Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)

by Theodore Parker

The power of the Pen is wholly personal. It is the appropriate instrument of the scholar, but it is least of all desired and sought for. The rich man sends his sons to trade, to make too much of inheritance yet more by fresh acquisitions of superfluity. He does not send them to literature, art or science. You find the scholar slipping in to other modes of action, not the merchants and politicians migrating into this. He longs to act by the gravity of his money or station, not draw merely by his head. The Office carries the day before the Pen; the Purse takes precedence of both. Educated men do not so much seek places that demand great powers, as those which bring much gold. Self-denial for money or office is common, for scholarship rare and unpopular. To act by money, not mind, is the ill-concealed ambition of many a well-bred man; the desire of this colors his day-dream, which is less of wisdom and more of wealth, or of political station; so a first-rate clergyman desires to be razed to a second-rate politician, and some "tall admiral" of a politician consents to be cut down and turned into a mere sloop of trade. The representative in Congress becomes a president of an insurance office or a bank, or the agent of a cotton mill; the judge deserts his station on the bench and presides over a railroad; the governor or senator wants a place in the post-office; the historian longs for a "chance in the custom-house." The Pen stoops to the Office, that to the Purse. The scholar would rather make a fortune by a balsam of wild cherry than write Hamlet or Paradise Lost for nothing; rather than help mankind by making a Paradise Regained. The well-endowed minister thinks how much more money he might have made had he speculated in stocks and not theology, and mourns that the kingdom of heaven does not pay in this present life fourfold. The professor of Greek is sorry he was not a surveyor and superintendent of a railroad, he should have so much more money; that is what he has learned from Plato and Diogenes. We estimate the skill of an artist like that of a peddler, not by the pictures he has made, but by the money. There is a mercantile way of determining literary merit not by the author's books, but by his balance with the publisher. No church is yet called after a man who is merely rich, something in the New Testament might hinder that; but the ministers estimate their brother minister by the greatness of his position, not of his character; not by his piety and goodness, not even by his reason and understanding, the culture he has attained thereby, and the use he makes thereof, but by the wealth of his church and the largeness of his salary; so that he is not thought the fortunate and great minister who has a large outgo of spiritual riches, rebukes the sins of the nation and turns many to righteousness, but he who has a large material income, ministers, though poorly, to rich men, and is richly paid for that function. The well-paid clergymen of a city tell the professor of theology that he must teach "such doctrines as the merchants approve," or they will not give money to the college, and he, it, and "the cause of the Lord" will all come to the ground at the same time and in kindred confusion. So blind Money would put out the heavenly eyes of Science, and lead her also to his own ditch. It must not be forgotten that there are men in the midst of us, rich, respectable and highly honored with social rank and political power, who practically and in strict conformity with their theory, honor Judas, who made money by his treachery, far more than Jesus who laid down his life for men, whose money is deemed better than manhood. It must indeed be so. Any outrage that is profitable to the controlling portion of society is sure to be welcome to the leaders of the State, and is soon pronounced divine by the leaders of the church.

It would seem as if the Pen ought to represent the favorite mode of power at a college; but even there the waters of Pactolus are thought fairer than the Castalian, Heliconian spring, or "Siloa's brook that flowed fast by the oracle of God." The college is named after the men of wealth, not genius. How few professorships in America bear the names of men of science or letters, and not of mere rich men! Which is thought the greatest benefactor of a college, he who endows it with money or with mind? Even there it is the Purse, not the Pen that is the symbol of honor, and the University is "up for California," not Parnassus.

Even in politics the Purse turns the scale. Let a party wrestle never so hard it cannot throw the dollar. Money controls and commands talent, not talent money. The successful shopkeeper frowns on and browbeats the accomplished politician, who has too much justice for the wharf and the board of brokers; he notices that the rich men avert their eye, or keep their beaver down, trembles and is sad, fearing that his daughter will never find a fitting spouse. The Purse buys up able men of superior education, corrupts and keeps them as its retained attorneys, in congress or the church, not as counsel but advocate, bribed to make the worse appear the better reason, and so help money to control the State and wield its power against the interest of mankind. This is perfectly well known; but no politician or minister, bribed to silence or to speech, ever loses his respectability because he is bought by respectable men,—if he get his pay. In all countries but this the Office is before the Purse; here the State is chiefly an accessory of the Exchange, and our politics only mercantile. This appears sometimes against our will, in symbols not meant to tell the tale. Thus in the House of Representatives in Massachusetts, a codfish stares the speaker in the face—not a very intellectual looking fish. When it was put there it was a symbol of the riches of the State, and so of the Commonwealth. With singular and unconscious satire it tells the legislature to have an eye "to the main chance," and, but for its fidelity to its highest instincts and its obstinate silence, might be a symbol good enough for the place.

