Elbert Hubbard

“ Thoreau's obscurity, his poverty, his lack of public recognition in life, either as a writer or lecturer, his rejection as a lover, his failure in business, and his early death, form a combination of calamities that make him as immortal as a martyr. Especially does an early death sanctify all and make the record complete, but the death of a naturalist while right at the height of his ability to see and enjoy—death from tuberculosis of a man who lived most of the time in the open air—these things array us on the side of the man 'gainst unkind Fate, and cement our sympathy and love. ”

“ Wickedness does no harm at all to the universe—it is only harmful to him who has it in his power to be released from it.
Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the deity within him, and to reverence it sincerely.
The prayers of Marcus Aurelius to the gods are for one thing only—that their will be done. All else is vain, all else is rebellion against the universe itself. ”

“ In Schopenhauer's philosophy, Will is something less as we know will, and something more than force. Will, connected with consciousness, as peculiar to man, is, in a less developed form, the real essence of all matter, of all things, organic or inorganic. Will is the blind, irresistible striving for existence; the unconscious organizing power, the omnipotent creative force of Nature, pervading the whole limitless universe; the endeavor to be, to evolve, to expand. ”

“ To own slaves is to be one, and to live in a land of slavery is to share in the bondage—a partaker in the infamy and the profits.
Plato and Aristotle became fast friends—comrades. With thinking men years do not count—only those grow old who think by proxy. Plato had no sons after the flesh, and the love of his heart went out to the Stagirite: in him he saw his own life projected.
When Aristotle had turned twenty he was acquainted with all the leading thinkers of his time; he read constantly, wrote, studied and conversed. ”

“ Van den Ende had a daughter, Clara Maria, a little younger than Spinoza, who surely was a most superior woman. She was the companion of her father in his studies. It speaks well for the father and it speaks well for the daughter that they were comrades and that his highest thought was expressed to her. I can conceive of no finer joy coming to a man than, as his hair whitens, to have a daughter who understands him at his best, who enters into his life, sympathizes with his ideals, ministers to his mental needs, who is his companion and friend. Only a great man ever has such a daughter. ”

“ The Theological, or first system, is the necessary starting-point of the human intellect. The Positive, or third period, is the ultimate goal of every progressive, thinking man; the second period is merely a state of transition that bridges the gulf between the first and the third.
Metaphysics holds the child by the hand until he can trust his feet—it is a passageway between the fictitious and the actual. Once across the chasm, it is no longer needed. Theology represents the child; Metaphysics the youth; Science the man.
The evolution of the race is mirrored in the evolution of the individual. ”

“ The man who can vivisect an emotion, and lay bare a heart-beat in print, knows a subtle joy. The misery that can explain itself is not all misery. Complete misery is dumb; and pain that is all pain is quickly transformed into insensibility. Schopenhauer's life was quite as happy as that of many men who persistently depress us by requesting us to "cheer up." Schopenhauer says, "Don't try to cheer up—the worst is yet to come." ”

“ What evil can be imagined greater for a State, than that honorable men, because they have thoughts of their own and can not act a lie, are sent as culprits into exile! What more baneful than that men, for no guilt or wrongdoing, but for the generous largeness of their mind, should be taken for enemies and led off to death, and that the torture-bed, the terror of the bad, should become, to the signal shame of authority, the finest stage for the public spectacle of endurance and virtue! ”

“ Plato was interested in politics, and like most Athenian youths, was intent on having a good time. However, he was no rowdy, like Alcibiades: he was suave, gracious, and elegant in all of his acts. He had been taught by the Sophists and the desire of his life was to seem, rather than to be. By very gentle stages, Plato began to perceive that to make an impression on society was not worth working for—the thing to do was to be yourself, and yourself at your best. And we can give no better answer to the problem of life than Plato gives in the words of Socrates: "It is better to be than to seem. ”

