hurch,
contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for
the government or against it, spread your table like base
housekeepers,--under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the
precise[173] man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn
from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you.[174] Do
your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what
a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I
anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and
topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I
not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous
word? Do I not know that, with[175] all this ostentation of examining
the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not
know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side,--the
permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a
retained attorney, and these airs of the bench[176] are the emptiest
affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another
handkerchief,[177] and attached themselves to some one of these
communities of opinion.[178] This conformity makes them not false in a
few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars.
Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two,
their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us,
and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is
not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we
adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by
degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying
experience in particular which does not fail to wreak itself also in
the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced
smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in
answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not
spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping willfulness, grow
tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable
sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.[179] And
therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders
look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If
this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his
own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but th