Nature

Nature loc: 308

Introduction loc: 319
Note: Lear, the old buffer, the old chough, the old chuffer! Emerson, the old fluffer, the old puffer. Edit

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? loc: 321

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. loc: 327

Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. loc: 328

Let us inquire, to what end is nature? loc: 330

But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. loc: 334

Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. loc: 335

I Nature loc: 346

I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. loc: 349

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. loc: 354

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. loc: 365

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. loc: 368

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. loc: 375

I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. loc: 377

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. loc: 382

II Commodity loc: 391

the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. loc: 396

it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. loc: 397

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. loc: 404

useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. loc: 408

III Beauty loc: 419

Such is 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 a delight in and for themselves loc: 423

First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. loc: 436

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough. loc: 439

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. loc: 445

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 in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. loc: 463

The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. loc: 469

Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. loc: 470

There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it become s an object of the intellect. loc: 492

The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, loc: 494

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. loc: 497

This love of beauty is Taste. loc: 501

The creation of beauty is Art. loc: 502

world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. loc: 512

IV Language loc: 517

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. loc: 525

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. loc: 549

Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, 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 loc: 555

That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. loc: 558

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. loc: 564

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. loc: 581

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. loc: 582

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 evermore, and we forget its presence. loc: 597

A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. loc: 631

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. loc: 638

That which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge, loc: 643

V Discipline loc: 645
the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new loc: 647
Note: A new fact, that Nature is a discipline. Edit
he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time. loc: 753
Note: I didn't understand the vast majority of what this chapter said. It was so general, so abstract, that it was just a bunch of words on the page. And what little I could understand seemed like a lot of horse shit. Edit

VI Idealism loc: 755

Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. loc: 766

it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my senses. loc: 767
the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. loc: 770
Note: This his proof? That God never jests with us? I'm starting to lose respect for Emerson big time right now. Edit

Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties of man. Their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is perfect. loc: 770
are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. loc: 772
Note: Yeah, it's called evolution. Edit

whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open. loc: 775

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 absolute.” It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. loc: 846

The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. loc: 850
Note: Is Emerson channwling Keats? Edit
of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula. loc: 855
Note: What a sentence! Edit

Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of the existence of matter. loc: 859

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. loc: 861

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. loc: 867
Note: Emerson is equating piety, passion and knowledge as ways of knowing truth? Edit

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 a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no affinity. loc: 871

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, in degrading 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. loc: 875

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. loc: 893
Note: Desirable to the mind determines the doctrines worth Edit

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. loc: 896
Note: This is starting to veer off into the realm of fairy tale. Edit

VII Spirit loc: 904

all the uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence 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. loc: 908

problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter? Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. loc: 921

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 deny the existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. loc: 924

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, loc: 934
Note: I guess you could make a case that Emerson could be neurologically correct, that the world as we know it and understand it and act on it is built upthrough our minds. It's how we survived and evolved as a species. So why all the metaphysical claptrap? I don't think he has Spinoza's God in mind here. Edit

Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once inhale 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. loc: 939
Note: No wonder that so many self help gurus like and quote Emerson. Edit

it animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul. loc: 946

world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious. loc: 948

It is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure. loc: 949
Note: Do these last two statements contradict one another? Edit

VIII Prospects loc: 956

Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. loc: 960
Note: What a phrase: "manly contemplation of the whole." Edit

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 sallies 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 a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments. loc: 961
Note: Intuition is as good as knowledge? Edit

perception of this class of truths makes the attraction which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. In view of this half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of Plato, that, “poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.” loc: 1001

is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; loc: 1019

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 Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom of children. loc: 1033
Note: Waldo sounds a lot like a Christian Scientist, here. Edit

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. loc: 1045

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. loc: 1054

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. loc: 1062

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 conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. loc: 1068
Note: Reframing? Edit