[REBORN FROM THE ASHES][comment][01.29]

kulewy531UID: 2603031

爱默生的一篇文章，对于理解美国文化很有帮助。生词比较多，文章也有点长（2400字左右），希望大家能克服一下。


Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance (1841)

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. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 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 luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for US than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole Cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
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 preéstablishcd 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 hint 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 your 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 behavior 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 parlor 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 ways of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent. troublesome. He numbers 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 éclat, 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 he hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it he 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 everything 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 he 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 today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropists 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 prisons 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.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily nonappearance on parade. Their works arc done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
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.

domudomuUID: 2670967

I read the other day some verses（诗节） written by an eminent（知名的，良好品质的） painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition（告诫，轻责） in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment（伤感，柔情，态度） 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. Speak your latent（潜在的，隐藏的） conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets（喇叭，鼓吹） of the Last Judgment. 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（零） 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 luster of the firmament of bards and sages（圣人）. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated（感到孤独的） majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for US than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole Cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
（说出自己内心的想法，艺术教会我们追寻自己的想法）


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（核，重点，核心） of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil（长时间，低报酬） bestowed（赠给，授予） 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 preéstablishcd 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 divin（天赐，极好，预测） idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate（成比例， 相称的） and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted（通知，授予，赋予）, but God will not have his work made manifest（明显，清楚显露） 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 hint no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. （这是一种不能兑现的解脱）In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates（振动） to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for your 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（卓越的，至高无上的） destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers,（积分商户） and benefactors, obeying the Almighty（万能的，强大的） effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
（嫉妒是愚蠢的，模仿是自杀性的，当投入工作后，身心会有所解放，遵守强大的力量，并且在黑暗中前进）
What pretty oracles（圣的，权威） nature yields us on this text, in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes（畜生）! That divided and rebel（反叛，反抗） 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（不安，慌张，窘迫）. Infancy conforms to（遵循） nobody; all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle（逗小孩，那样的说话) and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty(青春期） and manhood no less with its own piquancy（痛快） 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（听，重提）! 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（漠不关心） 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 parlor（客厅） 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 ways of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent.（雄辩的，传神的） troublesome. He numbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict（裁决，意见）. You must court him: he does not court you.
（分析孩子的一些行为，婴儿也是有语言有观点的）

But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat, 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（遗忘，记忆缺失） 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（不可收买，不可贿赂）, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter（说出） 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（阴谋，密谋） 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（不管是谁，无论是谁） would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not he hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it he goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. （除了你自身的正直，没有什么是神圣的）Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
（在这个复杂的社会，大人们的言行完全被别人看到。我就是我自己的神，在我活的地方）

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune（纠缠，不断要求我） me with the dear old doctrines（教条） 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. （好的和坏的，是可以由着向那转变的，只有我遵守的是对的，而我反对的都是错的）A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral（短暂的瞬间的） but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate（投降） 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（恶意，蓄意害人） and vanity（自大，虚荣） wear the coat of philanthropy（博爱，慈善活动） shall that pass? If an angry bigot（心胸狭窄，有偏见的人） 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（不厚道的） ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would he 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（布道，宣讲） as the counteraction（反对，反抗行动） of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun（避开） father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels（过梁，楣） of the door-post, Whim.（一时兴起的，异想天开） 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 today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropists（慈善家） that I grudge（不满，怨恨） 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 prisons if need be; but your miscellaneous（不同种类，混杂的） 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（酒鬼）; and the thousandfold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb（不再抵抗，屈从） and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation（赎罪，补偿） of daily nonappearance on parade. Their works arc done as an apology or extenuation（减轻罪孽的借口） of their living in the world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle（悲壮的可笑的）. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous（艰巨的） 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

