Class \^^.3JM1 
 
 Book i^ 
 
 Cotpghtl^? - 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 
 
ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 COMPENSATION 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 EDITED WITH NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY BY 
 
 ORREN HENRY SMITH 
 
 GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL, BOSTON 
 
 NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 
 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 

 -^^V 
 
 Copyrignt, 1893 and 191 1, by 
 American Book Company 
 
 Em. Amer. Sch. 
 w. p. 1 
 
 The three essays of Emerson included in this volume are printed 
 by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Messrs. Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Company, the authorized publishers of Mr, Emerson's works. 
 
 IP^^ 
 
 ©cuasasee 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet, essayist, and philosopher, was 
 born in Boston, May 25, 1803. He was the second of five sons 
 of the Rev. Wilham Emerson, minister of the First (Congrega- 
 tional) Church in Boston. His mother was Ruth Haskins, a 
 woman of strong character and superior mental abilities. He 
 had a minister for an ancestor for eight generations back, either 
 on the paternal or the maternal side. Thus he inherited his spir- 
 itual and intellectual tendencies from a long line of distinguished 
 progenitors. His aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, a woman of rare 
 intellectual attainments, was one of his early companions and ex- 
 erted a remarkable influence over his development. 
 
 Emerson began his studies at the public grammar school at 
 the age of eight, and four years later he attended the Latin 
 School. In 1 8 1 7 he entered Harvard. He was not distinguished 
 for proficiency in the studies of the curriculum, but he was superior 
 to most of his classmates in his knowledge of general literature. 
 He was especially interested in the study of Greek and history, 
 and much of his time was spent in the library. He graduated 
 in 1821. 
 
 For five years after leaving college Emerson taught school. 
 In 1823 he began to study for the ministry under Dr. Channing. 
 He was ''approbated to preach" in 1826 by the Middlesex 
 
 S 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Association of Ministers, but owing to ill health he did not enter 
 immediately upon his pubHc duties, but spent the following winter 
 in Florida. On his return from the South he preached in New 
 Bedford, Northampton, Concord, and Boston. On March ii, 
 1829, he was ordained as a colleague of the Rev. Henry Ware, 
 minister of the Second (Congregational Unitarian) Church in 
 Boston. Eighteen months later. Dr. Ware resigned and the 
 pastoral duties fell upon Emerson. 
 
 In September, 1829, he was married to Miss Ellen Louisa 
 Tucker. Their married life was brief, as Mrs. Emerson died of 
 consumption in February, 1832. 
 
 Emerson soon became troubled with doubts regarding his 
 duties as a minister, and as sincerity was always his guiding star, 
 he felt it his duty to proclaim these doubts to his congregation. 
 Accordingly in September, 1832, he delivered a sermon on the 
 Lord's Supper, in which he stated his scruples against adminis- 
 tering that rite. As he and his congregation differed radically 
 in these views, he resigned his pastorate and retired from public 
 preaching. 
 
 In 1833 he visited Europe for the first time. There he met 
 Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle, and formed with the last- 
 named a lifelong friendship which resulted in their famous 
 correspondence. 
 
 In the winter of 1833-34 he returned to the United States and 
 began his career as a lecturer. At this period of his hfe he Kved 
 with Dr. Ripley in the '' Old Manse," afterwards made famous 
 by Hawthorne. The first lectures he delivered were '' Water " 
 and '' The Relation of Man to the Globe." These were followed 
 by three lectures on his European tour. 
 
 In 1834 he began his series of biographical lectures on Michael 
 
INTRODUCTION, 7 
 
 Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Edmund Burke. 
 Those on Michael Angelo and George Fox were pubHshed later 
 in the '' North American Review." 
 
 In September, 1835, he was married to Miss Lydia Jackson 
 of Plymouth, Mass. They went to live in ''the plain, square, 
 wooden house," in Concord, v/hich was Emerson's home for the 
 rest of his life. 
 
 During the next three winters Emerson delivered three courses 
 of lectures in Boston : ten on English literature, in 1835 ; twelve 
 on the philosophy of history, in 1836 ; and ten on human culture, 
 in 1837. 
 
 In 1836 he wrote the ''Concord Hymn" for the dedication 
 ceremonies at the monument raised in honor of the Concord fight. . 
 It is one of the most beautiful poems he has written. 
 
 In 1836 his first volume, " Nature," — a philosophic essay full 
 of poetic thoughts, — was published anonymously. It was quite 
 different from anything Emerson had written before, and it did 
 not meet with a favorable reception. It was too vague for pop- 
 ular comprehension, and the time was not ripe for its full appre- 
 ciation. It took five years to sell five hundred copies of it in the 
 United States. 
 
 In 1836 the Symposium, or Transcendental Club, was organ- 
 ized, and Emerson became an active member. Among its other 
 members were James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, Bronson 
 Alcott, Elizabeth P. Peabody, and Margaret Fuller. They dis- 
 cussed, besides a variety of other topics, religious justice, truth, 
 mysticism, and the development of American genius. 
 
 From the last-named, subject Emerson probably received the 
 impulse which prompted him in 1837 to deliver his oration 
 entitled " The American Scholar " before the Phi Beta Kappa 
 
8 IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 Society at Cambridge. The address was received by the audi- 
 ence with the utmost enthusiasm and approval. 
 
 On July 24, 1838, Emerson delivered an oration on Hterary 
 ethics before the literary societies at Dartmouth College. 
 
 In the winter of 1838-39 he gave a course of ten lectures, — 
 "The Doctrine of the Soul,'' ''Home," ''The School," "Love," 
 "Genius," "The Protest," "Tragedy," "Comedy," "Duty," 
 " Demonology." 
 
 His next address was " The Method of Nature," delivered be- 
 fore the Society of the Adelphi in Waterville, Me., Aug. 1 1, 1841. 
 Other addresses delivered about this time were " Man, the Re- 
 former," "Lecture on the Times," "The Transcendentalist," and 
 "The Conservative." 
 
 In July, 1840, a transcendental magazine called "The Dial" 
 began its career under the editorship of Margaret Fuller. Emer- 
 son soon succeeded her as editor, and he contributed numerous 
 articles to the paper. It was not a financial success, and was 
 abandoned in 1844. 
 
 In 1 84 1 Emerson's first volume of collected essays was pub- 
 hshed. This volume now includes the following essays : " His- 
 tory," " Self-ReHance," " Compensation," " Spiritual Laws," 
 "Love," "Friendship," "Prudence," "Heroism," "The Over- 
 Soul," "Circles," "Intellect," "Art," "The Young American." 
 The last named was not published till 1844, but it now forms 
 part of the " First Series of Essays." 
 
 In February, 1842, Emerson wrote the pathetic "Threnody," 
 on the death of his dearly beloved son. In 1 844 he delivered, 
 in Concord, an address on the emancipation of the negroes in 
 the British West Indies. 
 
 In 1844 the "Second Series of Essays" appeared. It includes: 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 "The Poet,'^ ^^ Experience," '' Character,' ' "Manners," "Gifts," 
 "Nature," " PoUtics," " NominaUst and Realist," and "New 
 England Reformers." 
 
 In 1847 Emerson's first volume of poems was published. 
 This was chiefly a collection of poems which had appeared be- 
 fore, most of them in " The Dial." 
 
 In October, 1847, he sailed for Europe on an English lecture 
 tour. Many of the lectures he delivered on this trip were pub- 
 lished in a volume, " Representative Men," which appeared in 
 1850. It consists of a series of character sketches or mental 
 portraits, each designed to represent a class. The essays are : 
 "Lives of Great Men;" "Plato, or the Philosopher;" "Plato, 
 New Readings;" " Swedenborg, or the Mystic;" "Montaigne, 
 or the Skeptic;" "Shakespeare, or the Poet;" "Napoleon, or 
 the Man of the World ;" " Goethe, or the Writer." 
 
 In 1849 he returned to the United States. In 1850 Ke 
 signed the call for the first Woman's Rights Convention. In 
 1852, conjointly with James Freeman Clarke and William 
 Ellery Channing, he published the " Memoirs of Margaret 
 Fuller OssoU." 
 
 In January, 1855, he gave one of the lectures in a course of 
 Antislavery Addresses, delivered in Boston, and in the same 
 year he delivered an address before the Antislavery Party in New 
 York. The plan he proposed was to buy the slaves from the 
 owners and then liberate them. 
 
 " English Traits," the result of his observations in England, 
 
 i was pubhshed in 1856. In November, 1857, the "Atlantic 
 
 I Monthly " began its career in Boston with James Russell Lowell 
 
 as editor. Many of the former contributors of "The Dial" 
 
 wrote for this paper, among them Emerson, who contributed to 
 
lO INTRODUCTION, 
 
 it some of his best poems. The '' Essay on Persian Poetry " was 
 pubhshed in this paper in 1858. 
 
 " The Conduct of Life " appeared in i860. It contains essays 
 on '' Fate," '' Power," '' Wealth," '' Culture," '' Manners," '' Be- 
 havior," ''Worship," ''Beauty," "Illusions," " Considerations by 
 the Way." When we consider that twenty-five hundred copies 
 of this book were sold in a few days we perceive how much 
 Emerson had grown in favor in the twenty years since the publi- 
 cation of his first volume. 
 
 About this time a new paper called " The Dial " was started 
 in Cincinnati, for which Emerson wrote several articles. In 1862 
 he delivered an address at Boston on the Emancipation Procla- 
 mation. The " Boston Hymn" was read by him in Music Hall, 
 Jan. I, 1863. 
 
 " Voluntaries " was pubhshed in the "Atlantic Monthly " in 
 1863, and "Saadi" in 1864, "My Garden" in 1866, and "Ter- 
 minus " in 1867. These poems and others were collected in 
 1867 in a volume entitled " May Day and Other Pieces." 
 
 In 1866 Emerson received the degree of LL.D. from Har- 
 vard University, and in 1867 he was elected to their board of 
 overseers. In the same year he delivered an oration on the 
 Progress of Culture before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cam- 
 bridge. This year practically marked the close of his literary 
 career. Most of the works of note which appeared at a later 
 date were published from manuscript written by him at an ear- 
 lier period. 
 
 In 1868-70 he deUvered a series of lectures at Harvard Uni- 
 versity on the " Natural History of the Intellect." " Society and 
 Solitude," a new collection of essays, was published in 1870. The 
 essays include : " Society and Sohtude," " Civilization," "Art," 
 
INTRODUCTION, li 
 
 "Eloquence,'' "Domestic Life," "Farming," "Weeks and 
 Days," " Books," " Clubs," " Courage," " Success," " Old Age." 
 
 In 187 1, accompanied by his daughter Edith, he made a 
 trip to California. In July, 1872, his house caught fire. The 
 shock he received on this occasion greatly hastened his mental 
 decline. He was induced to go to Europe for his health, and 
 on his return he found his house perfectly restored to its for- 
 mer condition by friends who had paid for it by voluntary 
 subscriptions. 
 
 In December, 1874, he edited "Parnassus," a collection of 
 poems by British and American authors. In the same year 
 " Letters and Social Aims " appeared, containing the following 
 essays : " Poetry and Imagination," " Social Aims," " Elo- 
 quence," " Resources," " The Comic," " Quotation and Origi- 
 nality," " Progress of Culture," " Persian Poetry," " Inspiration," 
 " Greatness," " ImmortaHty." 
 
 On March 30, 1878, he delivered a lecture in the Old South 
 Church, Boston, on the "Fortune of the Republic." "The 
 Sovereignty of Ethics " was published in the " North American 
 Review" in 1878. In May, 1879, he read his address on "The 
 Preacher" in Divinity College, Harvard. In 1881 he read a 
 paper on Carlyle before the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
 essay on " Superlatives " appeared in the " Century " for 
 
 )ruary, 1882. 
 
 n April, 1882, Emerson caught a severe cold, which developed 
 
 ) pneumonia, of which he died on April 27. He was buried 
 
 Poncord near the graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau. 
 
 [n addition to many short poems hitherto unpublished, two 
 
 umes of essays, " Miscellanies " and " Biographical Sketches," 
 
 /e appeared since his death. 
 
12 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 To understand Emerson's works, we must inquire into his re- 
 ligious belief, since it permeates and colors all his writings. He 
 belongs to the school of transcendentalism, but this word admits 
 of many interpretations. Emerson himself defines it as '' modern 
 idealism." '*The materialist," he tells us, "insists on facts, on 
 history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of 
 man ; the idealist, on the power of Thought and of Will, on in- 
 spiration, on miracle, on individual culture. . . . The idealist 
 takes his departure from his consciousness and reckons the world 
 an appearance. . . . His thought, — that is the universe." 
 
 His precise attitude as to the conception of the Deity is diffi- 
 cult to define. He declares in one of his essays that '' there is a 
 sublime and friendly destiny by which the human race is guided 
 — the race never dying, the individual never spared — to results 
 affecting masses and ages." 
 
 Perhaps the following passage from Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 will give us as good a conception as any, of Emerson's reHgious 
 attitude : 
 
 " His creed was a brief one, but he carried it everywhere with 
 him. In all he did, in all he said, and, so far as all outward 
 signs could show, in all his thoughts, the indwelling Spirit was 
 his light and guide; through all nature he looked up to nature's 
 God ; and if he did not worship the ' man Christ Jesus ' as 
 churches of Christendom have done, he followed his footsj 
 so nearly that our good Methodist, Father Taylor, spoke of \ 
 as more like Christ than any man he had known." 
 
 But, whatever we may think of his theological views, we c 
 not fail to admire his ethics. He aimed to be a teacher of m 
 a reformer of reformers. He preached by life as well as by \ 
 a new code of morals. He was an ideahst, and he insisted 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 the application of idealism to the everyday matters of life. His 
 was a courageous and hopeful nature. He had unbounded con- 
 fidence in the power for good in the human soul, and he preached 
 untiringly the worth of the moral sentiment. He explored every 
 province of human Hfe and thought ; he lent his voice in behalf 
 of all great public measures ; and he never lost an opportunity 
 to prove himself a good citizen. His mission in life was to in- 
 spire others, to make life nobler, purer, loftier. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no writer regarding whom there is less con- 
 sensus of opinion than of Emerson. The judgments formed of 
 him are as various as the habits of thought in the critics. We 
 may regard him in three phases : Emerson the essayist, Emerson 
 the poet, and Emerson the philosopher and moral leader. In all 
 these phases we find the most diverse opinions and criticisms 
 regarding him. 
 
 Some say there never before was such a writer, poet, sage ; 
 others can find no sense in his writings and pronounce them 
 mere empty words. One critic accords him a high place as a 
 philosopher, but characterizes his poetry as inartistic and harsh ; 
 another ranks him among the greatest poets, and says of him, 
 ** The great poets addressed him as one of themselves ; he was 
 not of their audience, but of their choir;" while a third declares 
 that his poetry is as devoid of Hfe as his philosophy of wisdom. 
 We give a few of these criticisms by men whose opinions are 
 valued. 
 
 First let us hear what Oliver Wendell Holmes says: — 
 
 \ ''The poet in Emerson never acciurately differentiated itself 
 
 from the philosopher. . . . Emerson is so essentially a poet that 
 
 whole pages of his are like so many litanies of alternating chants 
 
 and recitations. His thoughts slip on and off their light rhythmic 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 robes just as the mood takes him. Many of the metrical pre- 
 ludes to his lectures are a versified and condensed abstract of the 
 leading doctrine of the discourse. Emerson was not only a poet, 
 but a very remarkable one. ... He was a man of intuition, of 
 insight, a seer, a poet with a tendency to mysticism which renders 
 him sometimes obscure and once in a while almost, if not quite, 
 unintelligible. He made desperate work now and then with 
 rhyme and rhythm, showing that though a born poet he was not 
 a born singer. . . . After all our criticisms we have to recognize 
 that there is a charm in his poems which cannot be defined any 
 more than the fragrance of a rose or a hyacinth. ... No man 
 would accuse Emerson of parsimony of ideas. He crams his 
 pages with the very marrow of his thought. But in weighing 
 out a lecture he was as punctiKous as Portia about the pound of 
 flesh. When the lecture had served its purpose it came before 
 the pubhc in the shape of an essay, but the essay never lost the 
 character it borrowed from the conditions under which it was 
 delivered ; it was a lay sermon." 
 
 Now let us listen to Matthew Arnold : — 
 
 ''And, in truth, one of the legitimate poets, Emerson, in my 
 opinion, is not. His poetry is interesting ; it makes one think, 
 but it is not the poetry of one of the born poets. ... I do not, 
 then, place Emerson among the great poets. But I go farther 
 and say that I do not place him among the great writers, the 
 great men of letters. . . . Emerson has passages of noble and 
 pathetic eloquence ; he has passages of shrewd and felicitous 
 wit ; he has crisp epigram ; he has passages of exquisitely touched 
 observation of nature. Yet he is not a great writer ; his style 
 has not the requisite wholeness of good tissue. . . . Emerson 
 cannot, I think, be called with justice a great philosophical 
 
IN TROD UCTION, 1 5 
 
 writer. He cannot build ; his arrangement of philosophical ideas 
 has no progress in it — no evolution ; he does not construct a 
 philosophy." 
 
 Lastly, the Rev. C. A. Bartol, criticising the critic, says : — 
 '' Mr. Arnold, who has forgot the dreams and got so bravely 
 over the supposed illusions of his youth, putting for them the 
 depressing doubts and hopeless speculations of his age; while he 
 prizes Emerson's spiritual substance, eschews as not good tissue 
 his Kterary style. Moses, David, Paul, James, and Jesus, as 
 reported by his amanuenses, under this self-confident critic's 
 cleaver, must lose their heads as writers and authors on the same 
 block. They, too, are no weavers of words whose work is figured 
 by the loom; but brief, sententious, pictorial, ejaculatory, a 
 quiver full of arrows being rather their type. Is there not a good 
 prophetic and oracular as well as a didactic or dialectic style? " 
 
 So we see that it is not safe to trust the opinion of any one 
 critic. It is not always easy to understand Emerson ; his sen- 
 tences are full of hidden meaning which cannot be detected at a 
 glance ; they must be read and re-read to perceive the full drift 
 of the thought ; but the thought in its fullness well repays us for 
 the trouble. With unbiased mind and earnest purpose we must 
 go to the storehouse of Emerson's works, take from thence all 
 the material we can gather, and with this as the basis, each 
 according to his understanding, form his own judgment. 
 
 ''The American Scholar" has been well called our literary 
 declaration of independence. In it Emerson deplores the ten- 
 dencies of Americans to devote their energies exclusively in the 
 direction of mechanical skill, and he fearlessly accuses them of 
 subserviency to European taste and style. 
 
i6 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 In treating of the education of the scholar, he recognizes three 
 great influences, — Nature, the Past with its accumulation ot 
 books, and Action. 
 
 Nature he regards as the most important influence. '' Know 
 thyself " and '' Study nature " are to him as one maxim. The 
 classifying instinct is one of the first to be developed ; we must 
 learn to see that many things are governed by one law. 
 
 In speaking of the influence of the past, he dwells chiefly on 
 books. The danger, he tells us, is in placing too much faith in 
 books. "Instead of Man Thinking we have the bookworm. 
 Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the 
 worst." 
 
 Action, though subordinate to the other influences, still is an 
 essential factor in education. '' It is the raw material out of 
 which the intellect molds her splendid product." He emphasizes 
 the dignity and necessity of labor, and spurns the idea that the 
 scholar must withdraw from the practical issues of life. Having 
 spoken of the scholar's education, he eloquently describes his 
 duties, which, he tells us, are all included in self-trust. If we 
 would be true to ourselves, we must never yield to the popular 
 cry, but manfully declare our independence, cost what it may, 
 and hold to our belief though the whole world decry it. ) 
 
 Lastly, he makes special application of these principles to the 
 American Scholar. (' He rejoices in the fact that people are be- 
 ginning to be interested in near and common things instead of in 
 the " doings in Italy and Arabia." '' What would we really know 
 the meaning of — the meal in the firkin, the milk in the pan, the 
 ballad in the street." And he closes in that hopeful strain, so 
 characteristic of Emerson, by expressing the utmost faith and 
 confidence in the American Scholar. 
 
v/ / 
 
 INTRODUCTION, i? 
 
 P'^erhaps no other work of Emerson's has been less criticised 
 li.>1iiore universally approved. James Russell Lowell, in speak- 
 ing of its delivery, says : ''It was an event without any former 
 parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in 
 the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What 
 crowded and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with 
 eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of 
 foregone dissent!'* 
 
 In this oration are to be found the germs of those thoughts 
 and principles which animate all the author's later works, — ^elf- 
 trust, self-culture, the dignity of labor, harmony and analogy in 
 nature, intellectual and moral independence. ) Emerson has been 
 accused of burying his thoughts so deep that common seekers 
 cannot find them ; but in this essay, at least, few passages can 
 be found which are not perfectly intelligible. Some of them, 
 indeed, are so exquisitely expressed as to constitute veritable 
 prose poems. The address, like all of Emerson's works, is full 
 of quotations and allusions ; yet Emerson is essentially original. 
 He is the champion of mental freedom, and continually urges 
 others to free themselves from the fetters of conventionality. 
 
 He practiced what he preached in this oration, and set the 
 example of ignoring European methods and manners. The 
 humblebee and the pine tree rather than the nightingale and the 
 asphodel furnished his models. 
 
 Let us rejoice that Emerson no longer need complain of our 
 subserviency to European taste. Since this address was deliv- 
 ered, we have had a host of original writers, — Cooper, Irving, 
 Hawthorne, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Whit- 
 man, and many others. The whole tendency of American liter- 
 ature has changed. As with one impulse it has grown more 
 
1 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 original and more American. Emerson's rich and vigorous fr^ sh- 
 ness has undoubtedly proved a stimulant to his contemporai^f s, 
 and to him, more than to any other, we are indebted for ti.e 
 development of American scholarship. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to explain the theme of ^^ Self-Reliance." 
 The title is self-explanatory. It is the doctrine which Emerson 
 preaches in " The American Scholar," reiterated and elaborated. 
 When we read there, '^ In self-trust all the virtues are compre- 
 hended," we strike the keynote of this later essay. /To the self- 
 reliant man everything is possible ; he may become a genius, a 
 leader of men, but without this one virtue, his case is hopeless.] 
 , Some of us, perhaps, cannot agree with Emerson when he tells 
 us it is right to ignore many of the ordinary duties of life for the 
 sake of maintaining our individuality ; but certain it is that con- 
 formity to the conventionalities of society stamps out from 
 many a man his originality and individuahty, and makes of him 
 merely one of a mass of men. Let us see how it is in our own 
 case. Suppose some one took enough interest in you or me to 
 write our biography. Would it not read somewhat like this? 
 
