The Service

by Henry David Thoreau




Contents

 I. Qualities of the Recruit
 II. What Music Shall We Have?
 III. Not How Many, But Where the Enemy Are




I.
Qualities of the Recruit


     _Spes sibi quisque._ Virgil
     Each one his own hope.

The brave man is the elder son of creation, who has stept buoyantly
into his inheritance, while the coward, who is the younger, waiteth
patiently till he decease. He rides as wide of this earth’s gravity as
a star, and by yielding incessantly to all the impulses of the soul, is
constantly drawn upward and becomes a fixed star. His bravery deals not
so much in resolute action, as healthy and assured rest; its palmy
state is a staying at home and compelling alliance in all directions.
So stands his life to heaven, as some fair sunlit tree against the
western horizon, and by sunrise is planted on some eastern hill, to
glisten in the first rays of the dawn. The brave man braves nothing,
nor knows he of his bravery. He is that sixth champion against Thebes,
whom, when the proud devices of the rest have been recorded, the poet
describes as “bearing a full-orbed shield of solid brass,”

     “But there was no device upon its circle,
     For not to seem just but to be is his wish.”

He does not present a gleaming edge to ward off harm, for that will
oftenest attract the lightning, but rather is the all-pervading ether,
which the lightning does not strike but purify. So is the profanity of
his companion as a flash across the face of his sky, which lights up
and reveals its serene depths. Earth cannot shock the heavens, but its
dull vapor and foul smoke make a bright cloud spot in the ether, and
anon the sun, like a cunning artificer, will cut and paint it, and set
it for a jewel in the breast of the sky.

His greatness is not measurable; not such a greatness as when we would
erect a stupendous piece of art, and send far and near for materials,
intending to lay the foundations deeper, and rear the structure higher
than ever; for hence results only a remarkable bulkiness without
grandeur, lacking those true and simple proportions which are
independent of size. He was not builded by that unwise generation that
would fain have reached the heavens by piling one brick upon another;
but by a far wiser, that builded inward and not outward, having found
out a shorter way, through the observance of a higher art. The Pyramids
some artisan may measure with his line; but if he gives you the
dimensions of the Parthenon in feet and inches, the figures will not
embrace it like a cord, but dangle from its entablature like an elastic
drapery.

His eye is the focus in which all the rays, from whatever side, are
collected; for, itself being within and central, the entire
circumference is revealed to it. Just as we scan the whole concave of
the heavens at a glance, but can compass only one side of the pebble at
our feet. So does his discretion give prevalence to his valor.
“Discretion is the wise man’s soul” says the poet. His prudence may
safely go many strides beyond the utmost rashness of the coward; for,
while he observes strictly the golden mean, he seems to run through all
extremes with impunity. Like the sun, which, to the poor worldling, now
appears in the zenith, now in the horizon, and again is faintly
reflected from the moon’s disk, and has the credit of describing an
entire great circle, crossing the equinoctial and solstitial
colures,—without detriment to his steadfastness or mediocrity. The
golden mean, in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system, and
that about which all revolve; and, though to a distant and plodding
planet it be the uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s
year is complete, it will be found to be central. They who are alarmed
lest Virtue should so far demean herself as to be extremely good, have
not yet wholly embraced her, but described only a slight arc of a few
seconds about her; and from so small and ill-defined a curvature, you
can calculate no centre whatever; but their mean is no better than
meanness, nor their medium than mediocrity.

The coward wants resolution, which the brave man can do without. He
recognizes no faith but a creed, thinking this straw, by which he is
moored, does him good service, because his sheet-anchor does not drag.
“The house-roof fights with the rain; he who is under shelter does not
know it.” In his religion the ligature, which should be muscle and
sinew, is rather like that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held
in their hands, when they went abroad from the temple of Minerva,—the
other end being attached to the statue of the goddess. But frequently,
as in their case, the thread breaks, being stretched; and he is left
without an asylum.

The divinity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple, which is
never permitted to go out, but burns as steadily, and with as pure a
flame, on the obscure provincial altars as in Numa’s temple at Rome. In
the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly
disposed. We say, justly, that the weak person is “flat,”—for, like all
flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength,
that is, on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He
slides all the way through life. Most things are strong in one
direction; a straw longitudinally; a board in the direction of its
edge; a knee transversely to its grain; but the brave man is a perfect
sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side, and is equally strong every
way. The coward is wretchedly spheroidal at best, too much educated or
drawn out on one side, and depressed on the other; or may be likened to
a hollow sphere, whose disposition of matter is best when the greatest
bulk is intended.