COMMET
After reading the splendid article written by the great writer Emerson, I just felt as if my heart and body got a unusual baptism. I'd like to reconsider my life, and the way I kept living for twenty years. There is a subtle relationship between the single and ever existing society. Children and infants have always been talked as the sample of pure and kindness. But actually they have their own ideas and language. They are just like angles, they get the special attrcation, and it is easy for them to attract many adults saying or acting unusual. As to the complex adults, they seem to want the ability to handle everything related or unralated to them. But poorly, their words, actions and ideas will be watched in some extend, thus they will follow the major trends of that modern socirty. It often seems that their freedom and ability is far less then those children and infants. However, nothing is at last scared but the integrity of your own mind. So, just regardless all the other things and follow your own thoughts.
There are no absolutely right things or wrong things, they are flexible enough to exchange in some sense. So, the most important thing is what is right and what is otherwise wrong in your mind. Only your mind can drive to the right direction in the future, of course, the right direction is just that right in your mind.
You can choose your way a style by yourself, but, the process of choosing may be quite important. Usually, people would like to choose a common way to live just as most human beings. But the greatest person will always keep their own ideas and thoughts into his mind. By clarifying what is really need and necessary, those greatest people are in the midst of the crowd keep with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

ieyangj08UID: 2743219

Sentence

1) 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. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
2) 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.
3) Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
4) 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.
5) 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.
6) 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.

Comment

How to become self-reliance? This article gives us the answer. The author Ralph Waldo Emerson was a major American port, philosopher, and center of the American Transcendental movement. His famous words, 'to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men', are also contained in this article. How powerful and wise it is! I also agree with plentiful other viewpoints he proposed in this article. Such as 'trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string', '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', and 'the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude'.

dingyi0311UID: 2627919

My comment
This article is very educative. It not comes straight to the very point the author want to tell us, and therefore make me confused at the beginning. Yet, after I have finished reading it, I was overwhelmed by the author’s wisdom and sage in unfolding his argument. This article completely approve people to be self-reliance- that people should be listen to their instinct and remain selfish. If it was not well argued, the author will be set into a moral pit and reproached by people who was regarded have high morality. The author first tell people need to follow their heart and not be shame of speaking out one’s internal thought. And this thought are usually right and enable many people to be great ones. Then the author assert that infants is right the kind of people who dare to express their instinct, raw, and undisguised desire. Infants are independent, irresponsible, conform nobody and every body conform to them. the author approve it as a healthy attitude of human nature. when it come to this point, no one will go against the author‘s viewpoint. The author then tell people that if we look at the world in a infant’s eyes; we will go upgright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. for example, despising the angry bigot who care only about himself’s interests while assumes bountiful cause of Abolition. In rest part of the article, the author calls for people who always do good thing to expiate to dismantle their fulsome cover. The true virtue is
“selfish”-follow their heart and do whatever they want. After all, live is not an apology or extenuation.

