Nature

The main themes in Emerson’s Nature are: Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealist, Spirit and Prospects.

            Nature expresses Emerson's belief that each individual must develop a personal understanding of the universe.  According to Emerson, people in the past had an intimate and immediate relationship with God and nature, and arrived at their own understanding of the universe.  All the basic elements that they required to do so exist at every moment in time.  

            Emerson's rejection of received wisdom is reinforced by his repeated references throughout Nature to perception of familiar things, to seeing things anew.  For Emerson, each moment provides an opportunity to learn from nature and to approach an understanding of universal order through it.  The importance of the present moment, of spontaneous and dynamic interactions with the universe, of the possibilities of the here and now, render past observations and schemes irrelevant. Emerson focuses on the accessibility of the laws of the universe to every individual through a combination of nature and his own inner processes.

            In Language, he states that the relation between spirit and matter "is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men."  In his discussion of "intellectual science" in Idealism, he writes that "all men are capable of being raised by piety or by passion" into higher realms of thought.  And at the end of the essay, in Prospects, he exhorts, "Know then that the world exists for you.  For you is the phenomenon perfect."  Each man is capable of using the natural world to achieve spiritual understanding.

            In Discipline, Emerson discusses the ways in which each man may understand nature and God — through rational, logical "Understanding" and through intuitive "Reason." Although the mystical, revelatory intuition leads to the highest spiritual truth, understanding, too, is useful in gaining a particular kind of knowledge, but whichever mental process illuminates a given object of attention at a given time, insight into universal order always takes place in the mind of the individual, through his own experience of nature and inner powers of receptiveness.

            In Idealism, Emerson stresses the advantages of the ideal theory of nature.  Idealism makes God an integral element in our understanding of nature, and provides a comprehensively inclusive view - Idealism sees the world in God; it beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul.

            Emerson writes in Prospects: "The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself.  He cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit."  By drawing upon our latent spiritual capabilities and seeking evidence of God's order in nature, we will make sense of the universe.

            In Beauty, he describes the way in which the structure of the eye and the laws of light conspire to create perspective: “By the mutual action of [the eye's] structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character so ever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical.”

            In discussing the similarities between natural objects and between natural laws in Discipline, Emerson reiterates and expands the image, making it more complex and comprehensive: “It is like a great circle on a sphere, comprising all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and comprise it, in like manner. Every such truth is the absolute Ens [that is, being or entity] seen from one side. But it has innumerable sides.”

            In Beauty, Language, and Discipline, Emerson examines Reason's revelation to man of the larger picture behind the multiplicity of details in the material world.  In Beauty, he describes the stimulation of the human intellect by natural beauty.  He offers artistic creativity as the extreme love of and response to natural beauty.  In Language, he describes the symbolism of original language as based on natural fact, and the integral relationship between language, nature, and spirit.  

            In Prospects, Emerson implores his readers to trust in Reason as a means of approaching universal truth.   Emerson puts forward examples of intuition at work — the "traditions of miracles," the life of Jesus, transforming action based on principle, the "miracles of enthusiasm, as those . . . of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers," "animal magnetism" "prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom of children..

            Emerson explores at length the difference between Understanding and Reason, both serve to instruct man, however, Understanding is tied to matter and leads to common sense rather than to the broadest vision.  Emerson grants that as man advances in his grasp of natural laws, he comes closer to understanding the laws of creation, but Reason is essential to transport man out of the material world into the spiritual.  In Idealism, Emerson asserts that intuition works against acceptance of concrete reality as ultimate reality, thereby promoting spiritualization.

            In Spirit, Emerson presents the notion of the mystical and intuitively understood "universal essence" which, expressed in man through nature's agency, confers tremendous power: “Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man?  Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite.”

            Emerson stresses throughout Nature that nature exists to serve man, and explains the ways in which it does so.  In Commodity, he enumerates the basic material uses of nature by man.  Emerson then goes on to point out the fact that man harnesses nature to enhance its material usefulness. In Beauty, Emerson discusses the power of natural beauty to restore man when exhausted, to give him simple pleasure, to provide a suitable backdrop to his glorious deeds, and to stimulate his intellect, which may ultimately lead him to understand universal order.  Man's artistic expression is inspired by the perception and translation in his mind of the beauty of nature.

            In Language, Emerson details language's uses as a vehicle of thought and, ultimately, through its symbolism and the symbolism of the things it stands for, as an aid to comprehension and articulation of spiritual as well as material truth.  A person effectively expresses himself, Emerson notes, in proportion to the natural vigor of his language.  Nature both exists for and intensifies man's capabilities.

            In Discipline, he introduces human will, which, working through the intellect, emphasizes aspects of nature that the mind requires and disregards those that the mind does not need.  Thus man imposes himself on nature, makes it what he wants it to be.  

            Emerson develops this idea in Idealism, in discussing the poet's elevation of soul over matter in "subordinating nature for the purpose of expression" — giving emphasis and drawing connections as suits the message he wishes to convey.  Nature is thus "fluid," "ductile and flexible," changeable by man.

            Emerson asserts throughout Nature the primacy of spirit over matter.  Nature's purpose is as a representation of the divine to promote human insight into the laws of the universe, and thus to bring man closer to God.  Emerson writes of nature in Spirit as "the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it."  He explores the relationship between matter and spirit extensively in Language, in which he discusses the correspondence between material and moral laws, and in Idealism, in which he presents the concept of nature as a projection by God on the human mind, as opposed to a concrete reality.

            Emerson's discussion in Language is based on three premises: that words — even those used to describe intellectual or spiritual states — originated in nature, in an elemental interaction between mind and matter; that not only do words represent nature, but, because nature is an expression of the divine, the natural facts that words represent are symbolic of spiritual truth; and that the whole of nature — not just individual natural facts — symbolizes the whole of spiritual truth. Emerson writes: “The world is emblematic.  Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass.”

            Moral law, as he suggests in Discipline, "lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference." At the end of Language, Emerson works toward the ideal theory in presenting all the particulars of nature as preexisting "in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by preceding affections, in the world of spirit." He writes that a fact is "the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world." Matter thus issues from and is secondary to spirit.

            In Idealism and Spirit, Emerson takes a philosophical leap in asking whether nature exists separately, or whether it is only an image created in man's mind by God.  Although he says that the answer cannot be known, and that it makes no difference in man's use of nature, he suggests that idealism is preferable to viewing nature as concrete reality because it constitutes "that view which is most desirable to the mind."  Emerson supports the ideal theory by pointing to the ways in which poetry, philosophy, science, religion, and ethics subordinate matter to higher truth, but he also acknowledges that idealism is hard to accept from the commonsensical point of view — the view of those who trust in rationality over intuition.

            In various ways in Nature, Emerson appears to suggest that the natural world does, in fact, exist separately from spirit.  For instance, he carefully distinguishes between man's inner qualities and his physical existence, between the "ME" and the "NOT ME," which includes one's own body.  His progressive argument is marred by this seeming contradiction, and by his hesitancy to state outright that nature is an ideal, even while he discusses it as such.  Emerson concludes the essay by asking his readers to open themselves to spiritual reality by trusting in intuitive reason.