Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the amers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature faceto face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us, by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laWs and worship.

……

A new, wide-ranging selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson"s most influential writings, this edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America"s greatest native philosophers and poets.

The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against social conformity, a lover of nature, an activist for the rights of women and slaves, and a poet of great sensitivity. As explored in this volume, Emersonian thought is a unique blend of belief in individual freedom and in humility before the power of nature, "1 become a transparent eyeball" Emerson wrote in Nature, "1 am nothing; t see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God" Written over a century ago, this passage is a striking example of the passion and originality of Emerson"s ideas, which continue to serve as a spiritual center and an ideological base for modern thought.

Featured here are seminal works such as Nature, "Self-Reliance,""The Over-Soul,"and early essays and lectures such as the "Cherokee Letter" and "Pray Without Ceasing."This collection also offers Emerson"s most important poetry, including "The Sphinx" and "Days,"

Foreword by Bobert D. Bichardson Jr.

NATURE (1836)

 Introduction

 Chapter I

 Chapter II  Commodity

 Chapter III  Beauty

 Chapter IV  Language

 Chapter V  Discipline

 Chapter VI  Idealism

 Chapter VII Spirit

 Chapter VIII Prospects

EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES

 Pray Without Ceasing(1826)

 Ethics (1837)

 The American Scholar 0837)

 Cherokee Letter (1838)

 The Divinty School Address (1838)

From ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES (1841)

 History

 Self-Reliance

 The Over-Soul

 Circles

From ESSAYS, SECOND SERIES (1844)

 The Poet

 Experience

 Politics

From REPRESENTATIVE MEN (1850)

 Uses of Great Men

 Montaigne; or, the Skeptic

LATER ESSAYS AND LECTURES

 Emancipation in the British West Indies (1844)

 Woman,(1855)

 Thoreau (1862)

POEMS

 Concord Hymn

 The Rhodora

 Each and All

 Brahma

 Hamatreya

 The Snow-Storm

 The Sphinx

 Ode: Inscribed to W. H. Channing

 Uriel

 Threnody

 Blight

 Terminus

  Poet

Additional Reading