 INTRODUCTION OF NATURE A subtle chain of countless rings, the next, unto the farthest, brings. The eye reads Omen's where it goes, and speaks all languages, the rose. Once driving to be man, the worm mounts through all the spires of form. INTRODUCTION Our age is retrospective. It builds the supple curves 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? Embusomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action and proportion to nature. Why should we grop among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines today 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 and 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. This 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 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. End of Introduction, Recording by David Lawrence, August the 4th, 2009, in Brampton, Ontario. Chapter 1 of Nature. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Chapter 1. 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 woodcutter from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Water owns this field, lock 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, but 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 scene. 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 maugure 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 grimaced midnight. There 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 is slough, and at what period so ever 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. Being on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. 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 conate 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. This 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 in 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. End of Chapter 1, read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto, California, for LibriVox. 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 sense is owed to nature. This of course is a benefit which is temporary and immediate, 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 tint 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 playground, 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 sign 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 Eolus's bag and carries the two and thirty winds in the boiler of his boat. To diminish fiction he paves the road with iron bars and mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, animals, and merchandise behind him he darts to 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 Noah to that of Napoleon? The private poor man had cities, ships, canals, bridges built for him. He goes to the post office and the human race run on his errands, to the bookshop and the human race read and write of all that happens, for him to the courthouse and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road and the human race go forth every morning and shovel out the snow and cut a path for him. But there is no need of specifying particulars in this class of uses. The catalogue is endless and the example so obvious that I shall leave them to the reader's reflection with the general remark that this mercenary benefit is one which has respect to a father good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Nature This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson Chapter 3 Beauty A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely the love of beauty. The ancient Greeks called the world cosmos, beauty, such as the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us delight in and for themselves, a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its 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. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There's no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful, and the stimulus it affords, the sense, and the sort of infinitude which it had, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pinecone, the wheat here, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, seashells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees as the palm. For better consideration, we may distribute the aspects of beauty in a threefold manner. One. First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. The influence of the forms and actions in nature is so needful to man that in its lowest functions it seems to lie on the confines of commodity and beauty. To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the dinning craft of the street and sees the sky in the woods and is a man again. In their eternal calm he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired so long as we can see far enough. But in other hours, nature satisfies by its loveliness and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I see the spectacle of mourning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations. The act of enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does nature deify us with a few and cheap elements? Give me health in a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria. The sunset and moon rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of fairy. Broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding. The night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams. Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the afternoon, was the charm last evening of a January sunset. The western clouds divided and some divided themselves into pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness, and the air had so much life and sweetness that it was a pain to come within doors. What was it the nature would say? Was there no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shakespeare could not reform for me in words? The leafless trees became spires of flame in the sunset, with the blue east for their background, and the stars of the dead calluses of flowers, and every withered stem and stable rhyme with frost contribute something to the mute music. The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country landscape is pleasant only half the year. I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer. To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field it beholds every hour a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again. The heavens change every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom on the plains beneath. The state of the crop and the surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth from week to week. The succession of native plants and the pastures and road sides, which make the silent clock by which time tells the summer hours, will make even the divisions of the day sensible to a keen observer. The tribes of birds and insects, like the plants punctual to their time, follow each other, and the year has room for all. By water-courses the variety is greater. In July the blue pondateria, or Pickleweed, blooms in large beds in the shallow parts of our pleasant river, and swarms with yellow butterflies in continual motion. Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold. Indeed, the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month the new ornament. But this beauty of nature, which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards and blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows and still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and to smear tinsel. It will not please us when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, whoever could clutch it, go forth to find it, and it is gone, because only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence. The presence of a higher, namely of the spiritual element, is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty, which can be lucked without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry in the state. