The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine. Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1864–1865

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.

Here's something fun for a change: Ralph Waldo Emerson's “Self Reliance” (note the quotation marks around the title, this one is short). Many of our selections demand much of us, and by that I'm referring to more than the page count. Consider Nietzsche: “Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths...” Consider Marcus: “Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness”. Consider Ecclesiastes: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” But Emerson offers you something you want to believe:

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 connection of events. Great men have always done so

As you can see, Emerson has no time for false humility. He wants to see you escape conformity, cast off any expectations that are holding you back, and become exactly yourself, acting and creating as only you can. Heady stuff, and although it's suspiciously easy to hear, it has the virtue of being not very easy to do; the voices in our heads of, well, everyone but ourselves are no quieter now than they were in Emerson's day, and after all, OSSI's membership are mostly well-behaved adults. So we'll risk it.

Here's the full text: Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you'd like to read it in print, it's often collected with his other essays, or in collections of transcendentalist works alongside Thoreau, etc. Any of these should do just fine.

We will meet as usual at Vino's, on August 11, and “thank the joyful juice for all [we] know”. See you there!

Library of Trinity College Dublin.

Some time ago I created something called the Old School Self Improvement Book Club on meetup.com. Here's the pitch:

Are you interested in improving yourself? In watering the seeds of virtue and pulling out vice by the roots? Are you looking for guidance but the self-help section at the bookstore looks like shelves of unproven fads and nonsense that was invented ten minutes ago?

We agree: the old ways are still the best!

The Old School Self Improvement Book Club will meet once a month to discuss a selected time-tested work of practical philosophy, psychology, or advice for living. We'll come together somewhere in the greater Fort Lauderdale area to make it as easy as possible for anyone from Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach counties to attend.

Since June 2023's meeting for the Enchiridion of Epictetus, we've met almost every month and almost always at a wine bar in Fort Lauderdale called Vino's, which has graciously hosted us on Monday nights in a side room named "Napoleon's Parlour" and decorated with images of the emperor himself, very appropriate for our Count of Monte Cristo meeting (It was our group's only excursion into fiction)! I'll start cross-posting the meetup notifications here as well; after all, it's a good way to ensure at least one blog post per month!