ieyangj08UID: 2743219

百度百科上搜来的作家简介，希望能对理解文章有所帮助

      
      Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a major American poet, philosopher and center of the American Transcendental movement.
　　Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Most of his ancestors were clergymen as was his father. He was educated in Boston and Harvard, like his father, and graduated in 1821. In 1825 he began to study at the Harvard Divinity School and next year he was licensed to preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. In 1829 Emerson married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died in 1831 from consumption. Emerson became sole pastor at the Second Unitarian Church of Boston in 1830. Three years later he had a crisis of faith, finding that he "was not interested" in the rite of Communion. Emerson's controversial views caused his resignation. In 1835 Emerson married Lydia Jackson and settled with her at the east end of the village of Concord, where he then spent the rest of his life.
　　Emerson's first book, Nature, a collection of essays, appeared when he was 33. Emerson emphasized individualism and rejected traditional authority. He also believed that people should try to live a simple life in harmony with nature and with others. His lectures 'The American Scholar' (1837) and 'Address at Divinity College' (1838) challenged the Harvard intelligentsia and warned about a lifeless Christian tradition. Harvard ostracized him for many years, but his message attracted young disciples, who joined the informal Transcendental Club (established in 1836). In 1840 Emerson helped Margaret Fuller to launch The Dial (1840-44), an open forum for new ideas on the reformation of society.
　　In 1841 Emerson published a selection of his earlier lectures and writings under the title Essays. It was followed by Essays: Second Series (1844), a collection of lectures annexed to a reprint of Nature (1849), and Representative Men (1850). In the 1850s he started to gain success as a lecturer. His English Traits, a summary of English character and history, appeared in 1856.Other later works include Conduct Of Life (1860), Society And Solitude (1870), a selection of poems called Parnassus (1874), and Letters And Social Aims, (1876). As an essayist Emerson was a master of style. He encouraged American scholars to break free of European influences and create a new American culture.
　　Emerson's health started to fail after the partial burning of his house in 1872. He made his last tour abroad in 1872-
　　1873, and then withdrew more and more from public life. Emerson died on April 27, 1882 in Concord. Miscellanies (1884), a collection of political speeches and Lectures And Biographical Sketches (1884) were published posthumously.
　　拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生（Ralph Waldo Emerson）：美国散文作家、思想家、诗人
　　拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生（Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882）美国散文作家、思想家、诗人。
　　1803年5月出生于马萨诸塞州波土顿附近的康考德村，1882年4月27日在波士顿逝世。他的生命几乎横贯19世纪的美国，他出生时候的美国热闹却混沌，一些人意识到它代表着某种新力量的崛起，却无人能够清晰的表达出来。它此时缺乏统一的政体，更没有相对一致的意识形态。在他去世的时候美国不但因为南北战争而统一，而且它的个性却逐渐鲜明起来，除了物质力量引人注目，它的文化也正在竭力走出欧洲的阴影。1837年爱默生以《美国学者》为题发表了一篇著名的演讲辞，宣告美国文学已脱离英国文学而独立，告诫美国学者不要让学究习气蔓延，不要盲目地追随传统，不要进行纯粹的摹仿。另外这篇讲辞还抨击了美国社会的拜金主义，强调人的价值。被誉为美国思想文化领域的“独立宣言”。一年之后，爱默生在《神学院献辞》中批评了基督教唯一神教派死气沉沉的局面，竭力推崇人的至高无上，提倡靠直觉认识真理。“相信你自己的思想，相信你内心深处认为对你合适的东西对一切人都适用……”文学批评家劳伦斯.布尔在《爱默生传》所说，爱默生与他的学说，是美国最重要的世俗宗教。
　　爱默生出身牧师家庭，自幼丧父，由母亲和姑母抚养他成人。曾就读于哈佛大学，在校期间，他阅读了大量英国浪漫主义作家的作品，丰富了思想，开阔了视野。毕业后曾执教两年，之后进入哈佛神学院，担任基督教唯一的神教派牧师，并开始布道。1832年以后，爱默生到欧洲各国游历，结识了浪漫主义先驱华滋华斯和柯尔律治，接受了他们的先验论思想，对他思想体系的形成具有很大影响。
　　爱默生回到波土顿后，在康考德一带从事布道。这时他的演说更接近于亚里士多德学派风格，重要讲演稿有《历史的哲学》、《人类文化》、《目前时代》等。 爱默生经常和他的朋友梭罗、霍桑、阿尔柯、玛格利特等人举行小型聚会，探讨神学、哲学和社会学问题。这种聚会当时被称为“超验主义俱乐部”，爱默生也自然而然地成为超验主义的领袖。
　　1840年爱默生任超验主义刊物《日晷》的主编，进一步宣扬超验主义思想。后来他把自己的演讲汇编成书，这就是著名的《论文集》。《论文集》第一集于1841年发表，包括《论自助》、《论超灵》、《论补偿》、《论爱》、《论友谊》等12篇论文。三年后，《论文集》第二集也出版了。这部著作为爱默赢得了巨大的声誉，他的思想被称为超验主义的核心，他本人则被冠以“美国的文艺复兴领袖”之美誉。
　　爱默生的《论文集》赞美了人要信赖自我的主张，这样的人相信自己是所有人的代表，因为他感知到了普遍的真理。爱默生以一个超验主义名的口吻，平静地叙说着他对世界的看法、超验主义结合并渗透了新柏拉图主义和类似加尔文教派的一种严肃道德观和那种能在一切自然中发现上帝之爱的浪漫派乐观主义。
　　爱默生喜欢演讲，面对人群令他兴奋不已，他说他感觉到一种伟大的情感在召唤，他的主要声誉和成就建立于此。他通过自己的论文和演说成为美国超验主义的领袖，并且成为非正式哲学家中最重要的一个。他的哲学精神表现在对逻辑学、经验论的卓越见解上，他轻视纯理论的探索，信奉自然界，认为它体现了上帝和上帝的法则。
　　除《论文集》之外，爱默生的作品还行《代表人物》、《英国人的特性》、《诗集》、《五日节及其他诗》。
　　爱默生集散文作家、思想家、诗人于一身，他的诗歌、散文独具特色，注重思想内容而没有过份注重词藻的华丽，行文犹如格言，哲理深入浅出，说服力强，且有典型的“爱默生风格”。有人这样评价他的文字“爱默生似乎只写警句”，他的文字所透出的气质难以形容：既充满专制式的不容置疑，又具有开放式的民主精神；既有贵族式的傲慢，更具有平民式的直接；既清晰易懂，又常常夹杂着某种神秘主义......一个人能在一篇文章中塞入那么多的警句实在是了不起的，那些值得在清晨诵读的句子为什么总能够振奋人心，岁月不是为他蒙上灰尘，而是映衬得他熠熠闪光。