“ The man who allows the dead to regulate his life, and accepts their thinking as final, satisfied to repeat what he is taught, remains forever in the lowlands. His wings are leaden.
The Jews—most law-bound and priest-ridden of all peoples—are at home everywhere because they have no home. They mix in the life of every nation and remain forever separate and apart. They will run with you, ride with you, trade with you, but they will not eat with you nor pray with you. They build no Altars to the Unknown God, out of courtesy to visitors and guests from distant climes. ”

“ If we read Emanuel Swedenborg, we find that these vast stretches in the domain of thought which Herbert Spencer disposed of as the Unknowable have been traversed and minutely described. Swedenborg's books are so learned that even Herbert Spencer could not read them: his scores are so intricate, his compositions so involved, that no man can play them.
The mystic who sees more than he can explain is universally regarded as an unsafe and unreliable person. The people who consult him go away and do as they please, and faith in his prophecies weaken as his opinions and hopes vary from theirs. ”

“ To these four questions we should bring our highest reason, our ripest experience and our best endeavor. As for himself we know that Kant made a schedule of life which evolved a sickly boy into a reasonably strong man who banished pain, sorrow and regret from his existence and lived a long life of deep, quiet satisfaction, sane to the end, watching every symptom of approaching dissolution with keen interest, and at the last passing into quiet sleep, his spirit gliding peacefully away, perhaps to answer those two great questions which he said were unanswerable here: "Who am I?" ”

“ Socrates was a product of the Greek renaissance. Great men come in groups, like comets sent from afar. Athens was seething with thought and feeling: Pericles was giving his annual oration—worth thousands of weekly sermons—and planning his dream in marble; Phidias was cutting away the needless portions of the white stone of Pentelicus and liberating wondrous forms of beauty; Sophocles was revealing the possibilities of the stage; Æschylus was pointing out the way as a playwright; and the passion for physical beauty was everywhere an adjunct of religion. ”

“ To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor; and life is a warfare, and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What, then, is that which is able to enrich a man? One thing, and only one—philosophy. But this consists in keeping the guardian spirit within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, and with hypocrisy ... ”

“ Athens had these men of refined elegance, Rome evolved them, London has had her day, New York knows them, and Chicago—I trust I will not be contradicted when I say that Chicago understands her business! And so we find these folks who cultivate a pellucid passivity, a phthisicky whisper, a supercilious smirk, and who win our smothered admiration and give us gooseflesh by imparting a taupe tinge of mystery to all their acts and words, thus proving to the assembled guests that they are the Quality and Wisdom will die with them. ”

“ Both parties to the dispute beat the air; they worry their own shadow; for they pass from Nature into the domain of speculation, where their dogmatic grips find nothing to lay hold upon. The shadows which they hew to pieces grow together in a moment like the heroes in Valhalla, to rejoice again in bloodless battles. Metaphysics can no longer claim to be the cornerstone of religion and morality. But if she can not be the Atlas that bears the moral world she can furnish a magic defense. Around the ideas of religion she throws her bulwark of invisibility ”

“ Swedenborg died in London, March Twenty-ninth, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, aged eighty-four years. Up to the very day of his passing away he enjoyed good health, and was possessed of a gentle, kind and obliging disposition that endeared him to all he met. There is an idea in the minds of simple people that insanity is always accompanied by violence, ravings and uncouth and dangerous conduct. Dreams are a temporary insanity—reason sleeps and the mind roams the universe, uncurbed and wildly free. On awakening, for an instant we may not know where we are, and all things are in disorder ”

“ But to Herbert Spencer there was little difference between enslavement of the mind and enslavement of the body. Both were essentially wrong in this—they interfered with Nature's law of evolution, and anything contrary to Nature must pay the penalty of pain and death. All forms of enslavement react upon the slaveholder, and a society founded on force can not evolve—and not to evolve is to die. The wellsprings of Nature must not be dammed—and in fact can not be dammed but for a day. Overflow, revolution and violence are sure to follow. ”

