A Free Thinker
             No one can know the truth of something until they experience it for themselves. This is an important theme in Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection of short essays titled Self-Reliance. "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist." (line 1) Emerson's opening essay "A Nonconformist" speaks of a man's duty to discover things for himself. People are all influenced by what they see and hear everyday, but they must decipher meaning from these things alone. A man is the knowledge that he himself has and must not believe only what others tell him is truth, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." (line 3). Emerson was one of the original questioners of society. He was able to discern the difference between the conditioned thoughts of a man and the original thoughts of a man, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature." (line 17). Emerson also felt that traveling is pointless, "Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places." (line 27), due to the fact that he believed each place is the same, but only the people change. And finally, Emerson felt that reliance on property is closely connected with self reliance, "And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance." (line 1).
             "A Nonconformist" written by Ralph Waldo Emerson discusses with great ardor the importance of thinking for oneself and worrying about oneself. He claims that nowadays what is important is not what they do but what they say, "Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it." (line 18). Emerson also states that one should not worry about people thousands of miles away from one but to simply worry about onese...