On Heroes and Hero-Worship / Representative Men

389 pp. Two titles in one volume: On Heroes and Hero-Worship by Thomas Carlyle, and Representative Men, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. "In 1833, when Emerson and Carlyle first met--at Carlyle's home on a remote Scottish moor--the meeting gave both men a sense of sympathetic recognition. Early in their conversation it was revealed that they shared a belief in the importance of Great Men. Eight years later, in 1841, On Heroes appeared, and its influence on Emerson is undoubted. Within four years he had prepared a set of lectures on what he called Representative Men, which complements the Carlyle book. Where the Scot was vehement and dyspeptic, haranguing against democracy and asserting that the history of the world is "at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here," Emerson was gently optimistic, with a regard for great men, and, indeed, all men, as "lenses through which we read our own minds.""