Putting your ear close to the soul

Emerson was deeply influenced by Quaker ideas.  When he went to New Bedford in 1835, Emerson already believed in something resembling the Quaker's fundamental principle of absolute trust in the inner voice, the "Inner Light."  

Quakers consider themsleves under an obligation to follow virtue, "bound to give up such of the customs, or fashions of men, as militate, in any manner, against the letter of the spirit of the gospel," not ordinarily, "but even to the death."  This leads to prohibitions (no music, no dancing, no novels, no theater, no destruction of animal life for pleasure) and social activism (refusal to pay taxes for support of ministers, abolitionism, equality of women, pacifism).  The spirit is considered as the primary and infallible guide -- and scriptures but a secondary means of importance.  According to Thomas Clarkson's Portraiture of Quakerism (1802), "This spirit" is "a primary and infallible guide, has been given to men universally and sufficiently.  Those who resist it, quench it."

According to Richardson's Emerson biography, "the real strength and energy of the Quakers comes from neither prohibitions nor theology but from "the centering of life on the realities of inward intercourse with God." Quakerism is supremely committed to the individual's own experience.  

Mary Rotch was a major influence on Emerson. She was a so-called "New Light" Quaker, who believed that the final authority by direct influence from "the Influence" (what she called God) and was kicked out of the Quakers.  

Emerson wrote about her ability to listen carefully to herself and believe it unquestioningly.

She was much disciplined, she said, in the years of Quaker dissension and driven inward, driven home, to find an anchor, until she learned to have no choice, to acquiesce without understanding the reason when she found an obstruction to any particular course of action.  [When she was in a depression, her friend told her] to dwell patiently with her dreariness and absence, in the confidence that it was necessary to the sweeping away of all her dependence upon tradition, and that she would finally attain to something better. And when she attained a better state of mind, its beginnings were very, very small.

Emerson reflected in his journal: "Can you believe, Waldo Emerson, that you may relieve yourself of this perpetual perplexity of choosing, and by putting your ear close to the soul, learn always the true way?"  Above all, Emerson was struck (according to Richardson) "by the serene and perfect assurance of Miss Rotch."   

On the March 21st, while reading the records of the debates about Rotch, he wrote "The subject that needs most to be presented, developed, is the principle of Self-Reliance, what it is, what it is not, what it requires, how it teaches us to regard our friends."