Complete. From “Essays and Marginalia.”

HOW many occasions of instruction do we daily omit, or pervert to the worst purposes! How seldom are we aware that every atom of the universe is a text, and every article of our household an homily! Few out of the immense female population of these realms but in some way are beholden to pins; and yet how few, how very few, derive any advantage from them beyond a temporary concinnity of garments, the support of an apron, or the adhesion of a neckerchief: they stick them in at morning, and pull them out at night, daily, for years, without enlargement of intellect, or melioration of morals. Yet there is not a pin in a tailor’s arm, not one that contributes to the annual groat of a miser, but might teach the wise of the world a lesson. Let us divide it into matter and form, and we shall perceive that it is the form alone that constitutes it a pin. Time was when it slumbered in the chaos of brazen wire, amid the multitude of concentric circles, cycles, and epicycles. Time was, too, when that wire was molten in the furnace, when the solid brass became as water, and rushed from its ore with a glowing rapidity. When this took place we know not; what strange mutations the metals may have undergone we cannot conjecture. It may have shone on the breast of Achilles, or ejected the spirit of Hector. Who knows but it may have partaken of the sacredness of Solomon’s lavers, or have gleamed destruction in the mirror of Archimedes?

  From form, then, is derived disgrace or dignity; of which the poor passive matter is but the involuntary recipient; yet forms are all fleeting, changeable creatures of time and circumstance, will and fancy: there is nothing that abides but a brute inert mass, and even that has no existence at any time, but in the form which it then bears.

  Just like this pin is man. Once he was, while yet he was not, even in the earth, from whence the fiery spirit which pervades all nature, and contains in itself the forms and living principles of all things, summoned him to life and consciousness. How various his subsequent fates!—how high his exaltation!—how sacred his offices!—how brilliant his genius!—how terrible his valor!—yet still the poor human animal is the same clod of earth, or the same mass of bullion, that is sown by the seeds that float in the atmosphere of circumstance, and stamped by the dies of education and example. See him in the decline, in the supercivilization of social life. He is sunk to a pin. His sole solidity is brazen impudence. His outside mercurial glitter, a counterfeit polish, as deleterious as it is attractive; composed of changeable fashions, that glide away like quicksilver, and, like quicksilver, are excellent to denote the changes of the seasons.

  Consider the head of a pin. Does it not resemble those royal personages which the English have been in the habit of importing from foreign parts to govern them? For, observe, it is no part of the pin, but superinduced upon it,—a more exotic,—a naturalized alien; or, like the noses of Taliacotius, adopted to supply natural or contingent deficiencies. It is a common remark upon a person of modern intellect, that he has a head, and so has a pin; but I believe it is to our national rather than our individual heads that this is meant to be applied; for what similarity can there exist between the silliest head that grows between a pair of shoulders and an adventitious nob, owing its elevation wholly to the caprice or convenience of a pin maker? But if the public head be intended, the analogy is strong enough for a commentator on the Apocalypse. A foreign prince, by the wisdom of a British parliament, became united to the headless trunk of the nation; becomes part of us by force of time and adhesion; yea, the very part from which the rest derive honor and usefulness.

  But if the head be thus dignified, shall the point want respect, without which the head were no head, and the shaft of no value, though, in relation to these noble members, it is but as the tail? Is it not the operative artificer, the pioneer to clear the way, the herald to announce, the warrior to subdue opposition? How aptly does this little javelin typify the frame of human society! What the head of a pin would be without its point, and the point without the head, that were the laborer without the ruler, or the ruler without the laborer.

  There is one more resemblance I would fain suppress, did not truth call for its statement. That pin may long glitter in the orderly rank of the paper, or repose in the soft security of the cushion; it may fix itself on the bosom of beauty, or support the cumbrous honors of her train; but an end is predestined to its glories, and Abasement the minor shall seize the possessions from Pride the trustee. It shall one day be broken, lost, trampled under foot, and forgotten; its slender length, which is now as straight as the arrow of Cupid, shall be as crooked as his bow; and it shall share the fate of decrepit demireps and exploded patriots.

  Remember, ye statesmen, and learn from the pin. While it was upright as the councils of—(no statesman that I ever heard of) it remained in office and preferment; and was not laid aside till it became sinuous as the politics of Machiavel.