INTRODUCTION Emerson on Creativity in Thought and Action The opening essay of Emerson’s 1860 book, The Conduct of Life, 1 posed, in that fateful year of threatening Civil War and disunion, the philosophical problem of human freedom and fate. The essay “Fate” is followed in the present book by a series of essays on related themes, including: “Power,” “Wealth,” “Culture,” “Worship,” “Beauty” and “Illusions.” The central ques- tion of the volume is, “How shall I live?” Appreciating both our freedom and its limits, we understand the vitality of power to acquire what wealth is needed to scale the corrections and heights of culture and worship, find beauty in life and human society, wary still of the illusions. Overall, the book is a call for creative solutions. Yet the nation, in the year of Abraham Lincoln’s election, seemed fated to war or disunion in spite of all its dedica- tion to freedom. 1. Fate, Thought, and Freedom The opening essay elaborates the preliminary point that “in our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon immovable limitations.” That there are limitations to the fulfillment of our wishes and desires, no one doubts. Yet, these are limitations to existing powers to fulfill our wishes and desires. Where we find limitations to power, then we find power, too. “If we must accept Fate,” Emerson says, “we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.” Limitation also has its limits. “Every spirit makes its house,” he says, affirming freedom and power, though “afterwards the house confines the spirit.” So, we need on occasion to get out of or transcend that self-fabricated house and explore the larger world and its potentialities. Emerson recognizes that every solution brings new problems. The essay “Fate” is, overall, a forceful affirmation of human free- 1. First published in Boston by Tricknor and Fields in 1860.