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it, he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. All those things for which men plow, build, or sail, obey virtue, said Salist. The winds and waves, said Gibbon, are always on the side of the ablest navigators. So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. When a noble act is done, perchance in a scene of great natural beauty, when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae, when Arnold Winkleried, in the High Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades, are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed? When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America, before it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane, the sea behind, and the purple mountains of the Indian archipelago around, can we separate the man from the living picture? Does not the new world clothe his form with her palm groves and savannas as fit drapery? Water does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelope great actions. When Sir Harry Vane was dragged up the tower hill, sitting on a sled, to suffer death as the champion of the English laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, You never sat on so glorious a seat. Charles II, to intimidate the citizens of London, caused the patriot Lord Russell to be drawn in an open coach, through the principal streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. That, his biographer says, the multitude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side. In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Potion associate themselves fitly in our memory with the geography and climate of Greece. The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus, and in common life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, will have remarked how easily he took all things along with him, the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature became ancillary to a man. Three. There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an object of the intellect. Beside the relation of things to virtue, they have a relation to thought. The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of them. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals. Each prepares, and will be followed by the other. Therefore does beauty, which in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes because it is unsought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the intellect. And then again in its turn of the active power. Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation. All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world. Some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such excess that not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art. The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sandvim, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all, that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, the totality of nature, which the Italians express by defining beauty in pionelluno. Nothing is quite beautiful alone. Nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which simulates him to produce. Thus is art. A nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works. The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth and goodness and beauty are but different faces of the same all. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of nature. End of Chapter 3. CHAPTER 4 OF NATURE This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Chapter 4. LANGUAGE Language is a third use which nature observes to man. Nature is the vehicle and three-fold degree. One, words are signs of natural facts. Two, particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. Three, nature is the symbol of spirit. One, words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history. The use of the outer creation to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight. Wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind. Transgression, the crossing of a line. Supersilious, the raising of the eyebrow. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought. And thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed. But the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children and savages use only nouns or names of things which they convert into verbs and apply to analogous mental acts. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import, so conspicuous a fact in the history of language, is our relieved debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic. It is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion. A cunning man is a fox. A firm man is a rock. A learned man is a torch. A lamp is innocence. A snake is subtle spite. Flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are a familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance. And heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us is respectively our image of memory and hope. Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone into the stream and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life wherein, as in affirmament, the natures of justice, truth, love, freedom arise and shine. This universal soul he calls reason. It is not mine or thine or his, but we are its. We are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm and full of everlasting orbs is the type of reason. That which intellectually considered, we called reason, considered in relation to nature, we call spirit. Spirit is the creator. Spirit had life in itself. And man in all ages and countries embodies it in its language as the father. It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies and that they are constant and pervade nature. These are not the dreams of a few poets here and there, but man is an analogist and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the center of beings and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects nor these objects without man. All the facts in natural history taken by themselves have no value but are barren like a single sex. But marry it to human history and it is full of life. Whole flora, all the neuses and buffoons volumes are dry catalogs of facts. But the most trivial of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs or work or noise of an insect applied to the illustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy or in any way associated to human nature, affects us in the most lively and agreeable manner. The seed of a plant to what affecting analogies in the nature of man is that little fruit made use of in all discourse up to the voice of Paul who calls the human corpse a seed. Quote, it is sound a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. End quote. The motion of the earth round its axis and round the sun makes the day and the year. These are certain amounts of brute light and heat. But is there no intent of an analogy between man's life and the seasons? And do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants. But the moment of ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, becomes a blime. Because of this radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts, savages who have only what is necessary, converse in figures. As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque until its infancy when it is all poetry. Our all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. The same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages. It has moreover been observed that the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat inhuman life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that pecancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwardsman which all men relish. A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol and so to utter it depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will is in a degree lost. New imagery ceases to be created and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not. A paper currency is employed when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time the fraud is manifest and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds of writers may be found in every long civilized nation who for a short time believe and make others believe that they see and utter truths who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those namely who hold primarily on nature. But wise men pierce distraught indiction and farsen words again to visible things so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest if he watch his intellectual processes will find that a material image more or less luminous arises in his mind contemporaneous with every thought which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the original cause through the instruments