Stoics are speaking to locked-down readers

This text was first published in Emerson’s Essays collection in 1841. Emerson drew on his journals of 1832-40 for a number of ideas and passages he wrote here. Over the years, he delivered the text as speeches and lectures, so it evolved over time. "Ne te quæsiveris extra." "Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shad...