Ralph Waldo Emerson · Public domain edition · 78 cards · 20 chapters
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays: First Series argues that history is not an account of the past but a record of the universal mind that each person shares and can verify in their own experience. This deck covers his claims about reading history, biography, antiquity, Greek and sacred history, power, circumstance, and the limits of written history.
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Chapter 1 · Question
According to Emerson, what is the relationship between the universal mind and individual men?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
Emerson asserts there is one mind common to all individual men, and each man is an inlet to the same and to all of it. Whoever is admitted to the right of reason becomes a freeman of the whole estate, able to think what Plato thought and feel what a saint felt. Of the works of this mind, history is the record.
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I. HISTORY (part 1)4 cards
According to Emerson, what is the relationship between the universal mind and individual men?
Emerson asserts there is one mind common to all individual men, and each man is an inlet to the same and to all of it. Whoever is admitted to the right of reason becomes a freeman of the whole estate, able to think what Plato thought and feel what a saint felt. Of the works of this mind, history is the record.
Chapter 1
How does Emerson say the student should read history?
The author argues the student must read history actively, not passively, esteeming his own life the text and books the commentary. He should see that he can live all history in his own person, transfer the point of view from Rome, Athens, and London to himself, and not be bullied by kings or empires.
Chapter 1
What does Emerson mean by saying 'there is properly no history, only biography'?
Emerson argues all history becomes subjective because each mind must know the whole lesson for itself and go over the whole ground. What it does not see or live, it will not know. Every law the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature, and we must see in ourselves the necessary reason of every fact.
Chapter 1
How does Emerson explain the value of studying antiquity, such as the pyramids or a Gothic cathedral?
Emerson says inquiry into antiquity is the desire to do away with the remote There or Then and introduce the Here and Now. Belzoni digs in the pyramids until he sees the difference between the work and himself vanish. With a cathedral, we put ourselves in the builder's place until we have the sufficient reason.
Chapter 1
I. HISTORY (part 2)4 cards
According to Emerson, what natural forms did Gothic architecture originate from?
The author argues the Gothic church originated in a rude adaptation of forest trees with all their boughs to a festal or solemn arcade. The bands about cleft pillars indicate the green withes that tied them, and the stained glass window's origin appears in the colors of the western sky seen through bare crossing branches. He says the Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone.
Chapter 2
What two antagonist facts does Emerson identify in early Asian and African history?
Emerson states that Nomadism and Agriculture are the two antagonist facts in early Asian and African history. Geography necessitated nomadic life, but nomads terrorized those who built towns, so agriculture became a religious injunction because of the perils from nomadism. He notes the gad-fly constrained African nomads to wander, driving cattle mad in the rainy season.
Chapter 2
Why does Emerson say all men feel interest in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry?
Emerson argues every man passes personally through a Grecian period. The Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, with spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. He says our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old but of the natural, and that the Greeks were not reflective but perfect in their senses and health.
Chapter 2
How does Emerson explain the student's understanding of sacred history and past reformers?
Emerson says the student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age of chivalry, and sacred history by the same key: when a prophet's voice echoes a sentiment of his infancy, he pierces to the truth through tradition's confusion. He also says the reformer repeats old reformers' part, learning what moral vigor is needed, since great licentiousness treads on reformation's heels.
Chapter 2
I. HISTORY (part 3)4 cards
According to Emerson, what does a person's power consist of?
The author argues a person's power consists in the multitude of his affinities—the fact that his life is intertwined with the whole chain of organic and inorganic being. He calls man a bundle of relations and a knot of roots whose flower and fruitage is the world, and says man cannot live without a world.
Chapter 3
How does Emerson use Napoleon to illustrate man's dependence on circumstance?
The author argues that Napoleon in an island prison, with no men to act on, no Alps to climb, and no stake to play for, would beat the air and appear stupid. Transported to large countries, dense population, and antagonist power, the man bounded by such an outline is not the virtual Napoleon—only Talbot's shadow.
