I have chosen fict.i.tious cases to try the principle. Extreme cases make shipwreck of a wicked law, but are favoring winds to bring every just statute into its happy harbor at the last. Will you say we are not likely to suffer from such usurpation? You know what we have suffered within three months past. G.o.d only knows what is to come. But no man is ever to seek for a stick if he wishes to beat a dog, or for a cross if he would murder his Saviour. The only way to preserve liberty is by eternal vigilance: we must be jealous of every president, every minister, every judge, every officer, from a king to the meanest commissioner he appoints to kidnap men. You have seen the attempts made to sap and undermine one of the most valuable safeguards of our social welfare,--seen that it excited very little attention; and I wish to warn you of the danger of a false principle. I have waited for this day to speak on this theme. Executive tyranny, with soldiers at its command, must needs be open in its deeds of shame. It may waste the money of the public which cleaves to the suspected hands of its officers: it is not so easy to get the necks of those it hates; for we have no star-chamber of democracy, and here the executive has not many soldiers at command, must ask before it can get them. It did ask, and got "No" for answer.
Legislative tyranny must needs be public, and is easily seen. But judicial tyranny is secret, subtle, unseen in its action; and all experience shows it is one of the most dangerous forms of tyranny. A corrupt judge poisons the wells of human society.[37] Scroggs and Jeffries are names deservedly hated by mankind, and there are some American names likely to be added to them. The traditionary respect entertained here for an office which has been graced by some of the n.o.blest men in the land, doubles our danger.
But an attack is made on another safeguard of society, yet more important. We have been told that there is no law higher than a human statute, no law of G.o.d above an act of the American Congress. You know how this doctrine of the supremacy of the lower law has been taught in the high places of the State, in the high places of the church, and in the low places of the public press. You know with what sneers men have been a.s.sailed who appealed to conscience, to religion, and said, "The law of G.o.d is supreme; above all the enactments of mortal men." You have been witness to attempts to howl down the justice of the Almighty. We have had declamation and preaching against the law of G.o.d. It is said the French a.s.sembly, some fifty or sixty years ago, voted that there should be no public worship of G.o.d; that there was no G.o.d to worship; but it was left for politicians and preachers of America, in our time, to declare that there is no law above the caprice of mortal men. Did the French "philosophers" decree speculative atheism? the American "wise men" put it in practice. They deny the function of G.o.d. "He has nothing to do with mankind." This doctrine is one of the foulest ever taught, and tends directly to debauch the conscience of the people. What if there were no law higher than an act of Parliament? what would become of the Parliament itself? There is such a thing conceivable as personal, speculative atheism. I think it is a very rare thing. I have never known an atheist: for, with all about us speaking of G.o.d; all within us speaking of him; every telescope revealing the infinite Mind in nebulae resolved to groups of systems of suns; every microscope revealing the infinite Father, yea, Mother of the world, in a drop of water, a grain of perishing wood, or an atom of stone; every little pendulum revealing his unchanging law on a small scale; and this whole group of solar systems, in its slow and solemn swing through heavenly s.p.a.ce, disclosing the same law on a scale which only genius at first can comprehend,--it is not easy to arrive at personal, speculative atheism. It would be a dreadful thing, the stark denial of a G.o.d. To say there is no infinite Mind in finite matter, no order in the universe, in providence only a fate, no G.o.d for all, no Father for any, only an inextinguishable nothing that fills the desert and illimitable ether of s.p.a.ce and time, the whence and whither of all that are,--such a belief is conceivable; but I do not believe that there is a single atheist living on the whole round world. There is no general danger of personal, speculative atheism. When M. Lalande declared that he saw no G.o.d through his telescope, though he meant not to deny the real G.o.d of nature, the world rang with indignation at an astronomer undevout and mad. But practical, political atheism has become a common thing in America, in New England.
