1. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet,
who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion
of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his
thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United
States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating
and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this groundbreaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two
collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841
and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The
Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from
the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.
Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing
certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the
relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical
than naturalistic; "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul."
While his writing style can be seen as somewhat impenetrable, and was thought so even in his own time,
Emerson's essays remain among the linchpins of American thinking, and Emerson's work has greatly
influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he
said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."
arly life, family, and education
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803, son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William
Emerson, a Unitarian minister. He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and the father's greatgrandmother Rebecca Waldo. Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the
others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles. Three other children—Phebe, John Clarke,
and Mary Caroline–died in childhood.
The young Ralph Waldo Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two
weeks before Emerson's eighth birthday. Emerson was raised by his mother, with the help of the other
women in the family; his aunt Mary Moody Emerson in particular had a profound effect on Emerson. She
lived with the family off and on, and maintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death
in 1863.

2. Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812 when he was nine. In October
1817, at 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president,
requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty. Midway through his junior
year, Emerson began keeping a list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks
that would be called "Wide World".He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a
waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel in . By his
senior year, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. Emerson served as Class Poet; as was
custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation on
August 29, 1821, when he was 18.He did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of
his class of 59 people.
In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek out warmer climates. He first went to Charleston,
South Carolina, but found the weather was still too cold. He then went further south, to St. Augustine,
Florida, where he took long walks on the beach, and began writing poetry. While in St. Augustine, he
made the acquaintance of Prince Achille Murat. Murat, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was only two
years his senior; they became extremely good friends and enjoyed one another's company. The two
engaged in enlightening discussions on religion, society, philosophy, and government, and Emerson
considered Murat an important figure in his intellectual education.
While in St. Augustine, Emerson had his first experience of slavery. At one point, he attended a meeting
of the Bible Society while there was a slave auction taking place in the yard outside. He wrote, "One ear
therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with 'Going, gentlemen, going'!"

3. Early career
Engraved drawing, 1878
After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William in a school for young womenestablished in their
mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his brother
William went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several
years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School. Emerson's
brother Edward, two years younger than he, entered the office of lawyer Daniel Webster, after graduating
Harvard first in his class. Edward's physical health began to deteriorate and he soon suffered a mental
collapse as well; he was taken to McLean Asylum in June 1828 at age 23. Although he recovered his
mental equilibrium, he died in 1834 from apparently longstanding tuberculosis. Another of Emerson's
bright and promising younger brothers, Charles, born in 1808, died in 1836, also of tuberculosis, making
him the third young person in Emerson's innermost circle to die in a period of a few years.
Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire on Christmas Day, 1827,
and married her when she was 18. The couple moved to Boston, with Emerson's mother Ruth moving
with them to help take care of Ellen, who was already sick with tuberculosis. Less than two years later,
Ellen died at the age of 20 on February 8, 1831, after uttering her last words: "I have not forgot the peace
and joy." Emerson was heavily affected by her death and visited her grave in Roxbury daily. In a journal
entry dated March 29, 1832, Emerson wrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the coffin."

4. Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor and he was ordained on January
11, 1829. His initial salary was $1,200 a year, increasing to $1,400 in July but with his church role he
took on other responsibilities: he was chaplain to the Massachusetts legislature, and a member of the
Boston school committee. His church activities kept him busy, though during this period, facing the
imminent death of his wife, he began to doubt his own beliefs.
After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's methods, writing in his journal in June 1832:
"I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The
profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers. His
disagreements with church officials over the administration of the Communion service and misgivings
about public prayer eventually led to his resignation in 1832. As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating
Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it." As one Emerson scholar has
pointed out, "Doffing the decent black of the pastor, he was free to choose the gown of the lecturer and
teacher, of the thinker not confined within the limits of an institution or a tradition."
Emerson toured Europe in 1833 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1857). He left aboard the
brig Jasper on Christmas Day, 1832, sailing first to Malta During his European trip, he spent several
months in Italy, visiting Rome, Florence and Venice, among other cities. When in Rome, he met with John
Stuart Mill, who gave him a letter of recommendation to meet Thomas Carlyle. He went to Switzerland,
and had to be dragged by fellow passengers to visit Voltaire's home in Ferney, "protesting all the way
upon the unworthiness of his memory." He then went on to Paris, a "loud modern New York of a
place,", where he visited the Jardin des Plantes. He was greatly moved by the organization of plants
according to Jussieu's system of classification, and the way all such objects were related and connected.
As Richardson says, "Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des
Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward
science."
Moving north to England, Emerson met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas
Carlyle. Carlyle in particular was a strong influence on Emerson; Emerson would later serve as an
unofficial literary agent in the United States for Carlyle, and in March 1835, he tried to convince Carlyle to
come to America to lecture. The two would maintain correspondence until Carlyle's death in 1881.