plukaUID: 2721764

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance (1841)

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. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 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 luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for US than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole Cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
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 preéstablishcd 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 hint 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 your 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 behavior 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 parlor 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 ways of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent. troublesome. He numbers 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 éclat, 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（遗忘之河） 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（合资的） 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 he hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it he 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 everything 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 he 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 today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropists 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 prisons 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.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily nonappearance on parade. Their works arc done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
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.

COMMENT

Honestly I haven't grasp all the picture this philosophical essay. The language is vague for me. Though I know every single word separately, when they come together: I can't read...(That's one important reason why I hate philosophy book: you can write really esoteric contents, yet please use language of earth, not Mars.= =|||)
Well, get down to the essay. Still I perceived sth( I think I perceived sth). That is, the individuality against community, the resolved against the hesitant, the bold against the flabby. I read about the resolution and pride on the independence of one's mind. How envy I am! There's, perhaps, distance between Emerson and the general. 
A little bit chaos in mind...
--If I can prevent a heart from broken, then I'll not live in vain.
Dickenson wrote it, though perhaps I do not get the word exactly. Somehow when thinking about the bold and frank mind espoused by Emerson, I come up with these words. The tenderness of Dickenson touches me more than Emerson.

错别字: philosoohy

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

Comment:

Thie special article reminds me of the issues concerned about originality and creation. As the author has emphasized in his passage, no one can possibly achieve success in the world by conforming to conventional practices and conventional ways of thinking. The God has armed us human with the capacity to think independently only if we donot lose the courage to upset the tradition. Of course, perfection is the state that one conserves his independence and originality without offending others and the common rules.

On the other hand, to over-accentuate the significance of independece would drive one far from his destination. Originality does not mean thinking something that was never thought before; it means putting old ideas together in new ways. In other words, almost every great creation depends on the basic knowledge of the creator. No one is capable of shaking the yoke of his predecessors and creat out of nothing. For example, modern politics in the US can trace back to the foundation of democracy——the Declaration of Indepence.

In summary, what we need to do is to enrich our basic knowledge and practice our particular enlighted reflection in the field we love.

