美国超验主义

美国超验主义美国超验主义也叫“新英格兰超验主义”或者说“美国文艺复兴”是美国的一种文学和哲学运动。

与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生和玛格丽特·富勒有关，它宣称存在一种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处，通过直觉得以把握。

领导人是美国思想家、诗人拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生。

美国超验主义（American Transcendentalism）是美国的一个重要思潮，它兴起于十九世纪三十年代的新英格兰地区，但波及其他地方，成为美国思想史上一次重要的思想解放运动。

它是与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生以及梭罗相关的一种文学和哲学运动，宣称存在一种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处，通过直觉得以把握。

一般认为，爱默生是超验主义的倡导者，他的散文，特别是他的演讲，令人感到亲切，富有一种奇异的带有强烈个人色彩的声音；他的散文在端庄凝重的说教之中每每流溢出特有的富有魅力的睿智、幽默感和文学、哲思的深度来。

他的言词文本雄辩有力而辉煌，语调变幻莫测，显示出他的深奥的文学技巧来。

1831年，爱默生辞去波士顿第二教堂的圣职到欧洲去旅游。

其间，他会见了不少当时的文学名人，诸如英国诗人、散文家瓦特·兰德（Walter Savage Landor），诗人柯勒律治（Samuel Taylor Coleridge），华兹华斯（William Wordsworth）和苏格兰散文家、历史学家卡莱尔（Thomas Carlyle）。

特别是他在苏格兰乡间会见了卡莱尔之后，开始了两位文学家的终生友情和通信。

1837年，当爱默生作《美国学者》演讲时，另一名超验主义的集大成者梭罗刚从哈佛大学毕业。

对于很多人而言，梭罗是一本教科书，通过他，人们可以用自然界发生的事实来理解世界，于是世界便成了一个供人阅读、品味、咀嚼的整体。

他希冀过简单的生活。

梭罗说过：“我之所以走进林间并不是想生活得便宜些或者更昂贵些，而是想以最少的麻烦做些个人想做的事。

”因此，他的文字细腻而自然，充满了一个敏感的作家和一个深思熟虑的哲人对大自然的至诚的感受和感动。

比起爱默生的演说和写作，梭罗更多地是实践和行动，在他的性格中，那种崇尚生命和自然、崇尚自由和独立的精神，和那种曾经在美国的开发，尤其是西部的开发中表现出来的勇敢、豪迈、粗犷、野性的拓荒者精神存在某种内在的联系。

从现在的历史资料来看，人们无法了解梭罗是否亲自聆听爱默生的演讲，但梭罗一生实践了爱默生在《美国学者》中的召唤：更多地关注美国本土，追求美国本土的独创性。

作为一场融欧洲与美国思想潮流于一体的思想运动，它催生了美国散文一系列经典之作：《自然》（Nature，1836）、《美国学者》（TheAmericanScholar，1837）、《知识的自然历史》（NaturalHistoryofIntellect，1893）、《瓦尔登湖》（Waldon，orLifeintheWoods，1854 梭罗著），等等。

