Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Nature and Selected Essays

Rate this book
An indispensible look at Emerson's influential life philosophy

Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on individual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and has given an impetus to modern political and social activism.

Larzer Ziff's introduction to this collection of fifteen of Emerson's most significant writings provides the important backdrop to the society in which Emerson lived during his formative years.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1836

Loading interface...
Loading interface...

About the author

Ralph Waldo Emerson

3,103 books4,999 followers
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.

The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
905 (42%)
4 stars
749 (35%)
3 stars
373 (17%)
2 stars
76 (3%)
1 star
37 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
Profile Image for Fergus, Quondam Happy Face.
1,106 reviews17.7k followers
August 26, 2023
I remember someone saying that the lead essay in this collection - Nature - was written when Emerson was still reeling from the loss of a loved one: I believe it was his son.

It shows in its last few sentences.

As consolation for his deep grief, apparently he then took up the study of Eastern religions (particularly Vedanta).

What must his neighbours, with their sturdy and rugged New England ways, have thought of this?

My guess is many saw him as an oddball (and for some strait-laced presbyters, surely a pariah)! Such is life.

Musta hurt, though! We can well imagine Emerson choosing a moment like that to pen his Goodbye Poem...

Farewell, proud world - I’m going home.
Thou’rt not my friend, nor am I thine...

To my eighteen-year-old self, he was, though, a revelation! I knew the feeling. That was that very last trumpet that marked the end of my childhood. The world is NOT my friend! Get the sublime subtlety of that?

Get this:

Suddenly - and without any prior notice - my soul was being exploded into the wide blue atmosphere, where, now in tiny fragments, I could for the first time see the awesome power of Nature, imbued, Emerson says, by the very oversoul that can rule all our thought and whims if we let it.

It will give us Peace.

Thour't not my friend...

No, no friend, but partner in an enterprise over which we have no control.

But for so many of my Boomer peers, he was their road to mysticism and the hippie culture.

But, what if (for the sake of argument) we had then LISTENED to the leering ostracism of his NOT-so-well-meaning friends’ label of Pariah - instead of seeking refuge?

As I was forced to listen, a captive audience indeed.

Why, then I think you could safely say that Emerson's thought would never have reached a Transcendental conclusion in my mind.

Yes, that very name of Pariah was given to me when I was a youth. It stuck. For I always thought fast - too fast. And under forced confinement, I had no CHOICE but to listen to my leering captors.

But by Listening and Eating Crow I Learned NOT transcendental Wisdom, of course, but - by dribs and drabs - the Practical Wisdom of Discernment.

Whuzzat?

Discernment is learned in the school of hard knocks.

My alma mater.

Where’s it located?

In the forum of publicly embittered sophistic dialogue. In getting your head bashed about repeatedly.

Learning discernment, we have a quiet key to understanding ourselves and our neighbours. And it can lead to our own development of a unique worldview.

So listen...

DON’T discard that queasy Sunday Teatime of the Soul feeling we all get.

That gloom.

That incipient depression.

OWN it. WORK with it.

It’s Us.

And USE it to silently, painfully Discern the Truth -

Or else Lose your Way ENTIRELY.
26 reviews
October 1, 2008
The world is pliably linguistic. Have faith in the way you see it! Allow yourself to do what you do and feel what you feel. Be a healthy individualist. Respect your fellow woman and your shared source.

Hippies talk all the time about universal spirits and mother nature and blah blah blah... none of them give plausible or interesting explanations of what they mean. Emerson points out very simply that Nature--everything that exists outside of me--makes up the common store of our language. Nature is what we all draw from to create and recreate. Think about that! That gives me an inherent reason to respect everything I meet, because we all have the same resources. I am no better and no worse, huh?

Read "Circles." There you get "reform," the expansion of the self onwards and outwards. I am so attached to certain aspects of myself (e.g. aptitude, personality, preferences, goals, causes) that the prospect of letting them go--just to try it out--is terrifying. In my fear I say, "that's just who I am." "I can't change who I am." "I'm here, I'm Lucas, get used to it." "I need to save the polar bears."

This we suppose to be individualism today! False confidence in a false self! Emerson makes me let go of these things I hold on to--everything I had thought was mine--but then shows me that I did not lose them at all! When I think I'm lost, I find I've expanded my circumference.

Read Emerson!
Profile Image for Dusty.
790 reviews222 followers
July 30, 2012
I can't help but start this review with a truism: It's near impossible to read American books or process American popular culture or politics without somehow grappling with the legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. We know better than ever that no claim to understand any era can be made without reference to a diversity of voices; however, while it's true that Emerson's easy to lump into the category of overrated privileged white men, it's also true that in his writings intersect just about every major current of nineteenth-century American (and possibly international) thought.