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance (1841)

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. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 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 luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for US than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole Cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

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 preéstablishcd 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 hint 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 your 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 behavior 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 parlor 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 ways of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent. troublesome. He numbers 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 éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is noLethe 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 he hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it he 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 everything 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 he 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 today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropists 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 prisons 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.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily nonappearance on parade. Their works arc done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

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.
---------------------------------
gleam
A brief beam or flash of light:
微光，闪光：瞬间的光或闪光
luster Soft
reflected light; sheen.
轻柔的光泽；光泽
conviction
guilty of a crime as charged.
判罪：陪审团或法官对某人犯有被指控之罪行的判决
kernel
The most material and central part; the core:
中心：最具实质性的中心部分；核心
preéstablishcd
solitude
The state or quality of being alone or remote from others.
单独：独自一人或远离他人的状态或性质
extenuation
The act of extenuating or the condition of being extenuated; partial justification.
开脱：使人原谅的行为或被人原谅的条件；偏心的辩护
--------------------------------------------------------
表示文章没有怎么看懂，很难写出什么有关内容的COMMENTS 个人还是对这类文章不太有反应~~~

123runfordreamUID: 2697608

Self-Reliance (reliance on one's own efforts and abilities)


Speak your latent
(present and capable of becoming though not now visible, obvious, active, or symptomatic) conviction (a strong persuasion or belief), and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 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 luster of the firmament of bards and sages.


good-humored (good-natured; cheerful)



A man is relieved and gay (cheerful and excited) when he has put his heart into his work and done his best;



the Almighty (god)



babes(n.小孩; 缺乏经验的人), and even brutes(n.畜生, 残忍或好色之人)! 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 (to talk continuously about silly and unimportant things) and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty (The stage of adolescence in which an individual becomes physiologically capable of sexual reproduction) and manhood no less with its own piquancy (n.辛辣; 痛快; 辣味) and charm,


Hark! (listen!)



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 (whoever) would be a man, must be a nonconformist (n. someone who does not accept the ways of thinking or behaving accepted by most other people in their society or group). He who would gather immortal palms must not he hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it he 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 (to make someone decide to do something prompt sb to do sth) 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 (Completely; entirely) from within?


A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular (someone who is the official leader or ruler of a country but who does not have real power or authority) and ephemeral but he.



pules (To whine; whimper)



miscellaneous (a miscellaneous set of things or people includes many different things or people who do not seem to be connected with each other)


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 your duty is 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.


Comment:
When I read a good piece of work, I can not help applauding for it. When it is a brilliant one, I feel like holding thousands of words to say, then suddenly finding out that there is no need to speak. I have to say, this is how I feel now. But I am not going to end this article like that. I don’t think I can take all the best thoughts from this article but at least a lot or what I have gained from this has mean a lot to me.
What is self reliance really? I never think this issue seriously. Maybe I just take the wrong way to know it as most people do. How to judge a person as a good even nice one? As our parents told us when we were little kids, following what teachers had told us, that is the most important one. Looking back of my way coming to the adult world, I indeed hate this means. And if we investigate randomly nowadays, we can still find out that how disappoint some of teachers’ behaviors. Especially Chinese way, education actually has many big flaws. For instance, teachers will never tell you sacrificing yourself to the benefits of whole groups is a second choice. It should be a relief to every apperantly (apparently).
On Emerson’s saying, “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think”. Above his discussing what must do and needn’t to do, I see the courage. But if it were the fundamental rule confessed by the society, it would be as normal as sun rising. Do what you must do not you have to, responsible for yourself, that’s a way of greatness. Unfortunately, the way of society evaluating greatness and meanness is forcing us to conform to a pattern, which apart our genius from our spiritual world to what is so called reality. Pathetic we accept almost all.
It is time to weak up and search true genius in our sleepy mind.

