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Nature

First published: 1836
Pages: 51

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Read by Jesse Zuba · 1 h 47 min · 9 parts

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Introduction
4:31
Chapter I - Nature
6:46
Chapter II - Commodity
3:51
Chapter III - Beauty
14:25
Chapter IV - Language
16:24
Chapter V - Discipline
17:02
Chapter VI - Idealism
20:24
Chapter VII - Spirit
7:22
Chapter VIII - Prospects
17:14

Nature (1849) is a public domain work.

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About this book

First published anonymously in 1836, this short book laid out the core ideas of American Transcendentalism before the movement had a name. Through a brief introduction and eight chapters that move from Commodity and Beauty to Language, Idealism, and Spirit, Emerson argues that the natural world is not merely useful but a visible sign of spiritual law, a text through which a careful observer reads truths about the self and God. It carries his famous image of becoming a "transparent eyeball," dissolving into the landscape until the currents of a universal being seem to flow through him. The essay presses readers to build an original relation to the universe rather than living on the secondhand faith of earlier generations. Its ideas ran straight into Thoreau's Walden and Whitman's poetry and shaped American writing for decades after.

About the author

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity.