how he can make it work with him and for him, without becoming part
of the machinery himself. In this lie the anguish and the struggle
of the greatest minds. Most sad are they, having mostly the deepest
sympathies, when they find themselves breaking off from communion
with other minds. They would go on, if they could, with the
opinions around them. But, happily, there is something to which a
man owes a larger allegiance than to any human affection. He would
be content to go away from a false thing, or quietly to protest
against it; but in spite of him the strife in his heart breaks into
burning utterance by word or deed.

Few, however, are those who venture, even for the shortest time,
into that hazy world of independent thought, where a man is not
upheld by a crowd of other men's opinions, but where he must find a
footing of his own. Among the mass of men, there is little or no
resistance to conformity. Could the history of opinions be fully
written, it would be seen how large a part in human proceedings the
love of conformity, or rather the fear of non-conformity, has
occasioned. It has triumphed over all other fears; over love, hate,
pity, sloth, anger, truth, pride, comfort, self-interest, vanity,
and maternal love. It has torn down the sense of beauty in the
human soul, and set up in its place little ugly idols which it
compels us to worship with more than Japanese devotion. It has
contradicted Nature in the most obvious things, and been listened to
with abject submission. Its empire has been no less extensive than
deep-seated. The serf to custom points his finger at the slave to
fashion--as if it signified whether it is an old or a new thing
which is irrationally conformed to. The man of letters despises
both the slaves of fashion and of custom, but often runs his narrow
career of thought, shut up, though he sees it not, within close