Unhappy teaching (1821--25), he tried the Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, and in 1826 began to guest preach in Unitarian pulpits, but his liberal ideas led him to break with the Unitarians in 1832. At the end of the year he went to Europe where he sought out many of the major literary-intellectual figures; in particular, Thomas Carlyle, his lifelong correspondent; and began to develop his own philosophy, a compound of German idealism, Neo-Platonism, Asian mysticism, and Swedenborgianism.

Back in America in 1833 he took up guest preaching again, but he gradually abandoned that for public lectures. His first wife having died (1831), he remarried (1835) and settled in Concord, MA, where he spent mornings writing and afternoons walking in the woods and fields; he enjoyed his four children and among his circle of friends was Henry David Thoreau. His famous Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard in 1837, "The American Scholar," was a humanist manifesto, stressing Americans' distinctive traits; and in place of traditional Christianity, he subscribed to a philosophy known as Transcendentalism, stressing the ties of humans to nature. Hardly an activist, he did support the abolitionists and the Civil War.

Although he published many volumes of essays and poetry;b1Nature (1836), Representative Man (1850), The Conduct of Life (1860);b1his main source of income as well as of his popular reputation came from the lectures that he gave throughout America and in England. He made a final trip to Europe and Egypt (1872--73) and continued to lecture and publish, but his mind clouded over during his final decade. Never accepted solely as a poet, philosopher, or creative writer, he has survived as one of America's most unique voices and influences.