Transcendentalists - Essay Example

Transcendentalists The science goal is providing a nature theory, nonetheless, man has not yet reached a truth broad enough of understanding all of natures phenomena and forms. Emerson identifies spirit and nature as the universe components. He defines nature as anything separate from inner individual - art, nature, other people, our own bodies. Under common usage, nature means the material world unaffected by humanity. Art is nature in amalgamation with the man’s will. Emerson explains that his usage of the word "nature" in its philosophical and common its meanings in the essay.

Emerson divides his work on Nature into eight chapters that are preceded by an introduction. In the Introduction, the author laments the current tendency of accepting the knowledge and past traditions instead of experiencing nature and God directly, in the present. Emerson asserts that all our problems about the universe order - about the relationships between man, God, and nature — may be retorted by our life experience and by the world surrounding us. Everybody is a creation manifestation and as such possess the solution to unlock the universe mysteries.

Nature, as well, is both a divine expression and an understanding means it. He fear that science, is "inhuman. Things viewed with a microscope start to be insignificant. He claims that our praying instruments disturb the harmony and balance of nature" On the highest transcendental level, though, he relied on nature for harmony and beauty, even a civilized humankind, which he often found to lack in ordinary life, appreciating natures "perfect confidence" and "eternal health". Yet even in these instants he stated that he "had realized paradisiac regions" where he had "barely a foothold.

" There are other transcendental straining in Thoreau which ring true nowadays. As we try rescuing vanishing species, he mourned the loss of the "nobler animals," lamenting that his ancestors have "spoiled many of the initial leaves and grandest ways" of the primitive nature poem, thwarting his wish "to know an entire earth and an entire heaven." He was captivated with the Indian, whose "contact with Nature is at least like it admits the utmost independence of each," coveting his "rare and strange society with nature," one even deprived of himself.

Though a creative person himself, he mistrusted the technology of the machines and railroad, wondering about the US obsession with speed. A feeling of being a close part of nature while also aware of its distinct integrity, Both Emerson and Thoreau pointed the model for us, living in a more polluted and often contaminated nature, to discard our fabricated sense of superiority and dominion and discover our proper spiritual and ethical place in nature. We must recollect that we are not essential or indispensable to natures health, hitherto our capacity to rescind the nature grows.

The best of our humanoid possibilities, though, is contingent to our nurturing close, respectful and caring relationships with nature. The two scholars suggests that people must serve natures ends adequately for nature to serve their lives. That they call transcendental eco-wisdom, both timely and timeless (Perkins, 250). While Thoreau found the very pedigrees of his vitality there, his religion, and his art, Emerson concludes Nature enthusiastically and affirmatively. Emerson asserts that we will eventually look at the world with different eyes.

Nature instilled with spirit will be dynamic and fluid. The world exists for every man, the humble too the great. As we spiritualize and idealize, squalor and evil will disappear, nobility and beauty will reign. Humans will enter a kingdom of his own territory over nature with wonder, as Thoreau believes. Perkins, George. American Literature before the Civil War. NY: McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions. 2014. Print