Now after the Office and the Purse have taken their votaries from the educated class, the ablest men are certainly not left behind. Three roads open before our young Hercules as he leaves college, having respectively as finger-post, the Pen, the Office, and the Purse. Few follow the road of Letters. This need not be much complained of; nay it might be rejoiced in, if the Purse and the Office in their modes of power did represent the higher consciousness of mankind. But no one contends it is so.

Still there are men who devote themselves to some literary callings which have no connection with political office, and which are not pursued for the sake of great wealth. Such men produce the greater part of the permanent literature of the country. They are eminently scholars; permanent scholars who act by their scholar-craft, not by the state-craft of the politician, or the purse-craft of the capitalist. How are these men paying their debt and performing their function? The answer must be found in the science and the literature of the land.

American Science is something of which we may well be proud. Mr. Liebig in Germany has found it necessary to defend himself from the charge of following science for the loaves and fishes thereof, and he declares that he espoused Chemistry not for her wealthy dower, not even for the services her possible children might render to mankind, but solely for her own sweet sake. Amongst the English race, on both sides of the ocean, science is loved rather for the fruit than the blossom; its service to the body is thought of more value than its service to the mind. A man's respectability would be in danger, in America, if he loved any science better than the money or fame it might bring. It is characteristic of us that a scholar should write for reputation and gold. Here, as elsewhere, the unprofitable parts of science fall to the lot of poor men. When the rich man's son has the natural calling that way, public opinion would dissuade him from the study of nature. The greatest scientific attainments do not give a man so high social consideration as a political office or a successful speculation—unless it be the science which makes money. Scientific schools we call after merely rich men, not men of wealthy minds. It is true we name streets and squares, towns and counties after Franklin, but it is because he keeps the lightning from factories, churches, and barns; tells us not "to give too much for the whistle," and teaches "the way to make money plenty in every man's pocket." We should not name them after Cuvier and La Place.

Notwithstanding this, the scientific scholars of America, both the home-born and the adopted sons, have manfully paid for their culture, and done honor to the land. This is true of men in all departments of science,—from that which searches the deeps of the sky to that which explores the shallows of the sea. Individuals, States, and the nation have all done themselves honor by the scientific researches and discoveries that have been made. The outlay of money and of genius for things which only pay the head and not the mouth of man, is beautiful and a little surprising in such a utilitarian land as this. Time would fail me to attend to particular cases.

Look at the Literature of America. Reserving the exceptional portion thereof to be examined in a moment, let us study the instantial portion of it, American Literature as a whole. This may be distributed into two main divisions: First comes the Permanent Literature, consisting of works not designed merely for a single and transient occasion, but elaborately wrought for a general purpose. This is literature proper. Next follows the Transient Literature, which is brought out for a particular occasion, and designed to serve a special purpose. Let us look at each.

The Permanent Literature of America is poor and meagre; it does not bear the mark of manly hands, of original, creative minds. Most of it is rather milk for babes than meat for men, though much of it is neither fresh meat nor new milk, but the old dish often served up before. In respect to its form, this portion of our literature is an imitation. That is natural enough, considering the youth of the country. Every nation, like every man, even one born to genius, begins by imitation. Raphael, with servile pencil, followed his masters in his youth, but at length his artistic eye attracted new-born angels from the calm stillness of their upper heaven, and with liberal, free hand, with masterly and original touch, the painter of the newness amazed the world.

The early Christian literature is an imitation of the Hebrew or the classic type: even after centuries had passed by, Sidonius, though a bishop of the church, and destined to become a saint, uses the old heathen imagery, referring to Triptolemus as a model for Christian work, and talks about Triton and Galatea, to the Christian Queen of the Goths. Saint Ambrose is a notorious imitator of pagan Cicero. The Christians were all anointed with Jewish nard; and the sour grapes they ate in sacrament have set on edge their children's teeth till now. The modern nations of Europe began their literature by the driest copies of Livy and Virgil. The Germans have the most original literature of the last hundred years. But till the middle of the past century their permanent literature was chiefly in Latin and French, with as little originality as our own. The real poetic life of the nation found vent in other forms. It is natural therefore, and according to the course of history, that we should begin in this way. The best political institutions of England are cherished here, so her best literature, and it is not surprising that we are content with this rich inheritance of artistic toil. In many things we are independent, but in much that relates to the higher works of man, we are still colonies of England. This appears not only in the vulgar fondness for English fashions, manners and the like, which is chiefly an affectation, but in the servile style with which we copy the great or little models of English literature. Sometimes this is done consciously, oftener without knowing it.