204), he wrote in “Circles” —also included in Essays-and the same is true for society as a whole. “The things which are dear to men at this hour, are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon.... A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits” (p. 206). The key word in this sentence is “culture.” Unlike many of his fellow transcendentalists, Emerson did not believe one could simply change society by changing the laws, or imposing new regulations. In order to effectively change the laws of a state, one must first change the minds of its citizens, and this could best be done through “culture,” or education. Emerson made this point explicitly in “Politics,” an essay he published in Essays: Second Series (1844). “Foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting;... the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen” (p. 256).

As a public lecturer, Emerson had dedicated himself to improving the character and progress of citizens. In the essay, he found the literary form best suited to that endeavor. Over the next few years, though, his faith in individual and social progress would be severely tested, yet still he would persist in his affirmation of human potential. In January 1842, his first-born child, Waldo, would die of scarlet fever. The death of his son necessarily recalled the other tragic and untimely deaths he had endured: Following Ellen’s death, his brother Edward had passed away in Puerto Rico soon after Emerson returned from England; his brother Charles had died just as Emerson was preparing Nature for the press. Waldo’s death was both familiar and unimaginable. He was only five. In “Spiritual Laws,” included in Essays, Emerson had written, “No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might.... For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose” (p. 154). Now he was forced to reconsider his belief in the infinite goodness of human life. Perhaps there were some events with no redeeming characteristics. “I comprehend nothing of this fact but its bitterness,” he wrote of Waldo’s death. In the essay “Experience,” which he published two years later in Essays: Second Series, Emerson grappled directly with the issue of potentially meaningless experience. “I grieve that grief can teach me nothing,” he wrote (p. 236). Even in his agony, Emerson was still able to recognize that this mood would be supplanted by other moods, including future moments of insight and joy.

In his essay “The Poet,” also included in Essays: Second Series, he made it the poet’s task to liberate us from such settled moods. “Every thought is also a prison,” he wrote. “Therefore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form... has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our chains, and admits us to a new scene” (p.