Emerson reflection essays

The first edition of the essay bore three epigraphs: a Latin line, meaning "Do not seek outside yourself"; a six-line stanza from Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune; and a four-line stanza that Emerson himself wrote. Emerson dropped his stanza from the revised edition of the essay, but modern editors have since restored it.

The first is the consistent enunciation of a view which is the master-tone that Emerson uses from essay to essay while the second is the internal linkage of the views in the essay. Some scholars have argued that Emerson’s views on friendship are strange and radical while others feel that his logic is sound and valid.

Published first in 1841 in Essays and then in the 1847 revised edition of Essays, "Self-Reliance" took shape over a long period of time. Throughout his life, Emerson kept detailed journals of his thoughts and actions, and he returned to them as a source for many of his essays.

Discussing the influence of nature on the scholar, Emerson concludes that an experienced thinker sees it as a whole. He writes, “There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God” (Emerson, par. 8). Emerson finds categorization of nature and separation if from people very ignorant.