We shall not attain to be spherical by lying on one or the other side
for an eternity, but only by resigning ourselves implicitly to the law
of gravity in us, shall we find our axis coincident with the celestial
axis, and by revolving incessantly through all circles, acquire a
perfect sphericity. Mankind, like the earth, revolve mainly from west
to east, and so are flattened at the pole. But does not philosophy give
hint of a movement commencing to be rotary at the poles too, which in a
millennium will have acquired increased rapidity, and help restore an
equilibrium? And when at length every star in the nebulæ and Milky Way
has looked down with mild radiance for a season, exerting its whole
influence as the polar star, the demands of science will in some degree
be satisfied.

The grand and majestic have always somewhat of the undulatoriness of
the sphere. It is the secret of majesty in the rolling gait of the
elephant, and of all grace in action and in art. Always the line of
beauty is a curve. When with pomp a huge sphere is drawn along the
streets, by the efforts of a hundred men, I seem to discover each
striving to imitate its gait, and keep step with it,—if possible to
swell to its own diameter. But onward it moves, and conquers the
multitude with its majesty. What shame, then, that our lives, which
might so well be the source of planetary motion, and sanction the order
of the spheres, should be full of abruptness and angularity, so as not
to roll nor move majestically!

The Romans “made Fortune sirname to Fortitude,” for fortitude is that
alchemy that turns all things to good fortune. The man of fortitude,
whom the Latins called _fortis_ is no other than that lucky person whom
_fors_ favors, or _vir summae fortis_. If we will, every bark may
“carry Cæsar and Cæsar’s fortune.” For an impenetrable shield, stand
inside yourself; he was no artist, but an artisan, who first made
shields of brass. For armor of proof, _mea virtute me involvo_,—I wrap
myself in my virtue;

     “Tumble me down, and I will sit
     Upon my ruins, smiling yet.”

If you let a single ray of light through the shutter, it will go on
diffusing itself without limit till it enlighten the world; but the
shadow that was never so wide at first, as rapidly contracts till it
comes to naught. The shadow of the moon, when it passes nearest the
sun, is lost in space ere it can reach our earth to eclipse it. Always
the System shines with uninterrupted light; for as the sun is so much
larger than any planet, no shadow can travel far into space. We may
bask always in the light of the System, always may step back out of the
shade. No man’s shadow is as large as his body, if the rays make a
right angle with the reflecting surface. Let our lives be passed under
the equator, with the sun in the meridian.

There is no ill which may not be dissipated like the dark, if you let
in a stronger light upon it. Overcome evil with good. Practice no such
narrow economy as they, whose bravery amounts to no more light than a
farthing candle, before which most objects cast a shadow wider than
themselves.

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow; she has not provided
_for_, but by a thousand contrivances _against_ it: she has bevelled
the margin of the eyelids, that the tears may not overflow on the
cheeks. It was a conceit of Plutarch, accounting for the preference
given to signs observed on the left hand, that men may have thought
“things terrestrial and mortal directly over against heavenly and
divine things, and do conjecture that the things which to us are on the
left hand, the gods send down from their right hand.” If we are not
blind, we shall see how a right hand is stretched over all,—as well the
unlucky as the lucky,—and that the ordering Soul is only right-handed,
distributing with one palm all our fates.

What first suggested that necessity was grim, and made fate to be so
fatal? The strongest is always the least violent. Necessity is my
eastern cushion on which I recline. My eye revels in its prospect as in
the summer haze. I ask no more but to be left alone with it. It is the
bosom of time and the lap of eternity. To be necessary is to be
needful, and necessity is only another name for inflexibility of good.
How I welcome my grim fellow, and walk arm in arm with him! Let me too
be such a Necessity as he! I love him, he is so flexile, and yields to
me as the air to my body. I leap and dance in his midst, and play with
his beard till he smiles. I greet thee, my elder brother! who with thy
touch ennoblest all things. Then is holiday when naught intervenes
betwixt me and thee. Must it be so,—then is it good. The stars are thy
interpreters to me.

