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02 - Self-Reliance - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Self reliance, nate equasi varies. Extra man is his own star, and
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the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man commands all lights,
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all influence, all fate. Nothing to him falls early or too late.
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Our acts, our angels are or good or ill. Our fatal shadows that
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walk by us still epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's honest Man's fortune. Cast the
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bantling on the rocks, suckle him with the she wolf's teat, wintered with
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the hawk and fox. Power and speed, be hands and feet. I
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read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and
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not conventional. The soul always hear is an abonition in such lines. Let
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the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value
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than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thoughts, To believe
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that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men.
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That is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the
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universal sense. For the inmost in due time becomes the utmost. And our
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first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the last judgment,
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familiar as the voice of the mind is to each. The highest merit we
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ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books
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and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A
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man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his
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mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.
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Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In
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every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back
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to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more
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affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous
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impression with good humored inflexibility, the most when the whole cry of voices is
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on the other side. Else to morrow a stranger will say, with masterly
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good sense, precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and
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we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. There
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is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy
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is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better
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or worse as his portion. That though the wide universe is full of good,
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no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him, but through his toil
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bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till the power
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which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what
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that is which he can do, Nor does he know until he has tried.
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Not for nothing, one face, one character, one fact makes much
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impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not
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without pre established harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall,
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that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves,
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and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may
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be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted.
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But God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man
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is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done
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his best. But what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no
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peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt,
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his genius deserts him. No muse befriends no invention, no hope, trust
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thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine
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providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of
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events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the
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genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at
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their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And
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we are now men and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny.
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And not miners and invalids in a protracted corner, nor cowards fleeing before
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a revolution, but guides redeemers and benefactors, obeying the almighty efforts and advancing
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on chaos and the dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text
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In the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes, that
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divided and rebel, mind that distrust of a sentiment. Because our arithmetic has
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computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not their mind
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being whole, their eyes as yet unconquered, when when we look in their
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faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms that nobody all conform to it, so
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that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and
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play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less
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with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious, and
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its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself.
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Do not think the youth has no force because he cannot speak to you and
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me, hark in the next room. His voice is a efficiently clear and
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emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries bashful or bold.
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Then he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. The nonchalance
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of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain as much as a
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lord to do or say ought to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of
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human nature. A boy is in the parlor, what the pit is in
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the playhouse, independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people
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and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits.
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In the swift summary way of boys as good, bad, interesting, silly,
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eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself, never about consequences, about interests.
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He gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him. He
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does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clap
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into jail by his consciousness as soon as he has once acted or spoken with
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a claw. He is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the
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hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is
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no lethy for this ah that he could pass again into his neutrality. Who
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can thus avoid all pledges, and, having observed, observe again from the
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same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted, innocence must always be formidable.
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He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which, being seen to be
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not private but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and
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put them in fear. These are the voices which we hear in solitude,
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but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere
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is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is
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a joint stock company in which the members agree, for the better securing of
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his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.
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The virtue in most request is conformity. Self reliance is its aversion.
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It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be
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a man must be a non conformist. He who would gather immortal points must
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not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be
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goodness. Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind
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absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
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I remember an answer which, when quite young, I was prompted to make
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to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old
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doctrines of the Church. On my saying, what have I to do with
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the sacredness of traditions if I live wholly from within, my friend suggested,
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but these impulses may be from below, not from above. I replied,
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they do not seem to me to be such. But if I am the
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Devil's child, I will live then from the devil. No law can be
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sacred to me, but that of my nature. Good and bad are but
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names very readily transferable to that or this. The only right is what is
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after my constitution. The only wrong what is against it. A man is
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to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if everything were titular
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and ephemeral. But he I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to
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badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well
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spoken individual effects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go
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upright and vital and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and
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vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot
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assumes this bountiful cause of abolition and comes to me with his last us from
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Barbados, why should I not say to him, go love thy infant love,
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thy wood chopper, be good natured and modest, have that grace,
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and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness. For black
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folks a thousand miles off, thy love of far is spite at home,
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rough and graceless would be such a greeting. But truth is handsomer than the
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affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it
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is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the
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doctrine of love. When that puls and winds, I shun father and and
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wife and brother. When my genius calls me, I would write on the
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lintels of the door post whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim.
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At last, But we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me
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not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then again,
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do not tell me, as a good man did to day, of
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my obligation to put all poor men in good situations? Are they my poor?
