The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

Let's forget about trying to be like Kim Kardashian or George Clooney. Let's all try to be like little Georgie and Kimmy, before they got all tarnished by fame. Little boys and girls don't care about what people think (and we know Kim Kardashian and George Clooney do). They just follow their own desires and judgments.

So. In this excerpt from his essay "Self-Reliance," Emerson's saying that he wants us to be like little boys and girls because these tiny tots are independent. They're individualistic. They're not imprisoned by what other people think or what society says they should eat for dinner.

A five-year-old doesn't care if he or she pees in public. OK, maybe that's a little to old to be peeing in public, but the point is that children are free, they're freer than us adults who are constantly worrying about how our hair looks or how our houses look or how our jobs look to others.

Basically, Emerson wants us to chill out. He wants us to embrace who we truly are, and to be true to ourselves. Only through individualism and self-reliance will we be able to achieve happiness and peace (no, not pees, either out or in).

Emerson makes his point in this passage by using contrasts. He contrasts the boy with the grown man. One is liberated and the other is imprisoned. Contrast. By constructing this distinction, Emerson makes us readers all want to go back to the good old days of childhood.

Emerson's use of contrast here is a great example of his rhetorical skills. He paints a wonderful, happy-go-lucky picture of that independent, free-spirited little boy. Who wouldn't want to be like him? And because we want to be like him, we're also won over by Emerson's arguments. Tah-dah!