Free The Tao of Emerson by Richard Grossman Page A

will think it
   the kick of a brute,
   and will not kick you in return,
But neither your knife, nor pistol
   will ever make the slightest impression.

69
    A master of the art of war has said
,
“I do not dare to be the host (to commence the war);

I prefer to be the guest (to act on the defensive)
.
I do not dare to advance an inch;

I prefer to retire a foot.”

This is called marshaling the ranks when there are no ranks;

Baring the arms to fight when there are no arms to bare;

Grasping the weapon when there is no weapon to grasp;

Advancing against the enemy when there is no enemy
.
    There is no calamity greater than lightly engaging in war
.
To do that is near losing the gentleness which is so precious
.
Thus it is that when opposing weapons are actually crossed
,
      he who deplores the situation conquers
.
    He who loves the bristle of bayonets
   only sees in their glitter
   what beforehand he feels in his heart.
    The least change in the man will change
   his circumstances;
The least enlargement of his ideas,
The least mitigation of his feelings
   in respect to other men.
If, for example, he could be inspired
   with a tender kindness to the souls of men,
And should come to feel that every man was another self,
   with whom he might come to join—
Every degree of the ascendancy of this feeling
   would cause the most striking of changes of external things.

70
    My words are very easy to know and easy to practice;

But there is no one in the world

   who is able to know and able to practice them
.
    There is an originating and all-comprehending

   principle in my words
,
And an authoritative law for the things

   which I enforce
.
It is because they do not know these
,
   that men do not know me
.
    They who know me are few
,
And I am on that account to be prized
.
It is thus that the sage wears a poor garment

   of haircloth
,
While he carries his signet of jade in his bosom
.
    My willful actions and acquisitions
   are but roving;
The idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion
   commands my curiosity.
My perception is as much a fact as the sun.
    Whenever a mind is simple
   and receives a divine wisdom,
Old things pass away—
Means, teachers, texts, temples fall.
    A man cannot be happy and strong
   until he, too, lives
   with nature, in the present, above time.

71
    To know and yet think we do not know

   is the highest attainment;

Not to know and yet think we do know

   is a disease
.
    It is simply by being pained at the thought

   of having this disease

   that we are preserved from it
.
The sage has not the disease
.
He knows the pain that would be

   inseparable from it;

And therefore he does not have it
.
    If any of us knew what we were doing,
   or where we are going,
Then when we think we best know!
We glide through nature and should not know
   our place again.
    All things swim and glitter;
Our life is not so much threatened as
   our perception.
    But in the solitude to which every man
   is always returning,
He has a sanity and revelations,
   which in his passage into new worlds
   he will carry with him.

72
    When the people do not fear what

   they ought to fear
,
That which is their greatest dread

   will come to them
.
    Let them not thoughtlessly indulge themselves

   in their ordinary life;

Let them not act as if weary of what

   life depends on
.
    It is by avoiding such indulgence that

   such weariness does not arise
.
    Therefore the sage knows these things
,
   but does not parade his knowledge;

Loves, but does not appear to set a value

   on himself
.
And thus he puts the latter alternative away

   and makes a choice of the former
.
    The use of the world is that man may
   learn its laws.
When a man stupid becomes a man inspired,
When one and the same man
Passes out of the torpid into the perceiving state,
Leaves the din of trifles, the stupor