This is one of a four-part classic series in hardback. It is an awesome collection that can easily be found cheaply in many used book stores. There is a great deal of pleasurable reading from classic works in these volumes. This particular volume has great thinkers stretching from Aristotle to Dewey.

Emerson's, Self-Reliance is included here (pp. 382-408). His well known statement: “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude” (p. 388) is included here. Self-Reliance argues that we hear a voice within that is stifled by others, or in the crowd. The inner voice is spiritual and true; the crowd's voice is artificial and wrong. Emerson in some way seems to be hinting at a Nietzschean uebermench for all.