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Biographical profile published by The Daily Objectivist; includes excerpt from the essay "Self-Reliance" (1841)
Hero of the Day - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Laissez Faire's ace customer service commando and co-webmaster, Russell Hanneken, tells TDO that critics of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) should "lay off."

"When I was in high school, 'Self-Reliance' gave voice to feelings I didn't know how to express, and got me interested in philosophy," says Russ.

He commends to our attention the following passage from Emerson's essay.

* * *

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. ...

[D]o 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 thousand-fold 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.1

     — Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

Copyright © 2000, The Daily Objectivist - Reprinted with permission of The Daily Objectivist and Davidmbrown.com.

17 Dec 2008 (last edit: 10 Jan 2024)


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  1. R. W. Emerson, Essays, Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1841, pp. 41-42, 43. (Freedom Circle note) ↩︎