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same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable, must always engage the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an immortal youth the force would be felt. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

¶ These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realties and creators, but names and customs.

¶ We can drive a stone upward for a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will forever fall; and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed

W

HOSO would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to

importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, "What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?" my friend suggested, "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil."

¶ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature ¶ Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this: the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

¶ Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright, and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If a bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with the last news of the Barbadoes, why should I not say to him: "Go love thy infant; love thy woodchopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folks a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it else it is none

¶ The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines.

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we can not spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. ¶ Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligations to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at the college of fools; the building of meetinghouses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies-though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold

¶ We have seen many counterfeits, but we are born believers in great men.

V

IRTUES are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and

his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world—as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate,

but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions s☛ I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I can not consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony ¶ What must I do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude Io

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HE objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force.

It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible Society, vote with a great party either for the Government or against it, spread your table like base

housekeepers-under all these screens, I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And of course, so much

force is withdrawn from your proper life But do your

thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman'sbuff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side-not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of those communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four is not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime Nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression 20

¶ There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean," the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which

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