Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Summary
Emerson opens his 1836 edition of his essay “Nature” with an epigraph from the philosopher Plotinus,
suggesting that nature is a reflection of humankind. The rest of his essay focuses on the relationship between people
and nature.
In the Introduction, Emerson suggests that rather than relying on religion and tradition to understand the
world, people should spend time in nature and intuit answers for themselves. But people shouldn’t just observe nature
—they should also actively consider “to what end is nature” (that is, what nature means or does). To Emerson, all
forms of science try to answer this question and find a “theory of nature.” And though it might sound unscientific,
Emerson thinks that seeking “abstract truth” through firsthand experience in nature is the best way to craft such a
theory.
Emerson then defines some of the terms that he’ll use throughout the rest of the essay: Nature/nature, the
Soul, and art. First, he suggests that the universe is comprised of two parts: Nature and the Soul. He uses Nature
(capital “N”) in the philosophical sense to refer to everything that is “NOT ME”—that is, everything that isn’t the
Soul. Emerson then breaks down Nature into smaller parts: nature (lowercase “n”), art, other people, and our own
physical bodies. The common use of the word nature (lowercase “n”) refers to the natural world—non-manmade
things like trees and the wind. But when people combine their human will with elements of the natural world, they
create art.
In Chapter 1, Emerson advocates for spending time alone in nature. By looking up at the stars, a person
transcends this world and comes in contact with the sublime. Most people take the stars for granted, since they shine
nightly. But if a person opens him- or herself up to nature’s influence and adopts an attitude of childlike curiosity,
nature will captivate and awe them. Part of seeing nature clearly is realizing that it is one integrated whole. To
illustrate this point, Emerson recalls looking out at the land and seeing between 20 and 30 farms. And while each farm
is separate from the next, and a different man owns each one, all of the farms form one unified landscape. Most people
struggle to view nature holistically like this, but poets, children, and people who love nature all can.
Emerson explains that when he’s in the woods, he turns into a “transparent eyeball” that allows him to see
everything. In this state, Emerson connects with God and even becomes part of God. Likewise, when people connect
with nature, they’re also connecting with themselves, because “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” If a
person feels somber, for instance, nature will look and feel somber, too.
In Chapter 2, Emerson focuses on nature as a commodity, or the ways in which nature is useful and valuable
to humankind. While nature’s status as a commodity is less important than all of its other qualities (which each
successive chapter will cover), Emerson nevertheless underscores that all of nature’s various forms (e.g., fire, stones,
vegetables, animals) work together to support human life.
In Chapter 3, Emerson turns to beauty—the idea that something can produce delight in the viewer in and of
itself, and not for the usefulness it can provide. Living and working in society can sap people of their vitality, so being
immersed in nature’s beauty invigorates the soul. Emerson points out that every season has its own unique kind of
beauty—even the depths of winter are beautiful in their own way. Part of what makes nature so beautiful, though, is
that it’s imbued with the divine. Beauty also stimulates the intellect and generates creativity. The creation of beauty is
called art, and all art is either the product of nature or the expression of it.
Emerson explores how nature shapes language in Chapter 4. All words represent natural objects, which in turn
represent spiritual truths. (For example, “a cunning man is a fox, […] a learned man is a torch.”) Emerson argues that
people who have been corrupted by their various desires use corrupted language. But a person with good character,
who’s grown up close to nature, has a skillful grasp of language and is more creative.
In Chapter 5, Emerson suggests that nature is a discipline: every aspect of it teaches us moral, spiritual, and
intellectual truths. But Emerson points out that nature is also meant to serve humankind. In this chapter, he also
underscores nature’s unity: even though nature takes many forms, they’re all interconnected.
Chapter 6 is about idealism. Here, Emerson contemplates how it’s impossible to prove that anything is real.
But to Emerson, it doesn’t really matter whether there is an external reality or whether everything we perceive to be
real is just an illusion. He suggests that most people consider themselves as permanent, while nature is in flux, but this
isn’t necessarily the case. Through words and particularly through symbols, the poet is the one who is able help the
reader see the world from new angles and perspectives. In contrast, both religion and ethics disregard, demonize, or
undervalue nature.
In Chapter 7, Emerson suggests that nature is a manifestation of God’s Spirit, or the Supreme Being, and that
nature is the means through which God connects with people. Emerson then questions what kind of matter nature is
made out of, where this matter came from, and why. In this section, Emerson suggests that people are simultaneously
separate from nature and part of it.

