Essays: First Series
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841
Why do we let go of our own thought, and then, with embarrassment, hear it from someone else? Ralph Waldo Emerson answers this in twelve essays, above all in “Self-Reliance” and “Compensation”. This is a book about how to listen to your own judgment without confusing it with whim, and why everything in life has to be paid for.
Who it is for
For those who often go along with other people’s opinions, are afraid of seeming inconsistent, look for themselves in moving from place to place and in other people’s examples, or want to work out where self-trust ends and stubbornness begins.
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Your thought in other people’s mouths
Imagine a conversation in which a simple thought comes to you. Everyone around says something different, and you let it go: if nobody thinks that way, it is probably not important. A week later someone else says exactly that, confidently and out loud, and you are left to accept your own opinion from another person’s hands, with shame. Ralph Waldo Emerson described this scene almost two hundred years ago, and for him it was not a minor annoyance but the central sickness of a human being.
In 1841 Emerson, a former minister from the small town of Concord, published twelve essays: on history, love, friendship, prudence, heroism, art. One thought runs through all of them. According to Emerson, all people share one common mind, and each person is open to it directly. So what you truly see with your own eyes may turn out to be true for others too, and there is no need to ask permission first from books, traditions and the majority.
Two essays form the heart of the collection. “Self-Reliance” explains why it is worth listening to your own judgment and what stops you from doing so. “Compensation” shows why this is not an invitation to egoism: the world, for Emerson, is built like a pair of scales, and everything in it has to be paid for.
This is philosophy, not a set of instructions, and you can argue with it. The argument moves step by step: the fear of other people’s displeasure, the fear of contradicting yourself, the question of what exactly is worth trusting, the price of every thing, and the strength that grows out of weakness.
A smile that makes your face ache
Emerson knew a man who once, moved by a religious feeling, stopped making compliments and small talk. With everyone he met he began to speak about what mattered most, addressing their conscience directly. At first everyone decided he had lost his mind. But he did not give up, and in time something unexpected happened: none of his acquaintances tried to lie to him any more or brush him off with chatter about prices and the news. His directness made others answer in kind.
Emerson tells this story to show how rarely we live that way. In his words, society is like a joint-stock company where people pay for their bread with their freedom: each agrees to give up a part of himself in order to get his own share more reliably. The most valued virtue in it is conformism, that is, readiness to think and act as everyone does.
There is a price for this, and Emerson names it. Customs that have long died for you drain your strength. You support a church you do not believe in, vote for a party out of habit, and behind all these screens it is no longer possible to make out who you really are. He recalls a preacher you can predict in advance: not one living word will be spoken, because the man has promised himself to look only at the permitted side of a question. And in company where we feel uncomfortable, we acquire a “silly face of praise”, a forced smile that cramps the muscles.
Why is it so hard to stop? Because the world punishes difference with displeasure. Emerson suggests weighing this soberly: the sour faces of a crowd, like its smiles, usually have no deep cause. They are put on and taken off “as the wind blows and the newspaper directs”. In the essay on prudence he adds: you fear your neighbor, but your neighbor fears you too. From afar people make threats, but up close they turn out to be as unsure of themselves as everyone else.
Emerson calls a nonconformist not someone who argues with everybody on principle, but someone who first checks whether what is called good really is good. His advice is short: do your work, and I will know you.
About the author
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American philosopher, poet and essayist, a former minister and one of the leading figures of Transcendentalism. “Essays: First Series” was published in 1841.
All books by this author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Terms from the book
- Socrates
- Shakespeare
- tack
- Copernicus
- Galileo
- intuition
- New Hampshire
- Vermont
- Concord: A small town in the American state of Massachusetts where Emerson spent most of his life.
- compensation: For Emerson, a law by which every gain has its price and every loss its own recompense. It is his philosophical idea, not a proven law of nature.
- conformism: Readiness to think and act as people around you do, following the opinion of the majority.
- nonconformist: A person who does not take what is generally accepted on trust and lives by their own judgment. For Emerson, this is above all someone who checks whether what is considered good really is good.
- Over-Soul: The name Emerson gave to the one mind shared by all people and all of nature. It is the author’s philosophical and religious idea, not a scientific concept.
- banyan: A tropical fig tree that puts down aerial roots and grows into a whole grove with a wide shade.
All terms
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