he has already made. These facts may suggest the advantage which the country life possesses for a powerful mind over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. We know more from nature than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind ever more and we forget its presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes year after year without design and without heed shall not lose their lesson altogether in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long hereafter amidst agitation and terror in national councils in the hour of revolution, these solemn images shall reappear in their morning luster as fit symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing events will awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment again the woods wave the pines murmur the river rolls and chimes and the cattle low upon the mountains as he saw and heard them in his infancy and with these forms the spells of persuasion, the keys of power are put into his hands. Three, we are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such peppercorn informations. Did it need such noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. We are like travelers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves. Have mountains and waves and skies no significance but what we consciously give them when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts. 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. Quote, the visible world and the relation of its parts is the dial plate of the invisible. End quote. The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus the whole is greater than its part. Reaction is equal to action. The smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time and many the like propositions which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life than when confined to technical use. In like manner the memorable words of history and the proverbs of nations consist usually of a natural fact selected as a picture or parable of a moral truth. Thus a rolling stone gathers no moss. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A cripple in the right way will beat a razor in the wrong. Make hay while the sun shines. It is hard to carry a full cup even. Vinegar is the son of wine. The last ounce broke the camel's back. Long-lived trees make roots first and the like. In their primary sense these are trivial facts but we repeat them for the value of their analogical import. What is true of proverbs is true of all fables, parables and allegories. This relation between the mind 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. It appears to men or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle the wise man doubts if at all other times he is not blind and deaf. Can these things be and overcome us like a summer's cloud without our special wonder? For the universe becomes transparent and the light of higher laws than its own shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began. From the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibniz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the roadside and from age to age as each prophet comes by he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There seems to be a necessity in spirits to manifest itself in material forms and day and night river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali pre-exist in necessary ideas in the mind of God and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections in the world of spirit. A fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. Material objects, said a French philosopher, are necessary kinds of scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the creator which must always preserve an exact relation to their first origin. In other words, visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side. This doctrine is obstruous and though the images of garment, scoriae, mirror, etc., may stimulate the fancy, we must summon the aid of subtler and more vital expositors to make it plain. Quote, every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth. End quote is the fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature so that the world shall be to us an open book and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause. A new interest surprises us whilst under the view now suggested we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of objects. Since, quote, every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the soul. End quote. That which was unconscious truth becomes when interpreted and defined in an object a part of the domain of knowledge, a new weapon in the magazine of power. End of chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Nature. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Chapter 5. Discipline. In view of the significance of nature we arrive at once at a new fact that nature is a discipline. This use of the word includes the preceding uses as parts of itself. Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the animals, the mechanical forces give us sincerest lessons day by day whose meaning is unlimited. They educate both the understanding and the reason. Every property of matter is a school for the understanding. Its solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, combines, measures, and finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. Meantime reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of thought by perceiving the analogy that marries matter and mind. One. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement, of assent from particular to general, of combination to one end of manifold forces. Proportion to the importance of the organ to be formed is the extreme care with which its tuition is provided, a care pre-termitted in no single case. What tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense. What continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas. What rejoicing over us of little men. What disputing of prices, what reckoning of interest, and all to form the hand of the mind, to instruct us that good thoughts are no better than good dreams unless they be executed. The same good office is performed by property and its filial systems of debt and credit. Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face, the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate, debt which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most. Moreover, property, which has been well compared to snow, if it fall level today it will be blown into drifts tomorrow, is the surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face of a clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of the understanding, it is hiving in the foresight of the spirit experience in profounder laws. The whole character and fortune of the individual are affected by the least inequalities in the culture of the understanding, for example in the perception of differences. Therefore is space and therefore time that man may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual. A bell and a plow each have their use, and neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear, but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. What is not good, they call the worst, and what is not hateful, they call the best. In like manner, what good-heed nature forms in us. She pardons no mistakes. Her ye is ye, and her ne ne. The first steps in agriculture, astronomy, zoology, those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take, teach that nature's dice are always loaded, that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results. How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the laws of physics. What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the councils of the creation and feels by knowledge the privilege to be. His insight refines him. The beauty of nature shines in his own breast. Man is greater that he can see this, and the universe less because time and space relations vanish as laws are known. Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the immense universe to be explored. What we know is a point to what we do not know. Open any recent Journal of Science and weigh the problems suggested concerning light, heat, electricity, magnetism, physiology, geology, and judge whether the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted. Passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, we must not omit to specify too. The exercise of the will, or the lesson of power, is taught in every event. From the child's successive possession of his several senses up to the hour when he saith thy will be done, he is learning the secret, that he can reduce under his will, not only particular events, but great classes, nay, the whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his character. Nature is thoroughly immediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly, as the ass on which the Savior rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mold into what is useful. Man is never weary of working it up. He forges the subtle and delicate air into wise and melodious words, and gives them wings as angels of persuasion and command. One after another his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all things until the world becomes, at last, only a realized will, the double of the man. Two. Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of reason and reflect the conscience. All things are moral, and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion. That every globe in the remotest heaven, every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life, every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and anti-diluvian coal mine, every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the ten commandments. Therefore is nature ever the ally of religion, lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment. Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have drawn deeply from this source. This ethical character so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature as to seem the end for which it was made. Whatever private purpose is answered by any member or part, this is its public and universal function, and is never omitted. Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use. When a thing has served an end, to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior service. In God every end is converted into a new means. Thus the use of commodity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid, but it is to the mind and education and the doctrine of use. Namely, that a thing is good only so far as it serves, that a conspiring of parts and efforts to the production of an end is essential to any being. The first and gross manifestation of this truth is our inevitable and hated training in values and wants in corn and meat. It has already been illustrated that every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the center of nature and radiates to all these circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds, and plants. Blight, rain, insects, sun. It is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, the merchant, and their several resorts have each an experience precisely parallel and leading to the same conclusion because all organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be doubted that this moral sentiment, which thus sense the air, grows in the grain and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him. Who can estimate this? Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fishermen? How much tranquility has been reflected to man from the azure sky over whose unspotted deeps the winds for evermore dry flocks of stormy clouds and leave no wrinkle or stain? How much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health. Herein is especially apprehended the unity of nature, the unity in variety which meets us everywhere. All the endless variety of things make an identical impression. Xenophonies complained in his old age that look where he would, all things hastened back to unity. He was weary of seeing the same entity in the tedious variety of forms. The fable of Proteus has a cordial truth, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole and partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm and faithfully renders the likeness of the world. Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is obvious as when we detect the type of the human hand in the flipper of the fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great superficial unlikeness. Thus architecture is called frozen music by Destiel and Gerta. Vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. A gothic church, said Coleridge, is a petrified religion. Michelangelo maintained that to an architect a knowledge of anatomy is essential. In Haydn's oratorios the notes present to the imagination not only motions as of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also as the green grass. The law of harmonic sounds reappears in the harmonic colors. The granite is differenced in its laws only by the more or less of heat from the river that wears it away. The river as it flows resembles the air that flows over it. The air resembles the light which traverses it with more subtle currents. The light resembles the heat which rides with it through space. Each creature is only a modification of the other. The likeness in them is more than the difference and their radical law is one and the same. A rule of one art or a law of one organization holds true throughout nature. So intimate is this unity that it is easily seen. It lies under the undermost garment of nature and betrays its source in universal spirit. For it pervades thought also. Every universal truth which we express in words implies or supposes every other truth. Omniverum veroconsonate. 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 ends seen from one side but it has innumerable sides. The central unity is still more conspicuous in actions. Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it. Inaction is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye and to be related to all nature. The wise man in doing one thing does all or in the one thing he does rightly he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly. Words and actions are not the attributes of brute nature. They introduce us to the human form of which all other organizations appear to be degradations. When this appears among so many that surround it the spirit prefers it to all others. It says, From such as this have I drawn joy and knowledge. In such as this have I found and beheld myself. I will speak to it. It can speak again. It can yield me thought already formed and alive. In fact the eye, the mind, is always accompanied by these forms, male and female, and these are incomparably the richest informations of the power and order that lie at the heart of things. Unfortunately every one of them bears the marks as of some injury is marred and superficially defective. Nevertheless far different from the deaf and dumb nature around them these all rest like fountain pipes on the unfathomed sea of thought and virtue where to they alone of all organizations are the entrances. It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their ministry to our education but where would it stop? We are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends who like skies and waters are co-extensive with our idea who answering each to a certain affection of the soul satisfy our desire on that side whom we lack power to put at such a focal distance from us that we can mend or even analyze them we cannot choose but love them when much intercourse with the friend has supplied us with the standard of excellence and has increased our respect for the resources of God who thus sends a real person to out go our ideal when he has moreover become an object of thought and whilst his character retains all its unconscious effect is converted in the mind into solid and sweet wisdom it is assigned to us that his office is closing and he is commonly withdrawn from our site in a short time end of chapter five of nature read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto, California for LibriVox. Chapter six of nature this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Daniel Pashas Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson chapter six idealism thus is the unspeakable but intelligible and practicable meaning of the world conveyed to man the immortal pupil in every object of sense to this one end of discipline all parts