The Conduct of Life

First published in 1860 book, Ralph Waldo Emerson's book "The Conduct of Life" is among the gems of his mature works.

First published in the year of Abraham Lincoln's election as President, this work poses the questions of human freedom and fate. The book also reveals a developed humanism together with a full awareness of human limitations and may be considered as partly confession. "The Conduct of Life" ostensibly is a set of essays about how to live life, but also is an amalgam of what life taught Emerson.

"The Conduct of Life" emphasizes Emerson's philosophy and thoughts on such issues as freedom and fate; creativity and established culture; faith, experience, and evidence; the individual, God, and the world; unity and dualism; moral law, grace, and compensation; and wealth and success.

This is the best of Emerson's later works, qualifying his earlier popular essays, series one and two, with the heavier hand of experience.