182 EMERSON’S ESSAYS

dent on the part of the narrator, that he seems to
think that his place in Christian Oxford requires of
him some proper protestations of abhorrence. But, if
we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly
come to Plutarch, who is its doctor and historian.
To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epami-
nondas, the Scipio, of old; and I must think we are
more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient
Writers. Each of his “Lives” is a refutation to the
despondency and cowardice of our religious and
political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not
of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anec-
dote, and has given that book its immense fame.

We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more
than books of political science, or of private economy.
Life is a festival only to the Wise. Seen from the nook
and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and
dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature
by our predecessors and our contemporaries are pun-
ished in us also. The disease and deformity around
us certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, and
moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed
such compound misery. A lockjaw that bends a
man’s head back to his heels; hydrophobia, that
makes him bark at his wife and babes; insanity, that
makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, farr1ine,—
indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had
its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by
human suffering. Unhappily, no man exists who has
not in his own person become, to some amount, a
stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to
a share in the expiation.

Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming