Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburde
ned his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Americ
ans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for
harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on indiv
idual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of
the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and h
as given an impetus to modern political and social activism. Larzer Ziff's intro
duction to this collection of fifteen of Emerson's most significant writings pro
vides the important backdrop to the society in which Emerson lived during his fo
rmative years.