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 The essay’s final chapter centers around how to best study nature. Different branches of science (e.g.,
geology) use observations, measurements, and calculations to study nature, and they also isolate different elements of
nature (like rocks and minerals) to study instead of considering those parts within the larger whole of nature. Emerson
advocates for a more holistic, intuitive approach to studying nature. But he suggests that there is value in the kind of
observation that scientists use (he calls this observation “Understanding”), because people need to understand, or
observe, the world before they can use their intuition to interpret those observations (he calls intuition “Reason”).
Closing his essay, Emerson suggests that we once lived in a utopian society where humankind and nature
lived in harmonious unity. But over time, we stopped paying attention to the spiritual truths that nature teaches, and
we grew distant from nature. To remedy this, people must spend time in nature and use their intuition to understand it
—this will unify humankind with nature again.

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Unity and Interconnectedness Theme Analysis
Themes

Emerson was a thought leader of the Transcendentalist movement, and his 1836 essay “Nature” was a
founding document that outlines many of the movement’s tenets. The concept of unity—that all people and things are
interconnected—is central to Transcendentalism, and Emerson focuses on the idea that people in his time (the early
19th century) have lost sight of this. In “Nature,” he proposes that nature, humanity, and the spiritual world are all
animated and united by the same “Universal Being,” or life force. His central argument in the essay is that everything
and everyone is interconnected—but that people have become dangerously alienated from themselves, from other
people, from nature, and from the divine.
When most people look at nature, they see its individual parts, but Emerson underscores that nature is really a
single, unified whole. For instance, he describes looking out at the countryside, which is dotted with 20 or 30 farms
that seem separate from one another, given that they each have their own boundaries and owners. This is how most
people see nature—they see its individual parts. But Emerson underscores that these seemingly disparate farms all
make up one landscape. And likewise, the different aspects of the natural world (like a flower petal, the wind, a tree,
an animal) all fall under the same single umbrella of nature. Emerson writes that all aspects of nature have something
in common—beauty—and that “A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.” Few people
are able to see this interconnectedness that runs throughout the natural world. It’s people who genuinely love nature
and live in close proximity to it (Emerson includes children and poets in this category) who are able to recognize this
unity.
But it’s not just nature that’s interconnected—Emerson stresses that humankind and nature are connected,
too. To illustrate this point, Emerson describes how a person who’s mourning the loss of a loved one will perceive
nature as looking dark and somber, because “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” He stresses that nature
doesn’t have its own personality; we project our own emotional experiences on it. In this way, nature is a reflection of
humankind, and even an extension of it. The epigraph from the original 1836 version of “Nature” underscores this
point. Quoting the philosopher Plotinus, Emerson notes that nature is “an image or imitation of wisdom,” meaning that
it’s an imitation of humankind. Emerson pushes his argument about nature and humanity’s interconnectedness one
step further with the concept of the “Universal Being.” A core Transcendentalist belief, the Universal Being is the
creative, animating, supernatural life force imbued in all things. And because this spirit underpins everything—it’s
infused in nature and in people—it consequently links nature, humanity, and the spiritual/supernatural world together.
At times, Emerson calls this force the “Universal Soul,” or the “Oversoul.” He suggests that just as individual aspects
of the natural world (e.g., a single leaf) form the broader whole of nature, so too do individual people’s souls form the
universal soul.
Emerson makes—but never resolves—a key contradiction to his argument about unity. At several points
throughout the essay, he (perhaps unintentionally) suggests that nature and humankind are actual distinct from one
another. In the essay’s Introduction, Emerson differentiates nature from Nature. With a lowercase -n, nature refers to
the natural world—the common definition of the word. But when he uses Nature with a capital -N, Emerson is taking
a philosophical angle: Nature encompasses the natural world (nature), art, a person’s own physical body, and other
people. In other words, Nature encompasses everything except for the soul. In a way, Emerson is linking nature and
humankind as he notes how the physical human body is part of Nature. But he filters out the human soul—which is
perhaps central to what it means to be human—from this broad definition of Nature. Overall, though, Emerson’s
primary point in “Nature” is clear: all things are connected, but people have lost sight of this truth.

