Essays — First Series

About the book

Emerson's first series opens with History and moves through Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, and other essays toward Intellect and Art. Across these subjects, he asks readers to test inherited opinions against their own experience and to recognize possibilities that conformity can obscure. Yet the volume is not confined to solitary conviction. Love and Friendship examine attachments to others, while Prudence and Heroism consider different demands upon action. The Over-Soul and Circles enlarge the inquiry into spiritual unity and the continual revision of human understanding. Emerson often advances through images, aphorisms, and abrupt shifts rather than a neatly bounded proof. Reading the essays together reveals both the force of his confidence and the productive friction between his various claims.

• Self-trust
• Spiritual unity
• Changing understanding

Why read it

The collection gives Emerson's best-known essay a richer setting among arguments about relationships and responsibility.

English text of Essays, First Series