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from "Nature" (1836) 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
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. Chapter I - Nature To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all
natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never
wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by
finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the
animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the
simplicity of his Chapter IV - Language Language is a third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle, and threefold degree.
1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eyebrow. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts. 2. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import,-so conspicuous a fact in the
history of language,-is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic; it is
things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every
appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be
described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning
man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is
subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar
expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us,
is respectively our image of memory and 3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations! Did it need such noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question, whether the characters are not significant of themselves. Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. "The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;" "reaction is equal to action;" "the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use. |