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 The Transformative Power of Nature Theme Analysis
In “Nature,” Emerson stresses that while humankind used to enjoy a close, pure, harmonious connection to
nature, this is no longer the case. Individuals and society as a whole have become corrupted, largely because people
have become disconnected from their own intuition, spirituality, and sense of morality. But Emerson suggests that
nature can heal humanity on both small and large scales. This starts on an individual level: if people spend more time
in nature, it will revitalize and enlighten them, and this positive transformation will ripple out to the rest of society.
Writing in the mid-1830s in the U.S., Emerson suggests that corruption abounds on both the societal and
individual level. Throughout the essay, Emerson underscores that nature teaches people moral and spiritual truths, if
only people use their intuition (what Emerson calls “Reason”) to recognize and absorb these lessons. But people have
grown physically and emotionally distant from nature—moving out of the countryside and to the increasingly
industrialized cities, for instance—and so they’ve consequently lost touch with this key source of moral and spiritual
guidance. Emerson writes that the average person’s “mind is imbruted and he is a selfish savage.” Drawing on the
ideas of Transcendentalist writer Amos Bronson Alcott (whom Emerson refers to in the essay as the “Orphic poet”),
Emerson explains that humans have corrupting desires—like the desire for wealth, power, pleasure, or praise—and
that giving in to those desires further disconnect people from nature. Living in a society that’s physically set apart
from nature and ungrounded in the kind of moral and spiritual truth that nature provides destroys a person’s
wholeness. And this separates them even further from other people, nature, morality, spirituality, and their own selves.
Given that humankind’s growing distance from nature is responsible for this widespread corruption, Emerson
suggests that it’s only through interacting with nature directly that people can better themselves, becoming more
energized, happier, and wiser. Unlike society, nature has a rejuvenating effect on people. Emerson suggests that
people who spend time in nature “retain[] the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.” In other words, even as
a person grows old, their spirit stays young; they still possess a childlike energy, curiosity, and reverence when they
live in close proximity to nature. Emerson uses the metaphor of a snake sloughing off its dead skin—revealing fresh,
tender skin beneath—to illustrate how a person casts off their old age and is renewed in nature. “In the woods,”
Emerson writes, “is perpetual youth.” Nature is also a source of joy, wonder, and emotional bliss. Throughout the
essay, Emerson draws on his own experiences in nature. Each time, he uses joyful, emotionally charged language to
describe his emotions. While he’s in the countryside, he “enjoy[s] a perfect exhilaration,” and admits, “Almost I fear
to think how glad I am.” Nature’s sheer beauty brings about emotional bliss and fulfillment, as it “satisfies the soul
purely by its loveliness.” Another important aspect of nature is the deep sense of awe that it stirs up in a person.
Emerson likens the dawn to the ancient Assyrian empire (known for its vastness, power, and splendor), the moonlight
to “unimaginable realms of faerie,” and nighttime to “mystic philosophy and dreams.” Emerson links nature to
magnificent, indescribable, awe-inspiring places and things to emphasize that nature shares those same qualities and
incites a similar sense of wonder within him.
Being in nature is also a positive form of escapism from sadness and puts a person’s day-to-day struggles into
perspective. He explains how if a person were to be alone in nature and look up at the stars, the starlight “will separate
between him and vulgar things” (in Emerson’s time, “vulgar” meant common, day-to-day things). Likewise, he
suggests that when a person ventures out into nature, “a wild delight runs through [them], in spite of real sorrows.”
With this, Emerson suggests that while a person may have very real problems in their life, nature has a bolstering,
invigorating effect and can help a person put their problems into perspective. Taking this a step further, Emerson
suggests that nature can even heal or solve a person’s problems. Speaking from his own experience, he writes, “In the
woods [...] I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity [...] which nature cannot repair.” Nature
also provides crucial moral guidance. To illustrate this point, Emerson gives the example of a fisherman who learns
“firmness” (i.e., strength of character) while out at sea: though the ocean waves crash forcefully over the rocks again
and again, the rocks remain unmoved.
In the essay’s final chapter, Emerson stresses that the only way to return the world to its former utopia (in
which humankind and nature lived in harmony) is through “redemption of the soul.” In other words, people need to
become whole again on an individual level before the wider world can be redeemed, and this kind of personal
transformation only happens in nature.

