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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 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.
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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 pre-established 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.
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.
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