The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Be thankful that it is so,--that only His eye sees whose hand formed. If
we could look in, we should be appalled at the vision. The worlds that
glide around us are mysteries too high for us. We cannot attain to them.
The naked soul is a sight too awful for man to look at and live. There
are individuals whose topography we would like to know a little better,
and there is danger that we crash against each other while roaming
around in the dark; but, for all that, would we not have the
Constitution broken up. Somebody says, "In heaven there will be no
secrets," which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If that were a
revelation from the King of Heaven, of course I would not speak
flippantly of it; but, though towards Heaven we look with reverence and
humble hope, I do not know that Tom, Dick, and Harry's notions of it
have any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all
individuality, and undermine the foundations of society.
Clairvoyance--if there be any such thing--always seemed to me a stupid
impertinence. When people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the
front-door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wish
them to climb in at the window, or creep through the pantry, or, worst
of all, float through the keyhole, and catch me in undress. So I believe
that in all worlds thoughts will be the subjects of volition,--more
accurately expressed when expression is desired, but just as entirely
suppressed when we will suppression.
After all, perhaps the chief trouble arises from a prevalent confusion
of ideas as to what constitutes a man your friend. Friendship may stand
for that peaceful complacence which you feel towards all well--behaved
people who wear clean collars and use tolerable grammar. This is a very
good meaning, if everybody will subscribe to it. But sundry of these
well-behaved people will mistake your civility and complacence for a
recognition of special affinity, and proceed at once to frame an
alliance offensive and defensive while the sun and the moon shall
endure. Oh, the barnacles that cling to your keel in such waters! The
inevitable result is, that they win your intense rancor. You would feel
a genial kindliness towards them, if they would be satisfied with that;
but they lay out to be your specialty. They infer your innocent little
inch to be the standard-bearer of twenty ells, and goad you to frenzy. I
mean you, you desperate little horror, who nearly dethroned my reason
six years ago! I always meant to have my revenge, and here I impale you
before the public. For three months, you fastened yourself upon me; and
I could not shake you off. What availed it me, that you were an honest
and excellent man? Did I not, twenty times a day, wish you had been a
villain, who had insulted me, and I a Kentucky giant, that I might have
the unspeakable satisfaction of knocking you down? But you added to your
crimes virtue. Villany had no part or lot in you. You were a member of a
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