Emerson urges to judge “palace”, “statue”, and “costly book”, claiming that he does it on his free will: “The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.” Indeed, we feel belittled by those great works, but it's because we're not looking at them the right way.
They are only great because we judged them great.
He also push people to not beg for peoples' approval, but to just accept them.
He himself judges several parts of society: “Society is a wave.
The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.”: basically, society changes but change doesn't equal to improvement.
He is also a major critic of the society's link to time.
He strongly believes that we often ignore the present because we are too obsessed by the past “ But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past”.
Time is meaningless to him, because you can only be happy and strong when you live beyond times.
Time is associated with property, with the uselessness of the watch.
“He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.” Property is purely superficial and isn't often legit: “ by inheritance, or gift, or crime”.
Finally, Emerson analyzes the notion of traveling.
We usually only travel to experience other peoples' work of art.
For him, traveling like we usually do is not a way to escape yourself: “ he is at home still” even when he's abroad.
“ The soul is no traveler”.
Chris was in some way an anarchist “Fuck their stupid rules”.
He didn't need a watch, and gave it to Gallen, and he did not travel to experience other peoples' work of art, but to escape the world.
November 2014
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