But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!
But every night come out these envoys of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile. Nature never wears a mean appearance.
Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind.
We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond.
But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this, their warranty deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun.
At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me.
Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.
Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. I loved the chapter on nature and language, it was a beautiful re discovery of words and idioms derived from nature. This essay by Emerson takes up about 56 of this little book's pages, and I feel like I could write about pages on it. Written in , it's interesting that Emerson starts off with how the current generation never got to face nature at its most pure, that was a task their forefathers got to experience.
You know, they had it easy in ! Sometimes he has a thought merging Nature, Man and Spirit that is simple, in sentence structure anyway, and I have to read it several times to Fascinating!
Sometimes he has a thought merging Nature, Man and Spirit that is simple, in sentence structure anyway, and I have to read it several times to come to an understanding with it, other times, a more lengthy discourse seems vaguely comprehensible.
Sometimes I want to blame the s syntax, but most of the time the writing has stood the test of time, so maybe that is not a good excuse. A few years ago I read Thoreau's 'America' and found it full of similar compelling precepts and ideas.
Like 'America', I'm going to read parts of this one over, maybe I'll feel smarter. View 2 comments. Nov 09, Naia Pard rated it liked it Shelves: classics , litere. I had it for a school assignment. This is far from something I would personally choose to read on a foggy Monday on Nov. Basically, it all comes down to the "man" and how he can change whatever if he puts his mind too it.
Still the writing is sublime and Emerson illustrates the canvas of imagination with his vocabulary. Even when challenged, my senses were bathed, soothed and massaged by the lyrical descriptions in the text. Emerson is a delight to listen to thank you LibriVox! He considered it his introductory work, essential to understanding everything else he wrote. From this essay we may gather, walking for pleasure was not a common practice in Concorde of the s; most probably the average person not having the leisure for it.
As he elaborates, we learn that where we walk fields and woods , how often we walk almost every day and direction of travel nothing so mundane as a destination but rather going east for history and west for freedom are the essentials to be considered when walking in nature.
Back in Thoreau's day Americans were too busy earning a living to walk as he suggested. Now most people are too caught up in competitive sports, expensive Disneyland vacations and the more-is-better mentality to appreciate his message.
Oct 10, Liam rated it it was ok. This actually had some really nice quotes and thoughts but it just didn't really grab my interest. May 02, Lisa rated it it was amazing Shelves: transcendentalism. My favorite quotes: "These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us.
Despite the name of the piece, the author seems every bit as preoccupied with the supernatural as he is the natural. I'd maintain that, from certain perspectives, the interchangeability and additional layer of wonderment does make sense. Emerson isn't shy about his spiritual perspective. And that perspective clearly influences his abi "The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. And that perspective clearly influences his ability to pan out and take reverent note of both the vast and the minute.
I also wasn't expecting to find Emerson's commentary quite so thought-provokingly beautiful. Favorite Quotes: "A man is a god in ruins. This is probably the best thing I have read in my life.
I will review it later this week. The third reading renders it much much more magical. In two consecutive years, it has not lost one spark of intensity and brilliance. Jun 20, Vanshi rated it it was ok. Transcendentalism has never been my cup of tea. Here, there are some good ideas, but there are also a lot of ideas I disliked.
I didn't find myself particularly fascinated by anything, although there are multiple quotes that are pretty. I definitely found some flaws. My main reason of distaste was from how Emerson relies on religion. Christianity, of course.
I want to be clear that being Christian and religious in general is by no means bad. I'm just looking at Emerson's lack of variety in his r Transcendentalism has never been my cup of tea. I'm just looking at Emerson's lack of variety in his reasoning.
I, as an atheist, find it difficult to connect to transcendentalism because of this main idea of using nature to transcend to God. The aforementioned excessively Christian reasoning and inconscise writing lowered my rating tremendously. I will say that the "Idealism" chapter reminded me of Immanuel Kant and G. Emerson definitely saw a "Truth", and those other two men did too. This made it easier to connect transcendentalism to Idealism. Criticism of epiricism immediately reminded me of David Hume.
