CHAPTER V. CHAPTER V. 
"And yet of your streng thtere is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague, wavering capability, and fixed, indubitable performance, what a difference! A certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our works can render articulate, and decisively discernible. Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept 'know thyself,' till it be translated into this partially possible one, 'know what thou canst work at.' "
Sartor Resartus, p. 166. Boston Edition.
The glory of the world passeth away. One kind of worldly glorypasses away, and another comes. Like a series of clouds sailingby the moon, and growing dim and dimmer as they go down the sky,are the transitory glories which are only brightened for an ageby man's smile: dark vapours, which carry no light withinthemselves. How many such have floated across the expanse ofhistory, and melted away! It was once a glory to have a power oflife and death over a patriarchal family: and how mean does thisnow appear, in comparison with tbe power of life and death whichevery man has over his own intellect! It was once a glory to befeared: how much better is it now esteemed to be loved! It wasonce a glory to lay down life to escape from one's personal woes:how far higher is it now seen to be to accept those woes as aboon, and to lay down life only for truth;--for God and not forself! The heroes of mankind were once its kings and warriors: welook again now, and find its truest heroes its martyrs, itspoets, its artisans; men not buried under pyramids or incathedrals, but whose sepulchre no man knoweth unto this day. Tothem the Lord showed the land of promise, and then buried them onthe confines. There are two aspects under which every individualman may be regarded: as a solitary being with inherent powers,and an omnipotent will; a creator, a king, an inscrutablemystery: and again, as a being infinitely connected with allother beings, with none but derived powers, with aheavenly-directed will; a creature, a subject, a transparentmedium through which the workings of principles are to beeternally revealed. Both these aspects are true, and thereforereconcilable. The Old World dwelt almost exclusively on the firstand meaner aspect: as men rise to inhabit the new heavens and thenew earth, they will more and more contemplate the other andsublimer. The old glory of a self-originating power and will ispassing away: and it is becoming more and more plain that a man'shighest honour lies in becoming as clear a medium as possible forthe revelations which are to be made through him: in wiping outevery stain, in correcting every flaw by which the light that isin him may be made dimness or deception. It was once a glory todefy or evade the laws of man's physical and moral being; and, inso doing, to encroach upon the rights of others: it is nowbeginning to be shown that there is a higher honour inrecognising and obeying the laws of outward and inward life, andin reverencing instead of appropriating the privileges of otherwards of Providence.
In other words, it was once a glory to be idle, and a shame towork,--at least with any member or organ but one,--the brain. Yetit is a law of every man's physical nature that he should workwith the limbs: of every man's moral nature, that he should know:and knowledge is to be had only by one method; by bringing theideal and the actual world into contact, and proving each by theother, with one's own brain and hands for instruments, and notanother's. There is no actual knowledge even of one's own life,to be had in any other way. Yet this is the way which men haveperversely refused to acknowledge, while every one is more orless compelled to practice it. Those who have been able to getthrough life with the least possible work have been treated asthe happiest: those who have had the largest share imposed uponthem have been passively pitied as the most miserable. If theexperience of the two could have been visibly or tangibly broughtinto comparison, the false estimate would have been long agobanished for ever from human calculations. If princes and nobles,who have not worked either in war or in council, men sunk insatiety; if women, shut out of the world of reality, andcompelled by usage to endure the corrosion of unoccupied thought,and the decay of unemployed powers, were able to spear; fully andtruly as they sink into their unearned graves, it would be foundthat their lives had been one hollow misery, redeemed solely bythat degree of action that had been permitted to them, in orderthat they might, in any wise, live. If the half-starved artisan,if the negro slave, could, when lying down at length to rest, seeand exhibit the full vision of their own lives, they wouldcomplain far less of too much work than of too little freedom,too little knowledge, too many wounds through their affections totheir cllildren, their brethren, their race. They would complainthat their work had been of too exclusive a kind; too much in theactual, while it had been attempted to close the ideal from them.Nor are their cases alike. The artisan works too much in one way,while too little in another. The negro slave suffers too much byinfliction, and yet more by privation; but he rarely or neverworks too much, even with the limbs. He knows the evil of toil,the reluctance, the lassitude; but with it he knows also the evilof idleness; the vacuity, the hopelessness. He has neither theprivilege of the brute, to exercise himself vigorously uponinstinct, for an immediate object, to be gained and forgotten;nor the privilege of the man, to toil, by moral necessity, withsome pain, for results which yield an evergrowing pleasure. It isnot work which is the curse of the slave: he is rarely so blessedas to know what it is.