Chapter 3
What does Emerson say the mind and nature are, making history readable?
Emerson states that in light of two facts—that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative—history is to be read and written. He argues the soul concentrates and reproduces its treasures for each pupil, who passes through the whole cycle of experience, so history stops being a dull book and walks incarnate in every just and wise man.
Chapter 3
What criticism does Emerson make of conventional written history?
The author argues conventional history is a shallow village tale, an old chronology of selfishness and pride. He asks what Rome knows of rat and lizard, and what food or succor Olympiads and Consulates offer the Esquimaux seal-hunter, the Kanaka, the fisherman, the stevedore, or the porter. He says annals must be written broader and deeper.
Chapter 3
II. SELF-RELIANCE (part 1)4 cards
What does Emerson call the highest merit of Moses, Plato, and Milton?
Emerson says the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions and spoke not what men thought but what they themselves thought. He uses them to illustrate that genius means believing your own private thought is true for all men, and that in every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts returning with alienated majesty.
Chapter 4
According to Emerson, what is society's relation to self-reliance?
The author argues that society is everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood of every member. He calls society a joint-stock company whose members agree to surrender liberty and culture for secured bread, with conformity as the virtue most in request and self-reliance as its aversion. Society loves not realities and creators but names and customs, so whoever would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Chapter 4
How does Emerson describe the boy's attitude compared with the man's?
Emerson praises the nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain to conciliate anyone, calling it the healthy attitude of human nature. The boy gives independent, genuine verdicts on people and facts, never cumbering himself about consequences or interests. The man, by contrast, is clapped into jail by his consciousness once he has acted with éclat, watched by the sympathy or hatred of hundreds.
Chapter 4
What does Emerson say about virtues done as penance?
The author argues that in the popular estimate virtues are the exception rather than the rule, and men perform good actions as a fine paid in expiation of daily non-appearance, so their virtues are penances. He says he does not wish to expiate but to live, preferring a life genuine and equal over one glittering and unsteady, and asks primary evidence that you are a man rather than appeal to your actions.
Chapter 4
II. SELF-RELIANCE (part 2)4 cards
According to Emerson, what is an institution in relation to one man?
Emerson asserts that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man," illustrating this with Monachism from the Hermit Antony, the Reformation from Luther, Quakerism from Fox, Methodism from Wesley, and Abolition from Clarkson. He concludes that all history resolves easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons, making the individual the cause and origin of lasting collective movements.
Chapter 5
How does Emerson distinguish perception from notion, and what does he say about thoughtless people?
Emerson says every man distinguishes his voluntary acts of mind from involuntary perceptions, and that perfect faith is due to the latter. Thoughtless people contradict statements of perception as readily as opinions, or more readily, because they do not distinguish perception from notion and fancy one chooses to see things. But perception is not whimsical but fatal: if he sees a trait, his children and eventually all mankind will see it.
Chapter 5
What does Emerson say about the roses under his window and how man differs from them?
Emerson says the roses make no reference to former or better roses; they are for what they are and exist with God today, with no time to them. The rose is perfect in every moment: its whole life acts before a leaf-bud bursts, and the leafless root has no less. Man, by contrast, postpones or remembers, lamenting the past or straining toward the future, and cannot be happy and strong until he lives in the present, above time.
Chapter 5
What does Emerson call the highest truth, and what does he say about hope and gratitude in the hour of vision?
Emerson says the highest truth probably cannot be said, since all speech is far-off remembering of intuition. When good is near and you have life in yourself, the way is wholly strange and new, excluding example and experience; you take the way from man, not to man. Fear and hope are alike beneath it, and there is somewhat low even in hope; in the hour of vision there is nothing properly called gratitude or joy.
Chapter 5
II. SELF-RELIANCE (part 3)4 cards
According to Emerson, what makes the New Hampshire or Vermont lad worth a hundred city dolls?
The sturdy lad tries many professions in successive years—farming, peddling, teaching, preaching, editing, politics—and always lands on his feet like a cat. He does not postpone his life but lives already, walking abreast with his days without shame at not 'studying a profession.' He has not one chance but a hundred.
