Ralph Waldo Emerson’s career was characterized both by reformation and reconciliation. It is easy to read too much into the often fiery rhetoric of Emerson’s speeches and come to see him primarily as an iconoclast, but this would be a great oversight. Emerson was, however, a very progressive thinker and he seemed to have a constitutional affinity for a sort of skeptical optimism. Never content to merely accept traditions at face value, Emerson knew at an early age that he had a higher calling: “I burn after the ‘aliquid immensum infinitumque’ [”Something great and immeasurable”] which Cicero desired” (Jan-Feb 1827 journal entry at age 23)(Emerson 2001, 487). At the same time, however, he was filled with doubt: “a score of words & deeds issue from me daily, of which I am not the master. They are begotten of weakness & born of shame” (ibid). Yet, in time Emerson would prove that these struggles with doubt (as well as seri...
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