 '' Mr. was of such a nationality (Order). He belonged to 
 
 such a reHgious sect (Class). He followed such a profession or 
 engaged in such a business (Genus). He was a member of such 
 a club, was interested in such a movement, etc. (Species)." These 
 are all class distinctions, but where, we ask, is the attribute that 
 shows his individuality, that makes him himself and distinguishes 
 ''him from his companions B and C and D? Of this, alas! most 
 men's lives leave no record. 
 
 In times of revolution, when conventionalities are forcibly 
 thrust aside, our great men grow up like mushrooms in a night. 
 
' INTRODUCTION, 19 
 
 ib' we find in our own history that at no other time did our 
 pountry produce so many great men as during the Revolutionary 
 period and the period of the Civil War. Must we, then, wish for 
 war and turmoil, or shall we rather beheve with Emerson that if 
 we would but be as brave as he would have us, the most peaceful 
 times might fill our records with the achievements of men who 
 now sink into unknown graves? 
 
 In '' Compensation " we strike one of Emerson's deeper and 
 more philosophic veins, — that great theory of retribution on 
 earth which makes us pause and hold our breath. Is it indeed 
 true that " every excess causes a defect, every defect an excess? " 
 that ''for everything you have missed you have gained some- 
 thing else, and for everything you gain you lose something? " 
 that '' every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue 
 rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty?" 
 The universal acceptation of this doctrine would work a revolu- 
 tion in society : for would not the wicked man fear to do wrong 
 if he knew the punishment to be as inevitable as the laws of 
 nature, and not dependent upon a possible detection and convic- 
 tion by the judges of the world? And where would be the 
 motive for his crime if he felt that he already possessed his 'full 
 allotment of happiness, and that for everything he gained in one 
 direction he would lose something in another? And would not 
 the virtuous man be encouraged to persist all the more in his 
 virtue if he knew that for every sacrifice he made there would 
 be some reward, — a gain in character, if not a material com- 
 pensation ? 
 
 But the doctrine is one that is not easily learned. To be well 
 understood it must be carefully taught by inspired men, by men 
 
20 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 like Emerson himself : for all men have not his penetrating eye : 
 they cannot see below the surface, and so long as the wrongdoci' 
 succeeds in his wrongdoing and the wicked man is rich and sur- 
 rounded by friends, so long will he be envied. No matter what 
 his mental turmoil may be, no matter though the poorest beggar 
 in the street have greater peace of mind, to the world at large he 
 appears happy and successful, and men continue to look for ret- 
 ribution in a life to come. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.^ 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen, — 
 
 I GREET you on the recommencement of our literary year. 
 Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of 
 labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the 
 recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, hke the ancient 
 Greeks; 2 for parhaments of love and poesy, like the Trouba- 5 
 dours ;3 nor for the advancement of science, like our contempora- 
 ries in the British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday 
 has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of 
 letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. 
 As such, it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. 10 
 Perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will 
 be, something else ; when the sluggard intellect of this continent 
 will look from under its iron lids,^ and fill the postponed expecta- 
 tion of the world with something better than the exertions of 
 
 1 This oration was delivered in August, 1837, before the Cambridge chap- 
 ter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a society composed of honor students 
 graduated from the various colleges. 
 
 2 Public games were a religious institution in ancient Greece. The most 
 important were the Olympic games celebrated in honor of Zeus. At first 
 they comprised simply feats of strength, races, etc. ; but later it became cus- 
 tomary to indulge in intellectual exercises. Dramatic pieces and discourses 
 were delivered, and artists exhibited their work while the games were in 
 progress. 
 
 3 Minstrels of Provence, in southern France, in the eleventh, twelfth, 
 and thirteenth centuries. Their poetry was about love and gallantry or about 
 war and chivalry. They sang at public festivals or at the courts of great 
 barons or princes. They were also known as Provengal minstrels. 
 
 * Heavy lids. 
 
 21 
 
2 2 EMERSON. 
 
 mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprentic y 
 ship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. T) i 
 millions, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed 
 on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, 
 
 5 that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, 
 
 that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the 
 
 constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers 
 
 announce, shall one day be the polestar^ for a thousand years? 
 
 In this hope, I accept the topic which not only usage, but the 
 
 lo nature of our association, seem to prescribe to this day, — The 
 
 American Scholar. Year by year, we come up hither to read 
 
 one more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire what light new 
 
 days and events have thrown on his character, and his hopes. 
 
 It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiquity, 
 
 IS convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, 
 divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself ; 
 just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its 
 end. 
 
 The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and subHme ; that 
 
 20 there is One Man, — present to all particular men only partially, 
 or through one faculty ; and that you must take the whole soci- 
 ety to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, 
 or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and 
 statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social 
 
 25 state, these functions are parceled out to individuals, each of 
 whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other 
 performs his. The fable implies, that the individual, to possess 
 himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace 
 all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this original unit, this 
 
 30 fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has 
 been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled 
 into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one 
 in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, 
 
 1 The north star, or the star in the zenith of the north pole of the earth. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 23 
 
 and Strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a 
 neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. 
 
 Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. 
 The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is 
 seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry, s 
 He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks 
 into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman 
 scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden ^ by 
 the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The 
 priest becomes a form ; the attorney, a statute book ; the mechanic, 10 
 a machine ; the sailor, a rope of a ship. 
 
 In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated 
 intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking, In the degen- 
 erate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a 
 mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot 2 of other men*s thinking, is 
 
 In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the theory of his office 
 is contained. Him nature solicits with all her placid, all her 
 monitory pictures ; him the past instructs ; him the future invites. 
 Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist 
 for the student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar 20 
 the only true master? But the old oracle said, ''All things have 
 two handles: beware of the wrong one."^ In life, too often, 
 the scholar errs with mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us 
 see him in his school, and consider him in reference to the main 
 influences he receives. 25 
 
 I. The first in time and the first in importance of the influences 
 upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun ; ^ and, after 
 
 1 Tyrannized over. 2 Imitator. 
 
 3 Theteachingsof Epictetus(6o?-i20?),a Roman Stoic philosopher, have 
 been handed down by one of his pupils, and preserved in two treatises, Dis- 
 courses of Epictetus, and Enchiridion. From the latter of these works the 
 quotation is made. 
 
 4 The predicate must be supplied, — a construction which occurs fre- 
 quently in :his oration. 
 
24 EMERSON, 
 
 sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow ; ever the 
 grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding 
 and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle 
 most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is 
 5 nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an 
 end, to the inexpHcable continuity of this web of God, but always 
 circular 1 power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his 
 own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find, — 
 so entire, so boundless. Far, too, as her splendors shine, system 
 
 lo on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without center, 
 without circumference, — in the mass and in the particle, nature 
 hastens to render account of herself to the mind. Classification 
 begins. To the young mind, everything is individual, stands by 
 itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in 
 
 15 them one nature ; then three, then three thousand ; and so, tyran- 
 nized over by its own unifying ^ instinct, it goes on tying things* 
 together, diminishing anomahes, discovering roots running under 
 ground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower 
 out from one stem. It presently learns, that, since the dawn of 
 
 2o history, there has been a constant accumulation and classifying 
 of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that these 
 objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law 
 which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer dis- 
 covers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is 
 
 25 the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions 
 and intelligible method throughout matter ; and science is nothing 
 but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. 
 The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact ; one 
 after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to 
 
 30 their class and their law, and goes on forever to animate the last 
 fiber of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight. 
 
 Thus to him, to this schoolboy under the bending dome of 
 
 1 Circular, because without beginning and without end. 
 
 2 Uniting into one. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 25 
 
 day,i IS suggested, that he and it proceed from one root ; one is 
 leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. 
 And what is that Root ? Is not that the soul of his soul ? — A 
 thought too bold, — a dream too wild. Yet when this spiritual 
 light shall have revealed the law of more earthly natures, — when s 
 he has learned to worship the soul, and to see that the natural 
 philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic 
 hand, he shall look forward to an ever-expanding knowledge as 
 to a becoming creator.^ He shall see, that nature is the opposite 
 of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one 10 
 is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws 
 are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the 
 measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant 
 of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in 
 fine, the ancient precept, ''Know thyself,"^ and the modern 15 
 precept, '' Study nature," become at last one maxim. 
 
 II. The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, 
 the mind of the Past, — in whatever form, whether of literature, 
 of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best 
 type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the 20 
 truth, — learn the amount of this influence more conveniently, — 
 by considering their value alone. 
 
 The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age 
 received into him the world around ; brooded thereon ; gave it 
 the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It 25 
 came into him, life ; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, 
 short-lived actions ; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. It 
 came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead 
 fact ; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It 
 now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in propor- 30 
 
 1 " Dome of day," i.e., the sky. 
 
 2 *' Knowledge as to," ,etc., i.e., knowledge will become a creator for him. 
 
 3 A maxim of Chilo, one of the seven sages of Greece, who lived in the 
 sixth century B.C. • 
 
26 EMERSON. 
 
 tion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it 
 soar, so long does it sing. 
 
 Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, 
 of transmuting hfe into truth. In proportion to the complete- 
 
 5 ness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness 
 of the product be. But none is quite perfect. As no air 
 pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither 
 can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the 
 perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, 
 
 lo that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, 
 as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, 
 it is found, must write its own books ; or rather, each genera- 
 tion for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will 
 not fit this. 
 
 IS Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which at- 
 taches to the act of creation, — the act of thought, — is transferred 
 to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man : 
 henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and 
 wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as 
 
 20 love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, 
 the book becomes noxious : the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish 
 and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incur- 
 sions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received 
 this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. 
 
 25 Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not 
 by Man Thinking ; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, 
 who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of 
 principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it 
 their duty to accept the views, which Cicero,^ which Locke,^ 
 
 1 Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), Roman author, orator, and states- 
 man. He stands preeminent as a specimen of the highest moral and intel- 
 lectual culture of the ancient world. 
 
 2 John Locke (1632-1704), English philosopher and theologian. His aim 
 was to inquire into the original certainty and extent of hilman knowledge. 
 His most famous work is his Essay on the Human Understanding. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 27 
 
 which Bacon,! have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and 
 Bacon were only young men in libraries, ^ when they wrote these 
 books. 
 
 Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. 
 Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such ; not as s 
 related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a 
 sort of Third Estate^ with the world and the soul. Hence, the 
 restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibhomaniacs • of all 
 degrees. 
 
 Books are the best of things, well used ; abused, among the 10 
 worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all 
 means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I 
 had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction 
 clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a sys- 
 tem. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. 15 
 This every man is entitled to ; this every man contains within 
 him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. 
 The soul active sees absolute truth ; and utters truth, or creates. 
 In this action, it is genius ; not the privilege of here and there a 
 favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is 20 
 progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the insti- 
 tution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. 
 This is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me 
 down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks 
 forward : the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hind- 25 
 head : ^ man hopes : genius creates. Whatever talents may be, 
 if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his ; — 
 
 1 Francis Bacon (i 561-1626), English philosopher and statesman. He 
 tried to recall philosophy from speculation and use it as an interpreter of 
 nature. His most important work is the Novum Organum (New Method). 
 
 2 *' Young men in libraries," i.e., young men like them.selves. 
 
 ^ In some countries the population has been divided into three classes or 
 estites, with respect to political rights and powers, as nobility, clergy, and 
 people; lords temporal, lords spiritual, and commons, etc. The common 
 people represent the *' third estate." 
 
 ■^ The back part of the head. 
 
28 EMERSON, 
 
 cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are 
 creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words ; 
 manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or 
 authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense 
 5 of good and fair. 
 
 On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive 
 from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of hght, 
 without periods of soKtude, inquest, and self-recovery, and a 
 fatal disservice is done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy 
 
 loof genius by overinfluence. The hterature of every nation bears 
 me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized ^ 
 now for two hundred years. 
 
 Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly 
 subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instru- 
 
 isments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can 
 read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other 
 men's transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of 
 darkness come, as come they must, — when the sun is hid, and 
 the stars withdraw their shining, — we repair to the lamps which 
 
 20 were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, 
 
 where the dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian 
 
 proverb says, ''A fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful." 
 
 It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from 
 
 the best books. They impress us with the conviction, that one 
 
 25 nature wrote and the same reads. We read the verses of one of 
 the great Enghsh poets, of Chaucer,^ of Marvell,^ of Dryden,^ 
 
 1 Imitated Shakespeare. This is one of the many words which Emerson 
 has coined. 
 
 2 Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 ?-i40o), the ** Father of English Poetry," author 
 of the famous Canterbury Tales. 
 
 3 Andrew Marvell (1621-78), English poet, called the '* Bi;itish Aris tides " 
 on account of his great probity, the allusion being to the Athenian, statcbu. an 
 Aristides, surnamed ** the Just." The Emigrants in the Bermudas is Mar- 
 veil's greatest poem. 
 
 ^ John Dryden (1631-1700), English poet. He was apppinted poet liu-y 
 reate in 1668. One of his most popular poems is The Ode for St. Cecilia's Day. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 29 
 
 with the most modern joy, — with a pleasure, I mean, which is 
 in great part caused by the abstraction of all ti?ne from their 
 verses. There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, 
 when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hun- 
 dred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that s 
 which I also had well-nigh thought and said. But for the evidence 
 thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine of the identity of all 
 minds, we should suppose some preestablished harmony, some 
 foresight of souls that were to be, and some preparation of stores 
 for their future wants, like the fact observed in insects, who lay 10 
 up food before death for the young grub they shall never see. 
 
 I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exag- 
 geration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, that, 
 as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were 
 boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be 15 
 fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed, 
 who had almost no other information than by the printed page. 
 I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. 
 One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, 
 '^ He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry 20 
 out the wealth of the Indies." ^ There is then creative reading 
 as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor 
 and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes 
 luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly 
 significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. 25 
 We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision 
 is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, 
 perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will 
 read, in his Plato 2 or Shakespeare,^ only that least part, — only 
 
 1 Spanish proverb. 
 
 2 Plato (427-347 B.C.), Athenian author and philosopher, the father of 
 idealism. He was a disciple of Socrates, whose memory and teachings he 
 preserved in his Dialogues. 
 
 ^ William Shakespeare (i 564-1616), the greatest of English poets and 
 dramatists. His most popular plays are Merchant of Venice and Hamlet, 
 
30 ^ EMERSON. 
 
 the authentic utterances of the oracle ; — all the rest he rejects, 
 were it never so many times Plato's and Shakespeare^s. 
 
 Gf^i^Eirse, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to 
 a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by labo- 
 5 rious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable 
 office, — to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, 
 when they aim not to drill, but to create ; when they gather from 
 far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by 
 the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. 
 
 lo Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pre- 
 tension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though 
 of towns of gold, can never countervail i the least sentence or 
 syllable of wit.^ Forget this, and our American colleges will 
 recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every 
 
 15 year. 
 
 III. There goes in the world a notion, that the scholar should 
 be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as unfit for any handiwork or 
 pubHc labor, as a penknife for an ax. The so-called '^ practical 
 men " sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or 
 
 20 see^ they could do nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy, 
 — who are always, more universally than any other class, the 
 scholars of their day, — are addressed as women ; that the rough, 
 spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, but only a 
 mincing and diluted speech. They are often virtually disfran- 
 
 25 chised ; and, indeed, there are advocates for their celibacy. As 
 far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. 
 Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. With- 
 out it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen 
 into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of 
 
 30 beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, 
 but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The pre- 
 amble ^ of thought, the transition through which it passes from 
 
 1 Prevail against. 2 Sound sense. ^ Prelude, or preliminary. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 31 
 
 the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I 
 know, as I have Uved. Instantly we know whose words are 
 loaded with life, and whose not. 
 
 The world, — this shadow of the soul, or other me^ lies wide 
 around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts s 
 and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this 
 resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and 
 take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an 
 instinct, that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech. I 
 pierce its order ; I dissipate its fear ; I dispose of it within the 10 
 circuit of my expanding life. So much only of life as I know 
 by experience, so much of the wilderness have I vanquished and 
 planted, or so far have I extended my being, my dominion. I 
 do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves 
 and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is is 
 pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasper- 
 ation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true 
 scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss 
 of power. 
 
 It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her 20 
 splendid products. A strange process too, this, by which experi- 
 ence is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted 
 into satin. 1 The manufacture goes forward at all hours. 
 
 The actions and events of our childhood and youth, are now 
 matters of calmest observation. They lie like fair pictures in the 25 
 air. Not so with our recent actions, — with the business which 
 we now have in hand. On this we are quite unable to speculate. 
 Our affections as yet circulate through it. We no more feel or 
 know it, than we feel the feet, or the hand, or the brain of our 
 body. The new deed is yet a part of life, — remains for a time 30 
 immersed in our unconscious life. In some contemplative hour, 
 it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit, to become a 
 thought of the mind. Instantly, it is raised, transfigured ; the 
 
 1 The silkworm feeds on the mulberry leaf, which furnishes the material 
 from which it spins the silk that is manufactured into satin. 
 
 / 
 
32 EMERSON. 
 
 corruptible has put on incorruption.^ Henceforth it is an object 
 of beauty, however base its origin and neighborhood. Observe, 
 too, the impossibihty of antedating this act. In its grub state, it 
 cannot fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly, with- 
 
 s out observation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and is 
 an angel of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in our private 
 history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose, its adhesive, inert 
 form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empy- 
 rean. Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of 
 
 lo boys, and dogs, and ferules,^ the love of little maids and berries, 
 and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone 
 already ; friend and relative, profession and party, town and 
 country, nation and world, must also soar and sing. 
 
 Of course, he w^ho has put forth his total strength in fit actions, 
 
 IS has the richest return of wisdom. I will not shut myself out 
 of this globe of action, and transplant an oak into a flowerpot, 
 there to hunger and pine ; nor trust the revenue of some single 
 faculty, and exhaust one vein of thought, much like those Savoy- 
 ards,^ who, getting their livelihood by carving shepherds, shep- 
 
 20 herdesses, and smoking Dutchmen, for all Europe, went out one 
 day to the mountain to find stock, and discovered that they had 
 whittled up the last of their pine trees. Authors we have, in 
 numbers, who have written out their vein, and who, moved by 
 a commendable prudence, sail for Greece or Palestine, follow 
 
 25 the trapper into the prairie, or ramble round Algiers, to replenish 
 their merchantable stock. 
 
 If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous 
 of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in coun- 
 try labors ; in town, ^ in the insight into trades and manufactures ; 
 
 1 I Cor. XV. 54. 
 
 2 Corporal punishment at school administered with the ferule. 
 
 3 Inhabitants of Savoy, south of Lake Geneva, the loftiest mountain re- 
 gion of Europe. Wood-carving was one of their chief industries, for which 
 the forests of beech, birch, and pine, which have suffered deplorable clear- 
 ances, furnished ample material. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 33 
 
 in frank intercourse with many men and women ; in science ; in 
 art ; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by 
 which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn imme- 
 diately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through 
 the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life hes behind us s 
 as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones^ for the 
 masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges 
 and books only copy the language which the field and the work- 
 yard made. 
 
 But the final value of action, hke that of books, and better than lo 
 books, is, that it is a resource. That great principle of Undula- 
 tion^ in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of 
 the breath ; in desire and satiety ; in the ebb and flow of the 
 sea ; in day and night ; in heat and cold ; and as yet more 
 deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is known to us is 
 under the name of Polarity,^ — these ''fits of easy transmission 
 and reflection,'' as Newton^ called them, are the law of nature 
 because they are the law of spirit. 
 
 The mind now thinks ; now acts ; and each fit reproduces the 
 other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the 20 
 fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer appre- 
 hended, and books are a weariness, — he has always the resource 
 to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the 
 function. Living is the functionary. The stream retreats to its 
 source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to 25 
 think. Does he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? 
 He can still fall back on this elemental force of living them. 
 This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the grandeur 
 of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty of affection cheer 
 
 1 Headstones of a wall. 2 Wave motion. 
 
 3 That quality or condition of a body by virtue of which it exhibits oppo- 
 site or contrasted powers or properties in opposite directions. 
 
 * Sir Isaac Newton (i 642-1 727), English philosopher and mathematician. 
 He discovered the law of gravitation and is regarded as the greatest of natural 
 philosophers. His most important work was the Principia. 
 
34 EMERSON. 
 
 his lowly roof. Those " far from fame/' who dwell and act with 
 him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and pas- 
 sages of the day better than it can be measured by any public 
 and designed display. Time shall teach him, that the scholar 
 
 5 loses no hour which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the 
 sacred germ of his instinct, screened from influence. What is 
 lost in seemliness is gained in strength. Not out of those, on 
 whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes 
 the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out 
 
 loof unhandseled^ savage nature, out of terrible Druids^ and 
 Berserkirs^ come at last Alfred^ and Shakespeare. 
 
 I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of 
 the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is 
 virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for 
 
 15 unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome ; always 
 we are invited to work ; only be this Hmitation observed, that a 
 man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion 
 to the popular judgments and modes of action. 
 
 I have now spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by 
 2o books, and by action. It remains to say somewhat of his duties. 
 
 1 A handsel is a gift ; hence, ungifted or uncultured. 
 
 2 An order of priests among the ancient Celts of Gaul, Britain, and Ire- 
 land. They believed in one Supreme Being and in the transmigration of the 
 soul from one body to another. They were held in great awe, as disobedience 
 to their mandates was followed by excommunication, in those days a terrible 
 fate. They guarded the secret archives of the religion and acted as instruc- 
 tors and judges. Though they were well educated and understood many of 
 the sciences, they also practiced divination and magic, and sacrificed human 
 beings as part of their worship. The Druids reverenced the oak and the 
 mistletoe, and their most profound ceremonies were performed in the depths 
 of oak forests or in caves. 
 
 3 Berserkir, or Berserker, was a hero in Scandinavian mythology who 
 fought without armor, but overcame all opponents by his valor ; hence the 
 name Berserkirs was given to a class of warriors who fought naked under the 
 influence of frenzy. 
 
 * Alfred the Great (849-901), King of the West Saxons, a distinguished 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 35 
 
 They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be 
 comprised in self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to 
 raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appear- 
 ances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of obser- 
 vation. Flamsteed ^ and Herschel,^ in their glazed observatories, s 
 may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the results 
 being splendid and useful, honor is sure. But he, in his private 
 observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the 
 human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, — 
 watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts ; correcting lo 
 still his old records; — must relinquish display and immediate 
 fame. In the long period of his preparation, he must betray 
 often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the 
 disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must 
 stammer in his speech ; often forego the living for the dead, is 
 Worse yet, he must accept, — how often! poverty and solitude. 
 For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting 
 the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the 
 cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the 
 faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are 20 
 the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and 
 self-directed ; and the state of virtual hostihty in which he seems 
 
 scholar and patron of learning. He is characterized by historians as the 
 wisest, best, and greatest king that ever reigned in England. 
 
