As per Ralph Waldo Emerson, human history is only a record of how every man discovered or rediscovered the principles of universal mind which pre-existed in human mind as laws. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, and every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. Which law becomes powerful and prominent, depends upon a particular circumstance or nature which gives power to one of them at a time.
Thus, history should be understood as a biography, and by reading the biographies of individuals in history, we read our own biography and discover principles of the universal mind that are eternal and unchanging. Emerson says, ‘ All learning that we do in the sphere of arts, poetry, science, heroic deeds etc. is indeed a discovery of our own nature or inner self.’ Emerson believes that an awakened individual “should see that he can live all history in his own person.”
History to a wise man holds nothing exceptional as an achievement to what he is doing in present era. It is important to be able to find intelligible, what the revolutionaries or the winning men of the past did, and to relate them to our own secret experiences, to actually learn anything out of them.
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The ability to awaken us to universe and timeless laws of nature lies in the power of arts, music, sculptures and monuments. Our life is an endless flight with facts and events acting as wings. A man who is enlightened and understands his instincts does not believe in facts but in the principles that underlie them. All great literature talks about the unattained and what is attainable by the power of human mind.
Every Age has their fables which give an expression to what the mind of that time toiled to achieve. Thus history is about the achievable; it is an inspiration for the readers to put their righteous attempts and soul into doing the just things.
Human mind needs an entity to work upon. No achievement or discovery or experience felt can be explained without an existing object to associate with. Emerson has explained this correspondence by the facts, mind is One, and Nature is correlative. The trivial experiences of everyday relate to some old prediction which we heard or saw without heed.
According to Emerson, history should be written with the concentration of soul and the cycle of experience rather than facts should be passed through it. It should talk of the life that you lived. No history yet talks about the metaphysical annals of man or of the mysteries hidden behind Death and Immortality. History should not be build around Rome, Constantinople, Paris, but there should have a broader and deeper view of the way nature has evolved. It should carry a true expression of our annals- from an ethical transformation, from the influx of regenerated conscience instead of being a symbol of our selfishness and pride.