[MD] Emerson on self-reliance

[Platt Holden]

Hi All, 

Emerson has been quoted on this site as supportive of the principles
of the MOQ. If that is so, then one should read his essay on Self-Reliance
and ponder the following passage from that essay:

"Do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all poor 
men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish 
philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to 
such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a 
class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; 
for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular 
charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-
houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; the 
thousandfold Relief Societies;-though I confess with shame I sometimes 
succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I 
shall have the manhood to withhold."

One should not judge a person from one essay or one passage. But,
when Emerson extols the virtue of individual independence, he is I 
think supporting the moral supremacy of the intellectual level because in  
the same essay he wrote:

"Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind."  

Regards,
Platt