十九世纪的美国被一些历史学家认为是独特的美国文化诞生和成长的时期，是继政治独立之后美国精神、文化从欧洲大陆的母体断乳而真正独立的时期。

正是在这样的特殊时代，以爱默森和梭罗等为代表的“超验主义”思潮“破空出世”，成为美国人的精神独立宣言。

超验主义追求人的自由的精神成为美国文化中一个重要遗产。

这种思潮发源于单一神教，同时又接受了浪漫主义的影响，强调人与上帝间的直接交流和人性中的神性，其结果是解放了人性，提高了人的地位，使人的自由成为可能。

超验主义具有强烈的批判精神，其社会目标是建立一个道德完满、真正民主自由的社会，尽管带有乌托邦的理想色彩。

超验主义的核心观点是主张人能超越感觉和理性而直接认识真理，认为人类世界的一切都是宇宙的一个缩影——“世界将其自身缩小成为一滴露水”（爱默生语）。

它强调万物本质上的统一，万物皆受“超灵”制约，而人类灵魂与“超灵”一致。

这种对人之神圣的肯定使超验主义者蔑视外部的权威与传统，依赖自己的直接经验。

超验主义的主要思想观点有三。

首先，超验主义者强调精神，或超灵，认为这是宇宙至为重要的存在因素。

超灵是一种无所不容、无所不在、扬善抑恶的力量，是万物之本、万物之所属，它存在于人和自然界内。

其二，超验主义者强调个人的重要性。

他们认为个人是社会的最重要的组成部分，社会的革新只能通过个人的修养和完善才能实现。

因此人的首要责任就是自我完善，而不是刻意追求金玉富贵。

理想的人是依靠自己的人。

其三，超验主义者以全新的目光看待自然，认为自然界是超灵或上帝的象征。

在他们看来，自然界不只是物质而已。

它有生命，上帝的精神充溢其中，它是超灵的外衣。

因此，它对人的思想具有一种健康的滋补作用。

超验主义主张回归自然，接受它的影响，以在精神上成为完人。

这种观点的自然内涵是，自然界万物具象征意义，外部世界是精神世界的体现。

爱默生有句名言——“相信你自己”，这句话成为超验主义者的座右铭。

这种超验主义观点强调人的主观能动性，有助于打破加尔文教的“人性恶”、“命定论”等教条的束缚，为热情奔放，抒发个性的美国式文化奠定了基础。

正因为爱默生的超验主义观点摒弃了加尔文教派神为中心的思想，认为在某种意义上，“人”就上帝，才使得超验主义明显地烙上资本主义上升期的时代轰烈：“一个人一定能够成为他想成为的人。

”而这种素来被称为美国平民宗教的自立自强，激励了美国民族精神的发展完善。

因此，超验主义者的贡献就在于在理想主义的旗帜下重新审视了“美”的哲学命题，解放了美国思想，也使美国文学（包括散文创作）从模仿英国及欧洲大陆的风格中脱颖而出，开创了美国文艺复兴时期。

其实，“超验主义”作为一种并不确切的戏称，也许只在认识论的意义上表现了这一思潮的一个特征，即崇尚直觉和感受，而这一思潮的意义也许更重要地是体现在它热爱自然，尊崇个性，号召行动和创造，反对权威和教条等具有人生哲学蕴涵的方面，它对于美国精神和文化摆脱欧洲大陆的母体而形成自己崭新而独特的面貌产生了巨大影响。