Over Greece hangs the divine necessity, ever a mellower heaven of
itself; whose light gilds the Acropolis and a thousand fanes and
groves.




II.
What Music Shall We Have?


     Each more melodious note I hear
     Brings this reproach to me,
     That I alone afford the ear,
     Who would the music be.

The brave man is the sole patron of music; he recognizes it for his
mother tongue; a more mellifluous and articulate language than words,
in comparison with which, speech is recent and temporary. It is his
voice. His language must have the same majestic movement and cadence
that philosophy assigns to the heavenly bodies. The steady flux of his
thought constitutes time in music. The universe falls in and keeps pace
with it, which before proceeded singly and discordant. Hence are poetry
and song. When Bravery first grew afraid and went to war, it took Music
along with it. The soul is delighted still to hear the echo of her own
voice. Especially the soldier insists on agreement and harmony always.
To secure these he falls out. Indeed, it is that friendship there is in
war that makes it chivalrous and heroic. It was the dim sentiment of a
noble friendship for the purest soul the world has seen, that gave to
Europe a crusading era. War is but the compelling of peace. If the
soldier marches to the sack of a town, he must be preceded by drum and
trumpet, which shall identify his cause with the accordant universe.
All things thus echo back his own spirit, and thus the hostile
territory is preoccupied for him. He is no longer insulated, but
infinitely related and familiar. The roll-call musters for him all the
forces of Nature.

There is as much music in the world as virtue. In a world of peace and
love music would be the universal language, and men greet each other in
the fields in such accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals
from a distance. All things obey music as they obey virtue. It is the
herald of virtue. It is God’s voice. In it are the centripetal and
centrifugal forces. The universe needed only to hear a divine melody,
that every star might fall into its proper place, and assume its true
sphericity. It entails a surpassing affluence on the meanest thing;
riding over the heads of sages, and soothing the din of philosophy.
When we listen to it we are so wise that we need not to know. All
sounds, and more than all, silence, do fife and drum for us. The least
creaking doth whet all our senses, and emit a tremulous light, like the
aurora borealis, over things. As polishing expresses the vein in
marble, and the grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks
anywhere. It is either a sedative or a tonic to the soul.

I read that “Plato thinks the gods never gave men music, the science of
melody and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle the ear; but that
the discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous fabric of the
soul, and that of it that roves about the body, and many times for want
of tune and air, breaks forth into many extravagances and excesses,
might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to their former consent
and agreement.”

A sudden burst from a horn startles us, as if one had rashly provoked a
wild beast. We admire his boldness; he dares wake the echoes which he
cannot put to rest. The sound of a bugle in the stillness of the night
sends forth its voice to the farthest stars, and marshals them in new
order and harmony. Instantly it finds a fit sounding-board in the
heavens. The notes flash out on the horizon like heat lightning,
quickening the pulse of creation. The heavens say, Now is this my own
earth.

To the sensitive soul the Universe has her own fixed measure, which is
its measure also, and as this, expressed in the regularity of its
pulse, is inseparable from a healthy body, so is its healthiness
dependent on the regularity of its rhythm. In all sounds the soul
recognizes its own rhythm, and seeks to express its sympathy by a
correspondent movement of the limbs. When the body marches to the
measure of the soul, then is true courage and invincible strength. The
coward would reduce this thrilling sphere-music to a universal
wail,—this melodious chant to a nasal cant. He thinks to conciliate all
hostile influences by compelling his neighborhood into a partial
concord with himself; but his music is no better than a jingle, which
is akin to a jar,—jars regularly recurring. He blows a feeble blast of
slender melody, because Nature can have no more sympathy with such a
soul than it has of cheerful melody in itself. Hence hears he no
accordant note in the universe, and is a coward, or consciously outcast
and deserted man. But the brave man, without drum or trumpet, compels
concord everywhere, by the universality and tunefulness of his soul.

Let not the faithful sorrow that he has no ear for the more fickle and
subtle harmonies of creation, if he be awake to the slower measure of
virtue and truth. If his pulse does not beat in unison with the
musician’s quips and turns, it accords with the pulse-beat of the ages.