of nature conspire a noble doubt perpetually suggests itself whether this end be not the final cause of the universe and whether nature outwardly exists it is a sufficient account of that appearance we call the world that God will teach a human mind and so makes it the receiver of a certain number of congruent sensations which we call sun and moon man and woman house and trade in my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects what difference does it make whether Orion is up there in heaven or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul the relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining the same what is the difference whether land and sea interact and worlds revolve and intermingle without number or end deep yawning under deep and galaxy balancing galaxy throughout absolute space or whether without relations of time and space the same appearances are inscribed in the constant faith of man whether nature and joy a substantial existent without or is only in the apocalypse of the mind it is alike useful and alike venerable to me be it what it may it is ideal to me so long as i cannot try the accuracy of my senses the frivolous make themselves marry with the ideal theory if its consequences were burlesque as if it affected the stability of nature it surely does not god never jest with us and will not compromise the end of nature by permitting any inconsequence in its procession any distrust of the permanence of laws would paralyze the faculties of man their permanence is sacredly respected and his fate therein is perfect the wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature we are not built like a ship to be tossed but like a house to stand it is a natural consequence of this structure that so long as the active powers predominate over the reflective we resist with indignation any hint that nature is more short-lived or mutable than spirit the broker the wheelwright the carpenter the toll man are much displeased at the intimation but whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open it is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind not to shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena as of heat water azote but to lead us to regard nature as a phenomenon not a substance to attribute necessary existence to spirit to esteem nature as an accident and an effect to the senses and the unrenewed understanding belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature in their view man and nature are indissolubly joined things are ultimates and they never look beyond their sphere the presence of reason mars this faith the first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the senses which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it and shows us nature aloof and as it were a float until this higher agency intervened the animal eye sees with wonderful accuracy sharp outlines and colored surfaces when the eye of reason opens to outline and surface are at once added grace and expression these proceed from imagination and affection and debate somewhat of the angular distinctness of objects if the reason be stimulated to more earnest vision outlines and surfaces become transparent and are no longer seen causes and spirits are seen through them the best moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its god let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture one our first institution in the ideal philosophy is a hint from nature herself nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us certain mechanical changes a small alteration in our local position apprises us of a dualism we are strangely affected by seeing the shore from a moving ship from a balloon or through the tints of an unusual sky the least change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air a man who seldom rides needs only to get into a coach and traverse his own town to turn the street into a puppet show the men the women talking running bartering fighting the earnest mechanic the lounger the beggar the boys the dogs are unrealized at once or at least wholly detached from all relation to the observer and seen as a parent not substantial beings what new thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar in the rapid movement of the railroad car nay the most wanted objects make a very slight change in the point of vision please us most in a chimera obscura the butcher's cart and the figure of one of our own family amuse us so a portrait of a well known face gratifies us turn the eyes upside down by looking at the landscape through your legs and how agreeable is the picture though you have seen it any time these 20 years in these cases by mechanical means is suggested the difference between the observer and the spectacle between man and nature hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe I may say a low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact probably that man is here by a prize that whilst the world is a spectacle something in himself is stable two in a higher manner the poet communicates the same pleasure by a few strokes he delineates as on air the sun the mountain the camp the city the hero the maiden not different from what we know them but only lifted from the ground and afloat before the eye he unfixes the land and the sea makes them revolve around the axis of his primary thought and disposes them anew possessed himself by a heroic passion he uses matter as symbols of it the sensual man conforms thoughts to things the poet conforms things to his thoughts the one esteems nature as rooted and fast the other as fluid and impresses his being there on to him the refractory world is ductile and flexible he invests dust and stones with humanity and makes them the words of the reason the imagination may be defined to be the use which the reason makes of the material world Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinate nature for the purposes of expression beyond all poets his imperial muse tosses the creation like a bobble from hand to hand and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind the remotest spaces of nature are visited and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection we are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet thus in his sonnets the laze of birds the sense and dyes of flowers he finds to be the shadow of his beloved time which keeps her from him is his chest the suspicion she has awakened is her ornament the ornament of beauty is suspect a crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air his passion is not the fruit of chance it swells as he speaks to a city or a state no it was builded far from accident it suffers not in smiling pomp nor falls under the brow of thralling discontent it fears not policy that heretic that works on leases of short numbered hours but all alone stands hugely politic in the strength of his constancy the pyramids seem to him recent and transitory the freshness of youth and love dazzles him with its resemblance to mourning take those lips away which so sweetly were foresworn and those eyes the break of day lights that do mislead the mourn the wild beauty of this hyperbole I may say in passing it would not be easy to match in literature this transfiguration which all material objects undergo through the passion of the poet this power which he exerts to dwarf the great to magnify the small might be illustrated by a thousand examples from his plays I have before me the tempest and will cite only these few lines aerial the strong base promontory have I made shake and by the spurs plucked up the pine and cedar Prospero calls for music to sue the frantic Alonso and his companions a solemn air and the best comforter to an unsettled fancy cure thy brains now useless boiled within thy skull again the charm dissolves apace and as the morning steals upon the night melting the darkness so their rising senses begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle their clear reason their understanding begins to swell and the approaching tide will shortly fill the reasonable shores that now lie foul and muddy the perception of real affinities between events that is to say of ideal affinities for those only are real enables the poet thus to make free with the most imposing forms and phenomena of