“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Or as Emerson puts it, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”:
“Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—’Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” (Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson) - Academy Of Ideas 2016/09/ ralph-waldo-emerson-self-reliance-nonconformity
The Genius Within and the Fallacy of Insignificance
“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.” (Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The 20th century author Colin Wilson asserted that the psychology of the modern individual is afflicted by a “fallacy of insignificance”. The modern individual, he wrote: “has been conditioned by society to lack self-confidence in their ability to achieve anything of real worth, and thus they conform to society to escape their feelings of unimportance and uselessness.”
Emerson too observed a fallacy of insignificance afflicting his contemporaries. He proposed that the individual could overcome this fallacy through the recognition that
“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.” (Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Such a recognition provides one with a stubborn, but healthy, insistence upon remaining true to oneself. Too many today, afflicted with a fallacy of insignificance, look outward in search of meaning and guidance to live by. They attempt to embed themselves into a social structure, in the belief that alone and without support, they are unworthy and their lives meaningless.
In Self-Reliance Emerson explains the flaws in this attitude and thus provides a remedy for the fallacy of insignificance which afflicts so many people today:
“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.” (Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- Academy Of Ideas 2016/09/ ralph-waldo-emerson-self-reliance-nonconformity