The last two paragraphs of "Self-Reliance" are a critique of property and fortune. Emerson castigates reliance on property, as he earlier attacked reliance on the thinking of others, as a means to a full life. Rather than admiring property, the cultivated man is ashamed of it, especially of property that is not acquired by honest work. Respect for property leads to a distortion of political life: Society is corrupted by people who regard government as primarily a protector of property rather than of persons.
Finally, Emerson urges the individual to be a risk taker. No external event, he says, whether good or bad, will change the individual's basic self-regard. "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." Self-reliance, then, is the triumph of a principle.
