By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply, and
creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work he
unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not
abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let
out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and
hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common
experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to the
customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as
a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man
is lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his
full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must
find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his
work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and
character make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in
his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will
never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the
meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it
into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims.
We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men,
and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. We
think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in
certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract
rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a
nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and
Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and
company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or
vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet
written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as
any. In our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of
hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death,
and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a
royal mind will. To make habitually a new estimate,—that is elevation.
What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In
himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is
in his nature and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The
goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter
them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite
productiveness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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