Self Reliance

Self – Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Themes: Individualism, Self-Reliance, Non-conformity
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.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within,
more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought,
because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us
with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this.
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.
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.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found
for you…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.
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 explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the
integrity of your own mind
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.
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.
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.
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word,
because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are
loath to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory,
lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should
contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone,
scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed
present, and live ever in a new day.
What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? …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…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.
Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, 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.
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.
For those who wish to continue the essay it is here… http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

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Self – Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Themes: Individualism, Self-Reliance, Non-conformity

For those who wish to continue the essay it is here… http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

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