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 your own mind. Absolve you to yourlf, and you shall have the suffrage世情 of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued advir 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 the impuls may be from below, not from above."一天的生活日记 ; I replied, "They do not em 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 himlf in the prence 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 cau 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, — el 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 cau why I ek 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-hous to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold 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 for itlf 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. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refu this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for mylf it makes no difference whether I do or forbear tho actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot connt 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 condary testimony.
联想g405 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 rve for the whole distinction between grea
tness and meanness. It is the harder becau you will always find tho 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 los 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 ba houkeepers, — under all the screens I have difficulty to detect the preci man you are: and of cour so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourlf. A man must consider what a blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your ct 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 himlf 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 the airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation . Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themlves to some one of the co
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mmunities of opinion. This conformity makes them not fal in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but fal 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 t 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 itlf also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of prai ," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ea, 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, with the most disagreeable nsation.森林狂想曲教案
For nonconformity 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 aversion had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces
身体祝福语明星怎么减肥的of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cau, 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 nate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated class. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themlves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroud, 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 noconcernment.
蒿菜的功效与作用 The other terror that scares us from lf-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word becau the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corp of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppo you should contradict yourlf; what then? It ems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed prent, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
