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The Essay On Self Reliance

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The Essay On Self Reliance

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© © All Rights Reserved
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1
THE

ESSAY ON

SELF-RELIANCE

BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSON


=
HO

THE ROYCROFT SHOP

EAST AURORA

NEW YORK
MCMV
838

£ 536se

Copyright
1905
By ELBERT HUBBARD
Miss Hildin Rankin

9-30-1925-

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.
SELF - RELIANCE

READ the other day some


verses written by an emi-
nent painter which were
original and not conven-
tional Always the soul
hears an admonition in such
lines, let the subject be what
it may. The sentiment they instill 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 always the inmost becomes
-and our first thought is ren-
the outmost,
dered back to us by the trumpets of the Last
Judgment.
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each,
the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato,
and Milton, is that they set at naught books
and traditions, and spoke not what men, but
what they, thought. A man should learn to
detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than
the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.

Yet he dismisses without notice his thought ,


1
SELF - RELIANCE

because it is his. In every work of genius


we recognize our own rejected thoughts : they
come back to us with a certain alienated maj-
esty. Great works of art have no more affect-
ing 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 an-
other .
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 ofground 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
2
SELF - RELIANCE

another none. It is not without pre- established


harmony , this sculpture in the memory. The
eye was placed where one ray should fall, that
it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely
let him speak the utmost syllable of his con-
fession. We but half express ourselves, and are
ashamed of that divine idea which each of us
represents. It may be safely trusted as propor-
tionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully
imparted, but God will not have his work
made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine
man to exhibit any thing divine. A man is re-
lieved 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 contem-
poraries, the connexion of events. Great men
have always done so and confided themselves
childlike to the genius of their age, betraying
their perception that the Eternal was stirring
at their heart, working through their hands ,
3
SELF - RELIANCE

predominating in all their being. And we are


now men, and must accept in the highest
mind the same transcendent destiny ; and not
pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before
a revolution , but redeemers and benefactors,
pious aspirants to be noble clay plastic under
the Almighty effort, let us advance and ad-
vance on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this


text in the face and behavior of children, babes
and even brutes. That divided and rebel mind ,
that distrust of a sentiment because our arith-
metic has computed the strength and means
opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their
mind being whole, their eye is as yet uncon-
quered, 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
4
SELF - RELIANCE

he cannot speak to you and me. Hark ! in the


next room , who spoke so clear and emphatic ?
Good Heaven ! it is he ! it is that very lump of
bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks has
done nothing but eat when you were by, that
now rolls out these words like bell-strokes. It
seems he knows how to speak to his contem-
poraries. 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. How is a
boy the master of society ! -independent, irre-
sponsible, looking out from his corner on such
people and facts as pass by, he tries and sen-
tences them on their merits, in the swift sum-
mary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting,
silly, eloquent, troublesome He cumbers

himself never about consequences , about in-


terests : he gives an independent, genuine ver-
dict. 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 com-
mitted person, watched by the sympathy or
5
SELF - RELIANCE

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 neutral, godlike indepen-
dence ! Who can thus lose all pledge, and
having observed , observe again from the same
unaffected , unbiased , unbribable, unaffrighted
innocence, must always be formidable, must
always engage the poet's and the man's re-
gards. Of such an immortal youth the force
would be felt. He would utter opinions on all
passing affairs, which being seen to be not pri-
vate 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
an
hi into the world . Society everywhere is in con-
ry res un
g
Ve F et spiracy against the manhood of every one of
r
d ulg
an M its members . Society is a joint- stock company
in which the members agree for the better se-
curing of his bread to each shareholder, to sur-
render the liberty and culture of the eater.
The virtue in most request is conformity.
Self-reliance is its aversion . It loves not real-
ities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a non-
6
SELF - RELIANCE

conformist. 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
our 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 tra-
ditions, 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
7
SELF - RELIANCE

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
8
SELF - RELIANCE

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 per-
sons 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 con-
fess 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 ac-
tion, 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 in-
9
SELF - RELIANCE

sane pay a high board. Their virtues are pen-


ances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live .
My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for
itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer
that it should be of a lower strain, so it be

genuine & equal, than that it should be glitter-


ing and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and
sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My
life should be unique ; it should be an alms, a
battle, a conquest, a medicine . 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 reck-
oned 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 as-
surance of my fellows any secondary testi-
mony .
What I must do , is all that concerns me, not
what the people think. This rule, equally ar-
duous in actual and in intellectual life , may

serve for the whole distinction between great-


ness and meanness. It is the harder, because
you will always find those who think they
10
SELF - RELIANCE

