Representative Men

Representative Men

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Title: Representative Men
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6312] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of
schedule] [This file was first posted on November 25, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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REPRESENTATIVE MEN
SEVEN LECTURES

BY
RALPH WALDO EMERSON

I. Uses of Great Men
II. Plato; or, the Philosopher
Plato; New Readings
III. Swedenborg; or, the Mystic
IV. Montaigne; or, the Skeptic
V. Shakspeare; or, the Poet
VI. Napoleon; or, the Man of the World
VII. Goethe; or, the Writer

I. USES OF GREAT MEN.
It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to
be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with
demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In
the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet.
Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men:
they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious.
Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and actually, or ideally, we
manage to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their
names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses,
and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them.
The search after the great is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of
manhood. We travel into foreign parts to find his works,--if possible, to get a glimpse of
him. But we are put off with fortune instead. You say, the English are practical; the
Germans are hospitable; in Valencia, the climate is delicious; and in the hills of
Sacramento there is gold for the gathering. Yes, but I do not travel to find comfortable,
rich, and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. But if there were
any magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the persons who are
intrinsically rich and powerful, I would sell all, and buy it, and put myself on the road
to-day.
The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge, that in the city is a man who
invented the railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens. But enormous populations, if
they be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants, or of fleas--the
more, the worse.
Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. The gods of fable are the shining
moments of great men. We run all our vessels into one mould. Our colossal theologies of
Judaism, Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and structural action of
the human mind. The student of history is like a man going into a warehouse to buy
cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new article. If he go to the factory, he shall find that
his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the interior walls of
the pyramids of Thebes. Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint,
or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their
origin from his thought. And our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed.
If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we derive from others, let us be

warned of the danger of modern studies, and begin low enough. We must not contend
against love,