There is, as Trumbull used to put it, a "duty of refusing
to do good." A man who can best serve the common good by concentrating
his strength on that work where his particular ability or training
makes him most effective, may be justified in refusing other calls
upon his energies, however intrinsically worthy. An Edison would be
doing wrong to spend his afternoons in social service, a Burbank has
no right to diminish his resources by giving a public library. Emerson
deserves our commendation for refusing to be inveigled into the various
causes that would have drafted his time and strength. Even to the
anti-slavery agitation he refused his services, saying, "I have quite
other slaves to free than those Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts
far back in the brain of man, which have no watchman or lover or defender
but me." This brings us to the question how far a man may legitimately
live a self- contained life. Certainly there is a measure of truth
in Goethe's saying, "No man can he isolates himself"; in Ibsen's "The
most powerful man is he who is most alone"; and in Matthew Arnold's
"Alone the sun rises, and alone Spring the great streams."
A multiplicity of interests distracts the soul and often confuses our
ideals. By keeping free from social burdens some men, like Kant, have
accomplished tasks of unusual magnitude.
On the other hand, we can match Goethe's assertion with another of
his own: "A talent forms itself in solitude, a character in the stream
of the world.
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