Essays — First Series
Essays — First Series is 74,651 words — about 4h 59m at 250 words per minute, across 24 chapters. Measure your own speed and read it here.
How long does it take to read Essays?
4h 59m at 250 words per minute
74,651 words · 24 chapters · counted from the full text, not estimated from a page count. Measure your own speed and this becomes your number.
Read Essays — First Series2.99 on its own · included with any membership · read a chapter first, free
How it opens
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is th…
Details
- AuthorRalph Waldo Emerson
- SourceProject Gutenberg #2944
- Length74,651 words · 4h 59m of reading
- Chapters24
- DictionaryIncluded
- CopyrightPublic domain in the United States
- Source checked2026-08-28
Contents
24 chapters
Recovered from the original source text, so you can open the book at any of them.
- 01I. HISTORY
- 02HISTORY
- 03II. SELF-RELIANCE
- 04SELF-RELIANCE
- 05III. COMPENSATION
- 06COMPENSATION
- 07IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS
- 08SPIRITUAL LAWS
- 09V. LOVE
- 10LOVE
- 11VI. FRIENDSHIP
- 12FRIENDSHIP
- 13VII. PRUDENCE
- 14PRUDENCE
- 15VIII. HEROISM
- 16HEROISM
- 17IX. THE OVER-SOUL
- 18THE OVER-SOUL
- 19X. CIRCLES
- 20CIRCLES
- 21XI. INTELLECT
- 22INTELLECT
- 23XII. ART
- 24ART
More from the library
"De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries
A Child's Garden of Verses
A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Tale of Two Cities
Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the Seven Against Thebes
Essays — First Series is public domain, and free at Project Gutenberg. Liminanotio is a word-at-a-time speed reader that runs in your browser, alongside the rest of the public-domain library.