Self Reliance Essay, Research Paper
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at
the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is
suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse,
as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of
good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but
through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is
given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new
in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can
do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing
one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on
him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not
without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where
one ray should fall, that it might testify of that
particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are
ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It
may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues,
so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his
work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay
when he has put his heart into his work and done his best;
but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no
peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the
attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no
invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you,
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of
events. Great men have always done so, and confided
themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying
their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated
at their heart, working through their hands, predominating
in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in
the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not
minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards
fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and
benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on
Chaos and the Dark.
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the
face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes!
That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment
because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means
opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being
whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in
their faces, we are disconcerted. 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 puberty and manhood no less with
its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and
gracious and its claims not to be put by, 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.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would
disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate
one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in
the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent,
irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people
and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their
merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad,
interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers
himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives
an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he
does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped
into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once
acted or spoken with 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 can thus avoid all pledges, and having
observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased,
unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be
formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs,
which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would
sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they
grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of
every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company,
in which the members agree, for the better securing of his
bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and
culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is
conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not
realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would
gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of
goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at
last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. 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. 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 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, uncharitable
ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk 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 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 of the door-post, Whim. I hope
it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot
spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause
why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not
tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put
all poor men in good situations. Are they 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
belong 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 popular charities; the education at
college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the
vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the
thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with
shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a
wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to
withhold.