Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

                     American essayist and anti-slavery activist. Emerson's
                    enthusiastic celebration of the individual person expressed a
                    prominent element of nineteenth-century optimism in his
                    Essays — First Series (1841) and Second Series (1844).
                    Among his best-known philosophical works are "The
                    American Scholar" (1837), a speech on American intellectual values,
                    and the confidently humanistic essay, "Self-Reliance" (1841).
                    Influenced by German Romanticism, Emerson helped to establish a
                    lasting American taste for non-theistic spirituality.