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1Self-Reliance
2Ralph Waldo Emerson
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4“Ne te quaesiveris extra.”
5“Man is his own star; and the soul that can
6Render an honest and a perfect man,
7Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
8Nothing to him falls early or too late.
9Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
10Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
11Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune
12Cast the bantling on the rocks,
13Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat;
14Wintered with the hawk and fox,
15Power and speed be hands and feet.
16I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which
17were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition
18in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is
19of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own
20thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true
21for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall
22be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, —
23and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last
24Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we
25ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and
26traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should
27learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind
28from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet
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30he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of
31genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a
32certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson
33for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with
34good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the
35other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense
36precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced
37to take with shame our own opinion from another.
38There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction
39that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself
40for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full
41of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil
42bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power
43which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is
44which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one
45face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another
46none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony.
47The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that
48particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine
49idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate
50and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his
51work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has
52put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done
53otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver.
54In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no
55hope.
56Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place
57the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries,
58the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided
59themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception
60that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through
61their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must
62accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors
63and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution,
64but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and
65advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
66What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind,
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68that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength
69and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole,
70their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are
71disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one
72babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to
73it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own
74piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not
75to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force,
76because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice
77is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his
78contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors
79very unnecessary.
80The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as
81much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude
82of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse;
83independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and
84facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift,
85summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome.
86He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an
87independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you.
88But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as
89he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched
90by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter
91into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again
92into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed,
93observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted
94innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing
95affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts
96into the ear of men, and put them in fear.
97These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and
98inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy
99against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock
100company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread
101to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The
102virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not
103realities and creators, but names and customs.
104Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather
105immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must
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107explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your
108own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the
109world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to
110make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear
111old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the
112sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested,
113— “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied,
114“They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live
115then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.
116Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the
117only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against
118it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every
119thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily
120we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
121Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than
122is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all
123ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?
124If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to
125me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, ‘Go
126love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have
127that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this
128incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is
129spite at home.’ Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is
130handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge
131to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the
132counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun
133father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would
134write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better
135than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me
136not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not
137tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in
138good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist,
139that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not
140belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to
141whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to
142prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at
143college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many
144now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I
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146confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked
147dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
148Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule.
149There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as
150some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation
151of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or
152extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a
153high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live.
154My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of
155a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering
156and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and
157bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal
158from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference
159whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot
160consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as
161my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or
162the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
163What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This
164rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole
165distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you
166will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than
167you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy
168in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst
169of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
170The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is,
171that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your
172character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society,
173vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your
174table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to
175detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn
176from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work,
177and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman’s-buff
178is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument.
179I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of
180the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly
181can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this
182ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such
183thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one
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185side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a
186retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation.
187Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief,
188and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This
189conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies,
190but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two
191is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say
192chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime
193nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which
194we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by
195degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in
196particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history;
197I mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in
198company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does
199not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low
200usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most
201disagreeable sensation.
202For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look
203askance on him in the public street or in the friend’s parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well
204go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like
205their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind
206blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more
207formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a
208firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes.
209Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people
210is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent
211brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it
212needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of
213no concernment.
214The 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
215for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint
216them.
217But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about
218this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated
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220in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what
221then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone,
222scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into
223the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics
224you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of
225the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God
226with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of
227the harlot, and flee.
228A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
229statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has
230simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on
231the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak
232what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing
233you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is
234it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and
235Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton,
236and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
237misunderstood.
238I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are
239rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh
240are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge
241and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it
242forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing,
243contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest
244thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found
245symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell
246of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window
247should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also.
248We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine
249that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not
250see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
251There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be
252each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be
253harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a
254little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all.
255The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line
256from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.
257Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine
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259actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have
260already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If
261I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done
262so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now.
263Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is
264cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What
265makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills
266the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories
267behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as
268by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham’s
269voice, and dignity into Washington’s port, and America into Adams’s eye.
270Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient
271virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and
272pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is selfdependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if
273shown in a young person.
274I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.
275Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong
276for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and
277apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish
278to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for
279humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us
280affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the
281times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is
282the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor
283working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or
284place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures
285you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds
286us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds
287you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be
288so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man
289is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and
290time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps
291as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a
292Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave
293to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man.
294An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the
295Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism,
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297of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called “the height of Rome”;
298and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout
299and earnest persons.
300Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let
301him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a
302bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in
303the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which
304built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these.
305To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air,
306much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, ‘Who are you, Sir?’ Yet
307they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they
308will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not
309to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable
310of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s
311house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking,
312treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had
313been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the
314state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up,
315exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.
316Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination
317plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day’s
318work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is
319the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus?
320Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake
321depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned
322steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be
323transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
324The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized
325the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual
326reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men
327have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk
328among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and
329reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent
330the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified
331their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man.
332The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we
333inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal
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335Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature
336and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable
337elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions,
338if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that
339source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call
340Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst
341all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which
342analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being
343which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from
344things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and
345proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also
346proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see
347them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.
348Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that
349inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without
350impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes
351us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice,
352when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to
353its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that
354causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can
355affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and
356his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a
357perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that
358these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions
359and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native
360emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict
361as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more
362readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They
363fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical,
364but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of
365time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before
366me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.
367The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane
368to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should
369communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his
370voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the
371present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind
372is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means,
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374teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into
375the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much
376as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in
377the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore,
378a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the
379phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another
380world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness
381and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast
382his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries
383are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space
384are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where
385it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an
386injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my
387being and becoming.
388Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say
389‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the
390blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no
391reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they
392exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose;
393it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its
394whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root
395there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments
396alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but
397with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround
398him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong
399until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
400This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet
401hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David,
402or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts,
403on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of
404grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and
405character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they
406spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had
407who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the
408words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes.
409If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be
410strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we
411shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish.
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413When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of
414the brook and the rustle of the corn.
415And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the
416intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is
417this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by
418any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any
419other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; —
420the 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
421persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike
422beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there
423is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over
424passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence
425of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.
426Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals
427of time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I think and feel
428underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my
429present, and what is called life, and what is called death.
430Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of
431repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in
432the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world
433hates, that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all
434riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the
435rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of selfreliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident
436but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak
437rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience
438than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must
439revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of
440eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or
441a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature
442must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are
443not.
444This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every
445topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the
446attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by
447the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by
44812
449so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling,
450war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as
451examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in
452nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure
453of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot
454help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the
455bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every
456animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore
457self-relying soul.
458Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause.
459Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the
460shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge
461them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature
462and fortune beside our native riches.
463But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his
464genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the
465internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other
466men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins,
467better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons
468look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit.
469Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child,
470because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?
471All men have my blood, and I have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt
472their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your
473isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.
474At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with
475emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock
476at once at thy closet door, and say, — ‘Come out unto us.’ But keep thy
477state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I
478give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my
479act. “What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the
480love.”
481If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us
482at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake
483Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be
484done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality
485and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and
48613
487deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother,
488O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto.
489Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I
490obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be
491the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new
492and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I
493cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what
494I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that
495you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what
496is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly
497rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you
498are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are
499true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will
500seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your
501interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live
502in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated
503by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us
504out safe at last. — But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot
505sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons
506have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute
507truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.
508The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection
509of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the
510name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.
511There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven.
512You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in
513the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father,
514mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can
515upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to
516myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of
517duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts,
518it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that
519this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.
520And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
521High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest
522be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as
52314
524strong as iron necessity is to others!
525If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction
526society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem
527to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We
528are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each
529other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and
530women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most
531natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out
532of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night
533continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our
534marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us.
535We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength
536is born.
537If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If
538the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at
539one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards
540in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to
541himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of
542his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all
543the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits
544a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive
545years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city
546dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a
547profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one
548chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and
549tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves;
550that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is
551the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should
552be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself,
553tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we
554pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore
555the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.
556It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all
557the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their
558pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their
559speculative views.
5601. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy
561office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for
56215
563some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in
564endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous.
565Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good,
566— is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest
567point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the
568spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect
569a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in
570nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not
571beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling
572in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of
573his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends.
574Caratach, in Fletcher’s Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of
575the god Audate, replies, —
576“His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours;
577Our valors are our best gods.”
578Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of
579self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help
580the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be
581repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly,
582and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and
583health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication
584with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome
585evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are
586flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with
587desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need
588it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he
589held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because
590men hated him. “To the persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed
591Immortals are swift.”
592As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease
593of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, ‘Let not God speak
594to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.’
595Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has
596shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother’s, or his
597brother’s brother’s God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove
598a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton,
59916
600a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo!
601a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the
602number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his
603complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are
604also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought
605of duty, and man’s relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism,
606Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every
607thing to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing
608a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the
609pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master’s
610mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for
611the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the
612system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe;
613the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built.
614They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, — how you can
615see; ‘It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.’ They do not yet
616perceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin,
617even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are
618honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and
619low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all
620young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe
621as on the first morning.
6222. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose
623idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination
624did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly
625hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man
626stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him
627from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men
628sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of
629wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like
630an interloper or a valet.
631I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the
632purposes 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
633he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does
634not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among
635old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and
63617
637dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.
638Travelling 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
639intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my
640friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside
641me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I
642seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and
643suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
6443. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness
645affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our
646system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies
647are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the
648travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves
649are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties,
650lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever
651they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model.
652It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the
653conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic
654model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are
655as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and
656love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil,
657the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the
658government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves
659fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.
660Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every
661moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the
662adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.
663That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man
664yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the
665master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could
666have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great
667man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could
668not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do
669that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.
670There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the
671colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses,
672or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich,
673all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you
67418
675can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same
676pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide
677in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt
678reproduce the Foreworld again.
6794. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit
680of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no
681man improves.
682Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the
683other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is
684christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration.
685For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts,
686and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading,
687writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in
688his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear,
689a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare
690the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost
691his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a
692broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck
693the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.
694The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He
695is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine
696Geneva 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
697wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice
698he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright
699calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair
700his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the
701number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not
702encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue.
703For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?
704There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of
705height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality
706may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages;
707nor 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
708twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates,
709Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is re19
710ally of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man,
711and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period
712are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved
713machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so
714much in their fishing-boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass,
715discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since.
716Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the
717periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius
718returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war
719among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the
720bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering
721it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says
722Las Casas, “without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive
723his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself.”
724Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it
725is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to
726the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation
727to-day, next year die, and their experience with them.
728And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments
729which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from
730themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious,
731learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They
732measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each
733is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect
734for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental,
735— came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not
736having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there,
737because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is,
738does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire,
739or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man
740breathes. “Thy lot or portion of life,” said the Caliph Ali, “is seeking after
741thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” Our dependence on these
742foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political par20
743ties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each
744new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats
745from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself
746stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner
747the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not
748so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method
749precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and
750stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by
751every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing
752of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently
753appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power
754is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and
755elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought,
756instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs,
757works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man
758who stands on his head.
759So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain
760all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these
761winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the
762Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt
763sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents,
764the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other
765favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for
766you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing
767can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
76821