Mac Mania 1/MacMania 1.toast/Educational/Education'More/R-Z/SelfRelianceRlphWldEmrsn.cpt/SelfReliance•RalphWaldoEmerson

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               SELF-RELIANCE

I READ the other day some verses writ-
ten 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
8
true for you in your private heart, is true
for all men,—that is genius. Speak your
latent conviction, and it shall be the uni-
versal sense; for always the inmost in due
time becomes the outmost,—and our first
thought is rendered back to us by the trum-
pets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the
voice of the mind is to each, the highest
merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Mil-
ton, is that they set at naught books and
traditions, and spoke not what men, but
what they thought. A man should learn to
detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more
than the lustre of the firmament of bards
and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice
his thought, because it is his. In every
work of genius we recognize our own re-
jected 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
9
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 nour-
ishing 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 char-
acter, one fact, makes much impression on
him, and another none. This sculpture in
the memory is not without pre-established
harmony. The eye was placed where one
ray should fall, that it might testify of that
particular ray. We but half express our-
selves, 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
10
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 di-
vine providence has found for you, the
society of your contemporaries, the con-
nection of events. Great men have always
done so, and confided themselves child-
like to the genius of their age, betraying
their perception that the absolutely trust-
worthy 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, re-
deemers and benefactors, obeying the
Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos
and the Dark.
  What pretty oracles nature yields us on
11
this text in the face and behavior of chil-
dren, babes, and even brutes! That divided
and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment
because our arithmetic has computed the
strength and means opposed to our pur-
pose, 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 no-
body; 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 man-
hood 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 contempo-
raries. 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.
12
A boy is in the parlor 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, sum-
mary way of boys, as good, bad, interest-
ing, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cum-
bers 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 éclat 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.
13
  These are the voices which we hear in
solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible
as we enter into the world. Society every-
where is in conspiracy against the man-
hood 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 non-
conformist. He who would gather immor-
tal palms must not be hindered by the name
of goodness, but must explore if it be good-
ness. Nothing is at last sacred but the in-
tegrity 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 saving, "What have
I to do with the sacredness of traditions,
if I live wholly from within?" my friend
suggested,—"But these impulses may be
14
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
15
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 ex-
planation. 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 philanthro-
pist 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 spirit-
ual affinity I am bought and sold; for them
I will go to prison if need be; but your
miscellaneous popular charities, the edu-
cation at college of fools; the building of
16
meeting-houses to the vain end to which
many now stand; alms to sots, and the
thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though
I 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 cour-
age 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
17
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
18
it, spread your table like base house-
keepers,— under all these screens I have
difficulty to detect the precise man you
are: and of course so much force is with-
drawn from your proper life. But do your
work, and I shall know you. Do your
work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A
man must consider what a blindman's-buff
is this game of conformity. If I know your
sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a
preacher announce for his text and topic
the expediency of one of the institutions
of his church. Do I not know beforehand
that not possibly can he say a new and
spontaneous word? Do I not know that
with all this ostentation of examining the
grounds of the institution he will do no
such thing? Do I not know that he is
pledged to himself not to look but at one
side, the permitted side, not as a man, but
as a parish minister? He is a retained attor-
ney, 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
19

