Essays: First Series
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841
5.0 · 8 ratings
About the book
Self-Reliance, Compensation, The Over-Soul and their nine companions — the essays that declared the individual soul its own authority and half of this shelf possible. Emerson writes in sentences built to be carried out of the book, and most of them have been.
Try the short course
Part 1 · All of history is your biography. The first six slides, free.
1 / 6
You read about someone who lived two thousand years ago - a general's panic, a philosopher's sudden clarity - and something in you says: yes, I know that. Emerson builds his first essay on that small shock of recognition.
His claim is blunt. There is one mind common to all people, and each of us is an inlet to the whole of it. What Plato thought, you can think. What a saint felt, you can feel. Whatever has happened to any human being, you are equipped to understand from the inside.
So history is not a record of other, grander people. It is the record of what this shared mind has done when it took the shape of Egypt, or Rome, or one stubborn reformer. Every page of it is made of the same stuff you are.
Inside the course
13 parts- History: all of it is your biographyFree above
- Self-Reliance — «trust thyself»
- The iron law of Compensation
- Spiritual laws that enforce themselves
Questions
Is Essays: First Series free to read in Astra Trainer?
Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.
What is the short course?
13 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.
Where do I get the app?
Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. Essays: First Series is waiting in the app’s library.
