Selected Works

Emerson's traces are said even by his detractors to be everywhere in American thought, representing, as the case may be, either what is best about the country - its optimism, its gregariousness, its independence of spirit or what is worst its tendency to ignore present ills by flattering itself as to future promise, a coldness disguised by indiscriminate bonhomie, and imperialism hidden even from itself by the cult of individualism.