1.Brief introductionAmerican Transcendentalism or“New England Transcendentalism” or “Am erican Renaissance” (1836---1855) was the first American intellectual movem ent, which exerted a tremendous impact on the consciousness of American people. As Lawrence Buell states, “To proclaim transcendentalism’s impact, however, is easier than to define it, for the movement was loosely organize d and its boundaries were indistinct”.New England Transcendentalism was, in essence, romantic idealism on Puritan soil. It was a system of thought that originated from three sources. First William Ellery Channing (1780---1842) was an American Unitarian clerg yman. His Unitarianism represented a thoughtful revolt against orthodox Purit anism. Unitarianism believed God as one being, rejecting the doctrine of trin ity, stressing the tolerance of difference in religious opinion, and giving each congregation the free control of its own affairs and its independent authorit y. It laid the foundation for the central doctrines of transcendentalism. Seco ndly, the idealistic philosophy from France and Germany exerted enormous i mpact on American intellectuals. Thirdly, oriental mysticism as revealed in Hi ndu and Chinese classics reached America in English translations. As a res ult, New England Transcendentalism blended native American tradition with f oreign influences.Dissatisfied with the materialistic-oriented society and eager to save the soul with a doctrine of the mind, some American intellectuals were so athir st for new ideas that they formed an informal discussing group, the Transce ndental Club, with some thirty men and women of Boston and Concord in 1 836. They were strongly influenced by the new German idealism and delight ed in abstract discussion. They met irregularly over the next four years at Ralph Waldo Emerson's home in Concord for the purpose of discussing the new ideas of life and society. This club was the first and most famous of a series of forums that served during the next few decades as social gatheri ng points. It became the movement's magnetic center. From 1836 to 1835, t hey advocated their views and principles in various magazines. Besides, the y even published their journal. The Dial (1840-1844).Their meetings and their journal promoted this movement and added pro minence to it. Many people interested in the new ideas of transcendentalism were impressed by the brotherhood of humanity. In order to separate them selves from the evil society, they made two communitarian experiments by e stablishing ideal communities. George Ripley (1802-1880) set up the Brook Farm on Boston's outskirts, which ran from 1841 to 1847 with emphasis on cooperation without competition. On this farm, people shared in domestic an d physical labor, and secured material and cultural welfare. It stressed educ ational reform and its most distinguished institution was its school. The grea t novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1806-1864) was once its member. It is a pit y that a disastrous fire in the uninsured main building put and end to this e xperiment. The second experiment is Fruitlands, near Harvard, set up by Br onson Alcott (1799-1888) in 1843. On this farm, Alcott stressed the absolute avoidance of exploitation of man and beast. It lasted less than a year bec ause it was more extreme in practice than the Brook Farm. Alcott also help ed to organize and preside over the concord School of Philosophy (1879-18 88), a summer seminar. This was the last significant activity of transcendent alism. However, in the 1830s and 1840s,transcendentalism was treated in ne wspapers and magazines as something between a national laughing stock a nd a clear menace to organized religion2. Major ConceptsThe term “transcendentalism” is derived from the Latin v erb transcender e meaning, to rise above, or to pass beyond the limits. Transcendentalism h as been defined as the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring kno wledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of knowing truth intuiti vely, or of reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor. As the le ader of this movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson interpreted transcendentalism as “whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought,” and as “idealism as it appears in 1842.” He believed that the transcendental law was the “moral law” through which man discovered the nature of God as a living spirit. Th e major concepts that accompanied transcendentalism can be summarized in the following six points.(1) It stressed the power of intuition, believing that people could learn t hings both from the outside world by means of the five senses and from th e inner world by intuition. But the things they learned from within were truer than the things they learned from without, and transcended them. It held th at everyone had access to a source of knowledge that transcended the everyday experiences of sensation and reflection. Intuition was inner light within.(2) As romantic idealism, it placed spirit first and matter second. It belie ved that both spirit and matter were real but that the reality of spirit was gr eater than that of matter. Spirit transcended matter, and the permanent reali ty was the spiritual one. It stressed essence behind appearance.(3) It took nature as symbolic of spirit of God. All things in nature were symbols of the spiritual, of God’s presence. Nature was alive, filled with G od’s overwhelming presence. Everything in the universe was viewed as an e xpression of the divine spirit. Behind physical objects was a universal soul. Nature was God’s enlightenment towards human beings. Therefore, it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on human mind. Nature was en nobling and people were somehow better for being out in the woods or mea dows. So people should come close to nature for instructions. Nature not o nly showed humanity its own materiality but taught human morality. Nature’s beauty was the beauty of human mind. The two were joined together. With this organic view in mind, it stressed unity of humanity and nature.(4) It emphasized the significance of the individual and believed that the individual was the most important element in society and that the ideal kin d of individual was self-reliant and unselfish. It held that there was a greatn ess in all human beings that needed only to be set free. People should dep end on themselves for spiritual perfection. As the individual soul could com mune with God, it was, therefore, divine. With the assumption of the innate goodness of humanity, it held that the individual soul could reach God witho ut the help of churches or clergy. While stressing individuality, it rejected th e restraints of tradition and custom. The transcendentalist had an uncompro mising concern for individual’s moral development rather than for social prog ress. The dignity of the individual remains a vital part of American creed ev en today.(5) Emerson envisioned religion as an emotional communication between an indivi dual soul and the universal “Oversoul”. The “Oversoul” as called b y Emerson was an all-pervading unitary spiritual power of goodness, omnipr esent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which everyone w as a part. It existed in nature and in humanity alike and constituted the chi ef element of the universe. Generally, the Oversoul referred to spirit of God as the most important thing in the universe. Since the Oversoul was a sin gle essence, and since all people derived their beings from the same sourc e, the seeming diversity and clash of human interests was only superficial,and all people were in reality striving toward the same ends by different but converging paths. Thus was affirmed the universal brotherhood of humanity, and the ultimate resolution of all social problems. The harder each person strove to express his or her individuality, the more faithfully he or she follo wed the inner voice, the more surely would the aims of his or her life coinc ide with those of his or her neighbor.