Self-Reliance

Introduction

The essay is the second piece in Emerson’s Essays: First Series, published in Boston in 1841 and drawn largely from his journals and lectures of the preceding years. In loosely linked paragraphs Emerson argues that conformity, whether to society or to one’s own earlier opinions, betrays the inner voice through which the universal speaks in each person; hence the much-quoted line that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. He then applies the thought to religion, travel and the belief in social progress. The essay became a key text of American individualism; Nietzsche read Emerson’s essays in German translation and admired them.

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• 1836Nature