English Prose | Page 3

cowards. It needs a divine man to exhibit anything
divine. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his
work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall
give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the
attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no
hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place
the divine providence has found for you, the society of your
contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done
so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age,
betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart,
working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we
are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same
transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing
before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to
be noble clay under the Almighty effort let us advance on Chaos and
the Dark.
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and
behavior of children, babes, and even brutes. That divided and rebel
mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed

the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their
mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look
in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all
conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the
adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty
and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it
enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by
itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to
you and me. Hark! in the next room who spoke so clear and emphatic?
Good Heaven! it is he! it is that very lump of bashfulness and phlegm
which for weeks has done nothing but eat when you were by, and now
rolls out these words like bell-strokes. It seems he knows how to speak
to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how to make
us seniors very unnecessary.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain
as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy
attitude of human nature. How is a boy the master of
society!--independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on
such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their
merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting,
silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about
consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict.
You must court him; he does not court you. But the man is as it were
clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or
spoken with éclat he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy
or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his
account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his
neutral, godlike independence! Who can thus lose all pledge and,
having observed, observe again from the 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 realities and creators, but
names and customs.
Whoso 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 deaf old doctrines of the church. On