“Self-Reliance” 401individual and sOciety in “Self-Reliance”
Ralph Waldo Emerson begins his essay “Self-
Reliance” with the Latin quotation: “Ne te quaesiveris
extra”—“Do not seek for things outside yourself.”
With this, he makes his point quickly: The indi-
vidual is the supreme strength of group thinking,
not the other way around. While every person is a
product of society, the man or woman who listens to
his or her own soul can be called a thinker, a voice
of ideas, or a genius. Emerson calls on the individual
to be a believer in him or herself, to trust his or her
deepest thoughts, as did the great thinkers of the
past—“Moses, Plato and Milton.”
Emerson unites all individuals into the fabric
of society by saying, “In every work of genius we
recognize our own rejected thoughts,” as if to say
that brilliant thoughts are inherent in every solitary
thinker—they only need a voice to become part
of the body of human understanding. He implies
here that while ideas of genius come from the indi-
vidual, they migrate to all people and fuel society: “A
stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely
what we have thought and felt all the time.” A single
thought can be so true and honest that it will seem
to another person like something from the depth of
his or her own soul.
Emerson’s concept of the relationship between
society and the individual is best summed up in
his dictum “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to
that iron string.” By tapping into his or her inner
strength, the individual becomes powerful. The
vibration of this metaphorical string is truth, a truth
that we can all hear, all respond to, and even seek
for motivation. To Emerson, a person’s inner voice is
God-given, and one only need look to the simplest
of humankind, a baby, to see the truth: “Infancy con-
forms to no one: all conform to it, so that one baby
commonly makes four or five out of the adults who
prattle and play to it.” Adults relate to babies as if
remembering when they themselves were once pure
and honest. There is no conscious joining of society
and youth. Society joins the youth on the floor in
baby-speak because the youth cries out for attention.
True, the infant is dependent on others for care, but
not for truth. For truth, the infant taps into his or
her inner beings and prattles as a way of communi-
cating with adults. Granted, it is not the ideas that
might exist in the infant mind that Emerson seeks,
it is the model of honest communication. An infant
can do nothing more than communicate honestly.
The focus, though, is on the mature individual as
a person who has created individual work. Emerson
says, “[D]o your work, and I shall know you. Do your
work, and you shall re-enforce yourself.” If a person
can find the freedom to be a truly honest individual,
he or she will be a truly honest thinker, one who
increases the knowledge of society. The infant repre-
sents the individual, while prattling adults represent
society. Under this model, who now controls the
common stream of thought?
Emerson states that the strong individual is the
result of strong, personal truths, and that strong
individuals are necessary for a strong society. The
danger, he warns, is in conformity because through
conformity, the individual is lost: “For non-con-
formity, the world whips you with its displeasure.”
Then, one paragraph later: “The other terror that
scares us from self-trust is our consistency.” These
two quotations reveal the irony of the individual and
society. While a strong individual is necessary for a
strong society, a strong society crushes the individual
who stands out as different. Rather than rejoice
at the genius of a new, individual idea, the group
is often blinded to that which does not already
exist in the common body of ideas. Emerson lists
examples of great ideas that were the result of “pure
and wise spirit” but which were summarily crushed
by the thick thinking of a slow-moving society. Of
Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo and
Newton, he writes his most quoted line: “To be
great is to be misunderstood.” To be great is to think
beyond all previous boundaries of thought and so to
add terror to the minds of contemporary thinkers.
Emerson goes on to give hope to the otherwise
voiceless individual through a modern fable. In this
story, a drunkard is taken from the street to the
palace where he is washed and dressed and given
the duke’s identity, only to wake up to begin an
important life. The drunkard is, perhaps, a meta-
phor for the nonconformist and the palace and title
metaphors for respect and honor. All a great thinker
needs is a way to get from the street to the palace,
to move from the ordinary to the honored. Only by