Villa Eden Part 59

"Give me something to do, something right hard; try and think of something."

Eric perceived the boy's state of excitement; sitting down near him, he took his hand, and showed him that life seldom furnished a single deed on which one could employ the whole strength of his voluntary powers; they would work quietly and steadily, and make each other wiser and better. The boy was contented, and looked at Eric as if he would, with his eyes, draw him into his soul, and make him his own. Then he lightly touched Eric's shoulder, as if to be newly a.s.sured that he was really with him.

Now they put things in order, and Roland was glad to render all kinds of a.s.sistance. In spite of his former deliberation, Eric had entered upon the new relation so unexpectedly, and plunged into it so suddenly, that he had hardly settled upon anything. Then there was so much to be discussed with his mother, deciding what he would take with him, and what he would leave behind, that they postponed all to a future arrangement by letter.

When temporary order was established, Eric complied with Roland's request to go with him upon the platform of the tower. They sat down here, and looked about, for a long time, in every direction. Eric could not restrain himself from telling the boy how new and beautiful all life appeared to him. They had formerly built castles upon the heights, for strife, for feuds, and for robbery of travellers upon the highway; but we, we work with the powers of nature, we endeavor to gain wealth, and then we withdraw, and place our dwelling upon an elevated site, in some lovely valley, and desire to take in only the eternal beauty, which no one can take away. The great river becomes a highway, along which industrious and n.o.ble men erect their habitations. The generations after us will be obliged to say that, at this time, men began to pay loyal homage to nature, as had never before been paid in the history of humanity; this is a new religion, even if it has no outward form, and shall never acquire any.

"Go on speaking, go on, on further," said Roland, nestling up to Eric; he could not say that he would like to hear just the sound of his voice; he closed his eyes and cried again: "Go on speaking!" Eric understood the imploring call, and went on to relate, how, when he stood for the first time upon the Righi, looking at the setting sun, he had been impressed with the thought whether there might not be some form, some service, by which the devotional feelings of these a.s.sembled spectators, in this temple of nature, might find expression. He had learned that this was impossible, and perhaps was not needful: nature imparts to each one a joy of his own, and joy in nature to each a private feeling of devotion, in which no others can share. Then extolling the happiness of being able thus in one's own house, on a tower erected by one's self, to appropriate the world, and the beauty of the earth, he showed how wealth, its pursuit, and its possession might be the basis of a grand moral and social benefit. Riches, he explained, were only a result of freedom, of the unfettered employment of activities, and must have only freedom as their resultant product.

Roland was happy; he did not comprehend the whole, but he felt, for the first time, that wealth was neither to be despised nor to be gloried in. All his teachers, hitherto, had endeavored to impress upon him either the one view or the other.

Joseph came to the tower, and asked whether Eric and Roland wished to dine together in their room; he was answered in the affirmative. They were happy, sitting together, and Roland cried:--

"We two dwell upon an island; and if I ever live in the castle, you must also live with me. Do you know what one thing more I want?"

"How! you want one thing more?"

"Yes; Manna ought to be with us. Don't you think she is now thinking of us?"

"Probably not of me."

"Yes, indeed! I have written to her about you, and this evening I am going to write again, and tell her everything."

Eric was puzzled, for a moment: he did not know what he ought to do.

Ought he to restrain the boy from writing about him? There was no reason for doing so, and he would not disturb Roland's impartial candor.

CHAPTER II.

A SPIRIT'S VOICE BY NIGHT.

Roland was writing in his room, and, as he wrote, frequently uttering the words aloud to himself. Eric sat silent, looking at the lamp. What was the use now of wis.h.i.+ng? He stood in front of the unpacked books; there were but few. During the last fifteen minutes before going to the train, he had gone once more into his father's study, and locked up the papers left by him; glancing his eye around the library, he took down a book, the first volume of Sparks's handsome edition of the works of Benjamin Franklin. This volume contained the autobiography and the continuation of the life. Some leaves were inserted in the handwriting of his father.

And now he read, on this the first night of his new occupation, these words,--

"Look at this! Here is a real man, the genius of sound understanding and of steadfast will. Electricity is always here in the atmosphere, but does not concentrate itself and become visible lightning.

"This is genius. Genius is nothing but electricity collected in the atmosphere of the soul.

"With this book a man would not be alone, if he were alone on an island; he would be in the midst of the world.

"No philosopher, no poet, no statesman, no artisan, no member of the learned professions, and yet all of these combined in one; a pet son, with Nature for his mother and Experience for his nurse; an outcast son, who, without scientific guidance, finds by himself all medicinal herbs in the wild woods.

"If I had a youth to educate, not for any special calling, but that he might become a genuine man and a good citizen, I would place my hands upon his head and say, 'My son, become like Benjamin Franklin--no,--not this; develop thine own being, as Benjamin Franklin developed his.'"

Eric rested his chin upon his hand, and gazed out into the darkness of the night.