 1 John Flamsteed (i 646-1 719), first English astronomer royal under 
 Charles II. He was the first to explain the true principles of the equation 
 of time. His Historia Coelistis Britannicse, in which he determined the 
 position of nearly 3000 stars, was the first trustworthy catalogue of the stars. 
 
 2 Sir William Herschel (i 738-1822) was of German birth, but all his 
 astronomical work was done in England. He accomplished more than any 
 other man in the field of astronomy. He discovered the planet Uranus, and 
 made many remarkable observations upon the physical constitution of the 
 sun, and upon comets ; but his most valuable service to the cause of astron- 
 omy consisted in his accurate observations upon variable and binary stars. 
 He demonstrated the action upon the most distant members of the firmament 
 of the same '^chanical laws that bind together our solar system. 
 
36 EMERSON, 
 
 to Stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all 
 this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in 
 exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one, 
 who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and 
 s lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye. 
 He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity 
 that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and commu- 
 nicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, 
 and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human 
 
 to heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its 
 commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive 
 and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her 
 inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to- 
 day, — this he shall hear and promulgate. 
 
 IS These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence 
 in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he 
 only knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest 
 appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish ^ of a govern- 
 ment, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half 
 
 20 mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on 
 this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole ques- 
 tion is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost 
 in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief that 
 a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the 
 
 25 earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadi- 
 ness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself ; add obser- 
 vation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach ; and 
 bide his own time, — happy enough, if he can satisfy himself 
 alone, that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads 2 
 
 30 on every right step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts him 
 to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns, that in going 
 down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the 
 secrets of all minds. He learns, that he who has mastered any 
 
 1 An idol or object of blind devotion. 
 
 2 Follows. 
 
• THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 37 
 
 law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men 
 whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his 
 own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering 
 his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have 
 recorded that, which men in crowded cities find true for them s 
 also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confes- 
 sions, — his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, — until 
 he finds that he is the complement of his hearers ; — that they 
 drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature ; 
 the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to lo 
 his wonder he finds, this is the most acceptable, most public, and 
 universally true. The people dehght in it ; the better part of 
 every man feels, This is my music ; this is myseli 
 
 In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended, free should 
 the scholar be, ^ free and brave. Free even to the definition of is 
 freedom, '' without any hindrance that does not arise out of his 
 own constitution." Brave; for fear is a thing, which a scholar 
 by his very function puts behind him. Fear always springs from 
 ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquillity, amid dan- 
 gerous times, arise from the presumption, that, hke children and 20 
 women, his is a protected class ; or if he seek a temporary peace 
 by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, 
 hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes,^ peeping 
 into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep 
 his courage up. So is the danger a danger still ; so is the fear 25 
 worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look into its 
 eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping 
 of this lion, — which lies no great way back; he will then find 
 in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent ; he 
 will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can hence- 30 
 forth defy it, and pass on superior. The world is his, who can see 
 through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, 
 what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance, — 
 
 1 The ostrich, when hunted, thrusts its head into a bush and imagines 
 itself invisible because it cannot see the hunter. 
 
38 EMERSON. 
 
 by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already 
 dealt it its mortal blow. 
 
 Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. It is a mischievous 
 notion that we are come late into nature ; that the world was 
 5 finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in 
 the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we 
 bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint.^ They adapt them- 
 selves to it as they may ; but in proportion as a man has any- 
 thing in him divine, the firmament fl^ows before him and takes his 
 
 lo signet and form. Not he is great who can alter matter, but he 
 who can alter my state of mind. They are the kings of the 
 world who give the color of their present thought to all nature 
 and all art, and persuade men by the cheerful serenity of their 
 carrying the matter, that this thing which they do, is the apple 
 
 15 which the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe, and invit- 
 ing nations to the harvest. The great man makes the great 
 thing. Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.^ 
 Linnaeus^ makes botany the most alluring of studies, and wins 
 it from the farmer and the herb-woman ; Davy,^ chemistry ; and 
 
 1 ** It is flint," i.e., hard or unimpressionable as flint. 
 
 2 In Cervantes' Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Don Quixote's squire, relates 
 a story of a gentleman who, having invited a poor farmer to dine with him, 
 pressed him to take the head of the table. The countryman, piquing himself 
 on his good breeding, refused to take the place of honor, until his host, los- 
 ing all patience, exclaimed, *' Sit thee down, clodpole, for let me sit wherever 
 I will, that will still be the upper end and the place of worship to thee." 
 The same thought, modified in expression, is placed by diff"erent authors in 
 the mouths of various men, and it is uncertain to which of several famous 
 Scotchmen Emerson ascribes it. 
 
 3 Carolus Linnaeus, or Carl von Linne (1707-78), Swedish botanist. He 
 established natural science upon its modern basis, and was, in botany and 
 zoology, the foremost man of his time. His artificial system of plant classi- 
 fication, though now discarded, was simple and easily followed, and has 
 greatly facilitated the study of botany. 
 
 4 Sir Humphry Davy ( 1 778-1829), English chemist. His greatest 
 achievement was his account of the decomposition by galvanism of the fixed 
 alkalies, by which he proved that these alkalies are metallic oxides. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 39 
 
 Cuvier,! fossils. The day is always his, who works in it with 
 serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd 
 to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of 
 the Atlantic follow the moon.2 
 
 For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed, s 
 — darker than can be enlightened. I might not carry with me 
 the feehng of my audience in stating my own behef. But I have 
 already shown the ground of my hope, in adverting to the doc- 
 trine that man is one. I believe man has been wronged ; he 
 has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light, that can lead lo 
 him back to his prerogatives. Men are become of no account. 
 Men in history, men in the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, 
 and are called ''the mass " and ''the herd." In a century, in a 
 millennium, one or two men ; that is to say, — one or two approxi- 
 mations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in is 
 the hero or the poet their own green and crude being, — ripened ; 
 yes, and are content to be less, so that may attain to its full 
 stature. What a testimony, — full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne 
 to the demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor 
 partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief. The poor and 20 
 the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity, for 
 their acquiescence in a pohtical and social inferiority. They are 
 content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great person, 
 so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature 
 which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified. 25 
 They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be 
 their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their 
 downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish 
 to add one drop of blood to make that great heart beat, those 
 
 1 George Cuvier (1769--1832), French naturalist. He first applied to 
 zoology the natural method, and founded a system of classification of animals 
 based on their anatomical structure. He is regarded as the founder of the 
 science of comparative anatomy. 
 
 2 The attraction of the moon heaps up the waters of the sea into a broad, 
 low wave, the passage of which forms the ebb and flow of the tide. 
 
40 EMERSON. 
 
 giant sinews combat and conquer. He lives* for us, and we live 
 in him. 
 
 Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power ; 
 and power because it is as good as money, — the ''spoils," so 
 
 5 called, '' of office." And why not? for they aspire to the highest, 
 and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake 
 them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap to the true, and 
 leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to 
 be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. 
 
 lo The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the 
 upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strown^ along the 
 ground. The private Hfe of one man shall be a more illustrious 
 monarchy, — more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene 
 in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For 
 
 IS a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of 
 all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only 
 done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for my- 
 self. The books which once we valued more than the apple 
 of the eye, we have quite exhausted. What is that but saying, 
 
 2c that we have come up with the point of view which the uni- 
 versal mind took through the eyes of one scribe ; we have 
 been that man, and have passed on. First, one ; then another ; 
 we drain all cisterns, and, waxing greater by all these supplies, 
 we crave a better and more abundant food. The man has 
 
 25 never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be 
 enshrined in a person, who shall set a barrier on any one side to 
 this unbounded, unboundable empire. It is one central fire, 
 which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna,^ lightens the capes 
 of Sicily ; and, now out of the throat of Vesuvius,^ illuminates 
 
 30 the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which 
 
 1 Strewn. 
 
 2 A celebrated volcanic mountain of Sicily, the largest island in the Medi- 
 terranean Sea. 
 
 3 A famous volcano, the most active in Europe, situated near Naples, the 
 largest town in Italy. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 41 
 
 beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates 
 all men. 
 
 1/ 
 
 But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of 
 the Scholar. I ought not to delay longer to add what I have to 
 say, of nearer reference to the time and to this country. s 
 
 Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas 
 which predominate over successive epochs, and there are data 
 for marking the genius of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now 
 of the Reflective or Philosophical age. With the views I have 
 intimated of the oneness or the identity of the mind through all 10 
 individuals, I do not much dwell on these differences. In fact, 
 I believe each individual passes through all three. The boy is a 
 Greek ; the youth, romantic ; the adult, reflective. I deny not, 
 however, that a revolution in the leading idea may be distinctly 
 enough traced. is 
 
 Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion.^ Must that 
 needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical; we are embarrassed 
 with second thoughts ; we cannot enjoy anything for hankering 
 to know whereof the pleasure consists ; we are lined with eyes ; 
 we see with our feet ; the time is infected with Hamlet's unhap- 20 
 piness, — 
 
 ^' Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." ^ 
 
 Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. Would 
 we be blind? Do we fear lest we should outsee nature and God, 
 and drink truth dry? I look upon the discontent of the literary 25 
 class, as a mere announcement of the fact, that they find them- 
 selves not in the state of mind of their fathers, and regret the 
 coming state as untried ; as a boy dreads the water before he 
 has learned that he can swim. If there is any period one would 
 desire to be born in, — is it not the age of Revolution ; when the 30 
 old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared ; 
 
 1 Literally, turning inward ; hence, reflection. 
 
 2 Shakespeare's Hamlet, act iii, sc. I. 
 
42 EMERSON. 
 
 when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope ; 
 when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the 
 rich possibilities of the new era ? This time, like all times, is a 
 very good one, if we but know what to do with it. 
 
 5 I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming 
 days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through 
 philosophy and science, through church and state. 
 
 One of these signs is the fact, that the same movement which 
 effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the 
 
 lo state, assumed in Hterature a very marked and as benign an 
 aspect. Instead of the sublime and beautiful ; the near, the low, 
 the common, was explored and poetized. That, which had been 
 negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing 
 and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, 
 
 IS is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts. The Hter- 
 ature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the 
 street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. 
 It is a great stride. It is a sign, — is it not? of new vigor, when 
 the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run 
 
 20 into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, 
 the romantic ; what is doing in Italy or Arabia ; what is Greek 
 art, or Proven9al minstrelsy ; I embrace the common, I explore 
 and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight 
 into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. 
 
 25 What would we really know the meaning of ? The meal in the 
 firkin ; the milk in the pan ; the ballad in the street ; the news 
 of the boat ; the glance of the eye ; the form and the gait of the 
 body ; — show me the ultimate reason of these matters ; show 
 me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as 
 
 30 always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature ; 
 let me see every trifle bristhng with the polarity that ranges it 
 instantly on an eternal law ; and the shop, the plow, and the 
 leger, ^ referred to the hke cause by which light undulates and 
 poets sing ; — and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and 
 
 1 Old form of *' ledger." 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 43 
 
 lumber room, but has form and order ; there is no trifle ; there is 
 no puzzle ; but one design unites and animates the farthest pin- 
 nacle and the lowest trench. 
 
 This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith/ Burns,^ Cow- 
 per,3 and, in a newer time, of Goethe,^ Wordsworth,^ and Car- s 
 lyle.^ This idea they have differently followed and with various 
 success. In . contrast with their writing, the style of Pope,"^ of 
 Johnson,^ of Gibbon,^ looks cold and pedantic. This writing is 
 blood- warm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not 
 less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near ex- lo 
 plains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to 
 all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful 
 
 1 Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74), Irish poet, historian, and novelist. The 
 charm of his poetry lies in the fact that he enlists simple and universal feel- 
 ings in behalf of the moral principle he seeks to establish. His best known 
 poem is The Deserted Village, and his famous and only novel. The Vicar of 
 Wakefield. 
 
 2 Robert Burns (1759-96), Scottish poet, the poet of the people and of 
 homely human nature, Tam O'Shanter, and The Cotter's Saturday Night 
 are his most noted poems. 
 
 3 William Cowper (i 731-1800), English poet of simple human affections. 
 He is best known by The Task, and Table Talk. 
 
 4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (i 749-1832), Germany's greatest philo- 
 sophical poet. His masterpieces are Faust, and Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 5 William Wordsworth (i 770-1850), English poet of nature and of man. 
 His longest poems are The Prelude, and The Excursion. 
 
 ^ Thomas Carlyle (i 795-1881), British essayist and historian, noted for 
 his deep insight into the nature of things. His most famous works are 
 History of the French Revolution, and Sartor Resartus. 
 
 "7 Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English poet. Pope was a critical poet 
 of no great originality. He cast other men's thoughts into finished verse. 
 His most noted works are the Essay on Man, and the Dunciad. 
 
 8 Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English miscellaneous writer, author of the 
 didactic novel Rasselas and of the Dictionary of the English Language. He 
 was a man of wonderful conversational powers, and his language is con- 
 densed and well-balanced like Pope's. 
 
 ^ Edward Gibbon (1737-94), English historian. His language is elab- 
 orate but he displays little sympathy with humanity. His great work is The 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 
 
44 EMERSON. 
 
 in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of 
 the modems, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the 
 ancients. 
 
 There is one man of genius, who has done much for this 
 5 philosophy of hfe, whose literary value has never yet been rightly 
 estimated ; — I mean Emanuel Swedenborg.^ The most imagi- 
 native of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, 
 he endeavored to ingraft a purely philosophical Ethics on the 
 popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt, of course, 
 
 lo must have difficulty, which no genius could surmount. But he 
 saw and showed the connection between nature and the affec- 
 tions of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual char- 
 acter of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his 
 shade-loving muse^ hover over and interpret the lower parts of 
 
 IS nature ; he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to 
 the foul material forms, and has given in epical parables^ a the- 
 ory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean and fearful things. 
 
 Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous polit- 
 ical movement, is the new importance given to the single person. 
 
 20 Everything that tends to insulate the individual, — to surround 
 him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel 
 the world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign 
 state with a sovereign state ; — tends to true union as well as 
 greatness. '^ I learned," said the melancholy Pestalozzi,^ '^ that 
 
 25 no man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to help any 
 
 1 Emanuel Swedenborg (i 688-1 772), founder of the New Jerusalem 
 Church. He first applied himself to the problem of discovering the nature 
 of the soul and spirit by anatomicsil studies, but a change came over him 
 which made of the scientific inquirer a supernatural prophet. 
 
 2 An inspiring power. 
 
 3 An epic is a poem about heroic or great events ; a parable is a moral 
 fable or an allegory ; hence, allegorical relations of great events or things. 
 
 ^ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), Swiss educational reformer, 
 and author of Leonard and Gertrude. He was deeply in earnest in his work 
 and spent his life with his pupils, sharing in their sufferings as well as in 
 their play. 
 
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 45 
 
 Other man." Help must come from the bosom alone. The 
 scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability 
 of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the 
 future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be 
 one lesson more than another, which should pierce his ear, it is, s 
 The world is nothing, the man is all ; in yourself is the law of all 
 nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends ; in 
 yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know 
 all, it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, 
 this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all lo 
 motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American 
 Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of 
 Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected 
 to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make 
 the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indo- is 
 lent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The 
 mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon 
 itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and the com- 
 plaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon 
 our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all 2c 
 the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, — 
 but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles 
 on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die 
 of disgust, — some of them suicides. What is the remedy? They 
 did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now 25 
 crowding to the barriers for the career, do not yet see, that, if the 
 single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there 
 abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience, — pa- 
 tience ; — with the shades ^ of all the good and great for company ; 
 and for solace, the perspective of your own infinite life ; and for 30 
 work, the study and the communication of principles, the making 
 those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not 
 
 1 Spirits or spiritual influence ; so called because it was formerly believed 
 that the soul, after its separation from the body, was perceptible to the sight, 
 but not to the touch, in which respect it resembled a shadow or shade. 
 
46 EMERSON. 
 
 the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit ; — not to be 
 reckoned one character ; — not to yield that peculiar fruit which 
 each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, 
 in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to 
 
 s which we belong ; and our opinion predicted geographically, as 
 the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and friends, — please 
 God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet ; we 
 will work with our own hands ; we will speak our own minds. 
 The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, 
 
 lo and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of 
 man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. 
 A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes 
 himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 "iVi? U qucesiveris extras ' 
 
 / 
 
 '* 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, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still," 
 
 Ep, to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Mart's Fortune, 
 
 1 '* Do not seek for anything outside of thyself." 
 
 2 Whether. 
 
 47 
 
Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
 Suckle him with the she- wolfs teat; 
 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
 Power and speed be hands and feet. 
 
 48 
 
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 instill is of more value than any 
 thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to s 
 beheve 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 ;i 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. FamiHar as the voice of the lo 
 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 luster of the firma- is 
 ment^ 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 spon- 20 
 taneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most^ 
 when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-mor- 
 
 1 Opinion. 2 See Note 2, p. 29. 
 
 3 John Milton (1608-74), one of the greatest and most original of English 
 poets, author of Paradise Lost. 
 
 * The heavens or canopy in which the stars appear to be placed ; hence, 
 ' to carry out the metaphor, the firmament, rather than the world, of bards 
 j and sages. 5 '< Then most," i.e., most at that time. 
 
 4 49 
 
50 EMERSON. 
 
 row 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 
 5 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 nour- 
 ishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on 
 that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power 
 
 10 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 
 
 IS 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 2 it be faith- 
 fully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest 
 
 20 by cowards. A man is reHeved 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. 
 
 25 ^ Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron string. Ac- 
 cept the place the divine providence has found for you, the so- 
 ciety 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 abso- 
 
 30 lutely 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 
 
 1 Image. 
 
 2 *' Proportionate," etc., i.e., of correct proportions and gf good results, f 
 so long as. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 51 
 
 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 s 
 and behavior of children, babes, and even' brutes ! That divided 
 and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arith- 
 metic has computed the strength and means opposed to our pur- 
 pose, these 2 have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as 
 yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are dis- 10 
 concerted. Infancy conforms to nobody : all conform to it, so 
 that one babe commonly makes four or five ^ out of the adults 
 who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puber- 
 ty^ and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and 
 made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by^ is 
 if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, 
 because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next 
 room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he 
 knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, 
 then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. 20 
 
 The nonchalance 5 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 
 parlor what the pit is in the playhouse ; ^ independent, irresponsi- 
 ble, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass 25 
 by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, 
 
 1 The confused or formless elementary state in which the universe is 
 supposed to have existed before order was developed ; hence, disorder in 
 general. 
 
 2 Children, babes, and brutes. 3 Supply '' babes." 
 4 The age of maturity. 5 Indifference. 
 
 6 In the early theaters the floor of the house, below the level of the stage, 
 was known as the pit. The seats in this part were the cheapest in the house, 
 and the people who assembled there were of a class who did not care much 
 what others thought of them, but shouted and stamped their applause and 
 hissed their disapproval, as the occasion seemed to demand. 
 
52 EMERSON. 
 
 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 
 
 s were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has 
 once acted or spoken with eclat^ 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^ 
 
 lo can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again 
 from the s^me unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted inno- 
 cence, 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. 
 
 IS These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow 
 faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society every- 
 where is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its 
 members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the mem- 
 bers agree, for the better securing of his bread to each share- 
 
 20 holder, 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 
 
 25 of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.^ Nothing is at 
 
 1 A French word (pronounced a kla') meaning brilliancy of success which 
 attracts applause. 
 
 2 Oblivion ; from the ancient Greek myth of Lethe, the personification of 
 oblivion, or from the river Lethe, in the lower world, of which the souls of 
 the departed drank and forgot all they had done in the upper world. 
 
 3 He who. 
 
 ^ One who does not conform to established opinions or creeds. 
 
 ^ Undying fame. A branch or leaf of the palm was anciently worn as a 
 symbol of victory or rejoicing. 1 
 
 6 '' Explore," etc., i.e., himself investigate if the thing so called be really 1 
 goodness. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 53 
 
 last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you 
 to yourself,^ and you shall have the suffrage ^ of the world. I 
 remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted 
 to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me 
 with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, 5 
 What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I Kve 
 wholly from within? my friend suggested, — ''But these impulses 
 may be from below, not from above." I rephed, ''They do not 
 seem to me to be such ; but if I am the Devil's child, I will Hve 
 then from the Devil.'' No law can be sacred to me but that of 10 
 my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transfer- 
 able to that or this ; the only right is what is after my constitu- 
 tion, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry him- 
 self in the presence of all opposition, as if everything were titular 
 and ephemeral^ but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we is 
 capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead insti- 
 tutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and 
 sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital,^ 
 and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear 
 the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?^ If an angry bigot 20 
 assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with 
 his last news from Barbadoes,^ why should I not say to him, 
 " Go love thy infant ; love thy wood-chopper : be good-natured 
 and modest : have that grace ; and never varnish your hard, un- 
 charitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk 25 
 a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough 
 and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer 
 than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some 
 
 1 ''Absolve," etc., i.e., justify yourself. 2 Approval. 
 
 3 "Titular and ephemeral," i.e., existing in name only and of short 
 duration. 4 <' i ought," etc., i.e., I ought to act as if I were alive. 
 
 5 Be tolerated. 
 
 6 An island in the Atlantic Ocean, belonging to Great Britain, one of the 
 Lesser Antilles. The inhabitants are mainly negroek who, prior to 1834, 
 were slaves. 
 
54 EMERSON. 
 
 edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be 
 preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that 
 pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and 
 brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels 
 5 of the doorpost, Whini}- I hope it is somewhat better than 
 whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Ex- 
 pect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude com- 
 pany. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of 
 my obhgation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they 
 
 lo my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge 
 the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not be- 
 long to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of 
 persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold ; 
 for them I will go to prison, if need be ; but your miscellaneous 
 
 IS popular charities ; the education at college of fools ; the build- 
 ing of meetinghouses to the vain end to which many now stand ; 
 alms to sots ; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies ; — though I 
 confess with shame I sometimes succumb and g\N^ the dollar, it 
 is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood 
 
 20 to withhold. 
 
 Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than 
 the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is 
 called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much 
 as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily nonappearance on 
 
 25 parade. Their works 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 for itself and not for a spectacle. I much 
 prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and 
 
 30 equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it 
 to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.^ I 
 
 1 Emerson means to convey the idea that he would rather have his actions 
 ascribed to mere caprice than to be compelled to spend his time in explaining 
 them. 
 
 2 A use of the sign for the thing signified. '' Not to need diet and bleed- 
 
SELF^RELIA NCE. 5 5 
 
 ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal 
 from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes 
 no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are 
 reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege 
 where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may s 
 be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or 
 the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. 
 
 What I must do is all that concerns rne, not what the people 
 think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual 
 life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and 10 
 meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those 
 who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. 
 It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy 
 in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is he who 
 in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the inde- 15 
 pendence of solitude. 
 