5. Daguerreotype of 'Lidian' Jackson Emerson and son Edward Waldo Emerson, 1840
Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived with his mother in Newton,
Massachusetts, until October, 1834, when he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, to live with his stepgrandfather Dr. Ezra Ripley at what was later named The Old Manse. Seeing the budding Lyceum
movement, which provided lectures on all sorts of topics, Emerson saw a possible career as a lecturer.
On November 5, 1833, he made the first of what would eventually be some 1,500 lectures, discussing
The Uses of Natural History in Boston. This was an expanded account of his experience in Paris. In this
lecture, he set out some of his important beliefs and the ideas he would later develop in his first published
essay Nature:
Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to
pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal
sense. I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great
book that is written in that tongue.
On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote a letter to Lydia Jackson proposing marriage. Her acceptance
reached him by mail on the 28th. In July 1835, he bought a house on the blic as the Ralph Waldo
Emerson House. Emerson quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He gave a lecture to
commemorate the 200th anniversary of the town of Concord on September 12, 1835. Two days later, he
married Lydia Jackson in her home town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and moved to the new home in
Concord together with Emerson's mother on September 15.
Emerson quickly changed his wife's name to Lidian, and would call her Queenie, and sometimes Asiaand
she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen
was named for his first wife, at Lidian's suggestion.

6. Emerson was poor when he was at Harvard, and later supported his family for much of his life. He
inherited a fair amount of money after his first wife's death, though he had to file a lawsuit against the
Tucker family in 1836 to get it. He received $11,600 in May 1834, and a further $11,674.49 in July 1837.
In 1834, he considered that he had an income of $1,200 a year from the initial payment of the estate,
equivalent to what he had earned as a pastor.
Literary career and Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1859
On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of Nature, Emerson met with Henry Hedge,
George Putnam and George Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals. This was
the beginning of the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. Its first official
meeting was held on September 19, 1836. On September 1, 1837, women attended a meeting of the
Transcendental Club for the first time. Emerson invited Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Hoar and Sarah Ripley
for dinner at his home before the meeting to ensure that they would be present for the evening gettogether. Fuller would prove to be an important figure in Transcendentalism.
Emerson anonymously published his first essay, Nature, on September 9, 1836. A year later, on August
31, 1837, Emerson delivered his now-famous Phi Beta Kappa address, "The American Scholar", then
known as "An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a
collection of essays (which included the first general publication of "Nature") in 1849. Friends urged him to
publish the talk, and he did so, at his own expense, in an edition of 500 copies, which sold out in a
month. In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans
to create a writing style all their own and free from Europe. James Russell Lowell, who was a student at

7. Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on our literary annals". Another member of
the audience, Reverend John Pierce, called it "an apparently incoherent and unintelligible address".
In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau. Though they had likely met as early as 1835, in the
fall of 1837, Emerson asked Thoreau, "Do you keep a journal?" The question went on to have a lifelong
inspiration for Thoreau. Emerson's own journal comes to 16 large volumes, in the definitive Harvard
University Press edition published between 1960 and 1982. Some scholars consider the journal to be
Emerson's key literary work.
In March 1837, Emerson gave a series of lectures on The Philosophy of History at Boston's Masonic
Temple. This was the first time he managed a lecture series on his own, and was the beginning of his
serious career as a lecturer. The profits from this series of lectures were much larger than when he was
paid by an organization to talk, and Emerson continued to manage his own lectures often throughout his
lifetime. He would eventually give as many as 80 lectures a year, traveling across the northern part of the
United States. He traveled as far as St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and California.
On July 15, 1838, Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School for the school's
graduation address, which came to be known as his "Divinity School Address". Emerson discounted
Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical
Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe
Osiris or Apollo". His comments outraged the establishment and the general Protestant community. For
this, he was denounced as an atheist, and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics,
he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard
for another thirty years.
The Transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, The Dial, in July 1840. They planned the
journal as early as October 1839, but work did not begin until the first week of 1840 George Ripley was its
managing editor andMargaret Fuller was its first editor, having been hand-chosen by Emerson after
several others had declined the role. Fuller stayed on for about two years and Emerson took over,
utilizing the journal to promote talented young writers including Ellery Channing and Thoreau.
It was in 1841 that Emerson published Essays, his second book, which included the famous essay, "SelfReliance". His aunt called it a "strange medley of atheism and false independence", but it gained
favorable reviews in London and Paris. This book, and its popular reception, more than any of Emerson's
contributions to date laid the groundwork for his international fame.
In January 1842 Emerson's first son Waldo died from scarlet fever. Emerson wrote of his grief in the
poem "Threnody" ("For this losing is true dying"),and the essay "Experience". That same month, William
James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.

8. Bronson Alcott announced his plans in November 1842 to find "a farm of a hundred acres in excellent
condition with good buildings, a good orchard and grounds"Charles Lane purchased a 90-acre (360,000
2
m ) farm in Harvard, Massachusetts, in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands, a community based
on Utopian ideals inspired in part by Transcendentalism. The farm would run based on a communal effort,
using no animals for labor; its participants would eat no meat and use no wool or leather. Emerson said
he felt "sad at heart" for not engaging in the experiment himself. Even so, he did not feel Fruitlands would
be a success. "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he wrote, "but they always end with saying, Give us
much land and money" Even Alcott admitted he was not prepared for the difficulty in operating Fruitlands.
"None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart", he
wrote. After its failure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's family in Concord which Alcott named
"Hillside".
The Dial ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported it as an end to the "most original and
thoughtful periodical ever published in this country". (An unrelated magazine of the same name would be
published in several periods through 1929.)
In 1844, Emerson published his second collection of essays, entitled "Essays: Second Series." This
collection included "The Poet," "Experience," "Gifts," and an essay entitled "Nature," a different work from
the 1836 essay of the same name.
Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much of the rest of the country. He had
begun lecturing in 1833; by the 1850s he was giving as many as 80 per year. He addressed the Boston
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and the Gloucester Lyceum, among others. Emerson spoke
on a wide variety of subjects and many of his essays grew out of his lectures. He charged between $10
and $50 for each appearance, bringing him as much as $2,000 in a typical winter "season". This was
more than his earnings from other sources. In some years, he earned as much as $900 for a series of six
lectures, and in another, for a winter series of talks in Boston, he netted $1,600. He eventually gave some
1,500 lectures in his lifetime. His earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying 11 acres (45,000
2
m ) of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in a neighboring pine grove. He wrote that he was
"landlord and waterlord of 14 acres, more or less".
Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy when reading the works of French philosopher Victor
Cousin. In 1845, Emerson's journals show he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas
Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas. Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas, and much of his
writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay
"The Over-soul":
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the
wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.

9. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only selfsufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle,
the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal,
the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
From 1847 to 1848, he toured England, Scotland, and Ireland He also visited Paris between the February
Revolution and the bloody June Days. When he arrived, he saw the stumps where trees had been cut
down to form barricades in the February riots. On May 21 he stood on the Champ de Mars in the midst of
mass celebrations for concord, peace and labor. He wrote in his journal: "At the end of the year we shall
take account, & see if the Revolution was worth the trees."
In February 1852 Emerson and James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing edited an edition of
the works and letters of Margaret Fuller, who had died in 1850 Within a week of her death, her New York
editor Horace Greeleysuggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called Margaret and Her
Friends, be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed away" Published
with the title The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Fuller's words were heavily censored or rewritten.
The three editors were not concerned about accuracy; they believed public interest in Fuller was
temporary and that she would not survive as a historical figure. Even so, for a time, it was the best-selling
biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before the end of the century.
Walt Whitman published the innovative poetry collection Leaves of Grass in 1855 and sent a copy to
Emerson for his opinion. Emerson responded positively, sending a flattering five-page letter as a
response. Emerson's approval helped the first edition of Leaves of Grass stir up significant interestand
convinced Whitman to issue a second edition shortly thereafter. This edition quoted a phrase from
Emerson's letter, printed in gold leaf on the cover: "I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great
Career".Emerson took offense that this letter was made public and later became more critical of the work.
Civil War years
Emerson was staunchly anti-slavery, but he did not appreciate being in the public limelight and was
hesitant about lecturing on the subject. He did, however, give a number of lectures during the pre-Civil
War years, beginning as early as November, 1837 A number of his friends and family members were
more active abolitionists than he, at first, but from 1844 on, he took a more active role in opposing slavery.
He gave a number of speeches and lectures, and notably welcomed John Brown to his home during
Brown's visits to Concord. He voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but Emerson was disappointed that
Lincoln was more concerned about preserving the Union than eliminating slavery outright. Once the
American Civil War broke out, Emerson made it clear that he believed in immediate emancipation of the
slaves.

