elaboration of this stoical conception of virtue, is not selfishness, a lack of altruism, or an unwillingness to subordinate self-interest to the common good but caution, timidity, "false prudence," "sensual prosperity"—an inordinate concern for "health and wealth." "Tart cathartic virtue" is the antidote to the "despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists." It is the "plenitude of energy and power" that announces itself in "contempt for safety and ease," in "contradiction to the voice of mankind," and in "good humor and hilarity." It is the "military attitude of the soul," in short, to which "we give the name of Heroism."

Emerson not only revives the stoic ideal of virtue but resurrects another way of talking about this elusive concept—as when he refers to the inherent properties or capacity of an object as its "virtue" or "genius"— that was already archaic, or at least increasingly uncommon, in the English usage of his day. Thus he observes that "the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow." When he speaks of the "virtue of art" or the "virtue" of logic, he uses the word in the same sense, to describe the intrinsic capacity or (by extension) the intrinsic power and force that fit an object, a particular activity or undertaking, or even a human being to its proper end. Applied to human conduct, this atavistic but eminently useful idea of virtue serves to remind us that virtue lies not so much in the act as in the disposition or temper behind it, as Jonathan Edwards would have put it. Virtue has to be distinguished, Emerson says, from "what is commonly called choice." It issues less from a conscious decision than from the "choice of my constitution." It is therefore "impulsive and spontaneous."

Like Carlyle, Emerson believes that heroism is unconscious—the product not of calculation but of "obedience," as Emerson puts it, to a "higher law than that of our will." Virtue is heroic character speaking through actions. It is the unpremeditated acceptance of natural limits on human freedom, which alone overcomes the power of fate and replaces "seeming" with "being." Virtue is "adherence in action to the nature of things."

"Spiritual Laws," the piece in which Emerson most clearly restates this old-fashioned way of thinking, follows "Compensation" in the First Series and serves as its companion. Taken together, these two essays (along with other writings) make it clear that Emerson, like Carlyle, draws not only on stoic and Aristotelian conceptions of virtue but on Christian conceptions as well. "There is no merit in the matter," Emerson insists. "Either

-275-