This is not a denial of the essence of G.o.d and his being, but of his function as Supreme Ruler of the church, of the State, of the people, of the universe. Of that there is danger. The devil of ambition tempts the great man to it; the devil of covetousness, the little man. Both strike hands, and say, "There is no higher law;" and low men lift up their mean foreheads in the pulpits of America and say, "It is the voice of a G.o.d, and not of a man. There is no higher law." The greatest understanding of this land, with haughty scorn, has lately said, "The North Mountain is very high; the Blue Ridge, higher still; the Alleghanies higher than either; and yet this "higher law" ranges further than an eagle"s flight above the highest peaks of the Alleghanies."[38] The impious taunt was received with "laughter" by men who have long acted on the maxim that there is no law of G.o.d, and whose State is impoverished by the attempt to tread His law under foot. I know men in America have looked so long at political economy that they have forgotten political morality, and seem to think politics only national housekeeping, and he the best ruler who buys cheapest and sells dearest. But I confess I am amazed when statesmen forget the lessons of those great men that have gone before us, and built up the social state, whose "deep foundations have been laid with prayer." What! is there no law above the North Mountain; above the Blue Ridge; higher than the Alleghanies? Why, the old Hebrew poet told us of One "which removeth the mountains, and they know not; which overturneth them in his anger; which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. Lo! he goeth by me, and I see him not; he pa.s.seth on also, but I perceive him not." Yes, there is One--his law "an eagle"s flight above the Alleghanies"--who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, whose strong hand setteth fast the mountains; yea, One who hath weighed the mountains in scales; before whom all nations are as a very little thing. Yes, Father in heaven! before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art G.o.d. Yea, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.
Thy name alone is excellent; thy glory above the earth and heaven!
No higher law for States than the poor statutes they enact!
"Among the a.s.semblies of the great A greater Ruler takes his seat; The G.o.d of heaven as Judge surveys These "G.o.ds of earth" and all their ways:-- "Why will you frame oppressive laws?
Or why support the unrighteous cause?
When will you once defend the poor, That foes may vex the saints no more?"
They know not, Lord, nor will they know; Dark are the ways in which they go; Their name of "earthly G.o.ds" is vain, For they shall fall and die like men."
It would be a great calamity for this nation to lose all of its mighty riches, and have nothing left but the soil we stand on. But, in seven or eight generations, it would all be restored again; for all the wealth of America has been won in less time. We are not two hundred and fifty years from Jamestown and Plymouth. It would be a great misfortune to lose all the foremost families of the nation. But England lost hers in the War of the Roses; France, in her Revolution. Nature bore great men anew, and fresh families sprung up as n.o.ble as the old. But, if this generation in America could believe that there was no law of G.o.d for you and me to keep,--say the acts of Congress what they might say,--no law to tame the ambition of men of mountain greatness, and curb the eagle"s flight of human tyranny, that would be a calamity which the nation would never recover from. No! then religion would die out; affection fall dead; conscience would perish; intellect give up the ghost, and be no more. No law higher than human will! No watchmaker can make a long pendulum vibrate so quick as a short. In this very body there is that law. I wake and watch and will; my private caprice turns my hand, now here, now there. But who controls my breath? Who bids this heart beat all day long, and all the night, sleep I or wake? Whose subtle law holds together these particles of flesh, of blood, and bone in marvellous vitality? Who gives this eye its power to see, and opens wide the portal of the ear? and who enchants, with most mysterious life, this wondrous commonwealth of dust I call myself? It is the same Hand whose law is "higher than the Blue Ridge," an "eagle"s flight above the Alleghanies."
Who rules the State, and, out of a few stragglers that fled here to New England for conscience sake, built up this mighty, wealthy State? Was it Carver and Winthrop who did all this; Standish and Saltonstall? Was it the cunning craftiness of mightiest men that consciously, well knowing what they did, laid the foundations of our New England State and our New England Church? Why, the boys at school know better. It was the eternal G.o.d whose higher law the Pilgrim and the Puritan essayed to keep, not knowing whereunto the thing would grow. Shall the fool say in his heart there is no G.o.d? He cannot make a hair grow on his head but by the eternal law of his Father in heaven. Will the politician say there is no law of G.o.d for States? Ask the sorrowing world; let Austria and Hungary make reply. Nay, ask the Southern States of America to show us their rapid increase in riches, in civilization; to show us their schools and their scholars, their literature, their science, and their art! No law of G.o.d for States! It is writ on the iron leaf of destiny, "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a curse to any people." Let the wicked hand of the South join with the Northern wicked hand, iniquity shall not prosper. But the eye of the wicked shall fail; they shall not escape; their hope shall be as giving up the ghost, because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory. Their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust, if they cast away the law of the Lord, and despise the word of the Holy One.
