Because my last post wasn't long enough...

Attributed often to Emerson is the boom that is transcendentalism; the movement of thought during the time period in which he wrote Self-Reliance (1841) that was a shift in ideas from the expected goals and success of society to the ideas of transcending material to acknowledge the individual and the innate knowledge within ones self (often of a religious nature and in respect to the Divine). Transcendentalism is the belief in the individual that grows with the ONE who resides within us an within everything in nature. Emerson couples his Self-Reliance and transcendentalism with the encouragement of the individual to move away from the past and historically accepted ideas of value and worth to what a person’s soul and divine qualities recognize as virtuous.

As pragmatism focuses on what is real and what truth really is, so seeks Emerson for the soul to recognize these ideas and refuse to allow outside forces to influence the individual.