General Philosophy

These are quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance,” written in 1841. In it, Emerson describes much of his life philosophy. His ideas are well worth pondering, and are most applicable in my mind to the strange things we’ve been reading.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. 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, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.

A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and 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 independence 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 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.

 

 

I looked into Emerson and this piece of work after seeing something on TV about him.  Part of the main discussion in this program was the fact that Emerson was battling with Benjamin Franklin through writing on how a person should generally live and find happiness.Their ideas were almost the opposite.

Emerson was part of a dying breed; a American romantic poet.  He suggested that we should be looking within, developing our own life principles, and coming to terms with them in our life.  He felt we should be concerned with our own ideas, and not worry about how others led their life.  Much of his poetry and writings also suggest a mystical relationship between us and nature, as well as with the people around us.  Benjamin Franklin on the other hand was much more geared towards what you can do for others, and what can you do for your country.  It’s obvious who won this battle of ideas today.

more reading to do about this..

 

 

Posted by jimhasgoodtimes