Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. He was descended
from a long line of New England ministers, men of refinement and
education. As a school-boy he was quiet and retiring, reading a great
deal, but not paying much attention to his lessons. He entered Harvard
at the early age of fourteen, but never attained a high rank there,
although he took a prize for an essay on Socrates, and was made class
poet after several others had declined. Next to his reserve and the
faultless propriety of his conduct, his contemporaries at college
seemed most impressed by the great maturity of his mind. Emerson
appears never to have been really a boy. He was always serene and
thoughtful, impressing all who knew him with that spirituality which
was his most distinguishing characteristic.
After graduating from college he taught school for a time, and then
entered the Harvard Divinity School under Dr. Channing, the great
Unitarian preacher. Although he was not strong enough to attend all
the lectures of the divinity course, the college authorities deemed
the name Emerson sufficient passport to the ministry. He was
accordingly "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association of
Ministers on October 10, 1826. As a preacher, Emerson was interesting,
though not particularly original. His talent seems to have been in
giving new meaning to the old truths of religion. One of his hearers
has said: "In looking back on his preaching I find he has impressed
truths to which I always assented in such a manner as to make them
appear new, like a clearer revelation." Although his sermons were
always couched in scriptural language, they were touched with the
light of that genius which avoids the conventional and commonplace. In
his other pastoral duties Emerson was not quite so successful. It is
characteristic of his deep humanity and his dislike for all fuss and
commonplace that he appeared to least advantage at a funeral. A
connoisseur in such matters, an old sexton, once remarked that on such
occasions "he did not appear at ease at all. To tell the truth, in my
opinion, that young man was not born to be a minister."
Emerson did not long remain a minister. In 1832 he preached a sermon
in which he announced certain views in regard to the communion service
which were disapproved by a large part of his congregation. He found
it impossible to continue preaching, and, with the most friendly
feelings on both sides, he parted from his congregation.
A few months later (1833) he went to Europe for a short year of
travel. While abroad, he visited Walter Savage Landor, Coleridge and
Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle. This visit to Carlyle was to both men
a most interesting experience. They parted feeling that they had much
intellectually in common. This belief fostered a sympathy which, by
the time they had discovered how different they really were, had grown
so strong a habit that they always kept up their intimacy. This year
of travel opened Emerson's eyes to many things of which he had
previously been ignorant; he had profited by detachment from the
concerns of a limited community and an isolated church.
After his return he began to find his true field of activity in the
lecture-hall, and delivered a number of addresses in Boston and its
vicinity. While thus coming before the open public on the lecture
platform, he was all the time preparing the treatise which was to
embody all the quintessential elements of his philosophical doctrine.
This was the essay _Nature_, which was published in 1836. By its
conception of external Nature as an incarnation of the Divine Mind it
struck the fundamental principle of Emerson's religious belief. The
essay had a very small circulation at first, though later it became
widely known.
In the winter of 1836 Emerson followed up his discourse on Nature by a
course of twelve lectures on the "Philosophy of History," a
considerable portion of which eventually became embodied in his
essays. The next year (1837) was the year of the delivery of the _Man
Thinking, or the American Scholar_ address before the Phi Beta Kappa
Society at Cambridge.
This society, composed of the first twenty-five men in each class
graduating from college, has annual meetings which have called forth
the best efforts of many distinguished scholars and thinkers.
Emerson's address was listened to with the most profound interest. It
declared a sort of intellectual independence for America. Henceforth
we were to be emancipated from clogging foreign influences, and a
national literature was to expand under the fostering care of the
Republic.
These two discourses, _Nature_ and _The American Scholar_, strike the
keynote of Emerson's philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. In
fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of
principles and theories to teach. These principles of life can all be
enumerated in twenty words--self-reliance, culture, intellectual and
moral independence, the divinity of nature and man, the necessity of
labor, and high ideals.
Emerson spent the latter part of his life in lecturing and in literary
work. His son, Dr. Edward Emerson, gave an interesting account of how
these lectures were constructed. "All through his life he kept a
journal. This book, he said, was his 'Savings Bank.' The thoughts thus
received and garnered in his journals were indexed, and a great many
of them appeared in his published works. They were religiously set
down just as they came, in no order except chronological, but later
they were grouped, enlarged or pruned, illustrated, worked into a
lecture or discourse, and, after having in this capacity undergone
repeated testing and rearranging, were finally carefully sifted and
more rigidly pruned, and were printed as essays."
Besides his essays and lectures Emerson left some poetry in which is
embodied those thoughts which were to him too deep for prose
expression. Oliver Wendell Holmes in speaking of this says: "Emerson
wrote occasionally in verse from his school-days until he had reached
the age which used to be known as the grand climacteric,
sixty-three.... His poems are not and hardly can become popular; they
are not meant to be liked by the many, but to be dearly loved and
cherished by the few.... His occasional lawlessness in technical
construction, his somewhat fantastic expressions, his enigmatic
obscurities hardly detract from the pleasant surprise his verses so
often bring with them.... The poetic license which we allow in the
verse of Emerson is more than excused by the noble spirit which makes
us forget its occasional blemishes, sometimes to be pleased with them
as characteristic of the writer."
Emerson was always a striking figure in the intellectual life of
America. His discourses were above all things inspiring. Through them
many were induced to strive for a higher self-culture. His influence
can be discerned in all the literary movements of the time. He was the
central figure of the so-called transcendental school which was so
prominent fifty years ago, although he always rather held aloof from
any enthusiastic participation in the movement.
Emerson lived a quiet life in Concord, Massachusetts. "He was a
first-rate neighbor and one who always kept his fences up." He
traveled extensively on his lecturing tours, even going as far as
England. In _English Traits_ he has recorded his impressions of what
he saw of English life and manners.
Oliver Wendell Holmes has described him in this wise: "His personal
appearance was that of the typical New Englander of college-bred
ancestry. Tall, spare, slender, with sloping shoulders, slightly
stooping in his later years, with light hair and eyes, the scholar's
complexion, the prominent, somewhat arched nose which belongs to many
of the New England sub-species, thin lips, suggestive of delicacy, but
having nothing like primness, still less of the rigidity which is
often noticeable in the generation succeeding next to that of the men
in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one
evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study,
which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and
penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation
was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the
right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was
pleasant, but he did not like explosive laughter any better than
Hawthorne did. None who met him can fail to recall that serene and
kindly presence, in which there was mingled a certain spiritual
remoteness with the most benignant human welcome to all who were
privileged to enjoy his companionship."
Emerson died April 27, 1882, after a few days' illness from pneumonia.
Dr. Garnett in his excellent biography says: "Seldom had 'the reaper
whose name is Death' gathered such illustrious harvest as between
December 1880 and April 1882. In the first month of this period George
Eliot passed away, in the ensuing February Carlyle followed; in April
Lord Beaconsfield died, deplored by his party, nor unregretted by his
country; in February of the following year Longfellow was carried to
the tomb; in April Rossetti was laid to rest by the sea, and the
pavement of Westminster Abbey was disturbed to receive the dust of
Darwin. And now Emerson lay down in death beside the painter of man
and the searcher of nature, the English-Oriental statesman, the poet
of the plain man and the poet of the artist, and the prophet whose
name is indissolubly linked with his own. All these men passed into
eternity laden with the spoils of Time, but of none of them could it
be said, as of Emerson, that the most shining intellectual glory and
the most potent intellectual force of a continent had departed along
with him."