...befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society...of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all...

...condition, a Heideggerian phrase I've assembled to translate a line from "Self- Reliance": "Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you: the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events" (CW2, 28). My claim, then, is that Emerson's essays provocatively delimit the...