Ralph Waldo Emerson · Philosophy
Emerson’s first book and founding manifesto - that nature is not dead matter but the visible language of spirit, that every natural fact answers to a spiritual fact, and that in solitude under the open sky the self can dissolve into the universal life.
You learned that for Emerson nature is the symbol of spirit, that ‘every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact’ (the doctrine of correspondence), and that in solitary communion with nature the self can become a ‘transparent eye-ball,’ nothing in itself yet seeing all. Explain these id…
Leads to Walt Whitman.
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