Nature (essay) - Synopsis

Synopsis

Many would call Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writing “metaphorical”, and that is just what this essay is. In “Nature”, Emerson lays out a problem that he attempts to solve throughout the essay: that man does not fully accept nature’s beauty and all that it has to offer. According to Emerson, people are distracted by the world around them; nature gives back to man, but man doesn’t reciprocate the favor. Emerson breaks his essay down into eight sections: Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit, and Prospects, all of which shed a different perspective on nature and man's relationship.

Nature is perfectly suitable for man, but according to Emerson, man must take himself away from society’s flaws and distractions, and create “wholeness” with nature. Emerson believes that solitude is the only way man can fully adhere to what nature has to offer. Reflecting upon this idea of solitude, and man's search for it, Emerson states, “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” {reflist}. Clearly, man must allow nature to “take him away”, society can destroy mans wholeness. Nature and man must create a reciprocal relationship, “Nature, in its ministry to man, is 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 sun 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” {reflist}, as Jefferson says, nature and man need each other to be beneficial. This relationship that Emerson depicts is somewhat spiritual; man must recognize the spirit of nature, and accept it as the Universal Being. “Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient” {reflist}. Emerson explains that nature is not “fixed or fluid”; to a pure spirit, nature is everything.

Although highly metaphorical, “Nature” creates such a different perspective towards one view of nature. Emerson abstractly speaks to every man; metaphorically creating common ground.