In his “Address to the Citizens of Concord,” he explained in no uncertain terms that human society is grounded in a common experience of the sanctity of human life.

I thought that all men of all conditions had been made sharers of a certain experience, that in certain rare and retired moments they had been made to see... what makes the essence of rational beings, namely, that whilst animals have to do with eating the fruits of the ground, men have to do with rectitude, with benefit, with truth, with something which is, independent of appearances: and that this tie makes the substantiality of life, this, and not their ploughing, or sailing, their trade or the breeding of families.... I thought it was this fair mystery,... which made the basis of human society, and of law; and that to pretend anything else, as that the acquisition of property was the end of living, was to confound all distinctions, to make the world a greasy hotel, and, instead of noble motives and inspirations, and a heaven of companions and angels around and before us, to leave us in a grimacing menagerie of monkeys and idiots (p. 000).

The Fugitive Slave Law attempted to elevate property rights over the individual’s natural right to liberty. For Emerson, this abomination made a mockery of democracy. Yet in American culture today, the right to get and keep whatever you can hold often seems to take precedence over the rights of others to a peaceable existence. Emerson was not naive to this fact. “I know that the world I converse with, in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think,” he wrote in “Experience” (p. 253), but he made this distinction to remind us that the world we think oftentimes is better than the world in which we find ourselves, and that such thoughts have the power to transform our lives. “We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time,” he wrote. “It takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life” (p. 253). To read Emerson is to make time for such insights, and in so doing, to remember the power we have as intelligent beings to change our circumstances. “Every law and usage was a man’s expedient to meet a particular case;... we may make as good; we may make better” (p. 256).



Peter Norberg received his Ph.D. from Rice University in 1998. Since 1997 he has been Assistant Professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. A specialist on the writers associated with the transcendentalist movement, he has written and lectured extensively on Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and the critical reaction to transcendentalism in the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. He also has published articles on Herman Melville and the poetry of Richard Henry Stoddard. His future projects include a history of Emerson’s career as a public lecturer.

A Note on the Text

This edition contains selections from five of Emerson’s works—Essays (1841), Essays: Second Series (1844), Nature, Addresses, and Lectures ( 1849), Representative Men (1850), and The Conduct of Life (1860)—as well as “An Address to the Citizens of Concord” on the Fugitive Slave Law (1851), the expanded version of Emerson’s eulogy for Thoreau that was published in the Atlantic Monthly, and a short selection of poetry. The essays collected here are meant to introduce readers to the major phases of Emerson’s career; however, no essays have been included from English Traits (1856), a volume of essays based on Emerson’s observations of British culture during his 1847-1848 lecture tour.

The text of this edition is based on The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Emerson’s son, Edward Waldo Emerson. With the exception of the essays “Fate,” “Power,” “Thoreau,” and the poetry, I have corrected each essay to bring it into accordance with The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (5 volumes to date, edited by Alfred R. Ferguson, Joseph Slater, and Douglas Emory Wilson, Harvard University Press, 1971—). I have done the same with “An Address to the Citizens of Concord” on the Fugitive Slave Law, correcting it against the text given in The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-187I (2 vols., edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001). Readers interested in textual matters for “Fate,” “Power,” and “Thoreau” should consult future volumes of The Collected Works as they become available.

Emerson makes numerous references to historical persons and mythology. Unless otherwise annotated, names of people and mythological figures have been identified in the Glossary of Names on page 465.

ESSAYS

Nature1

A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.2

Introduction

OUR AGE IS RETROSPECTIVE. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers.3 It writes biographies, histories, and criticism.