As soon as he has once acted or spoken
with eclat, 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 neutrality! Who can thus avoid
all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected,
unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. 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 your 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 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 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.
