Self-Reliance and Nature: The Complete First and Second Series of Emerson's Essays

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.
He is today seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.
Collected here in one convenient volume is Ralph Waldo Emerson's First Series and Second Series of essays.
The collection includes both Self-Reliance and Nature.
Essays - First Series 1. History 2. Self-Reliance 3. Compensation 4. Spiritual Laws 5. Love 6. Friendship 7. Prudence 8. Heroism 9. The Over-Soul 10. Circles 11. Intellect 12. Art Essays - Second Series 1. The Poet 2. Experience 3. Character 4. Manners 5. Gifts 6. Nature 7. Politics 8. Nominalist and Realist 9. New England Reformers

Genres: Philosophy, History

314 pages, Hardcover

Published December 23, 2022

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

[Rowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, there are some essays in here that are just crap, or really have no worth to give. I will speak generally on those when giving my summation of thought, but for the most part I will just speak on some take aways from some specific essays.

Self-Reliance
This essay has a bold and clear start. Emerson simply tells us to believe ourselves. To hold true to our convictions. To assert that which we know, lest we sheepishly wait for someone else to express said ideas, and have to meekly hop on board. We are who we are. He outlines that you must believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men. This is such a bold thought, and so counter-active to what we are told today. "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion". "God will not have his work made manifest by cowards". I think this is the crux of what Emerson is getting at. Not that we aren't potentially wrong in our beliefs, but that conviction and the forthright expounding of our earnest natures and ideas is what leads to the greatest accomplishments. That we must hold true to ourselves, regardless of how we may hurt ourselves, embarrass ourselves, or just maybe, revolutionize ourselves. He tells us that a man finds peace who puts his whole heart into something. We can accept that we maybe wrong, but we must be true to who and what we are. To be a man is to be a non-conformist, he tells us. All of this I can agree upon. Where I think he can lose sight is in his faith. He raises the example of not following Church tradition, essentially saying "all that is good and bad is from myself within", and that is a red flag to me. His non-denominational claims stem from a pretty atheistic point of view, in which he makes himself God, in a sense. Tradition is not just that, but it is the eternal truth passed directly from Jesus Christ himself. If the point of our holding true to our convictions is an honest attempt to learn and grow from genuine ideas, then surely he should learn and grow from the greatest man to walk the Earth, Jesus Christ. Ironically, though, he goes into somewhat of a parallel to ordo amortis, and produces a kind of conservative form of compassion: "Thy love afar is spite at home... truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, -else it is none". Certainly this harkens to the modern idea of being kind, not nice.

Spiritual Laws
This was an interesting one, with again some give and take for me. He talks about us being called by God in our vocations, going on to say "He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do." I do and don't agree. We are obviously called by God in our vocations, or rather our gifts, but this notion that we should incline to do what comes easy to us seems fabled and non-biblical. Think of Luke 15:7, for example. The glory will come in those who have faced adversity and came to meet with the divine in spite of said struggle. He does make a good point further on, which I believe corroborates the Catholic view on how one should live and evangelize. He says that "Human character evermore publishes itself... If you act [or don't], you show character". I certainly agree here. This is why the Church holds that the best form of evangelizations to simply be a good Christian. You are always making your impression, and are a walking billboard for what shapes you, what you believe in, ultimately culminating in who you are. He harkens almost to Marcus Aurelius when Emerson tells us to "Be, and not seem". The man who is what he wants to be does not worry about being perceived said way, he tells us. "The hero fears not, that, if he withhold the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it, - himself". "Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described as saying, I AM". The reference to the last line I believe to be a little misguided, just throwing in a random bit of scripture that doesn't necessarily latch on to the point, but it nonetheless stands tall and true. This is a very important lesson to learn, because certainly, if we want others to see us as simply humble, brave, courteous, etc. then we must simply be, with no worry towards our outward perception, which really just reveals an rightful insecurity, because either we know we aren't what we try to seem, or we know that our actions do not stem from earnest desire to do said action for its own sake.

I honestly can't say there's another essay in this collection that's worth it's own extended paragraph. There were some entries that came through with the occasional thought token, however. "Character", for instance, was painted in an interesting light. I like Emerson's idea that Character is this sort of intangible essence which one can simply feel on another person. It's this sort of magnitude, this sense of living actively rather than passively, a sort of commanding, affirmative assertion that one lays upon the world. The man with character understands himself, Emerson tells us. "The class of character like to hear of their faults: the other class do not like to hear of faults; they worship events... The hero sees that the event is ancillary: it must follow him". It almost speaks to that Locus of Control in psychology we hear about, that the hero, the man of character, has an internal locus, he is not affected by external events, but rather IS the affecter.

There's an interesting excerpt on friendship that I'll just paste, basically advising that better to have an agreeable adversary in a friend than a shadow, in that it is the difference that is cherished: "Friendship requires that rate mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power an of consent in the other party... I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, it that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance to find a mush of concession. better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it... There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them".

There's another interesting tidbit from "Heroism" describing the nature of what it means to be a hero. Particularly, I think Emerson tries to get at the essence of the honorable everyday man, who I suppose is the true hero. "The characteristic of heroism is its persistency" Emerson tells us. Essentially, all men have drawings or inclinations toward good deeds, but the hero is the one who persistently abides by these virtues. "When you have chose your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself" that is what a hero. Definitionally, Emerson tells us, the hero cannot be common, and the common can not be the hero. "Always do what you are afraid to do". An additional point he brings up here which I like, I think affirms the positive assertiveness of a good man. He says that a manly character should never make an apology, but should calmly regard prior actions, such as Phocion, who admitted that he was happy with the event of a battle, but did not regret his original dissuasion from it.

One big issue I have with Emerson is his approach to God. I know many Christians like him, those totally unrooted from tradition or the word, and yet through some quasi spirituality attribute God to everything, to the point of inanity. He seems to be one of those people that believes God is giving constant and direct signals and signs to him on every miniscule aspect of his being, which is such a dangerous and self important slope. It harkens to the same people who spout things like "urm well, if you have really overwhelming sinful urges, remember that so did David so that just means your potential is just as great". It's this insane logic that I find often amongst like non-denominational folks, particularly on that last part, or folks who want to be Christian without actually "being" Christian.

Overall, it's kind of weak and bland. Much like Thoreau, I found Emerson to be somewhat inaccessible for the laymen, though maybe a little less so. Regardless, he still struts forth in his writings with a pretentious aire that I am just over. There were swaths of boredom throughout, with many a bloated essay, hosting convoluted or loosely strung together tangents into fragments of something almost resembling a topic.

This was just yet another book this year that has been a total slog for me. I didn't much enjoy good bits of it, just staying intrigued enough by some particular entries to feel emboldened enough to continue. There is certainly a variety to choose from, and no collection is perfect, but with Emerson's style, it feels like the entire project suffers a brutal drawback. I wouldn't read this again, though may recommend it to one of my "spiritual" friends. Overall, somewhere in the realm of C/C- Tier for me.

[Tanja Nayak · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW - this book is amazing!! The philosophical musings of Emerson on life and nature are thought-provoking and timeless. a true classic. essential reading.