n this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of
land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would
learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations,
if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all
climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even
obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are
demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to
the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest
western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor
conduct toward a wornout China or Japan, but leads on direct, a tangent
to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down,
and at last earth down too.

It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascertain what
degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one's self in
formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society." He declared that
"a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half so much courage
as a footpad"--"that honor and religion have never stood in the way of a
well-considered and a firm resolve." This was manly, as the world goes;
and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man would have found
himself often enough "in formal opposition" to what are deemed "the most
sacred laws of society," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and
so have tested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not
for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain
himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the
laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just
government, if he should chance to meet with such.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed
to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any
more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we
fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I
had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to
the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it
is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen
into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft
and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind
travels. How worn and dusty, then, must b