Self Reliance and Other Essays

self reliance

"Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these." I am not very familar with higher level correspondence to this such philosophy but i am unsure the meaning to what Emerson says here?

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It sounds like Emerson is saying that charity is an act of penance. People give charity not in order to help people but to assuage their own guilt