Emerson Self Reliance annotated

Emerson’s Self-Reliance

(excerpts)

“Ne te quaesiveris extra”

“Do not seek yourself outside yourself.”

1 FAITH IN SELF: What is true for you in your private heart is true for all men...

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.”

2 NON CONFORMITY: The virtue in most requests is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion....Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

3 GOOD IS FOLLOWING INTUITION: 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. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.

TWO BARRIERS TO SELF-RELIANCE:

4 CONFORMITY TO OPINIONS OF OTHERS: These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world...It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and

bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his

actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or for.¬bear those actions which

are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and

mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of

my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in

actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better

than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live

after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness

the independence of solitude.

5 CONSISTENCY TO ONE'S OWN OPINIONS: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. -- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

6 NATURAL SELF: What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin...But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind...

For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought.

Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied

without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of

its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing

of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into

the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every

man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and

knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due.

RALPH EMERSON "SELF RELIANCE"

"Ne te quaesiveris extra."

"Do not seek for things outside of yourself"

"Man is his own star; and the soul that can

Render an honest and a perfect man,

Commands all light, all influence, all fate;

Nothing to him falls early or too late.

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,

Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's "Honest Man's Fortune"

Cast the bantling on the rocks,

Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;

Wintered with the hawk and fox,

Power and speed be hands and feet.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius.

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes

the outmost,---- and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and

Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they

thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind

from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without

notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected

thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more

affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with

good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else,

to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all

the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

ORIGINALITY: There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance;

that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though

the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil

bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and

another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony.

The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express

ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted

as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work

made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and

done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance

which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no

hope.

FAITH IN SELF AND THE WORLD:

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has

found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have

always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their

perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands,

predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the

same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing

before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and

advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and

even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has

computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole,

their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy

conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the

adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with

its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it

will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me.

Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak

to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very

unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or

say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the

pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and

facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as

good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about

consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he

does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he

has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy.÷ or the

hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this.

Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having

observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence,

must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be

not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

NON CONFORMITY: These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into

the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread

to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is

conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and cust.◊oms.

EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not

be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred

but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the

world.

FOLLOW INTUITIONS: 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. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only

right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in

the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every

decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright

and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy,

shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with

his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, `Go love thy infant; love thy

wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard,

uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love

afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the

affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, -- else it is none. The doctrine of

hatred must be preached.‚ as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines.

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels

of the door-post, _Whim_. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the

day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then,

again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good

situations. Are they _my_ poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the

dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a

class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison,

if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of

meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief

Societies; -- though I confe.‡ss with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked

dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man _and_ his

virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they

would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an

apology or extenuation of their living in the world, -- as invalids and the insane pay a high board.

Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live.

AVOID LIVING TO PLEASE OTHERS: SELF ASSESS:

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and

bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his

actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or for.¬bear those actions which

are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and

mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of

my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in

actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better

than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live

after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness

the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It

loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If .·you maintain a dead church,

contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it,

spread your table like base housekeepers, -- under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the

precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life.

But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must

consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your

argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions

of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous

word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he

will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, -- the

permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney,.Ê and these airs of the

bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another

handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This

conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all

particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real

four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We

come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.

FALSE PRETENSE IS LOSS OF SELF:

There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general

history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we

do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not

spontaneoÍusly moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the

face with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how

to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's

parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go

home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no

deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent

of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm

man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and

prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the

indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are arou.‡sed, when the

unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the

habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

FOOLISH CONSISTENCY IN BELIEFS IS A LOSS OF SELF:

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or

word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and

we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your

memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you

should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your

memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the

thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied

personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and .‹life,

though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the

hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers

and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern

himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow

speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

-- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?

Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo,

and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be

misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his

being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the c.›urve of the sphere. Nor

does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; --

read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite

wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or

retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not.

