The Hobgoblin of Little Minds
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday January 13th, 2002
***
"I don't have to be fair," he used to say. "I'm your father." And then, with a tight grip on my arm, he would swat my little behind and lead me off to the solitude of my bedroom, there in penitential fear to contemplate the wickedness of my ways. Which, of course, I rarely did. I think the phrase "self-righteous indignation" would more accurately describe my state of mind on those extremely rare occasions when my father would punish me for my bad behavior. It bothered me, my father's "unfairness" -- it simply "wasn't fair" that he should be so unfair. Of course, it never crossed my mind to think that the system worked both ways: that my father could be just as seemingly arbitrary in his generosity as he was in his discipline, and that I often received little gifts or rewards which I in no way had earned. Of course, that was different. I "deserved" those, whether or not I had actually earned them.
Actually, for all his huffing and puffing, my father bent over backwards to be fair to his children. He played no favorites. When I got a bicycle one year for Christmas, so did my brother, even though he was two years younger than me. (Not only that, but he learned to ride it without the training wheels long before I did as well). While it was certainly even-handed that my father should buy both my younger brother and me bicycles at the same time, it wasn't really "fair" - after all, seniority should have certain privileges. As the oldest child I inevitably clashed with my parents over a variety of things in this regard, over everything from hairstyles to allowances to curfews, only to have my younger brothers immediately reap the rewards of every little victory I won, without having to bend a finger for themselves. I took the lumps, they gathered up the sugar; or at least that's how it seemed to me at the time. It was only later that my brothers pointed out to me that in my role as groundbreaker, I had also been the one to decide which ground should be broken, thus locking them in to yet another pattern of privileges and responsibilities based more on my interests rather than on their own. I was the leader, and they followed along; and it was very difficult for them to agitate for something of interest to themselves so long as my parents were accustomed to hearing the first rumblings of discontent come from me.
Emerson's "self-reliance," like Thoreau's "civil disobedience," is one of those wonderfully-turned phrases that has transcended its original context, and become firmly established as part of our general cultural lexicon. It was a philosophy uniquely suited to the new American nation: the rugged individual, the pioneer, taming the frontier with ax and plow; or the Yankee sea captains, sailing their whaling ships and their speedy clippers across the seven seas, courageously hunting the Leviathan in order to bring light to the world, or plying the China trade with ingenuity and "know-how:" the very incarnation of “free enterprise.” Yet from the beginning, "self-reliance" was more myth than reality. The pioneer relied on his wife and family to keep the ol' homestead running smoothly; the New England sea captains depended upon their highly-skilled crew of sailors to bring those vessels safely into port. Even the most self-reliant of individuals rely almost daily on the performance of others. Perhaps not directly, but subtlety, unavoidably, we are all connected in an interdependent web of human relationships; we are not only our brother's keepers, but our brothers and our sisters keep us as well.
The desirability of self-reliance, and the inevitability of our interdependence may seem, on the surface at least, inconsistent. Yet self-reliance and interdependence are also complimentary, and reciprocal. If each endeavors to pull his or her own weight, the burden as a whole becomes easier for all: many hands make light work. Beyond the initial, apparent contradiction lies a greater harmony; and this is the great insight that Emerson shares with us in his essay on self-reliance. Trust your inmost self, that part of you that is most human; for in doing so you express that which you hold in common with all humanity. The universal can be known through the particular. Indeed, it is only through the particular that it is known at all.
The internal logic of all this is really quite compelling. We recognize a work of genius: the beauty of art, the wisdom of poetry, the insight of a religious doctrine, because it speaks to the "alienated majesty" of our own "rejected thoughts," the "latent convictions" of our "private hearts." A work of genius evokes the hidden genius within us all: we recognize its truth because we knew it all along. So why should not the reciprocal be true as well? Greatness, says Emerson, is a function of learning to trust our own latent genius, the wisdom of our private hearts; it is the ability to follow "that gleam of light which flashes across our minds from within," rather than accommodating ourselves to the conventional wisdom of society and its pundits. The truly great are those who are true to the source of all greatness, those inner-directed souls who recognize that from the depths of introspective solitude come great insights of universal application.
It's at this point that I begin to find Emerson a little puzzling. On the one hand, it's rather reassuring to think that my inmost self has a direct line to greatness, that when I speak from the depths of my heart, I speak to the experience of all humankind. I don't think I could stand up here Sunday after Sunday doing what I do if I didn't recognize a spark of truth in what Emerson says: that there is a universal quality to sincere, deep introspection and thoughtful reflection; and that even though I still consider myself a relative youngster, there are insights within my personal experience which makes them relevant to persons other than myself. Yet I am troubled by some of the possible implications of Emerson's doctrine of radical individualism: the implicit notion, for example, that external learning, the "world's opinion," counts for nothing, or that all human beings, if pushed to uncover the deepest source of their conscious reason, would think and believe in exactly the same way (that is to say, would think and believe exactly as Emerson did).