Chapter 6
What does Emerson call false prayer, and what is true prayer?
Emerson argues prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious—meanness and theft, supposing dualism rather than unity. True prayer is contemplation of life's facts from the highest point of view, the soliloquy of a jubilant soul. Once at one with God, man will not beg but sees prayer in all action, like the farmer weeding his field.
Chapter 6
Why does Emerson criticize travelling, and what exception does he allow?
Emerson argues the superstition of travelling is want of self-culture; the soul is no traveller and the wise man stays at home. He has no objection to circumnavigation for art, study, and benevolence, provided the man is first domesticated and does not go abroad hoping to find something greater than he knows. The sad self travels with you.
Chapter 6
What is Emerson's argument about whether society progresses?
The author argues society never advances: it recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Every gain costs something—the civilized man has a coach but lost the use of his feet, a watch but cannot read the sun. No greater men exist now than before; the arts and inventions of each period are only costume and do not invigorate men.
Chapter 6
III. COMPENSATION (part 1)4 cards
What does Emerson say the preacher's fallacy about the Last Judgment was?
The author argues the preacher's fallacy lay in conceding that the bad are successful and that justice is not done now, deferring judgment to the next life. Emerson says this defers to the base market estimate of success instead of confronting the world with the truth of the soul's presence and the omnipotence of the will.
Chapter 7
How does Emerson illustrate polarity or action and reaction in nature?
Emerson cites darkness and light, heat and cold, ebb and flow of waters, male and female, inspiration and expiration, the heart's systole and diastole, centrifugal and centripetal gravity, and electricity. He notes that magnetizing one end of a needle produces opposite magnetism at the other: if the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there.
Chapter 7
According to Emerson, what happens when a person gains an excess?
Emerson states every excess causes a defect and every defect an excess; every sweet has its sour. If riches increase, so do those who use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes from the man what she puts into his chest, swelling the estate but killing the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.
Chapter 7
What twofold manner does Emerson say every act rewards itself?
Emerson says every act rewards itself, or integrates itself, first in the thing or real nature, and second in the circumstance or apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution; the causal retribution is in the thing and seen by the soul. The retribution in circumstance may spread over a long time before becoming distinct.
Chapter 7
III. COMPENSATION (part 2)4 cards
According to Emerson, what do proverbs express that ordinary speech cannot?
Emerson argues proverbs are "the literature of reason" and statements of absolute truth without qualification, calling them "the sanctuary of the intuitions." The world, chained to appearances, will not let a realist say certain truths in his own words, but will allow him to say them in proverbs without contradiction. Thus the law of compensation is preached hourly in markets and workshops through proverbs.
Chapter 8
How does Emerson say wronging others is punished in social relations?
The author argues that all infractions of love and equity in social relations are speedily punished—by fear. While one stands in simple relations to others, meeting is easy, like water meeting water. But any departure from simplicity, any good for oneself that is not good for the other, makes the neighbor shrink away; his eyes no longer seek yours, and there is hate in him and fear in you.
Chapter 8
What does Emerson say about the real price of labor?
Emerson argues there can be no cheating in labor because of the dual constitution of things: the thief steals from himself and the swindler swindles himself. The real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, of which wealth and credit are only signs. Signs may be counterfeited or stolen, but knowledge and virtue cannot. The law of nature is: do the thing, and you shall have the power; those who do not the thing have not the power.
Chapter 8
How does Emerson claim defects and adversity benefit a person?
The author argues our strength grows out of our weakness. No man had a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him; a defect of temper, for instance, drives one to solitude and self-help, like a wounded oyster mending its shell with pearl. Great men are willing to be little; when pushed and defeated they learn their ignorance and gain moderation and real skill. Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.
Chapter 8
III. COMPENSATION (part 3)4 cards
According to Emerson, how does love resolve the bitterness of 'His' and 'Mine'?
