Lectures and Biographical Sketches

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About this book

Lectures and Biographical Sketches is Volume X of the Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in Boston in 1884. A piece titled "Perpetual Forces" begins with the hero of fairy tales and his servants, one who can eat granite rocks, one who can hear the grass grow and one who can run a hundred leagues in half an hour, and says that man in nature is surrounded by friendly giants.

In one passage the writer admires Thoreau's saying that nothing is so much to be feared as fear, and says that the world is built on the moral sentiment. Another passage speaks of Plutarch, who delighted in heroes, and of Alexandria, and says Plutarch knew the laws of conversation, treating the question whether it was civil to bring along guests whom the Greeks called shadows. A further passage says an upper class is not injurious as long as it depends on merit, and defines aristocracy as the class eminent by personal qualities.

About the author

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity.