History

The enlightened individual] . . . "should see that he can live all history in his own person."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, History

In History (1841), Emerson explores the philosophical principle that an enlightened individual "should see that he can live all history in his own person." In his view, individual minds contain principles of the universal mind, and so we can learn from those principles by studying biography. Through reading about others, we can learn about our own natures and consequently about the human experience.