I don't know that Emerson ever intended for these ideas to be derived from his essay; perhaps they are simply hobgoblins of my little mind, foolish inconsistencies which melt away before a higher unity. Emerson himself was certainly fond of books; he was a fine scholar (although he thought of himself more as a poet), who engaged in dialog with his peers and, through reading, with the great minds of the past as well. Perhaps all he really meant to imply was that, while truth itself may be absolute and universal, it is also too vast to be "pinned down" by formal concepts; that is to say, that truth truly is ineffable, "inexpressible,” and thus best experienced directly, through introspective thought and reflection (complete with all the inconsistencies those entail), rather than sopped up second-hand through books and from "authorities."
It's difficult to say. In many ways, in this day and age, Emerson's gospel of self-reliance has been replaced by the popular hype of self-help. I hate to think of the possibility that, were Emerson alive today, he would be appearing, not at the Lyceum, but on the Oprah Winfrey show, or in the Grand Ballroom of some luxurious hotel at several hundred bucks a head; and that he might modify his message for a generation reared on television: "Dare to be Great!" "Dare to Trust your Inmost Genius!" There may very well be a spark of truth to all these imaginings. But the mind of Emerson, of "America's Philosopher," was more subtle than that. And perhaps this alone is the true mark of his greatness, the fact that he is, himself, so easily misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson has much more to say to us than your typical, contemporary motivational speaker, just as "Walden" is much more than a 19th century version of "Voluntary Simplicity" or “Do What You Love and the Money will Follow.” And we see this in Emerson's reflections on theology, in the distinction he draws between metaphysics and metaphor. Again, he appears to be subtlety inconsistent: flee the impersonal deity which rational thought compels us to accept, and allow God to be clothed "in shape and color" as the "devout motions of the soul" break in upon your heart and life. Inconsistency itself is a hallmark of the religious life; for we can never hope to know God in God's essence. We can only know God through our experience of her. We may project upon her shape, color, personality: qualities we know by intellect have little or nothing to do with that reality we call God. Yet our experience of God in this way makes her more "real" than the Deity we discover through metaphysical abstractions. She becomes a God we can discover anew each day, changeless, yet ever changing in our intimations of her....
In a way, one might argue that Emerson's philosophy of self- reliance is a plea for moral pluralism and humanistic theology in an age still characterized by a desire for absolutes. This is by no means the standard view; but it has as much merit as those which attempt to characterize Emerson as the original guru of the power of positive thinking. His portrayal of "foolish consistency" as "the hobgoblin of little minds" is not a license to believe as you will, this way one day and another the next, because the power of your own inmost genius is enough by itself to make a proposition true. Rather, it is an expression of the realization that life itself is an inconsistent thing, and that consistency, when it exists, is not to be found "out there," in the objective world of books and public opinion, but in the honest appraisal of one's own subjective experience. If truth is the sole criterion of your religious insight, then to thine own self be true.
When my younger brother got his bicycle the very day that I got mine, I'll have to admit that I was outraged. How could my father have been so unfair, to make me wait two years longer for my bicycle than Kurt had had to wait for his? And when Kurt was riding around (usually on one of the neighbor kid’s bikes) without using his hands, and I was still struggling to master my training wheels, I felt humiliated as well as outraged. (Of course, Kurt always felt that it was unfair that he should have to keep the training wheels on his bike until I was ready to dispense with mine). (And when he eventually rode his bicycle into a parked car while showing off his superior skills to all the kids in the neighborhood, I began to think that just maybe there was some small modicum of justice left in the world after all).
But now, looking back, I realize that what was appropriate for Kurt, and what was appropriate for me, were two very different things; and I also understand why my mother wouldn't let him ride his bike to the grocery store by himself, a privilege that was allowed to me alone, despite my inferior ability as a cyclist. And deep down within me, I also recognize in that experience of the distinction between ability and judgment, an imperfect intimation of that larger harmony which transcends all our attempts to impose a foolish consistency upon it: the collective wisdom of our diverse experience, which we know best when we feel its overtones and undertones deep within ourselves.
***
READING: excerpts from "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment....A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty....
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connections of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being....
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude....
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other date for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict some what you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should never contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything your said today. - "Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood?" - Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood....