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- So-
ciety, vote with a great party either for the
Government or against it, spread your ta-
ble like base housekeepers , -under all these
screens, I have difficulty to detect the pre-
cise man you are. And, of course, so much
force is withdrawn from your proper life. But
do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your
work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man
must consider what a blind- man'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
11
SELF - RELIANCE

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 emp-
tiest 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 fewre 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 ad-
here. 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
12
SELF - RELIANCE

company where we do not feel at ease in


answer to conversation which does not inter-

est us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved,


but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow
tight about the outline of the face and make
the most disagreeable sensation, a sensation
of rebuke and warning which no brave young
man will suffer twice.

For non-conformity 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. If this aversa-
tion 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, -disguise no god, 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 cul-
tivated classes. Their rage is decorous and
prudent, for they are timid as being very vul-
nerable themselves. But when to their femi-
13
SELF - RELIANCE

nine 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 magnan-
imity 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 mon-
strous corpse of your memory, lest you con-
tradict somewhat you have stated in this or
that public place ? Suppose you should contra-
dict 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
bring the past for judgment into the thousand-
eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust
your emotion. 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
14
SELF - RELIANCE

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 philos-
ophers and divines. With consistency a great
soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well
concern himself with his shadow on the wall.

Out upon your guarded lips ! Sew them up


with packthread , do . Else, if you would be a
man, speak what you think to-day in words
as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak
what to-morrow thinks in hard words again ,
though it contradict every thing you said to-
day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you
shall be sure to be misunderstood . Misunder-
stood ! It is a right fool's word. 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 misunder-
stood.
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
15
SELF - RELIANCE

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 for-
ward, 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. Char-
acter teaches above our wills. Men imagine
that they communicate their virtue or vice
only by overt actions and do not see that vir-
tue or vice emit a breath every moment.
Fear never but you shall be consistent 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 when seen at a little distance, at a
little height of thought. One tendency unites
16
SELF - RELIANCE

them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zig-


zag line of a hundred tacks. This is only mi-
croscopic criticism . See the line from a suffi-
cient distance, and it straightens itself to the
average tendency. Your genuine action will
explain itself and will explain your other gen-
uine actions. Your conformity explains noth-
ing. Act singly, and what you have already
done singly, will justify you now.
Greatness always appeals to the future. If I
can be great enough now 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 cumu-
lative. All the foregone days of virtue work
their health into this. What makes the maj-
esty of the heroes of the senate and the field ,
which so fills the imagination ? The conscious-
ness of a train of great days and victories be-
hind. There they all stand and shed an united
light on the advancing actor. He is attended
as by a visible escort of angels to every man's
eye. That is it which throws thunder into
Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washing-
ton's port, and America into Adams's eye.
17
SELF - RELIANCE

Honor is venerable to us because it is no


ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We
worship it to-day, because it is not of to-day.
We love it and pay it homage, because it is
not a trap for our love and homage, but is
self-dependent, self- derived , and therefore of
an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in
a young person.
I hope in these days we have heard the last of
conformity and consistency. Let the words be
gazetted and ridiculous henceforward . Instead
of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle
from the Spartan fife. Let us bow and apolo-
gize never 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 rep-
rimand 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 mov-
ing wherever moves a man ; that a true man
belongs to no other time or place, but is the
18
SELF RELIANCE

centre of things. Where he is, there is nature .


He measures you, and all men , and all events.
You are constrained to accept his standard.
¶ 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, -put all means into
the shade. This all great men are and do.
Every true man is a cause, a country , and an
age ; requires infinite spaces and numbers and
time fully to accomplish his thought ; -and
posterity seem to follow his steps as a proces-
sion. 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 virtue and
the possible of man. An institution is the
lengthened shadow of one man ; as, the Refor-
mation, of Luther ; Quakerism, of Fox ; Meth-
odism , 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 & earnest persons .
Let a man then know his worth, and keep
19
SELF - RELIANCE

