This passage from "Self-Reliance: by Ralph Waldo Emerson
concerns a man's integrity and wholeness of experience. He
writes,
Not
for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another
none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished
harmony.
Emerson begins
his essay by defining genius:
To believe your own thought, to believe what is
true for you in your private heart is true for all men--that is
genius.
The meaning of the
passage that is recorded in the question comes from an examination of this definition of
genius along with the preceding lines about the harmony of memory
cited above. "Self-reliance" involves the "proportionate," that which is balanced
between one person's thoughts and the harmony of these thoughts with those of others
while one also "accepts the place the divine Providence has found" for him/her. As a
part of the Over-Soul which Emerson, like other Transcendentalists, believed in, man
arrives at truth that is "faithfully imparted" and "proportionate" with others and with
God. This is, indeed, truth; it is not what is "made manifest by cowards," for they
would alter the truth out of fear.
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