Preface
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.