Nature
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NATURE
BY
R. W. 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.
NEW EDITION
BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE:
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY
M DCCC XLIX.
Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1849
By JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
BOSTON:
THURSTON, TORRY AND COMPANY,
31 Devonshire Street.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I. NATURE 8
CHAPTER II. COMMODITY 10
CHAPTER III. BEAUTY 13
CHAPTER IV. LANGUAGE 23
CHAPTER V. DISCIPLINE 34
CHAPTER VI. IDEALISM 45
CHAPTER VII. SPIRIT 59
CHAPTER VIII. PROSPECTS 64
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.
NATURE.
CHAPTER I.
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.
CHAPTER II.
COMMODITY.
WHOEVER considers the final cause of the world, will discern a
multitude of uses that result. They all admit of being thrown into one
of the following classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and
Discipline.
Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages
which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is
temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. Yet
although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature
which all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like childish
petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that
has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which
floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid
ornaments, these rich conveniences, 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.
"More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of."--
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 wind sows the seed; the sun
evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on
the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the
plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of
the divine charity nourish man.
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. To diminish friction, he paves the road with iron bars,
and, mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, animals, and
merchandise behind him, he darts through the country, from town to
town, like an eagle or a swallow through the air. By the aggregate of
these aids, how is the face of the world changed, from the era of