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SELF-RELIANCE

beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-
existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with
knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the
Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of time,
years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I think
and feel underlay every former state of life and
circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what
is called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in
the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of
transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of
the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world
hates, that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades
the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a
shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus
and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-
reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be
power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor
external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which
relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience
than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger.
Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We
fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do
not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a
company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by
the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities,
nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on
this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-
blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the
Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by
the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All
things real are so by so much virtue as they contain.
Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence,
personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as
examples of its presence and impure action. I see the
same law working in nature for conservation and growth.
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature

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