RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Ralph
Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and poet. He was
born in Boston on 25 May 1803 and died in Concord on 27April 1882.
He
was known as one of the great transcendentalists
who believed in the ultimate properties of being that exist beyond the properties
of the material world. Nowadays these properties stand for truth, unity, beauty
and goodness.
His
philosophy being all-inclusive sought to reconcile all contraries. According to
him:
“There is one soul
It is related to the world.
Art is its action thereon.
Science finds its methods.
Literature is its record.
Religion is the emotion of reverence
that it inspires.
Ethics is the soul illustrated in
human life.
Society is the finding of this soul
by individuals in each other.
Traders are the learning of the soul in
nature by labour.
Politics is the activity of the soul
illustrated in power.
Manners are silent and mediate
expressions of soul. “
In
his famous essay “The Oversoul”, Emerson says:
The soul in man is not an organ, but
animates and exercises all organs. It is not a faculty but a light; it is not
the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will, is the
background of our being, in which they
lie –an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
Emerson’s
views about the immortality of the soul are the same as we find them in oriental
scriptures, especially the Bhagavadgita.
”Never
the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never. Never was time it was
not; End and Beginning are dreams! Birthless
and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever: Death hath not
touched it at all; dead though the house of it seems!
Finally,
here are his two famous quotes:
1.
Our
greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising up every time we fall.
2.
Live
in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air.
********
G.R.Kanwal
28 December 2025.
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