The author argues that since the heart and soul of all men are one, love dissolves the bitterness of 'His' and 'Mine': 'His is mine. I am my brother and my brother is me.' One overshadowed by great neighbors can still love and receive, and 'he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves,' discovering the envied estate is his own.
Chapter 9
What image does Emerson use for the soul quitting its old system of things?
Emerson compares the soul to a shell-fish crawling out of its beautiful but stony case because it no longer admits of growth, then slowly forming a new house. He says changes that break up prosperity are 'advertisements of a nature whose law is growth,' and in vigorous minds these revolutions are frequent, even incessant.
Chapter 9
Why does Emerson say growth comes 'by shocks' to us?
The author argues that in our 'lapsed estate' we rest rather than advance and resist rather than cooperate with divine expansion, so growth comes by shocks. We cannot part with friends or let angels go, not seeing they go out that archangels may come in. We are 'idolaters of the old,' lingering in the ruins of the old tent.
Chapter 9
How does Emerson claim the compensations of calamity become apparent over time?
Emerson says that after long intervals, the sure years reveal a deep remedial force underlying all facts. A fever, mutilation, disappointment, or loss of wealth or friends seems unpayable loss at the moment, but the death of a dear friend often operates revolutions in our way of life, closing an epoch and allowing new influences and growth of character.
Chapter 9
IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS (part 1)4 cards
According to Emerson, what happens to even tragic and terrible things when viewed through reflection?
Emerson claims that when reflection takes place and we look at ourselves in the light of thought, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Even the tragic and terrible become comely as they take their place in memory's pictures. The old house, the foolish person, and even a corpse in the chambers add grace or solemn ornament in the past.
Chapter 10
What does Emerson say about the theological problems that afflict young people, such as original sin and predestination?
Emerson argues these problems never presented a practical difficulty to anyone who did not go out of his way to seek them. He calls them the soul's mumps, measles, and whooping-coughs, and says a simple mind will not know these enemies. He adds that giving an account of one's faith requires rare gifts, but without self-knowledge there may still be sylvan strength and integrity.
Chapter 10
How does Emerson describe the relationship between nature and will in the success of great men like Caesar and Napoleon?
Emerson argues there is less intention in history than we ascribe to it. He says the best of Caesar's and Napoleon's power was in nature, not in them, and that their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them an unobstructed channel. He compares them to wires that do not generate the galvanism, and says the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow.
Chapter 10
What does Emerson mean by saying each man has his own vocation, and how does he define the call?
Emerson states each man has his own vocation and that the talent is the call. He describes a direction in which all space is open to him, like a ship in a river that meets obstruction on every side but one. This talent and call depend on his organization, the mode in which the general soul incarnates in him. He rejects the pretence of a summons by name and outward signs as fanaticism.
Chapter 10
IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS (part 2)4 cards
According to Emerson, what determines whether a person can learn a truth?
Emerson argues that no one can learn what they have not been prepared to learn, however close the object is. God screens people from premature ideas; eyes are "holden" until the mind ripens, and then the truth is seen and the earlier blindness seems like a dream. He illustrates with a chemist whose secrets mean nothing to a carpenter.
Chapter 11
What does Emerson say about how readers find meaning in a book?
Emerson argues a book is "a thousand books to a thousand persons": each reader finds only what they already are. A good book resembles good company—a base person placed among gentlemen is not truly of them. He cites Aristotle calling his works "published and not published," and says a reader cannot monopolize a book's wisdom since it stays hidden from the unprepared.
Chapter 11
What does Emerson say determines literary reputation and permanence?
Emerson argues there is no luck in literary reputation. Final verdicts come not from noisy contemporary readers but from an uncorrupted public, and only books that deserve to last do. Bentley said no book was ever written down by any but itself; permanence rests on a book's "specific gravity," its intrinsic importance to the constant mind of man.
Chapter 11
What does Emerson say about teaching and communicating oneself?
