Book Review

The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edited by Brooks Atkinson
Publisher: New York, NY: Random House, 2000.
ISBN: 0-679-78322-9

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), author, essayist, lecturer, and philosopher, has been one of the modern world’s most influential thinkers, still widely read and quoted 200 years after his birth. He was unorthodox, controversial, plainspoken, and unwavering in his conviction that God was to be found within, not in any outward form of religion or practice. After attending one of his lectures, the writer Harriet Martineau observed:

There is a vague nobleness and thorough sweetness about him, which move people to their very depths, without their being able to explain why. The logicians have an incessant triumph over him, but their triumph is of no avail. He conquers minds, as well as hearts, wherever he goes; and without convincing anybody’s reason of any one thing, exalts their reason, and makes their minds worth more than they ever were before.

Emerson experienced the loss of close family members at an early age; during his childhood he lost his father and three of his siblings. Later, after only eighteen months of marriage, he lost his beloved wife. He was a minister but had grown increasingly disillusioned with the outward rituals of traditional Christianity. Eighteen months after his wife’s death he resigned from the ministry. The poet Mary Oliver writes in the Introduction, “From this point on, the greater energies of his life found their sustenance in the richness and steadfastness of his inner life.” He had realized “the heart’s spiritual awakening as the true work of our lives.”

He set off on a voyage of discovery to Europe, where he attended lectures by leading scientists and met eminent authors including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth. While there he had an epiphany of the interrelatedness of all beings that included all of nature and of man. In his journal he noted, “There is a correspondence between the human soul and everything that exists in the world; more properly, everything that is known to man.” In his essay Nature he writes:

Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.

On his voyage home to America, he wrote in his journal, “In the hands of a true Teacher, the falsehoods, the pitifulnesses, the sectarianisms of each [religion] are dropped, and the sublimity and the depth of the Original is penetrated and exhibited to men.” He believed now in “the infinity of wisdom that issues from meditation.” He wrote, “It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul that animates all men.” Emerson believed that it is each person’s responsibility to open up to that light and to its wisdom. When we do this, we access the treasures that await all people. He wrote, “There is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens…. A light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.”

Emerson continued to learn and to experience throughout his life. He explored the philosophies of Plato, Hegel, Kant, and many others. He was close personal friends with Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Coleridge. He was a dedicated student of the Bhagavad Gita and the Sufis, including Hafez, Rumi, and Jami. He believed that “at the deep end of the pool, where it matters, Western and Eastern are profoundly alike, indeed, identical.”

Emerson believed that all humanity has access to the “divinity within,” “that great nature in which we rest … that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart.” He understood that the only way to reach the portal of the Over-Soul, the realm of God, is through solitary prayer and meditation. He wrote that if a person “would know what the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his closet and shut the door’ as Jesus said…. He must greatly listen to himself.”

The theme of turning toward God is a constant in his essays and poetry.

Henceforth, please God, forever I forego
The yoke of men’s opinions. I will be
Light-hearted as a bird, and live with God.
I find him in the bottom of my heart,
I hear continually his voice therein.

Having unique access to the divine, each person can participate in the glory of the divine. In his essay History he writes:

I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar’s hand and Plato’s brain,
Of lord Christ’s heart, and Shakespeare’s strain.

He explains: “What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done.”

Such beliefs led Emerson naturally to a continually positive outlook and aspect. He says: “To a stout heart, there is no danger. To a good head, no problem is inscrutable. To a good foot, no place is slippery. To a good sailor, every wind has something of his course in it. To good hands, nothing is impossible.” But his optimism was for the soul’s capacities, not for worldly conditions. The calamity of war – Emerson was in Paris during the French Revolution of 1848 – further strengthened this conviction. “It is always becoming evident that the permanent good is for the soul only, and cannot be retained in any society or system.” He urges all to access their strength from the power within and not from institutions, customs, or theologies.

Let a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh…. And that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more but thank and revere him.

Emerson understood the transience of all activity in the outward world: “Life itself is a bubble and a skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep … but thou, God’s darling! heed thy private dream, … stay there in thy closet, and toil…. Thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint.” Yet even in the transient physical world one may perceive a true and everlasting reality. “Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam.”

Emerson’s essays can be read and re-read; they offer inspiration and ever-deeper insights into the realization of the truth within. He writes that when God “fires the heart with his presence, … it inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true…. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being…. He believes that he cannot escape from his good.” Emerson assures the reader, “The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee.” Above all, the seeker of the truth must simply continue and not give up:

Patience and patience, we shall win at the last. We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. 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…. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!