Nature
Nature,essay by Emerson, published anonymously in 1836 and reprinted in Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849). Based on his early lectures, this first book expresses the main principles of Transcendentalism. An introduction states that “Our age is retrospective,” seeing God and nature at second hand through the ideas and experiences of previous generations, and asks, “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” The eight brief chapters discuss the “lover of nature,” the rare, poetic person “whose inward and outer senses are still truly adjusted to each other”; the “uses” of nature; the idealist philosophy in relation to nature; evidences of spirit in the material universe; and the potential expansion of human souls and works that will result from a general return to direct, immediate contact with the natural environment. The four uses of nature are (1) “Commodity,” or its utilitarian and sensuous...
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