Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A society of “walking monsters”: one good finger, one neck, one stomach—but never a whole human being. Ralph Waldo Emerson asks what it would take to become whole again.

In 1837, addressing Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society in Cambridge, Emerson argues that America has leaned too long on the learning of other lands. The true scholar, he says, must be more than a keeper of books or a “parrot” repeating other minds: he must meet nature with open eyes, learn from the past, and think for himself. But a society that parcels people into narrow occupations can turn even its thinkers into mere functions. Can the scholar reclaim the power that has been divided among us?

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Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.