We feel most at home in the greatness of other men, we don’t feel unworthy of it. An inspiring story of greatness always makes us feel we can also foster a story as great in our own lives. (8b2)
All literature writes the character of the wise man. — 9b1
A man hoping to attain great character does not need to hear himself praised, he does not need external validation, and if he gets it he does not hear the praise as being of himself. He assigns the praise to the character he aspires to possess. —9b2.
- I think it’s important to not identify with your emotions or beliefs of the way people perceive you. Identify only with your actions and make those in service of Character. Make those in service of greatness of character, or the ideal of character. And learn how to embody that and serve it with your whole heart.
We learn the genius of Greek character through a a fourfold manifestation in civil history, literature, architecture, and sculpture. 13a
Emerson references a painting by Guido Reni. — 13c2
- I have never heard of this painting or seen it. I have added it to Culture.
By a deeper apprehension, and not primarily by a painful acquisition of many manual skills, the artist attains the power of awakening other souls to a given activity. —14b2
It has been said, that “common souls pay with that which they do; nobler souls pay with that which they are.”
- I am not sure if I agree with this. I want to ponder it more.
In like manner, all public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep and sublime. — 16c1
The manners of that period are plain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for personal qualities, courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and elegance are not known. A sparse population and want make every man his own valet, cook, butcher, and soldier, and the habit of supplying his own needs educates the body to wonderful performances. — 18a12
… before yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit of the mind. — 18b1
- It seems he is talking here of what I have been learning first hand, that those who are reflective and live in their heads lack a natural grace and strong character.
Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. — 18b1
The Greeks are not reflective, but perfect in their senses and in their health, with the finest physical organization in the world. Adults acted with the simplicity and grace of children. They made vases, tragedies, and statues, such as healthy senses should, — that is, in good taste. Such things have continued to be made in all ages, and are now, wherever a healthy physique exists; but, as a class, from their superior organization, they have surpassed all. They combine the energy of manhood with the engaging unconscious of childhood. The attraction of these manners is that they belong to man, and are known to every man in virtue of hi once being a child; besides that there are always individuals who retain these characteristics. A person of childlike genius and inborn energy is still a Greek, and revives our love of the Muse of Hellas. — 18b19a1
When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pieces through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of institutions. — 19b2
Ah! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul,— ebbing downward into the forms into whose habits thou hast now for many years slid. — 22a1
- A good line. It is true that my soul has ebbed in the same ways for too long, and its because, as he says after, I have not solved the Sphinx’ riddle in that particular area. But I know now that I have the strength of character to learn the lessons I need to learn and change my behaviors. I also know now that every lesson you refuse to learn will continually show up and become an issue later. You get away with nothing and there is no fault of yours that will go unnoticed by yourself. Others may not notice, but you will always know that you are not doing your best because you are not being diligent to fix this or that particular issue. At the end of the day, you are the only person who has to be proud of yourself, your performance, and character. If you know you are being weak and limited how will you ever feel that euphoric and ennobling feeling of Confidence?
As near and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the road-side and put riddles to every passenger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless flight of winged facts or events! In splendid variety these changes come, all putting questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time serve them. —22a2
- Because of everything I am going through right now and all the things I am learning these words really mean a lot to me.
- It all began with my encounter with Carla in Paris where she was telling me that in life there are certain metaphysical truths and one of the most important is that life will keep sending you situation after situation in order toi teach you a certain lesson and if you continue to not learn the lesson you will have to pass through a situation designed to teach you that lesson again and again and each time the consequences and suffering of not learning that lesson will get worse. I didn’t believe her, but I did listen with an open mind.
- After Carla, I meet Alyssa where I am confronted with a lot of the faults in myself that if I would have listened to the lessons earlier I would not have had to confront. Some of these lessons included porn and lust of the eyes, speaking too much and not executing discretion or wisdom in my speech, insecurity and lack of knowledge that I am not enough, and most of all that I need to be working hard and that life is experienced through action and not through thought. Also, that I need to get out of my head and enjoy the present moment. All of these lessons have been whirling in the atmosphere of my mind for a long time but they had never truly been put into action. They were only things I knew I should be doing, but never did. I never had suffering enough to change. But now I know that I need to learn lessons as soon as they come to me. As Homer said, “even a fool can learn when something hits him.” I have been a fool to long and have needed to learn through pain. Alex Hormozi, defines learning as “when presented with the same stimulus a new action is taken.” In this sense, I am a very bad learner. I really believe now that this Sphinx image is exactly true. Life will continually send you the same lesson. Or maybe it won’t send you the same lesson. It might be more accurate to say that Life will keep sending you new stimuli and you will keep being limited by the same lame attribute of yourself until you fix that problem. So it’s not technically that life is sending you perfect stimuli to fix your fault, it’s that you in any challenging situation will always be held back by your limiting factor. Until you learn your lesson, you will be limited by the same factor over and over again until you fix the problem and then you will be limited by something else and it will appear that life sent you a new challenge to teach you that lesson. Either way, life is like the Sphinx. The challenges are a chimera as much as the sphinx is, that how they take knew shapes. But if you can’t solve her riddle you will die because often times in life not having the necessary knowledge and kills leads to failure, heartbreak, and suffering. If you have the necessary knowledge and wisdom though you defeat the Sphinx and can continue down the path. If you die though you will have to retrace your steps over and over until you can solve the Sphinx’ riddle at that same point along the road.
