Essays and Poems

The advent of industry in America throughout the 1800s drove down the price of products enabling Americans to own more things than ever before. Yet the Transcendentalists held that material things led to vanity. They prized the person's connection to divinity instead. Ralph Waldo Emerson one of the movement's most well-known members wrote a lot about his opinions and life. This volume of Essays and Poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson presents a typical sample of his writings. Emerson openly admits the transcendental way of life in the first essay Nature. He explains how man-made things lessen the beauty of the natural environment. Emerson thought that humans could discover spirituality and wholeness in nature.