Publisher's Synopsis
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. In 1880 Emerson wrote the essay: "Success, Greatness, Immortality," in which he states: "I think that wherever man ripens, this audacious belief presently appears, -in the savage, savagely; in the good, purely. As soon as thought is exercised, this belief is inevitable; as soon as virtue glows, this belief confirms itself. It is a kind of summary or completion of man."