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, ex-
ercises his reason , and finds himself a true
20
SELF - RELIANCE

prince. Our reading is mendicant and syco-


phantic. In history, our imagination makes
fools of us, plays us false. Kingdom and lord-
ship, power and estate are a gaudier vocabu-
lary 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 ? Sup-
pose they were virtuous : did they wear out
virtue ? As great a stake depends on your pri-
vate act to -day, as followed their public and
renowned steps . When private men shall act
with vast views, the lustre will be transferred
from the actions of kings to those of gentle-
men.
The world has indeed 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 every where 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
21
SELF - RELIANCE

represent the Law in his person, was the hie-


roglyphic by which they obscurely signified
their consciousness of their own right and
comeliness , the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action ex-


erts 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
impure actions, if the least mark of indepen-
dence appear ? The inquiry leads us to that
source, at once the essence of genius, the es-
sence of virtue, and the essence 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 com-
mon 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 proceedeth obviously from the
22
SELF - RELIANCE

same source whence their life and being also


proceedeth . We first share the life by which
things exist, and afterwards see them as ap-
pearances in nature, and forget that we have
shared their cause .
Here is the fountain of action and the foun-

tain of thought. Here are the lungs of that


inspiration which giveth man wisdom, of that
inspiration of man which cannot be denied
without impiety and atheism. We lie in the
lap of immense intelligence, which makes us
organs of its activity and receivers of its truth .
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 metaphysics, all philosophy is at
fault. Its presence or its absence is all we
can affirm .
Every man discerns between the voluntary
acts of his mind , and his involuntary percep-
tions. And to his involuntary perceptions, he
knows a perfect respect 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 . All my wilful actions and acqui-
23
SELF - RELIANCE

sitions are but roving ;-the most trivial rev-


erie, the faintest native emotion are domestic
and divine.

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 inter-
pose helps. It must be that when God speak-
eth, 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, then old things pass away, -
means, teachers, texts, temples fall ; it lives
now and absorbs past and future into the pres-
24
SELF - RELIANCE

ent hour. All things are made sacred by rela-


tion to it, —one thing as much as another. All
things are dissolved to their centre by their
cause, and in the universal miracle petty and
particular miracles disappear.
This is and must be. 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 an-
other 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 san-
ity and majesty of the soul. Time and space
are but physiological colors which the eye
maketh, 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 anything
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.
25
SELF - RELIANCE

These roses under my window make no refer-


ence 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 . There is no time to it.
¶ 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 him-
self, 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
26
SELF - RELIANCE

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. So was it with us, so will it be, if we
proceed. 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 disburthen
the memory of its hoarded treasures as old
rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice
shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook
and the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this sub-


ject 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 your-
self, it is not by any known or appointed
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
27
SELF - RELIANCE

new. It shall exclude all other being. You


take the way from man not to man. All per-
sons that ever existed are its fugitive ministers.
There shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are
alike beneath it. It asks nothing.
There is somewhat low even in hope. We
are then in vision. There is nothing that can

be called gratitude nor properly joy. The soul


is raised over passion. It seeth identity and
eternal causation. It is a perceiving that Truth
and Right are. Hence it becomes a Tranquillity
out of the knowing that all things go well .
Vast spaces of nature ; the Atlantic Ocean , the
South Sea ; vast intervals oftime, years , centu-
ries, are of no account.
This which I think and feel, underlay that
former state of life and circumstances, as it
does underlie my present, and will always all
circumstance , 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 dart-
ing to an aim. This one fact the world hates,
that the soul becomes ; for, that forever de-
28
SELF - RELIANCE

grades the past ; turns all riches to poverty ; all


reputation to a shame ; confounds the saint with
the rogue ; shoves Jesus and Judas equally
aside. Why then do we prate of self- reliance ?
Inasmuch as the soul is present , there will be
power not confident but agent.
To talk of reliance, is a poor external way of
speaking. Speak rather of that which relies,
because it works and is. Who has more soul

than I, masters me, though he should not


raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by
the gravitation of spirits ; who has less , I rule
with like facility. 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 over-
power 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. Virtue is the
governor, the creator, the reality. All things
real are so by so much of virtue as they con-
tain. Hardship, husbandry, hunting, whaling,
war, eloquence, personal weight, are some-
29
SELF - RELIANCE

what, and engage my respect as examples of


the soul's presence and impure action.
I see the same law working in nature for con-
servation and growth. The poise of a planet ,
the bended tree recovering itself from the
strong wind, the vital resources of every veg-
etable and animal, are also demonstrations of
the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying
soul. All history from its highest to its trivial
passages is the various record of this power.
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 them 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 the soul 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 men. We
must go alone. Isolation must precede true
society .
30
SELF - RELIANCE

