Prudence

ESSAY VII Prudence

What right have I to write ont of the negative sort? My
prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the inventing
of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gentle
repairing. I have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my
economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers that I must have some
other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity, and people
without perception. Then I have the same title to write on prudence,
that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We write from aspiration
and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities
which we do not possess. The poet admires the man of energy and
tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the bar: and
where a man is not vain and egotistic, you shall find what he has not
by his praise. Moreover, it would be hardly honest in me not to
balance these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship with words of
coarser sound, and, whilst my debt to my senses is real and constant,
not to own it in passing.

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of
appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God
taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter.
It is content to seek health of body by complying with physical
conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect.

The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist
for itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law
of shows recognizes the copresence of other laws, and knows that its
own office is subaltern; knows that it is surface and not centre
where it works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate
when it is the Natural History of the soul incarnate; when it unfolds
the beauty of laws within the narrow scope of the senses.

There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world.
It is sufficient, to our present purpose, to indicate three. One
class live to the utility of the symbol; esteeming health and wealth
a final good. Another class live above this mark to the beauty of
the symbol; as the poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of
science. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the
beauty of the thing signified; these are wise men. The first class
have common sense; the second, taste; and the third, spiritual
perception. Once in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale,
and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly; then also has a clear eye for
its beauty, and, lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred
volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and barns
thereon, reverencing the splendor of the God which he sees bursting
through each chink and cranny.