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1I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of
2servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard
3to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of
4yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any
5divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the
6shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and
7sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion
8of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a
9man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West
10Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination,--what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the
11ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As
12if you could kill time without injuring eternity. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called
13resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console
14yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are
15called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a
16characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the
17chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the
18common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert
19and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking
20or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day
21may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle
22fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old
23people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire
24a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way
25to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has
26not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by
27living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial,
28and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they
29have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty
30years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They
31have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great
32extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable,
33I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about. One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food
34solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his
35system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones,
36jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some
37circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.
38The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the
39valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the
40very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the
41acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions
42how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the
43very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's
44capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.
45Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left
46undone?" We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans
47illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was
48not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different
49beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life
50are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle
51take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in
52an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!--I know of no reading of another's experience so
53startling and informing as this would be. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be
54bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so
55well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man,--you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind,--I
56hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like
57stranded vessels. I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of
58ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant
59anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what
60work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not
61to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit
62ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the
63possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one
64centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said,
65"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man
66has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish
67their lives on that basis.
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