RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-82, one of America's most influential
authors and thinkers; b. Boston. A Unitarian minister, he left his
only pastorate, Boston's Old North Church (1829-32), because of
doctrinal disputes. On a trip to Europe Emerson met Thomas CARLYLE,
S.T. COLERIDGE, and WORDSWORTH, whose ideas, along with those of
Plato, the Neoplatonists, Asian mystics, and SWEDENBORG, strongly
influenced his philosophy. Returning home (1835), he settled in
Concord, Mass., which he, Margaret FULLER, THOREAU, and others made
a center of TRANSCENDENTALISM. He stated the movement's main
principles in Nature (1836), stressing the mystical unity of nature.
A noted lecturer, Emerson called for American intellectual
independence from Europe in his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard
("The American Scholar," 1837 [.txt-only version]). In an address at
the Harvard divinity school (1838), he asserted that redemption
could be found only in one's own soul and intuition. Emerson
developed transcendentalist themes in his famous Journal (kept since
his student days at Harvard), in the magazine The Dial, and in his
series of Essays (1841, 1844). Among the best known of his essays
are "The Over-Soul," "Compensation," and "Self-Reliance." He is also
noted for his poems, e.g., "Threnody," "Brahma," and "The Problem."
His later works include Representative Men (1850), English Traits
(1856), and The Conduct of Life (1870).