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I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the
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dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me,
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and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons
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to whom, by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold. For them.
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I will go to prison if need be. But your miscellaneous popular charities,
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the education at College of Fools, the building of meeting houses to the
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vain end to which many now stand, alms to sots, and the thousandfold
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relief societies. Though I confess with shame, I sometimes succumb and give the
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dollar. It is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have
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the manhood to withhold. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the
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exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do
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what is called a good action as some piece of courage or charity, much
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as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non appearance on parade.
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Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world.
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As invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances.
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I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is
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for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be
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of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it
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should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet,
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and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are
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a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I
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know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions
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which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I
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have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually
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am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my
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fellows any secondary testimony. The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead
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to you is that it scatters your force, It loses your time, and
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blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute
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to a dead Bible society, vote with a great party, either for the
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government or against it. Spread your table like base housekeepers. Under all these
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screens, I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are, and of
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course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work
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and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
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A man must consider what a blind man's bluff is, this game of
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conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear
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a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions
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of his church. Do I not know beforehand that, not possibly can he
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say a new and spontaneous word. Do I not know that, with all
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his ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such
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thing. Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look
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but at w one side, the permitted side. Not as a man,
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but as a parish minister. He is a retained attorney. And these heirs
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of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their
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eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these
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communities of opinion. That this conformity makes them not false, and a few
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particulars, authors of a few lines, but false in all particulars. Their
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every truth is not quite true. There too is not the real two,
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therefore not the real four, so that every word they say chagrins us,
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and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime, nature
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is not slow to equip us in the prison uniform of the party to which
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we Adhere we come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire
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by degrees the gentlest assen expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular which
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does not fail to rake itself also in the general history. I mean the
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foolish face of praise, the forced smile which we put on in company where
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we do not feel at ease, and answer the conversation which does not interest
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us. The muscles not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low, usurping
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wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, with a most disagreeable
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sensation. For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure, And therefore
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a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance
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on him in the public street or in the French parlor. If this aversation
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had its origin in contempt and resistance, like his own, he might well
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go home with a sad countenance. But the sour faces of the multitude,
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like the sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and
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off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of
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the multitude more formidable than that of the Senate and the college. It is
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easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of
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the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid,
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as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage, the
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indignation of the people is added when the ignorant and the poor are aroused,
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When the unintelligent, brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made
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to growl and mow. It needs the habit of magnanimity in religion to treat
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it godlike, as a trifle of no concernment. The other terror that scares
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us from self trust is our consistency, a reverence for our past act or
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word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit
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than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why
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should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of
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memory, lest you contradict something you have stated in this or that public place.
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Suppose you should contradict yourself. What then, it seems to be a
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rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts
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of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand eyed
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present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics, you
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have denied personality to the deity. Yet when the devout motions of the soul
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come yield to them heart and life, though you should clothe God with shape
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and color, leave your theory as Joseph's coat in the hand of the harlot
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and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
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little statesmen and philosophers, and dev with consistency. A great soul has simply
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nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the
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wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what
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tomorrow thinks in hard words. Again, though it contradict everything you said to
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day, Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Is it
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so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus
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and Luther and Copernicus and Galileo and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit
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that ever took flesh to be great is to be misunderstood. I suppose no
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man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in
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by the law of his being. As the inequalities of the Andes and the
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Himalaya are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how
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you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or an Alexandrian
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stanza. Read it forward backward or across it still spells the same thing.
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In this pleasing contrite wooden life which God allows me. Let me record day
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by day my honest thoughts, without prospect or retrospect, and I cannot doubt
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it will be found symmetrical. Though I mean it not and see it not.
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My book should smell of pines and resound with a hum of insects.
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The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his
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bill into my web. Also we pass for what we are. Character teaches
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above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by
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overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath.
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Every moment there will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, So they
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be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the
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actions will be harmonious. However, unlike they seem, these varieties are lost
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sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought, one
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tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line
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of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it
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straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and
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will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly,
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and what you have already done singly will justify you. Now. Greatness appeals
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to the future. If I can be firm enough to day to do right
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and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend
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me. Now be it how it will do right. Now always scorn appearances,
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and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the
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foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of
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the heroes of the Senate in the field, which so fills the imagination the
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consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind They shed a united light
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on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels.
