et faces, have no deep cause, but are put on
and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent
of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the
college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook
the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent,
for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to
their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the
ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force
that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs
the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of
no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a
reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no
other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath
to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about
this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated
in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself;
what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory
alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for
judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In
your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the
devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though
they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as
Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul
has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow
on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak
what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict
every thing you said to-day.--'Ah, so you shall be sure to be
misunderstood.'--Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was
misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus,
and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took
flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will
are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes
and Himmaleh are insignificant in th