Nature

"Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man: space, the air, the river, the leaf."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature (1836) was originally written by Ralph Waldo Emerson as a long essay in which he began to break away from traditional religious and social thinking and formulated the ideas and beliefs that were basic to the philosophy of Transcendentalism. In this essay, Emerson outlined his thinking about the fundamental relationship of man with nature. To many other intellectuals at the time his ideas were revolutionary because he abandoned the popular belief that humanity is separate from and above the rest of the natural world. In 1844, Emerson wrote and published two more series of essays entitled "Nature" in which the implications of this shift are discussed in greater detail.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) was an American poet and essayist. Universally known as the Sage of Concord, Emerson established himself as a leading spokesman of transcendentalism and as a major figure in American literature. His additional works include a series of lectures published as Representative Men (1850), The Conduct of Life (1860), and Society and Solitude (1870).