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That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's
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port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it
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is no ephemera. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to day
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because it is not of to day. We love it and pay it homage
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because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self
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dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old, immaculate pedigree, even
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if shown in a young person. I hope in these days we have heard
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the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous.
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Henceforward, instead of a gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from
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the spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man
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is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him.
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I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here
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for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it
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true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the
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times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the
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fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great,
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responsible thinker and actor working wherever a man works. That a true man belongs
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to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where
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he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all
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events. Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us of something else or of some
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other person character. Reality reminds you of nothing else. It takes place of
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the whole creation. The man must be so much that he must make all
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circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an
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age, requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design,
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and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man
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Caesar is born and for ages after we have a Roman empire. Christ is
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born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he
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is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened
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shadow of one man, as monarchism of the hermit antony, the Reformation of
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Luther, Quakerism of Box, Methodism of Wesley, abolition of Clarkson Scipio Milton
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called the height of Rome, and all history revolves itself very easily into the
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biography of a few stout and earnest persons. Let a man then know his
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worth and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal,
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or skulk up and down with the air of a charity boy, a bastard
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or interloper, in the world which exists for him, but the man in
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the street, finding no worth in himself, which corresponds to the force which
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built a tower or sculptured a marble. God feels poor when he looks on
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these. To him. A palace, a statue, or a costly book,
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have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and
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seem to say like that, who are you, sir? Yet they are
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all his suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties, that they will
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come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict. It is
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not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise that
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popular fable of the Sots who was picked up dead drunk in the street,
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carried to the Duke's house, washed and dressed, and laid in the Duke's
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bed, and on his waking treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke,
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and assured that he had been insane. Owes its popularity to the fact that
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it symbolizes so well the state of man who is in the world A sort
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of soughts but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds
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himself a true prince. Our reading is mendicants and sycophantic. In history,
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our imagination plays us false Kingdom and lordship. Power and estate are a gaudier
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vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house in a common day's work,
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But the things of life are the same to both. The sum total
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of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Skanderbeg and
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Gustavus, suppose they were virtuous? Did they wear out virtue as great a
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stake depends on your private acted day, as followed their public and renowned steps.
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When private men shall act with original views, the luster will be transferred
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from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. The world has been instructed
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by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has
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been taught by this colossal symbol, the mutual reverence that is due from man
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to man, the joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered. The king,
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the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them, by a
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law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and
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reverse theirs. Pay for benefits, not with money, but with honor and
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represent the law in his person was the higher of glyne, by which they
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obscurely signify their consciousness of their own rights and comeliness the right of every man.
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The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason
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of self trust? Who is the trustee? What is the aboriginal self on
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which a universe of reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power
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of that science baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots
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a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions. If the least mark
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of independence appear, the inquiry leads us to that source at once, the
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essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call spontaneity
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or instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as intuition, whilst all later teachings
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are tuitions in that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go.
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All things find their common origin. For the sense of being, which
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in calm ours rises we know not how in the soul is not diverse from
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things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but
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one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and
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being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and
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afterwards see them as appearance in nature, and forget that we have shared their
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cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the
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lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without
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impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes
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us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice.
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When we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a
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passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes? If if we
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seek to pry into the soul that causes all philosophy is at fault, its
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presence or its absence, is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between
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the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to
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his involuntary perceptions of perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression
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of them, but he knows that these things are so like day and nights,
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not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving the
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idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless
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people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much
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more readily, for they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy
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that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical
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but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after
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me, and in the course of time all mankind, although it may chance
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that no one has seen it before me, For my perception of it is
31:11
as much a fact as the sun. The relations of the soul to the
31:15
divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.
31:21
It must be that when God speaketh, he should communicate not one thing,
31:26
but all things. Should fill the world with his voice, should scatter forth
31:30
lights, nature, time, souls from the center of the present, thought
31:36
and new. Dates and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple
31:41
and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, means, teachers,
31:47
texts, temples, fall. It lives now and absorbs past and future into
31:52
the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, one
31:57
as much as another. All things are dissolved to their center by their cause,
32:02
and in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If therefore
32:08
a man claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward in the
32:13
phraseology of some old molded nation in another country, in another world, believe
32:19
him not. Is the acorn better than the oak, which is its fullness
32:23
and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast
32:28
his ripened being? Whence, then this worship of the past, the centuries
32:34
are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are
32:38
but physiological colors which the eye makes. But the soul is light. Where
32:45
it is is day, where it was is night. And history is an
32:50
impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or
32:54
parable of my being. In becoming man is timid and apologetic. He is
33:01
no longer upright. He dares not say I think I am, but quotes
33:07
some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blades of grass or the
33:13
blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or
33:17
better ones. They are for what they are. They exist with God to
33:22
day. There is no time. To them. There is simply the rose.