My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my

window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for

what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or

vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in

their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These

variet.flies are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them

all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient

distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself,

and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and

what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be

firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend

me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The

force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What

makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The

consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the

advancing a.◊ctor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into

Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is

venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because

it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage,

but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a

young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be

gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the

Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do

not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and

though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smo.øoth

mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and

office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor

working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre

of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily,

every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality,

reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he

must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires

infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; -- and posterity seem to follow

his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire.

Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to h.œis genius, that he is confounded with

virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as,

Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of

Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves

itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk

up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for

him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which

built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a

statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say

like that, `Who are you, Sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petiti.◊oners to his faculties

that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command

me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead

drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed,

and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had

been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the

world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true

prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and

lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house

and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the

same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gusta.⁄vus? Suppose they were

virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed

their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be

transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been

taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty

with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk

among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay

for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the

hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and

comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of

self-.fitrust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be

grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without

calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least

mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of

virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as

Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis

cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises,

we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from

man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being

also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances

in nat.«ure, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought.

Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied

without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of

its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing

of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into

the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every

man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and

knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of

them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful

actions and acquisitions are but roving; -- the idlest reverie, the faintest native em.‹otion, command

my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of

opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion.

They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see

a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, -- although it may chance

that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill

the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the

present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a

divine wisdom, old things pass away, -- means, teachers, texts, temp.Èles fall; it lives now, and

absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, -- one as

much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal

miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of

God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another

country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and

completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence,

then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the

soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where

it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing

more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

Man is timi.Èd and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say `I think,' `I am,' but quotes

some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under

my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they

exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every

moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower

there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in

all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with

reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to

foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present,

above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he

speak .„the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so

great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of

grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to

see, -- painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point

of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the

words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we

shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When

we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old

rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and

the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be sai.Òd; for all that

we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest

approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any

known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the

face of man; you shall not hear any name;---- the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly

strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man.

All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is

somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor

properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the

self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces

of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, -- long intervals of time, years, centuries, -- are of no

ac.Âcount. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it

does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment

of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one

fact the world hates, that the soul _becomes_; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to

poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas

equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will

be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak

rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me,

though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We

fancy it rhetoric, when.‡ we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that

a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must

overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all

into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes

the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by

so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal

weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see

the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential

measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The

genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, t.‹he bended tree recovering itself from the

strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the

self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the

intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid

the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge

them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our

native riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at

home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of

water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins,

better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one

w.ƒith a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend,

or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?

All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even

to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is,

must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with

emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet

door, and say, -- `Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power

men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through

my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love."

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at lea.ÿst resist our temptations;

let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon

breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality

and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with

whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived

with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that

henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I

shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,

-- but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I

must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I

am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you. should. I will not

hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before

the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love

you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not

in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly,

but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have

dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by

your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. -- But so

you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their

sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region

of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

The pop.·ulace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere

antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the

law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be

shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the _direct_, or in the _reflex_

way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour,

town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex

standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the

name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to

dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its

commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity,

and.È has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his

sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may

be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction _society_, he will see the

need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become

timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and

afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who

shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy

their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg

day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our

marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We .Êare parlour

soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails,

men say he is _ruined_. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an

office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his

friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life.

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who _teams

it_, _farms it_, _peddles_, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a

township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a

hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not `studying a

profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a

hundred chances. Le.Êt a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows,

but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear;

that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of

our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries,

and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, -- and that teacher

shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of

men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in

their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as

brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come .fithrough some

foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and

miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, -- any thing less than all good, -- is vicious.

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a

beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a

means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and

consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in

all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling

with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends.

Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies,

--

"His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours;

Our valors are our best gods.⁄."

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of

will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and

already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep

foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough

electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of

fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him

all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our

love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and

apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our

disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said

Zoroaster, "the blessed Immorta.‡ls are swift."

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say

with those foolish Israelites, `Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with

us, and we will obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has

shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's

God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a

Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and

lo! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it

touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in

creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental

thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism,

Sweden.Èborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new

terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby.

