Nature

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson's founding essay of American Transcendentalism, arguing that the natural world is the visible face of spirit.

At a glance A short, exhilarating call to encounter nature freshly and to trust one's own soul. With this slender essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson launched a movement and reshaped American… Written in prose that moves between argument and rapture, Nature asks the reader to step… What it's about Emerson considers the natural world under a series of aspects — as…

Emerson considers the natural world under a series of aspects — as commodity, beauty, language, and discipline — and works toward the claim that nature is the symbol of spirit, and that the human soul stands in living…