In America the people are strongly attached to the inst.i.tutions, const.i.tutions, and statutes of the land. On the whole, they are just establishments. If not, we made them ourselves, and can make them better when we will. The execution of laws is also popular. Nowhere in the world is there a people so orderly, so much attached to law, as the people of these Northern States. But one law is an exception. The people of the North hate the fugitive slave law, as they have never hated any law since the stamp act. I know there are men in the Northern States who like it,--who would have invented slavery, had it not existed long before. But the ma.s.s of the Northern people hate this law, because it is hostile to the purpose of all just human law, hostile to the purpose of society, hostile to the purpose of individual life; because it is hostile to the law of G.o.d,--bids the wrong, forbids the right. We disobey that, for the same reason that we keep other laws: because we reverence the law of G.o.d. Why should we keep that odious law which makes us hated wherever justice is loved? Because we must sometimes do a disagreeable deed to accomplish an agreeable purpose? The purpose of that law is to enable three hundred thousand slaveholders to retake on our soil the men they once stole on other soil! Most of the city churches of the North seem to think that is a good thing. Very well: is it worth while for fifteen million freemen to transgress the plainest of natural laws, the most obvious instincts of the human heart, and the plainest duties of Christianity, for that purpose? The price to pay is the religious integrity of fifteen million men; the thing to buy is a privilege for three hundred thousand slaveholders to use the North as a hunting-field whereon to kidnap men at our cost. Judge you of that bargain.
But I must end this long discourse. The other day I spoke of the vices of pa.s.sion: great and terrible evils they wrought. They were as nothing to the vices of calculation. Pa.s.sion was the flesh, ambition the devil.
There are vices of democracy, vices of radicalism; very great vices they are too. You may read of them in Hume and Alison. They are painted black as night and b.l.o.o.d.y as battle in tory journals of England, and the more vulgar tory journals of America. Democracy wrought terrible evils in Britain in Cromwell"s time; in France at her Revolution. But to the vices, the crimes, the sins of aristocracy, of conservatism,--they are what the fleeting l.u.s.t of the youth is to the cool, hard, calculating, and indomitable ambition of the grown man. Radicalism pillaged Governor Hutchinson"s house, threw some tea into the ocean; conservatism set up its stamp act, and drove America into revolution. Radicalism helped Shadrach out of court; conservatism enacted the fugitive slave bill.
Radicalism sets up a republic that is red for six months; conservatism sets up a red monarchy covered with blood for hundreds of years. Judge you from which we have the most to fear.
Such are the safeguards of society; such our condition. What shall we do? n.o.body would dare pretend to build a church except on righteousness; that is, the rock of ages. Can you build a state on any other foundation--that house upon the sand? What should you think of a minister of the church who got his deacons together, and made a creed, and said, "There is no higher law; no law of G.o.d. You, laymen, must take our word for your guidance, and do just as we bid you, and violate the plainest commands of conscience?" What would be atheism in a minister of the church,--is that patriotism in a minister of the state? A bad law is a most powerful instrument to demoralize and debauch the people. If it is a law of their own making, it is all the worse. There is no real and manly welfare for a man, without a sense of religious obligation to G.o.d; none in a family, none in a church, none in a state. We want righteousness in the people, in their establishments, in their officers.
I adjure you to reverence a government that is right, statutes that are right, officers that are right; but to disobey every thing that is wrong. I entreat you by your love for your country, by the memory of your fathers, by your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and holy love of G.o.d which Jesus taught, and you now feel.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] See note on Function of the Jury, above, p. 165.
