Essays, Second Series

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A collections of essays: History, Self-reliance, Compensation, Spiritual laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The over-soul, Circles, Intellect & Art. There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it, in appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Essays, Classics, Literature

153 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1842

About the author

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.

The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.

Reviews

[Illiterate]

A comparison with Kant, Schelling, even Coleridge shows Emerson is a rotten philosopher. He may be a better preacher. But who likes being preached to?

[Nathan Albright]

In reading this book it is easy to see why Emerson was celebrated in his own day but why he has a less than stellar reputation as a philosopher in our own day.  As someone who reads the book from the point of view of a Christian, the author appears to be engaged in the most banal and superficial sort of philosophizing that I would fail were I teaching a class on the subject.  Yet to those who fancy themselves as contemporary philosophers the author appears to be preaching, however unsuccessfully.  In reading this book from the hindsight of 150 or more years, this book reminds me of what would happen if a blogger of indifferent skill was given a platform to write op/eds for some hack publication like the New York Times or Washington Post and thought that this was validating his (or her) abilities as a writer, only for a collection of those works to be made for future generations to ponder at the incomprehensibility that someone of such vague and laughably incorrect generalities and abstractions could be thought of as a wise guide.  Indeed, that is the most baffling thing about this collection, that the author was apparently thought of in his time as a guide to anything.

This book is more than 350 pages and consists of two different series of essays.  The first series of essays takes up a bit more than 200 pages and contains some well-regarded essays, even if they come off badly in hindsight.  After an introduction, the first series includes essays like History (1), Self-Reliance (2), Compensation (3), Spiritual Laws (4), Love (5), Friendship (6), Prudence (7), Heroism (8), The Over-Soul (9), Circles (10), Intellect (11) and Art (12) that provide a lot of hot takes about deism and the author's views on art criticism, generally in tidy essays of about 20 pages or so in length so as to be short enough to not be authoritative dealings of the subject matter the author has unwisely chosen to tackle.  The rest of the book is taken up by a smaller set of essays that are equally overambitious in title and not nearly ambitious enough in content, namely The Poet (13), Experience (14), Character (15), Manners (16), Gifts (17), Nature (18), Politics (19), and the author's thoughts on Nominalism and Realism (20), which is about the most serious philosophical essay here.  After that the book ends with an index and leaves the reader wondering why the author thought himself qualified to pontificate on these subjects.

That is not to say that this book is horrible.  If the author comes off as callow and superficial, there are worse things to be than a fount of insight as to the superficial thinking of one's era.  Indeed, this book is more useful as a historical document of conventional wisdom during the middle of the 19th century than as a record of philosophy.  People read Plato or Aristotle or Augustine or others like that because they have some sort of insight to provide, however flawed their perspective and worldview.  In the case of Emerson, though, his writing is solely of interest because it demonstrates the way that supposedly enlightened and progressive people in the mid-19th century thought of themselves and various other topics.  And just as is the case for our own journalists and pundits who spout off contemporary received wisdom, future generations will look at our own philosophizing the same way that we look back on Emerson's and wonder why in the world anyone ever paid to see what that person had to think about anything.  And they will shrug their shoulders and be glad that they got the book from the library so that they didn't have to pay for it themselves.

[Adam]

Mostly disappointing but redeemed somewhat by a few nuggets of gold that I highlighted. When I began to read this volume at first I was impressed by Emerson's command of the English language. I felt I hadn't read anyone else describe things as he did. However, as I read further into his essays I started to lose admiration. I couldn't figure out why he was embellishing and ornamenting his style so much. Every now and then a sentence would ring out clear as a bell, only to be followed by pages and pages of nonsensical theater. Who was he trying to impress? Maybe it was the style at the time, but I also wonder if this is how he naturally thought and spoke because of his devotion to some of the big time classics of Shakespeare, Homer, Milton, et al. Sometimes I felt as if Emerson would be annoyed if he were to read or listen to someone of his own diction by how he would excoriate others for similar expression. Sigh, I suppose the greatest lesson I learned here is this: just because someone has written or said some extremely great things doesn't mean everything of theirs is high quality. Emerson is no exception and I felt no need to reread this again in the future, a feeling I had after reading his first volume.

[Sunil Rajasekar]

Did not know words could do that! It was heard to read at first and I almost gave up but once I got past the initial bumps, it really opened up and I was able to marvel the incredible writing. Be patient and take your time to savor every sentence.

[Ali]

Another awesome book by Ralph Waldo Emerson ;)

[Bill]

I liked it better than his first series of essays. I enjoyed the politics essay and the gifts essay. This second series of essays is still loaded with humanistic views. I found it funny that he claimed to read the classics like one reads a dictionary. So is that how good 'ole Ralph wants us to read his works? If you have to choose between the first series or the second series, read the second.

[Danielle]

With occasional snippets of wisdom, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s collection of essays can offer helpful insights for those unfamiliar with self-reflection. His thoughts, while in equal portions interesting and self-righteous, with moments of piercing lucency, smack of a surprisingly edifying, yet unnecessary, notes app rant. Emerson almost cuts to the heart of spirituality, but falls short of full truth and speaks in generalized absolutes that echo his own rather foppish existence as a city man exploring nature for the first time. For those dipping their toes into soul deepening, this collection of thoughts might be appropriate, with genuinely beautiful sentiments such as, “Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man,” and some goose eggs such as, “If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.”

[Kirk]

“Experience”

Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not.

The years teach much which the days never know.