10. Around this time, in 1860, Emerson published The Conduct of Life, his final original collection of essays.
In this book, Emerson "grappled with some of the thorniest issues of the moment," and "his experience in
the abolition ranks is a telling influence in his conclusions. In the book's opening essay, Fate, Emerson
wrote, "The question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I
live?"
Emerson visited Washington, D.C, at the end of January, 1862. He gave a public lecture at the
Smithsonian on January 31, 1862, and declared: "The South calls slavery an institution... I call it
destitution... Emancipation is the demand of civilization".The next day, February 1, his friend Charles
Sumner took him to meet Lincoln at the White House. Lincoln was familiar with Emerson's work, having
previously seen him lecture. Emerson's misgivings about Lincoln began to soften after this meeting. In
1865, he spoke at a memorial service held for Lincoln in Concord: "Old as history is, and manifold as are
its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain as this has caused, or will have caused, on its
announcement. Emerson also met a number of high-ranking government officials, including Salmon P.
Chase, the secretary of the treasury, Edward Bates, the attorney general, Edwin M. Stanton, the
secretary of war, Gideon Welles, the secretary of the navy, and William Seward, the secretary of state.
On May 6, 1862, Emerson's protégé Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis at the age of 44 and
Emerson delivered his eulogy. Emerson would continuously refer to Thoreau as his best friend, despite a
falling out that began in 1849 after Thoreau published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Another friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, died two years after Thoreau in 1864. Emerson served as one of
the pallbearers as Hawthorne was buried in Concord, as Emerson wrote, "in a pomp of sunshine and
verdure".He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1864.
Final years and death
Emerson's grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord
Starting in 1867, Emerson's health began declining; he wrote much less in his journals. Beginning as
early as the summer of 1871 or in the spring of 1872, Emerson started having memory problemsand

11. suffered from aphasia. By the end of the decade, he forgot his own name at times and, when anyone
asked how he felt, he responded, "Quite well; I have lost my mental faculties, but am perfectly well".
Emerson's Concord home caught fire on July 24, 1872; Emerson called for help from neighbors and,
giving up on putting out the flames, all attempted to save as many objects as possible. The fire was put
out by Ephraim Bull, Jr., the one-armed son of Ephraim Wales Bull. Donations were collected by friends
to help the Emersons rebuild, including $5,000 gathered by Francis Cabot Lowell, another $10,000
collected by LeBaron Russell Briggs, and a personal donation of $1,000 from George Bancroft. Support
for shelter was offered as well; though the Emersons ended up staying with family at the Old Manse,
invitations came from Anne Lynch Botta, James Elliot Cabot, James Thomas Fields and Annie Adams
Fields. The fire marked an end to Emerson's serious lecturing career; from then on, he would lecture only
on special occasions and only in front of familiar audiences.
While the house was being rebuilt, Emerson took a trip to England, continental Europe, and Egypt. He left
on October 23, 1872, along with his daughter Ellen while his wife Lidian spent time at the Old Manse and
with friends. Emerson and his daughter Ellen returned to the United States on the ship Olympus along
with friend Charles Eliot Norton on April 15, 1873. Emerson's return to Concord was celebrated by the
town and school was canceled that day.
In late 1874 Emerson published an anthology of poetry called Parnassus, which included poems by Anna
Laetitia Barbauld, Julia Caroline Dorr, Jean Ingelow, Lucy Larcom, Jones Very, as well as Thoreau and
several others. The anthology was originally prepared as early as the fall of 1871 but was delayed when
the publishers asked for revisions.
The problems with his memory had become embarrassing to Emerson and he ceased his public
appearances by 1879. As Holmes wrote, "Emerson is afraid to trust himself in society much, on account
of the failure of his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he wants. It is painful to
witness his embarrassment at times On April 21, 1882, Emerson was diagnosed with pneumonia. He died
on April 27, 1882. Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts. He was
placed in his coffin wearing a white robe given by American sculptor Daniel Chester French.
Lifestyle and beliefs