A man’s life should be a stately march to an unheard music; and when to
his fellows it may seem irregular and inharmonious, he will be stepping
to a livelier measure, which only his nicer ear can detect. There will
be no halt, ever, but at most a marching on his post, or such a pause
as is richer than any sound, when the deeper melody is no longer heard,
but implicitly consented to with the whole life and being. He will take
a false step never, even in the most arduous circumstances; for then
the music will not fail to swell into greater volume, and rule the
movement it inspired.




III.
Not How Many, But Where the Enemy Are


     —What’s brave, what’s noble,
     Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion.

          Shakespeare

When my eye falls on the stupendous masses of the clouds, tossed into
such irregular greatness across the cope of my sky, I feel that their
grandeur is thrown away on the meanness of my employments. In vain the
sun, thro’ morning and noon rolls defiance to man, and, as he sinks
behind his cloudy fortress in the west, challenges him to equal
greatness in his career; but, from his humbleness he looks up to the
domes and minarets and gilded battlements of the Eternal City, and is
content to be a suburban dweller outside the walls. We look in vain
over earth for a Roman greatness, to take up the gantlet which the
heavens throw down. Idomeneus would not have demurred at the freshness
of the last morning that rose to us, as unfit occasion to display his
valor in; and of some such evening as this, methinks, that Grecian
fleet came to anchor in the bay of Aulis. Would that it were to us the
eve of a more than ten years’ war,—a tithe of whose exploits, and
Achillean withdrawals, and godly interferences, would stock a library
of Iliads.

Better that we have some of that testy spirit of knight errantry, and
if we are so blind as to think the world is not rich enough nowadays to
afford a real foe to combat, with our trusty swords and double-handed
maces, hew and mangle some unreal phantom of the brain. In the pale and
shivering fogs of the morning, gathering them up betimes, and
withdrawing sluggishly to their daylight haunts, I see Falsehood
sneaking from the full blaze of truth, and with good relish could do
execution on their rearward ranks, with the first brand that came to
hand. We too are such puny creatures as to be put to flight by the sun,
and suffer our ardor to grow cool in proportion as his increases; our
own short-lived chivalry sounds a retreat with the fumes and vapors of
the night; and we turn to meet mankind, with its meek face preaching
peace, and such non-resistance as the chaff that rides before the
whirlwind.

Let not our Peace be proclaimed by the rust on our swords, or our
inability to draw them from their scabbards; but let her at least have
so much work on her hands as to keep those swords bright and sharp. The
very dogs that bay the moon from farmyards o’ these nights, do evince
more heroism than is tamely barked forth in all the civil exhortations
and war sermons of the age. And that day and night, which should be set
down indelibly in men’s hearts, must be learned from the pages of our
almanack. One cannot wonder at the owlish habits of the race, which
does not distinguish when its day ends and night begins; for, as night
is the season of rest, it would be hard to say when its toil ended and
its rest began. Not to it

     —returns
     Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
     Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
     Or flocks or herds, or human face divine;
     But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
     Surrounds.

And so the time lapses without epoch or era, and we know some
half-score of mornings and evenings by tradition only. Almost the night
is grieved and leaves her tears on the forelock of day, that men will
not rush to her embrace, and fulfill at length the pledge so forwardly
given in the youth of time. Men are a circumstance to themselves,
instead of causing the universe to stand around, the mute witness of
their manhood, and the stars to forget their sphere music and chant an
elegiac strain, that heroism should have departed out of their ranks
and gone over to humanity.

It is not enough that our life is an easy one; we must live on the
stretch, retiring to our rest like soldiers on the eve of a battle,
looking forward with ardor to the strenuous sortie of the morrow. “Sit
not down in the popular seats and common level of virtues, but endeavor
to make them heroical. Offer not only peace-offerings but holocausts
unto God.” To the brave soldier the rust and leisure of peace are
harder than the fatigues of war. As our bodies court physical
encounters, and languish in the mild and even climate of the tropics,
so our souls thrive best on unrest and discontent. The soul is a
sterner master than any King Frederick; for a true bravery would
subject our bodies to rougher usage than even a grenadier could
withstand. We too are dwellers within the purlieus of the camp. When
the sun breaks through the morning mist, I seem to hear the din of war
louder than when his chariot thundered on the plains of Troy. The thin
fields of vapor, spread like gauze over the woods, form extended lawns
whereon high tournament is held;

     Before each van
     Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears,
     Till thickest legions close.

