eir faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody:
all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five[159]
out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth
and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and
made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it
will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he
cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is
sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his
contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us
seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance[160] of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would
disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the
healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit
is in the playhouse;[161] independent, irresponsible, looking out from
his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences
them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad,
interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never
about consequences about interests; he gives an independent, genuine
verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as
it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has
once acted or spoken with _eclat_[162] he is a committed person,
watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections
must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe[163] for this. Ah,
that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who[164] can thus avoid
all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same
unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always
be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which
being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts
into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

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.[1