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Emerson's call for a
transcendentalist approach
to the study of history
In his famous essay entitled History Emerson wrote that:-
"There is one mind common to all individual men.
Of the works of this mind history is the record.
Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history.
all the facts of history pre-exist as laws. Each law in
turn is made by circumstances predominant. The creation
of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome,
Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.
Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy,
are merely the application of this manifold spirit to the
manifold world".
and also wrote that:-
"Man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,
whose flower and fruitage is the world."
and also wrote that:-
" every history should be written in a wisdom which
divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as
symbols. I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our
so-called History is".
Emerson suggests that it is by looking at facts as symbolic of
the application of human affinities that people may hope for a
broader and deeper writing of history that would more truly
express, and constructively demonstrate, Humanity's central and
wide-related nature.
We have prepared a special introductory page to these fascinating issues
and it is available from the following link:-
Emerson's transcendentalist approach
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![[Emerson, transcendentalist philosophy]](philosophy.gif)
Emerson, philosophy, history, transcendentalism