Self-Reliance | Portable Property
In the following essay excerpt, Packer examines Emerson's prescription for self-reform in ‘‘Self-Reliance,'' including some seeming contradictions between his advocation of self and spirituality.
To learn how to achieve this double abandonment we must turn to the best known of Emerson's essays, "Self-Reliance." If "Circles" was an attempt to discern the general laws governing human behavior, ‘‘Self Reliance’’ is an attempt to formulate a code of conduct for the individual believer, to answer the question: "What shall I do to be saved?''
Emerson had always conceived of the principle of self-reliance as an answer to the problem of individual salvation; one of his earliest explorations of the topic, a sermon entitled ‘‘Trust Yourself,’’ was preached as...
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