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Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, His Original Profession

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, His Original Profession 1 Packet B: Lecture 2 American literature 1820-1865 Primary texts: Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, his original profession and calling was as a Unitarian minister, but he left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson became one of America's best known and best loved 19th century figures and he was arguably the most influential American philosopher of the 19th century. His presence is still strong in American culture, even if many Americans don’t know it until they actually read Emerson in high school or college! This week’s readings will be a little heavy on the Emerson because he is so important. Source: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/faces/emerson.jpg I am including some materials from www.emersoncentral.com that I think will help you with your reading. Help in understanding Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, “Self-Reliance”: "It is said to be the age of the first person singular" - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" is often the first or only exposure students get to Emerson's thought. Here are some resources to help understand this essay: Background: What is Transcendentalism? An essay introducing the background and context of Transcendentalism, for help in understanding where Emerson's ideas came from. Transcendentalism - Definitions From Emerson himself, with some dictionary and other simple definitions listed as well. Transcendentalism Basic information on Transcendentalism - links to the two items above plus more. Quotes from Self-Reliance It's worth thinking about these quotes. Try to figure out what they mean. Sometimes they make more sense when you see them in context -- do a search on the essay online to find their context. • Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. • Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. • Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. • What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. • A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. • It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance 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 speculative views. • Travelling is a fool's paradise. • Insist on yourself; never imitate. • Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. • The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. • Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. • And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. 3 • Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. Some questions to think about: • How is Emerson's idea of Self-Reliance different from and similar to the common use of the term (take care of your own needs and don't depend on others outside yourself)? • Is Emerson really saying "Believe anything you want to believe and do anything you want to do"? Is he really saying "Nothing outside yourself matters"? • In what ways is Emerson speaking religiously -- that is, about our relationship to the divine? • What would Emerson say about the human capacity for good and for evil? • How have Emerson's ideas helped shape our concept of the American Dream? • Should students read more essays of Emerson, or just this one? Is this the best selection from Emerson for a high school or college student? A closing thought: Like many thinkers, Emerson's thought evolved through his lifetime. He later came to value social reform movements and group action more than he did in his early life. This was perhaps partly due to the maturity one gains in the life cycle, perhaps partly due to the failure of individual philanthropy to solve the increasing social problems of his age, perhaps partly due to the issue of slavery, in which the individual interests of slave vs. slaveholder were in stark contrast. But certainly, Emerson's later writing was more interested in relationships among people, and ethical behavior, than early works like "Self-Reliance" may indicate. Nevertheless, the worldview expressed in "Self-Reliance" is not, I would contend, one of radical separation of the individual from the rest of the universe, though Emerson has sometimes been accused of that view. (Source: http://www.transcendentalists.com/self_reliance_analysis.htm) From “Self-Reliance” 1841 "Ne te quaesiveris extra." [tr. Stretch your arm no farther than your sleeve will reach] "Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 4 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune 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. ESSAY II Self-Reliance I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil 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 the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered 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, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting 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 another. 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 of ground 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 another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved 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. 5 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted.
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