Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Publisher: Dreamscape Media
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781974995042
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

In 1834, Ralph Waldo Emerson, formerly a Unitarian minister, began a new career as a public lecturer. Many of those lectures formed the source material for his essays. Nature (1836), his first published work, contained the essence of his transcendental philosophy, which involved viewing the world of natural phenomena as a symbol of the inner life and emphasizing individual freedom and self-reliance. This collection contains eleven of his most celebrated and memorable essays from this period: "Self-Reliance, " "Nature, " "Circles, " "Friendship, " "Heroism, " "Prudence, " "Compensation, " "Gifts, " "Manners, " "Shakespeare; Or, the Poet, " and "The American Scholar."

Notes

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

[1] Games of strength. The public games of Greece were athletic and intellectual contests of various kinds. There were four of importance: the Olympic, held every four years; the Pythian, held every third Olympic year; and the Nemean and Isthmian, held alternate years between the Olympic periods. These great national festivals exercised a strong influence in Greece. They were a secure bond of union between the numerous independent states and did much to help the nation to repel its foreign invaders. In Greece the accomplished athlete was reverenced almost as a god, and cases have been recorded where altars were erected and sacrifices made in his honor. The extreme care and cultivation of the body induced by this national spirit is one of the most significant features of Greek culture, and one which might wisely be imitated in the modern world.

[2] Troubadours. In southern France during the eleventh century, wandering poets went from castle to castle reciting or singing love-songs, composed in the old Provençal dialect, a sort of vulgarized Latin. The life in the great feudal chateaux was so dull that the lords and ladies seized with avidity any amusement which promised to while away an idle hour. The troubadours were made much of and became a strong element in the development of the Southern spirit. So-called Courts of Love were formed where questions of an amorous nature were discussed in all their bearings; learned opinions were expressed on the most trivial matters, and offenses were tried.

Some of the Provençal poetry is of the highest artistic significance, though the mass of it is worthless high-flown trash.

[3] At the time this oration was delivered (1837), many of the authors who have since given America a place in the world's literature were young men writing their first books. "We were," says James Russell Lowell, "still socially and intellectually moored to English thought, till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and glories of blue water."

[4] Pole-star. Polaris is now the nearest conspicuous star to the north pole of the celestial equator. Owing to the motion of the pole of the celestial equator around that of the ecliptic, this star will in course of time recede from its proud position, and the brilliant star Vega in the constellation Harp will become the pole-star.

[5] It is now a well-recognized fact in the development of animal life that as any part of the body falls into disuse it in time disappears. Good examples of this are the disappearance of powerful fangs from the mouth of man, the loss of power in the wings of barnyard fowls; and, vice versa, as new uses for a member arise, its structure changes to meet the new needs. An example of this is the transformation from the hoof of a horse through the cloven hoofs of the cow to the eventual development of highly expert fingers in the monkey and man. Emerson assumed the doctrine of evolution to be sufficiently established by the anatomical evidence of gradual development. In his own words: "Man is no up-start in the creation. His limbs are only a more exquisite organization—say rather the finish—of the rudimental forms that have been already sweeping the sea and creeping in the mud. The brother of his hand is even now cleaving the arctic sea in the fin of the whale, and innumerable ages since was pawing the marsh in the flipper of the saurian." A view afterwards condensed into his memorable couplet:

"Striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form."

[6] Stint. A prescribed or allotted task, a share of labor.

[7] Ridden. Here used in the sense of dominated.

[8] Monitory pictures. Instructive warning pictures.

[9] The Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus is the author of this saying, not "the old oracle." It occurs in the Encheiridion, or manual, a work put together by a pupil of Epictetus. The original saying of Epictetus is as follows: "Every thing has two handles, the one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold of the act by that handle wherein he acts unjustly, for this is the handle which cannot be borne: but lay hold of the other, that he is your brother, that he was nurtured with you, and you will lay hold of the thing by that handle by which it can be borne."

[10] Every day, the sun (shines).

[11] Beholden. Emerson here uses this past participle with its original meaning instead of in its present sense of "indebted."

[12] Here we have a reminder of Emerson's pantheism. He means the inexplicable continuity "of what I call God, and fools nature," as Browning expressed it.

[13] His expanding knowledge will become a creator.

[14] Know thyself. Plutarch ascribes this saying to Plato. It is also ascribed to Pythagoras, Chilo, Thales, Cleobulus, Bias, and Socrates; also to Phemonië, a mythical Greek poetess of the ante-Homeric period. Juvenal (Satire XI. 27) says that this precept descended from heaven. "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much" were inscribed upon the Delphic oracle.

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man."

[15] Obser...

Table of contents

• Title
• About Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Table of Contents
• The American Scholar
• Compensation
• Self-Reliance
• Friendship
• Heroism
• Manners
• Gifts
• Nature
• Shakespeare; or, the Poet
• Prudence
• Circles
• Notes