Emerson argues a man teaches by doing, not by words: "He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives." Real teaching requires the pupil to be brought into the same state or principle, a transfusion where "he is you and you are he." Public orations that don't communicate the speaker's own character he calls an escapade, a gag—not a speech, not a man.
Chapter 11
IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS (part 3)4 cards
According to Emerson, what does the 'rich mind' do, and what is his view of action?
The author argues the rich mind "lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature," while the poor mind needs an outside badge—a diet, coat, society, donation, or office—to feel it is something. He asserts "To think is to act," and that all action is of infinite elasticity, so even the least action can be inflated with celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon.
Chapter 12
What objection does Emerson raise to much of our reading of history and great lives?
The author argues it is a "pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbors," calling it peeping. He asks how one dare read Washington's campaigns before answering one's own correspondents' letters, and mocks the preposterous use of books: "He knew not what to do, and so he read." He says one's own time and facts should be as good as the heroes'.
Chapter 12
Why does Emerson say we should not wish to be Epaminondas or disparage our own lot?
The author argues a good man is contented and that heaven is large enough for all modes of love and fortitude. He loves and honors Epaminondas but does not wish to be him, holding it more just to love the world of this hour. Action is good when need demands it, and sitting still is also good; the same wood serves as weathercock or bridge sleeper.
Chapter 12
What does Emerson mean by saying the poet who writes a true drama 'is Cæsar, and not the player of Cæsar'?
The author argues that using names like Cæsar or Tamerlane does not mean deferring to those "accidental men" or "stock heroes." If the poet writes a true drama, the same strain of thought, pure emotion, subtle wit, and great self-sufficing heart are his own, and by that power he rouses nations. He urges believing in God, not in names, places, and persons.
Chapter 12
V. LOVE4 cards
According to Emerson, how does love affect a young man's character and social ties?
The author argues love seizes man at one period, working a revolution in mind and body, uniting him to his race, pledging him to domestic and civic relations, carrying him with new sympathy into nature, enhancing the senses, opening the imagination, adding heroic and sacred attributes, establishing marriage, and giving permanence to human society.
Chapter 13
Why does Emerson say we should study love in hope rather than in history?
He argues each man sees his own life defaced by a stain of error while others' lives look fair and ideal, and that infinite compunctions embitter mature memories of budding joy. Details are melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. So one should leave lingering adherence to facts and view the sentiment ideally.
Chapter 13
What does Emerson claim the lover sees in his mistress, unlike friends?
The author argues the lover cannot picture his maiden as poor or solitary; she stands as a representative of all select things and virtues, making the world rich. Friends find likeness to her mother or sisters, but the lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings, diamond mornings, rainbows, and birdsong.
Chapter 13
How does Emerson describe beauty's nature, citing sculpture and music?
He calls beauty the flowering of virtue, a nameless charm destroyed by any attempt to refer it to organization. It points to an unattainable sphere, like opaline doves'-neck lustres. A statue is beautiful when it becomes incomprehensible and demands imagination; music, per Jean Paul Richter, speaks of things never found.
Chapter 13
VI. FRIENDSHIP3 cards
What does Emerson say happens to a stranger's conversation once he reveals his partialities and defects?
Emerson describes a commended stranger who inspires elevated talk and lively surprise in a household, but once the stranger intrudes his partialities, definitions, and defects into the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the first, last, and best he will ever hear; he is no stranger now, and the throbbing of the heart and communications of the soul come no more.
Chapter 14
Why does Emerson say our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions?
Emerson argues we have made friendships a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. We aim at a swift and petty benefit, snatching at the slowest fruit in God's garden, which many summers and winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly but with an adulterate passion that would appropriate him to ourselves, so poetry turns to stale prose.
Chapter 14
What does Emerson mean by respecting the naturlangsamkeit in friendship?
Emerson urges respect for naturlangsamkeit, the slow working of nature that hardens the ruby in a million years and operates on a scale in which Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows. He argues bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk protecting a delicate organization from premature ripening, and that love is not for levity but for the total worth of man.