the world and to assert the predominance of the soul three whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts he differs from the philosopher only herein that the one proposes beauty as his main end the other truth but the philosopher not less than the poet postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought the problem of philosophy according to Plato is for all that exists conditionally to find a ground unconditioned and have salute it proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena which being known the phenomena can be predicted that law when in the mind is an idea its beauty is infinite the true philosopher and the true poet are one and the beauty which is truth and a truth which is beauty is the aim of both is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles it is in both cases that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul and recognized itself in their harmony that is seized their law in physics when this is attained the memory disperses itself of its cumbers catalogs of particulars and carries centuries of observation in a single formula thus even in physics the material is degraded before the spiritual the astronomer the geometer rely on their irrefragable analysis and disdain the results of observation the sublime remark of Euler on his law of arches this will be found contrary to all experience yet is true had already transferred nature into the mind and left matter like an outcast corpse 4 intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of the existence of matter Turgot said he that has never doubted the existence of matter may be assured that he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries it fastens the attention upon immortal necessary uncreated natures that is upon ideas and in their presence we feel that the outward circumstance is a dream and a shade whilst we wait in this Olympus of gods we think of nature as an appendix to the soul we ascend into their region and know that these are the thoughts of the supreme being these are they who were set up from everlasting from the beginning or ever the earth was when he prepared the heavens they were there when he established the clouds above when he strengthened the fountains of the deep then they were by him as one brought up with him of them took he counsel their influence is proportionate as objects of science they are accessible to few men yet all men are capable of being raised by piety or by passion into their region and no man touches these divine natures without becoming in some degree himself divine like a new soul they renew the body we become physically nimble and lightsome we tread on air life is no longer irksome and we think it will never be so no man fears age or misfortune or death in their serene company for he is transported out of the district of change whilst we behold unveiled the nature of justice and truth we learn the difference between the absolute and the conditional or relative we apprehend the absolute as it were for the first time we exist we become immortal for we learn that time and space are relations of matter that with the perception of truth or a virtuous will they have no affinity five finally religion and ethics which may be fitly called the practice of ideas or the introduction of ideas into life have an analogous effect with all lower culture integrating nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit ethics and religion differ herein that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man the other from god religion includes the personality of god ethics does not they are one to our present design they both put nature under foot the first and last lesson of religion is the things that are seen are temporal the things that are unseen are eternal it puts in a front upon nature it does that for the unschooled which philosophy does for briquely and viassa the uniform language that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects is condemn the unsubstantial shows of the world they are vanities dreams shadows unrealities seek the realities of religion the devotee flouts nature some theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility and indignation towards matter as the munition and platonists they distrust it in themselves any looking back to these flesh pots of Egypt platonists was ashamed of his body in short they might all say of matter when michael angelo said of external beauty it is the frail and weary weed in which god dresses the soul which he has called into time it appears that motion poetry physical and intellectual science and religion all tend to affect our convictions of the reality of the external world but I own there is something ungrateful and expanding too curiously the particulars of the general proposition that all culture tends to imbue us with idealism I have no hostility to nature but a child's love to it I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons let us speak her fair I do not wish to fling stones at my beautiful mother nor soil my gentle nest I only wish to indicate the true position of nature in regard to man we're in to establish man all right education tends as the ground which to attain is the object of human life that is of man's connection with nature culture inverts the vulgar views of nature and brings the mind to call that apparent which it uses to call real and that real which it uses to call visionary children it is true believe in the external world the belief that it appears only is an afterthought but with culture this faith will surely arise on the mind as it did the first the advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith is this that it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable to the mind it is in fact the view which reason both speculative and practical that is philosophy and virtue take for seen in the light of thought the world always is phenomenal and virtue subordinates it to the mind 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 therefore the soul holds itself off from a too trivial and microscopic study of the universal tablet it respects the end too much to immerse itself in the means it sees something more important in christianity than the scandals of ecclesiastical history or the niceties of criticism and very incurious concerning persons or miracles and not at all disturbed by chasms of historical evidence it accepts from god the phenomenon as it finds it as the pure and awful form of religion in the world it is not hot and passionate at the appearance of what it calls its own good or bad fortune at the union or opposition of other persons no man is its enemy it accepts whatsoever befalls as part of its lesson it is a watcher more than a doer it is a doer only that it may the better watch end of chapter six recording by daniel paschus of bethlehem pennsylvania chapter seven of nature this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org nature by ralph waldo emerson chapter seven spirit it is essential to a true theory of nature and of man that it should contain somewhat progressive uses that are exhausted or that may be and facts that end in the statement cannot be all that is true of this brave lodging wherein man is harbored and wherein all his faculties find appropriate and endless exercise and all the uses of nature admit of being summed in one which yields the activity of man in infinite scope through all its kingdoms to the suburbs and outskirts of things it is faithful to the cause when it had its origin it always speaks of spirit it suggests the absolute it is a perpetual effect it is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us the aspect of nature is devout like the figure of jesus she stands with bended head and hands folded upon the breast the happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship of that ineffable essence which we call spirit he that thinks most will say least we can foresee god in the course and as it were a distant phenomena of matter but when we try to define and describe himself both language and thought desert us and we are as helpless as fools and savages that essence refuses to be recorded in propositions that when man has worshipped him intellectually the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of god it