"SELF RELIANCE"
"Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas.
Emerson mentions that citizens control the government so they have control. He also mentions how “nothing has authority over the self.” He says, “History cannot bring enlightenment; only individual searching can.” He believes that truth is inside a person and this is an authority, not institutions like religion.
"Self-Reliance" took shape over a long period of time. Throughout his life, Emerson kept detailed journals of his thoughts and actions, and he returned to them as a source for many of his essays. Such is the case with "Self-Reliance," which includes materials from journal entries dating as far back as 1832. In addition to his journals, Emerson drew on various lectures he delivered between 1836 and 1839.
The first edition of the essay bore three epigraphs: a Latin line, meaning "Do not seek outside yourself"; a six-line stanza from Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune; and a four-line stanza that Emerson himself wrote. Emerson dropped his stanza from the revised edition of the essay, but modern editors have since restored it. All three epigraphs stress the necessity of relying on oneself for knowledge and guidance.
The essay has three major divisions: the importance of self-reliance (paragraphs 1-17), self-reliance and the individual (paragraphs 18-32), and self-reliance and society (paragraphs 33-50). As a whole, it promotes self-reliance as an ideal, even a virtue, and contrasts it with various modes of dependence or conformity.
Because the essay does not have internally marked divisions delineating its three major sections, readers should number each paragraph in pencil as this discussion will make reference to them.
He begins his work by defining genius as – “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.’’ He further writes that the almighty has made each person unique and each educated person realizes that ignorance is envy. He says that the people must seek loneliness for themselves to listen to this genius and to trust oneself and to hear and act on the voice of God. He adds, “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.”
He further gives instances of people who have trusted themselves and have finally achieved success. These include Moses, Plato and Milton. He goes on further to write that an individual is discouraged only by two sources, the first one being the society and the second being the foolish consistency. He criticizes the society harshly calling it “a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” Focusing on foolish consistency Emerson describes it as – “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.’’ To support his view he urges that “The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.’’ He also says that one must be true not to what was done yesterday but he must be true to the right track and he would surely achieve his goal.
He ends the essay by writing about self-worth. He states “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 says that the people who believe in the saying – “trust thyself” must value themselves, never underestimate themselves and consider themselves equal to the great men of history.
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. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. 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 conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. 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 your own mind. ("Self-Reliance").
Ralph Waldo Emerson is all about individualism, and we can see it in these paragraphs from his essay. According to him, we should all try to return to the state of innocence of children. That's because kids don't sit around and obsess about what people think of them. They follow their own minds. They're independent, and they have strong opinions: they love things or they hate things.
According to Emerson, we should all strive to be like that. Because having an independent mind, and not giving into pressure to follow the herd, is the only way we can be true to our own identity. So let's all be nonconformists. Let's be rebels and go against the grain. Let's do what we want.
