Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the amers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature faceto face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us, by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laWs and worship.
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A new, wide-ranging selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson"s most influential writings, this edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America"s greatest native philosophers and poets.
The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against social conformity, a lover of nature, an activist for the rights of women and slaves, and a poet of great sensitivity. As explored in this volume, Emersonian thought is a unique blend of belief in individual freedom and in humility before the power of nature, "1 become a transparent eyeball" Emerson wrote in Nature, "1 am nothing; t see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God" Written over a century ago, this passage is a striking example of the passion and originality of Emerson"s ideas, which continue to serve as a spiritual center and an ideological base for modern thought.
Featured here are seminal works such as Nature, "Self-Reliance,""The Over-Soul,"and early essays and lectures such as the "Cherokee Letter" and "Pray Without Ceasing."This collection also offers Emerson"s most important poetry, including "The Sphinx" and "Days,"
Foreword by Bobert D. Bichardson Jr.
NATURE (1836)
Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II Commodity
Chapter III Beauty
Chapter IV Language
Chapter V Discipline
Chapter VI Idealism
Chapter VII Spirit
Chapter VIII Prospects
EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES
Pray Without Ceasing(1826)
Ethics (1837)
The American Scholar 0837)
Cherokee Letter (1838)
The Divinty School Address (1838)
From ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES (1841)
History
Self-Reliance
The Over-Soul
Circles
From ESSAYS, SECOND SERIES (1844)
The Poet
Experience
Politics
From REPRESENTATIVE MEN (1850)
Uses of Great Men
Montaigne; or, the Skeptic
LATER ESSAYS AND LECTURES
Emancipation in the British West Indies (1844)
Woman,(1855)
Thoreau (1862)
POEMS
Concord Hymn
The Rhodora
Each and All
Brahma
Hamatreya
The Snow-Storm
The Sphinx
Ode: Inscribed to W. H. Channing
Uriel
Threnody
Blight
Terminus
Poet
Additional Reading