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 de-
grees 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 willfulness, grow tight about the
outline of the face, with the most disagree-
able 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 parlor.
20
If this aversation had its origin in con-
tempt an 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 pru-
dent, 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 comput-
ing our orbit than our past acts, and we are
loath to disappoint them.
21
  But why should you keep your head
over your shoulder? Why drag about this
corpse of your memory, lest you con-
tradict somewhat you have stated in this
or that public place? Suppose you should
contradict yourself; what then? It seems
to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on
your memory alone, scarcely even in acts
of pure memory, but to bring the past for
judgment into the thousand-eyed present,
and live ever in a new day. In your meta-
physics 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 con-
sistency 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-mor-
row speak what to-morrow thinks in hard
words again, though it contradict every
thing you said to-day.—"Ah, so you shall
22
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 sym-
metrical, 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 inter-
weave that thread or straw he carries in
his bill into my web also. We pass for what
we are. Character teaches above our wills.
23
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 it-
self to the average tendency. Your genuine
action will explain itself and will explain
your other genuine actions. Your con-
formity 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
24
health into this. What makes the majesty
of the heroes of the senate and the field,
which so fills the imagination? The con-
sciousness 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 ephemera.
It is always ancient virtue. We worship it
to-day because it is not of to-day. We love
it and pay it homage because it is not a
trap for our love and homage, but is self-
dependent, self-derived, and therefore of
an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown
in a young person.
  I hope in these days we have heard the
last of conformity and consistency. Let
the words be gazetted and ridiculous
henceforward. Instead of the gong for
dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spar-
tan 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
25
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 center of things. Where he is, there is
nature. He measures you and all men and
all events. Ordinarily, every body in so-
ciety reminds us of somewhat else, or of
some other person. Character, reality, re-
minds you of nothing else; it takes place
of the whole creation. The man must be
so much that he must make all circum-
stances indifferent. Every true man is a
cause, a country, and an age; requires in-
finite spaces and numbers and time fully
to accomplish his design;—and posterity
seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.
A man Cæsar 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
2 6
virtue and the possible of man. An institu-
tion is the lengthened shadow of one man;
as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony;
the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism,
of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition,
of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the
height of Rome"; and all history resolves
itself very easily into the biography of a
few stout and earnest persons.
  Let a man then know his worth, and
keep things under his feet. Let him not
peep or steal, or skulk up and down with
the air of a charity-boy, a bastard or an
interloper in the world which exists for
him. But the man in the street, finding no
worth in himself which corresponds to
the force which built a tower or sculp-
tured a marble god, feels poor when he
looks on these. To him a palace, a statue,
or a costly book have an alien and for-
bidding 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.
27
...........................................................
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 wak-
ing, 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 sycophan-
tic. In history our imagination plays us
false. Kingdom and lordship, power and
estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than pri-
vate 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
luster will he transferred from the actions
of kings to those of gentlemen.
28
  The world has been instructed by its
kings, who have so magnetized the eyes
of nations. It has been taught by this colos-
sal symbol the mutual reverence that is
due from man to man. The joyful loyalty
with which men have everywhere suf-
fered the king, the noble, or the great pro-
prietor 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 rep-
resent the law in his person, was the hiero-
glyphic 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 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 im-
pure actions, if the least mark of inde-
pendence appear? The inquiry leads us to
that source, at once the essence of genius,
29
of virtue, and of life, which we call Spon-
taneity or Instinct.We denote this primary
wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teach-
ings 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,
30
 ............................................................
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 percep-
tions, 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, com-
mand my curiosity and respect. Thought-
less people contradict as readily the state-
ment of perceptions as of opinions, or
rather much more readily; for they do not
distinguish between perception and no-
tion. They fancy that I choose to see this
or that thing. But perception is not whim-
sical, 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
31
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 center
of the present thought; and new date and
new create the whole. Whenever a mind is
simple and receives a divine wisdom, old
things pass away,—means, teachers, texts,
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 center by their cause, and in the
universal miracle petty and particular mir-
acles 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 ful-
ness 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
32
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 satis-
fies nature in all moments alike. But man
postpones or remembers; he does not live
in the present, but with reverted eye la-
ments 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.
33
  This should be plain enough. Yet see
what strong intellects dare not yet hear
God himself unless he speak the phrase-
ology of I know not what David, or Jere-
miah, 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 under-
stand 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 per-
ception, we shall gladly disburden the
memory of its hoarded treasures as old
rubbish. When a man lives with God, his
voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of
the brook and the rust]e of the corn.
  And now at last the highest truth on
this subject remains unsaid; probably can-
34
...........................................................
not be said; for all that we say is the far-
off remembering of the intuition. That
thought by what I can now nearest ap-
proach 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 footprints
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
35
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 forever degrades the past, turns
all riches to poverty, all reputation to a
shame, confounds the saint with the rogue,
shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why
then do we prate of self-reliance? Inas-
much 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, plas-
tic and permeable to principles, by the
law of nature must overpower and ride all
36
............................................................

cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who
are not.
  This is the ultimate fact which we so
quickly reach on this, as on every topic,
the resolution of all into the ever-blessed
ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the
Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the
measure of good by the degree in which
it enters into all lower forms. All things
real are so by so much virtue as they con-
tain. 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 recover-
ing 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
37
stun and astonish the intruding rabble of
men and books and institutions by a simple
declaration of the divine fact. Bid the in-
vaders 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 ad-
monished 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 pre-
cinct 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,
38
but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At
times the whole world seems to be in con-
spiracy 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 con-
fusion. 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 sanc-
tities 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 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
39
I obey no law less than the eternal law. I
will have no covenants but proximities. I
shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to
support my family, to be the chaste hus-
band 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 at-
tentions. If you are true, but not in the
same truth with me, cleave to your com-
panions; 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
40
follow the truth it will bring us out safe
at last." —But so may you give these
friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my
liberty and my power to save their sen-
sibility. 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 con-
fessionals, 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, neighbor, 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 dis-
41
............................................................
pense 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 god-
like 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, so-
ciety, law, to himself, that a simple pur-
pose may be to him as strong as iron
necessity is to others!
  If any man consider the present aspects
of what is called by distinction society,
he will see the need of these ethics. The
sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn
out, and we are become timorous, de-
sponding 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.
42
Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts,
our occupations, our marriages, our re-
ligion we have not chosen, but society has
chosen for us. We are parlor 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 NewYork, 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 Hamp-
shire 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 town-
ship, 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.
43
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 them-
selves! That which they call a holy office
is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer
looks abroad and asks for some foreign
addition to come through some foreign
virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of
natural and supernatural, and mediatorial
44

and miraculous. Prayer that craves a par-
ticular commodity, anything less than all
good, is vicious. Prayer is the contempla-
tion of the facts of life from the highest
point of view. It is the soliloquy of a be-
holding 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 kneel-
ing 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 endeavors;
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 suf-
45
............................................................

