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A Crisis of Confidence In the early 1830s, a young Boston pastor found himself wrestling with his faith. His beloved wife had died, and he began questioning his beliefs. At the time, many institutions reinforced the idea that it was better to fit in and repress one’s individuality than it was to stand out in the crowd. The Industrial Revolution had shown that machines could replace people, introducing the idea that individuals did not matter. The pastor was troubled by this notion. He believed, on the contrary, that the individual was the most important force in the universe. The pastor was so passionate about his search for a new way of thinking that he resigned his position and traveled to Europe to visit with some of the great philosophers of the day. That pastor was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his crisis of confidence became a revolution in American thought. When Emerson returned to the United States in 1833, he helped forge the Transcendentalist movement.

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