Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Original Classic Edition. Emerson Twitchell Ralph

sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with[175] all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is

       pledged to himself not to look but at one side,--the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench[176] are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief,[177] and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion.[178] This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not [88] the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime na-ture is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel

       at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping willfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

       For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.[179] And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have

       no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.[180] Yet is the discontent of the multitude more

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