Be true to yourself. I have seen boys in their play put a shovel under the feet of one of their mates and trip him up. The boy standing on the shovel resembles the man’s state who does not rely upon himself. The sincere man who does without second thought that which he is prompted to do, stands upon the basis of the world; he is not an individual so much as he is the hands and the tongue of Nature itself. Could he be wholly of this mind he would be strictly omnipotent because his will conspiring with the divine will, his will being the mere effluence of the Reason, he would behold what he willed done.
To believe your own thought,—to believe that what is true for you, in your private heart, is true for all men,—that is genius. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is, that they set at nought books and traditions, and spoke not what other men, but what they thought.—Yet this principle, in practical life as arduous as in the intellectual, may serve for the whole distinction betwixt men. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it yourself. 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.
Whilst thus the sufficient rule of all Ethics is comprised in the Stoical precept, Reverence Thyself, explained by Christianity that in the heart of man, is the sanction and reward that goes along with it, is the perfect system of compensation which pervades nature, and which though too subtle and simple to be reduced to a science and formally taught, yet finds utterance in a thousand proverbs, in old oracles, in fables, and in history.
An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure; love for love. Give and it shall be given you. He that watereth shall be watered himself. “What will you have?” quoth God; “Pay for it and take it.” Who doth not work, shall not eat. Nothing venture, nothing have. It is written on the tomb of [a] Shah of Persia, “Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done; no more; no less.”—Curses are chickens that come home to roost.—Thefts never enrich, alms never impoverish, and murder will speak out of stone walls. Self-abasement is self-exaltation. Giving is receiving. The lover is loved.
A perfect compensation adjusts itself through all the parts of material and of moral nature. Darkness answers to light, heat to cold, ebb to flow, reaction to action.
In brute nature no creatures are favorites but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part. If the head and neck are enlarged the body and extremities are cut short. “Economical nature has prescribed to herself a Civil list, a budget in whose single chapters she reserves to herself entire freedom, but in the sum total ever remains true to herself since if on one side too much is given she immediately subtracts it on the other and in the most decided manner makes all square.” All things are administered under the same law.—Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse: it is to answer for its moderation with its life.