 The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead 
 to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs 
 the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead 
 church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great 20 
 party either for the government or against it, spread your table 
 like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty 
 to detect the precise man^ you are. And, of course, so much force 
 is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I 
 shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reenforce yourself. 25 
 A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of 
 conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I 
 hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency 
 of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know before- 
 hand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? 30 
 Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the 
 
 ing " means not to be unhealthy, a special course of diet being frequently 
 prescribed in cases of illness, and bleeding having been one of the first 
 resources of the old medical practitioners. 
 
 1 ** The precise man," i.e., precisely what kind of a man. 
 
$6 EMERSON. 
 
 grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not 
 know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — 
 the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He 
 is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench i are the emp- 
 
 s tiest affectation. Well,! most men have bound their eyes with 
 one or another handkerchief,^ and attached themselves to some 
 one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes 
 them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false 
 in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their 
 
 10 two is not the real two, their four not the real four ; so that 
 every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin 
 to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in 
 the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come 
 to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the 
 
 15 gentlest asinine^ expression. There is a mortifying experience 
 in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the gen- 
 eral history; I mean ''the foolish face of praise,'' the forced 
 smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease 
 in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The mus- 
 
 20 cles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping 
 willfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the 
 most disagreeable sensation. 
 
 For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. 
 And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. 
 
 25 The bystanders look askance on him in the pubHc street or in 
 the friend's parlor. If this aversation^ had its origin in con- 
 tempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a 
 sad countenance ; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their 
 sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the 
 
 30 wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of 
 the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the 
 
 1 Court of justice. 
 
 2 An extension of the metaphor of the blindman's-bufif. 
 
 3 Like an ass, or stupid. 
 
 4 A turning away from. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 57 
 
 college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world 
 to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is deco- 
 rous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable 
 themselves. But when to their feminine^ rage the indignation 
 of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are s 
 aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bot- 
 tom of society is made to growl and mow,^ it needs the habit 
 of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no 
 concernment. 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consist- i 
 ency ; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of 
 others have no other data for computing our orbit ^ than our past 
 acts, and we are loth to disappoint them. 
 
 But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? 
 Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict i 
 somewhat^ you have stated in this or that public place? Sup- 
 pose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to 
 be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely 
 even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment 
 into the thousand-eyed^ present, and live ever in a new day. In 21 
 your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity ; yet 
 when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart 
 and hfe, though they should clothe God with shape and color. 
 Leave your theory, as Joseph^ his coat in the hand of the harlot, 
 and flee. 2 
 
 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of httle minds, adored 
 by Httle statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consist- 
 ency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well 
 concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you 
 think now in hard^ words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow 3< 
 
 1 Feminine, because decorous and timid. 2 Xo make grimaces. 
 
 3 Course or path in life. 4 Something. 
 
 5 Thousand-eyed, because there may be thousands of witnesses to things 
 that happen in the present, while for the past we must rely on memory and 
 history. 6 Qen. xxxix. 12. '^ Strong and enduring. 
 
58 EMERSON. 
 
 thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you 
 said to-day. — ''Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood." — 
 Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was mis- 
 understood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Coper- 
 
 5 nicus, and Galileo, and Newton,^ and every pure and wise spirit 
 that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 
 
 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 Himmaleh^ are insignificant in the curve of the 
 
 lo sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A 
 character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza ; — read it for- 
 ward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.^ In this 
 pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record 
 
 1 Pythagoras (582-507 B.C.), a famous Greek philosopher, and leader in 
 a movement for ethical and religious reform. He died in banishment. 
 Socrates (469-399 B.C.), one of the most famous of Athenian philosophers 
 and teachers of truth, virtue, and self-control, was ridiculed, imprisoned, and 
 died a martyr; Jesus was crucified; Martin Luther (i 483-1 546), a German 
 Augustine monk, protested against certain abuses that had grown up within 
 the Catholic Church, and became the leader of the Reformation or religious 
 revolution. He was excommunicated by the church and outlawed by the 
 state. Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), a Polish astronomer, was the 
 originator of the theory that the planets revolve around the sun. This theory 
 was opposed to the prejudices and dogmas of the time and was not generally 
 accepted until many years after his death. Galileo, or Galilei (i 564-1 642), 
 was a famous Italian astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor of 
 the refracting telescope by means of which he discovered the mountainous 
 character of the moon, the phases of the planet Venus, the satellites of Jupi- 
 ter, and the rings of Saturn. His physical discoveries were heard with in- 
 credulity by the physicists of his time, and he was subjected to persecution 
 and imprisonment by the Inquisition because of them. Sir Isaac Newton 
 (1642-172 7), the great English philosopher and mathematician who discov- 
 ered the law of gravitation. His teachings were hotly contested and only 
 adopted after many years. 2 Digressions. 
 
 3 Andes and Himmaleh (Himalaya), the great mountain ranges of South 
 America and Asia respectively. 
 
 4 It is the palindrome, not the acrostic or Alexandrian stanza, which has 
 this peculiarity. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 
 
 day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospec 
 I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it . 
 and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with thv 
 hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave 
 that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also.^ We pass s 
 for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine 
 that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, 
 and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. 
 
 There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so 
 they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, lo 
 the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These 
 varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of 
 thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the 
 best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. ^ See the line from 
 a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tend- is 
 ency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain 
 your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. 
 Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify 
 you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm 
 enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done 20 
 so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, 
 do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. 
 The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of 
 virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of 
 the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagina- 25 
 tion ? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories 
 behind. They shed an united hght on the advancing actor. 
 He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which 
 throws thunder into Chatham's^ voice, and dignity into Wash- 
 
 1 '^ Without prospect," etc., i.e., without looking backward or forward. 
 
 2 Emerson means to express by this whole passage that our lives should 
 be natural, not artificial or conventional. 
 
 3 The short, oblique courses back and forth by which a sailing vessel ad- 
 vances against a li/eadwind. 
 
 * ^William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-78), one of the most distinguished 
 
 : / 
 
EMERSON. 
 
 6 port, and America into Adams's ^ eye. Honor is vener- 
 
 . to us because it is no ephemeris.^ It is always ancient 
 
 irtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We 
 
 love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love 
 
 5 and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of 
 an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. 
 
 I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and 
 consistency. Let the words be gazetted^ and ridiculous hence- 
 forward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle 
 
 lo from the Spartan fife.^ Let us never bow and apologize more. 
 A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to 
 please him ; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will 
 stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I 
 would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth 
 
 IS mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the 
 face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot 
 of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor 
 working wherever a man works ; that a true man belongs -to no 
 other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, 
 
 20 there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. 
 Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or 
 of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing 
 else ; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so 
 much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every 
 
 of English statesmen. He was possessed of great eloquence and all his 
 actions were impelled by deep patriotic feeling. 
 
 1 Samuel Adams (i 722-1 803), American statesman. Adams was a con- 
 spicuous agitator of the popular cause in America, a prominent member of 
 the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and one of the signers of the 
 Declaration of Independence. He is called the *' Father of the Revolution." 
 
 2 A journal or account of daily transactions. 
 
 3 Officially announced. 
 
 4 The Spartans of ancient Greece were especially noted for their courage 
 and valor. The signal of attack in battle was given by the music of the fife 
 or flute. Hence, '* instead of the gong," etc., instead of a mere summons to 
 dinner let us have something that will inspire us to bravery. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requu 
 spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his dcL 
 and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients, 
 man Csesar^ is born, and for ages after we have a Roman En 
 pire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave 5 
 to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible 2 
 of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man ; 
 as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony ;3 the Reformation, of 
 Luther; Quakerism, of Fox;* Methodism, of Wesley;^ Aboli- 
 tion, of Clarkson.^ Scipio, Milton called '' the height of 10 
 Rome ;"'^ and all history resolves itself very easily into the biog- 
 raphy 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 is 
 which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no 
 worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a 
 
 1 Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.), the great Roman general, one of the great- 
 est the world has ever seen, also preeminent as a statesman and as an orator. 
 After subduing Gaul he crossed the Rubicon against his enemies in Rome. 
 He became undisputed master of the known world, was made imperator for 
 life, and sought to promote the true interests of his country. He laid a strong 
 foundation to the imperial power of his successors. 
 
 2 '* Possible," i.e., that which it is possible for man to accomplish. 
 
 3 Saint Antony or Anthony (251-356?), a voluntary hermit of Upper 
 Egypt, founder of Monachism, the doctrine of a life of religious seclusion, 
 asceticism, and devotion. 
 
 4 George Fox (1624-91), an Englishman, founder of the Society of 
 Friends, or Quakers. 
 
 5 John Wesley (1703-91), an Englishman, founder of the religious sect 
 of the Methodists. 
 
 6 Thomas Clarkson (i 760-1 846), English philanthropist. He devoted 
 his life to the abolition of the slave trade and the relief of the oppressed. 
 Through his influence Parliament declared the slave trade illegal in 1807. 
 
 7 See Milton's Paradise Lost, Book IX, line 510. Publius Cornelius 
 Afrlcanus Scipio Major (237-183 ? B. C), the greatest Roman general before 
 CsBsar. By his defeat of Hannibal he ended the long struggle between 
 Rome and Carthage. 
 
EMERSON. 
 
 sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on 
 
 To him a palace, a statue, a costly book, have an alien 
 
 forbidding air, much Hke a gay equipage, and seem to say 
 
 .Ke 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 possession. The picture waits for my' verdict: 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 obsequious 
 
 ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane,^ 
 
 owes its popularity to the fact, 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 finds himself a true prince. 
 
 Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our 
 imagination plays us false. Kingdora and lordship, power and 
 estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward 
 in a small house and common day's work ; but the things of life 
 are the same to both ; the sum total of both is the same. Why 
 all this deference to Alfred,^ and Scanderbeg,^ and Gustavus ? ^ 
 Suppose they were virtuous ; did they wear out virtue ? As great 
 a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their pub- 
 lic and renowned steps. When private men shall act with origi- 
 nal views, the luster will be transferred from the actions of kings 
 to those of gentlemen. 
 
 The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so mag- 
 
 1 It is difficult to say where this fable originated. See the story of " The 
 Sleeper Awakened" in the Arabian Nights, and the introduction to Shake- 
 speare's Taming of the Shrew. 2 See Note 4, p. 34. 
 
 3 Scanderbeg (George Castriota, 1404 ?-68), an Albanian chief who ab- 
 jured Islamism, and successfully conducted several crusades against the 
 Turks. 
 
 4 Gustavus II (Gustavus Adolphus, 1 594- 1632), King of Sw^eden. Law, 
 order, and national spirit were encouraged during his reign, schools were 
 everywhere established, roads made, and foreign trade extended. He even 
 established model farms. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE 63 
 
 netized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal 
 symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The 
 joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, 
 the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law 
 of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse s 
 theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and 
 represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic ^ by which 
 they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right 
 and comeliness, the right of every man. 
 
 The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained 10 
 when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee?. 
 What is the aboriginal ^ Self, on which a universal reliance may 
 be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science- 
 baffling star, without parallax,^ without calculable elements, 
 which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure ac- is 
 tions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry 
 leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, 
 and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote 
 this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are 
 tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis 20 
 cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of 
 being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, 
 is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, 
 from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the 
 same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first 25 
 share the hfe by which things exist, and afterwards see them as 
 appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their 
 cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here 
 are the lungs ^ of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and 
 
 1 Hidden sign. 2 Primitive, first. 
 
 3 Apparent displacement of an object as observed from different points of 
 view. The parallax of a heavenly body is used in estimating its distance, and 
 decreases as the distance increases ; hence, the exact location of a star so far 
 distant as to have no parallax cannot be calculated. 
 
 * The source from which it draws breath; hence, the origin. 
 
64 EMERSON. 
 
 which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie 
 in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of 
 its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, 
 when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a 
 
 5 passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek 
 to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its 
 presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discrim- 
 inates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involun- 
 tary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions 
 
 10 a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, 
 but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to 
 be disputed. My willful actions and acquisitions are but roving ; 
 — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my 
 curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily 
 
 IS 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. If I see a trait, my 
 children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, 
 
 20 — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. 
 For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. 
 
 The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it 
 is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God 
 speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things ; 
 
 2s should fill the world with his voice ; should scatter forth light, 
 nature, time, souls, from the center, of the present thought ; and 
 new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is sim- 
 ple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, 
 teachers, texts, temples fall ; it lives now, and absorbs past and 
 
 30 future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by 
 relation to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved 
 to their center by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty 
 and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to 
 know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phrase ■ 
 
 35 ology of some old moldered nation in another country, in another 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 65 
 
 world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which 
 is its fullness and completion? Is the parent better than the 
 child into whom he has cast his ripened being ? Whence, then, 
 this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against 
 the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but s 
 physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light ; 
 where it is, is day ; where it was, is night ; and history is an im- 
 pertinence 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 10 
 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 to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the is 
 rose ; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a 
 leaf bud has burst, its whole life acts ; in the full-blown flower 
 there is no more ; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature 
 is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments ahke. But man 
 postpones or remembers ; he does not live in the present, but 20 
 with reverted^ eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches 
 that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He 
 cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the 
 present, above time.^ 
 
 This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects 25 
 dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology 
 of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not 
 always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We 
 are hke children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandaraes^ 
 and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and 30 
 character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact 
 words they spoke ; afterwards, when they come into the point of 
 
 1 See Note 3, p. 44. 2 Turned back. 
 
 3 That is, apart from time past or time to come. 
 ^ Old women ; grandmothers. 
 
66 EMERSON, 
 
 view which those had who uttered these sayings, they under- 
 stand them, and are willing to let the words go ; for, at any time, 
 they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live 
 truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be 
 
 5 strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new per- 
 ception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treas- 
 ures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be 
 as sweet as the murmiu* of the brook and the rustle of the corn. 
 And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains un- 
 
 lo said ; probably cannot be said ; for all that we say is the far-off 
 remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now 
 nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, 
 when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accus- 
 tomed way ; you shall not discern the footprints of any other ; 
 
 IS you shall not see the face of man ; you shall not hear any 
 name; — the 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 persons that ever existed 
 are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. 
 
 20 There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, 
 there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. 
 The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causa- 
 tion, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms 
 itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of 
 
 25 nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of 
 time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I think 
 and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, 
 as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what 
 is called death. 
 
 30 Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the 
 instant of repose ; it resides in the moment of transition from a 
 past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to 
 an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; 
 for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all 
 
 35 reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 67 
 
 Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self- 
 reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power 
 not confident but agent. ^ To talk of rehance is a poor external 
 way of speaking. Speak rather of that which reUes, because it 
 works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, s 
 though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must re- 
 volve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when 
 we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is 
 Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and per- 
 meable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and 10 
 ride ^ all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. 
 
 This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as 
 on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed One. 
 Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it con- 
 stitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into is 
 all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as 
 they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, elo- 
 quence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect 
 as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same 
 law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is 20 
 in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing 
 to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The gen- 
 esis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended 
 tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of 
 every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-suf- 25 
 ficing, and therefore self -relying soul. 
 
 Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit at home with 
 the cause. Let 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 shoes from off their feet, 30 
 for God is here within.^ Let our simplicity judge them, and our 
 
 1 Power not reliant but active. 
 
 2 *' Overpower," etc., i.e., have power over and rule. 
 
 3 The Mohammedans are obliged to take off their shoes before they are 
 permitted to enter a mosque. 
 
68 EMERSON. 
 
 docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and 
 fortune beside our native riches. 
 
 But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, 
 nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in 
 
 5 communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to 
 beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. 
 I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any 
 preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, 
 begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always 
 
 lo sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or 
 father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said 
 to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have 
 all men's.^ Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, 
 even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your, isolation 
 
 15 must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. 
 At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune 
 you with emphatic trifles. Friend, cHent, child, sickness, fear, 
 want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, — 
 ''Come out unto us." But keep thy state ; come not into their 
 
 20 confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them 
 by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through 
 my act. '' What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave 
 ourselves of the love." > 
 
 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and 
 
 25 faith, let us at least resist our temptations ; let us enter into the 
 state of war, and wake Thor and Woden,^ courage and constancy, 
 in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times 
 by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying 
 affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived 
 
 30 and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, 
 O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived 
 
 1 An allusion to the fact that all men are brothers. 
 
 2 In Norse mythology the god Woden was held to be all-powerful and 
 noted for his constancy, while his eldest son Thor, the god of thunder, was 
 the personification of strength and courage. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, ' 69 
 
 with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the 
 truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law 
 less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximi- 
 ties.^ I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my 
 family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these rela- 5 
 tions I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal 
 from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself 
 any longer for you, or you.^ If you can love me for what I am, 
 we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to de- 
 serve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. 10 
 I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly 
 before the sun and moon whatever inly^ rejoices me, and the 
 heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you ; if you are 
 not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. 
 If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to is 
 your companions ; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, 
 but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and 
 all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. 
 Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dic- 
 tated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, 20 
 it will bring us out safe at last. — But so may you give these 
 friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, 
 to save their sensibiHty. Besides, all persons have their moments 
 of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth ; 
 then will they justify me, and do the same thing. 25 
 
 The populace think that your rejection of popular standards 
 is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism ;'^ and the 
 bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild^ his 
 
 1 " I will," etc., i.e., I will agree to govern my conduct only according to 
 the dictates of my inner consciousness, of my soul's intuitive sense of right. 
 
 2 You in the singular, i.e., the particular person whom Emerson imagines 
 himself as addressing. 3 Within the soul. 
 
 4 The doctrine that Christians are freed from the moral law as set forth in 
 the Old Testament by the new dispensation of grace in the Gospel. 
 
 5 Cover or conceal. 
 
70 EMERSON, 
 
 crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two 
 confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven.^ 
 You may fulfill your round of duties by clearing yourself in the 
 direct^ or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied 
 
 s your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and 
 dog ; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also 
 neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have 
 my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of 
 duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can dis- 
 
 10 charge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. 
 If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its com- 
 mandment one day. 
 
 And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast 
 off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust 
 
 IS himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, 
 clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, 
 law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong 
 as iron necessity is to others! 
 
 If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by 
 
 20 distinction society^ he will see the need of these ethics. The 
 sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are be- 
 come timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, 
 afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our 
 age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and 
 
 25 women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see 
 that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, 
 have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force,' 
 and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our house- 
 keeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our mxarriages, 
 
 30 our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. 
 We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where 
 strength is born. 
 
 If oiu: young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose 
 all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If 
 
 1 Confessed. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 7^ 
 
 the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed 
 in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of 
 Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that 
 he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of 
 his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who s 
 in turn tries all the professions, who teains it, farms it^ peddles^ 
 keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, 
 buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, 
 like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. 
 He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not '' study- lo 
 ing a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives 
 already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let 
 a Stoic 2 open the resources of man, and tell men they are not 
 leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves ; that with 
 the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear ; that a man is 
 is the word made flesh,^ born to shed healing to the nations, 
 that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the mo- 
 ment he acts 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 20 
 to splendor, and make his name dear to all history. 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revo- 
 lution 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. 25 
 
 I. In what prayers do men allow themselves 1 ^ That which 
 they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer 
 
 1 '' Teams it," etc., i.e., drives a team or engages in farming as a profes- 
 sion. 
 
 2 A disciple of the philosopher Zeno, who founded a sect and taught that 
 men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and should sub- 
 mit uncomplainingly to the inevitable ; hence, the name is applied to any 
 one who professes to be indifferent to pleasure or pain. 
 
 3 See John i. 14. 
 
 ^ * In what prayers," etc., i.e., in what prayers do men allow themselves 
 to irdulge. 
 
72 EMERSON, 
 
 looks abroad arid asks for some foreign addition to come through 
 some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural 
 and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that 
 craves a particular commodity, — anything less than all good, — is' 
 5 vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts 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 meanness and 
 theft. It supposes dualism ^ and not unity in nature and con- 
 10 sciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not 
 beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the 
 farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower 
 • kneehng with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard through- 
 out nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's ''Bon- 
 is duca," 2 when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, 
 
 repHes, — 
 
 '^ His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 
 Our valors are our best gods. " 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is 
 2o the want of self-reliance : it is infirmity of will. Regret calami- 
 ties, if you can thereby help the sufferer ; if not, attend your own 
 work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy 
 is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit 
 down and cry for company, instead of imparting to th-em truth 
 25 and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in 
 communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is 
 joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the 
 self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all 
 tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our 
 
 1 A twofold division. 
 
 2 Caratach, or Caractacus, was a character in the play of Bonduca (another 
 name for Boadicea), written by the English dramatist and poet John Fletcher 
 (1579-1625). The scene of the play is laid in ancient Britain, where the 
 characters were historical. Audate is another name for the Celtic goddess 
 (not god) Audrasta, 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 73 
 
 love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not 
 need it. We soUcitously and apologetically caress and celebrate 
 him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapproba- 
 tion. The gods love him because men hated him. ''To the 
 persevering mortal," said Zoroaster,^ ''the blessed Immortals ares 
 swift." 
 
 As men's prayers are 'a disease of the will, so are their creeds 
 a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, 
 " Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any 
 man with us, and we will obey." Everywhere I am hindered of lo 
 meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple 
 doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's 
 brother's God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it 
 prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke,^ a 
 Lavoisier,^ a Hutton,^ a Bentham,^ a Fourier,^ it imposes its 15 
 classification on other men, and lo ! a new system. In propor- 
 tion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the 
 objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his 
 complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, 
 which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on 20 
 the elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. 
 Such is Calvinism,^ Quakerism, Swedenborgism.^ The pupil 
 takes the same delight in subordinating everything to the new 
 terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a 
 
 1 The founder of the ancient Persian religion. The time in which he lived 
 is uncertain. 2 See Note 2, p. 26. 
 
 2 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94), illustrious French chemist. He 
 discovered the composition of water. 
 
 4 James Hutton (1726-97), great Scotch geologist. He wrote the Theory 
 of Rain, and Theory of the Earth. 
 
 5 Jeremy Bentham (i 748-1832), English philosopher and reformer. He 
 devoted himself to reforms in legislature and government. 
 
 6 F'rangois Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837), French socialist. 
 
 '^ The doctrine of the followers of John Calvin (1509-64), French theo- 
 logian. 
 
 ^ The doctrine taught by Emanuel Swedenborg. See Note i, p. 44. 
 
 ( 
 
74 ±LM±LK:iUlW. 
 
 new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, 
 that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the 
 study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the 
 classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily 
 5 exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their 
 eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe ; the 
 luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master 
 built. They cannot imagine how you aHens have any right to 
 see, — how you can see; '^ It must be somehow that you stole 
 
 lo the hght from us." They do not yet perceive, that light, unsys- 
 tematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. 
 Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest 
 and do well, presently their neat new pinfold ^ will be too strait ^ 
 and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the im- 
 
 15 mortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, 
 will beam over the universe as on the first morning. 
 