I like the silent church before the service be-

gins, 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 con-
spiracy to importune you with emphatic tri-
fles. Friend, client , child , sickness , fear, want ,
charity, all knock at once at thy closet door
and say, ' Come out unto us.'-Do not spill
thy soul ; do not all descend ; keep thy state ;
stay at home in thine own heaven ; come not
for a moment into their facts, into their hub-
bub of conflicting appearances, but let in the
light of thy law on 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
31
SELF - RELIANCE

have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of


99
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 con-
stancy in our Saxon breasts . This is to be done in
our smooth times by speaking the truth . Check
this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live
no longer to the expectation of these deceived
and deceiving people with whom we converse.
Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O
brother, O friend , I have lived with you after
appearances hitherto Henceforward I am
the truth's.
Be it known unto you that henceforward I
obey no law less than the eternal law. I will
have no covenants but proximities. I shall en-
deavor 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
32
SELF - RELIANCE

to deserve that you should . I must be myself.


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 what-
ever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.
Ifyou are noble, I will love you ; if you are
not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypo-
critical attentions. 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, how-
ever 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 can-
not 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 pop-
ular standards is a rejection of all standard ,
and mere antinomianism ; and the bold sensu-
33
SELF - RELIANCE

alist 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 your-
self in the direct, or, in the reflex way. Con-
sider 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 en-
ables 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 task-master. High be his heart, faithful
his will, clear his sight, that he may in good
earnest be doctrine, society, law to himself,
that a simple purpose may be to him as strong
as iron necessity is to others .
34
SELF - RELIANCE

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 so do lean and
beg day and night continually. Our housekeep-
ing is mendicant, our arts, our occupations,
our marriages, our religion we have not chosen,
but society has chosen for us. We are parlor
soldiers. The rugged battle of fate, where
strength is born, we shun.
If our young men miscarry in their first en-
terprizes, 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
35
SELF - RELIANCE

and to himself that he is right in being dis-


heartened and in complaining the rest of his
life.

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Ver-


mont, 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 arise who shall reveal 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 pow-
ers 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
- and that teacher
but thank and revere him,
shall restore the life of man to splendor, and
36
SELF - RELIANCE

make his name dear to all History . It is


easy to see that a greater self-reliance, - -a new

respect for the divinity in man, -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 specu-
lative views.
1. In what prayers do men allow themselves !
That which they call a holy office, is not so
much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad
and asks for some foreign addition to come
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 theft and meanness. 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
37
SELF - RELIANCE

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 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 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 im-
parting to them truth and health in rough elec-
tric shocks , putting them once more in com-
munication with the soul. The secret of for-

tune 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
38
SELF - RELIANCE

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. ' Every-
where I am bereaved of meeting God in my
brother, because he has shut his own temple
doors, and recites fables merely of his broth-
er'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 Spurzheim, it imposes its classifi-
cation on other men, and lo ! a new system .
In proportion always 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 classifi-
cations of some powerful mind acting on the
39
SELF - RELIANCE

great elemental thought of Duty, and man's


relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism,
Quakerism, Swedenborgianism.
The pupil takes the same delight in subordi-
nating every thing to the new terminology
that a girl does who has just learned botany ,
in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby.
It will happen for a time, that the pupil will
feel a real debt to the teacher, —will find his
intellectual power has grown by the study of
his writings. This will continue until he has
exhausted 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 re-
mote 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 unsys-
tematic , indomitable , will break into any cabin ,
even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and
call it their own. If they are honest and do
40
SELF - RELIANCE

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- col-
ored, will beam over the universe as on the
first morning .
2. It is for want of self- culture that the idol
of Travelling, the idol of Italy, of England,
of Egypt, remains for all educated Americans.
They who made England , Italy, or Greece
venerable in the imagination, did so not by
rambling round creation as a moth round a
lamp, but by sticking fast where they were,
like an axis of the earth. In manly hours , we
feel that duty is our place, and that the merry-
men of circumstance should follow as they
may. The soul is no traveller : the wise man
stays at home with the soul , and when his ne-
cessities, his duties, on any occasion call him
from his house , or into foreign lands, he is at
home still, and is not gadding abroad from
himself, 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.
41
SELF - RELIANCE

