English Prose | Page 4

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 every thing 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 an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes
to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him,
"Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and
modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable
ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk 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
door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we

cannot 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 to-day, of my obligation 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
college of fools; the building of meeting-houses 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.
Virtues 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 battle, a conquest, a
medicine. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this
appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no
difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned
excellent. I cannot 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 I must 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