123runfordreamUID: 2697608

我晕~颜色都掉没了。
~~~~(>_<)~~~~

qisaimanUID: 2703629

Emerson : self-reliance.
to tell the truth, the article gives me a headache.
I hope i will not go for it again. it occur to me two words : self-knowledge and individualism .
the last sentence express the idea of emerson clearly: to be in the crowd with a independent thought.
But it seems what I have read here is just a small portion of his attitude. The wiki says :”…..His views, the basis of Transcendentalism, suggested that God does not have to reveal the truth but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly from nature.[109]….’
I would like to read more before returning to any further comments.

番茄斗斗UID: 2720914

There is a time in every man's education when hearrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation issuicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion(命运);that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel（核心） of nourishingcorn can come to him but through his toil（辛苦的工作） bestowed on that plot ofground which is given to him to till（耕种）. The power which resides in him isnew in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nordoes he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, onecharacter, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none.This sculpture in the memory is not without preéstablishcd harmony. Theeye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of thatparticular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of thatdivine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted asproportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but Godwill not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved andgay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but whathe has said or done otherwise shall give hint no peace. It is adeliverance（被释放） which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius desertshim; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that ironstring. Accept the place the divine providence has found for your thesociety of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great menhave always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius oftheir age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthywas seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominatingin all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highestmind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in aprotected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides,redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancingon Chaos and the Dark.
What pretty oracles nature yields us on thistext, in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes!That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because ourarithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose,these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yetunconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted.Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it, so that one babecommonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play toit. So God has armed youth and puberty（青春期） and manhood no less with its ownpiquancy（趣味） and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claimsnot to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youthhas no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the nextroom his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knowshow to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will knowhow 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 conciliateone, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlorwhat the
pitis in the playhouse; independent;irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts aspass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift,summary ways of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent.troublesome. He numbers himself never about consequences, aboutinterests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court（讨好）him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped（迅速放置） intojail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken withéclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatredof hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There isno
Lethe for this. Ah, that he couldpass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, andhaving observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased,unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He wouldutter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be notprivate, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, andput them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude,but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Societyeverywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of itsmembers. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree,for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrenderthe liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request isconformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities andcreators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. Hewho would gather immortal palms must not he hindered by the name ofgoodness, but must explore if it he goodness. Nothing is at last sacredbut the integrity of your own mind. Absolve（开脱责任，赦免） you to yourself, and youshall have the suffrage（投票权） of the world. I remember an answer which whenquite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont toimportune 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 whollyfrom within? my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be frombelow, 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 lawcan be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but namesvery readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what isafter my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is tocarry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything weretitular（有名无实的） and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily wecapitulate to badges and names, to large societies and deadinstitutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and swaysme more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak therude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat ofphilanthropy shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountifulcause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoeswhy should I not say to him, "Go love thy infant; love thywood-chopper; be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and nevervarnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredibletenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spiteat home." Rough and graceless would he such greeting, but truth ishandsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have someedge to it,-- else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preachedas the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules（哭泣） andwhines（哀鸣）. 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（一时的念头） at last, but we cannot spend theday in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why Iexclude company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did today,of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they mypoor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropists that I grudge thedollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to meand to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by allspiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prisonsif need be; but your miscellaneous（各种各样的） popular charities; the education atcollege of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end towhich many now stand; alms（施舍物） to sots（酒鬼）; and the thousandfold（千倍的） ReliefSocieties;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb（屈从） and givethe dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by（不久） I shall have themanhood to withhold（抑制，制止）.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather theexception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do whatis called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much asthey would pay a fine in expiation of daily nonappearance on parade.Their works arc done as an apology or extenuation of their living inthe world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtuesare penances（苦行，苦修）. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is foritself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of alower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should beglittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not toneed diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, andrefuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myselfit makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which arereckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where Ihave intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am,and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows anysecondary testimony.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not whatthe people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and inintellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction betweengreatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always findthose who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. Itis easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy insolitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in themidst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence ofsolitude.

COMMENT：

I love this article, though I never reach Emerson's works, nor am I into this philosophy based words.

Much time have i spent on these sentences, i can hardly grasp its ideas, especially the first few paragraphes. Instead, i'm more interested in the bottom of the article, which reveal the self-reliance.  Emerson started from the vivid discription of behavior of babes, no courtion, independent and irresponsible, which enables them the title of non-conformists, which is long gone after their growth. As he put the case related to virtue, he advances, and explained us the essence of life is for ourselves rather than for a spectacle. Deeply impressed by these words, I highlighted them in return. To be an adult like this, without the observation of others, making it clear that environment is providing rather than affecting, and in-sum, non-conformist as Emerson raised, we have far more works to do.

错词：
discription--description
paragraphes--paragraphs