Self Reliance
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction
that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for
better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of
good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed
on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in
him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor
does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one
fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the
memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray
should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express
ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It
may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully
imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. 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 absolutely trustworthy was seated 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
minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a
revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort,
and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on
this text, in the face and behaviour 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 his voice is sufficiently
clear and emphatic. 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. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; 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.