33:29
It is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf bud
33:32
has burst, its whole life acts in the full blown flower. There is
33:37
no more in the leafless root. There is no less. Its nature is
33:42
satisfied, and it satisfies Nature in all moments alike. But man postpones or
33:49
remembers he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the
33:54
past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe
33:59
to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives
34:05
with Nature in the present above time. This should be plain enough. Yet
34:12
see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology
34:17
of I know not what David, or Jeremiah or Paul. We shall not
34:22
always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lines.
34:29
We are like children who repeat by wrote the sentences of grand names and
34:32
tutors. And as they grow elder of the men of talents and character,
34:37
they chance to see plainfully recollecting the exact words they spoke. Afterwards, when
34:44
they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings.
34:47
They understand them and are willing to let the words go, for at any
34:52
time they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly,
34:58
we shall see true it is as easy for a strong man to be
35:02
strong as it is for a week to be weak. When we have new
35:07
perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures of old rubbish.
35:13
When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as
35:16
the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. And now,
35:22
at last, the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid, probably cannot be
35:28
said. For all that we say is the far off remembering of the intuition
35:32
that thought. By what I can now nearest approach to say, it is
35:37
this, When good is near you, when you have life in yourself,
35:42
it is not by any known or accustomed way. You shall not discern the
35:46
footprints of any other. You shall not see the face of man, you
35:50
shall not hear any name. The way, the thought the good shall be
35:54
wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the
36:00
way from man, not to man, All persons that ever existed are its
36:07
forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is something low
36:13
even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can
36:16
be called gratitude nor properly joy. The soul, raised over passion, beholds
36:22
identity and eternal causation, perceives the self existence of truth and right, and
36:29
calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature,
36:35
the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, long intervals of time, years,
36:39
centuries, are of no account. This, which I think and feel,
36:45
underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlay my present
36:50
and what is called life. In what is called death, life only avails
36:55
not the having lived. Power sees in the instant of repose. It resides
37:02
in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the
37:06
shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact
37:10
the world hates that the soul becomes, for that forever degrades. The past
37:17
turns, all richest of poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the
37:22
saint with the rogue shoves Jesus and judas equally aside, Why then do we
37:28
prate of self reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be
37:32
power, not confident, but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor
37:38
external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works
37:44
and is who has more obedience than I masters me? Though he should not
37:49
raise his finger round him, I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits.
37:55
We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of eminent virtue, which do not yet
38:00
see that virtue is height, and that a man or a company of men,
38:05
plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature, must overpower
38:09
and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets who are
38:15
not. This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this,
38:21
as on every topic. The resolution of all into the ever blessed one.
38:27
Self existence is the attribute of the supreme cause, and it constitutes the measure
38:31
of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All
38:37
things real are so by so much virtue as they contain commerce, husbandry,
38:43
hunting, wailing, war, eloquence, personal weight, are something and engage
38:49
my respect. As examples of its presence and impure action. I see the
38:53
same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature,
39:00
the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms,
39:06
which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise
39:10
and orbits, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital
39:15
resources of every animal and vegetable, our demonstrations of the self sufficing and therefore
39:22
self relying soul. Thus all concentrates. Let us not rove, Let us
39:30
sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble
39:36
of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact.
39:42
Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here
39:46
within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law,
39:52
demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. But now,
40:00
oh, we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of
40:04
man, Nor is his genius admonished to stay at home to put itself in
40:07
communication with the internal ocean. But it goes abroad to beg a cup of
40:14
water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like
40:21
the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching, how far
40:27
off, how cool, how chase the person's look begirt each one with a
40:31
precinct or sanctuary. So let us always sit. Why should we assume the
40:37
faults of our friend of wife, or father or child because they sit around
40:44
our hearth or are said to have the same blood. All men have my
40:49
blood, and I have all mens. Not for that while I adopt their
40:52
petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But
40:58
your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, That is, must be
41:02
elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you
41:08
with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want
41:15
charity. All knock at once at thy closet door and say, come out
41:21
unto us, but keep thy state. Come not into their confusion. The
41:25
power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No
41:31
man can come near me but through my act what we love that we have.
