NATURE,
ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES.
MISCELLANIES;
EMBRACING
NATURE, ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES.
BY
R. W. EMERSON.
BOSTON:
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY.
M.DCCC.LVI.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY, in the Clerk’s Office of the
District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
NATURE 5
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. AN ORATION BEFORE
THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, AT CAMBRIDGE,
AUGUST 31, 1837 75
AN ADDRESS TO THE SENIOR CLASS IN DIVINITY
COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, JULY 15, 1838 113
LITERARY ETHICS. AN ADDRESS TO THE LITERARY
SOCIETIES IN DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, JULY 24, 1838 147
THE METHOD OF NATURE. AN ADDRESS TO THE
SOCIETY OF THE ADELPHI, IN WATERVILLE COLLEGE,
MAINE, AUGUST 11, 1841 181
MAN THE REFORMER. A LECTURE READ BEFORE
THE MECHANICS’ APPRENTICES’ LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
BOSTON, JANUARY 25, 1841 217
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON THE TIMES. READ
IN THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, DEC. 2, 1841 249
THE CONSERVATIVE. A LECTURE READ IN THE
MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, DECEMBER 9, 1841 283
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. A LECTURE READ IN
THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, JANUARY, 1842 317
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. A LECTURE READ TO
THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, IN BOSTON,
FEBRUARY 7, 1844 349
NATURE.
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.
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 that whatever
curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of
things can satisfy. 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. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms
and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great
apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what
end is nature?
All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have
theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach
to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that
religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are
esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most
abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it
will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all
phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable;
as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.
Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the
Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all
which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and
art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name,
NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I
shall use the word in both senses;--in its common and in its
philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the
inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur.
_Nature_, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man;
space, the air, the river, the leaf. _Art_ is applied to the mixture of
his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a
picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a
little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so
grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the
result.
NATURE.
CHAPTER I.
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. The
rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and
what he touches. 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
envoys 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. Nature never wears
a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and
lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never
became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains,
reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the
simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most
poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by
manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of
timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming
landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning
the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a
property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate
all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s
farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not
see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. 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. His intercourse with
heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of
nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Nature says,--he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs,
he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every
hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change
corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from
breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits
equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a
cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles,
at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any
occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect
exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man
casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever
of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within
these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial
festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them
in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. 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. 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 parcel of God. The name of the nearest friend
sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be
acquaintances,--master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I
am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I
find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the
tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon,
man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
The 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. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of
the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise,
and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a
better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or
doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not
reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary
to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always
tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed
perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread
with melancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To
a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in
it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who
has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts
down over less worth in the population.