Nature

Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is a legendary and superb nature essay and a philosophical interpretation of nature and how it influences man physically and spiritually. Emerson's writing is redolent with the wonder of the true romantic, but never sinks to the level of maudlin fluff.In the essay Emerson put forth the foundation of transcendentalism, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. Transcendentalism suggests that the divine, or God, suffuses nature, and suggests that reality can be understood by studying nature. Emerson's visit to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris inspired a set of lectures he later delivered in Boston which were then published.Within the essay, Emerson divides nature into four usages: Commodity, Beauty, Language and Discipline. These distinctions define the ways by which humans use nature for their basic needs, their desire for delight, their communication with one another and their understanding of the world.Emerson followed the success of "Nature" with a speech, "The American Scholar", which together with his previous lectures laid the foundation for transcendentalism and his literary career.Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882)[5] was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature". Following this work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."[6]Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", [7] "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet", and "Experience." Together with "Nature", [8] these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world. He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, [10] and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. "In all my lectures," he wrote, "I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man."[11]Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist.Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803, [13] a son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarianminister. He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and his father's great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo.[14] Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles.[15] Three other children-Phebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline-died in childhood.[15] Emerson was entirely of English ancestry, and his family had been in New England since the early colonial period.