"Give me an understanding of today's world," he told them, "and you may have the worlds of the past and the future. Show me where God is hidden...as always...in nature. What is near explains what is far. A drop of water is a small ocean. Each of us is a part of all of nature."
Emerson said a sign of the times was the new importance given to each person. "The world," he said, "is nothing. The person is all. In yourself is the law of all nature."
Emerson urged students to learn directly from life. He told them, "Life is our dictionary."
VOICE TWO:
The following year, Emerson was invited to speak to students and teachers at the Harvard religious school. In his speech, he called for moral and spiritual rebirth. But his words shocked members of Harvard's traditional Christian church. He said churches treated religion as if God were dead.
"Let mankind stand forevermore," he said, "as a temple returned to greatness by new love, new faith, new sight."
Church members who heard him speak called him a man who did not believe in God. Almost thirty years passed before Harvard invited Emerson to speak there again.
VOICE ONE:
Away from Harvard, Emerson's speeches became more and more popular. He was able to make his living by writing and speaking. "Do you understand Mister Emerson?" a Boston woman asked her servant. "Not a word," the servant answered. "But I like to go and see him speak. He stands up there and looks as if he thought everyone was as good as he was."
Many people, especially the young, did understand Emerson. His ideas seemed right for a new country just beginning to enjoy its independence -- a country expanding in all directions.
Young people agreed with Emerson that a person had the power within himself to succeed at whatever he tried. The important truth seemed to be not what had been done, but what might be done.
VOICE TWO:
In a speech called "Self-Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson told his listeners, "Believe your own thoughts, believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men."
Emerson said society urges us to act carefully. This, he said, restricts our freedom of action. "It is always easy to agree," he said. "Yet nothing is more holy than the independence of your own mind. Let a person know his own value. Have no regrets. Nothing can bring you peace but yourselves."
VOICE ONE:
The eighteen fifties were not a peaceful time for America. The nation was divided by a bitter argument about slavery.
Most people in the South defended slavery. They believed the agricultural economy of the South depended on Negro slaves. Most people in the North condemned slavery. They believed it was wrong for one man to own another.
Emerson was not interested in debates or disputes. But he was prepared to defend truth, as he saw it.
Emerson believed that the slaves should be freed. But he did not take an active part in the anti-slavery movement. All his beliefs about the individual opposed the idea of group action -- even group action against slavery.
As the dispute became more intense, however, Emerson finally, quietly, added his voice to the anti-slavery campaign. When one of his children wrote a school report about building a house, he said no one should build a house without a place to hide runaway slaves.
VOICE TWO:
Emerson's health began to fail in the early eighteen seventies. His house was partly destroyed by fire. He and his wife escaped. But the shock was great. Friends gave him money to travel to Egypt with his daughter. While he was gone, they rebuilt his house.
Emerson returned to Concord. But his health did not improve. He could no longer work. In April, eighteen eighty-two, he became sick with pneumonia. He died on April twenty-seventh. He was seventy-nine years old.
VOICE ONE:
Ralph Waldo Emerson's death was national news. In Concord and other places, people hung black cloth on houses and public buildings as a sign of mourning. His friends in Concord walked to the church for his funeral service. They carried branches of the pine trees that Emerson loved.
After the funeral, Ralph Waldo Emerson was buried in Concord near the graves of two other important early American writers -- Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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VOICE TWO:
This Special English program was written by Richard Thorman. I'm Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another People in America program on the Voice of America.
