Legacy

Emerson Celebrated

On April 27, 1882, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s body expired. But as the Reverend Charles Ames said in his memorial address in Philadelphia, “I think no man has ever died on this continent whose departure could leave so rich and lasting an after-glow on our sky.”

Through his lectures, essays, and other writings, Emerson has joined the American pantheon. His work is among the greatest America has produced or, as the historian James Truslow Adams wrote, “In no other author can we get so close to the whole of the American spirit.” Emerson’s radical ideas gradually became more prevalent. He lived the truth, and his imagination, idealism, and stern sense of duty made these ideas take root and live on. In his Essay on Democracy, James Russell Lowell declared that two men, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln, stood preeminent as products of American democracy. He is taught everywhere in the world. His words have been translated into many languages. Each landmark anniversary of his birth and death has been celebrated in hundreds of communities, including this one, in 2003. Emerson brought fresh spirit into religion, and made people willing to rethink their old

He believed in people, and admired not just the scholar but the woodchopper, the fisherman, the servant. He raised everyone to his own level. He believed that we must think our own thoughts, fresh and unhampered. We should, as he did, search out new truth, meet in kindness and honesty, each respecting the other, looking for the good and building on it.

“He was the philosopher of democracy...the one citizen of the
New World fit to have his name uttered in the same
breath withthat of Plato.” —John Dewey