 2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Trav- 
 eling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fasci- 
 nation for all educated Americans. They who made England, 
 
 2o Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking 
 fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, 
 we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveler ; the 
 wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on 
 any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he 
 
 25 is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of 
 his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and vir- 
 tue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an 
 interloper or a valet. 
 
 I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the 
 
 30 globe, for the purposes 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 he knows. He who 
 travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not 
 carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth 
 
 1 An inclosure for beasts. 2 Narrow. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 75 
 
 among old things. In Thebes,^ in Palmyra,^ his will and mind 
 have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to 
 ruins. 
 
 Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to 
 us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, s 
 at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. 
 I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and 
 at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, 
 the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the 
 Vatican,^ and the palaces. I aifect to be intoxicated with sights lo 
 and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with 
 me wherever I go. 
 
 3. But the rage of traveling is a symptom of a deeper un- 
 soundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect 
 is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness, is 
 Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. 
 We imitate ; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind ? 
 Our houses are built with foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished 
 with foreign ornaments ; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, 
 lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the 20 
 arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind 
 that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his 
 own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be 
 observed. And why need we copy the Doric ^ or the Gothic^ 
 model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint 25 
 expression are as . near to us as to any, and if the American 
 
 • 
 
 1 The ruined prehistoric city, capital of Upper Egypt. 
 
 2 A ruined city, founded by Solomon, in an oasis of the Syrian desert, a 
 hundred and twenty miles northeast of Damascus. 
 
 ^ The residence of the Pope in Rome, the largest palace in the world, 
 consisting of over four thousand rooms. It contains the finest existing col- 
 lection of marbles, bronzes, frescoes, paintings, gems, and statues. 
 
 4 A style of architecture distinguished for simplicity and strength, which 
 originated in Doris in ancient Greece. 
 
 5 A style of architecture derived from the Goths, with high and sharply 
 pointed arches and clustered columns. 
 
76 EMERSON, 
 
 artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done 
 by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, 
 the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, 
 he will create a house in which all these will find themselves 
 
 s fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. 
 
 Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can 
 present every moment with the cumulative 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 
 
 lo best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows 
 what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is 
 the master who could have taught Shakespeare ? ^ Where is the 
 master who could have instructed Franklin,^ or Washington, or 
 Bacon,^ or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scip- 
 
 is ionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. 
 Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. 
 Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much 
 or dare too much.' There is at this moment for you an utterance 
 brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias,-* or 
 
 20 trowel^ of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante,^ but 
 different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all 
 eloquent, with thousand-cloven ^ tongue, deign to repeat itself; 
 but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can 
 reply to them in the same pitch of voice ; for the ear and the 
 
 25 tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and 
 
 1 See Note 3, p. 29. 
 
 2 Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), American philosopher, statesman, and 
 writer. He discovered the nature of lightning, invented the lightning rod, 
 performed important diplomatic services during the Revolution, and compiled 
 the famous Poor Richard's Almanac. 
 
 3 See Note i, p. 27. 
 
 4 Phidias ( 500 ?-432 ? B.C.), the greatest sculptor of Greece if not of all 
 lands. 5 The tool with which they reared the pyramids. 
 
 6 Dante Alighieri (i 265-1 321), the greatest Italian poet, author of the 
 Inferno. 
 
 7 Divided into many parts ; that is, capable of speaking in many ways. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 77 
 
 noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce 
 the Foreworld^ again. 
 
 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so 
 does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the 
 improvement of society, and no man improves. s 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it 
 gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes ; it is bar- 
 barous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific ; 
 but this change is not ameHoration. For everything that is 
 given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses 10 
 old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, 
 writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of 
 exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose 
 property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth 
 of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two is 
 men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal 
 strength. If the traveler tell us truly, strike the savage with a 
 broad ax, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if 
 you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send 
 the white to his grave. 20 
 
 The civiHzed 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, 25 
 the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The sol- 
 stice 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 notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his 
 
 wit ; the insurance oflice increases the number of accidents ; and 30 
 
 I 
 
 1 A previous state of the world. 
 
 2 Geneva, Switzerland, at one time produced the best watches in the 
 world. 
 
 3 An almanac for the use of navigators and astronomers, calculated at the 
 Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England. 
 
78 EMERSON, 
 
 it may be a question whether' machinery does not encumber; 
 whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Chris- 
 tianity intrenched in estabHshments and forms, some vigor of 
 wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic ; but in Christendom 
 
 5 where is the Christian ? 
 
 There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the 
 standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever 
 were. A singular equality may be observed between the great 
 men of the first and of the last ages ; nor can all the science, 
 
 lo art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to 
 educate greater men than Plutarch's ^ heroes, three or four and 
 twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Pho- 
 cion,^ Socrates, Anaxagoras,^ Diogenes,^ are great men, but they 
 leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called 
 
 15 by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the 
 founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are 
 only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the 
 improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson^ and 
 Bering^ accomplished so much in their fishing boats, as to astonish 
 
 20 Parry ^ and Franklin,^ whose equipment exhausted the resoiurces 
 
 1 A Grecian philosopher living in the first century A.D. He was also a 
 prolific writer. His most noted work is Parallel Lives, a series of forty-six 
 biographies divided into pairs, one taken from Greek and one from Roman 
 history, and each accompanied by a psychological and moral comparison be- 
 tween the characters described. 2 An Athenian general (402-317 B.C.). 
 
 3 Eminent Greek philosopher (500-428 B.C.). He maintained the eter- 
 nity of matter. 
 
 4 A famous Greek cynic philosopher (412 ?-323 ? B.C.). He affected a 
 contempt for the comforts of life and the customs of the world. According 
 to tradition he lodged in a tub. 
 
 5 Henry Hudson, distinguished English discoverer, discovered Hudson 
 River and Hudson Bay. 
 
 6 A Danish navigator (i 680-1 741). He discovered Bering Strait in 1728, 
 and ascertained that Asia was not joined to America, as was formerly supposed. 
 
 7 Sir William Edward Parry, English navigator (i 790-1855). In 1819-23 
 he penetrated the Arctic regions farther than any previous explorer. 
 
 8 Sir John Franklin (i 786-1847), English Arctic explorer. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE. 79 
 
 of science and art. Galileo, with an opera glass, discovered a 
 more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. 
 Columbus^ found the New World in an undecked boat. It is 
 curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and 
 machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few 5 
 years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential 
 man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among 
 the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon 2 conquered Europe 
 by the bivouac,^ which consisted of falling back on naked valor, 
 and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impos- lo 
 sible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas,^ '' without abolish- 
 ing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in 
 imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his 
 supply of corn, grind it in his handmill, and bake his bread him- 
 self." 15 
 
 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water 
 of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not 
 rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. 
 The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and 
 their experience with them. 20 
 
 And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on 
 governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. ]\Ien 
 have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that 
 they have come to esteem the rehgious, learned, and civil institu- 
 tions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, 25 
 because they feel them to be assaults on property. They meas- 
 ure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by 
 
 1 Christopher Columbus (about 1436-1506), the discoverer of America. 
 
 2 See note 2, page loi. 
 
 3 An encampment of soldiers in the open air, without tents, each soldier 
 remaining dressed, with his weapons at hand. 
 
 ^ Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonne, Comte de las Cases ( 1 766-1842); 
 author of ''Memorial de St. Helene," and a friend of Napoleon Bonaparte's. 
 Note that Emerson's spelling of the name is wrong. He confused it Avith 
 that of the great Bartolome de las Casas, the Spanish missionary. 
 
8o EMERSON. 
 
 what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his 
 property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates 
 what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by in- 
 heritance, or gift, or crime ; then he feels that it is not having ; 
 5 it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies 
 there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But 
 that which a man is does 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, or storm, or 
 
 lo bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man 
 breathes. '' Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali,^ '' is 
 seeking after thee ; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.'^ 
 Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish 
 respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous 
 
 IS conventions ; the greater the concourse, and with each, new up- 
 roar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Dem- 
 ocrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! The 
 young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thou- 
 sand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon 
 
 20 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. Is 
 
 25 not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in 
 the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently ap- 
 pear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows 
 that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for 
 good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws him- 
 
 30 self unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands 
 in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles ; just 
 
 1 Become his own. 
 
 2 An Arabian caliph, surnamed the " Lion of God," a cousin and follower 
 of Mohammed. He is distinguished as an author of many maxims and 
 proverbs which have been handed down and published. 
 
SELF-RELIANCE, 8 1 
 
 as a man 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 Effect, the s 
 chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou 
 hast chained the wheel of Chance,^ and shalt sit hereafter out of 
 fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the 
 recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or 
 some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think lo 
 good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing 
 can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace 
 but the -triumph of principles. 
 
 1 Fortuna, the goddess of fortune or chance in Roman mythology, was 
 represented with her eyes bound, standing on a ball or wheel to indicate that 
 luck rolls, like a ball, without choice. 
 
COMPENSATION. 
 
 The wings of Time are black and white. 
 Pied 1 with morning and with night. 
 Mountain tall and ocean deep 
 Trembling balance duly keep. 
 In changing moon, in tidal wave, 
 Glows the feud of Want and Have. 
 Gauge of more and less through space 
 Electric star and pencil plays. 
 The lonely Earth amid the balls 2 
 That hurry through the eternal halls,^ 
 A makeweight ^ flying to the void, 
 Supplemental asteroid, 
 Or compensatory spark. 
 Shoots across the neutral Dark. 
 
 1 Spotted. 2 Planets. 3 Space, 
 
 * Something added to fill a deficiency. 
 
 83 
 
Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine, 
 Stanch and strong the tendrils twine : 
 Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, 
 None from its stock that vine can reave. ^ 
 Fear not, then, thou child infirm, 
 There's no god dare wrong a worm. 
 Laurel crowns ^ cleave to deserts. 
 And power to him who power exerts ; 
 Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
 Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ; 
 And all that Nature made thy own, 
 Floating in air or pent ^ in stone. 
 Will rive ^ the hills and swim the sea, 
 And, like thy shadow, follow thee. 
 
 1 Take away. 
 
 2 Honors, from the custom of the ancient Greeks to use laurel crowns as 
 a mark of honor. 
 
 ^ Confined. ^ Rend asunder. 
 
 84 
 
COMPENSATION. 
 
 EVER since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse 
 on Compensation : for it seemed to me when very young, 
 that on this subject hfe was ahead of theology, and the people 
 knew more than the preachers taught. The documents,^ too, 
 from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by s 
 their endless variety, and lay always before me, even in sleep ; 
 for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the 
 transactions of the street, the farm, and the dwelling house, 
 greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence of character, 
 the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me, also, k 
 that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present 
 action of the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradi- 
 tion, and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation 
 of eternal love, conversing with that which he knows was always 
 and always must be, because it really is now. It appeared, more- i^ 
 over, that if this doctrine could be stated in terms with any resem- 
 blance to those bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes 
 revealed to us, it would be a star^ in many dark hours and 
 crooked passages in our journey that would not suffer us to lose 
 our way. 2c 
 
 I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at 
 church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, un- 
 folded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judg- 
 ment. He assumed, that judgment is not executed in this world ; 
 that the wicked are successful ; that the good are miserable ; and 25 
 then urged from reason and from Scripture a compensation to 
 
 ^ Data. 2 A guiding star ; hence, guide. 
 
 85 
 
86 EMERSON, 
 
 be made to both parties in the next Kfe. No offense appeared 
 to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. As far as I 
 could observe, when the meeting broke up, they separated with- 
 out remark on the sermon. 
 
 5 Yet what was the import ^ of this teaching? What did the 
 preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the 
 present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, 
 dress, luxury, are had^ by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are 
 poor and despised ; and that a compensation is to be made to 
 
 10 these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another 
 day, — bank stock and doubloons,^ venison and champagne? 
 This must be the compensation intended ; for what else ? Is it 
 that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve 
 men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference 
 
 15 the disciple would draw was, — " We are to have such a good 
 time as the sinners have now;" — or, to push it to its extreme 
 import, — " You sin now ; we shall sin by and by ; we would sin 
 now, if we could ; not beii>g successful, we expect our revenge 
 to-morrow." 
 
 2o The fallacy lay in the immense concession, that the bad are 
 successful ; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the 
 preacher consisted in deferring* to the base estimate of the 
 market^ of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confront- 
 ing and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the 
 
 25 presence of the soul ; the omnipotence of the will : and so 
 establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and false- 
 hood. 
 
 I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the 
 day, and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when 
 
 30 occasionally they treat the related topics. I think that our pop- 
 ular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over 
 the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this 
 
 1 Meaning. 2 Possessed. 
 
 3 Spanish and Portuguese coins worth about $15.60 each. 
 
 4 Bowing to ; accepting. ^ Those engaged in commercial life. 
 
COMPENSA TION, 8 7 
 
 theology. Their daily hfe gives it the lie.^ Every ingenuous 
 and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own ex- 
 perience ; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they 
 cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they know. That 
 which they hear in schools and pulpits without afterthought, if s 
 said in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence. 
 If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the 
 divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well 
 enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his 
 incapacity to make his own statement. 10 
 
 I shall attempt to record some facts that indicate the path of 
 the law of Compensation ; happy beyond my expectation, if I 
 shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. 
 
 PoLARiTY,2 or actiou and reaction, we meet in every part of 
 nature; in darkness and Hght; in heat and cold; in the ebb is 
 and flow of waters ; in male and female ; in the inspiration and 
 expiration of plants and animals ; in the equation of quantity 
 and quality in the fluids of the animal body ; in the systole^ and 
 diastole* of the heart ; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound ; 
 in the centrifugal^ and centripetal <5 gravity; in electricity, gal- 20 
 vanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce'^ magnetism at one 
 end of a needle ; the opposite magnetism takes place at the other 
 end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, 
 you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, 
 so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make 25 
 it whole ; as, spirit, matter ; man, woman ; odd, even ; subjec- 
 tive, objective ; in, out ; upper, under ; motion, rest ; yea, nay. 
 
 Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The 
 
 1 Proves it false. 2 See Note 3, p. 33. 
 
 3 Contraction of the heart and arteries. 
 
 * Dilatation of the heart and arteries. 
 
 5 Tending to recede from the center. 
 
 ^ Tending to move towards the center. 
 
 ■^ Develop. 
 
88 EMERSON, 
 
 entire system of things gets represented in every particle. There 
 is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and 
 night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel 
 of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, 
 
 s so grand in the elements, is repeated within these small bounda- 
 ries. For example, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has 
 observed that no creatures are favorites, but a certain compensa- 
 tion balances every gift and every defect. A surplusage^ given 
 to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the 
 
 lo same creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk 
 and extremities are cut short. 
 
 The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What 
 we gain in power is lost in time ; and the converse. The periodic 
 or compensating errors of the planets is another instance. The 
 
 IS influences of climate and soil in political history is another. 
 The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does not breed 
 fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 
 
 The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. 
 Every excess causes a defect ; every defect an excess. Every 
 
 20 sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which 
 is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. 
 It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain 
 of wit there is a grain of folly. For everything you have missed, 
 you have gained something else ; and for everything you gain, 
 
 25 you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased ^ that 
 use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out 
 of the man what she puts into his chest, swells the estate, but 
 kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The 
 waves of the sea do not . more speedily seek a level from their 
 
 30 loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to equalize 
 themselves. There is always some leveling circumstance that 
 puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, 
 substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too 
 
 1 Excess. 2 xhat is, their needs or wants are incre^se4, 
 
COMPENSA TION. 89 
 
 Strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad 
 citizen, — a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him? — 
 nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are 
 getting along in the dame's 1 classes at the village school, and 
 love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus s 
 she contrives to intenerate^ the granite and felspar, takes the 
 boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true. 
 
 The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But 
 the President has paid dear for his White House. ^ It has com- 
 monly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attri- 10 
 butes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appear- 
 ance before the world, he is content to eat dust^ before the real 
 masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or do men desire 
 the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? Neither 
 has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is 15 
 great, and overlooks^ thousands, has the charges of that emi- 
 nence. With every influx of light comes new danger. Has he 
 light? he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that 
 sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity 
 to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father 20 
 and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves and 
 admires and covets? — he must cast behind him their admiration, 
 and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become a byword 
 and a hissing. 
 
 This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain 25 
 to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mis- 
 managed long. Res nolunt diu male administrari, ^ Though no 
 checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. 
 If the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If 
 you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make 30 
 the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law 
 
 1 Schoolmistress. 2 Soften. 
 
 3 The official residence of the President in Washington. 
 
 4 ** Eat dust," i.e., humble himself. 5 Superintends. 
 6 The Latin rendering of the sentence preceding. 
 
90 EMERSON. 
 
 is too mild, private vengeance comes in. If the government is 
 a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by an overcharge of 
 energy in the citizen, and Hfe glows with a fiercer flame. The 
 true hfe and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors 
 5 or felicities of condition, and to establish themselves with great 
 indiff erency 1 under all varieties of circumstances. Under all 
 governments the influence of character remains the same, — in 
 Turkey and in New England about alike. Under the primeval 
 despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that man must have 
 
 10 been as free as culture could make him. 
 
 These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is repre- 
 sented in every one of its particles. Everything in nature con- 
 tains all the powers of nature. Everything is made of one 
 hidden stuff ; as the naturalist sees one type under every meta- 
 
 i: morphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a 
 swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. 
 Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, 
 but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances,^ hin- 
 drances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every oc- 
 
 2o cupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and 
 a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of 
 human life ; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course 
 and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the 
 whole man, and recite all his destiny. 
 
 25 The world globes itself in a drop of dew.^ The microscope 
 cannot find the animalcule* which is less perfect for being little. 
 Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs 
 of reproduction that take hold on eternity, — all find room to 
 consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every 
 
 30 act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears 
 with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the 
 
 1 Impartiality. 2 Things which help its progress. 
 
 3 ** The world," etc., i.e., the laws which make the world a globe give 
 the same shape to a drop of dew. 
 
 •* An animal so small as to be nearly or quite invisible to the naked eye. 
 
COMPENSA TION, 9 1 
 
 universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good 
 is there, so is the evil ; if the affinity, so the repulsion ; if the 
 force, so the limitation. 
 
 Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul, 
 which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel s 
 its inspiration ; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. 
 '' It is in the world, and the world was made by it." Justice is 
 not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts 
 of life. 01 icvj3oc Acbg del evninrovai,^ — The dice of God are 
 always loaded.^ The world looks like a multiphcation table, or lo 
 a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances 
 itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor^ more nor 
 less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is 
 punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence 
 and certainty. What we call retribution is the universal neces- is 
 sity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If 
 you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, 
 you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. 
 
 Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, in 
 a twofold manner ; first, in the thing, or in real nature ; and sec- 20 
 ondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the 
 circumstance the retribution. The causal retribution is in the 
 thing, and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the circum- 
 stance is seen by the understanding ; it is inseparable from the 
 thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so does not be- ^5 
 come distinct until after many years. The specific stripes^ may 
 follow late after the offense, but they follow because they accom- 
 pany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punish- 
 ment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the 
 pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, 30 
 
 1 //oi koo'boi Deeds at ilpiptoosee — the Greek of the sentence which 
 follows. 
 
 2 '* The dice," etc., i.e., God does not play a game of chance. 
 
 3 Neither. 
 
 * Blows made with a lash ; hence, punishment. 
 
92 EMERSON. 
 
 seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the effect already blooms 
 in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the 
 seed. 
 
 Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be dis- 
 
 s parted, 1 we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate ; for 
 example, — to gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the 
 senses from the needs of the character. The ingenuity of man 
 has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem, — 
 how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual 
 
 lo bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral 
 fair ; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean ojff this upper surface 
 so thin as to leave it bottomless ; to get a one end^ without an 
 other end. The soul says. Eat; the body would feast. The 
 soul says. The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul ; 
 
 IS the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, Have do- 
 minion over all things to the ends of virtue ; the body would have 
 the power over things to its own ends. 
 
 The soul strives amain ^ to live and work through all things. 
 It would be the only fact. All things shall be added unto it, — 
 
 20 power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims 
 to be somebody; to set up for himself ; to truck and higgle for 
 a private good ; and, in particulars, to ride, that he may ride ; to 
 dress, that he may be dressed; to eat, that he may eat; and to 
 govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great ; they would 
 
 25 have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be 
 great is to possess one side of nature, — the sweet, without the 
 other side, — the bitter. 
 
 This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to 
 this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest suc- 
 
 30 cess. The parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is 
 taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power 
 out of strong things, as soon as we seek to separate them from 
 the whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual 
 
 1 Divided. 2 Vigorously. 
 
COMPENSA TION. 93 
 
 good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no out- 
 side, or a light without a shadow. '' Drive out nature with a 
 fork, she comes running back."^ 
 
 Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise 
 seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not 5 
 know ; that they do not touch him ; — but the brag is on his lips, 
 the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part, 
 they attack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped 
 them in form, and in the appearance, it is because he has resisted 
 his life, and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much 10 
 death. So signal is the failure of all attempts to make this sep- 
 aration of the good from the tax, that the experiment would not 
 be tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — but for the circum- 
 stance, that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and 
 separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man is 
 ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the 
 sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual hurt ; he 
 sees the mermaid's ^ head, but not the dragon's tail ; and thinks 
 he can cut off that which he would have, from that which he 
 would not have. '' How secret art thou who dwellest in the 20 
 highest heavens in silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling 
 with an unwearied providence certain penal blindnesses upon 
 such as have unbridled desires! "^ 
 
 The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, 
 of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a tongue 25 
 in Uterature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter,^ Supreme 
 Mind ; but having traditionally ascribed to him many base ac- 
 tions, they involuntarily made amends to reason, by tying up the 
 hands 5 of so bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of 
 
 1 A proverb, quoted by Horace, the origin of which is lost in antiquity. 
 
 2 A fabled marine being, represented as having the upper part of the body 
 like a woman and the lower part like a fish, serpent, or dragon. 
 
 3 St. Augustine, Confessions, Book I. 
 
 * Jupiter, Jove, or Zeus, the supreme god of the Greeks and Romans. 
 5 Limiting the power. 
 
94 EMERSON, 
 
 England. 1 Prometheus ^ knows one secret which Jove must bar- 
 gain for ; Minerva,^ another. . He cannot get his own thunders ; 
 Minerva keeps the key of them. 
 
 " Of all the gods, I only know the keys 
 5 That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
 
 His thunders sleep." 
 
 A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its 
 
 moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; 
 
 and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented and 
 lo get any currency which was not moral. Aurora^ forgot to ask 
 
 youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old. 
 