Chapter 14
VII. PRUDENCE4 cards
How does Emerson define prudence and its relation to the senses?
Emerson calls prudence "the virtue of the senses," "the science of appearances," and "the outmost action of the inward life." He says it moves matter according to the laws of matter and is content to seek bodily health by complying with physical conditions and mental health by the laws of the intellect. Prudence is legitimate when it unfolds the beauty of laws within the narrow scope of the senses, but false when detached from higher law.
Chapter 15
What three classes of proficiency in knowledge of the world does Emerson identify?
Emerson describes three classes: one lives to the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final good (common sense); another lives above this to the beauty of the symbol, as poet, artist, naturalist, and scientist (taste); a third lives above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified — the wise (spiritual perception). Rarely, one man traverses the whole scale.
Chapter 15
What is base prudence, and how does Emerson criticize it?
Emerson describes base prudence as devotion to matter, as if we had only palate, nose, touch, eye, and ear. It adores the Rule of Three, never subscribes, never gives, seldom lends, and asks of any project only "Will it bake bread?" He calls it a disease like thickening of the skin until vital organs are destroyed, and says it is the god of sots and cowards and the subject of all comedy.
Chapter 15
How does Emerson say nature punishes neglect of prudence?
Emerson argues nature punishes any neglect of prudence: if you treat the senses as final, obey their law; if you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it ripens on the slow tree of cause and effect. Dislocated laws of time and space become "holes and dens," and a disturbed hive yields bees instead of honey. Untimely words and actions, like a whetstone too late for hay, are sad and lonesome.
Chapter 15
VIII. HEROISM4 cards
According to Emerson, what is the essence of heroism?
The author argues that self-trust is the essence of heroism. He describes it as the state of the soul at war, whose ultimate objects are defiance of falsehood and wrong and the power to bear whatever evil agents inflict. Heroism speaks truth and is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, persistent, and undaunted.
Chapter 16
How does Emerson describe heroism's relation to the voice of mankind?
The author argues heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. It obeys a secret impulse of individual character, and each person sees farther on his own path. Just and wise men take umbrage at first, but later see the act in unison with their own.
Chapter 16
What does Emerson say heroism thinks of prudence and comfort?
The author argues heroism scorns false prudence that dotes on health and wealth, and treats the littleness of common life as its jest. Heroism measures itself by contempt for some external good. Yet it finds its own success at last, and then even prudent men extol it.
Chapter 16
What does Emerson say about the temperance and hospitality of the hero?
The author argues the hero's temperance comes from wishing to do no dishonor to his own worthiness, and he loves it for elegance, not austerity. Hospitality must be for service, not show, or it pulls down the host. He cites Sogd's house in Bukharia, open day and night for a hundred years.
Chapter 16
IX. THE OVER-SOUL4 cards
What does Emerson call the Over-soul, and what is each man's relation to it?
Emerson calls the Over-soul that Unity, the common heart, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all others. It is the Supreme Critic on errors of past and present and the only prophet of what must be. It constrains each person to pass for what he is and to speak from character rather than tongue, tending to become wisdom, virtue, power, and beauty.
Chapter 17
How does Emerson describe the soul's relation to time and space?
Emerson argues the soul abolishes time and space, calling them inverse measures of the soul's force. Though most men treat these walls as real and insurmountable, the spirit sports with time, crowding eternity into an hour or stretching an hour to eternity. Before the soul's revelations, Time, Space, and Nature shrink away; the soul knows only the soul.
Chapter 17
According to Emerson, how does the soul's progress differ from gradual motion?
Emerson argues the soul advances not by gradation, like motion in a straight line, but by ascension of state, like metamorphosis from egg to worm to fly. Growths of genius are total in character: each throe of growth expands the man where he works, passing classes and populations of men, rather than ranking individuals one over another.
Chapter 17
What does Emerson say about persons and the impersonal common nature?
Emerson argues persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. Youth is mad for persons, but larger experience discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. In earnest conversation, tacit reference is made to a third party, a common nature that is impersonal and is God; the company become wiser than they were, attaining a higher self-possession.
