At the end of his life, Emerson looked back on the rise of New England Transcendentalism in the essay "Historic Notes on Life and Letters in Massachusetts," later published under the title "Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England." He wrote of this vital period: "The idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world." Although disinclined to take credit for his own influence, he himself did much to advance the central position of mankind and of the individual in relation to God, nature, and human institutions. From before the 1836 publication of Nature (his first, most comprehensive exposition of the principles of Transcendental philosophy), every lecture that he gave and every piece that he wrote elevated the importance and dignity of man as an expression of God, as a part of the unity of God, man, and nature in the Oversoul. The assumptions underlying Nature invalidated the subordination of the individual in more traditional religious, social, and political frameworks. In Chapter VII of Nature ("Spirit"), Emerson wrote:
. . . that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? . . . man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite.
This outlook was radically humanistic, and challenged the distant sovereignty of God that formed part of New England's Calvinistic heritage.
Emerson not only uplifted mankind to oneness with, rather than subservience to, God. He also suggested a distinctly democratic view of each man as equal in worth and capacity to all other men. Human hierarchies, distinctions between the great and the humble, were irrelevant in measuring the value of the individual. Emerson wrote in Chapter VIII of Nature ("Prospects"):
All that Adam had, all that Cæsar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Cæsar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.