ferer; 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 communica-
tion with their own reason. The secret of
fortune is joy in our hands.Welcome ever-
more 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 apolo-
getically caress and celebrate him because
he held on his way and scorned our dis-
approbation. The gods love him because
men hated him. "To the persevering mor-
tal," 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 in-
tellect. They say with those foolish Israel-
ites, "Let not God speak to us, lest we die.
Speak thou, speak any man with us, and
we will obey." Everywhere I am hindered
46
............................................................

of meeting God in my brother, because
he has shut his own temple doors and re-
cites fables merely of his brother's, or his
brother's brother's God. Every new mind
is a new classification. If it prove a mind of
uncommon activity and power, a Locke,
a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier,
it imposes its classification on other men,
and lo! a new system. In proportion to the
depth of the thought, and so to the num-
ber of the objects it touches and brings
within reach of the pupil, is his compla-
cency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds
and churches, which are also classifications
of some powerful mind acting on the ele-
mental thought of duty and man's relation
to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quaker-
ism, 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 intel-
lectual 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 ex-
47
haustible 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 can-
not 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, un-
systematic, 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 joy-
ful, 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 fascina-
tion for all educated Americans. They
who made England, Italy, or Greece vener-
able in the imagination, did so by sticking
fast where they were, like an axis of the
earth. In manly hours we feel that duty
48
 .............................................................

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 sen-
sible 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 cir-
cumnavigation of the globe for the pur-
poses 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
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
49
and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, em-
brace my friends, embark on the sea and
at last wake up in Naples, and there beside
me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelent-
ing, identical, that I fled from. I seek the
Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be in-
toxicated 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 symp-
tom 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 flour-
ished. It was in his own mind that the
artist sought his model. It was an appli-
cation 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
50
Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, gran-
deur 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, consider-
ing the climate, the soil, the length of the
day, the wants of the people, the habit and
form of the govermnent, he will create a
house in which all these will find them-
selves 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 Shake-
speare? 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.
Shakespeare will never be made by the
51
study of Shakespeare. Do that which is
assigned you, and you cannot hope too
much or dare too much. There is at this
moment for you an utterance brave and
grand as that of the colossal chisel of
Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the
pen of Moses or Dante, but different from
all these. Not possibly will the soul, all
rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven
tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you
can hear what these patriarchs say, surely
you can reply to them in the same pitch
of voice; for the ear and the tongue are
two organs of one nature. Abide in the
simple and noble regions of thy life, obey
thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the
Foreworld again.
  4. As our Religion, our Education, our
Art look abroad, so does our spirit of
society. All men plume themselves on
the improvement of society, and no man
improves.
  Society never advances. It recedes as
fast on one side as it gains on the other. It
undergoes continual changes; it is bar-
barous, it is civilized, it is christianied, it
is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not
52
amelioration. For every thing that is given
something is taken. Society acquires new
arts and loses old instincts. What a con-
trast between the well-clad, reading, writ-
ing, 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 sol-
stice he does not observe; the equinox he
53
knows as little; and the whole bright calen-
dar 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 machin-
ery 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 Christen-
dom 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 pro-
gressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras,
Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no
class. He who is really of their class will
not be called by their name, but will be
his own man, and in his turn the founder
54
of a sect. The arts and inventions of each
period are only its costume and do not in-
vigorate men. The harm of the improved
machinery may compensate its good. Hud-
son 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 intro-
duced with loud laudation a few years or
centuries before. The great genius returns
to essential man. We reckoned the im-
provements 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 Em-
peror 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 sup-
55
ply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill and
bake his bread himself."
  Society is a wave. The wave moves on-
ward, but the water of which it is com-
posed 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 dies with them.
  And so the reliance on Property, in-
cluding 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 in-
stitutions 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 be-
long to him, has no root in him and merely
56
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 prop-
erty, 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; there-
fore be at rest from seeking after it." Our
dependence on these foreign goods leads
us to our slavish respect for numbers. The
political parties meet in numerous conven-
tions; 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 re-
formers 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 sup-
57
port 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 perceiv-
ing, 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
 58
 ............................................................
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.