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Emersons Nature Essay, Research Paper

Critical Analyzation Of Emerson s Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a profound writer and speaker of the 19th century. As a poet and an essayist he was able to invoke new ideas and thoughts that soon made him the central figure in the Transcendentalist movement. Emerson created a revolution that influenced other great writers such as Thoreau, and Whitman. Thus making Ralph Waldo Emerson one of the most important writers in American literature. Emerson was a visionary, and because of this, he resisted social conformity. Breaking beyond these boundaries gave him the ability to make his own assumptions on how the world worked. This newfound awareness led to his first major achievement. The essay Nature was an extensive subject for Emerson, thus creating the basis for his whole transcendental spirituality. Through the poetic and evocative ideas within Emerson s language, he speaks of the 7 facets of the relationship between humans and nature: Commodity, beauty, language, discipline, idealism, spirit and prospects. His belief is that the spirit is there to encompass nature, and by understanding self-transcendence nature can reveal spirituality to us. As part of nature, Emerson believes we are born into this original relationship between one another. However, because of the ongoing strive for power in everyday life we are disconnected and individualized from it. Because most of us look at nature only with our own desires in mind, we do not really see nature. At least not how Emerson would like us to see it. He wants us to look at nature as if we were little children. Adults are generally corrupt; children are innocent and able to have a direct relation with God’s design. “The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

Emerson poses a way to find a personal connection to the beauty and spirituality throughout nature. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Emerson states, emphasizing the word also. He continues with, Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Emerson wants to recover the immediate relationship that our ancestors once had with the world. He believes we need to find the answers to the questions of how we should live. In God, every end is converted into a new means. Thus the use of commodity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to the mind an education in the doctrine of use, namely that a thing is good only so far as it serves. By interacting with Nature people learn not only what is practical but also what is good. “The moral law lies at the center of nature and radiates to the circumference…. The moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him. What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of Health!” For Emerson, the soul and nature are perfectly complementary.

In the opening chapters of Nature he describes the different things nature provides to the consciousness. Commodity is the material things that nature provides us. Emerson’s view of nature is something like the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve were moral, they existed in a perfect harmony with nature. But after the first sin humanity was morally corrupted and now we are no longer able to be in harmony with nature. Nature exists to provide to the human needs: “Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. . . . the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man.” Human values are built into nature; what we feel is good to us is naturally good.

In chapter three, Emerson moves on to Beauty, which he argues that our aesthetics are derived from nature. “Primary forms” such as the mountains, the sky, the trees, the animals, all “gives us a delight in and for themselves. The entire circuit of natural forms, the totality of nature.” Emerson’s approach to being one with nature is extremely visual; this is closely related to why he stresses the importance of everyone to have individual vision. Emerson seems careful in explaining that beauty is not just an elaborate painting or a pretty picture. Instead Every natural action is graceful, nature is the norm, and within nature that is where we gain our subconscious knowledge of beauty. Beauty also needs to be perceived intellectually, to reflect on the truth placed within. “A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.” The purpose of beauty in nature is to connect us with nature’s true organization. The concept of nature providing us with beauty is easily grasped, however, according to Emerson nature also provides us with language, which he focuses on in chapter four.

In a famous, and difficult opening statement he summarizes his position. Nature is the vehicle of thought, and in a simple, double, and Threefold degree. Words are signs of natural facts. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. Nature is the symbol of spirit. The first point is a theory of language, which makes the distinction that words are not things, but signs standing for things. Emerson believes words are signifiers; things are what are being signified. The important distinction is between the two words, signifier and signified. It sounds basic until he further explains that even those words, which express a moral or intellectual fact , will be found. If traced back far enough he believes there will be some material or physical appearance in representation. He implies that when we use

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