The Nature of True Heroism — Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson opens with Beaumont and Fletcher: Sophocles goes to his death teaching the Romans how to live, and Martius discovers that conquering the body did not conquer the soul. The scene sets the essay's tune, which Emerson says modern writing rarely sounds. We need Plutarch's tart cathartic lives more than political theory because life looks dangerous from the chimney-side of prudence, yet culture must arm the man for the state of war he is born into.

Toward external evil the soul takes a warlike attitude, and Emerson names that Heroism. It is self-trust that slights prudence, advances to its own music, and sometimes seems proud or unphilosophical, yet cannot be judged from behind. Heroism works against the voice of mankind for a time, obeying a secret impulse only the actor can fully read. Self-trust is the essence of heroism: truth, justice, generosity, scorn of petty calculations, and a jest at the sugar-plums of common life. The magnanimous open doors in Sogd for a century because hospitality done for love puts the host under God's obligation.

Heroism wears good humor. Scipio tears his accounts rather than wait for justification; Socrates jokes at the Prytaneum; the stout captain replies that it is in their power to be hanged and scorn you. These stories grip us because the same energy is ours if we stop worshipping foreign geography. Where the heart is, there the muses sojourn. Massachusetts and the Jerseys were ground enough for Milton and Washington. Yet many extraordinary youths shrink when they hitch the sun-horses to ordinary plow work and find no companion for their first aspirations.

The mark is persistency. Always do what you are afraid to do, Emerson heard counselled. Do not take back your words when prudent people withhold praise. Speak truth with austerity if need be, and look boldly at unpopularity. Lovejoy dies for free speech; in a republic the youth should know how fast he can fix duty while neighbors call his opinions incendiary. The essay closes by turning toward Manners, where half the world does not know how the other half lives, works, or eats.