Essayist, poet, and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) propounded a transcendental idealism emphasizing self-reliance, selfculture, and individual expression. The six essays and one address included in this volume, selected from Essays, First Series (1841) and Essays, Second Series (1844), offer a representative sampling of his views outlining that moral idealism as well as a hint of the later scepticism that colored his thought. In addition to the celebrated title essay, the others included here are "History," "Friendship," "The Over-Soul," "The Poet," and "Experience," plus the well-known and frequently read Harvard Divinity School Address.

FROM HIS DAY TO OURS, the Bostonian minister, magazine editor, diarist,essayist, lecturer, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) has had an enormous influence on writers and thinkers at home and abroad.Much of his finest thought is distilled in his Essays (1841) and Essays:Second Series (1844), largely based on earlier lectures and iournal entries. Six of the best of these essays are included here, along with Emerson"s controversial "Divinity School Address," which he delivered to the senior class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1838.

Emerson"s optimism (based on an apparently boundless self-confidence) was highly encouraging to the young American psyche, and he was truly prophetic in his call for a genuinely national literature, while simultaneously urging American intellectuals to join the mainstream of world--especially European culture. As an eternal questioner in religion, epistemology and other areas of thought he was definitely a precursor of our skeptical era.

From Essays (1841)

 History

 Self-Reliance

 Friendship

 The Over-soul

From Essays: Second Series (1844)

 The Poet

 Experience

The Divinity School Address