12. Ralph Waldo Emerson in later years
Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are
connected to God and, therefore, all things are divine. Critics believed that Emerson was removing the
central God figure; as Henry Ware, Jr. said, Emerson was in danger of taking away "the Father of the
[
Universe" and leaving "but a company of children in an orphan asylum". Emerson was partly influenced
by German philosophy and Biblical criticism. His views, the basis of Transcendentalism, suggested that
God does not have to reveal the truth but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly from
nature.
Emerson did not become an ardent abolitionist until 1844, though his journals show he was concerned
with slavery beginning in his youth, even dreaming about helping to free slaves. In June 1856, shortly
after Charles Sumner, a United States Senator, was beaten for his staunch abolitionist views, Emerson
lamented that he himself was not as committed to the cause. He wrote, "There are men who as soon as
they are born take a bee-line to the axe of the inquisitor... Wonderful the way in which we are saved by
this unfailing supply of the moral element". After Sumner's attack, Emerson began to speak out about
slavery. "I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom", he said at a meeting at

13. Concord that summer. Emerson used slavery as an example of a human injustice, especially in his role
as a minister. In early 1838, provoked by the murder of an abolitionist publisher from Alton,
Illinois named Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Emerson gave his first public antislavery address. As he said, "It is
but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free
speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live".John Quincy Adams said the mob-murder of
Lovejoy "sent a shock as of any earthquake throughout this continent". However, Emerson maintained
that reform would be achieved through moral agreement rather than by militant action. By August 1, 1844,
at a lecture in Concord, he stated more clearly his support for the abolitionist movement. He stated, "We
are indebted mainly to this movement, and to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point
of practical ethics".
Emerson may have had erotic thoughts about at least one man. During his early years at Harvard, he
found himself attracted to a young freshman named Martin Gay about whom he wrote sexually charged
poetry. He also had a number of crushes on various women throughout his life, such as Anna Barker and
Caroline Sturgis.
Legacy
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
Issue of 1940
As a lecturer and orator, Emerson—nicknamed the Concord Sage—became the leading voice of
intellectual culture in the United States. Herman Melville, who had met Emerson in 1849, originally
thought he had "a defect in the region of the heart" and a "self-conceit so intensely intellectual that at first
one hesitates to call it by its right name", though he later admitted Emerson was "a great man" Theodore
Parker, a minister and Transcendentalist, noted Emerson's ability to influence and inspire others: "the
brilliant genius of Emerson rose in the winter nights, and hung over Boston, drawing the eyes of

14. ingenuous young people to look up to that great new start, a beauty and a mystery, which charmed for
the moment, while it gave also perennial inspiration, as it led them forward along new paths, and towards
new hopes".
Emerson's work not only influenced his contemporaries, such as Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau,
but would continue to influence thinkers and writers in the United States and around the world down to
the present. Notable thinkers who recognize Emerson's influence include Nietzsche and William James,
Emerson's godson. "There is little disagreement that Emerson was the most influential writer of 19thcentury America, though these days he is largely the concern of scholars. Walt Whitman, Henry David
Thoreau and William James were all positive Emersonians, while Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne
and Henry James were Emersonians in denial — while they set themselves in opposition to the sage,
there was no escaping his influence. To T. S. Eliot, Emerson’s essays were an ―encumbrance.‖ Waldo the
Sage was eclipsed from 1914 until 1965, when he returned to shine, after surviving in the work of major
American poets like Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane."
Emerson's "Self-Reliance" has been listed among the favorite books of Barack Obama on his Facebook
page.
In his book The American Religion, Harold Bloom repeatedly refers to Emerson as "The prophet of the
American Religion," which in the context of the book refers to indigenously American religions such
as Mormonism and Christian Science, which arose largely in Emerson's lifetime, but also to Mainline
Protestant churches that Bloom says have become in the United States more gnostic than their European
counterparts. In The Western Canon, Harold Bloom compares Emerson to Michel de Montaigne: "The
only equivalent reading experience that I know is to reread endlessly in the notebooks and journals of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American version of Montaigne. Several of Emerson's poems were included
in Bloom's The Best Poems of the English Language, although he wrote that none of the poems are as
outstanding as the best of Emerson's essays, which Bloom listed as Self-Reliance, Circles, Experience,
and "nearly all of Conduct of Life".
Namesakes

