Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Self-Reliance
Excerpts from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841):
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Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
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Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
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The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines.
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Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
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If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument.
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For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face.
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My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.
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At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles.
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Travelling is a fool's paradise.
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The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The 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 libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue.
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The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner.
