Nature and Self Reliance
Artemis Fang
Senior One A
24 February 2015
A Comparative Essay Between Nature and Self Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American writer and philosopher who lived during the Romantic Period in the early 1800’s. He and Henry David Thoreau laid the groundwork for Transcendentalism, building its core around kinship with nature, individualism, and seeing past materialism. Emerson had strong beliefs about the world we live in and wrote passionately about them. Two of his most famous essays were titled “Nature” and “Self Reliance”. These two writings reflected some of Emerson’s major thoughts about life and are both considered key texts on Transcendentalist thought. There are many similarities and differences between the two pieces.
Emerson made the defining principles of his philosophy clear in his first major work, a long essay titled “Nature”, published in 1836. In this essay, he repeatedly emphasizes the importance of connecting with nature. It is said that solitude can open up the beauty of nature to the eye of man. According to Emerson, nature can inspire a feeling of reverence at its inaccessible, enigmatic beauty. (Leude 2008). Emerson believed that Man can find happiness, perhaps even an irrational happiness, in being one with nature, where man could get in touch with himself, and feel the rush of power surge through him, for he is away from the troubles of the material world, from modern society, and back in harmony with the sacred force of nature. “Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.” (Emerson 1836).
Emerson also brings to attention that adults are typically blind to the beauty of nature and have a tendency to fail to appreciate it. He used the stars as an example. What if the stars only showed up once in a thousand years? Surely men would find them a wondrous thing for their sheer beauty. But they have always appeared to us in their full glory and so we take them
Senior One A
24 February 2015
A Comparative Essay Between Nature and Self Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American writer and philosopher who lived during the Romantic Period in the early 1800’s. He and Henry David Thoreau laid the groundwork for Transcendentalism, building its core around kinship with nature, individualism, and seeing past materialism. Emerson had strong beliefs about the world we live in and wrote passionately about them. Two of his most famous essays were titled “Nature” and “Self Reliance”. These two writings reflected some of Emerson’s major thoughts about life and are both considered key texts on Transcendentalist thought. There are many similarities and differences between the two pieces.
Emerson made the defining principles of his philosophy clear in his first major work, a long essay titled “Nature”, published in 1836. In this essay, he repeatedly emphasizes the importance of connecting with nature. It is said that solitude can open up the beauty of nature to the eye of man. According to Emerson, nature can inspire a feeling of reverence at its inaccessible, enigmatic beauty. (Leude 2008). Emerson believed that Man can find happiness, perhaps even an irrational happiness, in being one with nature, where man could get in touch with himself, and feel the rush of power surge through him, for he is away from the troubles of the material world, from modern society, and back in harmony with the sacred force of nature. “Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.” (Emerson 1836).
Emerson also brings to attention that adults are typically blind to the beauty of nature and have a tendency to fail to appreciate it. He used the stars as an example. What if the stars only showed up once in a thousand years? Surely men would find them a wondrous thing for their sheer beauty. But they have always appeared to us in their full glory and so we take them