One young man of my acquaintance,who has inherited some acres,told me that he thought he should live as I did,if he had the means.I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account;for,beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself,I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible;but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way,and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.The youth may build or plant or sail,only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise,as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye;but that is sufficient guidance for all our life.We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period,but we would preserve the true course.
Undoubtedly,in this case,what is true for one is truer still for a thousand,as a large house is not proportionally more expensive than a small one,since one roof may cover,one cellar underlie,and one wall separate several apartments.But for my part,I preferred the solitary dwelling.Moreover,it will commonly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince another of the advantage of the common wall;and when you have done this,the common partition,to be much cheaper,must be a thin one,and that other may prove a bad neighbor,and also not keep his side in repair.The only cooperation which is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial;and what little true coperation there is,is as if it were not,being a harmony inaudible to men.If a man has faith,he will coperate with equal faith everywhere;if he has not faith,he will continue to live like the rest of the world,whatever company he is joined to.To coperate in the highest as well as the lowest sense,means to get our living together.I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world,the one without money,earning his means as he went,before the mast and behind the plow,the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket.It was easy to see that they could not long be companions or coperate,since one would not operate at all.They would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures.Above all,as I have implied,the man who goes alone can start to-day;but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready,and it may be a long time before they get off.
But all this is very selfish,I have heard some of my townsmen say.I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises.I have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty,and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also.There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town;and if I had nothing to do-for the devil finds employment for the idle-I might try my hand at some such pastime as that.However,when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect,and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself,and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer,they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor.While my townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their fellows,I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits.You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else.As for Doing-good,that is one of the professions which are full.Moreover,I have tried it fairly,and,strange as it may seem,am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me,to save the universe from annihilation;and I believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it.But I would not stand between any man and his genius;and to him who does this work,which I decline,with his whole heart and soul and life,I would say,Persevere,even if the world call it doing evil,as it is most likely they will.
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one;no doubt many of my readers would make a similar defence.At doing something,-I will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,-I do not hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire;but what that is,it is for my employer to find out.What good I do,in the common sense of that word,must be aside from my main path,and for the most part wholly unintended.Men say,practically,Begin where you are and such as you are,without aiming mainly to become of more worth,and with kindness aforethought go about doing good.If I were to preach at all in this strain,I should say rather,Set about being good.As if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude,and go about like a Robin Goodfellow,peeping in at every cottage window,inspiring lunatics,and tainting meats,and making darkness visible,instead of steadily increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can look him in the face,and then,and in the meanwhile too,going about the world in his own orbit,doing it good,or rather,as a truer philosophy has discovered,the world going about him getting good.When Phaton,wishing to prove his heavenly birth by his beneficence,had the sun's chariot but one day,and drove out of the beaten track,he burned several blocks of houses in the lower streets of heaven,and scorched the surface of the earth,and dried up every spring,and made the great desert of Sahara,till at length Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt,and the sun,through grief at his death,did not shine for a year.
