Experience Summary and Analysis

As time and life pass through our consciousness, largely unheeded, we rarely can mark those specific dates or places where "experience" was gained from a teachable moment, Emerson says. We stumble through life so unaware that it is miraculous we can acquire wisdom, experience poetry or gain virtue. Usually it is only in retrospect that we become aware of the changes in our lives brought about through experience, according to the transcendentalist writer. Emerson notes that people often make a dramatic display of grief, but says it is really a "shallow" emotion. When his son died, Emerson says, he at first felt deprived of "a beautiful estate", but later realized there is no way he can ever his son back or recover his lost estate.

Our own temperaments color our experience and are a large part of the "system of illusions...