How Much Truth Can You Speak Alone?

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Over the course of my long reading life, I have encountered the thoughts of many writers.  Some of them, I believe, were right about a lot of things.  Benjamin Franklin is one of these writers.  Others said some things I questioned, but I still enjoyed reading what they had to say because it was thought-provoking or just eloquently expressed.  Ralph Waldo Emerson belongs in this category.  This week, I'm taking on a point Emerson made in an essay I love--and don't entirely buy: "Self-Reliance."

If you had asked Ralph Waldo Emerson, he would have told you he was a genius.  If he sounds like an arrogant guy, I should add that Emerson thought everyone was a genius--or, at least, could be.

It's a tantalizing proposition, one that might have a lot of resonance today, nearly two centuries after Emerson presented it in his magnificent essay "Self-Reliance."

Was he right?

Emerson's Bold Proposition

If the name Ralph Waldo Emerson rings only a faint bell or no bell at all, I should explain that Emerson was a minister-turned-essayist from Massachusetts.  He was the intellectual center of the Transcendentalists, a group that also included Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, but he was more than that.  It's been said that Emerson was the central figure in American literature in his time.  That's saying something, since this was also the age of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman.

Emerson wrote some of the greatest essays in the history of American literature — among them Nature, "The American Scholar," "The Poet," and the one I'm focusing on here, "Self-Reliance."

Published in 1841, "Self-Reliance" is a kind of manifesto, not for independent living, as the title seems to suggest, but for independent thinking.  It crashes out of the gate with a forceful, yet artful opening paragraph, one that grabs the reader by the shoulders and insists he take notice.  It begins:

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.

The last sentence of this excerpt succinctly captures the point I made at the beginning of this essay.  It's a bold proposition.  Is Emerson really putting each of us on the same level as, say, Plato?  Lest we have to guess, he spells it out in another sentence from this same opening paragraph: "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."

It sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?  Forget about all those "books and traditions" and speak your mind.  Emerson drives home the point in the next sentence, in which he says that one "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."

Your Turn

At this point, we can respond to Emerson's bold proposition in one of at least three ways:

1. "Preach it, Ralph!"  One response is agreement. The idea of being a genius oneself and being able to make assertions that are valuable only because we trusted ourselves and made these assertions probably sounds pretty appealing to many of us (especially us parents).

2. "Balderdash!" We also could dismiss Emerson's argument (ideally with a loud "Balderdash!" or some equally colorful and dismissive word) because it doesn't square with what we already think.

3. "Hmm, let me think about that, Emmy. What makes you believe that, and, more importantly, why should I believe it, too?" Finally, to borrow a common phrase from my world of education, we could exercise some critical thinking. That is, instead of immediately accepting or dismissing Emerson's claim, we could consider it — along with his evidence and other information — before making a determination.

I think you know which approach I endorse.

Thinking in Our Own Time

I will not dissect Emerson's entire argument.  It's a long essay, and this is not one of my literature classes.  I should add here, though, the underlying principle of Emerson's argument for "Self-Reliance" is that each human being has access to the divine; thus, that "gleam of light" he asks us to "detect and watch" is more than just a random spark or self-serving thought.  It's part of something much larger and weightier.  That's Emerson's belief, anyway.

Let's return to your response, then.  Do you agree with Emerson?

Wait, don't answer yet, unless you have read the rest of the essay.  Again, there's a lot here.  Rather than digest the entire thing and come to a final determination, I want to take this opportunity to use Emerson's proposition as a jumping-off point for some thoughts on thinking in our current age.

Emerson wrote the words I have quoted here in a different era.  Judging from what he says here, as well as some similar statements by Thoreau in his book Walden, I think it's safe to say that they were responding to what they saw as passivity in their fellow Americans.  Elsewhere in "Self-Reliance," Emerson says, "Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage."

We still have plenty of people who do not think for themselves, but rather fall in line with what others are saying.  To them I would quote one of my favorite lines from "Self-Reliance": "If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument."  (Yes, I myself am quoting someone else here, but only to advance my own argument.  Quotations can help to articulate one's own thinking without supplanting it, a point I will make in a future column here in Mind Travel.)

Today, I think we also have a very different, but also troubling problem.  You probably have heard people boldly stating opinions that do not seem to hold water.  You perhaps (I hope) are responding to them as a critical thinker, but they don't seem particularly critical themselves, at least not about their own thought.

These people would seem to be falling in line with Emerson's thinking, speaking their own thoughts as the geniuses they believe they are.

Here's where I, doing some critical thinking myself, would challenge Emerson (if he were here to defend himself).  I enthusiastically agree with you, Ralph, that people should strive to think independently instead of merely parroting what others have said or written, but I also think they should anchor their assertions in factual evidence and sound logical principles.  Otherwise, we are all merely shouting at one another, and no one knows what is actually true.

What about that "gleam of light"?  Well, however appealing Emerson's thought — that is, that we are all in touch with the divine — I'm not so sure that every flicker in your brain or my brain is Morse code from the Great Beyond.  Maybe it's just static or, perhaps worse, a reflection of our own self-interests.

Let me propose an extra step in the process.  Yes, let us "detect and watch that gleam of light" and then interrogate it by looking for its logical and factual underpinnings, by considering evidence from our own experience, as well as the thoughts and experiences of other people, before elevating it to the status of divine truth (and ourselves to the level of genius).

If your thought does not stand up to scrutiny, set it aside — there's no shame! — and wait.  There's another gleam coming, and maybe that one will establish your genius.?