Circles: Essays: First Series

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.  His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet" and "Experience". He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world.  "Circles" is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, first published in 1841. The essay consists of a philosophical view of the vast array of circles one may find throughout nature. In the opening line of the essay Emerson states "The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. Contents: Essays: First Series, 1841 X. "Circles"