Here is Wisconsin and the farthest west. It is simple, independent,
original, natural life.
Most whom I meet in the streets are, so to speak, outward bound; they live
out and out, are going and coming, looking before and behind, all out of doors
and in the air. I would fain see them inward bound, retiring in and in,
farther and farther every day, and when I inquired for them I should not hear
that they had gone abroad anywhere, to
Rondont
or Sackets Harbor,
but that they had withdrawn deeper within the folds of being.
England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front
upon this private sea, but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of
land — though it is without a doubt the direct way to India.
I would say then to my vagrant countrymen: Go not to any foreign theater for
spectacles, but consider first that there is nothing which can delight or
astonish the eyes, but you may discover it all in yourselves. One hastens to
Southern Africa perchance to chase the giraffe; but that is not the game he
would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes, if he could?
— What was the meaning of that Exploring Expedition with all its parade
and expense, but a recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas
in the moral world to which every man is an inlet, yet unexplored by him; but
that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storms and
savage cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to
steer and sail for one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic
and Pacific ocean of one’s being alone.
Erret et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.
Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae.
Let the other wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.
This one has more of God, that one has more of the road.
Here is demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go
to the wars — cowards that run away and enlist. O ye Chivalry, ye could
not fight a duel with your lives, and so ye challenged a man!
I met a pilgrim travel-worn, who could speak all tongues and conform himself
to the customs of all nations, who carried a passport to all countries, and
was naturalized in all climes, who had vanquished all the chimeras and caused
the Sphinx to go an dash her head against a stone, who never retraced his
steps nor returned to his native land, and was reputed to have travelled
further than all the travellers. He bore for device on his shield these words
only — “Know
Thyself.”
“Direct your eye sight inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmographie.”
Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us,
but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the
country, and I might attend. Some events in history are more remarkable than
important, like eclipses of the sun by which all are attracted, but whose
effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.