41:37
But by desire we bereave ourselves of the love. If we cannot at
41:44
once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith. Let us at least resist
41:49
our temptations. Let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor and
41:52
Woden courage and constancy in our Saxon's breasts. This is to be done in
41:59
our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection.
42:06
Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom
42:12
we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife,
42:16
O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto
42:22
henceforward I am the truths. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey
42:29
no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities.
42:35
I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to
42:38
be the chaste husband of one wife. But these relations I must feel after
42:44
a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be
42:50
myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you or you. If you
42:54
can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If
42:59
you can not, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I
43:04
will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is
43:08
deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever
43:14
rejoices me and the heart of points. If you are noble, I will
43:19
love you. If you are not, I will not hurt you and myself
43:23
by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth
43:28
with me, cleave to your companions. I will seek my own. I
43:34
do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest
43:38
and mine and all men's. However long we have dwelt in lies, to
43:44
live in truth? Does this sound harsh to day? You will soon love
43:50
what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, And if we follow
43:54
the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. But so may
44:00
you give these friends pain? Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty in
44:06
my power to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of
44:12
reason when they look out into the region of absolute truth. Then will they
44:15
justify me and do the same thing. The populace think that your rejection of
44:22
popular standards is a rejection of all standard and mere antinomianism, and the bold
44:28
sensualist will use the name of philosophy to guild his crimes. But the law
44:34
of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other,
44:38
of which we must be shriven. You may fulfill your round of duties by
44:44
clearing yourself in the direct or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have
44:50
satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat,
44:54
and dog, whether any of these can upbraid you. But I he
45:00
may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to myself. I have my
45:05
own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many
45:09
officers that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it
45:15
enables me to dispense with the popular code. If anyone imagines that this law
45:21
is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. And truly it demands
45:28
something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity and has
45:32
ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. I be his heart, faithful,
45:37
his will, clear his sight, that he may, in good earnest be
45:43
doctrine society law to himself. That a simple purpose may be to him as
45:47
strong as iron necessity is to others. If any man consider the present aspects
45:54
of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these
45:59
ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and
46:04
we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid
46:08
of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age
46:15
yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate
46:19
life in our social state. But we see that most natures are insolvent,
46:24
cannot satisfy their own ones, have an ambition out of all proportion to their
46:29
practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping
46:36
is mendicants. Our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion.
46:40
We have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor
46:46
soldiers. We shine the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.
46:52
If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart.
46:58
If the young merchant fail, men say he is ruined. If the finest
47:01
genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office
47:06
within one year afterwards, in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York.
47:10
It seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being
47:15
disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New
47:20
Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teems it,
47:24
farms it, pedals, keeps a school, preaches edits a newspaper,
47:29
goes to congress, buys a township, and so forth in successive years,
47:34
and always, like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred
47:37
of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame
47:44
in not studying a profession, for he does not postpone his life, but
47:49
lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let
47:54
a stoic open the resources of man and tell men they are not leaning willows,
48:00
but can and must attach themselves. That with the exercise of self trust,
48:05
new power shall appear. That a man is word made flesh, born
48:09
to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion,
48:15
and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the
48:19
books, idolatries, and customs out of the window. We pity him no
48:23
more, but thank and revere him, and that teacher shall restore the life
48:29
of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history. It
48:34
is easy to see that a greater self reliance must work a revolution in all
48:38
the offices and relations of men, in their religion, in their education,
48:43
in their pursuits, their modes of living, their association, in their property,
48:49
in their speculative views. One in what prayers do men allow themselves,
48:55
That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly
49:00
prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue,
49:06
and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and
49:12
miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity. Anything less than all good is
49:17
vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point
49:22
of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It
49:28
is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means
49:32
to affect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism, not
49:38
unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with
49:44
God, he will not beg He will then see prayer in all action.
49:49
The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer
49:52
of the rower, kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers
49:57
heard throughout nature, though for shee ends Karatak in Fletcher's Bonduca. When admonished
50:05
to inquire the mind of the god, al Date replies his hidden meeting lies
50:09
in our endeavors. Our valors are our best gods. Another sort of false
50:15
prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self reliance. It is
50:22
infirmity of will, regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer, if
50:28
not attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.
