Society and Solitude

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps no writer has so dramatically shaped the course of American philosophy as Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose meditations on spirituality, freedom, and the power of knowledge have informed and inspired generations of activists, scholars, and thinkers. Published in 1870, Society and Solitude is Emerson's last great work, a collection of lectures he delivered on tour, in which he found profound insight on such seemingly prosaic topics as Art, Eloquence, Domestic Life, Books, Courage, Success, and Old Age. "A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days," says Emerson in his lecture here on "Works and Days." Such penetrating wit and wisdom continues to speak to us today. American poet and philosopher RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) was a driving force behind the Transcendental Movement of the early 18th century. He studied at Harvard Divinity School; however, after a crisis of faith embraced individualism, rejected authority, and despaired of spiritless Christian conventions. His works include the essay collection Nature, Conduct of Life, and Parnassus, a poetry chapbook as well as Compensation and Self-Reliance from his lecture series.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

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

[شمس · Rating 4 out of 5]

. . . in the scale of powers it is not talent but sensibility which is best. (Success)

The highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired us. (Art)
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I am of the opinion of the poet Wordsworth, that “there is no real happiness in this life but in intellect and virtue.” I am of the opinion of Pliny that “whilst we are musing on these things, we are adding to the length of our lives.” I am of the opinion of Glauco, who said, “The measure of life, O Socrates, is, with the wise, the speaking and hearing such discourses as yours.” (Works and Days)

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Society and Solitude comprises 12 essays: Society and Solitude, Civilisation, Art, Eloquence, Domestic Life, Farming, Works and Days, Books, Clubs, Courage, Success, and Old Age.

Like The Conduct of Life, there are some good thoughts and musings to be found in here (particularly in Books, which I personally think is a real stand-out, and definitely my favourite from the collection) but there is a good reason why the essays comprising Emerson's Essays are much better known, and more highly regarded.

Of course, being written by Emerson, the style and turns of phrase can be savoured as much as the content.
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Read from The Conduct of Life and Society and Solitude
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. . . to whose eye the gods and nymphs never appear ancient, for they know by heart the whole instinct of majesty. (Domestic Life)

Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or, we boil at different degrees. One man is brought to the boiling-point by the excitement of conversation in the parlor. The waters, of course, are not very deep. He has a two-inch enthusiasm, a patty-pan ebullition. Another requires the additional caloric of a multitude and a public debate; a third needs an antagonist, or a hot indignation; a fourth needs a revolution; and a fifth, nothing less than the grandeur of absolute ideas, the splendours and shades of Heaven and Hell. (Eloquence)
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I visit occasionally the Cambridge Library, and I can seldom go there without renewing the conviction that the best of it all is already within the four walls of my study at home. (Books)

The crowds and centuries of books are only commentary and elucidation, echoes and weakeners of these few great voices of time . . . So, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer, if all the secondary writers were lost. (Books)

Let him read what is proper to him, and not waste his memory on a crowd of mediocrities. (Books)

Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find himself answered there. (Books)

Of Plato I hesitate to speak, lest there should be no end. You find in him that which you have already found in Homer, now ripened to thought,—the poet converted to a philosopher, with loftier strains of musical wisdom than Homer reached; as if Homer were the youth and Plato the finished man; yet with no less security of bold and perfect song, when he cares to use it, and with some harp-strings fetched from a higher heaven. He contains the future, as he came out of the past. (Books)

But Plutarch’s Morals is less known, and seldom reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writing to can as ill spare it as the Lives. (Books)

Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy is a book of great learning. To read it is like reading in a dictionary. ’T is an inventory to remind us how many classes and species of facts exist, and, in observing into what strange and multiplex byways learning has strayed, to infer our opulence. (Books)

I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue. (Books)

In every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. (Success)

We remember our old Greek Professor at Cambridge, an ancient bachelor, amid his folios, possessed by this hope of completing a task, with nothing to break his leisure after the three hours of his daily classes, yet ever restlessly stroking his leg and assuring himself “he should retire from the University and read the authors.” (Old Age)

Bentley thought himself likely to live till fourscore,—long enough to read everything that was worth reading,—“Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit imago." (Old Age)
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Or, if your skepticism reaches to the last verge, and you have no confidence in any foreign mind, then be brave, because there is one good opinion which must always be of consequence to you, namely, your own. (Courage)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of all time. Not to be rushed through. Read. Stop. Think. Go back, repeat until you get every drop of meaning and benefit. It is like a well that is never empty, and you will not regret the investment of your time and attention.

[H.g. Callaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my own edition of R.W. Emerson's 1870 book of essays, Society and Solitude, Twelve Chapters. This is a scholarly, hardback edition. I have added a full annotation of the text, an Introduction, a bibliography of Emerson's authors and related readings, and a short Chronology of Emerson's life--plus and index. Recommended for Emerson scholars and libraries--for Emerson's views just after the Civil War, during Reconstruction.

[Cobertizo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Los días se hacen de un telar del que la trama y la urdimbre son el tiempo pasado y futuro. Visten majestuosamente, como si cada uno de los dioses hubiera dado puntada en el tejido celeste. Es penoso ver las cosas que nos hacen ricos o pobres: cuestión de dinero, abrigos y alfombras, un poco más o menos de piedra, madera o pintura, la última moda de una capa o un sombrero; como sucede entre los indios desnudos, donde uno se jacta de poseer abolorio o una pluma roja y los demás se sienten miserables por no tenerlas. Pero los tesoros que la naturaleza acumula a sus expensas -la centenaria, refinada y compuesta anatomía del hombre, las llamadas del mar, los cielos profundos con sus planetas, el receptivo cerebro y las estructuras nerviosas que le responden, etc- se ponen en manos de todos en cantidades infinitas, no como un abalorio o el dinero o las alfombras."

[Douglas Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought it would be a better essay.

I come to Emerson as a huge Thoreau fan. I guess I really enjoy reading Thoreau more than Emerson. Oh well... at least the essay was very short!

[Terrence Hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤️❤️❤️

I can relate
To it. its perfectly expressed and anybody who can vibe with it can see it that sometimes society is a trap lol

[Dwight Etgen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brief, but not sparing detail, is this. For those who do not understand the undergirding philosophies of Americana, reading this would introduce those to a useful few.

[Kristen (belles_bookshelves) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends."

I don't know why, but I thought there would be more poetry?

But it's still a great collection of stories, not as hard to get through as Edgar Allan Poe's works that I also read all in sequence.