Nature

Nature is an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published anonymously in 1836. It is in this essay that the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature.Transcendentalism suggests that divinity suffuses all nature, and speaks to the notion that we can only understand reality through studying nature. In “Nature,” Emerson lays out an abstract problem that he attempts to solve throughout the essay: that humans do 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 to humans, but humans do not reciprocate. Emerson breaks his essay into eight sections—–Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects—–each of which sheds a different perspective on the relationship between humans and nature.