If, again, the happiest man who has ever lived on earth,(excepting the Man of Sorrows, whose depth of peace no one willattempt to fathom,) could, in passing into the busier life tocome, (to which the present is only the nursery mimicking ofhuman affairs,) communicate to us what has been the trueblessedness of his brief passage, it would be found to lie inwhat he had been enabled to do: not so much blessed in regard toothers as to himself; not so much because he had made inventions,(even such a one as printing:) not so much because through himcountries will be better governed, men better educated, and somelight from the upper world let down into the lower; (for greatthings as these are, they are sure to be done, if not by him, byanother;) but because his actual doing, his joint head andhand-work have revealed to him the truth which lies about him;and so far, and by the only appointed method, invested him withheaven while he was upon earth. Such a one might not be consciousof this as the chief blessedness of his life, (as men are everleast conscious of what is highest and best in themselves:) hemight put it in another form, saying that mankind were growingwiser and happier, or that goodness and mercy had followed himall the days of his life, or that he had found that all evil isonly an aspect of ultimate good: in some such words of faith orhope he would communicate his inward peace: but the real meaningof the true workman, if spoken for him by a divine voice, (asspoken by the divine voice of his life,) is, as has been said,that his complete toil has enriched him with truth which can beno otherwise obtained, and which neither the world, nor any onein it, except himself, could give, nor any power in heaven orearth could take away.
Mankind becomes more clear-sighted to this fact about honourand blessedness, as time unfolds the sequence of his hieroglyphicscroll; and a transition in the morals and manners of nations isan inevitable consequence, slow as men are in deciphering thepicture-writing of the old teacher; unapt as men are inconnecting picture with picture, so as to draw thence a truth,and in the truth, a prophecy. We must look to new or renovatedcommunities to see how much has been really learned.
The savage chief, who has never heard the saying"he that would be chief among you, let him be yourservant," feels himself covered with glory when he pacesalong in his saddle, gorgeous with wampum and feathers, while hissquaw follows in the dust, bending under the weight of hisshelter, his food, and his children. Wise men look upon him withall pity and no envy. Higher and higher in society, the right ofthe strongest is supposed to involve honour: and physical isplaced above moral strength. The work of the limbs, whollyrepulsive when separated from that of the head, is devolved uponthe weaker, who cannot resist; and hence arises the disgrace ofwork, and the honou rof being able to keep soul and bodytogether, more or less luxuriously, without it. The barbaricconqueror makes his captives work for him. His descendants, whohave no prisoners of war to make slaves of, carry off captives ofa helpless nation, inferior even to themselves in civilisation.The servile class rises, by almost imperceptible degrees, as thedawll of reason brightens towards day. The classes by whom thehand-work of society is done, arrive at being cared for by thosewho do the head-work, or no work at all: then they are legislatedfor, but still as a common or inferior class, favoured, out ofpure bounty, with laws, as with soup, which are pronounced"excellent for the poor:" then they begin to open theirminds upon legislation for themselves; and a certain lip-honouris paid them which would be rejected as insult if offered tothose who nevertheless think themselves highly meritorious invouchsafing it.
This is the critical period out of which must arise a neworganisation of society. When it comes to this, a new promiseblossoms under the feet of the lovers of truth. There are many ofthe hand-workers now who are on the very borders of the domain ofhead-work: and, as the encroachments of those who work not at allhave, by this time, become seriously injurious to the rights ofothers, there are many thinkers and persons of learning who aredriven over the line, and become hand-workers; for which they, asthey usually afterwards declare, can never be sufficienlythankful. There is no drowning the epithalamium with which thesetwo classes celebrate the union of thought and handicraft.Multitudes press in, or are carried in to the marriage feast, anda new era of society has begun. The temporary glory of ease anddisgrace of labour pass away like mountain mists, and the clearsublimity of toil grows upon men's sight.
If, in such an era, a new nation begins its career, whatshould be expected from it?
