Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-82 was an American essayist, poet, and popular philosopher who began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston but rose to international prominence as a lecturer and author of essays such as Self-Reliance, History, The Over-Soul, and Fate. Emerson developed a metaphysics of process, an epistemology of moods, and a existentialist ethics of self-improvement based on English and German Romanticism, Neoplatonism, Kantianism, and Hinduism. From his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, he influenced generations of Americans, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up Emersonian themes like power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. This collection of Emerson's brilliant essays includes the following 1.The American Scholar 2.Compensation 3.Self-Reliance 4.Friendship 5.Heroism 6.Manners 7.Gifts 8.Nature 9.Shakspeare Or, The Poet 10.Prudence 11.Circles