ABSTRACT
Self-Reliance contains an unambiguous call to spiritual as well as social nonconformity, for among its more resonant and stirring statements is the claim: 'Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Though the theme had concerned Ralph Waldo Emerson for more than a decade and though his thoughts on the subject had found expression in various sermons and lectures in the 1830s, the essay 'Self-Reliance' gave a new force and prominence to Emerson's belief in the importance of the self. There is an unmistakable line of continuity from William Ellery Channing's addresses 'Likeness to God', 'Spiritual Freedom' and 'Self-Culture' to Emerson's essay, yet when Orestes Brownson reviewed the Essays in his Boston Quarterly Review, he decided that 'Self-Reliance' contained the lesson for America. Emerson's words combine the most daring effrontery, a contemptuous dismissal of scriptures, with reverence for the source of all religions: the immediate experience of God in the soul.
