Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essential Spiritual Writings Edited by Jon Sweeney Orbis, £15 There is much to admire, and a areat deal to mistrust, in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The prose often soars but the theology can be troubling. Talk of the divine potential within every human person and the relentless assault on tradition frequently crossed over into heterodoxy. Emerson, Jon Sweeney writes, “thought he was saving a living God from the heap of Christian belief that dwelled too much on revelation ‘long ago given and done’ ”. Emerson’s great project was the “slow dismantling of the doctrinal edifice” which, unsurprisingly, divided opinion. During his lifetime, the philosopher endured bitter denunciations from New England’s intellectual and clerical establishments, but he was also one of the few Americans whose works were “readily exported, read, discussed and praised throughout the capitals of Europe”. Posthumously, Emerson has been hailed as a convention-crushing prophet and dismissed as a dilettante philosopher who elevated the individual “at the expense of dismantling just about everything else”. He was, however, impossible to ignore, as even his foes admitted. Edgar Allan Poe described Emerson’s work as “sprawling, illegible and irregular”, but conceded that it was “sufficiently bold”. The deftly edited compendium of the Sage of Concord’s spiritual writings will allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Extracts from the youthful outbursts and mature meditations cover all the familiar Emersonian themes – from nature to the soul – and there is a pleasing selection from the sometimes underrated poetry. On form, Emerson is hard to resist. “Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times,” he wrote in his famous essay on self-reliance. “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.” I’m easily seduced by such prose, and it is very confusing when one of your least favourite thinkers is also one of your literary heroes.