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 Religion, Science, and Individualism Theme Analysis

Individualism lies at the heart of Transcendentalism, so it’s also central to “Nature,” which is a founding
document of the movement. For Emerson—and other Transcendentalist thinkers—spirituality is crucial to
understanding the universe, and spirituality and nature are intimately connected. So, he advocates for a spiritual
worldview that’s based on highly subjective, personal experiences in nature. In the essay, Emerson stresses that people
shouldn’t look to authority figures, organized religion, history, or science for explanations about the world and about
God. Rather, people must turn to their own intuition and firsthand experiences in nature and draw their own
conclusions.
Emerson isolates several common—but largely unhelpful—ways of understanding the world and the
divine. He suggests that society primarily relies on “tradition, and a religion by revelation to us” to understand the
universe and God. By this, he seems to be saying that people look to traditional practices and beliefs, dogma, sacred
writings, and/or religious authority figures for answers about God and how the world works. Most people cling to
previous generations’ experiences with and insights about the divine, they use those revelations to guide their
understanding rather than having their own first-hand experiences and forming their own insights. (Emerson doesn’t
go into detail about previous generations’ experiences, but an example might be the narratives in the Bible that
recount someone’s experiences with the divine, like the stories about Moses in the Book of Exodus.) But to Emerson,
history and tradition are stale, outdated, and unhelpful—they’re “dry bones of the past” in a “faded wardrobe.” In
contrast, he writes that ”There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and
worship.” With this, he’s saying that the “dry bones of the past” (history and tradition) can’t help us understand “new
lands, new men, [and] new thoughts”—instead, people must connect with God and with nature in a new way by
exploring such things for themselves and forming their own approach to spirituality.
Similar to society’s emphasis on religion and tradition, many people rely on science’s objective observation
and calculated measurements to understand the world. But Emerson argues that this is a one-sided approach for
discovery—it over-focuses on mere observation and doesn’t leave room for insights gained through intuition. Instead,
Emerson advocates for an individualized approach to spirituality that’s grounded in personal experience in nature.
Rather than revering authority figures and the knowledge they share, Emerson praises solitude and the insights that
often accompany it. Throughout the essay, he writes of the insights that came to him when he was alone in the
countryside (e.g., realizing that nature has the capacity to fix all of his problems) and stresses that the reader must
carve out time to be alone in nature, too. With distractions and other people’s influence stripped away, a person can
form a one-on-one connection with nature—and consequently with God, whose spirit is imbued in nature. Emerson
suggests that there’s a special kind of spiritual clarity that comes from being alone in the wilderness, as he writes that
“in the woods, we return to reason and faith” (when Emerson uses the word reason in his essay, he’s referring to
“intuition”). By referring to intuition and faith, which are abstract and emotional, Emerson frames nature as a hub for
discovering spiritual truths—much like a church or other religious center might be.
From Emerson’s perspective, it’s not equations, scientific facts, or religious doctrine that will help a person
understand the world—real understanding comes from “untaught sallies of the spirit,” or sudden spiritual insights.
Importantly, these insights are “untaught” and highly personal; they must come from the individual and not from an
outside source like a sacred scripture or scientific journal. According to Emerson, a truly wise person knows that
sometimes, dreams can teach a person more than scientific experiments can, and a thoughtful guess can be more
valuable than a proven fact.