The point here is that Nature is easily connectable to early philosophers of Western Europe, which makes complete sense for American philosophy is deeply influenced by that subcontinent. That is definitely the most fascinating part of this essay rather than the actual ideas within. What's interesting is that I came across Idealism by trying to study Giovanni Gentile.
That man was in Mussolini's cabinet and is considered the father of fascism. Hegel influenced Gentile and Marx in two very, very different ways. The conclusion here is that Hegel and Kant are incredibly abstract and difficult to decipher.
I mean, communism and fascism are historically juxtaposed to each other! The true conclusion, however, is that you wasted your time by reading Vanshi's excessively dense review. Mar 03, Rupertt Wind rated it it was amazing.
Its poetry, pure unadulterated poetry of nature. Feb 15, Tomek rated it it was ok. This was an uneven book. The beginning and the end are easy to read and thought provoking, while the middle is dense and obtuse.
These essays are Emerson's attempts to understand why nature is valuable and what our relationship to nature should be. This is a lofty and noble goal, but I think he ultimately fell short. He starts off by stating his premise: that being in nature gives humans unparallelled peace and happiness. He then grapples with to the reasons behind this truth in subsequent chapt This was an uneven book.
He then grapples with to the reasons behind this truth in subsequent chapters. However, this is where the train seems to go off track. Emerson's writing style becomes difficult to follow and academic. The essay becomes a philosophical treatise. Unfortunately, many of his arguments are flawed, but that would not necessarily make this book less enjoyable if it wasn't so convoluted. Emerson writes philosophy like a poet.
He tries to turn logic into flowery prose, which, rather than elevating his premises, renders them opaque. He tries to right the ship at the end by bringing it back to his original point and explaining how we should relate to nature in simple terms, but it is too little, too late for me.
I also took some umbrage with Emerson's ideas as well. On the one hand, Emerson, like other transcendentalists, tries to convince people that the mechanistic worldview of industrial society, wherein nature has only utilitarian value as a commodity, is flawed and vulgar. However, he does not seem to believe that the dualism, the separation, between humans an nature upon which industrial consumer culture is predicated, is a problem.
In fact, he seems to view it as inherent and critical to restore equilibrium in the world. It is our place, he argues, to dominate nature. He may see us as the "stewards of Creation" of Genesis.
Thus, while he believes that it is wrong to dominate nature because we see it as property and a resource, there seems to be no problem in dominating it with respect in wonder. Humans are the pinnacle of evolution and so it is our role to dominate nature. But to dominate implies submission and inequality, if not outright abuse, which hardly sounds like the making of a healthy loving relationship.
I do not believe it is possible to mend our relationship with nature and truly love it without first addressing and eliminating the separation between us and it.
We are equal players in the drama of life on earth, not some higher observers. Even though Emerson sees beauty in nature as being a more valuable than its raw resources, he seems to think that the value of this beauty is not intrinsic.
It is only valuable insomuch that it inspires and serves as a backdrop to human creation and greatness. We humans are still the main purpose, the teleological end of the natural world in his eyes. I first though it ironic that Emerson called native peoples, who lived as a part of nature rather than apart from nature, savages.
However, I now see it as being demonstrative of his view that the separation between humans and nature to be essential and the natural result of evolution. Thus, he sees them as lesser beings because they still use nature directly and do not separate themselves from it. While Emerson suggests that nature is not just a resource to be used but a reflection of and imbued with God's divinity, he also does not believe that has value beyond that.
Thus, nature is only valuable because it is imbued with spiritual meaning which we assign. Again, this likely a product of his religious background. This notion again conflicts with the worldviews of many indigenous cultures. While they too believed that the natural world was imbued with spiritual meaning, it was also valuable intrinsically. This world was not a steppingstone to a better, higher spiritual realm. Thus, it was not something that could be abused and commodified.
I suppose that I need to view this work within the contexts of Emerson's time. Nature was still largely seen as a dangerous wild place that was to be subdued and put to productive use. It was the age of mechanization and industrialization.
