Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Vishnu, both the Primeval Cosmic Man and the Lord of Being, pursuesMaya, the Mother of Existence, throughout the cycles of lives much asman pursues nature in the cycles of Emerson’s protean mind. We will followthe transformation of this relationship between the human being and naturethrough selected private and public writings in three periods of Emerson’slife: his young adulthood up to the age of thirty-five (1838), the next stateuntil he was forty (1839–1843), and the nine years until he was forty-nine(1844–1852).What is Emerson the man by the age of thirty-five? Born on May25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts, Ralph Waldo Emerson grew up in a“poor but educated family.”He lost his pastor father atthe age of eight and, subjectto tuberculosis whichseparated him from normalgames and sports, youngEmerson found fulfillmentin the companionship of histhree brothers and in books.Poor health after his graduationfrom Harvard Collegedelayed his becominga minister of the “rationalChristianity” of the UnitarianChurch until 1828. In theinterim, his reading of variouscontemporary philosophers,especially Coleridge,was weakening the intensityof his commitment to thedogma of the church as hediscovered the revelation ofa God within his heart, notjust on historical and scripturalrecord. At the age of twenty-eight, Emerson lost his wife of eighteenmonths, Ellen Tucker, to consumption. One year later, in 1832, Emersonresigned as minister over his parish’s and the church’s attitude toward thecelebration of the Lord’s Supper, feeling by now that in the ministry as aprofession, “instead of making Christianity a vehicle for truth, you maketruth only a horse for Christianity.”159