Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement in the mid-nineteenth century. A former Unitarian minister, he developed a philosophy centred on the divine potential of the individual self and its intuitive access to a universal Over-Soul. His essays Self-Reliance, Nature, and The American Scholar argued for intellectual independence, the spiritual significance of the natural world, and the importance of trusting one's own instincts against conformity and tradition.