into the alehouse; Joseph Emerson of Malden, “a heroic scholar,” who prayed every night that no descendant of his might ever be rich; and William Emerson of Concord, Mass., the patriot preacher, who died while serving in the army of the Revolution. Sprung from such stock, Emerson inherited qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue, sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. The form of his ideals was modified by the metamorphic glow of Transcendentalism which passed through the region of Boston in the second quarter of the 19th century. But the spirit in which Emerson conceived the laws of life, reverenced them and lived them out, was the Puritan spirit, elevated, enlarged and beautified by the poetic temperament.
His father was the Rev. William Emerson, minister of the First Church (Unitarian) in Boston. Ralph Waldo was the fourth child in a family of eight, of whom at least three gave evidence of extraordinary mental powers. He was brought up in an atmosphere of hard work, of moral discipline, and (after his father’s death in 1811) of that wholesome self-sacrifice which is a condition of life for those who are poor in money and rich in spirit. His aunt, Miss Mary Moody Emerson, a brilliant old maid, an eccentric saint, was a potent factor in his education. Loving him, believing in his powers, passionately desiring for him a successful career, but clinging with both hands to the old forms of faith from which he floated away, this solitary, intense woman did as much as any one to form, by action and reaction, the mind and character of the young Emerson. In 1817 he entered Harvard College, and graduated in 1821. In scholarship he ranked about the middle of his class. In literature and oratory he was more distinguished, receiving a Boylston prize for declamation, and two Bowdoin prizes for dissertations, the first essay being on “The Character of Socrates” and the second on “The Present State of Ethical Philosophy”—both rather dull, formal, didactic productions. He was fond of reading and of writing verse, and was chosen as the poet for class-day. His cheerful serenity of manner, his tranquil mirthfulness, and the steady charm of his personality made him a favourite with his fellows, in spite of a certain reserve. His literary taste was conventional, including the standard British writers, with a preference for Shakespeare among the poets, Berkeley among the philosophers, and Montaigne (in Cotton’s translation) among the essayists. His particular admiration among the college professors was the stately rhetorician, Edward Everett; and this predilection had much to do with his early ambition to be a professor of rhetoric and elocution.
Immediately after graduation he became an assistant in his brother William’s school for young ladies in Boston, and continued teaching, with much inward reluctance and discomfort, for three years. The routine was distasteful; he despised the superficial details which claimed so much of his time. The bonds of conventionalism were silently dissolving in the rising glow of his poetic nature. Independence, sincerity, reality, grew more and more necessary to him. His aunt urged him to seek retirement, self-reliance, friendship with nature; to be no longer “the nursling of surrounding circumstances,” but to prepare a celestial abode for the muse. The passion for spiritual leadership stirred within him. The ministry seemed to offer the fairest field for its satisfaction. In 1825 he entered the divinity school at Cambridge, to prepare himself for the Unitarian pulpit. His course was much interrupted by ill-health. His studies were irregular, and far more philosophical and literary than theological.
In October 1826 he was “approbated to preach” by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. The same year a threatened consumption compelled him to take a long journey in the south. Returning in 1827, he continued his studies, preached as a candidate in various churches, and improved in health. In 1829 he married a beautiful but delicate young woman, Miss Ellen Tucker of Concord, and was installed as associate minister of the Second Church (Unitarian) in Boston. The retirement of his senior colleague soon left him the sole pastor. Emerson’s early sermons were simple, direct, unconventional. He dealt freely with the things of the spirit. There was a homely elevation in his discourses, a natural freshness in his piety, a quiet enthusiasm in his manner, that charmed thoughtful hearers. Early in 1832 he lost his wife, a sorrow that deeply depressed him in health and spirits. Following his passion for independence and sincerity, he arrived at the conviction that the Lord’s Supper was not intended by Christ to be a permanent sacrament. To him, at least, it had become an outgrown form. He was willing to continue the service only if the use of the elements should be dropped and the rite made simply an act of spiritual remembrance. Setting forth these views, candidly and calmly, in a sermon, he found his congregation, not unnaturally, reluctant to agree with him, and therefore retired, not without some disappointment, from the pastoral office. He never again took charge of a parish; but he continued to preach, as opportunity offered, until 1847. In fact, he was always a preacher, though of a singular order. His supreme task was to befriend and guide the inner life of man.
The strongest influences in his development about this time were the liberating philosophy of Coleridge, the mystical visions of Swedenborg, the intimate poetry of Wordsworth, and the stimulating essays of Carlyle. On Christmas Day 1832 he took passage in a sailing vessel for the Mediterranean. He travelled through Italy, visited Paris, spent two months in Scotland and England, and saw the four men whom he most desired to see—Landor, Coleridge, Carlyle and Wordsworth. “The comfort of meeting such men of genius as these,” he wrote, “is that they talk sincerely.” But he adds that he found all four of them, in different degrees, deficient in insight into religious truth. His visit to Carlyle, in the lonely farm-house at Craigenputtock, was the memorable beginning of a lifelong friendship. Emerson published Carlyle’s first books in America. Carlyle introduced Emerson’s Essays into England. The two men were bound together by a mutual respect deeper than a sympathy of tastes, and a community of spirit stronger than a similarity of opinions. Emerson was a sweet-tempered Carlyle, living in the sunshine. Carlyle was a militant Emerson, moving amid thunderclouds. The things that each most admired in the other were self-reliance, directness, moral courage. A passage in Emerson’s Diary, written on his homeward voyage, strikes the keynote of his remaining life. “A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. . . . All real good or evil that can befall him must be from himself. . . . There is a correspondence between the human soul and everything that exists in the world; more properly, everything that is known to man. Instead of studying things without, the principles of them all may be penetrated into within him. . . . The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint man with himself. . . . The highest revelation is that God is in every man.” Here is the essence of that intuitional philosophy, commonly called Transcendentalism. Emerson disclaimed allegiance to that philosophy. He called it “the saturnalia, or excess of faith.” His practical common sense recoiled from the amazing conclusions which were drawn from it by many of its more eccentric advocates. His independence revolted against being bound to any scheme or system of doctrine, however nebulous. He said: “I wish to say what I feel and think to-day, with the proviso that to-morrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.” But this very wish commits him to the doctrine of the inner light. All through his life he navigated the Transcendental sea, piloted by a clear moral sense, warned off the rocks by the saving grace of humour, and kept from capsizing by a good ballast of New England prudence.
After his return from England in 1833 he went to live with his mother at the old manse in Concord, Mass., and began his career as a lecturer in Boston. His first discourses were delivered before the Society of Natural History and the Mechanics’ Institute. They were chiefly on scientific subjects, approached in a poetic spirit. In the autumn of 1835 he married Miss Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, having previously purchased a spacious old house and garden at Concord. There he spent the remainder of his life, a devoted husband, a wise and tender father, a careful householder, a virtuous villager, a friendly neighbour, and, spite of all his disclaimers, the central and luminous figure among the