The dozen or so essays collected here return time and again to a few fundamental philosophical concepts, for example the natural and universal force behind all our thoughts and actions (that is, the Over-Soul) and the tension between idealism (transcendentalism) and materialism, but in the defense and periphery of these topics Emerson also addresses slavery, class divisions, the alienation of laborer from the products of his/her labor, westward expansion, the role the United States seems destined to play on the world stage, and so forth. In his notes on the French essayist Montaigne, Emerson writes that skeptical intellectuals acknowledge the limits of their reason, and I think Larzer Ziff does Emerson justice by choosing to include essays written later in Emerson's career that highlight some of his own limitations. While the more famous (and inspiring) earlier essays -- "Man the Reformer," for example -- may lead us to believe that Emerson would stand up for anybody disenfranchised, later essays actively deride classes of people who are disallowed access to education. In "Fate," he says certain classes are destined never to rise above their commitments to stomach and genitals, and "the more of these drones perish, the better for the hive" (367). Here, the step from Emerson to, say, the ethnic cleansing projects of people like Hitler is uncomfortably small. That said, the majority of these essays are powerfully composed and generally push us to be our better selves, if for no reason better than to do justice to the ancestors whose bloods flow within our veins. If you're born American or have spent much time immersed in American media culture, you'll probably be surprised how much of Emerson you already knew.
Profile Image for Melissa Rudder.
175 reviews260 followers
June 19, 2008
I can't resist Emerson. I enjoyed Nature much less than "Self Reliance" but I still found myself admiring his prose. For a writer who said "I hate quotations," he sure supplies a plethora of pithy lines.

My main problem with Nature was how anthropocentric it was. Nature is a powerful force through which the poet experiences the sublime and can gather fundamental truths, yet Emerson repeatedly asserts that it is a servant of "man," which bothered me. I was also slightly disturbed by Emerson's enthusiastic acceptance of the myth of progress at the same time that growing industrialization threatened his precious natural world.

Still, full of some very nice prose and ideas that dramatically transformed American culture. My favorite parts were when he talked about the role of the writer.
Profile Image for a.rose.
152 reviews5 followers
September 4, 2020
read a few essays in this collection for class (definitely did not read the whole book...). emerson is hella wordy but i did like his emphasis on renewing your connection to nature as well as his critique on scholars merely reading and rehashing great authors, rather than fully reflecting and making their own opinions on literature.
Profile Image for felicia varenius .
6 reviews17 followers
March 1, 2022
beautiful. "The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred expression, when the mind is open to their influence."
Profile Image for Mark Smeltz.
Author 1 book13 followers
August 8, 2017
Passages like this are great:

"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."

Parts like this are more troubling:

"Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Savior rode."

The essay alternates between such moments of brilliant insight and anthropocentrism. The result is rather a mixed bag...still worth a look to appreciate its impact on American literature, but not what I was looking for.
Profile Image for June.
70 reviews
March 20, 2022
Picked up a pdf of this book when I saw that Harry Styles was teasing something with it and I wasn't disappointed! Can manage to be more wordy than thought possible in a few places which left me skimming a few pages, (can you blame me?) But overall I am a sucker for old guys who had nothing to do but write underappreciated wordy-ass essays about the "natural world", so this was right up my wheelhouse. Really enjoyed it! Was it anything too special though? Not necessarily.
Profile Image for Iulia.
605 reviews19 followers
August 23, 2023
Read “Nature”, “The American Scholar”, “Self-Reliance”, “The Transcendentalist”, “The Poet”.

I can appreciate Emerson’s flashes of insight, the occasionally beautiful choice of words, or his (unfortunately) lasting cultural and intellectual legacy. But there’s no denying that I have a profound and immense dislike for much of his BS philosophy of hyper hardcore individualism, his nationalist/imperialist drivel, man-above-all doctrine etc, etc.

“The world is nothing, the man is all”

“The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.”

Who’s cooking your dinner, you sick maniac?
Profile Image for Rakhi Dalal.
217 reviews1,467 followers
September 15, 2011
Emerson speaks about Nature with such an enthusiasm.He speaks of the integrity of impression given by natural objects.He believes that in woods, we return to reason and faith and that nothing can befall us in life- no disgrace and no calamity.......and we feel that we are part or particle of God.

