All instincts immature, All purposes unsure; Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act. All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to God.
We may not be able to discern these "instincts immature," these "facts that break through language and escape," but we can assuredly discipline our minds and souls to see, hear, feel, and touch many beautiful things in our fellows which we too often ignore.
Reader, what are you radiating? I cannot answer that question. Your friends and your enemies may tell in part. You alone can tell all. Sit down some day, many days, and study yourself. Weigh yourself. See how much good you are doing, how much evil. Write out a balance sheet. It will help you in your efforts to know what you most need to seek to radiate in future, and what to avoid radiating.
You surely do not _want_ to radiate evil.
Is it not better consciously to radiate that which you wish than unconsciously (or thoughtlessly) to radiate that which you do not wish?
As, consciously or unconsciously, we radiate that which is within us, whether good or evil, should we not aim consciously to radiate the best of which we are capable, and thus evidence that we are striving to overcome all the evil that may be within us?
I want to radiate individuality. I want to be myself and none other. If I see in others things to emulate, things that will more fully make me what I want and ought to be, then emulation becomes a joyful duty--the something in another becomes part of myself through my desire, my emulation, my longing to attain. Hence in the right seeking to be myself I seek also to be like all the good in others which appeals to me. Herein is no destruction of my individuality. It is a perfecting of it. I take what is my own, no matter where or how I find it.
It is so well known as to be trite that men and women are mere sheep. We follow our leaders. We are anything but individual. In religion, in medicine, in law, in speech, in dress, in amusements, in architecture, in literature, in food, in everything, custom and fashion dominate us.
I would radiate a healthy resistance to the dictates of fashion. Why should fashion ride rough-shod over the wisdom of men and women? The hoop-skirt, the stove-pipe collar and hat, the camel's hump of fifteen or twenty years ago that the ladies wore as an extra adornment, the chignon, and a thousand and one other foolish things that once domineeringly dared us to defy them have disappeared. Why should we ever have yielded to them? What is fashion, anyhow? She is a fickle damsel, generally proud of her money, whose good looks are often the result of powder and paint and chalk and rouge instead of good health, vigor, and love. She is a mere flirt, carried away for a few hours with anything as a whim to pass away the time; without heart, feeling, sensibility, brain, or knowledge. Her fads are more likely to be wrong than right, and when right are generally the result of a lapse into sensibility by relinquishing any pretense at thought into the hands of some one who can think for her. Fashion, a heartless, conscienceless, soulless jade whose friendship and favor are a curse, whose flatteries are hollow, insincere, and corrupting, and whose only use for any one or anything lasts merely so long as her own selfish pleasures are attained or desire for novelty satisfied.