 Achilles ^ is not quite invulnerable ; the sacred waters did not 
 ' wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried,^ in the 
 
 1 Parliament has supreme power in England. 
 
 2 Prometheus, in Greek mythology the regenerator of mankind, used 
 knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil. He stole Jupiter's fire and taught 
 mortals how to use it. Jupiter punished Jiim by chaining him to a rock 
 where he was tortured by an eagle. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven 
 portending the fall of Jupiter, and only Prometheus knew the secret of avert- 
 ing it. Jupiter offered him his freedom if he would reveal it. For a long 
 time he steadfastly refused, and endured untold tortures ; but at length, 
 according to some traditions, he revealed the secret that if Jupiter became 
 the father of a son by Thetis, that son would deprive him of his sovereignty. 
 Prometheus was thereupon set free. According to another story he never 
 divulged the secret, but was at length released by Hercules, who killed the 
 eagle. 
 
 3 Minerva, Athena, or Pallas, a goddess in Greek and Roman mythology, 
 who sprang full-armed from the head of her father Jupiter. She was the god- 
 dess of wisdom and of war, and sometimes wielded Jupiter's thunderbolts. 
 
 ^ Aurora, Roman goddess of the dawn, became enamored of Tithonus, 
 son of Laomedon, King of Troy. She stole him away and persuaded Jupiter 
 to grant him immortality, but she forgot to have youth added to the gift, and 
 soon began to discern that he was growing old. She grew angry at this and 
 finally turned him into a grasshopper. 
 
 5 Achilles is the hero of the Iliad, Homer's great epic. His mother, 
 Thetis, dipped him in the river Styx to render him immortal. 
 
 6 The Nibelungenlied is the great epic poem of the old Germans, as the 
 
COMPENSATION, ' 95 
 
 Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back 
 whilst he was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which 
 it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is a crack in 
 everything God has made. It would seem, there is always this 
 vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares, even into the s 
 wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to make bold 
 hohday, and to shake itself free of the old laws, — this back- 
 stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that 
 in nature nothing can be given, all things are sold. 
 
 This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis,^ who keeps watch in lo 
 the universe, and lets no offense go unchastised. The Furies,^ 
 they said, are attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven 
 should transgress his path, they would punish him. The poets 
 related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had 
 an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners ; that the is 
 belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the Trojan hero over the 
 field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword which 
 Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax^ fell They 
 recorded, that when the Thasians erected a statue to Theagenes,* 
 a victor in the games, one of his rivals went to it by night, and en- 20 
 deavored to throw it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved 
 it from its pedestal, and was crushed to death beneath its fall. 
 
 Iliad is of the ancient Greeks. Siegfried is the mythical hero of the former 
 as Achilles is of the latter story. 
 
 1 In Greek mythology, a goddess personifying moral reverence for law. 
 She visited the righteous anger of the gods upon the proud and insolent. 
 
 2 The Furies were three mythological deities, Alecto, Tisiphone, and 
 Megaera, who punished crimes by their secret stings. 
 
 3 Ajax and Hector are mythological heroes in the Trojan War as related 
 in the Iliad, the former a Greek and the latter a Trojan. After a personal 
 combat, they exchanged arms, and when subsequently Ajax committed sui- 
 cide, he used the sword which had been Hector's, and when Achilles killed 
 Hector, he used the belt which had belonged to Ajax to fasten the corpse to 
 his chariot or car. 
 
 4 See Pausanias's Description of Greece, Book VI, line 11. Theagenes, 
 an inhabitant of Thasos, an island in the y^gean Sea, was renowned for his 
 strength and swiftness and his numerous victories in athletic contests. 
 
96 • EMERSON, 
 
 This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from 
 thought above the will of the writer. That is the best part of 
 each writer, which has nothing private in it ; that which he does 
 not know, that which flowed out of his constitution, and not 
 s from his too active invention ; that which in the study of a single 
 artist you might not easily find, but in the study of many, you 
 would abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias ^ it is not, but 
 the work of man in that early Hellenic ^ world, that I would 
 know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, however con- 
 
 10 venient for history, embarrass when we come to the highest crit- 
 icism. We are to see that which man was tending to do in a 
 given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, 
 by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante,^ of Shakespeare,^ 
 the organ whereby man at the moment wrought. 
 
 IS Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs 
 of all nations, which are always the Kterature of reason, or the 
 statements of an absolute truth, without qualification. Proverbs, 
 like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the in- 
 tuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, 
 
 20 will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer 
 him to say in proverbs without contradiction. And this law of 
 laws which the pulpit, the senate, and the college deny, is hourly 
 preached in all markets and workshops by flights of proverbs, 
 whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of birds 
 
 25 and flies. 
 
 All things are double, one against another. — Tit for tat ; an 
 eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood ; measure 
 for measure ; love for love. — Give and it shall be given you. — 
 He that watereth shall be watered himself. — What will you have? 
 
 30 quoth God; pay for it and take it. — Nothing venture, nothing 
 have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no 
 more, no less.^ — Who doth not work shall not eat. — Harm 
 watch, harm catch. — Curses always recoil on the head of him 
 
 1 See Note 4, p. 76. 2 Greek. « See Note 6, p. 76. 
 
 ^ See Note 3, p. 29. 
 
COMPENSA TION, 9 7 
 
 who imprecates them. — If you put a chain around the neck of 
 a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. — Bad 
 counsel confounds the adviser. — The Devil is an ass. 
 
 It is thus written, because it is thus in hfe. Our action is 
 overmastered and characterized above our will by the law of 5 
 nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, 
 but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with 
 the poles of the world. 
 
 A man cannot speak, but he judges himself. With his will, or 
 against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his compan- 10 
 ions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. 
 It is a thread-ball 1 thrown at a mark, but the other end remains 
 in the thrower's bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon hurled at the 
 whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and if 
 the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to t.s 
 cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the boat. 
 
 You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. " No man 
 had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said 
 Burke.2 The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he 
 excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate 20 
 it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the 
 door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat 
 men as pawns ^ and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. 
 If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The senses 
 would make things of all persons ; of women, of children, of 25 
 the poor. The vulgar proverb, '' I will get it from his purse or 
 get it from his skin,** is sound philosophy. 
 
 All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are 
 speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand 
 
 1 A ball of thread. 
 
 2 Edmund Burke (1729-97), Irish statesman, orator, and political writer, 
 rlis best known works are his Speech on American Conciliation and Reflec- 
 tions on the French Revolution. 
 
 3 A piece of lowest rank in the game of chess ; hence, a mere figure to be 
 moved about at the will of another. 
 
98 EMERSON, 
 
 in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in 
 meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents 
 of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration ^ of nature. 
 But as soon as there is any departure from simpHcity, and attempt 
 
 5 at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor 
 feels the wrong ; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk 
 from him ; his eyes no longer seek mine ; there is war between 
 us ; there is hate in him and fear in me. 
 
 All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all un- 
 
 lojust accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the 
 same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the 
 herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is 
 rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and though 
 you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. 
 
 IS Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes 
 are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered 2 
 over government and property. That obscene ^ bird is not 
 there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be 
 revised. 
 
 20 Of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantly 
 follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. The terror of 
 cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates,^ the awe of prosper- 
 ity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to impose on 
 itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the 
 
 25 tremblings of the balance of justice through the heart and mind 
 of man. 
 
 1 A penetrating between other substances. 
 
 2 *' Fear," etc., i.e., fear has presaged evil, made faces, and spoken inco- 
 herently. 3 Ill-omened. 
 
 4 Polycrates, a celebrated Greek tyrant of Samos, had such unvarying 
 good fortune that he was counseled to cast from him that which he valued 
 most in order to allay the jealousy of the gods. Accordingly he threw into 
 the sea an emerald ring of extraordinary beauty ; but in a few days he 
 regained it from inside a fish presented to him by a fisherman. Soon after 
 this Polycrates' prosperity deserted him and he suffered an ignominious death 
 on the cross. 
 
COMFENSA TION, 99 
 
 Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best 
 to pay scot and lot^ as they go along, and that a man often pays 
 dear for a small frugahty. The borrower runs in his own debt. 
 Has a man gained anything who has received a hmidred favors 
 and rendered none ? Has he gained by borrowing, through in- s 
 dolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money? 
 There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit 
 on the one part, and of debt on the other ; that is, of superiority 
 and inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory of him- 
 self and his neighbor ; and every new transaction alters, accord- lo 
 ing to its nature, their relation to each other. He may soon 
 come to see that he had better have broken his own bones than 
 to have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that ''the highest 
 price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it." 
 
 A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of hfe, and is 
 know that it is the part of prudence to face every claimant, and 
 pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. 
 Always pay ; for, first or last, you must pay your entire debt. Per- 
 sons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, 
 but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own 20 
 debt. If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only 
 loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for 
 every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great 
 who confers the most benefits. He is base — and that is the 
 one base thing in the universe — to receive favors and render 25 
 none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those 
 from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit 
 we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, 
 cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying 
 in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm^ worms. Pay it 30 
 away quickly in some sort. ^ 
 
 Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, 
 
 1 Scot and lot, formerly a parish assessment laid on subjects according to 
 their ability. 
 
 2 Beget, 3 Manner. 
 
lOO EMERSON, 
 
 say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, 
 a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some apphcation of good sense to a 
 common want. It is best to pay in your land a skillful gardener, 
 or to buy good sense applied 'to gardening; in your sailor, good 
 
 s sense applied to navigation ; in the house, good sense appKed 
 to cooking, sewing, serving ; in your agent, good sense applied 
 to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your presence, or 
 spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of the dual 
 constitution of things, in labor as in Hfe there can be no cheat- 
 
 10 ing. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles him- 
 self. For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof 
 wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may 
 be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, 
 knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These 
 
 IS ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the 
 mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the de- 
 faulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and 
 moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the opera- 
 tive. The law of nature is. Do the thing, and you shall have the 
 
 20 power : but they who do not the thing have not the power. 
 
 Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a 
 stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense 
 illustration of the perfect compensation of the universe. The 
 absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that everything 
 
 25 has its price, — and if that price is not paid, not that thing but 
 something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get any- 
 thing without its price, — is not less sublime in the columns of a 
 leger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of light and dark- 
 ness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt 
 
 30 that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those pro- 
 cesses with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle 
 on his chisel edge, which are measured out by his plumb and 
 foot rule, which stand as manifest ii?. the footing of the shop bill 
 as in the history of a state, — do recommend to him his trade, 
 
 35 and though seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination. 
 
COMPENSA TION. i O I 
 
 The league between virtue and nature engages all things to 
 assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and sub- 
 stances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds 
 that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den 
 in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the 5 
 earth is made of glass.^ Commit a crime, and it seems as if a 
 coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods 
 the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You 
 cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot- 
 track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or 10 
 clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws 
 and substances of nature — water, snow, wind, gravitation — 
 become penalties to the thief. 
 
 On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all 
 right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathe- is 
 matically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. 
 The good man has absolute good, which like fire turns every- 
 thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm ; 
 but as the royal armies sent against Napoleon,^ when he ap- 
 proached, cast down their colors and from enemies became 20 
 friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offense, poverty, 
 prove benefactors : — 
 
 ^' Winds blow and waters roll 
 Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 
 Yet in themselves are nothing.'* 25 
 
 The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As 
 no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, 
 so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful 
 
 1 There is no place where you can hide ; every spot will be transparent. 
 
 2 Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-182 1), Emperor of France. For many 
 years he was one of the most successful generals the world has ever seen, 
 and he seemed destined to conquer the whole of Europe, but was finally 
 defeated at Waterloo by the English and Prussians, and exiled to St. Helena, 
 where he died. 
 
102 EMERSON. 
 
 to him. The stag in the fable ^ admired his horns and blamed 
 his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and after- 
 wards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every 
 man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As no man thor- 
 5 oughly understands a truth until he has contended against it, so 
 no man has a thorough acquaintance w4th the hindrances or 
 talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen the 
 triumph of the other over his own want of the same. Has he a 
 defect of temper that unfits him to live in society ? Thereby he 
 
 lo is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self- 
 help ; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with 
 pearl. 
 
 Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation 
 which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we 
 
 15 are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A great man is 
 always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of 
 advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, 
 defeated, he has a chance to learn something ; he has been put 
 on his wits, on his manhood ; he has gained facts ; learns his 
 
 2o ignorance ; is cured of the insanity of conceit ; has got modera- 
 tion and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of 
 his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his 
 weak point. The wound cicatrizes ^ and falls off from him like 
 a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed 
 
 25 on invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be de- 
 fended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against 
 me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as 
 honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that 
 lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil to 
 
 30 which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich 
 Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he 
 kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the tempta- 
 tion we resist. 
 
 1 One of ^sop's fables. 
 
 2 Heals by forming a skin over dead flesh. 
 
COMPENSA TION. 1 03 
 
 The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and 
 enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts 
 and bars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness 
 in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long, under 
 the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as 5 
 impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as 
 for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There is a 
 third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of 
 things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every con- 
 tract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve 10 
 an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your 
 debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment 
 is withholden,! the better for you; for compound interest on 
 compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.^ 
 
 The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat 15 
 nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It 
 makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant 
 or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving 
 themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man 
 voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour 20 
 of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole consti- 
 tution. It persecutes a principle ; it would whip a right ; it 
 would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage 
 upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It re- 
 sembles the prank of boys, who run with fire engines to put 25 
 out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate 
 spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr 
 cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of 
 fame ; every prison, a more illustrious abode ; every burned 
 book or house enlightens the world ; every suppressed or ex- 30 
 punged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. 
 Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to com- 
 munities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the mar- 
 tyrs are justified. 
 
 1 Old form of '' withheld. '^ 2 Treasury. 
 
104 EMERSON, 
 
 Thus do all things preach the indiiferency of circumstances. 
 The man is all. Everything has two sides, a good and an evil. 
 Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. But the 
 doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. The 
 5 thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, — What boots ^ 
 it to do well? there is one event to good and evil; if I gain any 
 good, I must pay for it ; if I lose any good, I gain some other ; 
 all actions are indifferent. 
 
 There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, 
 
 loits own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. 
 The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose 
 waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal 2 
 abyss of real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation, or a 
 part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding 
 
 15 negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, 
 and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from 
 thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the same. Nothing, 
 Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade, on 
 which, as a background, the living universe paints itself forth, but 
 
 2b no fact is begotten by it ; it cannot work ; for it is not. It can- 
 not work any good ; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inas- 
 much as it is worse not to be than to be. 
 
 We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because 
 the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy, and does not 
 
 25 come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There 
 is no stunning confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. 
 Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he carries 
 the malignity and the lie with him, he so far deceases from 
 nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration of the 
 
 30 wrong to the understanding also ; but should we not see it, this 
 deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. 
 
 Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of 
 rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to 
 virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of 
 1 Profits. 2 See Note 2, p. 63. 
 
CO MP ENS A TION. 1 05 
 
 being. In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add 
 to the world ; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and 
 Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the Hmits of the hori- 
 zon. There can be no excess to love ; none to knowledge ; none 
 to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest s 
 sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism,^ 
 never a Pessimism. 
 
 His Hfe is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust. 
 Our instinct uses " more '' and " less " in application to man, of 
 the presence of the soul, and not of its absence ; the brave man i 
 is greater than the coward ; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is 
 more a man, and not less, than the fool and knave. There is no 
 tax on the good of virtue; for that is the incoming of God him- 
 self, or absolute existence without any comparative. Material 
 good has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, has no i 
 root in me, and the next wind will blow it away. But all the 
 good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for in nature's 
 lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. 
 I no longer wish to meet^ a good I do not earn, for example, to 
 find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new 2 
 burdens. I do not wish more external goods, — neither posses- 
 sions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is appar- 
 ent ; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge 
 that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig 
 up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I 2 
 contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom 
 of St. Bernard,'^ — '^Nothing can work me damage except my- 
 self ; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never 
 am a real sufferer but by my own fault." 
 
 In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequali- 3 
 
 1 The doctrine that everything in nature is ordered for the best. Pessi- 
 mism is the reverse. 
 
 2 To receive, or have bestowed on me. 
 
 3 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, France (1091-1153), one of the most influen- 
 tial theologians of the middle ages. 
 
io6 EMERSON. 
 
 ties of condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the 
 distinction of More and Less. How can Less not feel the pain ; 
 how not feel indignation or malevolence towards More? Look 
 at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not 
 5 well what to make of it. He almost shuns their eye ; he fears 
 they will upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a 
 great injustice. But see the facts nearly, and these mountainous 
 inequalities vanish. Love reduces them, as the sun melts the 
 iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, 
 
 lo this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my 
 brother, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and out- 
 done by great neighbors, I can yet love ; I can still receive ; and 
 he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby 
 I make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for 
 
 15 me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and 
 envied is my own. It is the nature of the soul to appropriate. all 
 things. Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by 
 love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious do- 
 main. His virtue, — is not that mine ? His wit, — if it cannot 
 
 20 be made mine, it is not wit. 
 
 Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes 
 which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are ad- 
 vertisements of a nature whose law is growth. Every soul is by 
 this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its 
 
 25 friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shellfish crawls out 
 of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its 
 growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the 
 vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until in 
 some happier mind they are incessant, and all worldly relations 
 
 30 hang very loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a transparent 
 fluid membrane through which the living form is seen, and not, 
 as in most men, an indurated^ heterogeneous 2 fabric of many 
 dates, and of no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned. 
 Then there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely 
 
 1 Hardened. 2 Composed of differing things. 
 
COMPENSATION. 1 07 
 
 recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should be the out- 
 ward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circum- 
 stances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. But 
 to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not 
 cooperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by 5 
 shocks. 
 
 We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels 
 go. We do not see that they only go out, that archangels may 
 come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in 
 the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence, ic 
 We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or recre- 
 ate^ that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old 
 tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe 
 that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot 
 again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and ij 
 weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, '' Up and on- 
 ward f orevermore ! " We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither 
 will we rely on the new ; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, 
 like those monsters who look backwards. 
 
 And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to 2( 
 the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, 
 a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of 
 friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But 
 the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all 
 facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which 2, 
 seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect 
 of a guide or genius ; for it commonly operates revolutions in 
 our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which 
 was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted ^ occupation, or a 
 household, or style of hving, and allows the formation of new 3 
 ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or 
 constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception 
 of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next 
 years; and the man or woman who would have remained a 
 
 1 Create again. 2 Customary. 
 
lo8 EMERSON, 
 
 sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much 
 sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect 
 of the gardener, is made the banian i of the forest, yielding shade 
 and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 
 
 1 Banyan, an East Indian tree of the mulberry family. Aerial roots 
 descending from the branches become fixed in the ground, and thicken into 
 supports or pillars. Thus the branches spread over an immense area, and a 
 single tree has the appearance of a whole grove. 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR 
 STUDY. 
 
 In most cases all the reading of any author that the average stu- 
 dent has time for in his school course can serve only to set him on his 
 way to some of the vast treasure houses of wisdom and satisfaction, 
 and to stimulate his desire to explore still further the paths on which 
 he has been started. The portion of an author's work best fitted 
 for this beginning, then, is that which will make the way seem most 
 attractive, and will present the most faithful and the most inspiring 
 picture of the goal of the pilgrimage. This is particularly true of a 
 philosophical essayist like Emerson. So, in selecting the essays for 
 this Kttle volume from the great wealth of material open to the stu- 
 dent of Emerson, two ideas have been uppermost in mind: first, to 
 choose those that experience has shown to possess the most immediate 
 appeal to young people; and second, to include those that most 
 simply present the fundamental ideas that pervade all of Emerson's 
 writing; for as "Man and Nature are one,'' so is Emerson's thought 
 about man, and nature, and life, under whatever title it may appear. 
 
 The problems confronting the more or less immature pupil as he 
 first grapples with this thought are many; but paramount in im- 
 portance and in difiiculty, perhaps, are, first, the task of interpreting 
 Emerson's thought into the pupil's own experience and interests; 
 and second, the necessity which rests upon the pupil of learning to 
 think, not with the author, but for himself. The way to each of these 
 ends must be found largely by the individual pupil following and 
 cooperating with the suggestions of the resourceful teacher. The 
 introduction, notes, and questions accompanying the selections from 
 the essays, however, are designed to suggest some of the ways in which 
 a beginning may be made. 
 
 It is a popular assumption that secondary school pupils cannot or, 
 at any rate, do not think. The successful teacher and the average 
 
 109 
 
no NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 student know, however, that pupils are wiUing and ready to think, 
 so far as their minds can range, about things that come within their 
 realm of interests. In this respect they are about like the rest of us. 
 As thinkers they differ from Emerson primarily in their range of in- 
 terests. 
 
 Manifestly then the first thing for the pupil to do as he approaches 
 the study of Emerson is to endeavor under the inspiration of his 
 teacher to enlarge his horizon to take in the author's interests, and to 
 strive to see clearly how Emerson's seemingly remote philosophy 
 lights up the borderland of schoolboy thought, because to Emerson 
 everything, "the shop, the plow, and the leger," are phases of the 
 '4ike cause by which light undulates and poets sing," and "one 
 design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest 
 trench." This is the difficult task. The soil is hard and the hand of 
 the tiller often unskilled, but the seed is virile and of long life, and the 
 harvest will come in good time. 
 
 To secure this first common ground of interest, in the case of Emer- 
 son where personality is so large a factor, the pupil should first, per- 
 haps, come to understand something of the man himself with the 
 emphasis upon the things that appeal to youth. Emerson's life is 
 rather barren of incident, but there are compelling qualities of char- 
 acter that will arouse enthusiasm. His firm independence, his belief 
 in himself, his "optimistic Americanism," his lofty idealism, his con- 
 vincing sincerity, are traits that may serve as stepping-stones to the 
 phases of his thought to which they lead. Emerson's presentation 
 of "The American Scholar" as a man of action, instead of a recluse, 
 offers a vantage ground from which many excursions into his phi- 
 losophy may be made. The group of questions and topics accompany- 
 ing each essay may be suggestive of some of the fields into which the 
 student's thought may be turned. But first and always the pupil 
 must feel that though the notes and the teacher may be of service 
 at the outset, they are only media of communication between his 
 mind and the great source of power that lies in Emerson's thought. 
 
 The second main thought always to be kept in mind is that the 
 pupil should become, "not the parrot of other men's thinking," but 
 "Man thinking." This is the end and consummation of the first, 
 and follows it more readily than we sometimes believe. Whether 
 Emerson's ideas arouse sympathy or antagonism in the mind of the 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. ill 
 
 pupil, matters little. If the effort to transform what Emerson liked 
 to call "the energy of ideas" or "ecstasy" into energy that can be 
 used by the mind of the pupil has been successful, the reaction in 
 thought is secured; for, as Professor Woodberry says, "No man rises 
 from reading him without feeling more unshackled." Then the 
 
 "compensatory spark 
 Shoots across the neutral Dark," 
 
 and the energy imparted may be left to seek its expression in a life of 
 action. 
 