is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual and strives to lead back the individual to it when we consider spirit we see that the views already presented do not include the whole circumference of man we must add some related thoughts three problems are put by nature to the mind what is matter wins is it and where to the first of these questions only the ideal theory answers idealism said matter is a phenomenon not a substance idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of our own being and the evidence of the world's being the one is perfect the other incapable of any assurance the mind is a part of the nature of things the world is a divine dream from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry yet if it only denied the existence of matter it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit it leaves god out of me it leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my own perceptions to wander without end then the heart resists it because it box the affections and denying substantive being to men and women nature is so pervaded with human life that there is something of humanity in all and in every particular but this theory makes nature foreign to me and does not account for that consanguinity which we acknowledge to it let it stand then in the present state of our knowledge merely as a useful introductory hypothesis serving to apprise us of the eternal distinction between the soul and the world but when following the invisible step of thought we come to inquire when says matter and where to many truths arise to us out of the recesses of consciousness we learn that the highest is present to the soul of man that the dread universal essence which is not wisdom or love or beauty or power but all in one and each entirely is that for which all things exist and that by which they are that spirit creates that behind nature throughout nature spirit is present one and not compound it does not act upon us from without that is in space and time but spiritually or through ourselves therefore that spirit that is the supreme being does not build up nature around us but puts it forth through us as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves the pores of the old as a plant upon the earth so man rests upon the bosom of God he is nourished by unfailing fountains and draws at his need and exhaustive power who can set bounds to the possibilities of man once inhaled 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 this view which admonishes me where the sources of wisdom and power lie and points to virtue as to the golden key which hopes the palace of eternity carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth because it animates me to create my own world to the purification of my soul the world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man it is a remoder and inferior incarnation of God a projection of God in the unconscious but it differs from the body in one important respect it is not like that now subjected to human will its serene order is inviolable by us it is therefore to us the present exposer of the divine mind it is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure as we degenerate the contrast between us and our house is more evident we are as much strangers in nature as we are aliens from God we do not understand the notes of birds the fox and the deer run away from us the bear and tiger rend us we do not know the uses of more than a few plants as corn and the apple the potato and the vine is not the landscape every glimpse of which had the grandeur a face of him that this may show us what discord is between man and nature for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape if the laborers are digging in the field hard by the poet finds something ridiculous in his delight until he is out of the sight of men end of chapter seven chapter eight of nature this is a Libervox recording all Libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org nature by Ralph Waldo emerson chapter eight prospects in inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things the highest reason is always the truest that which seems faintly possible it is so refined is often faint and dim because it is deepest seated in the mind among the eternal verities empirical science is apt to cloud the site and by the very knowledge of functions and processes to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole the savant becomes unpoetic but the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities but is arrived at by untaught sallys of the spirit by a continual self recovery and by entire humility he will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility that I guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable information and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments for the problems to be solved are precisely those which the physiologist and the naturalist omit to state it is not so pertinent to man to know all the individuals of the animal kingdom as it is to know whence and where to is this tyrannizing unity in his constitution whichever more separates and classifies things endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to one form when I behold a rich landscape it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity I cannot greatly honor my newtness and details so long as there is no hint to explain the relation between things and thoughts no way upon the metaphysics of concoology of botany of the arts to share the relation of the forms flowers shells animals architecture to the mind and build science upon ideas in a cabinet of natural history we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast fish and insect the american who has been confined in his own country to the site of buildings designed after foreign models is surprised on entering new york minster or saint peters at roam by the feeling that these structures are imitations also faint copies of an invisible archetype nor a science-efficient humanity so long as the naturalist overlooks that wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world of which he is lured not because he is the most subtle inhabitant but because he is its head and heart and finds something of himself in every great and small thing in every mountain stratum in every new law of color fact of astronomy or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open a perception of this mystery inspires the muse of george herbert the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth century the following lines are part of his little poem on man man is all symmetry full of proportions one limb to another and to all the world besides each part may call the farthest brother for head with foot have private amity and both with moons and tides nothing had got so far but man had caught and kept it as his prey his eyes dismount the highest star he is in little all the sphere herbs gladly cure our flesh because that they find their acquaintance there for us the winds do blow the earth doth rest have more and fountains flow nothing we see but means our good as our delight or as our treasure the hole is either our cupboard of food or cabinet of pleasure the stars have us to bed night draws the curtain which the sun withdraws music and light attend our head all things unto our flesh are kind in their descent and being to our mind in their assent and cause more servants wait on man then he'll take notice of in every path he treads down that which doth befriend him when sickness makes him pale and wan almighty love man is one world and have another to attend him the perception of this class of truth makes the attraction which draws men to science but the end is lost side of an attention to the means in view of this half side of science we accept a sentence of play dough that poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history every surmise and the destination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect and we learn to prefer imperfect theories and sentences which contain glimpses of truth to digested system which have no one valuable suggestion a wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought and so communicating through hope new activity to the torpid spirit i shall therefore conclude this essay with some traditions of