50:32
Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly and
50:38
sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health
50:44
in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason.
50:50
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods
50:54
and men, is the self helping man. For him, all doors are
50:59
flung wide him, all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow
51:05
with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him. Because he
51:09
did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because
51:15
he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because
51:22
men hated him. To the persevering mortals, said Zoroastra. The blessed immortals
51:27
are swift. As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are
51:32
their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say, with those foolish Israelites,
51:38
let no God speak to us lest we die. Speak Thou speak any
51:43
man with us, and we will obey everywhere. I am hindered of meeting
51:47
God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites
51:52
fable merely of his brothers or his brother's brothers. God. Every new mind
51:59
is a new classification if it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power.
52:04
A loch, a levoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a fourier,
52:08
it imposes its classification on other men and lo a new system. In proportion
52:14
to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects
52:17
it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is its complacency. But
52:23
chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some
52:29
powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty and man's relation to the highest
52:36
such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in
52:43
subordinating everything to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany,
52:47
in seeing a new earth and new seasons. Thereby, it will happen for
52:52
a time that the pupil will find his intellectual power as grown by the study
52:57
of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized.
53:02
Passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that
53:07
the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the
53:12
walls of the universe. The luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the
53:16
arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to
53:22
see. How you can see, it must be somehow that you stole the
53:25
light from us. They do not yet perceive that lights, unsystematic, indomitable
53:34
will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp a while
53:38
and call it their own. If they are honest and do well. Presently
53:43
their neat new pinfold will be too straight and low, will crack, will
53:47
lean a rot and vanish, and the immortal lights, all young and joyful,
53:52
million orbed, million colored, will beam over the universe as on the
53:58
first morning. Two. It is for want of self culture that the superstition
54:05
of traveling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retain its fascination
54:10
for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy or Greece venerable in
54:16
the imagination, did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis
54:22
of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place.
54:27
The soul is no traveler. The wise man stays at home, and
54:30
when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house
54:36
or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men
54:39
sensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes the missionary of wisdom and
54:45
virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and not like an interloper
54:51
or a valet. I have no churlish objection to the supernavigation of the globe
54:57
for the purpose of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the
55:00
man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding
55:04
something greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused to get something
55:09
which he does not carry, travels away from himself and grows old, even
55:14
in youth, among old things in thebes in Palmyra, his will and mind
55:20
have become old and dissipated, as they he carries ruins to ruins. Traveling
55:27
is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discovered to us the indifference of places.
55:32
At home. I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can
55:37
be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace
55:43
my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples.
55:47
And there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting,
55:52
identical that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces.
55:59
I affect to be in intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not
56:04
intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. Three. But the
56:13
rage of traveling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action.
56:17
The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fast is restlessness.
56:23
Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate,
56:29
And what is imitation but the traveling of the mind. Our houses are
56:34
built with foreign taste. Our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments, our opinions,
56:38
our tastes, our faculties lean and follow the past and the distant.
56:44
The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own
56:49
mind that the artists sought his model. It was an application of his own
56:52
thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And
56:58
why need we copy the door or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience,
57:02
grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any
57:07
And if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to
57:12
be done by him considering the climate, the soil, the length of the
57:15
day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government,
57:20
he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted,
57:24
and taste and sentiment will be satisfied. Also insist on yourself never imitate your
57:34
own gift. You can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole
57:37
life's cultivation. But of the adopted talent of another, you have only an
57:43
extemporaneous half possession that which each can do best. None but his maker can
57:49
teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can till that
57:53
person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare?
57:58
Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin or Washington, or Bacon or
58:02
Newton. Every great man is a unique. The scipionism of Scipio is precisely
58:10
that part he could not borrow Shakespeare will never be made by the study of
58:15
Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much
58:21
or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave
58:25
and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidius, or trowel of the
58:30
Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante. But different from all these,
58:36
not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousand
58:40
cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself. But if you can hear what these
58:45
patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice.