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday January 13th, 2002
***
"I don't have to be fair," he used to say. "I'm your father." And then, with a tight grip on my arm, he would swat my little behind and lead me off to the solitude of my bedroom, there in penitential fear to contemplate the wickedness of my ways. Which, of course, I rarely did. I think the phrase "self-righteous indignation" would more accurately describe my state of mind on those extremely rare occasions when my father would punish me for my bad behavior. It bothered me, my father's "unfairness" -- it simply "wasn't fair" that he should be so unfair. Of course, it never crossed my mind to think that the system worked both ways: that my father could be just as seemingly arbitrary in his generosity as he was in his discipline, and that I often received little gifts or rewards which I in no way had earned. Of course, that was different. I "deserved" those, whether or not I had actually earned them.
Actually, for all his huffing and puffing, my father bent over backwards to be fair to his children. He played no favorites. When I got a bicycle one year for Christmas, so did my brother, even though he was two years younger than me. (Not only that, but he learned to ride it without the training wheels long before I did as well). While it was certainly even-handed that my father should buy both my younger brother and me bicycles at the same time, it wasn't really "fair" - after all, seniority should have certain privileges. As the oldest child I inevitably clashed with my parents over a variety of things in this regard, over everything from hairstyles to allowances to curfews, only to have my younger brothers immediately reap the rewards of every little victory I won, without having to bend a finger for themselves. I took the lumps, they gathered up the sugar; or at least that's how it seemed to me at the time. It was only later that my brothers pointed out to me that in my role as groundbreaker, I had also been the one to decide which ground should be broken, thus locking them in to yet another pattern of privileges and responsibilities based more on my interests rather than on their own. I was the leader, and they followed along; and it was very difficult for them to agitate for something of interest to themselves so long as my parents were accustomed to hearing the first rumblings of discontent come from me.
Emerson's "self-reliance," like Thoreau's "civil disobedience," is one of those wonderfully-turned phrases that has transcended its original context, and become firmly established as part of our general cultural lexicon. It was a philosophy uniquely suited to the new American nation: the rugged individual, the pioneer, taming the frontier with ax and plow; or the Yankee sea captains, sailing their whaling ships and their speedy clippers across the seven seas, courageously hunting the Leviathan in order to bring light to the world, or plying the China trade with ingenuity and "know-how:" the very incarnation of “free enterprise.” Yet from the beginning, "self-reliance" was more myth than reality. The pioneer relied on his wife and family to keep the ol' homestead running smoothly; the New England sea captains depended upon their highly-skilled crew of sailors to bring those vessels safely into port. Even the most self-reliant of individuals rely almost daily on the performance of others. Perhaps not directly, but subtlety, unavoidably, we are all connected in an interdependent web of human relationships; we are not only our brother's keepers, but our brothers and our sisters keep us as well.
The desirability of self-reliance, and the inevitability of our interdependence may seem, on the surface at least, inconsistent. Yet self-reliance and interdependence are also complimentary, and reciprocal. If each endeavors to pull his or her own weight, the burden as a whole becomes easier for all: many hands make light work. Beyond the initial, apparent contradiction lies a greater harmony; and this is the great insight that Emerson shares with us in his essay on self-reliance. Trust your inmost self, that part of you that is most human; for in doing so you express that which you hold in common with all humanity. The universal can be known through the particular. Indeed, it is only through the particular that it is known at all.
The internal logic of all this is really quite compelling. We recognize a work of genius: the beauty of art, the wisdom of poetry, the insight of a religious doctrine, because it speaks to the "alienated majesty" of our own "rejected thoughts," the "latent convictions" of our "private hearts." A work of genius evokes the hidden genius within us all: we recognize its truth because we knew it all along. So why should not the reciprocal be true as well? Greatness, says Emerson, is a function of learning to trust our own latent genius, the wisdom of our private hearts; it is the ability to follow "that gleam of light which flashes across our minds from within," rather than accommodating ourselves to the conventional wisdom of society and its pundits. The truly great are those who are true to the source of all greatness, those inner-directed souls who recognize that from the depths of introspective solitude come great insights of universal application.
It's at this point that I begin to find Emerson a little puzzling. On the one hand, it's rather reassuring to think that my inmost self has a direct line to greatness, that when I speak from the depths of my heart, I speak to the experience of all humankind. I don't think I could stand up here Sunday after Sunday doing what I do if I didn't recognize a spark of truth in what Emerson says: that there is a universal quality to sincere, deep introspection and thoughtful reflection; and that even though I still consider myself a relative youngster, there are insights within my personal experience which makes them relevant to persons other than myself. Yet I am troubled by some of the possible implications of Emerson's doctrine of radical individualism: the implicit notion, for example, that external learning, the "world's opinion," counts for nothing, or that all human beings, if pushed to uncover the deepest source of their conscious reason, would think and believe in exactly the same way (that is to say, would think and believe exactly as Emerson did).