A mind might ponder it’s thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a national exultation or alarm? No man can antedate his experience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw today the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for the first time. — 25a2
- This is so true. I have just learned this in my first relationship. Throughout my whole life I felt I had been preparing for my first relationship. I wanted one so bad and I thought that when I got one I would do very well and be a perfect partner, after all I am really quite good at non-romantic relationships. However, part of what I thought was me preparing for a relationship was a hindrance. I never had dated anyone before and I was always waiting for the perfect woman and not thinking it would be worth it to get into a relationship and risk making myself ‘impure’ or risk learning bad behaviors due to a toxic partner. This was faulty thinking though because as Emerson says I could have never predicted how my personality did respond to being in a relationship. I was jealous, needy, desperate, and critical. It really upsets me to think how I acted. I have learned much though, but I would have been better off practicing relationships by being in them rather than waiting for perfection and trying to step into a relationship as perfect. You learn through doing. You learn through practice. You learn through experience. Experience is the greatest teacher truly. You can learn all the psychology and tricks about making a good relationship, but you’ll never really learn a thing until you are in one and see how your perosnality will respond to the new stimuli.
Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely that the mind is One, and that nature is correlative, history is to be read and written. — 25b2
- This seems to be Emerson’s big point. It seems to be what he is trying to get across throughout the essay. I wish it hit me deeper. The whole journey of the essay was gorgeous at every moment, but the point or the meaning of the journey feels a bit weak.
- Basically I guess he saying that we should read history knowing that each figure of history is as good or weak as we can be. That all of history is done by individuals made of the same stuff as us; therefore, anything they felt or did is something we could have done. If there is a man who acted greatly throughout history and we aspire to his action, we must ponder how we can acquire that skill. If there is someone who is evil, we must ponder how we could become him too, so that we may avoid his lot. As he said elsewhere, all history is in its proper way read as our biography, as the biography of the Self and of Man.
- Then that nature is correlative. I guess this means that we can make the macro view of history a micro view by seeing how its whole scope can be applied to our individual live’s. Maybe, he is referring to how reality is a fractal pattern. That big patterns and cycles can teach us about things happening in our own lives and visa versa.
History shall no longer be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived … He shall walk, as the poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful events and experiences; — his own form and features exalted by their exalted intelligence shall be that variated vest. — 25c1
- I aspire to this amount of learning and feeling. It reminds me of that beautiful thought I once had, when carrying a heavy bin of books, “If only I could read all of these. My soul would then carry this much weight.”
- It also reminds me of what he said earlier (on 25a2). You don’t know how you will respond to something until it has passed through your being and you observe you response. (Also, Whitman’s line of filtering things through yourself.) Reading history, reading literature in general, allows you to live more lives and accumulate more experience, a larger personality, and superior being. This will give you greater self-knowledge, wisdom, and weight.
overweening:
adjective
- showing excessive confidence or pride.
"overweening ambition" ”Is there somewhat overweening in this claim?” — 25d1
I hold our actual knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do I know sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? … Yet every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. — 26a1,2
- It seems hear that he is also aiming to make science, not only history, to be read and written via the lens of man.
- I love this because I too believe that everything can be made into a symbol that can tecah a moral lesson. The best example of this is the life of the butterfly. Or maybe how the coldest part of the day is right before the sun rises. I would eventually love to integrate this into my website. Having each aspect of reality accounted for and explained through the lens of its utility to each individual’s life. I had desired to do this long before I met Emerson, now I only want to do it more.
Summary:
It seems this essay might be aiming to make one understand that all of human history is each man’s heritage and his story. There is nothing within history that was not done by man; therefore, it can all be done again by you. In fact, history’s patterns may be repeating within your life right now, and without an understanding of the past, you will be ill-equipped to solve the riddle that the Sphinx is currently confronting you with. Emerson wants us to read and write history through a very personal lens, through the lens of a “child” or “unschooled farmer’s boy,” rather than the sterile, impersonal, and merely factual lens of the scholar.