It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his

master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and

not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote

horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their

master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, -- how you can see; `It

must be somehow that you stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive, that light,

unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and

call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait

and low, will crack, will .Ïlean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful,

million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.

2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England,

Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece

venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In

manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home,

and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands,

he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes

the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an

interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study,

and benevolence, .Ùso that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of

finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which

he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In

Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to

ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home

I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my

trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me

is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the

palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant

goes with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual

action.¯. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel

when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of

the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments;

our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created

the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It

was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed.

And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought,

and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and

love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the

wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these

will find themselve.˚s fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative

force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an

extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who

could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or

Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is

precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare.

Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this

moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of

the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the

soul .¯all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear

what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and

the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy

heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men

plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes

continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this

change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new

arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking

American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New

Zea.„lander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep

under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his

aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or

two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall

send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but

lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the

hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when

he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe;

the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his

mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload hi.Ès wit; the insurance-office

increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber;

whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments

and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the

Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater

men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first

and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century

avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in

time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they

leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own

man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventi.Âons of each period are only its

costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its

good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to astonish Parry and

Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an

opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since.

Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and

perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or

centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the

art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac,

which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held

it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, magazines,

commissaries, and carriages, un.Òtil, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his

supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The

same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons

who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want

of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come

to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate

assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of

each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his

property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is..

accidental, -- came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does

not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber

takes it away. But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires

is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or

storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion

of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our

dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties

meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new upr.soar of

announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of

Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In

like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O

friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is

only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to

prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing

of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of

all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked

for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his

thought, instantl.ry rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles;

just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel

rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the

chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and

shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of

your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits,

and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but

yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Ralph Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” Study G.ˆuide

GROUP 1:

1. Connect the three epigraphs to Emerson’s concept of self-reliance. “Ne te quaesiveris extra” means “Do not seek yourself outside yourself.”

2. Connect the Emersonian statement, “what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men” to Immanuel Kant’s theory of the categorical imperative: “Act only in accord with a principle which you would at the same time will to be a universal law" (Cahn and O'Brien 1996, 101). How is this in keeping with modern environmental ethics?

3. What do you learn about fate, faith, and perserverence in the following quote: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your con.°temporaries, the connection of events.” What does Emerson cite as the two barriers to self-reliance?

GROUP 2:

4. What is the relationship between society and the individual and the imagination and reality in the following quote: “These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.”

5. Emerson states, “The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-relaince is its aversion....Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” Describe a time in which you relied upon your convictions and became were thus a nonconformist.

6. Statments in this essay were considered heretical to contemporary (1800’s) traditions of worship, especially the traditions of the Unitarian church which paracticed a strictly traditional approach to worship. Explain how the following statment is heretical: “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. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.”

GROUP 3:

7. Emerson states, “It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opi.˝nion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Why does Emerson admire the ability to be “the independence of solitude” while in a crowd? Describe someone you know that exhibits this quality.

8. Emerson has been criticized for the inconsistencies in his thoughts. Read the following quote and explian how it allows, if not necessitates contradiction in order to achieve higher thoughts. (Thoreau is famous for his contradictions as well). Emerson states, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what

to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderst..ood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

GROUP 4:

9. What does Emerson learn about human nature form his observations of nature in the following quote: “ see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and the.refore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a

simple declaration of the divine fact.”

10. Emerson articulates the Transcendentalist belief in intuition as the fundamental means of knowing the word and the self. He writes, “What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the

essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are

tuitions. In th.èat deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin...But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, -- although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.”

-Describe something you know by intuition.

-Describe something you know from being taught.

-What is the relationship between these two pieces of knowledge. Which “fact” is more valuable? Why?

-Which is the more valuable process of knowledge acquisition? Why?

-Emerson believes there are apriori truths in the world: thuths that existed before the world existed, that is, they are true by definition, by the nature of existence. Express such a truth and indicate how it is “as much a fact as the sun.”