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 now stand; alms to sots; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—­though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule.  There is the man and his virtues.  Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade.  Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,—­as invalids and the insane pay a high board.  Their virtues are penances.  I do not wish to expiate, but to live.  My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.  I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.  I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.[171] I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions.  I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent.  I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right.  Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.  This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.  It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.  It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.[172]

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.  It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.  If you maintain a dead church, 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.