man and nature which a certain poet sang to me and which as they've always been in this world and perhaps reappear to every bard may be both history and prophecy the foundations of man are not in matter but in spirit but the element of spirit is eternity to it therefore the longest series of events the oldest chronologies are young and recent in the cycle of the universal man from whom the known individuals proceed centuries are points in all histories but the epoch of one degradation we distrust and I inwardly our sympathy with nature we own and disown our relation to it by turns we are like never could nezzar dethroned bereft of reason and eating grass like an ox but who can set limits to the remedial force of spirit a man is a god in ruins when men are innocent life shall be longer and shall pass into the immortal as gently as we wake from dreams now the world would be insane and rabid if these disorganization should last for hundreds of years it is kept in check by death and infancy infancy is perpetual messiah which comes into the arms of fallen men and pleads with them to return to paradise man is the dwarf of himself once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit he filled nature with his overflowing currents out from him spanked the sun and moon from man the sun from woman the moon the laws of his mind the periods of his actions externalize themselves into day and night into the year and the seasons but having made for himself this huge shell his waters retired he no longer fills the veins and veinlets he's shrunk to a drop he sees that the structure still fits him but fits in colossally say every man in the world but fits in colossally say rather once it fitted him now it corresponds to him from far and on high he adores timidly his own work now is man the follower of the sun and woman the follower of the moon yet sometimes he starts in his slumber and wonders at himself in his house and uses strangely at the resemblance betwixt him and it he perceives that if his law is still paramount if still he have elemental power if his word is sterling yet in nature it is not conscious power it is not inferior but superior to his will it is instinct thus my orific poet saying at present man applies to nature but half his force he works on the world with his understanding alone he lives in it and masters it by a penny wisdom and he that works most in it has but a half met and whilst his arms are strong his digestion good his mind is in brooded and he is a selfish savage his relation to nature his power over it is through the understanding is by manure the economic use of fire wind water and the mariners needle steam coal chemical agriculture the repairs of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon this is such a resumption of power as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch instead of vaulting at once into his throne meantime in the thick darkness there are not wanting gleams of a better light occasional examples of the action of man upon nature with his entire force with reason as well as understanding such examples are the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations the history of jesus christ the achievements of a principle as in religious and political revolutions and in the abolition of the slave trade the miracles of enthusiasm as those reported of speedenberg hohenlo and the shakers many obscured yet contested facts now arranged under the name of animal magnetism prayer eloquence self-healing and the wisdom of children these are examples of reasons momentary grasp of the scepter the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space but in instantaneous in streaming causing power the difference between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by the schoolmen in saying that the knowledge of man is an evening knowledge the spurtina cognitio but that of god is a morning knowledge matutina cognitio the problem of restoring to the world original internal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul the ruin of the blank that we see when we look at nature is in our own eye the axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things and so they appear not transparent but opaque the reason why the world lacks unity and lies broken and heaps is because the man is disunited with himself he cannot be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit loves as much its demand as perception indeed neither can be perfect without the other in the utter most meaning of the words thought is devout and devotion is thought deep calls unto deep but in actual life the marriage is not celebrated there are innocent men who worship god after the tradition of their fathers but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their faculties and they're patient naturalists but they freeze their subject under the wintry light of the understanding is not prayer also study of truth a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite no man ever prayed heartily without learning something but when a faithful thinker resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought she'll at the same time kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections then will god go forth anew into the creation it will not need when the mind is prepared for study to search for objects the invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common what is a day what is a year what is summer what is woman what is a child what is sleep to our blindness these things seem unaffecting we make fables to hide the baldness of the fact and conform it as we say to the higher law of the mind but when the fact is seen under the light of an idea the gaudy fable fades and tribbles leave a hold the real higher law to the wise therefore a fact is true poetry and the most beautiful of fables these wonders are brought to our own door you also are a man man and woman and their social life poverty labor sleep fear fortune are known to you learn that none of these things is superficial but that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties and affections of the mind whilst the abstract question occupies your intellect nature brings it into concrete to be solved by your hands it were a wise inquiry for the closet to compare point by point especially at remarkable crises in life our daily history with the rise in progress of ideas in the mind so shall we come to look at the world with new eyes it shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect what is truth and of the affections what is good by yielding itself passive to the educated will then she'll come to pass but my poet said nature is not fixed but fluid spirit alters mold makes it the immobility or bruteness of nature is the absence of spirit the pure spirit it is fluid it is volatile it is obedient every spirit builds itself a house and beyond its house a world and beyond its world a heaven know then that the world exists for you for you is the phenomenon perfect what we are that only can we see all that Adam had all that Caesar could you have and can do Adam called his house heaven and earth Caesar called his house room you perhaps call yours a cobblers trade a hundred acres of plowed land or a scholar's garret yet line for line and point for point your dominion is as great as theirs though without fine names build therefore your own world as fast as you can form your life to the pure idea in your mind that will unfold its great proportions a correspondent revolution and things will attend the influx of the spirit so fast will disagreeable appearances swine spiders snakes pests mad houses prisons enemies vanish they are temporary and shall be no more seen the sorter and filth of nature the sun shall dry up in the windex hail as when the summer comes from the south the snowbags melt and the face of the earth becomes green before it so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path and carry with it the beauty it visits and the song which enchants it it shall draw beautiful faces warm hearts wise discourse and heroic acts around its way until evil is no more seen the kingdom of man over nature which cometh not with observation a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of god he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight end of nature