Chapter 17
X. CIRCLES4 cards
What does Emerson mean by saying every action admits of being outdone?
Emerson argues that around every circle another can be drawn: there is no end in nature, every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens. Each result is threatened and judged by what follows, and is limited rather than contradicted by the new. Life is an apprenticeship to the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, which both inspires and condemns every success.
Chapter 18
How does Emerson illustrate that permanence is only a word of degrees?
He argues there are no fixtures in nature and the universe is fluid. Greek sculpture melted away like ice, Greek letters are passing, and new arts destroy old ones: aqueducts made useless by hydraulics, fortifications by gunpowder, canals by railways, sails by steam, steam by electricity. A granite tower seems permanent until its secret is known, since the invisible thought behind it built it and can topple it.
Chapter 18
What does Emerson say about the key to every man and his reformation?
Emerson argues the key to every man is his thought: however sturdy he looks, he obeys a helm, the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by being shown a new idea that commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle rushing outward without end, and the heart refuses to be imprisoned.
Chapter 18
How does Emerson describe the effect of a new generalization or thinker?
Emerson warns that when God lets loose a thinker, all things are at risk, like a conflagration in a great city. No piece of science, literary reputation, hope, religion, or moral is safe from a new generalization, which he calls a new influx of divinity into the mind. Valor consists in preferring truth to one's past apprehension of it and accepting it from any quarter.
Chapter 18
XI. INTELLECT4 cards
According to Emerson, what distinguishes intellect from ordinary perception and affection?
The author argues intellect is void of affection and separates a fact from local and personal reference, discerning it as if it existed for its own sake. It goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards that personality as a fact rather than as "I" and "mine." It pierces form, overleaps walls, detects likeness between remote things, and reduces all things to a few principles.
Chapter 19
What does Emerson say about the relationship between spontaneous intuition and logic?
The author argues spontaneous or intuitive action is always best, and that our thinking is a pious reception we cannot fully control. Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of intuition, containing it latently, but its virtue is silent method. The moment logic appears as separate propositions with independent value, it becomes worthless. We should trust instinct until it ripens into truth.
Chapter 19
What two gifts does Emerson say genius requires?
The author argues constructive intellect, or genius, requires two gifts: the thought and the publication. The thought is revelation, a miracle that no study can familiarize, the advent of truth into the world. But to be communicable it needs a vehicle or art, becoming picture or sensible object. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
Chapter 19
How does Emerson describe the difficulty and timing of abstract thought?
The author argues thinking is the hardest task in the world. One may intend the mind without respite in one direction and still fail, yet thoughts flit before us and we dimly forebode the truth. Then, unannounced, the truth appears, but the oracle comes because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. He compares this to undulation: now labor with your brains, now forbear and see what the great Soul showeth.
Chapter 19
XII. ART3 cards
According to Emerson, what should a painter aim for in landscapes and portraits?
Emerson argues that in fine arts the aim is creation, not imitation. In landscapes the painter should omit nature's prose details and give only spirit and splendor, conveying a fairer creation. In portraits he must inscribe character rather than features, esteeming the sitter as only an imperfect likeness of the aspiring original within.
Chapter 20
What does Emerson say is the office of painting and sculpture, and why are they 'merely initial'?
Emerson argues art's office is to educate the perception of beauty by detaching single objects from the confusing variety of things, so thought becomes possible. But painting and sculpture are merely initial: like dancing, once they train the eye to self-possession and grace, their lessons are better forgotten, opening the eye to nature's eternal living picture.
Chapter 20
What traits does Emerson say all works of the highest art share, and who is the best critic?
Emerson argues the highest art is universally intelligible, restores the simplest states of mind, and is religious, since its skill is the reappearance of the original soul. The best critic is the individual whose simple tastes and susceptibility to great human influences overpower local and special culture; beauty must be carried within, or it is not found.
Chapter 20
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #2944 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-18. Cards reviewed 2026-10-18.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
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