the devil’s child

Emerson, in his classic “Self-Reliance”:

“I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested – ‘But these impulses may be from below, not from above.’ I replied, They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil’s child, I will live then from the devil. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.”