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 Reason, Understanding, and Truth Theme Analysis

Much of “Nature” is about how people are disconnected from themselves and from nature, and how they must
consequently spend time in nature to fix their current corrupted state. But Emerson takes his argument a step further by outlining
how, exactly, he thinks people should study, interact with, and learn from nature in order to become whole again. He suggests
that, when it comes to learning about (or from) nature, people rely too heavily on their “understanding”—that is, discovering
intellectual facts or objective truths through observation. And while he admits that understanding has merit, Emerson says that it’s
crucial for people to lean on their intuition (which he calls “reason”) to grasp nature’s moral and spiritual teachings.
One way people can learn from nature is by using their understanding—using observation to learn intellectual truths or
facts. Emerson stresses that all parts of nature “is a school for the understanding—its solidarity or resistance, its inertia, [...] its
divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, combines, [and] measures [...].” Citing concepts from physics and algebra, Emerson
suggests that understanding is what comes from meticulous, scientific, objective methods of observing and studying the world. He
provides the example of “the astronomer, [and] the geometer”—a type of scientist and a type of mathematician, respectively—and
explains that they “rely on their irrefragable analysis,” meaning the objective, indisputable conclusions they’re able to draw about
the world because of their observations. (Though Emerson does contradict this idea at points throughout the essay, claiming that
scientists use abstract reasoning more than physical observation.) This kind of careful observation and analysis is valuable,
Emerson says, but it’s ultimately incomplete on its own.
Understanding, though essential, must be paired with intuition (“reason”) for people to grasp the full scope of nature’s
teachings. In the chapter about language, Emerson explains that “Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.” In other
words, it’s not enough to know objective facts about nature, because those facts are also infused with spiritual truths that extend
beyond mere understanding. For example, while mere observation can show someone that moss only grows on completely
unmoving objects, there’s a spiritual or moral truth underpinning the idea that “A rolling stone gathers no moss”: a person who’s
always moving from place to place can’t set down roots in a community or be successful. To Emerson, “All the facts in natural
history taken by themselves, have no value,” so observation must be coupled with reason for a person to access all of nature’s
valuable truths. Emerson describes tossing a stone into a stream and watching the water ripple, and how the experience suddenly
reminds him of “the flux of all things.” While a fisherman, by contrast, might watch the ocean crash over the rocky coastline again
and again and learn “firmness” (i.e., strength of character) from the rocks. But in both cases, observing how stones and water
interact leads to gleaning deeper spiritual or ethical truths about the human experience.
Emerson suggests that there is an “ethical character [that] so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature”—another way of
saying that nature is infused with moral lessons. Even religious figures like David and Jesus, Emerson notes, have turned to nature
for this kind of moral guidance. Natural truths (i.e., facts about nature) and moral truths are like faces looking at one another
through glass—or, in modern phrasing, they’re two sides of the same coin. Emerson writes that “The axioms of physics translates
the laws of ethics,” by which he means that objective facts about the natural world (like laws of physics) actually express moral
laws or truths, too. For example, the phrases “reaction is equal to action,” or “the whole is greater than its part” are both scientific
truths, but they can also be applied to life more broadly (e.g., “the whole is greater than its part” might be used to describe how a
team is more effective than each individual working on their own). Overall, Emerson stresses that understanding and intuition
must be woven together for a person to access the full depth of nature’s teachings.

Sublime Term Analysis

A core idea in both Romanticism and Transcendentalism, the sublime refers to an experience of intense, overwhelming
emotion that transcends the mundane (i.e., the earthly world). In “Nature,” Emerson suggests that nature produces such a state—
enjoying solitude in nature separates a person from their normal, day-to-day life, and nature’s unearthly, divine beauty is
profoundly moving.
Sublime Quotes in Nature
The Nature quotes below are all either spoken by Sublime or refer to Sublime. For each quote, you can also see the other
terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
“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 vulgar things. 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 preachers 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.”

TranscendentalismTerm Analysis

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 Transcendentalism was an early 19th-century philosophical movement based in the U.S. Its thinkers—Emerson among
them—rejected the highly scientific and rational worldview that was common at the time, instead valuing subjectivity, intuition,
and spirituality. They believed in the value of every individual and that society (particularly institutions like organized religion
and politics) corrupted people. Transcendentalists also deeply appreciated nature and saw it as a way to understand the world and
observe the interconnectedness of all things.