From the Other Shore

xv

you will believe. I suppressed my internal pain, I suffered through the struggle, and I decided not as an indignant youth, but as a man who has thought through what he is doing, how much he is losing . . . For whole months I weighed, I wavered, and finally I brought everything as a sacrifice:

I have no concern for the consequences, they are not in my power; they are rather in the power of the willful caprice that has forgotten itself so far as to outline with an arbitrary compass not only our words, but our very steps. It was in my power not to obey—and I did not obey.

To obey against one's conviction, when there is an opportunity not to obey, is immoral. Passive submission becomes almost impossible. I have been present at two revolutions, I have lived too much as a free man to allow myself to be chained again; I have experienced popular unrest, I have grown accustomed to free speech, and I cannot become a serf again, not even to suffer with you. If I still had to moderate myself for a common cause, perhaps the strength might have been found; but where, at this moment, is our common cause? At home, you have no soil upon which a free man can stand. Can you, after this, call me? . . . To the struggle we go; to silent martyrdom, to a...