Teaching, Writing, and the Measure of Depth

The same reality pervades all teaching. A man can teach by doing, and in no other way. If he can communicate himself he can teach, but not by words. He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle that you are in; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; then there is teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. But your propositions run out of one ear as they run in at the other. We see it advertised that Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the Fourth of July, and Mr. Hand will deliver one before the Mechanics’ Association, and we do not go there, because we know that these gentlemen will not communicate their own character and experience to the company. If we had reason to expect such a confidence, we would go through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick would be carried in litters. But a public oration is an evasion, a noncommittal gesture, an excuse, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.

A similar Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We have yet to learn that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or oath can give it evidence. The sentence must also contain its own justification for being spoken.

The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematically measurable by its depth of thought. How much water does it draw? If it awakens you to think, if it lifts you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect will be wide, slow, and permanent over the minds of men; if the pages do not instruct you, they will die like flies within the hour. The way to speak and write what will not go out of fashion is to speak and write sincerely. The argument that has no power to reach my own practice, I may well suspect, will fail to reach yours. But take Sidney’s maxim: “Look in your heart, and write.” He who writes to himself writes to an eternal public. Only a statement that you have arrived at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity is fit to be made public. The writer who takes his subject from his ear and not from his heart should know that he has lost as much as he seems to have gained; and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and half the people say, ‘What poetry! What genius!’ it still needs fuel to make fire. Only what is profitable profits. Life alone can impart life; and though we burst, we can be valued only as we make ourselves valuable. There is no luck in literary reputation. Those who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; a court as of angels, a public that cannot be bribed, entreated, or overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. Only those books come down to us that deserve to last. Gilt edges, vellum and morocco, and presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole’s Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may endure for a night, but Moses and Homer stand forever. There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato—never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these works come down in due course, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them in his hand. “No book,” said Bentley, “was ever written down by any but itself.” The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort, friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. “Do not trouble yourself too much about the light on your statue,” said Michelangelo to the young sculptor; “the light of the public square will test its value.”