Emerson View Of Nature In Relation To Transcendentalism

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Emerson

Emerson’s ideals of transcendentalism are clearly expressed in Nature and “The American Scholar.” He alludes to the transcendentalist belief in the soul’s inherent ability to grasp the truth in Nature when he says:

“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.”

Emerson at first seems to have had very contradictory ideas about the separation between man and Nature. To explain how the "me" can be shown by the "not me" Emerson makes examples of Nature, using such imagery as circulating currents of water and air. His less ambiguous references are metaphors about the interaction between man and nature through spirit. The basis and inspiration for the creative insights that Emerson desires come from being immersed in the revitalizing stream of Nature: "Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past...?" Emerson seems to be saying that Nature is an inner source of energy that fills us with power. This representation of nature as a river is of a being (apparently female, based on Emerson’s use of the word “embosomed”) detached from man and mostly impervious to his will.
The idea of division between man and nature changes as Emerson explains nature as the Not Me. He defines nature as "in the common sense...essences unchanged by man." Yet later Emerson writes of feeling “the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me” and says, “The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and vegetable.” His use of the word “currents” to describe the “Universal...