[35] In these times of political corruption, when a postmaster in a country village is turned out of office for voting for a representative to Congress who exposed the wickedness of a prominent member of the cabinet, it is pleasant to read such letters as those of Washington to Benjamin Lincoln, March 11, 1789, and to Bushrod Washington, July 27, 1789, in Sparks"s Writings of Washington, vol. ix. p. 477, _et seq._, and x. p. 73, _et seq._
[36] In the Pilgrim"s Progress, Bunyan gives a case which it is probable was fict.i.tious only in the names of the parties. Faithful was indicted before Lord Hategood for a capital offence. Mr. Envy testified. Then the judge asked him, Hast thou any more to say? Envy replied: "My Lord, I could say much more, only I would not be tedious to the court. Yet, if need be, when the other gentlemen have given in their evidence, rather than any thing should be wanting that will dispatch him, I will enlarge my testimony against him."
Lord Hategood stated the law--there were three statutes against the prisoner: 1. The act of King Pharaoh, in 1 Exodus 22; 2. That of King Nebuchadnezzar in 3 Daniel 6; and 3. That of King Darius in 6 Daniel 7.
The jury took "the law from the ruling of the court," and, having been carefully packed, to judge from the names, and all just men expelled from their number, they readily found such a verdict as the government had previously determined upon.
The same thing, _mutatis mutandis_, has been attempted in America, in Boston, and we may fear that in some instances it will succeed.
[37] Since the first publication of this sermon we have seen eight-and-thirty men indicted for treason under the fugitive slave law, because they resisted the attempt to kidnap one of their number, and killed one of the kidnappers. This indictment was found at the instigation of an officer of the government, who adds new infamy to the name of the great first murderer.
[38] Speech at Capon Springs.
VIII.
THE POSITION AND DUTIES OF THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.--AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT WATERVILLE, AUGUST 8, 1849.
Men of a superior culture get it at the cost of the whole community, and therefore, at first owe for their education. They must pay back an equivalent, or else remain debtors to mankind, debtors forever; that is, beggars or thieves, such being the only cla.s.s that are thus perpetually in debt and a burden to the race.
It is true that every man, the rudest Prussian boor, as well as Von Humboldt, is indebted to mankind for his culture, to their past history and their existing inst.i.tutions, to their daily toil. Taking the whole culture into the account, the debt bears about the same ratio to the receipt in all men. I speak not of genius, the inborn faculty which costs mankind nothing, only of the education thereof, which the man obtains. The Irishman who can only handle his spade, wear his garments, talk his wild brogue, and bid his beads, has four or five hundred generations of ancestors behind him, and is as long descended, and from as old a stock, as the accomplished patrician scholar at Oxford and Berlin. The Irishman depends on them all, and on the present generation for his culture. But he has obtained his development with no special outlay and cost of the human race. In getting that rude culture, he has appropriated nothing to himself which is taken from another man"s share.
He has paid as he went along, so he owes nothing in particular for his education; and mankind has no claim on him as for value received. But the Oxford graduate has been a long time at school and college; not earning, but learning; living therefore at the cost of mankind, with an obligation and an implied promise to pay back when he comes of age and takes possession of his educated faculties. He therefore has not only the general debt which he shares with all men, but an obligation quite special and peculiar for his support while at study.
This rule is general, and applies to the cla.s.s of educated men with some apparent exceptions, and a very few real ones. Some men are born of poor but strong-bodied parents, and endowed with great abilities; they inherit nothing except their share of the general civilization of mankind, and the onward impulse which that has given. These men devote themselves to study; and having behind them an ancestry of broad-shouldered, hard-handed, stalwart, temperate men, and deep-bosomed, red-armed and industrious mothers, they are able to do the work of two or three men at the time. Such men work while they study; they teach while they learn; they hew their own way through the wood by superior strength and skill born in their bones, with an axe themselves have chipped out from the stone, or forged of metal, or paid for with the result of their first hewings. They are specially indebted to n.o.body for their culture. They pay as they go, owing the academic ferryman nothing for setting them over into the elysium of the scholar.
