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- Self-Reliance
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 1841
- “Ne te quaesiveris extra.”
- “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.
- I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which
- were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition
- in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is
- of more value than any thought they may contain. 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
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- 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.
- 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.
- 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,
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- 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.
- 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 customs.
- 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
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- 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. 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
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- confess 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.
- 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 forbear 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
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- side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a
- retained attorney, 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. 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 spontaneously 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 aroused, 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.
- 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
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- 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 curve 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 varieties 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
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- 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 actor. 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 selfdependent, 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 smooth 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 his 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,
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- 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, petitioners 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 Gustavus?
- 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-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal
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- 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 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. 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
- emotion, 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,
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- teachers, texts, temples 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 timid 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.
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- 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 said; 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 account. 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 selfreliance? 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
- 12
- 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, the
- 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 with 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 least 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
- 13
- 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 populace 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 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
- 14
- 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 are 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. Let 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
- 15
- some foreign addition to come through 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
- Immortals 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,
- 16
- 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,
- Swedenborgism. 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 lean, 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, so 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
- 17
- 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 themselves
- 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
- 18
- 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 Zealander, 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 his 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 re19
- ally 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 inventions 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, until, 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 par20
- ties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each
- new uproar 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,
- instantly 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.
- 21
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