Chapter 18 - Page 2

the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with
the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a
maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea
Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an
indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas
in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet
unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles
through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with
five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the
private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

"Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.
Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae."

Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.
I have more of God, they more of the road.

It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in
Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may
perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at
last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave
Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has
ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct
way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform
to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all
travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to
dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old
philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and
the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards
that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way,
which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct
toward a wornout China or Japan, but leads on direct, a tangent to
this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down,
and at last earth down too.
It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascertain
what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one's self
in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society." He
declared that "a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require
half so much courage as a footpad" -- "that honor and religion have
never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firm resolve."
This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, if not
desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough "in
formal opposition" to what are deemed "the most sacred laws of
society," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have
tested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not for a
man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain
himself in