Miscellanies : $b embracing Nature, addresses, and lectures — John Shaqi
Miscellanies : $b embracing Nature, addresses, and lecturesEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Miscellanies : $b embracing Nature, addresses, and lectures
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
American essays -- 19th century; Philosophy of nature; Transcendentalism (New England)
It has already been illustrated, that every natural process is a version
of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and
radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every
substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we
deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the
wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred
emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow
of winter overtakes in the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the
miner, the merchant, in their several resorts, have each an experience
precisely parallel, and leading to the same conclusion: because all
organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be doubted that this moral
sentiment which thus scents the air, grows in the grain, and impregnates
the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The
moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth
which it illustrates to him. Who can estimate this? Who can guess how
much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? how much
tranquillity has been reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose
unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, and
leave no wrinkle or stain? how much industry and providence and
affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? What a searching
preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of Health!
Herein is especially apprehended the unity of Nature,--the unity in
variety,--which meets us everywhere. All the endless variety of things
make an identical impression. Xenophanes complained in his old age,
that, look where he would, all things hastened back to Unity. He was
weary of seeing the same entity in the tedious variety of forms. The
fable of Proteus has a cordial truth. A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a
moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection
of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the
likeness of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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