Week 3: The Early Lectures

EMERSON’S LECTURES & ESSAYS

“Here everything is admissible, philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry, humor, fun, mimicry, anecdotes, jokes, ventriloquism. All the breadth & versatility of the most liberal conversation, highest, lowest, the most personal local topics, all are permitted, and all may be combined in one speech; it is a panharmonicon.”

Journal, 1839

1833: Natural science, 4 lectures

1834: Italy, 2 lectures

Early 1835: Biography, 6 lectures

Fall 1835: English literature, 10 lectures

Emerson’s First Lecture Topics

EMERSON’S LECTURES, 1836 -1840

1836-1837: The Philosophy of History, 12 lectures

1837-1838: Human Culture, 10 lectures

1838-1839: Human Life, 10 lectures

1839-1840: The Present Age, 10 lectures

“A public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.”

“Spiritual Laws,” Essays & Lectures, p. 316

“In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to be a mere thinker, or, still worse, a parrot of others’ thinking.”

“ The American Scholar ”Essays & Lectures, p. 54

“Books are for the scholar’s idle times.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 58

“The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 63

“Free should the scholar be,—free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 63

“The relation between the mind and matter is . . . the study of every fine genius since the world began . . . of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibniz, of Swedenborg.”

Nature, “Language”Essays & Lectures, pp. 24-25

“The new importance given to the single person.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, page 70

“If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come around to him.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, page 70

“Fear always springs from ignorance.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 65

“ . . . must be a university of knowledge.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 70

“It is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 70

“Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 60

“There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.”

“The American Scholar” Essays & Lectures, p. 55

“The scholar is the man of the ages, but he must also wish with other men to stand with his contemporaries.”

“Goethe” Essays & Lectures, p. 56

“I would study, I would know, I would admire forever.”

“The Divinity School Address”Essays &Lectures, p. 75

“Good is positive.

“The Divinity School Address”Essays & Lectures, p. 77

“Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat.”

“The Divinity School Address”Essays & Lectures, p. 77

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINAL MISTAKES

(1) Treating Christ like a Greek god, mythologizing him.

(2) Worshipping the Bible.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINAL MISTAKES

(1) Treating Christ like a Greek god, mythologizing him.

(2) Bondage to tradition.

“It is still true that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of memory, and not out of the soul.”

“The Divinity School Address”Essays & Lectures, p. 86

“Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.”

“The Divinity School Address”Essays & Lectures, p. 83

“The Bible will not be ended until the creation is.”

Journal, 1852

“Pure Heaven was pouring itself into each of us.”

Journal, 1855

“O my brothers, God exists.”

“Spiritual Laws” Essays & Lectures, p. 309

“All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having.”

“Experience”Essays & Lectures, p. 483

“The word God is the algebraic X in morals, and the Hebrews with right philosophy made it unspeakable. But the stupid world, finding a word, assumes this scientific for a baptismal name, and talks of him as easily as of Captain Gulliver.”

Journals, 1849

“Freedom is the essence of Christianity.”

Sermons, 1832

“The main regard of religion must be to make us good at home.”

Sermons, 1827

“God is a wise householder and requires all that is practicable to be done in his family.”

Sermons, 1835

“By his holy thoughts, Jesus serves us, and thus only.”

“The Divinity School Address”Essays & Lectures, p. 82

"What we now call the Christian religion existed amongst the ancients, and was from the beginning of the human race, until Christ Himself came in the flesh; from which time the already existing true religion began to be styled Christian."

St. Augustine, Retractiones

“Creation is an endless miracle, as new in this hour as when Adam awoke.”

Sermons, 1836

“The best moments in life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers, and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its God.”

NatureEssays & Lectures, p. 33

“If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.”

“The Divinity School Address”Essays & Lectures, p. 76

“Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone.”

“The Divinity School Address”Essays & Lectures, p. 88

Emerson’s Children

Waldo 1836 -Ellen 1839 -Edith 1841Edward 1844

Emerson’s 1841-1842 Lecture Series, “The Times”1. Introduction2. The Conservative3. The Poet4. The Transcendentalist5. Manners6. Character7. The Relation of Man to Nature8. Prospects

“ . . . a species of fanaticism now prevailing more or less in that region, under the name of transcendentalism.”

New York Review, 8 April 1842

1797: Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur alsEinleitung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft

1800: System des transscendentalen Idealismus

1806: Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der höherenPhysik zur Erklärung des allgemeinen Organismus

“There is one mind common to all individual men.”

“History”Essays & Lectures, p. 237

“Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors.”

“The Transcendentalist”Essays & Lectures, p. 195

• They are lonely • They long to be loved• They look for the beauty in others• They are exacting and extortionate critics• They are not good citizens• They do not willingly give to charities• They worship beauty

“The good and the wise must learn to act, and carry salvation to the combatants and demagogues in the dusty arena below.”

“The Transcendentalist”Essays & Lectures, p. 203

END