...of its seekers. Certainly the latter exhibit an independent attitude. Emerson put it more forcibly: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam...than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. . . . I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels...

...of truth requires the special epistemological attitude that Emerson sees in his selfreliant heroes: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam...than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages." But there is a darker, even tragic side to the claim that truth comes only by surprise: We cannot be...

...for intellectual as well as political independence from the creeds and cultures of the European past. "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam...than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages," he said, and his call for self-reliance became a marching banner for seekers of a truly American expression...

...Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. ... In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain...

...saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. 2 A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam...flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. 3 We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes...

...your city, your industry, or in society as a whole. Follow Your Instincts Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam...of light which flashes across his mind from within. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize...

...transform the religion of the inner light into a literal worship of the self, with his exhortation that "a man should learn to detect and watch that gleam...of light which flashes across his mind from within . . . Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." Correspondingly, he asserted,...

...find my answer on the other side of action. January 13 You Are Your Sunshine A man should learn to watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within. —Ralph Waldo Emerson The sixth principle in your action plan says, "Make your own sunlight." Don't...

...wilful intellectual act. This means that "the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions,...than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages" (259). Emerson's position here recalls the familiar conceptual division between inner and outer ("books...

...Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and...more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.l Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his." «*• Ralph Waldo Emerson,...