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,--disguise no god,
but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is
the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate
and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to
brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and
prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But
when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when
the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute
force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it
needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a
trifle of no concernment.
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a
reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no
other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath
to disappoint them.
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