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Chapter VII. Spirit
from Nature, published as part of Nature; Addresses and Lectures
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it
should contain somewhat progressive. Uses that are exhausted or that
may be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is
true of this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all
his faculties find appropriate and endless exercise. And all the
uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the
activity of man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the
suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence
it had its origin. It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the
absolute. It is a perpetual effect. It is a great shadow pointing
always to the sun behind us.
The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she
stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The
happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks
most, will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it
were, distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and
describe himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as
helpless as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded
in propositions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the
noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It
is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the
individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it.
When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already
presented do not include the whole circumference of man. We must add
some related thoughts.
Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter?
Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the
ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a
substance. Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between
the evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being.
The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind
is a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from
which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles
than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the
existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit.
It leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of
my perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it,
because it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men
and women. Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is
something of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this
theory makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that
consanguinity which we acknowledge to it.
Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge,
merely as a useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us of
the eternal distinction between the soul and the world.
But when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come to
inquire, Whence is matter? and Whereto? many truths arise to us out
of the recesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest is
present to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which
is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each
entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they
are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature,
spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from
without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through
ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is, 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. As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom
of God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his
need, inexhaustible power. Who can set bounds to the possibilities
of man? Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the
absolute natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has
access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in
the finite. This view, which admonishes me where the sources of
wisdom and power lie, and points to virtue as to
"The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,"
carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, because
it animates me to create my own world through the purification of my
soul.
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 differs 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. It is a fixed point whereby we
may measure our departure. As we degenerate, the contrast between us
and our house is more evident. We are as much strangers in nature,
as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds.
The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us.
We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the
apple, the potato and the vine. 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.
