Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born May 25, 1803 and died April 27, 1882. He 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 quotes

Emerson had expressed views in his private Journals which suggest that he accepted that Human Nature, and Human Beings, tend to display three identifiable aspects and orientations:

"Imagine hope to be removed from the human breast & see how Society will sink, how the strong bands of order & improvement will be relaxed & what a deathlike stillness would take the place of the restless energies that now move the world. The scholar will extinguish his midnight lamp, the merchant will furl his white sails & bid them seek the deep no more. The anxious patriot who stood out for his country to the last & devised in the last beleagured citadel, profound schemes for its deliverance and aggrandizement, will sheathe his sword and blot his fame. Remove hope, & the world becomes a blank and rottenness." (Journal entry made between October and December, 1823)

"In all districts of all lands, in all the classes of communities thousands of minds are intently occupied, the merchant in his compting house, the mechanist over his plans, the statesman at his map, his treaty, & his tariff, the scholar in the skillful history & eloquence of antiquity, each stung to the quick with the desire of exalting himself to a hasty & yet unfound height above the level of his peers. Each is absorbed in the prospect of good accruing to himself but each is no less contributing to the utmost of his ability to fix & adorn human civilization." (Journal entry of December, 1824)

"Our neighbours are occupied with employments of infinite diversity. Some are intent on commercial speculations; some engage warmly in political contention; some are found all day long at their books …" (This dates from January - February, 1828)

Other influencers

The quotes from Emerson are reminiscent of William Shakespeare, Georg Hegel and Victor Cousin.

• "There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee."

William Shakespeare: Henry IV (Pt 1), Act I, Scene II

• "The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions." Georg Hegel, 1770-1831, German philosopher, The Philosophy of History (1837)

In the later eighteen-twenties Ralph Waldo Emerson read, and was very significantly influenced by, a work by a French philosopher named Victor Cousin who wrote:

"What is the business of history?

What is the stuff of which it is made?

Who is the personage of history?

Man : evidently man and human nature. There are many different elements in history. What are they?

Evidently again, the elements of human nature. History is therefore the development of humanity, and of humanity only; for nothing else but humanity develops itself, for nothing else than humanity is free. …

… Moreover, when we have all the elements, I mean all the essential elements, their mutual relations do, as it were, discover themselves. We draw from the nature of these different elements, if not all their possible relations, at least their general and fundamental relations." Introduction to the History of Philosophy (1829)

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