Thus, Emerson's view of unmanaged natural landscapes as being beautiful, wondrous places that could provide love, affection, and inspiration was probably pretty revolutionary for the time. Furthermore, his belief that humans are above nature is probably a function of his background in Judeo-Christian religion, whose Great Chain of Being establishes the hierarchy of Creation. Finally, I take issue with his last chapter as a scientist.
He claims that empirical science is an imperfect lens through which to view the world and will never allow us to fully comprehend it. Although I agree with his premise, I disagree with the conclusion, which is that poetry and art is a better method of interpreting our place and purpose.
Physical science and the arts are two equally valid ways of understanding Creation. Why do we need to choose one? Science deals with fact and art with truth. Both our essential to our survival and well-being. Emerson says that the "half-sight of science," is not enough to allow us to fully see and appreciate the splendor of nature. I tend to agree, though I would also say that art is also a "half-sight.
Without fact we cannot survive in this world and without truth, I would not care to. Well, you caught me rambling. In short, I did not particularly enjoy this book. However, it did make me think deeply about my relationship to nature, so I suppose it served its purpose in that sense. I find it mildly amusing that Emerson identifies the concept of different types of ecosystem services provisioning, regulation, supporting, and cultural in his chapter on Commodity long before the concept became accepted in ecological science.
He also seems to hint at descent with modification in the Discipline chapter about a quarter century before Darwin's The Origin of the Species was published Dec 03, Emily Philbin rated it it was amazing Shelves: nonfiction.
Another reread for me and though I joke with my students about the kumbaya-esque nature here, there's something within this piece that reminds us all we are too rushed to notice. Maybe because I grew up somewhere I could see the stars, where I fell asleep to the sound of the crickets and peepers sooo loud sometimes rather than the sounds of sirens and broken bottles I hear now that I connected with this so deeply.
Maybe it was just the current need for serenity and to rethink what it means to Another reread for me and though I joke with my students about the kumbaya-esque nature here, there's something within this piece that reminds us all we are too rushed to notice.
Maybe it was just the current need for serenity and to rethink what it means to be in this world, but Emerson had a far stronger impact on me now than the many times I read this before In its origin, language was pure poetry, and clearly conveyed the relationship between material symbol and spiritual meaning. Emerson states that the same symbols form the original elements of all languages. And the moving power of idiomatic language and of the strong speech of simple men reminds us of the first dependence of language upon nature.
Modern man's ability to express himself effectively requires simplicity, love of truth, and desire to communicate efficiently. But because we have lost the sense of its origins, language has been corrupted. The man who speaks with passion or in images — like the poet or orator who maintains a vital connection with nature — expresses the workings of God. Finally, Emerson develops the idea that the whole of nature — not just its particulate verbal expressions — symbolizes spiritual reality and offers insight into the universal.
He writes of all nature as a metaphor for the human mind, and asserts that there is a one-to-one correspondence between moral and material laws.
All men have access to understanding this correspondence and, consequently, to comprehending the laws of the universe. Emerson employs the image of the circle — much-used in Nature — in stating that the visible world is the "terminus or circumference of the invisible world. Man may grasp the underlying meaning of the physical world by living harmoniously with nature, and by loving truth and virtue. Emerson concludes "Language" by stating that we understand the full meaning of nature by degrees.
Nature as a discipline — a means of arriving at comprehension — forms the subject of Chapter V, "Discipline. The ultimate result of such lessons is common sense. Emerson offers property and debt as materially based examples that teach necessary lessons through the understanding, and space and time as demonstrations of particularity and individuality, through which "we may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual. The wise man recognizes the innate properties of objects and men, and the differences, gradations, and similarities among the manifold natural expressions.
The practical arts and sciences make use of this wisdom. But as man progressively grasps the basic physical laws, he comes closer to understanding the laws of creation, and limiting concepts such as space and time lose their significance in his vision of the larger picture.
Emerson emphasizes the place of human will — the expression of human power — in harnessing nature. Nature is made to serve man. We take what is useful from it in forming a sense of the universe, giving greater or lesser weight to particular aspects to suit our purposes, even framing nature according to our own image of it. Emerson goes on to discuss how intuitive reason provides insight into the ethical and spiritual meanings behind nature. Nature thus forms the proper basis for religion and ethics.
