On August 31, 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge. We know this address as The American Scholar. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. would later declare this moment to be “the declaration of independence of American intellectual life.”

On July 4, 184, Emerson’s younger friend, Thoreau, would set up camp on a nook of Walden Pond to begin a two year, two month and two day experiment in consciousness and the declaration of independence his friend had offered.

More to follow . . .