“ The individual soul striving for expression ignores all man-made laws. Truth is that which serves us best in expressing our lives. A rotting log is truth to a bed of violets, while sand is truth to a cactus. But when the violet writes a book on "Expression as I Have Found It," making laws for the evolution of beautiful blossoms, it leaves the Century Plant out of its equation, or else swears, i' faith, that a cactus is not a flower, and that a Night-Blooming Cereus is a disordered thought from a madman's brain. ”

“ The wealth, energy and practical business sense of the Jews recommended them to the grandees of Leon, Aragon and Castile. To the Jews they committed their exchequer, the care of their health, the setting of their jewels, and the fashioning of their finery. In this genial atmosphere many of the Jews grew great in the study of science, literature, history, philosophy and all that makes for mental betterment. They increased in numbers, in opulence and in culture. Their thrift and success set them apart as a mark for hate and envy. ”

“ Pass through the rest of life like one who has entrusted to the gods, with his whole soul, all that he has, making himself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man.
Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains. ”

“ Seneca was a combination of Delsarte and Emerson. He was as popular as Henry Irving, and as wise as Thomas Brackett Reed. His writings were in demand; when he spoke in public, crowds hung upon his words, and the families of the great and powerful sent him their sons, hoping he would impart the secret of success. The world takes a man at the estimate he puts upon himself. Seneca knew enough to hold himself high. Honors came his way, and the wealth he acquired is tokened in those five hundred tables, inlaid with ivory, to which at times he invited his friends to feast. ”

“ The bracketing of the names of Shakespeare and Swedenborg is eminently well. They are Titans both. In the presence of such giants, small men seem to wither and blow away. Swedenborg was cast in heroic mold, and no other man since history began ever compassed in himself so much physical science, and with it all on his back, made such daring voyages into the clouds.
The men who soar highest and know most about another world usually know little about this. No man of his time was so competent a scientist as Swedenborg, and no man before or since has mapped so minutely the Heavenly Kingdom. ”

“ Mind was the great miracle to Kant—the ability to know all about a thing by seeing it with your inward eye. "The Imagination hath a stage within the brain upon which all scenes are played," and the play to Kant was greater than the reality. ”

“ This was not really such a far-away dream, when we remember that her brother was then Emperor and childless. Her thought was more for her child than for herself, and her expectation was that he would succeed Caligula. The persistency with which she told this ambition for her boy is both beautiful and pathetic. Every mother sees her own life projected in her child, and within certain bounds this is right and well.
Glimpses of kindness and right intent are shown when Agrippina recalled Seneca, and when she became the mother of the motherless children of Claudius. ”

“ Looking at the turmoil of life, we find all occupied with its want and misery, exerting all their strength in order to satisfy its endless needs and avert manifold suffering, without daring to expect anything else in return than merely the preservation of this tormented individual existence, full of want and misery, toil and moil, strife and struggle, sorrow and trouble, anguish and fear—from the cradle to the grave. ”

“ The joy of existence lies in self-expression. What if we should order the painter to quit his canvas, the sculptor to lay aside his tools, the farmer to leave the soil? Do these things, and you do no more than you do when you force a thinker to follow in the groove that dead men have furrowed. ”

“ As nothing purifies like fire, so does nothing sanctify like death—the love we lose is the only love we keep.
Mathematics, bills and balance-sheets were odious to young Schopenhauer. He reverenced the memory of his father, but his mother had endowed him with a strong impulse for expression. He wrote little essays on the backs of envelopes, philosophized over his bills, sneaked out of the countingroom the back way to attend the afternoon lectures by the great Doctor Gall, and finally, boldly followed his mother to Weimar, that he might bask in the shadow of the mighty Goethe. ”

“ HENRY THOREAU
[Pg 393]
As a rule, the man who can do all things equally well is a very mediocre individual. Those who stand out before a groping world as beacon-lights were men of great faults and unequal performances. It is quite needless to add that they do not live on account of their faults or imperfections, but in spite of them.
Henry David Thoreau's place in the common heart of humanity grows firmer and more secure as the seasons pass; his life proves for us again the paradoxical fact that the only men who really succeed are those who fail. ”