In May 2006, 168 years after Emerson delivered his "Divinity School Address," Harvard Divinity
School announced the establishment of the Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Professorship.
Harvard has also named a building, Emerson Hall (1900), after him.

Emerson Hill, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Staten Island, is named for his eldest
brother, Judge William Emerson, who resided there from 1837 to 1864.

The Emerson String Quartet, formed in 1976, took their name from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

15. 
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize is awarded annually to high school students for essays on historical
subjects.
Selected works
Representative Men (1850)
See also Category: Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Collections

Essays: First Series (1841)

Essays: Second Series (1844)

Poems (1847)

Nature; Addresses and Lectures (1849)

Representative Men (1850)

English Traits (1856)

The Conduct of Life (1860)

May Day and Other Poems (1867)

Society and Solitude (1870)

Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Individual essays

"Nature" (1836)

"Self-Reliance" (Essays: First Series)

"Compensation" (First Series)

"The Over-Soul" (First Series)

"Circles" (First Series)

"The Poet" (Essays: Second Series)

"Experience" (Essays: Second Series)

"Politics" (Second Series)

"The American Scholar"

"New England Reformers"

16. Note
This is one of the Essays that Emerson published in the period 1841-1844. In it, he advocates the
practice of self-government as the most rightful way for individuals to set up a proper social
organisation.
In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they
existed before we were born: that they are not superior to the citizen: that every one of them was once
the act of a single man: every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case: that they
all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better. Society is an illusion to the
young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rooted like
oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman
knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become
the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like
Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does forever. But
politics rest on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity. Republics abound in young
civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of
living, and employments of the population, that commerce, education, and religion, may be voted in or
out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get
sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which
perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the
citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity;
and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the
population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We are superstitious, and esteem the
statute somewhat: so much life as it has in the character of living men, is its force. The statute stands
there to say, yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article today? Our statute is a currency,
which we stamp with our own portrait: it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time will
return to the mint. Nature is not democratic, nor limited-monarchical, but despotic, and will not be
fooled or abated of any jot of her authority, by the pertest of her sons: and as fast as the public mind is
opened to more intelligence, the code is seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks not articulately,

17. and must be made to. Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true
and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns
the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as
grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and
establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures. The history
of the State sketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy of
culture and of aspiration.
The theory of politics, which has possessed the mind of men, and which they have expressed the
best they could in their laws and in their revolutions, considers persons and property as the two
objects for whose protection government exists. Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of
being identical in nature. This interest, of course, with its whole power demands a democracy.
Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in
property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a county. This accident,
depending, primarily, on the skill and virtue of the parties, of which there is every degree, and,
secondarily, on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights, of course, are unequal. Personal rights,
universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands
a government framed on the ratio of owners and of owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds,
wishes them looked after by an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off,
and pays a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds, and no fear of the Midianites, and pays
no tax to the officer. It seemed fit that Laban and Jacob should have equal rights to elect the
officer, who is to defend their persons, but that Laban, and not Jacob, should elect the officer
who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And, if question arise whether additional officers or watchtowers should be provided, must not Laban and Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds
to buy protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than Jacob, who, because
he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his own.
In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, and so long as it comes to the
owners in the direct way, no other opinion would arise in any equitable community, than that
property should make the law for property, and persons the law for persons.
But property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not create it. Gift, in one
case, makes it as really the new owner's, as labour made it the first owner's: in the other case, of
patrimony, the law makes an ownership, which will be valid in each man's view according to the
estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity.
It was not, however, found easy to embody the readily admitted principle, that property should
make law for property, and persons for persons: since persons and property mixed themselves in
every transaction. At last it seemed settled, that the rightful distinction was, that the proprietors
should have more elective franchise than non-proprietors, on the Spartan principle of "calling
that which is just, equal; not that which is equal, just."
That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared in former times, partly, because
doubts have arisen whether too much weight had not been allowed in the laws, to property, and
such a structure given to our usages, as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep
them poor; but mainly, because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure and yet inarticulate,

