Self-Reliance Theme

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes self-reliance with the theme that no matter how strange, or unethical your ideas may be, if you believe in it, that you should trust your own ideas and the way that you live your life. For example, he says that "Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age,".
By this, he means that the most memorable men have always told the secrets of themselves during their era no matter how similar they may end up sounding to others. He believes that the men who do this are the most memorable because of their trust for themselves with output of thoughts that may not seem so normal during their time-period.
"Absolve to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world." Emerson uses this to reinforce that what you do, as long as you yourself approve of your own ideas, other people are bound to as well.