The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own
central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto--not
criticism by other standards, and adjustments thereto--is the lesson
of Nature. True, the full man wisely gathers, culls, absorbs; but
if, engaged disproportionately in that, he slights or overlays the
precious idiocrasy and special nativity and intention that he is, the
man's self, the main thing, is a failure, however wide his general
cultivation. Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse are not
only attended to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us up, like a
cancer. Already, the democratic genius watches, ill-pleased, these
tendencies. Provision for a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue,
justification of what one has in one's self, whatever it is, is
demanded. Negative qualities, even deficiencies, would be a relief.
Singleness and normal simplicity and separation, amid this more and
more complex, more and more artificialized state of society--how
pensively we yearn for them! how we would welcome their return!
In some such direction, then--at any rate enough to preserve the
balance--we feel called upon to throw what weight we can, not for
absolute reasons, but current ones. To prune, gather, trim, conform,
and ever cram and stuff, and be genteel and proper, is the pressure
of our days. While aware that much can be said even in behalf of all
this, we perceive that we have not now to consider the question of
what is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or set
of nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous
congeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becoming
stifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite
conformity and art.
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