(6) It held that commerce was degrading and that a life spent in busine ss was a wasted life. Humanity could be much better off if people paid less attention to the material world in which they lived.3. SignificanceTherefore, transcendentalism can be best understood as a somewhat lat e and localized manifestation of romantic movement in literature and philoso phy. The triumph of intuition over five senses, the exaltation of the individua l over society, the critical attitude toward formalized religion, the rejection of any kind of restraint or bondage to custom, the new and thrilling delight in nature --- all these were in some measure characteristic of transcendentalis m. These ideas also inspired English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge as w ell as many German idealist philosophers. As formulated by Emerson, transc endentalism became a clarion call to action, exhorting young people to cast off their deadening enslavement to the past, to follow God within, and to li ve every moment of life with strenuousness, to regard nature as the great o bjective lesson proving God’s presence everywhere in His creation.Transcendentalism was also an ethical guide to life for a young nation of America. It preached the positive life and appealed to the best side of h uman nature. Therefore, it stressed the tolerance of difference in religious o pinion and the free control of his own affairs by each congregation, and call ed to throw off shackles of custom and tradition, and to go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture. It insisted on the ess ential worth and dignity of the individual as a powerful force for democracy. It also advocated, and practiced, an idealism that was greatly needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity too often became mere opport unism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.New England Transcendentalism is important to American literature at le ast for two reasons. On the one hand, it is represented by two major writer s of the country----Emerson and Thoreau. They became movers and shakers whose writings have had more and more impact with the passage of time. So far as these two writers are concerned, they were more enduringly important for their ideology than for their actual literary achievement. On the other hand, a new group of writers under the influence of Emerson and Thoreau began to apply transcendental ideas in their works. Almost all the writers of the period were more or less influenced by transcendentalist doctrines. Ha wthorne, Melville, Lowell, Dickinson, and Whitman were all exponents of tran scendentalism in one way or another. They created one of the most prolific periods in the history of American literature.4. WeaknessesThe transcendentalist movement had a small membership and only lasted for a few years, but it has exerted great impact in the country. As time p asses, the term “Transcendentalism” has lost its derogatory sense and beco me the condensation of American romantic movement in literature of the per iod. It lasting importance is great. Transcendentalism, however, was never a systematic philosophy. It borrowed from many sources and reconciled few of them. Whenever the demand of logic became too insistent, it turned to my sticism. It became a rationale for the pressure toward expansionism that was already turning people’s minds to the conquest o f the West. It resulted far more often in rampant individualism than in a democracy of mutual helpfuln ess and equal opportunity. The denial of the reality of evil tended to make moral indignation an irrelevant emotion. The failure of transcendentalism asa moral force in American life was its denial of its real spiritual origin. People used it to justify their acquisitiveness and left it up to the principle of c ompensation to balance the rest of the account. These are its weaknesses.Self-Reliance (1841)Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was democracy's poet and the central figure in the Transcendental movement that invigorated American intellectual life in the mid-nineteenth century. Transcendentalism defined "reason" as the highest human faculty, the individual's innate capacity to grasp beauty and truth by allowing full play to the intellect and emotions. The movement emerged from a small group of intellectuals centered in Concord, Massachusetts, and Emerson proved not only its intellectual leader but its most eloquent voice as well.Trained as a Unitarian minister, Emerson left the church in 1832 to devote himself to writing and teaching and fostering a unique American philosophy. In "The American Scholar" (1837), he called upon his countrymen to achievean intellectual independence from Europe to complement the political independence they had already achieved. As Henry Clay had commented, "We look too much abroad. . . . Let us become real and true Americans." In his address to Harvard, Emerson asked, "Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition and a religion by revelation to us? Let us demand our own works and laws and worship." Oliver Wendell Holmes called the speech "Our intellectual Declaration of Independence."In his poetry and essays, Emerson celebrated the diversity and freedom he found in American life, and he demanded that his fellow citizens be worthy of their freedom by daring to be independent in their individual lives. In this, his most famous essay, he declared that "Nothing is sacred but the integrity of your own mind." The quest for self-reliance was really a search for harmony in the universe, which could only be achieved by each person seeking his or her own unique means of self-fulfillment. Emerson scandalized proper society by his attacks on organized religion, which he believed stifled the soul; for him, the divinity of each person lay in the individuality that could be sought in a free society. Even there, he noted, the idealist could be misunderstood.Originally Emerson eschewed the "real" world for his beloved ideas. Although he opposed slavery, he avoided for as long as possible the radical abolitionist societies calling for an end to Negro bondage. But when he believed that his hero, Daniel Webster, had betrayed public trust by supporting the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Emerson attacked him publicly. In the next decade, he helped hide runaway slaves and spoke out openly for the abolitionist cause.For further reading: Gay Wilson Allen, Waldo Emerson (1981); Stephen E. Whicher, Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1953); Philip F. Gura and Joel Myerson, eds., Critical Essays on American Transcendentalism (1982).Self-RelianceNe te quaesiveris extra.Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. --Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's FortuneCast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, Wintered with the hawk and fox, Power and speed be hands and feet.I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton 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 than 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 withoutpreëstablished 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 de-liver. 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 behavior 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 parlor 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. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat 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; begood-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. They 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 andto 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-houses 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 itself 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 refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent 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 secondary testimony.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 serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those 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 loses 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 base housekeepers,--under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course 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 yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church.。