JIGSAW PUZZLE ON EMERSON'S "NATURE" (1836)

DIRECTIONS: Each student will read their assigned passages and contribute their answer to the group. It is the goal of each student to have the following environmental concepts defined by the end of the class.

EMERSON “NATURE” QUOTES:

TO WHAT END IS NATURE?

NATURE FOSTERS / SERVES OUR NEED FOR:

1 ANTHROPOCENTRIC:

1 ECOCENTRIC:

2 SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED / SOCIETAL SELF:

TO WHAT END IS NATURE?

NATURE FOSTERS / SERVES OUR NEED FOR:

2 NATURAL SELF:

3 PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH:

4 COMMODITY:

5 BEAUTY:

6 HUMILITY / SELF RESTRAINT:

7 TRANSCENDENCE:

8 LANGUAGE / THOUGHT:

9 INVIOLABLE SPIRITUALITY / FAITH:

1 SOCIETAL v NATURAL SELF: How is this a definition of the losing the societal self to attain the natural self?

"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.."

"The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who ever could clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone: 't is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence."

2 NATURAL SELF : How is this a definition of the natural self and psychological health?

“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to

each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.

His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”

“In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man

beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own 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.”

3 LIMITS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE---> HUMILITY AND SELF RESTRAINT: How does nature remind us of the limits of what we can know and, therefore, is sublime?

"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 childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects."

4 COMMODITY : How is this both ecocentric (perceiving a natural object as integral to a sustainable ecosystem) and anthropocentric (perceiving nature as valuable if it serves man)?

“Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed.

"More servants wait on man

Than he 'll take notice of." ------

Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man.”

5 BEAUTY : How is this view of the effect of man's perspective upon nature anthropocentric?

“...the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight

in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping.

This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual

action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical.”

BEAUTY: How is this view that nature serves man's need for beauty anthropocentric?

“ First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight...To the body and mind

which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. he health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough."

“The world exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty.”

6 DEIFIED TRANSCENDENCE: How does this passage develop idea that nature can allow man to feel godlike?

"Crossing a bare common,in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky,without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty."

" I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from day-break to sun-rise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations: the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements!"

7 LANGUAGE / THOUGHT: How does nature develop our ways of thinking and, therefore, our language?

“Words are signs of natural facts.

Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. … 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.”

"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...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 hope. Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? "

"A rolling stone gathers no moss; A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; ...Make hay while the sun shines; ...Long-lived trees make roots first;"

8 SPIRIT: WHY DOES EMERSON FIND THAT HIS FAITH IN GOD IS ENCOURAGED BY EXPERIENCES IN NATURE?

“The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship….behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present,...it does not act upon us from without,...the Supreme Being does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old.”

"The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful."

"Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation."

The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious. But it differ from the body in one important respect. It is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the divine mind. ... Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him? Yet this may show us what discord is between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds something ridiculous in his delight, until he is out of the sight of men.

9 INTERCONNECTEDNESS IN NATURE: How does this passage and the poem "Each and all" develop man's ability to see that nature is interdependent and any natural object's beauty is dependent on its connection to the whole ecosystem?

"Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. "

Each and All

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

...All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,

Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;

He sings the song, but it pleases not now,

For I did not bring home the river and sky; —

He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;

The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;

And the bellowing of the savage sea

Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,

As 'mid the virgin train she stayed,

Nor knew her beauty's best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; —

The gay enchantment was undone,

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, "I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth:" —

As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,

Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet's breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;

Over me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird; —

Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

-Ralph Emerson

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10. How does Emerson's poem "The Rhodora" express that both man and nature are guided to flourish by the unseen beneficent presence of a spiritual power?

On being asked, whence is the flower.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals fallen in the pool

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask; I never knew;

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

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ALL: SUMMARY PARAGRAPH: According to your reading of Ralph Emerson's "Nature" (1836), what are the essential "ends / purposes of nature?”