What is that? Are there miracles in our life? He looked to the right and to the left, as if he must have heard the voice of his father; as if he had not written, but was speaking the words,--My son, become like Benjamin Franklin!

Eric, with great effort, continued his reading:--

"It is indeed well for us to form ourselves after the first men of the old world, the period of generative, elementary existence; the characters of the Bible and of Homer are not the creations of a single, highly endowed mind, but they are the embodiments of the primitive, national spirit in distinct forms, and embrace a far wider compa.s.s than the span of individual existence.

"Understand me well. I say, I know in modern history no other man, according to whose method of living and thinking a man of our day can form himself, except Benjamin Franklin.

"Why not Was.h.i.+ngton, who was so great and pure?

"Was.h.i.+ngton was a soldier and a statesman, but he was not an original discoverer of the world within himself, and an unfolder of that world from his own inner being. He exerted influence by ruling and guiding others; Franklin, by ruling and guiding himself.

"When the time shall ever come, and it will come, that battles shall be spoken of as in this day we speak of cannibals; when honorable, industrious, humane labors shall const.i.tute the history of humanity, then Franklin will be acknowledged.

"I would not willingly fall into that sanctimonious tone, the remnant of pulpit oratory, that comes out in us whenever we approach the eternal sanct.i.ties; and I hope our tone must be wholly different from that of those who claim to speak in the name of a spirit which they themselves do not possess.

"G.o.d manifested himself to Moses, Jesus, Mohammed in the solitude of the desert; to Spinoza in the solitude of the study; to Franklin in the solitude of the sea." (This last clause was stricken out, and then again inserted.) "Franklin is the man of sober understanding, who knows nothing of enthusiasm.

"The world would not have much beauty if all human beings were like Franklin; his nature is wholly dest.i.tute of the romantic element, (to be expressed differently," was written in the margin, and attention called to it by a cross,) "but the world would have uprightness, truthfulness, industriousness, and helpfulness. Now they use the word love, and take delight in their beautiful sentiments; but you are permitted to speak about love when you have satisfied those four requirements." (This last sentence was underlined with red ink.)

"In Franklin there is something of Socrates, and there is specially noticeable a happy vein of humor; Franklin enjoys also a good laugh.

"Franklin is, through and through, good prose, intelligible, transparent, compact.

"We do not have to educate geniuses in the world. Every genius trains himself, and can have no other trainer. In the world we have to form substantial, energetic members of the common weal. What thou dost specially, whether thou makest shoe-pegs or marble statues, is not my business but thine.

"We shall never be in a right position in regard to the world, if we do not believe in purity, in the n.o.blest motives; the inmost of humanity is revealed to us only on this condition. There is no better coat-of-mail against a.s.saults, than faith in the good which others do, and which one is to do himself; one hears then, within, the inspiring tones of martial music, and marches with light and free step onward through the contest of life.

"It is the distinguis.h.i.+ng and favorable feature in Franklin's life, that he is the self-made man; he is self-taught, and has discovered by himself the forces of nature and the treasures of science; he is the representative of those, who, transplanted from Europe to America and in danger of deterioration and decay, attained a wholly new development.

"If we could have, like antiquity, a mythological embodiment of that world which is called America, which carried with it the G.o.ds of Europe,--I mean those historical ideas which the colonists carried over with them, and yet freely adopted into their own organic life,--would you have these ideas embodied in a human form,--here stands Benjamin Franklin. He was wise, and no one taught him; he was religious, and had no church; he was a lover of men, and yet knew very well how bad they were.

"He not only knew how to draw the lightning from the clouds, but also the stormy elements of pa.s.sion from the tempers of men; he has laid hold of those prudential maxims which are a security against destruction, and which fit one for self-guidance.

"The reason why I should take him for a master and a guide in the education of a human being, is this:--he represents the simple, healthy, human understanding, the firmly established and the safe; not the erratic spirit of genius, but those virtues of head and of heart which steadily and quietly promote man's social happiness and his moral well-being.

"Luther was the conqueror of the middle ages; Franklin is the first in modern times to make himself. The modern man is no longer a martyr; Luther was none, and Franklin still less. No martyrdom.

"Franklin has introduced into the world no new maxim, but he has expressed with simplicity those which an honest man can find in himself.

"In what Franklin is, and in what he imparts, there is nothing peculiar, nothing exciting, nothing surprising, nothing mysterious, nothing brilliant nor dazzling; it is the water of life, the water which all creatures stand in need of." (Here it was written on the margin,--Deep springs are yet to be bored for, and to be found here) "The man of the past eighteenth century had no idea of the people, could have none, for it was wrung and refined out of the free thinking that prevailed even to the very end of the century, even to the revolution.

"He who creates anew stands in a strange and hostile, or, at least, independent att.i.tude towards that which already exists.

"Franklin is the son of this age; he recognizes only the in-born worth of men, not the inherited. (Deeper boring is yet to be done here)."

With paler ink, evidently later, it was written,--

"It is not by chance, that this first not only free-thinking,--for many philosophers were this,--but also free-acting man was a printer.