Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay

“To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun” (Emerson 1827). Every day, we take nature for granted by treating it as something that is common and repetitive. Normally we don’t wake up, look at the sun in the morning, and think about the miracle of reality in nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay “Nature,” on different aspects on what nature is, but in the end concludes nature is something so beautiful, it is something we will never be able to fully comprehend. Nature is something that can never be owned. Emerson distinguishes this by saying, “Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape” (1827). It is easy to buy a piece of land and call it yours, but they will never own the landscape itself. Emerson also uses beauty in Chapter 3 as something that is priceless. Like land may feel like a physical necessity, beauty is what people think they need to survive. Beauty from nature “is medicinal and restores their tone,” it gives people delight and restores the simplest things (1830). Just like a plot of land can bring in an income and give people delight with the amount they own, beauty works the same way. However, nobody can own a landscape and beauty of it. So who does?

I believe that Emerson is referring to God as the poet. He is the “property in the horizon” that nobody can own since He can fully comprehend nature himself (1827). God is the creator of nature and that makes him worthy of the highest power, owning all of the land... owning the entire universe. Even though “This is the best part of these men's farms,” that God created it for them, they have no appreciation for the massive beauty (1827). People aren’t thankful and recognize where nature even comes from, that they “give no title”