Five-minute digest
The Conduct of Life
Summary
The Conduct of Life is Ralph Waldo Emerson's book of nine essays on how a person should live, published in 1860 and drawn from lectures he had given through the 1850s. Where his earlier Essays celebrated self-reliance and the soul's direct access to truth, this later book faces the hard limits of life: temperament, heredity, circumstance and the 'terror of life'. Fate opens with those limits and answers that thought and will can rise above them, ending with an appeal to build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. Power praises health, energy and concentration. Wealth argues that a person should earn his own living, use money well and avoid waste, and that real wealth comes from applying mind to nature. Culture warns against narrow egotism and recommends books, travel, cities and solitude as correctives. Behavior treats manners as the happy ways of doing things and the eye and face as revealers of character. Worship, the center of the book, argues that a moral law runs through the universe, that belief in luck is shallow, and that people reveal their own character by the way they judge the world. Considerations by the Way offers practical advice on friendship, the masses and the uses of difficulty; Beauty defends beauty as a sign of health and order; and Illusions ends with the young mortal alone with the gods amid the shifting appearances of life. The essays are dense and aphoristic, full of memorable sentences, examples from history and science, and sharp observations of American society. They are a primary source for New England Transcendentalism and for the moral outlook of nineteenth-century America. Emerson had left the Unitarian ministry and does not write as an orthodox Christian: his 'worship' is directed to a universal moral law and an impersonal Over-Soul rather than to the God of the creeds. Students can therefore read him both for his insight into character, work and self-government and as a test case in comparing Transcendentalist and Christian accounts of providence, sin and grace. The book suits high school students who read one essay at a time, with a pencil, and who are ready to argue with as well as admire a great American writer.
Top Lessons
Fate and freedom
Emerson admits that heredity and circumstance limit us, yet insists that 'Intellect annuls Fate.' Students can compare his answer with the Christian teaching that God's providence governs all things while human beings remain responsible.
Our judgments reveal us
In Worship Emerson writes that our opinion of the world is also a confession of character. A suspicious person sees suspicion everywhere. The idea echoes Christ's warning about the mote and the beam.
Earning, spending and character
In Wealth Emerson argues that each person should pay his own way and spend for the higher purposes of life. Students can weigh his practical advice against Scripture's teaching on stewardship and contentment.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are, and if we misbehave we suspect others.”
“Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances”
Frequently cited
“Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.”
“Life is a search after power”
Frequently cited
“The first wealth is health.”
“Manners are the happy ways of doing things”
“God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.”
“Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.”
“There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe.”