If the organisation of its society were a matter of will; ifit had a disposable moral force, applicable to controllablecircumstances, it is probable that the new nation would takeafter all old nations, and not dare to make, perhaps not dream ofmaking, the explicit avowal, that that which had ever hithertobeen a disgrace, except in the eyes of a very few prophets, hadnow come out to be a clear honour. This would be more, perhaps,than even a company of ten or fifteen millions of men and womenwould venture to declare, while such words as Quixotic,Revolutionary, Utopian, remain on the tongues which wag the mostindustriously in the old world. But, it so happens it is never inthe power of a whole nation to meet in convention, and agree whattheir moral condition shall be. They may agree upon laws for thefurtherance of what is settled to be honourable, and for theexclusion of some of the law-bred disgraces of the old world: butit is not in their power to dispense at will the subtle radianceof moral glory, any more than to dye their scenery with rainbowhues because they have got hold of a prism. Moral persuasionsgrow out of preceding circumstances, as institutions do; andconviction is not communicable where the evidence is not of acommunicable kind. The advantage of the new nation over the oldwill be no more than that its individual members are more open toconviction, from being more accessible to evidence, less burdenedwith antique forms and institutions, and partial privileges, socalled. The result will probably be that some members of the newsociety will follow the ancient fashion of considering work ahumiliation; while, upon the whole, labour will be more honouredthan it has ever been before.
America is in the singular position of being nearly equallydivided between a low degree of the ancient barbarism in relationto labour, and a high degree of the modern enlightenment.Wherever there is a servile class, work is considered a disgrace,unless it bears some other name, and is of an exclusivecharacter. In the free States, labour is more really and heartilyhonoured than, perhaps, in any other part of the civilised world.The most extraordinary, and least pleasant circumstance in thecase is that, while the south ridicules and despises the northfor what is its very highest honour, the north feels somewhatuneasy and sore under the contempt. It is true that it is fromnecessity that every man there works; but, whatever be the cause,the fact is a noble one, worthy of all rejoicing: and it were tobe wished that the north could readily and serenely, at alltimes, and in disregard of all jibes, admit the fact, as matterfor thankfulness, that there every man works for his bread withhis own head and hands.
How do the two parties in reality spend their days?
In the north, the children all go to school, and work there,more or less. As they grow up, they part off into the greatestvariety of employments. The youths must,without exception,workhard; or they had better drown themselves. Whether they are to belawyers, or otherwise professional; or merchants, manufacturers,farmers, or citizens, they have everything to do for themselves.A very large proportion of them have, while learning their futurebusiness, to earn the means of learning. There is much manuallabour in the country colleges; much teaching in the vacationsdone by students. Many a great man in Congress was seen in hisboyhood leading his father's horses to water; and, in his youth,guiding the plough in his father's field. There is probablyhardly a man in New England who cannot ride, drive, and tend hisown horse; scarcely a clergyman, lawyer, or physician, who, ifdeprived of his profession, could not support himself by manuallabour. Nor, on the other hand, is there any farmer or citizenwho is not, more or less, a student and thinker. Not only are allcapable of discharging their political duty of self-government;but all have somewhat idealised their life. All have lookedabroad, at least so far as to understand the foreign relations oftheir own country: most, I believe, have gone further, and cancontemplate the foreign relations of tbeir own being. Some onegreat mind, at least, has almost every individual entered intosympathy with; some divine, or politician, or poet, who hascarried the spirit out beyond the circle of home, State, andcountry, into the ideal world. It is even possible to trace, inthe conversation of some who have the least leisure for reading,the influence of some one of the rich sayings, the diamonds andpearls which have dropped from the lips of genius, to shine inthe hearts of all humanity. Some one such saying may be perceivedto have moulded the thoughts, and shaped the aims, and become theunder-current of the whole life of a thinking and labouring man.Such sayings being hackneyed signifies nothing, while theindividuals blessed by them do not know it, and hold them intheir inmost hearts, unvexed by hearing them echoed by carelesstongues. "Am I not a man and a brother?" "Happythe man whose wish and care," &c. "The breakingwaves dashed high," &e. (Mrs. Hemans's Landing of thePilgrims,) "What shadows we are, and what shadows wepursue," (Burke)--these are some of the words which, sinkingdeep into the hearts of busy men, spring up in a harvest ofthoughts and acts.