58:51
For the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide
58:54
in the simple and noble regions of thy life. Obey thy heart, and
59:00
thou shalt reproduce the fue world again. Four. As our religion, our
59:07
education, our art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All
59:13
men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves. Society
59:20
never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the
59:24
other. It undergoes continual changes. It is barbarous, it is civilized,
59:30
it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific. But this change
59:34
is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society
59:39
acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well clad,
59:45
reading, writing, thinking American with a watch, a pencil and a
59:50
bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property
59:54
is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of
59:59
a shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the two men,
1:00:04
and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If
1:00:07
the traveler tells us, truly, strike the savage with a broad axe,
1:00:12
and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal, as if
1:00:15
you struck the blow into soft pitch, And the same blow shall send the
1:00:20
white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but has
1:00:24
lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks
1:00:29
so much support a muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he
1:00:34
fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical
1:00:38
almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it.
1:00:43
The man in the street does not know a star in the sky,
1:00:45
the solstice, he does not observe, the equinox he knows is little,
1:00:51
and the whole bright calendar of the years without a dial in his mind.
1:00:55
His note books impair his memory, his libraries over load his wit. The
1:01:00
insurance office increases the number of accidents. And it may be a questioned whether
1:01:05
machinery does not encumber, whether we have not lost by refinement some energy,
1:01:10
by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue.
1:01:16
For every Stoic was a Stoic. But in Christendom, where is the Christian.
1:01:23
There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of
1:01:28
height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular
1:01:31
equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last
1:01:37
ages. Nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of
1:01:40
the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's Heros three or four and
1:01:47
twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. For Scian,
1:01:53
Socrates, and Exaggeras Diogenes are great men, but they leave no class.
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He who is really of their class will not be called by their name,
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but will be his own man, and in his turn the founder of a
1:02:07
sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and
1:02:13
do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good.
1:02:17
Hudson and Bearing accomplished so much in their fishing boats as to astonish Perry
1:02:22
and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo,
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with an opera glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any
1:02:34
one since Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious
1:02:39
to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery which were introduced with
1:02:45
loud laudation a few years or centuries before the great genius returns to essential man.
1:02:54
We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science,
1:02:59
And yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back
1:03:04
on naked Valor and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible
1:03:10
to make a perfect army, says La Casis, without abolishing our arms,
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magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in the imitation of the Roman
1:03:20
custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his
1:03:24
handmill, and bake his bread himself. Society is a wave. The wave
1:03:32
moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The
1:03:37
same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is
1:03:42
only phenomenon. The persons who make up a nation to day next year die
1:03:47
and their experience with them. And so the reliance on property, including the
1:03:53
reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self reliance. Men
1:03:59
have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to
1:04:02
esteem the religious learned and civil institutions as gods of property, and they deprecate
1:04:09
assaults on these because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure
1:04:14
their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each
1:04:17
is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property out of new respect
1:04:23
for his nature. Especially, he hates what he has if he see that
1:04:27
it is accidental, come to him by inheritance or gift or crime, then
1:04:32
he feels it is not having. It does not belong to him, has
1:04:36
no root in him, and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber
1:04:42
takes it away. But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire.
1:04:47
And what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the
1:04:51
back of rulers or mobs, or revolutions, or fire or storm or bankruptcies,
1:04:58
but perpetually renews itself. Of wherever the man breathes, thy lot or
1:05:02
portion of life, said the Caliph Ali is seeking after THEE. Therefore be
1:05:09
at rest from seeking after it. Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us
1:05:14
to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions,
1:05:20
the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, the delegation
1:05:25
from Essex, the Democrats from New Hampshire, the Whigs of Maine, the
1:05:30
young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms.
1:05:36
In like manner, the reformers summon conventions and vote and resolve in multitude.
1:05:43
Not so o, friends, will the God deign to enter and inhabit
1:05:46
you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a
1:05:50
man puts off all foreign support and stands alone, that I seek him to
1:05:56
be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner.
1:06:00
Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men?
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And in the endless mutation. Thou only firm column, must presently appear the
1:06:12
upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn,
1:06:16
that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere,
1:06:20
and so perceiving throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself,
1:06:27
stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles. Just as
1:06:31
a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on
1:06:35
his head. So use all that is called a fortune. Most men gamble
1:06:42
with her, and gain all and lose all as her wheel rolls. But
1:06:46
do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with cause and effect.
1:06:51
The chancellors of God in the will work and acquire. And thou hast chained
1:06:58
the wheel of chance, and shall sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations.
1:07:03
A political victory, of rise of rents, the recovery of your sick
1:07:08
or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your
1:07:13
spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe
1:07:18
it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself nothing can bring you peace,
1:07:25
but the triumph of principles and of self reliance