Moreover, the uses of particular facets of nature as described in "Commodity" do not exhaust the lessons these aspects can teach; men may progress to perception of their higher meaning as well. Emerson depicts moral law as lying at the center of the circle of nature and radiating to the circumference. He asserts that man is particularly susceptible to the moral meaning of nature, and returns to the unity of all of nature's particulars. Each object is a microcosm of the universe.
Through analogies and resemblances between various expressions of nature, we perceive "its source in Universal Spirit. Emerson builds upon his circle imagery to suggest the all-encompassing quality of universal truth and the way it may be approached through all of its particulars.
Unity is even more apparent in action than in thought, which is expressed only imperfectly through language. Action, on the other hand, as "the perfection and publication of thought," expresses thought more directly. Because words and conscious actions are uniquely human attributes, Emerson holds humanity up as the pinnacle of nature, "incomparably the richest informations of the power and order that lie at the heart of things.
As an expression of nature, humanity, too, has its educational use in the progression toward understanding higher truth. At the beginning of Chapter VI, "Idealism," Emerson questions whether nature actually exists, whether God may have created it only as a perception in the human mind. Having stated that the response to this question makes no difference in the usefulness of nature as an aid to human comprehension of the universal, Emerson concludes that the answer is ultimately unknowable.
Whether real or not, he perceives nature as an ideal. Even if nature is not real, natural and universal laws nevertheless apply. However, the common man's faith in the permanence of natural laws is threatened by any hint that nature may not be real. The senses and rational understanding contribute to the instinctive human tendency to regard nature as a reality.
Men tend to view things as ultimates, not to look for a higher reality beyond them. But intuitive reason works against the unquestioned acceptance of concrete reality as the ultimate reality. Intuition counteracts sensory knowledge, and highlights our intellectual and spiritual separateness from nature.
As the intuition is increasingly awakened, we begin to perceive nature differently, to see the whole, the "causes and spirits," instead of individual forms. Emerson explores idealism at length. He first points out that a change in perspective is caused by changes in environment or mechanical alterations such as viewing a familiar landscape from a moving railroad car , which heighten the sense of the difference between man and nature, the observer and the observed.
Altered perspective imparts a feeling that there is something constant within man, even though the world around him changes, sometimes due to his own action upon it. Emerson then discusses the way in which the poet communicates his own power over nature. The poet sees nature as fluid and malleable, as raw material to shape to his own expressive purposes.
Inspired by intuition and imagination, he enhances and reduces facets of nature according to his creative dictates. He provides an ideal interpretation of nature that is more real than concrete nature, as it exists independent of human agency.
The poet, in short, asserts "the predominance of the soul" over matter. Emerson looks to philosophy, science, religion, and ethics for support of the subordination of matter to spirit. He does not uniformly approve of the position assigned to nature by each of these disciplines, but nevertheless finds that they all express an idealistic approach to one degree or another.
He points out that although the poet aims toward beauty and the philosopher toward truth, both subject the order and relations within nature to human thought in order to find higher absolutes, laws, and spiritual realities. Scientists, too, may elevate the spiritual over the material in going beyond the accumulation of particulars to a single, encompassing, enlightening formula.
And although they distrust nature, traditional religion and ethics also promote the spiritual and moral over the physical. In "Idealism," Emerson again takes up the capacity of all men to grasp the ideal and universal. Intellectual inquiry casts doubt upon the independent existence of matter and focuses upon the absolute and ideal as a higher reality.
It encourages approaching nature as "an appendix to the soul" and a means of access to God. Although these complex ideas are expressed by specialists in "intellectual science," they are nevertheless available to all. And when any man reaches some understanding of divinity, he becomes more divine and renews himself physically as well as spiritually. Knowledge of the ideal and absolute brings confidence in our existence, and confers a kind of immortality, which transcends the limitations of space and time.
Emerson points out that in the quest for the ideal, it does not serve man to take a demeaning view of nature.
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