My final look at Self Reliance focuses on rhetoric. As noted on Sunday, there are long stretches where the essay reads like poetry and deserves close reading. But there are other sections of the text where Emerson is writing for the lectern, stylizing his text for emotional impact. Over the years, these rhetorical moments have come to define our image of Emerson, but they have obscured understanding.

Take, for example, the fourth line in the essay:

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.

The words pop from the page. Emerson formed them from classical rhetorical structure. Note the parallel “to believe” phrases. Speakers rely on phrases like these to create a rhythm in the text, to coil up the gathering thought so it can snap to conclusion. Also, for this rhetorical structure to work properly, it must begin simply and then extend.  Emerson starts with a generic “to believe your own thought.”  A phrase that read “To believe your own thought is genius,” is provocative, but unmemorable.

The second “to believe” phrase is the prize: what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men. That thought could stand alone as it’s own sentence. But note that Emerson never actually takes that step. What Emerson says before and after this sentence is that honestly spoken sentiment is more valuable than thought. Why would that be the case?  I’m going to turn to Nietzsche, Gay Science 354, for my theory:

Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely individual – there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they do not appear so any longer.

(T)he world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised world; that everything which becomes conscious becomes just thereby meagre, relatively stupid, – a generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the herd; that with the evolving of consciousness there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification, superficial-isation, and generalisation.

Indeed, we have not any organ at all for knowing, or for “truth”: we “know” (or believe, or fancy) just as much as may be of use in the interest of the human herd, the species ; and even what is here called “usefulness” is ultimately only a belief, a fancy, and perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be ruined.

Nietzsche’s punchline comes in Twilight of the Idols:

We stop appreciating ourselves enough when we communicate. Our actual experiences are not in the least talkative. They could not express themselves even if they wanted to. For they lack the words to do so. When we have words for something we have already gone beyond it. In all speech there is a grain of contempt. Language, it seems, was invented only for average, middling, communicable things. The speaker vulgarizes himself as soon as he speaks.

Going back to Emerson’s quote, the genius does not lie in the “truth” of any given statement, the genius lies in the courageous self-deceit of listing to that inner voice and letting it speak your sentiment without attempting to please the herd.

So why does Emerson need the rhetoric? Two reasons.  One, rhetoric is a wonderful shorthand. It provides speakers and writers an opportunity to quickly and bluntly deliver a core message in a powerful way. It took me four lines from Nietzsche to convey what Emerson does in one powerfully designed sentence.

The second reason is more important. Rhetoric is democratic. It reaches all ears, much like fast food reaches all hungry mouths. Emerson never would have reached a popular audience without the memorable rhetoric. While there’s a risk of being misunderstood, Emerson answers that in another famous rhetorical flourish in Self Reliance:

Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—’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.

 

What’s interesting about this piece of rhetoric is how it demonstrates Nietzsche’s grain of contempt theory. Obviously, Emerson doesn’t believe that every lazily-formed, ill-considered word out of every boastful American’s mouth is as wise as the words of Pythagoras, Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. But if you take all of these words of unfiltered sentiment together, you get what Whitman later called the great poem that is America. Let the democratic organ turn these words into generalization. We’ll end up with far greater wisdom from a democratic nation of people speaking their own sentiments than if we instruct everyone to speak carefully as if the fate of the nation rested on their words.

It’s this faith in democracy that separates Emerson from Nietzsche. Emerson has faith in our stupidity. He’s willing to accept it and own it. If you trick Americans into thinking they always have something valuable to say — and that they are exceptional — the end result will be a collective voice of wisdom that is exceptional.