Emerson encourages his readers to “trust thyself---accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.” (pg.200) I believe individualism to be the first principle. In this disquisition (although not all of it is mentioned in the textbook), Emerson supports individualism and “must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny--” (pg. 200) In the section, “The Grounds for Self-Reliance,” Emerson follows this with …show more content…
He continues to claim, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.” (pg. 201) He encourages us to use our own minds, and come up with our own conclusions. This also collided with the principle of individualism, as mentioned in the first paragraph of my essay. Emerson concluded this with mentioning that being misunderstood isn’t considered an unpleasant thing. “-Is it that bad 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 . . .” (pg. …show more content…
This is shown for Thoreau for the following statement, “But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”
Another one of Thoreau’s famous stories is named, “Walden.” This story also compares to Emerson’s principles in his story “Self Reliance,” and I am going to dig in deeply into both stories to find these comparisons.
A common principle I see between the two are how they both use sentence units, instead of paragraphs. This is obvious in not just these two stories, but their works as a whole. In the story of “Walden,” the units are: “Economy,” “Where I Lived and What I Lived,” and “Conclusion.” In “Self Reliance,” the only section mentioned is, “The Grounds from Self Reliance,” but there are more units in his other stories.
Another common principle between Thoreau and Emerson are they were both a part of the transcendentalism era in the late 1820s and 1830s. Transcendentalists basically proved an argument and tried to be different from other