I don't know that Emerson ever intended for these ideas to be derived from his essay; perhaps they are simply hobgoblins of my little mind, foolish inconsistencies which melt away before a higher unity. Emerson himself was certainly fond of books; he was a fine scholar (although he thought of himself more as a poet), who engaged in dialog with his peers and, through reading, with the great minds of the past as well. Perhaps all he really meant to imply was that, while truth itself may be absolute and universal, it is also too vast to be "pinned down" by formal concepts; that is to say, that truth truly is ineffable, "inexpressible,” and thus best experienced directly, through introspective thought and reflection (complete with all the inconsistencies those entail), rather than sopped up second-hand through books and from "authorities."
It's difficult to say. In many ways, in this day and age, Emerson's gospel of self-reliance has been replaced by the popular hype of self-help. I hate to think of the possibility that, were Emerson alive today, he would be appearing, not at the Lyceum, but on the Oprah Winfrey show, or in the Grand Ballroom of some luxurious hotel at several hundred bucks a head; and that he might modify his message for a generation reared on television: "Dare to be Great!" "Dare to Trust your Inmost Genius!" There may very well be a spark of truth to all these imaginings. But the mind of Emerson, of "America's Philosopher," was more subtle than that. And perhaps this alone is the true mark of his greatness, the fact that he is, himself, so easily misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson has much more to say to us than your typical, contemporary motivational speaker, just as "Walden" is much more than a 19th century version of "Voluntary Simplicity" or “Do What You Love and the Money will Follow.” And we see this in Emerson's reflections on theology, in the distinction he draws between metaphysics and metaphor. Again, he appears to be subtlety inconsistent: flee the impersonal deity which rational thought compels us to accept, and allow God to be clothed "in shape and color" as the "devout motions of the soul" break in upon your heart and life. Inconsistency itself is a hallmark of the religious life; for we can never hope to know God in God's essence. We can only know God through our experience of her. We may project upon her shape, color, personality: qualities we know by intellect have little or nothing to do with that reality we call God. Yet our experience of God in this way makes her more "real" than the Deity we discover through metaphysical abstractions. She becomes a God we can discover anew each day, changeless, yet ever changing in our intimations of her....
In a way, one might argue that Emerson's philosophy of self- reliance is a plea for moral pluralism and humanistic theology in an age still characterized by a desire for absolutes. This is by no means the standard view; but it has as much merit as those which attempt to characterize Emerson as the original guru of the power of positive thinking. His portrayal of "foolish consistency" as "the hobgoblin of little minds" is not a license to believe as you will, this way one day and another the next, because the power of your own inmost genius is enough by itself to make a proposition true. Rather, it is an expression of the realization that life itself is an inconsistent thing, and that consistency, when it exists, is not to be found "out there," in the objective world of books and public opinion, but in the honest appraisal of one's own subjective experience. If truth is the sole criterion of your religious insight, then to thine own self be true.
When my younger brother got his bicycle the very day that I got mine, I'll have to admit that I was outraged. How could my father have been so unfair, to make me wait two years longer for my bicycle than Kurt had had to wait for his? And when Kurt was riding around (usually on one of the neighbor kid’s bikes) without using his hands, and I was still struggling to master my training wheels, I felt humiliated as well as outraged. (Of course, Kurt always felt that it was unfair that he should have to keep the training wheels on his bike until I was ready to dispense with mine). (And when he eventually rode his bicycle into a parked car while showing off his superior skills to all the kids in the neighborhood, I began to think that just maybe there was some small modicum of justice left in the world after all).
But now, looking back, I realize that what was appropriate for Kurt, and what was appropriate for me, were two very different things; and I also understand why my mother wouldn't let him ride his bike to the grocery store by himself, a privilege that was allowed to me alone, despite my inferior ability as a cyclist. And deep down within me, I also recognize in that experience of the distinction between ability and judgment, an imperfect intimation of that larger harmony which transcends all our attempts to impose a foolish consistency upon it: the collective wisdom of our diverse experience, which we know best when we feel its overtones and undertones deep within ourselves.
***
READING: excerpts from "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment....A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty....
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connections of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being....
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude....
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other date for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict some what you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should never contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything your said today. - "Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood?" - Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood....
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 10:20 AM