 The exact method of studying the essays will always vary with 
 the varying conditions of maturity of pupils, time, resources for 
 collateral reading, and the tastes of teacher and pupil. In some 
 respects the study of the essay is less difficult than the reading of 
 other forms of literary work. The essay makes its appeal to the 
 understanding rather than to the imagination, to the emotions, or to 
 the artistic taste. It is generally practical in its nature. On the other 
 hand, however, it does not possess the compelling interest of plot, as 
 in the novel, or the fascination of character study, as in the drama. 
 It often, also, deals with topics not inherently interesting to the 
 average boy or girl. For these reasons, then, it is especially necessary 
 that the student approach the reading with the sincere conviction 
 that there is something in the essay well worth his while, and with an 
 earnest purpose to find out what that something is. Here, care and 
 skill in planning the preliminary work and good judgment in decid- 
 ing how thoroughly the essay is to be mastered and just what parts 
 may best be passed rapidly, are all important; and the student should 
 respond readily to the suggestions of the teacher. 
 
 With most of Emerson's essays it is doubtful if the average pupil 
 can be turned loose to make the first reading as a whole for himself, 
 as can be done in the case of the essays of Addison or of Irving. Many 
 would fail to get the thought and so acquire at the outset a distaste 
 for the author and his topic, which it would be hard for the most 
 enthusiastic teacher to overcome. Although the most of the essays 
 do not readily lend themselves to the outline plan, it may be best in 
 most cases that the pupil be given a brief statement of the thought of 
 a certain portion of the essay in advance of his reading, and that the 
 details of the thought, the reasonableness of it, the logical* conclu- 
 
112 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 sions to be drawn, and, always, the practical bearing of it upon the 
 pupiFs life be reserved for subsequent class discussion. 
 
 Such topics as structure, choice of words, types of sentences, 
 peculiarities of style, etc., no doubt have their place in connection 
 with essay study, but they are usually incidental and should not be 
 forced or pursued to the detriment of the effectiveness of the thought. 
 
 t 
 
 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 
 
 During the five years following Emerson's resignation of his pas- 
 torate of the Second Church in Boston in September, 1832, which 
 was his virtual withdrawal from the ministry, the fundamental ideas 
 of his philosophy were conceived. The remainder of his life was de- 
 voted to working out and expressing the thoughts that took shape 
 between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty-five. He had cast away 
 from the old anchorage; he must find a new. These were years of 
 stress. He had stood aside from the world; he felt that the world 
 did not want him; yet he had resolved to do his part. *^He had 
 achieved self-reliance"; he was sure of the most satisfactory com- 
 pensation, the approval of his own soul; he was making himself 
 "The American Scholar." "Hereafter," he writes, "I design not to 
 utter any speech, poem, or book that is not entirely and peculiarly 
 my work." 
 
 He came to feel that the entire universe was his own, and that 
 Nature, God, and Man were one. His sensitive soul revolted at the 
 materialistic ideas of the preceding generations. He had been born 
 to a philosophy which had denied the power of the mind to form ideas 
 except from impressions received through the senses, which aflSirmed 
 that morality is a thing based on custom or utility. Both reason 
 and intuition, which was the basis of his faith, told him that the mind 
 has creative energy, that it has a faculty transcending the senses and 
 the understanding. Hence, Emerson and those whom his ideas at- 
 tracted were called Transcendentalists, a term generally applied to 
 those who believe that reality can be reached by processes of thought. 
 
 The first expression of "The New Thought," as Transcendentalism 
 was sometimes called, was made in Nature, published in 1836. This 
 little "arsenal of ideas" attracted little attention at first, but it is 
 
NOTES UDY. 113 
 
 the storehouse of powc /nstantly drew. It 
 
 contains the embryonic ic >phy. 
 
 The first application of tht tc ^ made in his address 
 
 on The American Scholar dehve. a year . . Of this Bronson Al- 
 cott, father of the author of Little Men and Little Women, says, "I 
 beHeve that it was the first adequate statement of the new views that 
 really attracted general attention. I had the good fortune to hear 
 that address; and I shall not forget the delight with which I heard it, 
 nor the mixed confusion, consternation, surprise, and wonder with 
 which the audience listened to it." LowelFs comment on the same 
 occasion maybe found on page 17 of the Introduction. Dr. Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes called it ^^The Declaration of Independence of Amer- 
 ican Literature.'^ The address forms the best possible introduction 
 to the study of Emerson, as it is in the nature of a preface to his whole 
 philosophy of life. 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 Although the central thought of Self-Reliance had been incor- 
 porated in several of Emerson's early occasional addresses, the essay 
 first appeared in the present form in the first series of essays published 
 in 1 84 1. The introduction in the Centenary Edition says: — "Thus 
 it appears that the writings of Landor , . . may have given the orig- 
 inal push towards the writing of this essay. A small portion of the 
 essay came from the lecture on Individualism, the last in the course 
 on the Philosophy of History, delivered in 1836-37, and other passages 
 are taken from the lectures. School, Genius, and Duty, in the course on 
 Human Life, 1838-39." 
 
 After the study of The American Scholar the student will be pre- 
 pared to meet Emerson's idea of self-trust which, as is stated on 
 page 35, embraces all the duties of the scholar. The whole essay may 
 in fact be presented as a development of one topic of the Phi Beta 
 Kappa address. Three things, however, should be made plain at 
 the outset; first, that Emerson is often led into seemingly extreme 
 statements through his fear of weakening the effect of his expression 
 of a firm conviction by qualifying it; second, that the student should 
 endeavor to apply the author's own dictum to his study and inter- 
 pretation of the essay, — to trust, as it were, his own reason in a meas- 
 
114 NOTh TUDY. 
 
 ure; and third, tha^ i says, "Self-reliance is 
 
 a misnomer ultimat ast in the constitution of 
 
 the universe/' \ 
 
 Of this last a word L. .leeds said. It must be remembered 
 
 that all of Emerson's philosophy of the conduct of life is based on the 
 idea that Nature, Man, and God are one, and that all that is best in 
 man is his portion of the divine spirit. Hence, in trusting to self, he 
 means to the highest self, or to the divine within man. So, as some 
 one has said, self-reliance is God-reliance. We know the divine 
 within us through intuition. This intuitive relation is the supernat- 
 ural factor in man, the manifestation in consciousness of the universal 
 spirit. This theory of intuition dominates the German literature of 
 the time, and was interpreted to the English speaking world by 
 Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth. To this theory Emerson added, 
 naturally enough, the conception that genius is "the true oracle of 
 heaven.'' As Cooke says, "While the earlier mystics taught Emerson 
 the doctrine of self-renunciation and dependence on God, all the 
 later Germans he read taught individuality and self-reliance. He 
 combined the two ideas and made them one." Hence, we have 
 independence through dependence upon the promptings of one's in- 
 most nature. In Letters and Social Aims he writes of this higher 
 self, "and in this self-respect, or hearkening to the privatest oracle, 
 he need never be at a loss. In morals, this is conscience; in intellect, 
 genius; in practice, talent: not to imitate or surpass a particular man 
 in his way, but to bring out your own new way." 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the details of the working out of this 
 philosophy, the essay is "a clarion call" to the best that is in young 
 people. It arouses all the native aspirations of the individual. It is 
 stimulating to feel that each of us has something within him which 
 makes him "a new creature with a value of his own." 
 
 COMPENSATION. 
 
 No essay of Emerson's, as Bliss Perry remarks, opens more happily 
 or more naturally than the one on Compensation. The ease and evi- 
 dent pleasure with which he approaches his great subject make the 
 essay seem to grow out of his long meditation now clarified and given 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 115 
 
 definiteness by the incident of the sermon. This uncommonly at- 
 tractive introduction may well serve as a model for the consideration 
 of the student. 
 
 This essay, like Self-Reliance which it immediately followed, ap- 
 peared in 1 84 1 in the first series. Like most of Emerson's essays it 
 is made up in part, as the opening paragraphs suggest, of thoughts 
 which had long been in his mind and many of which had already been 
 expressed in his Journal or elsewhere; but, unlike many of the others, 
 it does not seem, as Dr. Edward Emerson notes, to have been de- 
 livered previously in the form of an address as so many of the essays 
 were. When the essay was written, Emerson had chosen his course in 
 Hfe and had settled down to a quiet career as a thinker with the hope 
 of doing his share of the world's work as a writer and lecturer. 
 The death of his wife and of his promising brothers, Edward and 
 Charles, and the mental and moral struggle of his withdrawal from 
 the ministry had chastened but strengthened his spirit. He had a 
 knowledge of love and sorrow; he had experienced success and disap- 
 pointment; he had become a shrewd observer of affairs and of men, 
 and had acquired the courage to analyze unflinchingly the cause of 
 moral strength or weakness. Out of the fullness of these experiences 
 and powers he wrote of retribution. 
 
 Probably none of the essays has made a wider popular appeal, 
 and none is more worthy of consideration, because of its human in- 
 terest, its concern for the affairs of everyday life, its moral encourage- 
 ment, and its inspiring appeal to obedience to universal law. Few 
 of the essays deal with a profounder philosophy, yet none are handled 
 with more freshness, directness, and simplicity. 
 
 Its comparative simplicity of treatment and its richness in illustra- 
 tion drawn from practical life should make the approach to the final 
 philosophy easy. Many of the ideas expressed in the preceding essays 
 are repeated here in a new setting. The whole thought grows out of 
 the author's deep-seated optimism, his unwavering belief in the good- 
 ness of things, in the necessity of obedience, and in the inevitableness 
 of reward or puiiishment. "God cannot be cheated." All evil is 
 evidence of the violation of law, and cannot long be hidden. All men 
 are equal; all are great if obedient, because the soul is all that is, and 
 circumstances are nothing. 
 
Ii6 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 Questions and Topics on The American Scholar. 
 
 1. Find all you can about the Phi Beta Kappa Society to-day. 
 What is the emblem of the society? Do you know any members? 
 (Page 21, Note i.) 
 
 2. Do we meet for games of ^^ strength or skill" to-day more than 
 in 1837? (Page 21, 1. 3.) 
 
 3. Are Americans too busy to give to letters to-day? Why were 
 they especially busy in Emerson's early years? (Page 21, 1. 9.) 
 
 4. Are there any signs of our ^^apprenticeship to other lands'' 
 still remaining? (Page 22, 1. i.) 
 
 5. What events in American life have since been ^'sung in song 
 and story"? (Page 22, 1. 4.) 
 
 6. Who of the great American writers had written previous to 
 1837? (Page 22.) 
 
 7. Do you infer that Emerson would believe in our present idea 
 of specialization in education? (Page 22, 11. 29 ff.) 
 
 8. Has the tendency been toward or away from the division of 
 labor since Emerson spoke? (Pages 22-23.) 
 
 9. What is the true purpose of work? Ruskin says, "When men 
 are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as 
 the color petals out of a beautiful flower." (Page 23, 11. 3-11.) 
 
 10. Measured by his own definition, was Emerson a scholar? Are 
 most pupils scholars? (Page 23, 1. 13.) 
 
 11. Is Emerson's description of "the bookworm " the common idea 
 of a scholar to-day? Do you know a "bookworm"? A real scholar? 
 (Page 27, 1. 4.) 
 
 12. If all men believed "the active soul" the only thing of value, 
 what changes would be wrought in society? (Page; 27, 1. 15.) 
 
 13. How can the average person become "a creator"? (Page 27, 
 1. 18.) 
 
 14. Why is " a strong head" needed for one who gets his wisdom 
 only from books? (Page 29, 1. 18.) 
 
 15. Do " the so-called ^practical men' " sneer at scholars in our 
 day? Is it true that scholars are not "practical"? (Page 30, 1. 18.) 
 
 16. In talking with people do you ever feel that some speak from 
 experience; others, only from theory? (Page 31, 1. 2.) 
 
 17. Do you find any evidences of Emerson's having used his knowl- 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY, 1 17 
 
 edge of arts and sciences "to illustrate and embody his perceptions"? 
 (Page 2>d>, 1- 3-) 
 
 18. Did Emerson himself fulfill the true functions of a scholar — to 
 cheer, to raise, and to guide men, by showing them facts amidst 
 appearances? Do you think of any other duties of the scholar? 
 (Page 35, 1. 2.) 
 
 19. Compare the scholar's sacrifices with his opportunities. Is 
 the reward worth the price? (Page 35.) 
 
 20. Are men as willing in our time to be "brushed like flies from 
 the path of a great person '7 Do we worship heroes? (Page 39, 11. 23 ff .) 
 
 21. Is the seeking of money, or "spoils of office,'' characteristic 
 of this generation? (Page 40, 1. 3.) 
 
 22. In what traits is the boy like the ancient Greeks? (Page 41, 
 1. 12.) 
 
 23. Do you know of any instances where "Public and private 
 avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat"? (Page 45, 1. 14.) 
 
 Questions and Topics on Self-Reliance. 
 
 1. What do you think of Emerson's definition of genius? Com- 
 pare it with other definitions, especially with the familiar saying that 
 it is "an infinite capacity for taking pains." (Page 49, 1. 5.) 
 
 2. When in a man's education does the time come when he be- 
 lieves envy springs from ignorance, etc.? In what sense is this true? 
 (Page 50, 1. 4.) 
 
 3. Why is man "clapped into jail" by consciousness? (Page 52, 
 
 1.4.) 
 
 4. Why do these inner promptings "grow faint as we enter the 
 world?" Why does society destroy manhood? (Page 52, 11. 15 ff.) 
 
 5. How far is it safe for the individual to refuse to conform to 
 society? Could there be any government without the sacrifice of 
 personal rights for the good of the whole? (Page 53.) 
 
 6. Is Emerson uncharitable? Do you know of any instances 
 of unwise giving? * Is it wise to give because it is expected of you? 
 (Page 54, 11. 8-20.) 
 
 7. Does Emerson think men should be judged by their actions? 
 (Page 55, 1. 2.) 
 
 8. Is it safe for the average individual to ignore what people 
 think? (Page 55, 11. 8-16.) 
 
Il8 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 g. Can you think of instances when we "wear the fooHsh face of 
 praise"? (Page 56, I. 17.) 
 
 10. In what respect do newspapers direct men? (Page 56, 1. 30.) 
 
 11. Can you recall any men in American History who have with- 
 stood the opposition of both the cultivated classes and the masses? 
 (Page 57, 11. 1-9.) 
 
 12. Judging from these essays, were Emerson's writings consistent? 
 (Page 59.) 
 
 13. Can you mention other instances of institutions which are "the 
 lengthened shadow of one man''? (Page 61, 1. 7.) 
 
 14. Shall we not learn from the past? Can you formulate a state- 
 ment of Emerson's idea of the value of History? (Pages 65-66.) 
 
 15. In what sense does he mean that duty to self is higher than 
 duty to society? Have you tried doing your whole duty to yourself 
 for one day? (Page 70, 11. 6-12.) 
 
 16. What are some of the "choices" made for us by society? 
 (Page 70, 1. 30.) 
 
 17. Can you mention instances of "sturdy lads" from the country 
 who have surpassed the "city dolls"? Why have they succeeded? 
 (Page 71, 11. 5-12.) 
 
 18. Why is prayer to effect a private end "theft"? (Page 72, 1. 8.) 
 
 19. What do you think are the purposes of travel? What did 
 Emerson think? (Page 74, 11. 17 ff.) 
 
 20. Are there any elements in our system of education that foster 
 restlessness? (Page 75, 1. 15.) 
 
 21. How do insurance offices increase the number of accidents? 
 (Page 77, 1. 30.) 
 
 22. Compare the men of to-day with some of the great men of an- 
 tiquity. Which are greater? (Page 78.) 
 
 23. What are some of the harms of the extensive use of machinery? 
 (Page 78, 1. 17.) 
 
 24. Is it true that we place too much reliance upon property? On 
 what should we relie? (Page 79, 1. 21.) 
 
 Questions and Topics on Compensation. 
 
 I. We are told that the sermon was the immediate occasion of the 
 writing of the essay, but do you find anywhere a statement of the 
 purpose of the writing? (Page 85, 1. 21.) 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 119 
 
 2. Have you ever thought the bad are successful? What deter- 
 mines success? (Page 86, 1. 20:) 
 
 3. Can you mention other illustrations of polarity? (Page 87.) 
 
 4. What are some of the disadvantages and the compensations 
 of your climate? (Page 88, 1. 14.) 
 
 5. Have you gained something for everything you have missed, 
 etc.? A good topic for a theme. Give specific instances. (Page 88, 
 
 I. 23.) 
 
 6. Do you know of instances where men of genius in their devotion 
 to their work have neglected ^^ father and mother, and wife and child '7 
 Why does Emerson think it is right? Recall King Arthur's devotion 
 to the Round Table. (Page 89, 1. 20.) 
 
 7. Cite instances where high taxes have yielded no revenue, where 
 juries have declined to inflict severe legal penalties, and where private 
 vengeance has taken punishment into its own hands. (Page 89, 
 
 II. 29 ff.) 
 
 8. Have you tried to escape the consequences of your own acts? 
 Do you think you succeeded? (Page 92.) 
 
 9. Is experience with the bitter side of life necessary to greatness? 
 Think over the lives of several great men, Milton, Lincoln, Dante, 
 and others. (Page 92, 1. 25.) 
 
 10. Do you know any other proverbs that Emerson might have 
 added to this list? (Page 96, 11. 26 ff.) 
 
 11. From what enjoyment does "the exclusive in fashionable life'' 
 exclude himself? (Page 97, 1. 19,) 
 
 12. What is the cause of the fear that punishes? Fear of what? 
 Does a man who is conscious of no wrong-doing fear? (Pages 
 97-98.) 
 
 13. What would be the result if all men believed that a swindler 
 and a thief rob themselves? (Page 100, 1. 10.) 
 
 14. How do opposition and blame and antagonism protect and 
 benefit any one? Can you mention instances? (Page 102, L 17.) 
 
 15. Apply Emerson's idea of compensation to cheating, and see 
 why no one can be cheated except by himself. (Page 103, 1. 5.) 
 
 16. How does the criminal receive punishment which we do not 
 see? (Page 104, 11. 23-31.) 
 
 17. Do you ever wish for ''the pot of buried gold," the thing you 
 have not earned? (Page 105, 1. 20.) 
 
I20 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 / 
 
 1 8. Think of some men you admire and see how far they are mas- 
 ters of circumstances? (Page 106, 11. 21 ff.) « 
 
 19. Try to recall instances in which seeming disasters have proved 
 blessings. (Page 107, 11. 20 ff.) 
 
 Theme Topics. 
 
 1. Was Emerson a Practical Man? 
 
 2. Emerson — His Own Ideal of the American Scholar. 
 
 3. Emerson and Thoreau as Lovers of Nature. 
 
 4. Self-Reliance in the Lives of Certain Americans. 
 
 5. Striking Instances of the Wisdom of Instinct. 
 
 6. "Nature's Lawful Coin.'' See page 105, line 17. 
 
 7. Traits of Emerson's Character Revealed in the Essays. 
 
 8. "Room Alone and Keep a Journal." (Emerson's advice to all 
 college students). 
 
 9. Evidences of the Law of Compensation in My Own Experience. 
 
 10. The Most Impressive Idea Emerson Has Given Me. 
 
 11. The Use of Books — Emerson's Idea and Mine. 
 
 12. What Some "Scholars" are Doing in this City. 
 
 13. Are Our Scholars Practical Men? 
 
 14. The Right Spirit and the Wrong Spirit of Foreign TraveL 
 
 15. The Greek Goddess, Nemesis. 
 
 16. The Law of Compensation in the Careers of Some Important 
 Characters in My Reading (Brutus, Shylock, Sidney Carton, Silas 
 Marner, Lancelot, King Arthur, Elaine, Orlando, Guinevere, Nancy 
 Lammeter, etc.). 
 
 Notes to the American Scholar. 
 
 (Numerals in heavy type refer to the pages of the text, the lighter ones to 
 
 the lines.) 
 
 21 : Title. " The American Scholar " was one of Emerson's favorite 
 themes. He spoke again at Dartmouth College in 1838 on " the 
 resources, the subject, and the discipline of the scholar." In begin- 
 ning he said, " Neither years nor books have yet availed to eradicate 
 a prejudice rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and 
 earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 1 21 
 
 lead him directly into the holy ground where other men's aspirations 
 only point." 
 
 23 : 26. Nowhere is Emerson more poetic, more eloquent, than 
 when describing Nature. Read the opening paragraphs of the essay 
 on Nature. 
 
 24: 12. Classification begins. Emerson had no sympathy with 
 pure science, classification for the sake of classification. To him 
 science was interesting and profitable only as it revealed the truth 
 concerning the unity of all things. 
 
 25:3. Soul of his soul. The epitome of Emerson's idea of Nature. 
 
 25:29. Quick thought. Living thought. Compare "the quick 
 and the dead." 
 
 25: 29. It now endures, etc. Notice the three important functions 
 of a book — to preserve, to spread, and to stimulate thought. 
 
 26. By all means read Ruskin's definition of a book in Kings'^ Treas- 
 uries, 
 
 26: 27. Not from their own sight, etc. Emerson was a firm be- 
 liever in the rightness of intuition. 
 
 27: 27. The pure efflux of the Deity. Man becomes divine only 
 when he becomes a creator. 
 
 28:9. Genius . . . the enemy of genius. Why? 
 
 28: 13. Right way of reading. Read also Ruskin's discussion of 
 how to read in Kings^ Treasuries, 
 
 28: 21. We hear, that we may speak. Holmes said that he talked 
 to find out what he thought. 
 
 29: 2. Abstraction of all time, i. e., they deal with ideas of per- 
 manent interest. 
 
 30: 7. Aim not to drill. Drill is only a means to give power to 
 create. 
 
 30:16. There goes in the world a notion, etc. Compare this 
 statement of the popular idea of a scholar with George William 
 Curtis' discussion of the same topic in " The Duty of the American 
 Scholar," in Orations and Addresses, Vol. i, p. 7. 
 
 30: 27. Without it, he is not yet man. Curtis speaks of Milton 
 as the ideal type of scholar, because he forsook his scholarly delights 
 to participate in the great Puritan struggle, and then out of his 
 *' action " wrote his great epic, Paradise Lost. 
 
 30: 31. Heroic mind. In the first year of the Civil War, Emerson 
 
122 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 said to the colleges, " Against the heroism of soldiers, I set the heroism 
 of scholars/' Ponder their sacrifices described on pages 35 and 36. 
 
 31:4. Other me. Read again his idea of the relation of Man and 
 Nature, page 25. 
 
