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SELF-RELIANCE

wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with
the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its
displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to
estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on
him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this
aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like
his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance;
but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces,
have no deep cause, 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 senate and
the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows
the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their
rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being
very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine
rage the indignation of the people is added, when the
ignorant and the poor are aroused, 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 no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our
consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our
orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint
them.

But why should you keep your head over your
shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory,
lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or
that public place? Suppose you should contradict
yourself; what then? It seems 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 present, 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

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