[153] Then most when, most at the time when.
[154] "The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity."—Emerson, Address to the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge.
"For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within."
Tennyson, In Memoriam, V. I.
[156] Trust thyself. This is the theme of the present essay, and is a lesson which Emerson is never tired of teaching. In The American Scholar he says:
"In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended." In the essay on Greatness:
"Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears.... Stick to your own.... Follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of heaven for you to walk in."
Carlyle says:
"The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself."
[157] Chaos (Χάος), the confused, unorganized condition in which the world was supposed to have existed before it was reduced to harmony and order; hence, utter confusion and disorder.