 31:7. I grasp the hands of those next me, etc. Dr. Edward 
 Everett Hale in his address on the ninetieth anniversary of Emer- 
 son's birth gives many illustrations of Emerson's practical mingHng 
 with affairs and with men. 
 
 31:16. Drudgery, calamity, etc. Emerson always believed that 
 he owed " much of the vigor, the rigor, and the manhood of his life," 
 to his early struggles with poverty. Read Hale's anecdote on this 
 point. 
 
 31: 26. Not so with our recent actions. It is said that the his- 
 torian Bancroft felt that he could deal impassionately only with 
 the history of America previous to the Revolution. 
 
 32: 27. If it were only for a vocabulary, etc. A paragraph well 
 worth study for both thought and expression. 
 
 33: 16. The idea of " Polarity " is further elaborated in Compensa- 
 tion. 
 
 33: 19. Each fit reproduces the other. Thought bears fruit in ac- 
 tion; action gives rise to thought. 
 
 34: 7. Not out of those, etc. Some one has said that the city draws 
 its men of vigor largely from the boys of the country. 
 
 34 : 12. Ruskin is another example of a man of culture who believed 
 profoundly in the duty of manual labor. 
 
 35: 2. Self-trust. In his Dartmouth address, Emerson said, "The 
 whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by 
 demonstrating what man can be and do." The idea is developed in 
 Self-Reliance. 
 
 35. Do you find here anything of autobiographical significance? 
 
 36: 16. He and he only knows the world. All others are deceived 
 by insignificant details of the moment. Curtis and Ruskin both 
 speak of the need of the scholar's seeing beyond the present appear- 
 , ances and resisting the whims of what Ruskin calls "the mob." 
 
 36: 32. He has descended into the secrets of all minds, because 
 Emerson believed all minds are one. 
 
 37: 13. This is my music; this is myself. Compare with Ruskin's 
 definition of a book, Kings^ Treasuries, paragraph 9. 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 123 
 
 37: 18. Fear always springs from ignorance. Ci. Heroism. ^* Self- 
 trust is the essence of Heroism." 
 
 37: 27. Whelping of this lion, i. e., find the real nature of our fear. 
 
 38: 9. Takes his signet and form. Cf. ^' One is seal, and one is 
 print," page 25. 
 
 38: II. Kings of the world. Read Ruskin's description of the true 
 king in Kings^ Treasuries, paragraph 45. 
 
 39: 13. In a century, etc. Edward Everett Hale says of Emerson, 
 "There are possibly ten such men, probably not so many, in the 
 nineteen centuries." 
 
 39: 15. All the rest, etc. Emerson works out this idea in Repre- 
 sentative Men, Cf., also, Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship, 
 
 40: 6. Wake them. This is the great problem of civilization — to 
 awaken men to see the truth. 
 
 40: 10. The main enterprise, etc. A statement of his belief in the 
 eternal progress or evolution of mankind. 
 
 41: 12. The boy is a Greek. He has the characteristics of the 
 ancient Greeks. The history of the race is repeated in the individual. 
 
 41 : 16. Age of Introversion. These were the times following 
 Romanticism in poetry, one characteristic of which was subjectivity, 
 or '^ the looking within." 
 
 41: 18. Hankering to know whereof the pleasure consists. The 
 scientific spirit of the Victorian period just beginning was influencing 
 the poets to seek the reason for all things. See Tennyson's Flower in 
 the Cranied Wall. 
 
 41 : 30. Age of Revolution. The literary period just closing in 
 1837 is frequently called the Revolutionary period because of its 
 revolt against formalism. 
 
 42:9. Elevation of . . . the lowest class. Emerson is speaking 
 in the time of the great social and political reform in England. The 
 Reform Bill in 1832 extended the franchise to the middle class. The 
 slaves were freed in 1833. 
 
 42:11. The near, the low, etc. The poets of the period, notably 
 Wordsworth, were exalting the beauty and worth of common things. 
 
 42: 23. Give me insight into to-day. Another illustration of the 
 practicality of Emerson's idealism. 
 
 42: 25. The meal in the firkin, etc. This passage admirably pre- 
 sents Emerson's idea of the oneness of things. 
 
124 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY, 
 
 44:6. Emanuel Swedenborg. Even while in college Emerson 
 responded sympathetically to the teachings of Swedenborg. 
 
 45: I. Help must come from the bosom alone. Cf. " Man is his 
 own star." 
 
 45: 16. See already the tragic consequence. Emerson blamed the 
 scholar for many of the conditions that led to the Civil War. In an 
 address during the first year of the war he said, " 'Tis because the 
 scholars did not learn and teach, because they were traders and left 
 their altars and libraries and worship of truth, and played the syco- 
 phant to presidents and generals and members of Congress." 
 
 45: 28. Patience, etc. A stirring appeal to young men to ^^ wake," 
 and to beHeve in their own highest instincts. 
 
 Notes to Self-Reliance. 
 
 47. It was Emerson's custom to preface his essays with a poetic 
 quotation, or a bit of his own verse, or with both, as in this case. 
 Some of his best epigrammatic verse is in these prefatory stanzas. See 
 the stanza preceding the essay on History, Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 suggests that this is an impulse inherited from generations of minis- 
 terial ancestors who were accustomed to using texts for their sermons. 
 
 48. With all of Emerson's sensitiveness and delicacy of spirit, 
 there went a profound admiration for ruggedness, the energy of 
 earth, physical endurance, and power. Napoleon interested him more 
 than any other man in history. He wrote, "These Hoosiers and 
 Suckers are better than the sniveling opposition." Dr. Edward Emer- 
 son in his address at the opening of Emerson Hall at Harvard, said, 
 "But the mother- wit of an Irish girl, the shrewd courage of a hump- 
 backed hostler, the confidence of a State Street merchant, the farmer's 
 dealing with the clod, the chemist's with the crystal, were as sug- 
 gestive to him as a page of Goethe." 
 
 49: I. Eminent painter. The Centenary Edition suggests that 
 either William Blake or Washington AUston is meant. Blake, es- 
 pecially, was original. 
 
 49: 18. Our own rejected thoughts. Ruskin says the average 
 person reads to find his own thoughts expressed. 
 
 50:14. Preestablished harmony. A technical term from the philos- 
 ophy of Leibnitz, used in his attempts to explain the uniformity of 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 125 
 
 the impressions made upon mind by matter as existing in a harmony 
 established from the beginning. See Century Dictionary. 
 
 51: 5. What pretty oracles nature yields us, etc. Emerson was a 
 great lover of children and young people, and felt more at home with 
 them than with his contemporaries. Wordsworth in his Ode on 
 Intimations of Immortality beautifully expresses his faith in the right- 
 ness of the instincts of childhood. Read the opening stanzas. 
 
 51 : 26. He tries and sentences them, etc. Compare with the 
 following from Education^ " They know truth from counterfeit as 
 quick as the chemist does. They detect weakness in your eye and 
 behavior a week before you open your mouth. ... If I can pass 
 with them, I can manage well enough with their fathers." 
 
 52: 5. Clapped into jail. Compare again with Wordsworth's Ode 
 on Intimations of Immortality, stanza 5, 
 
 "Shades of the prison house begin to close 
 Upon the growing Boy." 
 
 52: 25. Explore if it be goodness. Cf. i Thessalonians v. 21. 
 
 53:11. Good and bad. Cf. Hamlet, II. 2, "There is nothing 
 either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." 
 
 53: 12. After my constitution. Notice the double implication in 
 " constitution " — the political and the moral sense of the word. 
 
 53: 26. Spite at home. In turning your attention to things re- 
 mote, you neglect things close by. Cf. " Charity begins at home." 
 
 54: 3. I shun father and mother, etc. Cf. Matt. x. 37. 
 
 54: 22. Man and his virtues, i. e., we usually think of men and 
 their virtues as separate. 
 
 55 : 14. Great man. Is not this a test of real greatness ? 
 
 56: 24. Sour face. The first stroke of displeasure — the disap- 
 proval of your associates. 
 
 57:22. Motions. Natural impulses. Cf. " emotions." 
 
 58: 6. To be great is to be misunderstood. Remember this epi- 
 gram. Why is it true ? 
 
 58:11. Acrostic, palindrome. "Madam, I'm Adam," and Na- 
 poleon's remark, " Able was I ere I saw Elba," are examples. 
 
 58: 13. Contrite wood-life, humble, simple life. Emerson withdrew 
 to Concord to be able to lead a simple Hfe close to nature, 
 
126 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 59: 3. My book should smell of pines, etc. In his Journal in 1841 
 he wrote, "All my thoughts are foresters. I have scarce a day-dream 
 on which the breath of the pines has not blown and their shadows 
 waved. Shall I not therefore call my little book Forest Essays? " 
 
 59: 6. Character teaches above our wills. Our characters are 
 influential for good or bad whether we wish it or not. 
 
 60: 20. He measures you, i. e., the true man is the standard by 
 which all are measured. 
 
 60: 23. Takes place. An old expression for takes precedence of. 
 See place in Century Dictionary. 
 
 61: 7. An institution, etc. An example of one of Emerson's pithy 
 sentences. It was his custom to work over such thoughts again and 
 again until the expression suited the thought. He kept a book of 
 such sentences which he incorporated in his essays as opportunity 
 came. 
 
 61 : II. All history, etc. Emerson's reading was largely biography. 
 He loved the individuality in historic characters. It was his custom 
 to copy anecdotes of famous people. Plutarch and his heroes were his 
 delight. Dr. Holmes arranges the number of his references to great 
 men in the following order: Shakespeare, Napoleon, Plato, Plutarch. 
 
 61 : 14. Steal. Creep about. 
 
 62: 15. Our reading, etc. We become flatterers of rank; we give 
 too much attention to kings and princes and too little to common 
 men. 
 
 63: 2. Symbol, i. e., the king, a symbol of the power and dignity 
 of man. 
 
 63: II. Who is the Trustee? This paragraph needs careful atten- 
 tion. It explains the whole ground of Emerson's idea of Self-Reliance. 
 We should " obey " or " acquiesce " in the promptings of Instinct, 
 which is the working of the ^' Over-Soul," or the Universal Mind, in 
 our minds. Hence, " the Trustee," the " aboriginal self," is the 
 Universal Mind. Elsewhere he says there is ^^ one mind common to 
 all individual men," and " every man is an inlet to the same and to 
 all of the same." 
 
 63: 19. All later teachings, etc. Find Wordsworth's expression of 
 this in the Ode on Intimations of Immortality. 
 
 64: 9. Perceptions. This term is used to signify the application 
 of the intellect to the facts of life. 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY, 127 
 
 64: 12. My willful actions. He places instinct above reason 
 always. 
 
 64: 18. Fatal, inevitable, fateful. An old use of the word. Emer- 
 son frequently uses words in their original sense. 
 
 65: 4. Worship of the past. Emerson was a believer in the " thou- 
 sand-eyed present." Genius, he says, is characterized by a neglect 
 of yesterday and a " reliance upon the inspiration of to-day." 
 
 65: 9. Apologue. iEsop's fables are good examples of apologues. 
 
 65: 12. Ashamed before. Put to shame by. 
 
 66: 7. His voice shall be as sweet, etc. The richness and the music 
 of Emerson's voice impressed all who heard him. One who heard 
 him preach in New Bedford says, "One day there came into our pulpit 
 the most gracious of mortals, with a face all benignity, who gave out 
 the first hymn and made the first prayer as an angel might have read 
 and prayed. Our choir was a good one, but its best was coarse and 
 discordant after Emerson's voice." 
 
 67: 5. Obedience. See Note 62,, line 11. 
 
 67: 20. Power he defines elsewhere as " a sharing of the nature of 
 the world." 
 
 68:2. Beside. In comparison with. 
 
 68: 3. Mob. Cf. again Ruskin's Kings^ Treasuries, paragraph 30. 
 
 68: 6. We must go alone. All useful union must be purely within. 
 Cf. "The union is only perfect when all the uniters are isolated." 
 
 68: 25. Resist our temptations. This is the negative or defensive 
 side of self-reliance. 
 
 69: 27. Rejection of all standard. When Emerson rejected the 
 common standards of the pulpit, he was bitterly assailed on all sides 
 as unchristian, an atheist, etc. 
 
 70 : 4. Consider whether you have satisfied, etc. Consider the fine 
 scorn of this passage. 
 
 70: 24. No great and perfect persons. This subject is still further 
 treated in Character. 
 
 71:5. Sturdy lad. Another instance of his admiration of native 
 power. See Note 48. 
 
 71: 17. Ashamed of our compassion. Read Ruskin's treatment of 
 this topic in Kings^ Treasuries , paragraph 36 — " You despise com- 
 passion," etc. 
 
 72:3. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, etc. One of 
 
128 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 
 
 Emerson's stipulations in his occasional ministerial work was that he 
 would offer prayer only when he felt moved to do so. 
 
 72 : 9. Dualism. Man and God as separate instead of one. 
 
 72: II. Prayer in all action. Cf. Sir Philip Sidney's, " God helps 
 them who help themselves." 
 
 73: 7. Creeds. Creeds bind the beliefs of man in groups or sects, 
 while Emerson's philosophy says that each man should think and 
 feel independently. 
 
 74: 13. Pinfold. Cf. Comus, line 7, " Confined and pestered in this 
 pinfold here." 
 
 74: 22. Soul is no traveler. Emerson made trips abroad in 1831, 
 1847, and 1872, but with none of them was he satisfied, for he con- 
 stantly yearned for home and family. 
 
 75: II. My giant. Explain what is meant by " giant." 
 
 75: 17. We imitate. A reiteration of his belief in the individual 
 and in the present. 
 
 76: I. The precise thing to be done. Here we have the very prin- 
 ciple of all art — the fitness of the thing produced to the environment 
 and the thought. 
 
 76: 10. No man yet knows, etc. Cf. Ruskin's definition of a book 
 in Sesame and Lilies, 
 
 76: 19. Colossal chisel. A transferred epithet. Colossal really 
 applies to the product of the chisel. 
 
 77: 2. Foreworld. An original or ideal state. 
 
 77: 10. Something is taken. Cf. Compensation. 
 
 78: 17. The harm of . . . machinery. Many of the thinkers of 
 the Victorian Period questioned seriously the ultimate value of the 
 wonderful advance in the use of machinery. Look up Ruskin's ideas 
 on the subject. 
 
 79: 25. Guards of property. Ex-President Roosevelt in his ad- 
 dress before the French Academy in April, 19 10, said, " We must 
 place human rights before property rights." 
 
 80:8. Living property. Read Ruskin's discussion of "real treas- 
 ures " in Kings^ Treasuries, paragraph 45. 
 
 80: II. Thy lot or portion of life, etc. See second motto of Com- 
 pensation. 
 
 81: 3. Use all that is called Fortune, etc. This paragraph is an 
 admirable summing up of all that has gone before. 
 
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 129 
 
 Notes to Compensation. 
 
 83-84. In the two introductory stanzas are expressed the two es- 
 sential phases of the thought of the whole essay; first, the dualism, 
 "polarity," or balanced nature of the universe; and second, the in- 
 evitableness of retribution. Notice, too, that in the first instance, 
 though there is dualism in everything, there is also unity, as all things 
 are alike; and that in the second stanza, beneath the compensatory 
 philosophy, is the thought that man is above his environment. The 
 imagery of the first motto illustrates the charm which astronomical 
 phenomena always had for Emerson. 
 
 84: 7. Deserts. Where is the accent? 
 
 85: I. Ever since I was a boy. In the early days of his ministry, 
 June, 183 1, he wrote in his Journal, " Is not the law of Compensation 
 perfect? ... * The gods sell all things.' — ^Well, old man, hast got no 
 farther? Why, this was taught thee months and years ago. It was 
 writ on the autumn leaves at Roxbury in keep-school days — it sounded 
 in the blind man's ear at Cambridge. . . . And I have nothing char- 
 actered in my brain that outlives this word Compensation." 
 
 86: 17. You sin now, etc. An illustration of Emerson's startling 
 manner of expressing a generally half-realized thought. 
 
 86: 24. Announcing the presence of the soul, i. e., he does not 
 consider soul-success; he thinks only of material success. 
 
 86 : 32. Men are better, etc. Another instance of Emerson's lack of 
 confidence in so-called human institutions or systems. Cf . his idea of 
 governments. 
 
 87 : 4. Wiser than they know. Another way of saying that their 
 instincts are better than their intellects. This furnishes the keynote 
 to several essays. Cf. Pascal: "Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison 
 ne connait pas." Emerson was a great admirer of the French philos- 
 opher. 
 
 87:8. Answered by a silence. May this sometimes be "the 
 foolish face of praise "? See Self-Reliance, page 56. 
 
 87: 13. This circle. The circle is the symbol of perfection and of 
 eternity; hence, the perfect and eternal law of compensation. 
 
 87: 14. Polarity. The law of contraries of Plato, and a prominent 
 idea in the philosophy of Kant and Goethe. With Emerson it is one 
 of the universal laws of nature. " Mind is with him the positive, and 
 
I30 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY, 
 
 matter the negative expression of the Universal Spirit." Cf. the 
 recent theory of ions. 
 
 88: 14. Compensating errors. Error is here used in its etymological 
 sense of wandering or deviating from the regular course. According 
 to Lagrange's theory of the solar system each planet may undergo 
 various changes in its orbit both in eccentricity and in inclination, 
 but the balance of the whole system is always maintained. 
 
 88: 23. For everything you have missed. Cf. Self- Reliance , page 77. 
 
 89: 6. Intenerate. Another instance of the author's fondness for 
 etymology. Look up the derivation of the word. 
 
 89: 10. Cost him all his peace. Many of our presidents in recent 
 years have expressed this thought. 
 
 89: 14. Permanent. Why? 
 
 89: 16. Charges of that eminence. Worries, cares. Cf. Gold- 
 smith's The Deserted Village, lines 97-108. 
 
 89: 18. Bear witness to the light. John i. 7. 
 
 89: 20. Incessant. An example of the accurate use of words. 
 Notice the active sense of the word as explained in the Century 
 Dictionary. 
 
 89: 23. A byword and a hissing. Another instance of Emerson's 
 frequent use of Biblical phraseology. Emerson felt that he had in- 
 curred this penalty by his devotion to truth. 
 
 90: II. These appearances, etc. This and the following paragraph 
 are passages often quoted to show Emerson's theory of the oneness 
 of things. Though Darwin's Origin of Species did not appear until 
 1859, the evolutionary theory was already in the air — the theory 
 that all forms of life have developed from one original germ of 
 life. 
 
 90 : 30. The true doctrine, etc. Is Emerson a pantheist? Look up 
 the word in the Century Dictionary. 
 
 91:9. Ot KvfioL, etc. A fragment from a lost play of Sophocles. 
 
 91: 13. Every secret, etc. See Introduction, page 19. 
 
 91 : 19. Every act, etc. A difficult passage. The act and its reward 
 or punishment are inseparable; hence, the two become one or are in- 
 tegrated, first, because each act has its own reward in the doing of it, 
 and second, it has its reward in a train of attendant circumstances. 
 The intellect sees the circumstantial reward, but only the soul sees 
 the real reward in the act itself. 
 
• NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 131 
 
 92: 21. Truck and higgle. See Century Dictionary. Both words 
 are colloquial in New England in the sense of barter. 
 
 93: 13. To try is to be mad. The attempt to separate the act 
 from its retribution becomes an insane hobby that so acts upon the 
 mind as to blind it to the actual truths. 
 
 93 : 24. Fable. Emerson implies in the illustrations following that 
 the essential truth of the myths, etc., is the reason of their survival. 
 
 94: 1. Prometheus. For these stories in full, see Gayley's Classic 
 Myths, or Bulfinch's Age of Fable, 
 
 94 : 4. Of all the gods, etc. From -^schylus' Prometheus, 
 
 95 : 9. All things are sold. Read LowelFs Vision of Sir Launfal, 
 Prelude, lines 21-30, "Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us," 
 etc. 
 
 97: 9. Judges himself. Reveals what manner of man he is. 
 
 97: 13. A harpoon. During his occasional preaching visits to New 
 Bedford, Emerson became much interested in the adventures of the 
 whale fishers. 
 
 99 : 14. To ask for it. To get it for the asking. A household maxim 
 with Emerson. 
 
 99 : 30. Worm worms. Compare with the story of the storing up 
 of the manna. Exodus xvi. 
 
 100: 28. Budgets. The annual financial statement with an esti- 
 mate of the necessary taxes for the ensuing year. 
 
 100: 35. Exalt his business. An argument often used in these days 
 to show the mental and moral value of manual and industrial training. 
 
 101:1. The league, etc. An admirable paragraph. Study its 
 structure. Emerson believed that all nature is moral. Professor 
 Woodberry says his essays are "the best of lay sermons." 
 
 loi : 4. No den, etc. Compare this passage with Webster's cele- 
 brated discussion of the same topic in his speech in the White murder 
 case. 
 
 101:23. Winds blow and waters roll, etc. From Wordsworth's 
 sonnet. Near Dover, 
 
 102: 4. Thank his faults. This whole passage is transcribed from 
 his Journal and is purely personal. He realized very keenly his own 
 limitations, and often said they were elements in his success. 
 
 102: II. Mends his shell with pearl. Look up the formation of 
 pearls. See Century Dictionary. 
 
132 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY, . 
 
 102: 25. I hate, etc. Another transcription from his Journal 
 written two months after the bitter attack made upon him by the 
 Boston clergy for his rather radical advice to young ministers in his 
 Divinity School Address. 
 
 103: 18. Read again Ruskin's discussion of a mob, Kings^ Treas- 
 uries, paragraph 30. 
 
 103: 19. Traversing. An uncommon use of the word in the sense 
 of to thwart or to obstruct. 
 
 103: 27. The martyr, etc. Remember that Garrison a few years 
 previous was dragged through the streets of Boston. Has his com- 
 pensation come? 
 
 104: 5. What boots it to do well? Cf. Milton's Lycidas, lines 64- 
 
 84. 
 
 104: 13. Essence. Look up the derivation of this word, and see 
 how Emerson has translated '^ Being '^ into its Latin equivalent, and 
 has then followed it with God. A compact statement of the whole 
 philosophy of the Universal Spirit. 
 
 105: 2. Chaos. For the mythology of Chaos see Gayley's Classic 
 Myths, pages 37-38. 
 
 105 : 27. Nothing can work me damage, etc. A favorite maxim with 
 Dr. Johnson. 
 
 106: 25. The shellfish, etc. By all means read Holmes' The Cham- 
 bered Nautilus, written in 185 1. The same thought is expressed in 
 Longfellow's Excelsior, and in Spenser's An Hymne in Honour of 
 Beautie, 
 
 107: II. Force in to-day. This whole passage is another statement 
 of Emerson's belief in the greatness of the present, and of his disre- 
 gard of the past. See page 42, line 23. 
 
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