ay he is _ruined_. If the
finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in
an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of
Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is
right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life.
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the
professions, who _teams it, farms it_,[225] _peddles_, keeps a school,
preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so
forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet,
is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his
days, and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does
not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a
hundred chances. Let a Stoic[226] open the resources of man, and tell
men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves;
that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a
man is the word made flesh,[227] born to shed healing to the
nations,[228] that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that
the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books,
idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
thank and revere him,--and that teacher shall restore the life of man
to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution
in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their
education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their
association; in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves![229] That which they call
a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad
and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign
virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural,
and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular
commodity,--anything less than all good,--is vicious. Prayer is the
contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It
is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul.[230] It is the
spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to
effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and
not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one
with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The
prayer