Question

In "Self-Reliance," Emerson believes that _____ hinders the development of a person. Select all that apply.

conformity
consistency
intuition
presence

Answer 1

Link to the essay: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html

It’s long but I’ll get back to this tonight if I have more time

Answer 2

Ok, so this is a long essay, but I'll try to demonstrate the main idea that Emerson is going for, by giving you a few representative quotes from the essay

- the quote he chooses to put at the beginning, "Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;"

Think about how the star is being used metaphorically. The speaker is evoking the idea of a guiding star (ex: the North Star) to say how men should guide themselves to make decisions

- "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 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."

Here, he is using another metaphor saying how man draws power from his **own effort** and not something given to him

if you're still stuck, focus on this passage specifically:

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."