Sxcerpts from Selflieliance Ti^lph Waldo Smerson Excerpts from SelfTidiance Excerpts from Self%eltance ^^alph Waldo Emerson Trivately "Printed Christmas 1922 This above all: To thine own self be true^ And it must follow^ as the night the day^ Thou canst not then be false to any man, — Shakespeare. When I set about the making of a book to send out as a Christmas greetings I was met with this difficulty: that to make a book you must have something to put into it. Although I know something about the making of books and at times have even ventured to express an occasional thought in writings I am not an author and the ideas in this book are not mine. They consist of some of the thoughts of Emerson which came to me with striking force in his essay on '^^ Self Reliance,'' Nowadays almost every magazine contains stories y articles or advertisements of books dealing with the recognition and development of the powers that are within us. None that I have read ^however^has seemed to me to show such fundamental insight^and to be so really inspiring^ as this essay of Emerson s. The re- reading of this essay on various occasions has always confirmed the powerful impression it made on me years ago, I feel that the ideas it contains , and the manner in which those ideas are expressed Jorm a unique contribution to the literature of a subject in which there is ever-increasing interest. No doubt you have read this essay ^but in any case in passing on to you some of the thoughts Emerson expresses in it ^I accompany them with all the wishes and spirit of good fellowship which are summed up in the greeting which has been so redolent of kindly feeling down through the gey^erations: "yf Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year'' C C, Ronalds QhristmaSy 1^22 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/excerptsfromselfOOemerrich SelfT{diance TO believe your own thought, to believe that v^hat is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men — that is genius. 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 tra- ditions, and spoke not what men, but what they, thought. A man should learn to detedl and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejedbed thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affedling lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous [5] Self-reliance impression with good humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have felt •and thought all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignor- ance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good,no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given 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. 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 [6] 'tance Self%eli their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, pre- dominating in all their being. How is a boy the master of society! — inde- pendent, irresponsible, looking from his corner on such people and fadls as pass by, he tries and sentences 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 interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdid:. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his conscious- ness. As soon as he has once adled or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds whose affec- tions must now enter into his account. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is con- [7] SelfT^liance formity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man must be a noncon- formist. 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. Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule. There is the man ^;z^/ his virtues. Men do what is called a good adtion, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appear- ance on parade.Theirworks are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spedtacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I ask prinaary evidence that you are a [8] Self Reliance man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no differ- ence whether I do or forbear those acftions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assur- ance of my fellows any secondary testimony. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen 'and philoso- phers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being as the inequalities of Andes and Him- maleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men im- agine that they communicate their virtue or vice [9] SelflKMiance only by overt actions and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. Fear never but you shall be consistent in w^hat- ever variety of aftions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the adtions 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 them all. There is a great responsible Thinker and Ad:or moving wherever moves a man. 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 procession. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after, we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the length- ened shadow of one man; as, the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome'*; and all history [lO] Self^^^eliance resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street finding no worth for 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 posses- sion. The picture waits for my verdid:: 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 obse- quious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, — owes its popularity to the ["1 Self-reliance fadl, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and j&nds himself a true prince. Every man discerns between the voluntary adts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions. And to his involuntary perceptions, he knows a perfect respect is due. He may err in the expres- sion of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. All my wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the most trivial reverie, the faintest native emo- tion 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. It is as much a fadl as the sun. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now [12] Self-reliance and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation 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. The centuries are conspirators against the san- ity and majesty of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors w^hich the eye maketh, but the soul is light; w^here 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. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. 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 adts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there [13] Self-reliance is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies na- ture, 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,standsontiptoetoforeseethefuture. He can- not be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. Let a stoic arise who shall reveal the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning wil- lows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear: that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he ad:s from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, — we pity him no more but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all History. It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance, — a new respect for the divinity in man, — must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; [H] Self-reliance in their religion; in their education; in their pur- suits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views. Prayer is the contemplation of the fadis 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 adlion. 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. Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontentment 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. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung [IS] SelfT^liance wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. *^To the persevering mortal,**said Zoroaster, **the blessed Immortals are swift." Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cu- mulative 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. It is only as a man puts off from himself all ex- ternal support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He who knows that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly [i6] Self-reliance on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a oian who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and EfFedt, the chancellors of God. In theWill work and acquire, and thou has chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery 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. Three hundred and fifty copies of this little book were printed for Charles Corbett Ronalds by The Ronalds Press ^Advertising Agency, Limited in December, 1^22,