th
the deaf 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; be good-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. Then, 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 and to 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