Only few men ever make this heroic and crucial experiment. None but poor men"s sons essay the trial. Nothing but poverty has whips sharp enough to sting indolent men, even of genius, to such exertion of the manly part. But even this proud race often runs into another debt: they run up long scores with the body, which must one day be paid "with aching head and squeamish heart-burnings." The credit on account of the hardy fathers, is not without limit. It is soon exhausted; especially in a land where the atmosphere, the inst.i.tutions, and the youth of the people all excite to premature and excessive prodigality of effort. The body takes a mortgage on the spendthrift spirit, demands certain regular periodic payments, and will one day foreclose for breach of condition, impede the spirit"s action in the premises, putting a very disagreeable keeper there, and finally expel the prodigal mortgagor. So it often happens, that a man, who in his youth scorned a pecuniary debt to mankind, and would receive no favor even to buy culture with, has yet, unconsciously and against his will, contracted debts which trouble him in manhood, and impede his action all his life; with swollen feet and blear eyes famous Griesbach pays for the austere heroism of his penurious and needy youth. The rosy bud of genius, on the poor man"s tree, too often opens into a lean and ghastly flower. Could not Burns tell us this?
With the rare exceptions just hinted at, any man of a superior culture owes for it when obtained. Sometimes the debt is obvious: a farmer with small means and a large family sends the most hopeful of his sons to college. Look at the cost of the boy"s culture. His hands are kept from work that his mind may be free. He fares on daintier food, wears more and more costly garments. Other members of the family must feed and clothe him, earn his tuition-fees, buy his books, pay for his fuel and room-rent. For this the father rises earlier than of old, yoking the oxen a great while before day of a winter"s morning, and toils till long after dark of a winter"s night, enduring cold and hardship. For this the mother stints her frugal fare, her humble dress; for this the brothers must forego sleep and pastime, must toil harder, late and early both; for this the sisters must seek new modes of profitable work, must wear their old finery long after it is finery no more. The spare wealth of the family, stinted to spare it, is spent on this one youth. From the father to the daughters, all lay their bones to extraordinary work for him; the whole family is pinched in body that this one youth may go brave and full. Even the family horse pays his tax to raise the education fee.
Men see the hopeful scholar, graceful and accomplished, receiving his academic honors, but they see not the hard-featured father standing unheeded in the aisle, nor the older sister in an obscure corner of the gallery, who had toiled in the factory for the favored brother, tending his vineyard, her own not kept, who had perhaps learned the letters of Greek to hear him recite the grammar at home. Father and sister know not a word of the language in which his diploma is writ and delivered. At what cost of the family tree is this one flower produced? How many leaves, possible blossoms, yea, possible branches have been absorbed to create this one flower, which shall perpetuate the kind, after being beautiful and fragrant in its own season? Yet, while these leaves are growing for the blossom"s sake, and the life of the tree is directed thither with special and urgent emphasis, the difference between branch and blossom, leaf and petal, is getting more and more. By and by the two cannot comprehend each other; the acorn has forgotten the leaf which reared it, and thinks itself of another kin. Grotius, who speaks a host of languages, talking with the learned of all countries, and of every age, has forgot his mother tongue, and speech is at an end with her that bore him. The son, accomplished with many a science, many an art, ceases to understand the simple consciousness of his father and mother. They are proud of him--that he has outgrown them; he ashamed of them when they visit him amid his scholarly company. To them he is a philosopher; they only clowns in his eyes. He learns to neglect, perhaps to despise them, and forgets his obligation and his debt. Yet by their rudeness is it that he is refined. His science and literary skill are purchased by their ignorance and uncouthness of manner and of speech. Had the educational cost been equally divided, all had still continued on a level; he had known no Latin, but the whole family might have spoken good English. For all the difference which education has made betwixt him and his kinsfolk he is a debtor.
In New England you sometimes see extremes of social condition brought together. The blue-frocked father, well advanced, but hale as an October morning, jostles into Boston in a milk-cart, his red-cheeked grand-daughter beside him, also coming for some useful daily work, while the youngest son, cultured at the cost of that grand-daughter"s sire and by that father"s toil, is already a famous man; perhaps also a proud one, eloquent at the bar, or powerful in the pulpit, or mighty in the senate. The family was not rich enough to educate all the children after this costly sort; one becomes famous, the rest are neglected, obscure, and perhaps ignorant; the cultivated son has little sympathy with them.
So the men that built up the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Milan slept in mean hutches of mud and straw, dirty, cold, and wet; the finished tower looks proudly down upon the lowly thatch, all heedless of the cost at which itself arose.