I have no churlish objection to the circumnav-


igation 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, trav-
els away from himself, and grows old even in
youth among old things. In Thebes, in Pal-
myra, his will and mind have become old and
dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.
¶ Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to
our first journeys the discovery that place is
nothing. At home I dream that at Naples,
at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty ,
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, 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 itself only a
symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting
the whole intellectual action . The intellect is
42
SELF - RELIANCE

vagabond, and the universal system of educa-


tion fosters restlessness Our minds travel
when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We
imitate ; and what is imitation but the travel-
ling of the mind ? Our houses are built with
foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished with
foreign ornaments ; our opinions, our tastes,
our whole minds lean, and follow the Past
and the Distant, as the eyes of a maid follow
her mistress.

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 .
43
SELF - RELIANCE

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 an
unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely
that part he could not borrow.
If anybody will tell me whom the great man
imitates in the original crisis when he per-
forms a great act, I will tell him who else
than himself can teach him . Shakspeare will
never be made by the study of Shakspeare .
Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst
not hope too much or dare too much. There
is at this moment, there is for me an utter-
ance bare 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.
44
SELF - RELIANCE

Not possibly will the soul all rich , all eloquent ,


with thousand -cloven tongue, deign to repeat
itself; but if I can hear what these patriarchs
say, surely I can reply to them in the same
pitch of voice : for the ear and the tongue are
two organs of one nature. Dwell up there in
the simple and noble regions of thy life , obey
thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Fore-
world 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. Its progress
is only apparent, like the workers , of a tread-
mill 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,
45
4
SELF - RELIANCE

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 his aboriginal
strength the white man has lost. If the trav-
eller 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 loses so much support of muscle.
He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has
lost 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 libra-
ries overload his wit ; the insurance office in-

creases the number of accidents ; and it may


be a question whether machinery does not
46
SELF - RELIANCE

encumber ; whether we have not lost by refine-


ment 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 stan-
dard 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, Anax-
agoras, Diogenes, are great men , but they leave
no class. He who is really of their class will not
be called by their name, but be wholly 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 equip-
ment exhausted the resources of science and
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art. Galileo , with an opera-glass , discovered a


more splendid series of facts 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 phenom-
enal. The persons who make up a nation to-
day, next year die , and their experience with
them .
48
SELF - RELIANCE

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 what they call
the soul's progress, namely, the religious,
learned, and civil institutions, as guards of
property, and they deprecate assaults on these,
because they feel them to be assaults on prop-
erty. 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, ashamed of what he has, out of new
respect for his being.
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 rev-
olution or no robber takes it away. But that
which a man is, does always by necessity
acquire, and what the man acquires is perma-
nent and 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 is put.
49
SELF - RELIANCE

" Thy lot or portion of life, " said the Caliph


Ali , " is seeking after thee ; therefore be at
rest from seeking after it. " Our dependence
on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish
respect for numbers. The political parties meet
in numerous conventions ; the greater the con-
course, and with each new uproar of announce-
ment, The delegation from Essex ! The Dem-
ocrats 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, & vote and resolve in multitude.
But not so , O friends ! will the God deign to
enter and inhabit you, but by a method pre-
cisely the reverse.
It is only as a man puts off from himself all
external 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 in the soul, that


he is weak only because he has looked for
50
SELF - RELIANCE

good out of him and elsewhere , and so per-


ceiving, 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 & Effect,
the chancellors of God. In the Will work and
acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of
Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee.
A political victory , a rise of rents , the re-
covery of your sick, or the return of your
absent friend, or some other quite external
event, raises your spirits , and you think good
days are preparing for you Do not believe
it It can never be so. Nothing can bring
you peace but yourself Nothing can bring
you peace but the triumph of principles.

51
HERE ENDETH THE ESSAY ON SELF-RELIANCE,
WRITTEN BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON , AND
DONE INTO A BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT
THEIR SHOP WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA , ERIE
COUNTY , NEW YORK , MCMV. COMPLETED ON
AUGUST THE ELEVENTH OF THE YEAR TEN,
FROM THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYCROFT SHOP
7
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

3 9015 06605 3631

The HF Group
Indiana Plant
T 113065 2

10/30/

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