewer laws, and
the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal
Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the
Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the
appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must
be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe,
which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and
deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this
coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and
with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance
of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He
needs no army, fort, or navy, -- he loves men too well; no bribe, or
feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no
favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done
thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has
the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home
where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through
him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has
the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not
husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life.
His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his
presence, frankincense and flowers.
We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the
cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the
influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, as the
rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its
presence is hardly yet suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it; the
Annual Register is silent; in the Conversations' Lexicon, it is not set
down; the President's Message, the Queen's Speech, have not mentioned
it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which genius and piety
throw into the world, alters the world. The gladiators in the lists of
power feel, through all their frocks of force and simulation, the
presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and ambition are
confession of this divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor
amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide its
nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is
because we know how much is due from us, that we are impatient to show
some petty talent as a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a
conscience of this right to grandeur of character, and are false to it.
But each of us has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or
formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an apology to
others and to ourselves, for not reaching the mark of a good and equal
life. But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of
our companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our
own brow, or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad.
We do penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, and we are
constrained to reflect on our splendid moment, with a certain
humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a
fair expression of our permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet in
society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, `I am not all
here.' Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough,
not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology
for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This
conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a
poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of
forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail: climb they
must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could
enter into strict relations with the best persons, and make life serene
around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford
to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press, and covet relations
so hollow and pompous, as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be
a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.
The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave
the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own
constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we
depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been
very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable,
but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the
revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any
party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all
party, and unites him, at the same time, to the race. It promises a
recognition of higher rights than those of personal freedom, or the
security of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be trusted,
to be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as the basis of a State,
has never been tried. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing
into confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his
part in certain social conventions: nor doubt that roads can be built,
letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of
force is at an end. Are our methods now so excellent that all
competition is hopeless? Could not a nation of friends even devise
better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid
fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system
of force. For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior
to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force,
where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code
of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the
post-office, of the highway, of commerce, and the exchange of property,
of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be
answered.
We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to
governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and
instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on
the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to
persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial
restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen
might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or
a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man
sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the
broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love.
All those who have pretended this design, have been partial reformers,
and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do
not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the
authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature.
Such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not
entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who
exhibits them, dare to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and
churchmen; and men of talent, and women of superior sentiments, cannot
hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart
of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men, --
if indeed I can speak in the plural number, -- more exactly, I will say,
I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse
experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, impossible, that
thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest
and simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of
lovers.