"Self-Reliance" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

[p.falk]

I've been reading through a few of Emerson's short articles and addresses and all I feel like saying is.... eh.

"Self-Reliance" starts off with a great example of this stumbling thought and trips back over itself. It starts off with

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 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.

For one - how does he know? How does Emerson know that the verses written by that eminent painter did not have their infancy in the mind of another... someone whose words and thoughts impressed that eminent painter. A cadre of decadent poets might not follow the conventions of the Catholic Church, but they have their own conventional leanings.

I think of Chesterton while writing that:

.... his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large.

But then Emerson states that it's the feeling imparted by what was read which really matters, not the thoughts. The after that he goes on about the importance of trusting your own thoughts. Being brave enough to throw your thoughts out there so that your "latent conviction" will become "the universal sense".

So no problem with the conventional, as long as what was previously thought of being convention is supplanted by your own thoughts, which are really your own feelings and sentiments.


I can see how Emerson shaped Unitarianism. I hear this sentiment in many people, transcending Unitarianism (frustratingly enough).

I'd be curious though... would Moses and Plato think their highest merit lay with saying "what they thought"? Or, that they were speaking a Truth above them. Sure, merit in risking to say that Truth.

[p.falk]

This is funny. After writing that I search for any commentary Chesterton might have had on Emerson. One of the first links was this:


https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/conver ... chesterton


A quote of Emerson is offered where he decries the Church for turning Christ's miracles into Monsters. How Christ wants us to find the divine in ourselves and how religions ruins all of that.

The a quote from Chesterton is offered which flips this on it's head:

We have all heard people say a hundred times over, for they seem never to tire of saying it, that the Jesus of the New Testament is indeed a most merciful and humane lover of humanity, but that the Church has hidden this human character in repellent dogmas and stiffened it with ecclesiastical terrors till it has taken on an inhuman character. This is very nearly the reverse of the truth. The truth is that it is the image of Christ in the churches that is almost entirely mild and merciful. It is the image of Christ in the Gospels that is a good many other things as well. The figure in the Gospels does indeed utter in words of almost heart-breaking beauty his pity for our broken hearts. But they are very far from being the only sort of words that he utters. Nevertheless they are almost the only kind of words that the Church in its popular imagery ever represents him as uttering.

There is something appalling, something that makes the blood run cold, in the idea of having a statue of Christ in wrath. There is something insupportable even to the imagination in the idea of turning the corner of a street or coming out in the spaces of a marketplace, to meet the petrifying petrifaction of that figure as it turned upon a generation of vipers, or that face as it looked at the face of a hypocrite. The Church can reasonably be justified therefore if she turns the most merciful face or aspect toward men; but it is certainly the most merciful aspect that she does turn.