The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Title: Nature

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Release Date: July 17, 2009 [EBook #29433]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NATURE ***

Produced by Ruth Hart

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