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SELF-RELIANCE

is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and
spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should
learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes
across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without
notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of
genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come
back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works
of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They
teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with
good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry
of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger
will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have
thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to
take with shame our own opinion from another.

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.

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