But to whom this reason appease? Its true that that the existence of nature and Us too can not be ignored, but what joy does it give to the souls who are looking out for a reason for the existence itself? To be convinced, its important to believe.....but what if everything including nature is just an illusion?
Profile Image for Caroline.
3 reviews8 followers
August 14, 2008
Who doesn't love Emerson? Raise your hand so that I can stop being your friend.
Profile Image for ellie a.
44 reviews1 follower
July 11, 2023
nature was definitely a standout but it may be one of my favorite essays ive ever read-- just genuinely beautiful and interesting and makes you reevaluate your relationship with the things happening around you, which is always a fun process. definitely recommend checking out the titular essay, if anything
Profile Image for Noteeth.
16 reviews6 followers
March 15, 2018
...and five stars for his tribute to Thoreau.
Profile Image for Zelia Lerch.
125 reviews
February 13, 2024
These American lit Emerson essays are so hard to keep track of… sorry if this is cheating but I read like 9 of these essays so I’m gonna count it as this book ❤️
Profile Image for Lucia L.
9 reviews
October 10, 2021
I think if we all read American trascendentalists, the stoics and Spinoza...the world will be a better place.
Profile Image for Marshall.
170 reviews20 followers
May 25, 2015
Ralph Waldo Emerson covered many aspects of men in many essays. Nature-oriented and thought-provoking, many points have been discussed around men’s relation with nature, how men can learn truth from nature, and what virtues men can possess while interacting with nature. In a society where we emphasize on external pursuits, these essays emphasize on internal pursuit - how to build intellect, will, and affection, what forms nature of a man. Mostly importantly, how men should see through the surface of diversity of all things and derive common law and nature of all things.

By emphasizing on internal pursuits, Emerson constantly talks about CHARACTER of men - character is the cause for our body and mind, our physical fitness, our intellect, our will, and our affection. I’m grateful to have encounter this great book as a young adult. Use it as a great guideline for building my own character and shape experience myself and many others.

Some great quotes, organized by essay:

Nature
A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth and his desire to communicate it without loss.
Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces.
Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.
A right action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature. The wise man, in doing one thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly.
The foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit.
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited himself. He cannot be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much its demand as perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought.

American Scholars
He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end.
To the young mind every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct.
It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books.
The mind now thinks, now acts, and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended and books are a weariness — he has always the resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.
In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be — free and brave. Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very function puts behind him. Fear always springs from ignorance.

History
Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.
The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences.
The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity equally obvious. There is, at the surface, infinite variety of things; at the center there is simplicity of cause.
Common souls pay with what they do, nobler souls with that which they are.

Self-Reliance
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves child to the genius of their age.
Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home.
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience dies with them.

The over-soul
When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love.
The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth.

Experience
Human life is made up of the two elements, power and form, the the proportion must be invariably kept if we would have it sweet and sound.
Profile Image for Jono.
92 reviews30 followers
January 18, 2009
My version had essays on Nature, History and Self-Reliance. My impression was that Emerson was one smart guy. The essays are packed with wisdom in so many places across so many areas of thought. It's definitely not always easy to read. The writing is often frilly and complex. It's also threaded with examples from classics (I haven't read) throughout. That said he's an extremely poetic writer and the book was worth reading for any one of his lines of wisdom from any of the essays. I particularly liked his thoughts on self-reliance.
Profile Image for Zospeak.
8 reviews
May 1, 2012
I'm not sure if this is the exact copy I have, but the essay on Nature is so beautifully written. He manages to describe the simple spiritual upliftment people can access through natural scenery. Emerson was very controversial in his time because his philosophies went against the Church's idea that you must go through the institution/a third party to access spirituality. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, Emerson writes brilliantly and I find his words life-affirming - they make me happy to be alive!
Profile Image for Stephen.
155 reviews
November 6, 2014
In this essay he paints the relationship humans possess with nature and how we as human's can find solace and inspiration in nature. He paints an entire philosophical thought process of how we are connected with all parts of the God's creation.

I am sure Emerson's philosophy could be debunked by serious philosophers. Yet, this essay, as one who learned to worship God in nature, instinctively jived with me.
Profile Image for Shane.
57 reviews1 follower
February 18, 2016
Nature I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII +

Address:
The American Scholar +
An Address to the Senior Class in Divinity College +
Literary Ethics +
The Method of Nature +

Lectures:
Man the Reformer +
Introductory Lecture on the Times +
The Conservative +-
The Transcendentalist -
The Young American +
Profile Image for Clay Kallam.
939 reviews25 followers
August 14, 2018
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of those names -- you've heard it, you have some idea why he was important, but really, when you get right down to it, you don't know much beyond the name.

So, for example, when I was reading one of the essays is this book, this sentence appeared: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." I've always loved that line, but had no idea it was Emerson who wrote it, nor that it was from an 1841 essay called "Self-Reliance."

