English Prose | Page 6

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 sallies of his will are
rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and
Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it
matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or
Alexandrian stanza;--read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells
the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows
me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or
retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I
mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound
with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should
interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also.
We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men
imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt
actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever variety of actions, so
they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the
actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties
are lost sight of when seen at a little distance, at a little height of
thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a
zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This is only microscopic criticism. See
the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the
average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will
explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.
Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now.
Greatness always appeals to the future. If I can be great enough now to
do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to
defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn
appearances and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.
All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes
the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the
imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories

behind. There they all stand and shed an united light on the advancing
actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels to every man's eye.
That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into
Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable
to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We
worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it
homage because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is
self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate
pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and
consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.
Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan
fife. Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man is coming to
eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish
to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make
it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth
mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of
custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history,
that there is