and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole Self-
distinction between greatness and meanness. It is Reliance
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.

The 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 And of course, so much force is withdrawn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
your work, and you shall reinforce
yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's-
buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect,
I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce

Self for his text and topic the expediency of one of the Reliance 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 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 these 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 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. ¶There is a mortifying experience in particular

which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general Selfhistory; I mean, "the foolish face of praise," the Reliance forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face and make the most disagreeable sensation, a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave young man will suffer twice

For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, and a newspaper directs.

Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to

Self- brook the rage of the cultured classes. Their rage is Reliance decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being

very vulnerable themselves But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdon never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust your emotion. In

your metaphysics you have denied personality to the SelfDeity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, Reliance yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. ¶A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? & Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the