Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stephen E. Whicher (Editor)

book

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Literature, Nonfiction, Essays, Poetry, College

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

[David Haws · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a supplementary-reading text for a lower-division course in American Literature I took in 1970 (I've kept most of my college textbooks, although a few have sublimated off over the years). I doubt that I read much of it at the time, but over the years I've come to understand how important the Transcendental Awakening was to America in the 19th Century, but also during the awakening of the 1960s and 70s.

[Maggie]

63:
July 21, 1837
Courage consists in the conviction that they with whom you co tend are no more than you. If we believed in the existence of strict individuals (itl), natures, that is, not radically identical but unknown, immeasurable, we should never dare fight.

The American Scholar
69 - One must be an inventor to read well.
72 Character is higher than intellect.
78 Give me insight into today . . . the near explains the far.
79 The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
80 We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. ...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

Self-Reliance
You are allowed to be alone to think. You are allowed to resist Society in order to make individual advancements. Society, by nature, will grow angry at you because it is contingent on you joining.

355:
Spring, 1851: On returning slaves: And this filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century, by people who could read and write. I will not obey it, by God.
August, 1852
I waked at night, and bemoaned myself, because I had not thrown myself into this deplorable question of Slavery, which seems to want nothing so much as a few assured voices. But then, in hours of sanity, I recovery myself, and say, "God must govern his own world, and knows his way out of this pit, without my desertion of my post, which has none to guard it but me. I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts, far back in the brain of man,--far retired in the heaven of invention, and which, important to the republic of Man, have no watchman, or lover, or defender, but I.

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an undergraduate a friend gave me a copy of Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson Edited by Stephen Whicher (1957) that introduced me to his poetry and ideas about Transcendentalism. When I got to graduate school I remember a presentation I made which illustrated the concept of Transcendentalism by bringing objects of nature into the classroom and asking my fellow students to describe what they were viewing through the mind of God (which according to Emerson they were sharing). Emerson (like William Blake) believed that the imagination was a direct channel to Heaven and if an open and clear connection was present it may be a catalyst for infinite poetic revelation. Both the Harvard Divinity Address and The Poet were essays that became life changing revelations for me and Emerson's Transcendentalism along with the German philosophy of "Dinggendicht" or "in-seeing" that Rainer Maria Rilke employed informed my poetry for years to come. In later years I found a beautiful volume of The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson that was first published in 1875 by Wm. Wise (New York). The later 1957 text by Stephen Whicher is a fine place to start and contains an informative introduction by him as well.

[Dayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned the importance of being self-reliant. Especially if one has Thoreau living with the family.

"Many scholars suggest that the strain in their (Emerson and Thoreau) relationship began to emerge about the time, Thoreau returned from Walden Pond. John Ronan’s article "Thoreau’s Declaration of Independence" from Emerson in Walden maintains that a part of the problem may have stemmed from the difficulties of living together, citing an entry in neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne’s journal in 1843: “Mr. Emerson appears to have suffered some inconveniency from his experience of Mr. Thoreau as an intimate. It may well be that such a sturdy and uncompromising person is fitter to meet occasionally in the open air, than to have as a permanent guest at table and fireside” (qt in Ronan 136).

[Tommy Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Emerson made his writing so descriptive and personal that I was able to garner a vicarious experience of early to mid 19th century American culture. It was interesting to watch Emerson allow age and life experience to change him from an idealistic religious romantic to a full-blown cynic still hanging on to minuscule religious rooting convictions.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, class is starting . . .

[Mike]

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."