"When shows break up," wrote Whitman
afterward, "what but oneself is sure?" In 1834 and 1835 we find
Emerson occupying a room in the Old Manse at Concord, strolling
in the quiet fields, lecturing or preaching if he were invited to
do so, but chiefly absorbed in a little book which he was
beginning to write--a new utterance of a new man.
This book, the now famous "Nature" of 1836, contains the essence
of Emerson's message to his generation. It is a prose essay, but
written in the ecstatic mood of a poet. The theme of its
meditation is the soul as related to Nature and to God. The soul
is primal; Nature, in all its bountiful and beautiful
commodities, exists for the training of the soul; it is the
soul's shadow. And every soul has immediate access to Deity. Thus
the utility and beauty and discipline of Nature lift the soul
Godward. The typical sentence of the book is this: "The sun
shines today also"; that is to say: the world is still alive and
fair; let us lift up our hearts! Only a few Americans of 1836
bought this singular volume, but Emerson went serenely forward.
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