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SELF-RELIANCE

Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever
they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the
artist sought his model. It was an application of his own
thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be
observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic
model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and
quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the
American artist will study with hope and love the precise
thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil,
the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit
and form of the government, he will create a house in
which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and
sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can
present every moment with the cumulative force of a
whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of
another, you have only an extemporaneous, half
possession. That which each can do best, none but his
Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor
can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master
who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master
who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or
Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The
Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not
borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of
Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you
cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this
moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of
the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians,
or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.
Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with
thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you
can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply
to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the
tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple
and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou
shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

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