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 ground-

breaking 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 great-

grandmother 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.

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'!" 

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."

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.

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 step-

grandfather 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.

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 get-

together.  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

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, "Self-

Reliance". 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.

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

m2) 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

m2) 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.

And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-

sufficing 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.

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

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

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

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

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

19th-century 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.

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"

 

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, 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 watch-towers 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, 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 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 so-called 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 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.

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; 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.

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.