It is plain that this man owes for his education; it is plain whom he owes. But all men of a superior culture, though born to wealth, get their education in the same way, only there is this additional mischief to complicate the matter: the burden of self-denial is not borne by the man"s own family, but by other fathers and mothers, other brothers and sisters. They also pay the cost of his culture, bear the burden for no special end, and have no personal or family joy in the success; they do not even know the scholar they help to train. They who hewed the topstone of society are far away when it is hoisted up with shouting.
Most of the youths now-a-days trained at Harvard College are the sons of rich men, yet they also, not less, are educated at the public charge; beneficiaries not of the "Hopkins" Fund," but of the whole community.
Society is not yet rich enough to afford so generous a culture to all who ask, who deserve, or who would pay for it a hundred-fold. The accomplished man who sits in his well-endowed scholarship at Oxford, or rejoices to be "Master of Trinity," though he have the estate of the Westminsters and Sutherlands behind him, is still the beneficiary of the public, and owes for his schooling.
In the general way among the industrious cla.s.ses of New England, a boy earns his living after he is twelve years old. If he gets the superior education of the scholar solely by the pecuniary aid of his father or others, when he is twenty-five and enters on his profession, law, medicine, or divinity, politics, school-keeping, or trade, he has not earned his Latin grammar; has rendered no appreciable service to mankind; others have worked that he might study, and taught that he might learn. He has not paid the first cent towards his own schooling; he is indebted for it to the whole community. The ox-driver in the fields, the pavior in the city streets, the laborer on the railroad, the lumberer in the woods, the girl in the factory, each has a claim on him.
If he despises these persons, or cuts himself off from sympathy with them; if he refuses to perform his function for them after they have done their possible to fit him for it; he is not only the perpetual and ungrateful debtor, but is more guilty than the poor man"s son who forgets the family that sent him to college: for that family consciously and willingly made the sacrifice, and got some satisfaction for it in the visible success of their scheme, nay, are sometimes proud of the pride which scorns them, while with the ma.s.s of men thus slighted there is no return for their sacrifice. They did their part, faithfully did it; their beneficiary forgets his function.
The democratic party in New England does not much favor the higher seminaries of education. There has long been a suspicion against them in the ma.s.s of the community, and among the friends of the public education of the people a serious distrust. This is the philosophy of that discontent: public money spent on the higher seminaries is so much taken from the humbler schools, so much taken from the colleges of all for the college of the few; men educated at such cost have not adequately repaid the public for the sacrifice made on their account; men of superior education have not been eminently the friends of mankind, they do not eminently represent Truth, Justice, Philanthropy, and Piety; they do not point men to lofty human life, and go thitherward in advance of mankind; their superior education has narrowed their sympathies, instead of widening; they use their opportunities against mankind, and not in its behalf; think, write, legislate, and live not for the interest of mankind, but only for a cla.s.s; instead of eminent wisdom, justice, piety, they have eminent cunning, selfishness, and want of faith. These charges are matters of allegation; judge you if they be not also matters of fact.
Now there is a common feeling amongst men that the scholar is their debtor, and, in virtue of this, that they have a right to various services from him. No honest man asks the aid of a farmer or a blacksmith without intending to repay him in money; no a.s.sembly of mechanics would ask another to come two hundred miles and give them a month"s work, or a day"s work. Yet they will ask a scholar to do so.
What gratuitous services are demanded of the physician, of the minister, of the man of science and letters in general! No poor man in Boston but thinks he has a good claim on any doctor; no culprit in danger of liberty or life but will ask the services of a lawyer, wholly without recompense, to plead his cause. The poorest and most neglected cla.s.s of men look on every good clergyman as their missionary and minister and friend; the better educated and more powerful he is, the juster and greater do they feel their claim on him. A pirate in jail may command the services of any Christian minister in the land. Most of the high achievements in science, letters and art, have had no apparent pay. The pay came beforehand: in general and from G.o.d, in the greater ability, "the vision and the faculty divine," but in particular also and from men, in the opportunity afforded them by others for the use and culture thereof. Divinely and humanly they are well paid. Men feel that they have this right to the services of the scholar, in part because they dimly know that his superior education is purchased at the general cost.
Hence, too, they are proud of the few able and accomplished men, feeling that all have a certain property therein, as having contributed their mite to the acc.u.mulation, by their divine nature related to the men of genius, by their human toil partners in the acquirements of the scholar.
