Chapter IV: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures

In the introduction of his first book, _Nature_, Emerson announces his favorite doctrine, the necessity of seeing the world through our own eyes, of being original, not imitative. He then proceeds with his interpretation. Nature not only exalts man, giving him a pleasure so tonic that it admonishes to temperance, but also renders him certain services. They may be classified under Commodity, Beauty, Language, and Discipline. The first, albeit the lowest, is perfect in its kind; men everywhere comprehend the ‘steady and prodigal provision’ that has been made for their comfort. Beauty is the second, and meets a nobler want. ‘Nature satisfies by its loveliness,’ and ‘without any mixture of corporeal benefit.’ ‘Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.’ This is not enough, there must be a spiritual element. Such element is found in the will and virtue of man. An act of truth or heroism ‘seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple.’ Beauty in Nature also becomes an object of the intellect. It reforms itself in the mind, leads to a new creation, and hence Art.

Nature is the source of language, words being the signs of natural facts. But ‘every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.’ In brief, ‘the world is emblematic.’ Nature is a discipline of the understanding, devoting herself to forming the common-sense. Nature is the discipline of the will, after which she becomes the ally of Religion. In short, so great is the part played by Nature in disciplining man that the ‘noble doubt’ perpetually arises ‘whether the end be not the Final Cause of the Universe; and whether nature outwardly exists.’

What then? It makes no difference ‘whether Orion is up there in heaven or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul.’ Culture has the uniform effect of leading us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a substance. Nature herself gives us the hint of Idealism. The poet teaches the same lesson. The philosopher seeking, not Beauty, but Truth, dissolves the ‘solid seeming block of matter’ by a thought. Intellectual science begets ‘invariably a doubt of the existence of matter.’ Ethics and religion have the same effect of degrading ‘nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit.’

Back of all nature, then, is spirit. ‘The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God.’ At present man has not come into his whole kingdom. He depends on his understanding alone. Let him apply all his powers, the reason as well as the understanding.

Brief as it is, this little book shows to perfection the richness of Emerson’s thought, his skill in the apothegm, his economy of phrase, the poetic cast of his mind, and the beauty of his diction.

Nine addresses and lectures are printed along with _Nature_ in the definitive edition of Emerson’s writings. The first is the Phi Beta Kappa Oration, ‘The American Scholar,’ in which Emerson sounds with resonant tone that note of independence so marked in all his teaching. It was time, he thought, for the ‘sluggard intellect’ of America to ‘look from under its iron lids’ and prove itself equal to something more than ‘exertions of mechanical skill.’ We have been too long the bond slave of Europe.

True emancipation consists in freedom from the idea that only a few gifted ones of the earth are privileged to learn truth at first hand. Let us not be cowed by great men.

Emerson notes three influences acting upon the scholar. First, nature, always with us and taking the impress of our minds. Second, books, which, noble as they are in theory, have their danger: ‘I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit.’ Third, life, everything which is the opposite of mere thinking. ‘If it were only for a vocabulary the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary.’

Above all, he praises the obscure scholar who without hope of visible reward, reckoning at true value the seesaw of public whim and fancy, patient of neglect, patient of reproach, ‘is happy if he can satisfy himself alone that this day he has seen something truly.’

‘The Divinity Address,’ as it is called, was thought in its day nothing short of outrageous radicalism. The now well-known Emersonian plea for a noble individuality is made in terms the most inspiring. He bewails the helplessness of mankind. ‘All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret.’ Emerson would drive out the spirit which prompts a man to content himself with being ‘an easy secondary to some Christian scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent man.’ He would have men follow no one leader, however distinguished or gifted, but seek truth at first hand, know God face to face. And while he grants that nothing is of value in comparison with the soul of a good and great man, even a great man becomes a source of danger if we propose to rest in the shadow of his achievement rather than develop our own gift.

‘The Method of Nature’ is a rhapsody in praise of the spontaneous and unreasoning as over against the logical and definite. Nature looks to great results, not to little ones, to the type rather than the individual.

In ‘Man the Reformer’ Emerson preaches another favorite doctrine, the necessity of manual work. There is nothing fanciful in his view. He did not set himself against division of labor. He did not insist that every man should be a farmer ‘any more than that every man should be a lexicographer.’ His ‘doctrine of the Farm’ is that ‘every man ought to stand in primary relations with the work of the world.’

This address should be read in connection with the one on ‘The Times,’ which supplements it. The ideal reformer is not he who has some cause at heart in comparison with which all other causes are naught. The reformer is the ‘Re-maker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great Nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past.’

A reading of this address ought to be followed by a reading of the one entitled ‘The Conservative.’ As he had advised reformers of the danger to which they were exposed, he now warns conservatives not to forget that they are the retrograde party. By their theory of life sickness is a necessity and the social frame a hospital. Yet in a planet ‘peopled with conservatives one Reformer may yet be born.’

In the lecture on ‘The Transcendentalist’ Emerson comes to a tempered defence of his own. He defines the new movement; it is merely Idealism as it shows itself in 1840--an old thing under a new name. He is very patient with the Transcendentalists, whose chief idiosyncrasy is that they have ‘struck work.’ ‘Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, and these must.’ American literature and spiritual history will profit by the turmoil. This heresy will leave its mark, as any one will admit who knows ‘these seething brains, these admirable radicals, these talkers who talk the sun and moon away.’