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Nature was an essay by Ralph
Waldo Emerson, written in 1836. It’s about 22 pages long.
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This essay explains
transcendentalism – that you can find divinity (Godliness) in nature, all
around you. Emerson called it a Universal Soul, or Reason. The idea is that, if
everything on Earth was made by God, then each little thing tells you something
about God.
“What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the
wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,
––it is a sacred emblem from the first
furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the
fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, the merchant, in their several
resorts, have each an experience precisely parallel, and leading to the same
conclusion: because all organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be
doubted that this moral sentiment which thus scents the air, grows in the
grain, and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks into
his soul. The moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of
truth which it illustrates to him. Who can estimate this? Who can guess how
much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman?”
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Emerson believed that nature
united everything, from animals to the arts and sciences:
“Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy
is obvious, as when we detect the type of the human hand in the flipper of the
fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great superficial
unlikeness. Thus architecture is called "frozen music," by De Stael
and Goethe. Vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. "A Gothic
church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified religion." Michael
Angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is essential.”
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This essay is divided into
eight sections, titled: Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline,
Idealism, Spirit, and Prospects
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In the essay, nature isn’t just
the woods and rivers. It’s the physical world – everything around you,
including art, science, and your physical body - everything but your soul.
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In the section titled Nature, Emerson
discusses how it serves human needs: as entertainment/delight, for
communication, and for understanding our world.
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Emerson argued that people do
not fully accept nature’s beauty and all it has to offer. He said most people
don’t see, or notice, nature the way a child does. That we lose something by
growing up – a poetic or artistic way of seeing.
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He suggested that people stay
in solitude to better develop their relation with nature.
“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the
snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child.”
v Commodity has to do with all the gifts from the earth. the main idea
is we shouldn’t gripe or complain about our world, but be thankful for
everything it offers.
“this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath,
this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping
clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water,
stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his
play-ground, his garden, and his bed.”
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Emerson didn’t believe that
human technology was against nature. His argument was that it imitated nature.
“The useful arts are reproductions or new combinations
by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. He no longer waits for
favoring gales, but by means of steam, he realizes the fable of Aeolus's bag,
and carries the two and thirty winds in the boiler of his boat.”
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Emerson felt that the natural
world was a gift so beautiful, it made us all richer than kings:
“Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of
emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my
Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the
night shall be my Germany
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What makes the world so
beautiful isn’t simply all the nice, scenery, but the fact that it’s there even
when not expected, to remind us of our place, and to provide beauty when we’re
struggling.
“Go out of the house to see the moon, and ’t is mere
tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary
journey.”
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In Language, Emerson explains
how all our words and expressions come from nature.
“An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a
firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is
subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness
are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love.
Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and
hope.”
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Emerson uses the word Discipline
to mean a subject, like a school subject. Nature is itself a subject you can
learn from. It’s a teacher, lesson book, and a classroom. Every science class
you take, every literature and history class, even PE, they’re all different
sides of the discipline of nature.
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Through the discipline of
nature, we learn common sense, and the nature of property, debt, and credit. Emerson
compared property to snow:
“if it fall level to-day, it will be blown into drifts
to-morrow”
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Through the discipline of
nature, we can learn morals – right and wrong:
“All things are moral; . . .
every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every
change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf,
to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from
the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and
wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments. Therefore is nature ever the ally of
Religion: lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.”
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Everything we buy and consume
can teach us morals. Think of common objects like pencils, cups, shoes, coats, eyeglasses,
etc. Emerson saw them as servants:
“. . . 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; . . .”
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