There are a few young men, esteemed the least happy members ofthe community, who inherit wealth. The time will come, when thesociety is somewhat older, when it will be understood that wealthneed not preclude work: but at present, there are no individualsso forlorn, in the northern States, as young men of fortune. Menwho have shown energy and skill in working their way in societyare preferred for political representatives: there is noscientific or literary class, for such individuals to fall into:all the world is busy around them, and they are reduced to thepredicament, unhappily the most dreaded of all in the UnitedStates, of standing alone. Their method, therefore, is to spendtheir money as fast as possible, and begin the world like othermen. I am stating this as matter of fact; not as being reasonableand right.
As for the women of the northern States, most have theblessing of work, though not of the extent and variety which willhereafter be seen to be necessary for the happiness of theirlives. All married women, except the ladies of rich merchants andothers, are liable to have their hands full of householdoccupation, from the uncertainty of domestic service; a topic tobe referred to hereafter. Women who do not marry have, in manyinstances, to work for their support; and, as will be shown inanother connexion, under peculiar disadvantages. Work, on thewhole, may be considered the rule, and vacuity the exception.*
What is life in the slave States, in respect of work ?
There are two classes, the servile and the imperious, betweenwhom there is a great gulf fixed. The servile class has not eventhe benefit of hearty toil. No solemn truths sink down into them,to cheer their hearts, stimulate their minds, and nerve theirhands. Their wretched lives are passed between an utterdebasement of the will, and a conflict of the will with externalforce.
The other class is in circumstances as unfavourable as theleast happy order of persons in the old world. The means ofeducating children are so meagre** that young people begin lifeunder great disadvantages. The vicious fundamental principle ofmorals in a slave country, that labour is disgraceful, taints theinfant mind with a stain which is as fatal in the world ofspirits as the negro tinge is at present in the world of society.It made my heart ache to hear the little children unconsciouslyuttering thoughts with which no true religion, no true philosophycan coexist. "Do you think I shall work?""O, you must not touch the poker here." "You mustnot do this or that for yourself: the negroes will be offended,and it won't do for a lady to do so." "Poor thing! shehas to teach: if she had come here, she might have married a richman, perhaps." "Mamma has so much a-year now, so wehave not to do our work at home, or any trouble. Tis such acomfort!"-- When children at school call everything thatpleases them "gentlemanly," and pity all (but slaves)who have to work, and talk of marrying early for anestablishment, it is all over with them. A more hopeless state ofdegradation can hardly be conceived of, however they may ride,and play the harp, and sing Italian, and teach their slaves whatthey call religion.
"Poor things!" may be said of such, in return. Theyknow little, with their horror of work, of what awaits them.Theirs is destined to be, if their wish of an establishment isfulfilled, a life of toil, irksome and unhonoured. They escapethe name; but they are doomed to undergo the worst of thereality. Their husbands are not to be envied, though they do rideon white horses, (the slave's highest conception of bliss,) liedown to repose in hot weather, and spend their hours between tbedischarge of hospitality and the superintendence of theirestates; and the highly honourable and laborious charge of publicaffairs. But the wives of slave-holders are, as they and theirhusbands declare, as much slaves as their negroes. If they willnot have everything go to rack and ruin around them, they mustsuperintend every household operation, from the cellar to thegarrets: for there is nothing that slaves can do well. While theslaves are perpetually at one's heels, lolling against thebed-posts before one rises in the morning, standing behind thechairs, leaning on the sofa, officiously undertaking, andinvariably spoiling everything that one had rather do forone's-self, the smallest possible amount of real service isperformed. The lady of the house carries her huge bunch of keys,(for every consumable thing must be locked up,) and has togive out, on incessant requests, whatever is wanted for thehousehold. She is for ever superintending, and trying to keepthings straight, without the slightest hope of attaining anythinglike leisure and comfort. What is there in retinue, in thereputation of ease and luxury, which can compensate for toils andcares of this nature? How much happier must be the lot of avillage milliner, or of the artisan's wife who sweeps her ownfloors, and cooks her husband's dinner, than that of theplanter's lady with twenty slaves to wait upon her; her sonsmigrating because work is out of the question, and they have notthe means to buy estates; and her daughters with no betterprospect than marrying, as she has done, to toil as she does!
