Gifts

Ralph Waldo Emerson

from Essays: Second Series (1844)

Gifts of one who loved me, --

'T was high time they came;
When he ceased to love me,
Time they stopped for shame.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the
world can pay, and ought to go into chancery, and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency,
which involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at
Christmas and New Year, and other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be
generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing. If, at any
time, it comes into my head, that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to
give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because
they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay
natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music
heard out of a work-house. Nature does not cocker1 us: we are children, not pets: she is not
fond2: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate
flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love
flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance
enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these
sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of
commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. If a man should send to me to
come a hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me a basket of fine summer fruit, I
should think there was some proportion between the labor and the reward.

For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and one is glad when an
imperative leaves him no option, since if the man at the door have no shoes, you have not to
consider whether you could procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man
eat bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is always a great satisfaction to supply
these first wants. Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it
seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked,
though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of
punishing him. I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies3.

Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is, that we might
convey to some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was easily associated
with him in thought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings
and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou
must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn;
the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of
her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis,
when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an index of his merit.
But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something, which does not
represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent
kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of
symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black-mail.

The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the
office of a man to receive gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do
not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can
receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one
who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems
something of degrading dependence in living by it.

"Brother, if Jove to thee a present make,

Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."

We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society, if it do not give us besides
earth, and fire, and water, opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of veneration.

He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both
emotions are unbecoming. Some violence, I think, is done, some degradation borne, when I
rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes
from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me
overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I love his
commodity, and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me,
correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him,
and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or
this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to
deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and
therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons4, not at all
considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather
sympathize with the beneficiary, than with the anger of my lord Timon. For, the expectation of
gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is
a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill luck to
be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally
wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire in the
Buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your benefactors."

The reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there is no commensurability between a man
and any gift. You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he
at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial and
selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike
before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my
friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. Besides, our action on each other,
good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the
acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and
humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we
seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received. But rectitude
scatters favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all
people.

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and
to whom we must not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently.
There are persons, from whom we always expect fairy tokens; let us not cease to expect them.
This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we
cannot be bought and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but in
fate. I find that I am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust
out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, but only
likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual
trick, -- no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they
feel you, and delight in you all the time.

QUESTIONS

1. In what ways, according to the author, are flowers and gifts always fit presents? Explain
the simile: "they are like music heard out of a workhouse" (lines 23-24).
2. Under what circumstances does he approve of giving necessities as gifts? What are his
arguments against luxury gifts such as rings and jewels? Under what circumstances do
you think he would approve or disapprove of the following gifts: a check, a gold bracelet,
a photograph, a corsage, a book of poetry, a necktie?
3. What difficulties does he see in receiving gifts? In the light of this essay, what criticism
can you make of some of our common practices in Christmas and Tet giving?
4. Why can't we give anything to a magnanimous person?
5. What does the author say about love? How does he relate this subject to the notion of
gifts?
6. In reading Emerson, we find that his unit of thought is usually the sentence, not the
paragraph. What qualities does the Emerson sentence possess? Give examples form the
essay.
7. This essay deals with giving and receiving gifts - that is, an everyday matter. Is there any
reason why Emerson uses a significant number of learned words eg. usurpation,
commensurability, magnanimity, rectitude, etc. in this essay? (Note that even some of the
common words have developed rich connotational meanings, eg. "Thou must bleed for
me").
8. Style is the man. What sort of man is the author? Which of his qualities do you admire the
most?
 9. Do you disagree with Emerson on any points? If so, how?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Seven of his ancestors were ministers, and his
father, William Emerson, was minister of the First Church (Unitarian) of Boston. Emerson
graduated from Harvard University at the age of 18 and for the next three years taught school in
Boston. In 1825 he entered Harvard Divinity School, and the next year he was sanctioned to
preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. Despite ill health, Emerson delivered
occasional sermons in churches in the Boston area. In 1829 he became minister of the Second
Church (Unitarian) of Boston. That same year he married Ellen Tucker, who died 17 months later.
In 1832 Emerson resigned from his pastoral appointment because of personal doubts about
administering the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. On Christmas Day, 1832, he left the United
States for a tour of Europe. He stayed for some time in England, where he made the
acquaintance of such British literary notables as Walter Savage Landor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth. His meeting with Carlyle marked the beginning of a
lifelong friendship.

On his return to the United States in 1833, Emerson settled in Concord, Massachusetts, and
became active as a lecturer in Boston. His addresses--including "The Philosophy of History,"
"Human Culture," "Human Life," and "The Present Age"--were based on material in his Journals
(published posthumously, 1909-1914), a collection of observations and notes that he had begun
while a student at Harvard. His most detailed statement of belief was reserved for his first
published book, Nature (1836), which appeared anonymously but was soon correctly attributed to
him. The volume received little notice, but it has come to be regarded as Emerson's most original
and significant work, offering the essence of his philosophy of transcendentalism. This idealist
doctrine opposed the popular materialist and Calvinist (see Calvinism) views of life and at the
same time voiced a plea for freedom of the individual from artificial restraints.

Emerson applied these ideas to cultural and intellectual problems in his 1837 lecture "The
American Scholar," which he delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard. In it he
called for American intellectual independence. A second address, commonly referred to as the
"Address at Divinity College," delivered in 1838 to the graduating class of Cambridge Divinity
College, aroused considerable controversy because it attacked formal religion and argued for
self-reliance and intuitive spiritual experience.

The first volume of Emerson's Essays (1841) includes some of his most popular works. It
contains "History," "Self-Reliance," "Compensation," "Spiritual Laws," "Love," "Friendship,"
"Prudence," "Heroism," "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "Intellect," and "Art." The second series of
Essays (1844) includes "The Poet," "Manners," and "Character." In it Emerson tempered the
optimism of the first volume of essays, placing less emphasis on the self and acknowledging the
limitations of real life. In the interval between the publication of these two volumes, Emerson
wrote for The Dial, the journal of New England transcendentalism (see below), which was
founded in 1840 with American critic Margaret Fuller as editor. Emerson succeeded her as editor
in 1842 and remained in that capacity until the journal ceased publication in 1844. In 1846 his first
volume of Poems was published (dated, however, 1847).

Emerson again went abroad from 1847 to 1848 and lectured in England, where he was welcomed
by Carlyle. Several of Emerson's lectures were later collected in the volume Representative Men
(1850), which contains essays on such figures as Greek philosopher Plato, Swedish philosopher
Emanuel Swedenborg, and French writer Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. While visiting abroad,
Emerson also gathered impressions that were later published in English Traits (1856), a study of
English society. His Journals give evidence of his growing interest in national issues, and on his
return to America he became active in the abolitionist cause, delivering many antislavery
speeches. The Conduct of Life (1860) was the first of his books to enjoy immediate popularity.
Included in this volume of essays are "Power," "Wealth," "Fate," and "Culture." This was followed
by a collection of poems entitled May Day and Other Pieces (1867), which had previously been
published in The Dial and The Atlantic Monthly. After this time Emerson did little writing and his
mental powers declined, although his reputation as a writer spread. His later works include
Society and Solitude (1870), which contained material he had been using on lecture tours;
Parnassus (1874), a collection of poems; Letters and Social Aims (1876); and Natural History of
Intellect (1893).

Summary of transcendentalism

Emerson developed a philosophy called transcendentalism. Briefly speaking, this philosophy

involves belief in a supreme being, called Over-Soul, who permeates every part of animate and
inanimate nature (i.e. the universe), or, to put it another way, who actually is the universe. Thus,
each individual man is part of the Over-Soul. Since the Over-Soul includes everything and is
perfect, we cannot consider isolated events as either good or bad. What seems evil to one's
man's limited understanding is, in the comprehensive view of the Over-Soul, balanced or
compensated by an equal and opposite good. In "Gifts", Emerson urges man to "transcend" his
own narrow view of things and rise to a knowledge of the ultimate perfection and harmony of the
universe.

1
cocker: spoil, coddle

2
fond: foolishly tender; weakly indulgent

3
Furies: in Greek mythology, beings who punished the wicked.
4
Timon: the leading character in Shakespeare's play Timon of Athens, spent his entire fortune on
lavish gifts and was then spurned by those who had flattered him.