It behoves us to make life a steady progression, and not be defeated by
its opportunities. The stream which first fell a drop from heaven,
should be filtered by events till it burst out into springs of greater
purity, and extract a diviner flavor from the accidents through which
it passes. Shall man wear out sooner than the sun? and not rather dawn
as freshly, and with such native dignity stalk down the hills of the
East into the bustling vale of life, with as lofty and serene a
countenance to roll onward through midday, to a yet fairer and more
promising setting? In the crimson colors of the west I discover the
budding hues of dawn. To my western brother it is rising pure and
bright as it did to me; but only the evening exhibits in the still rear
of day, the beauty which through morning and noon escaped me. Is not
that which we call the gross atmosphere of evening the accumulated deed
of the day, which absorbs the rays of beauty, and shows more richly
than the naked promise of the dawn? Let us look to it that by earnest
toil in the heat of the noon, we get ready a rich western blaze against
the evening.

Nor need we fear that the time will hang heavy when our toil is done;
for our task is not such a piece of day-labor, that a man must be
thinking what he shall do next for a livelihood,—but such, that as it
began in endeavor, so will it end only when no more in heaven or on
earth remains to be endeavored. Effort is the prerogative of virtue.
Let not death be the sole task of life,—the moment when we are rescued
from death to life, and set to work,—if indeed that can be called a
task which all things do but alleviate. Nor will we suffer our hands to
lose one jot of their handiness by looking behind to a mean recompense;
knowing that our endeavor cannot be thwarted, nor we be cheated of our
earnings unless by not earning them. It concerns us, rather, to be
somewhat here present, than to leave something behind us; for, if that
were to be considered, it is never the deed men praise, but some marble
or canvas, which are only a staging to the real work. The hugest and
most effective deed may have no sensible result at all on earth, but
may paint itself in the heavens with new stars and constellations. When
in rare moments our whole being strives with one consent, which we name
a yearning, we may not hope that our work will stand in any artist’s
gallery on earth. The bravest deed, which for the most part is left
quite out of history,—which alone wants the staleness of a deed done,
and the uncertainty of a deed doing,—is the life of a great man. To
perform exploits is to be temporarily bold, as becomes a courage that
ebbs and flows,—the soul, quite vanquished by its own deed, subsiding
into indifference and cowardice; but the exploit of a brave life
consists in its momentary completeness.

Every stroke of the chisel must enter our own flesh and bone; he is a
mere idolater and apprentice to art who suffers it to grate dully on
marble. For the true art is not merely a sublime consolation and
holiday labor, which the gods have given to sickly mortals; but such a
masterpiece as you may imagine a dweller on the tablelands of central
Asia might produce, with threescore and ten years for canvas, and the
faculties of a man for tools,—a human life; wherein you might hope to
discover more than the freshness of Guido’s Aurora, or the mild light
of Titian’s landscapes,—no bald imitation nor even rival of Nature, but
rather the restored original of which she is the reflection. For such a
masterpiece as this, whole galleries of Greece and Italy are a mere
mixing of colors and preparatory quarrying of marble.

Of such sort, then, be our crusade,—which, while it inclines chiefly to
the hearty good will and activity of war, rather than the insincerity
and sloth of peace, will set an example to both of calmness and
energy;—as unconcerned for victory as careless of defeat,—not seeking
to lengthen our term of service, nor to cut it short by a reprieve,—but
earnestly applying ourselves to the campaign before us. Nor let our
warfare be a boorish and uncourteous one, but a higher courtesy attend
its higher chivalry,—though not to the slackening of its tougher duties
and severer discipline. That so our camp may be a palæstra, wherein the
dormant energies and affections of men may tug and wrestle, not to
their discomfiture, but to their mutual exercise and development.

What were Godfrey and Gonsalvo unless we breathed a life into them and
enacted their exploits as a prelude to our own? The Past is the canvas
on which our idea is painted,—the dim prospectus of our future field.
We are dreaming of what we are to do. Methinks I hear the clarion
sound, and clang of corselet and buckler, from many a silent hamlet of
the soul. The signal gun has long since sounded, and we are not yet on
our posts. Let us make such haste as the morning, and such delay as the
evening.

     Henry D. Thoreau


_July, 1840_.