Some few of these ladies are among the strongest-minded andmost remarkable women I have ever known. There are greatdraw-backs, (as will be seen hereafter,) but their mental vigouris occasionally proportioned to their responsibility. Women whohave to rule over a barbarous society, (small though it be,) tomake and enforce laws, provide for al1 the physical wants, andregulate the entire habits of a number of persons who can in norespect take care of themselves, must be strong and stronglydisciplined, if they in any degree discharge this duty. Those whoshrink from it become perhaps the weakest women I have anywhereseen: selfishly timid, humblingly dependent, languid in body, andwith minds of no reach at all. These two extremes are found inthe slave States, in the most striking opposition. It is worthyof note, that I never found there a woman strong enoughvoluntarily to brave the woes of life in the presence of slavery;nor any women weak enough to extenuate the vices of the system;each knowing, prior to experience, what those woes and vices are.
There are a few unhappy persons in the slave States, too few,I believe, to be called a class, who strongly exemplify theconsequences of such a principle of morals as that work is adisgrace. There are a few, called by the slaves "meanwhites;" signifying whites who work with the hands. Wherethere is a coloured servile class, whose colour has become adisgrace through their servitude, two results areinevitable: that those who have the colour without the servitudeare disgraced among the whites; and those who have the servitudewithout the colour are as deeply disgraced among the coloured.More intensely than white work-people are looked down upon atPort-au-Prince, are the "mean whites" despised by theslaves of the Carolinas. They make the most, of course, of theonly opportunity they can ever have of doing what they see theirsuperiors do,--despising their fellow-creatures. No inducementwould be sufficient to bring honest, independent men into theconstant presence of double-distilled hatred and contempt likethis; and the general character of the "mean whites"may therefore be anticipated. They are usually men who have noprospect, no chance elsewhere; the lowest of the low.
When I say that no inducement would be sufficient, I mean nopolitic inducement. There are inducements of the same force asthose which drew martyrs of old into the presence of savagebeasts in the amphitheatre, which guided Howard through the gloomof prisons, and strengthened Guyon of Marseilles to offer himselfa certain victim to the plague,--there are inducements of suchforce as this which carry down families to dwell in the midst ofcontempt and danger, where everything is lost but,--the oneobject which carries them there. "Mean whites" thesefriends of the oppressed fugitive may be in the eyes of allaround them; but how they stand in the eye of One whose thoughtsare not as our thoughts, may some day be revealed. To themselvesit is enough that their object is gained. They do not wantpraise; they are above it: and they have shown that they can dowithout sympathy. It is enough to commend them to their own peaceof heart.
* In testimony of the fact that the working people of thisregion are thinkers too, I subjoin a note written by the wife ofa village mechanic, who is a fair specimen of her class.
"Sir,--Nothing but a consciousness of my own incompetencyto form a just opinion on a question of such magnitude, and onetoo which involves consequences as remote from my personalobservation, as the immediate, or gradual emancipation of theslaves, has, for some time, prevented my being an acknowledgedabolitionist. With tbe Divine precepts before me, which requireus to love our neighhour as ourselves, and 'whatsoever we wouldthat others should do to us,' etc. etc., instructed andadmonished too by the feelings of common humanity, I cannothesitate to pronounce the system of slavery an outrageousviolation of the requirements of God, and a lawless and cruelinvasion of the rights of our fellow men. In this view of it, Iam not able to understand how it can be persisted in, witboutsetting at defiance the dictates of reason and conscience, andwhat is of more importance, the uncompromising authority ofScripture, tbe arguments of wise and talented men to thecontrary, notwithstanding. The most superficial observer cannotfail to discern, in the universal interest and agitation, whichprevail on this subject, a prelude to some mighty revolution. Ifthis 'war of words' is the worst that will precede oraccompany it, I shall be happily disappointed. With thesefeelings, sir, you will readily believe tbe assurance, that Ihave been greatly interested, and instructed, in reading themild, comprehensive, intelligent 'lecture,' of your lamentedbrother."
** See Appendix C: an admirable sketch by a resident ofCharleston, of the interior of a planter's family. Itunconsciously bears out all that can be said of tbe educationalevils of the existing state of society in the south.
From Harriet Martineau, Society in America, VolumeII, Part II, Chapter V -"Morals of Economy." London:Saunders and Otley, 1837, pp. 293-312.
Forward to Society in America, Vol II,Part II, Chapter V, Section I - "Morals of Slavery."
Back to Society in America, Volume II,Part II, Chapter IV, Section II - "Revenue andExpenditure."
Back to Society in America - Table ofContents
Back to the Dead Sociologists'Society Index