History as a Biography of Shared Experiences

Emerson goes on to say that since this universal mind is the one that writes history, it must also be the one that reads it. He argues that because everyone shares the same experiences, history serves as a biography for each person. The universal nature of the spirit, according to Emerson, connects everyone and everything across time. He supports this idea by employing the transcendentalist theory of oneness, suggesting that all of history has occurred for us in the present, and each person can understand the past by comparing it to their own life.