truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.
I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your
interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt
in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You
will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as
mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at
last.'--But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I
cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility.
Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they
look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they
justify me and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards
is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and
the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild
his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are
two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be
shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing
yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider
whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother,
cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these
can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard
and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and
perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices
that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts it
enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one
imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment
one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast