NATURE

Ralph Waldo Emerson

----

A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.

Introduction

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the
fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The
foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through
their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the
universe? 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? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of
life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they
supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among
the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into
masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also.
There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new
men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable.
We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe
that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our
minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a
solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it
as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is
already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let
us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around
us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature.
We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote
approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to
truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and
speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound
judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a
true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that
it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only
unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams,
beasts, sex.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature
and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate
from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is,
both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked
under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature and
casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses; -- in its
common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as
our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of
thought will occur. _Nature_, in the common sense, refers to
essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf.
_Art_ is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as
in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken
together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching,
and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on
the human mind, they do not vary the result.

_Chapter I_ NATURE

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his
chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write,
though nobody is with me. 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.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always
present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a
kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. 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. The lover of nature is he whose inward
and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has
retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. 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. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under
a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of
special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am
glad to the brink of fear. 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. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these
plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial
festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of
them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and
faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no
disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot
repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe
air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes.
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. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign
and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or
servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of
uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something
more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil
landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man
beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is
the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.
I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them.
The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It
takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like
that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I
deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does
not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is
necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature
is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which
yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the
nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the
colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of
his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt
of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear
friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in
the population.