18. that the whole constitution of property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on
persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly, the only interest for the consideration of the State,
is persons: that property will always follow persons; that the highest end of government is the
culture of men: and if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement, and the
moral sentiment will write the law of the land.
If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is less when we take note of our
natural defences. We are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we
commonly elect. Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old,
who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their
sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. With such an ignorant
and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond
which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws, as well as men; and
things refuse to be trifled with. Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is
planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the chances are a hundred to
one, that he will cut and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property must and will have
their just sway. They exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of
earth never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will
always weigh a pound: it will always attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue of one
pound weight; - and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under
any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force, - if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the
law, then against it; with right, or by might.
The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or
supernatural force. Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as
civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of
calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the
arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the
Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.
In like manner, to every particle of property belongs its own attraction. A cent is the
representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the necessities of
the animal man. It is so much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land. The law
may do what it will with the owner of property, its just power will still attach to the cent. The law
may in a mad freak say, that all shall have power except the owners of property: they shall have
no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write every statute that
respects property. The non-proprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish
to do, the whole power of property will do, either through the law, or else in defiance of it. Of
course, I speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates. When the rich are outvoted, as
frequently happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every
man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that property
to dispose of.
The same necessity which secures the rights of person and property against the malignity or folly
of the magistrate, determines the form and methods of governing, which are proper to each
nation, and to its habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other states of society. In this

19. country, we are very vain of our political institutions, which are singular in this, that they sprung,
within the memory of living men, from the character and condition of the people, which they still
express with sufficient fidelity, - and we ostentatiously prefer them to any other in history. They
are not better, but only fitter for us. We may be wise in asserting the advantage in modern times
of the democratic form, but to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the
monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is better for us, because the religious
sentiment of the present time accords better with it. Born democrats, we are nowise qualified to
judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living in the monarchical idea, was also relatively right.
But our institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemption
from the practical defects which have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt.
Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of
censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that
the State is a trick?
The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in the parties into which each
State divides itself, of opponents and defenders of the administration of the government. Parties
are also founded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity
of their leaders. They have nothing perverse in their origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting
relation. We might as wisely reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose
members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of
those interests in which they find themselves. Our quarrel with them begins, when they quit this
deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and, obeying personal considerations, throw
themselves into the maintenance and defence of points, nowise belonging to their system. A
party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty,
we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal
of the masses which they direct. Ordinarily, our parties are parties of circumstance, and not of
principle; as, the planting interest in conflict with the commercial; the party of capitalists, and
that of operatives; parties which are identical in their moral character, and which can easily
change ground with each other, in the support of many of their measures. Parties of principle, as,
religious sects, or the party of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of
abolition of capital punishment, degenerate into personalities, or would inspire enthusiasm. The
vice of our leading parties in this country (which may be cited as a fair specimen of these
societies of opinion) is, that they do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to
which they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying of some local and
momentary measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth. Of the two great parties, which, at this
hour, almost share the nation between them, I should say, that, one has the best cause, and the
other contains the best men. The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man, will, of course, wish
to cast his vote with the democrat, for free-trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal
cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the access of the young and the
poor to the sources of wealth and power. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the socalled popular party propose to him as representatives of these liberalities. They have not at heart
the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our
American radicalism is destructive and aimless: it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends;
but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On the other side, the conservative party,
composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely
defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it

20. proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion,
nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or
the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to
expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation.
I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance.
In the strife of ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cherished, as the children of
the convicts at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children.
Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy; and the
older and more cautious among ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with some terror
at our turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of construing the Constitution, and in the
despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor; and one foreign observer thinks he has found
the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our
Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a
monarchy and a republic, saying, "that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will
sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never
sink, but then your feet are always in water." No forms can have any dangerous importance,
whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no difference how many tons weight of
atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs.
Augment the mass a thousandfold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is equal to
action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each
force by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of
liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. "Lynch-law" prevails only
where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a
permanency: everybody's interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.
We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature
expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract
of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common conscience. Governments have their
origin in the moral identity of men. Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every
other. There is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so many, or so resolute
for their own. Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his
own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness. In these decisions all the citizens find a perfect
agreement, and only in these; not in what is good to eat, good to wear, good use of time, or what
amount of land, or of public aid, each is entitled to claim. This truth and justice men presently
endeavour to make application of, to the measuring of land, the apportionment of service, the
protection of life and property. Their first endeavours, no doubt, are very awkward. Yet absolute
right is the first governor; or, every government is an impure theocracy. The idea, after which
each community is aiming to make and mend its law, is, the will of the wise man. The wise man,
it cannot find in nature, and it makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his government by
contrivance; as, by causing the entire people to give their voices on every measure; or, by a
double choice to get the representation of the whole; or, by a selection of the best citizens; or, to
secure the advantages of efficiency and internal peace, by confiding the government to one, who
may himself select his agents. All forms of government symbolize an immortal government,
common to all dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect
where there is only one man.

21. Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right
and my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from
what is unfit, my neighbour and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to
one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the
direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so
much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it
is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it
must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder
which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in
numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference
between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after
my views: but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too
much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore,
all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For, any laws but those which men
make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one
thought, and see that things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both
there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his plot, and,
guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. This is the history of
governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be
acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go
to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all
debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere
they think they get their money's worth, except for these.
Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power.
The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the
growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance
of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.
That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to
form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king.
To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State
expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He
needs no army, fort, or navy, - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw
friends to him; no vantage ground, no favourable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has
not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no
money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the
creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has
the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few,
to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to
them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.
We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the
morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy. As a political
power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet
suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it; the Annual Register is silent; in the Conversations'
Lexicon, it is not set down; the President's Message, the Queen's Speech, have not mentioned it;

22. and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the
world. The gladiators in the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of force and simulation,
the presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and ambition are confession of this divinity;
and successes in those fields are the poor amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul
attempts to hide its nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is because we
know how much is due from us, that we are impatient to show some petty talent as a substitute
for worth. We are haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur of character, and are false to
it. But each of us has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, or
amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an apology to others and to ourselves, for not reaching the
mark of a good and equal life. But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of our
companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, or give us the
tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of
expiation, and we are constrained to reflect on our splendid moment, with a certain humiliation,
as somewhat too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression of our permanent energy.
Most persons of ability meet in society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, “I am not
all here.” Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think
the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in
our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold,
hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of forest animals, they have nothing but
a prehensile tail: climb they must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could
enter into strict relations with the best persons, and make life serene around him by the dignity
and sweetness of his behaviour, could he afford to circumvent the favour of the caucus and the
press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous, as those of a politician? Surely nobody would
be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.
The tendencies of the times favour the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all
code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we
believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very
marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the
revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was
never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all party,
and unites him, at the same time, to the race. It promises a recognition of higher rights than those
of personal freedom, or the security of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be trusted,
to be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We
must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be not
compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions: nor doubt that roads can be built, letters
carried, and the fruit of labour secured, when the government of force is at an end. Are our
methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? Could not a nation of friends even
devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything
from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force. For, according to the order
of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of
force, where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they
will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of
commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and
science, can be answered.

23. We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on
force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil
nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to
persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar
system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbour, without the hint of
a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the
power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle
of right and love. All those who have pretended this design, have been partial reformers, and
have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind a single
human being who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own
moral nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except
avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits them, dare to think them practicable, he
disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent, and women of superior sentiments, cannot
hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions
of this enthusiasm, and there are now men, - if indeed I can speak in the plural number, - more
exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse
experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might
exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or
a pair of lovers.