But that sentence also reflects the whole of "Nature and Selected Essays," both for its insight as well as its syntax and vocabulary. Emerson is firmly in his own time and place and, for example, the 1837 "American Scholar" is rooted in the intellectual inferiority complex that had gripped -- and would continue to grip -- the United States since its founding. At the same time, the importance of religion in the worldview of Emerson and his contemporaries is paramount, even though Emerson eventually abandons the trappings of the conventional Protestantism of the day.

Emerson also tends to wander from his theme, but his insight and his focus on grander themes than the issues of the time makes "Nature and Selected Essays" a worthwhile stroll through the mind of one of America's most influential early thinkers. That said, his Transcendentalism never quite was defined precisely enough to challenge existing systems, and essays such as "The Poet" are too far removed from us to stir us.

On the other hand, "Napoleon" reflects some commentaries from 2018 when it contrasts worldly success with the character of the person who achieved that success, and "Montaigne" describes the kind of worldview that can counter such tyrants and populists.

Perhaps the most readable of all the essays is the last one, on Henry David Thoreau, a protege of Emerson's who died at 42. Much of what seems to us to be stylistic excess has been pared away, and the simplicity of the prose and the clarity of the observation bring Thoreau to life as his contemporaries saw him, not as we do 150 years on.

As is often the case, I felt the five-star system too limiting, as "Nature and Selected Essays" is a 3.5, really. Though it isn't necessarily easy reading, and though some of the concerns are distant, Emerson's influence and intellect reward the patient reader.

Profile Image for Roman Brasoveanu.
33 reviews1 follower
October 13, 2023
There is nothing redeeming about Emerson's work, least of all his 1836 essay "Nature." Here we have lofty prose in homiletic style, but little underlying substance. Emerson is not a systematic thinker; he deals in strings of sentences rather than coherent arguments. In "Nature" the contradictory character of his writing is seen; the chapter on language and that on spirit take entirely different views on nature (the former would make nature out to be a purely phenomenal!). Even on the most basic issues such as the nature of language, the work is riddled with contradictions. Page 263 and 270 ("The Poet") on the reliability of language and the use of poetry evidence this point.

His incompetence as an intellectual should be seen in how he treats Plato, whose teachings he believes himself to be following. He gets Plato totally wrong on poetry, actually quoting Aristotle, who is his polar opposite in this regard!

The attentive reader will find an informal philosopher who preaches an esoteric/gnostic doctrine of reconnecting soul with spirit. He is unwilling, by admission, to accept the 'logical extremes' that his own doctrine leads him to. It took 12 years to sell 500 copies for good reason and Emerson's contemporaries were absolutely right, these works are vacuous and obscure.
January 3, 2021
This book is a collection of essays by the American philosopher - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson seeks to guide the development of young America and its citizens though scholarly discourse. If the bill of rights provided for the elemental rights of Americans, this book details how those rights should be exercised. In reading the book I was struck by how much the tenets of Transcendental philosophy overlapped with Tao philosophy specifically; the "oneness" of the world. Of all the book's essays my favourite was "Self-reliance", advocating the need for people to think for themselves and trust in their intuition despite opposition from others.

It is a challenging read, (aren't all philosophy books...) but there is an abundance of actionable advice and his writing has the power to transfix you. He is a name I have heard much of, and it is only my first reading of his works. Although i don't agree with all his thoughts, that wouldn't stop be going back for more.

@fivequotebookchallenge
Profile Image for Ivan.
373 reviews
December 6, 2020
FIRST LINE REVIEW: “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.” Or put more directly, get away from your desk/computer, avoid people and go for a long walk in the woods. I had to take my time with this collection of philosophical writing from the early-mid 1800s in order to follow Emerson’s ideas. I’m no philosopher, but my take-away was a constant refrain of the above opening line, coupled with a focus on trying to be the best person you can be for yourself and for others. Love, nature and selflessness were all constant refrains. So was the need to unstick ourselves from bad habits and traditions. As one of the founders of transcendentalism, he seems to be saying that we need to evolve/transcend just as nature does, rather than rigidly/conservatively refusing to do so. Makes a lot of sense.
Profile Image for Garrett Peace.
285 reviews11 followers
October 29, 2017
Whew. Finally.

Yes, this is a 5-star book. You can see so much of the intellectual life of America (such as it is...) getting its start here, and I am glad I read it, just to have a greater understanding of the intellectual/“spiritual” context in which some of my favorite writers (Whitman, Dickinson, etc.) were working. “Experience” was my favorite essay, along with “Self-Reliance.” Everything else was great, but it’s difficult to read more than one at a time, due to the density of Emerson’s prose and ideas and to his repetition of certain ideas as well.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.