Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau changed our lives. How? Well, the answer is not so simple as the statement. To understand fully how they affected our lives, we have to understand the philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau, and the relationship between the two. So let's begin with the relationship between Emerson and Thoreau.

Emerson was born in 1803, into a family of ministers. He went to Harvard where he studied theology and philosophy, among other subjects. It was at Harvard where Emerson discovered transendentalism, and his career shifted paths. He started to give lectures on his philosophy of life and the human spirit. It was at one of these lectures that a young, influential man by the name Thoreau first was introduced to Emerson.

Thoreau, born in 1817, was the son of a pencil maker. His mother ran a boarding house where she hosted many of the intellectuals of their time. Thoreau attended Harvard as well, and that was wh

So how did Emerson and Thoreau change our lives? Without their pioneering essays on such subjects as "Self-Reliance" and "Civil Disobedience", we might never be able to express ourselves without worries of fitting into the constraints and the conformity of our society. We might never be able to "Dance to the beat of our own drummer".

In "Civil Disobedience", Thoreau's most famous social protest, He explains that it is our civil right to disagree with laws. He believed that people must be free to act according to their own idea of right and wrong, without government interference. In "Civil Disobedience", he said that people should refuse to obey any law they believe is unjust. Thoreau practiced this type of passive resistance when, in 1846, he refused to pay poll taxes. He did so to express his opposition to the Mexican War. Thoreau spent one night in jail for his refusal. The essay greatly influenced such reformers as Leo Tolstoy of Russia, Mohandas Gandhi of India, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders of the American civil rights movement.

Emerson's writing focused on nonconformity and individuality. In his essay "Self-Reliance," he wrote, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind," and, "Whoso wo

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