This feeling is not confined to men who intellectually can appreciate intellectual excellence. The little parish in the mountains, and the great parish in the city, are alike proud of the able-headed and accomplished scholar, who ministers to them; though neither the poor clowns of the village nor the wealthy clowns of the metropolis could enter into his consciousness and understand his favorite pursuits or loftiest thought. Both would think it insulting to pay such a man in full proportion to his work or their receipt. n.o.body offers a salary to the House of Lords: their lordship is their pay, and they must give back, in the form of justice and sound government, an equivalent for all they take in high social rank. They must pay for their n.o.bility by being n.o.ble lords.
How shall the scholar pay for his education? He is to give a service for the service received. Thus the miller and the farmer pay one another, each paying with service in his own kind. The scholar cannot pay back bread for bread, and cloth for cloth. He must pay in the scholar"s kind, not the woodman"s or the weaver"s. He is to represent the higher modes of human consciousness; his culture and opportunities of position fit him for that. So he is not merely to go through the routine of his profession, as minister, doctor, lawyer, merchant, schoolmaster, politician, or maker of almanacs, and for his own advantage; he is also to represent truth, justice, beauty, philanthropy, and religion--the highest facts of human experience; he must be common, but not vulgar, and, as a star, must dwell apart from the vulgarity of the selfish and the low. He may win money without doing this, get fame and power, and thereby seem to pay mankind for their advance to him, while he rides upon their neck; but as he has not paid back the scholar"s cost and in the scholar"s way, he is a debtor still, and owes for his past culture and present position.
Such is the position of the scholar everywhere, and such his consequent obligation. But in America there are some circ.u.mstances which make the position and the duty still more important. Beside the natural aristocracy of genius, talent, and educated skill, in most countries there is also a conventional and permanent n.o.bility based on royal or patrician descent and immovable aristocracy. Its members monopolize the high places of society, and if not strong by nature are so by position.
Those men check the natural power of the cla.s.s of scholars. The descendant of some famous chief of old time, takes rank before the Bacons, the Shakspeares, and the Miltons of new families, born yesterday, to-day gladdened and gladdening with the joy of their genius, usurps their place, and for a time "shoves away the worthy bidden guest"
from the honors of the public board. Here there is no such cla.s.s: a man born at all is well born; with a great nature, n.o.bly born; the career opens to all that can run, to all men that wish to try; our aristocracy is movable, and the scholar has scope and verge enough.
Germany has the largest cla.s.s of scholars; men of talent, sometimes of genius, of great working power, exceedingly well furnished for their work, with a knowledge of the past and the present. On the whole, they seem to have a greater power of thought than the scholars of any other land. They live in a country where intellectual worth is rated at its highest value. As England is the paradise of the patrician and the millionnaire, so is Germany for the man of thought; Goethe and Schiller, and the Humboldts took precedence of the mere conventional aristocracy.
The empire of money is for England; that of mind is for Germany. But there the scholar is positively hindered in his function by the power of the government, which allows freedom of thought, and by education tends to promote it, yet not its correlative freedom of speech, and still less the consequent of that--freedom of act. Revelations of new thought are indeed looked for, and encouraged in certain forms, but the corresponding revolution of old things is forbidden. An idea must remain an idea; the government will not allow it to become a deed, an inst.i.tution, an idea organized in men. The children of the mind must be exposed to die, or, if left alive, their feet are cramped, so that they cannot go alone; useless, joyless, and unwed, they remain in their father"s house. The government seeks to establish national unity of action, by the sacrifice of individual variety of action, personal freedom; every man must be a soldier and a Christian, wearing the livery of the government on the body and in the soul, and going through the spiritual exercises of the church, as through the manual exercise of the camp. In a nation so enlightened, personal freedom cannot be wholly sacrificed, so thought is left free, but speech restricted by censorship--speech with the human mouth or the iron lips of the press.
Now, as of old, is there a controversy between the temporal and the spiritual powers, about the invest.i.ture of the children of the soul.
Then, on the other side, the scholar is negatively impeded by the comparative ignorance of the people, by their consequent lack of administrative power and self-help, and their distrust of themselves.