Comparing Emerson And Thoreau

What is nature? It is the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. What is the connection between human and nature? You might not notice the significance of it, but by reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, Self-Reliance, and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” and Civil Disobedience, you would realize that human cannot live without nature. According to Emerson and Thoreau, nature is a living character through which human identity is constructed either through the characters’ alignment with the natural world or their struggle against it.

Nature by Emerson

“Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE.”

This quote summarizes in a

frank and conspicuous tone the author’s beliefs that everything that exists outside of human’s external consciousness “all that is separate from us … distinguishes as the NOT ME” even human body derived from nature, thus emphasizing on the importance of nature of a driven fore that defined existence of and within universe.

Self-Reliance by Emerson
“the inmost in due time becomes the outmost” & “and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment”
Emerson’s use of antithesis in this 2 quotes put an emphasis on the irony of life and how life is a cycle that led us in circle, to live a life-time and died a child, to have “our first thought rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.” This suggests of an imminent repetition, a circle of that starts and ends with one single thought: uncertainty about the world of the unknowns. The quotes also underscore, in its subtext, the importance and eminent presence of nature in our life. The quote compares human life to a cycle, a repetition of birth and death that humans are forced to conform to. A circle is the most nature form, and through this emphasis on the cycle of life, Emerson may have suggested that nature controlled every aspect of your life, even the soul itself, like Pinocchio on strings.

“But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections most now enter into his account” & “With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do”
The second quote suggests that human interaction have forged and shaped our perception; thus, after “he have once acted or spoken with éclat,” his opinion shall never “pass again into his neutrality.” We can never remained as frank as we used to before interaction/intercourse, and our opinion is biased and reworded to take into account the relationship we have with our acquaintances.

Similarly, since every outside of the soul is nature – including society – this reflects how nature influences human perception. This is the connection between nature and the soul. Consistency represents a constant in society, a repetition in thoughts and behaviors that always persisted through time. This seemed liked an unnatural recurrence, meaning a concept that does not apply to natural world: trees and organisms evolved, and nature never follow a specific pattern, or quoted Emerson: “spontaneous impression.” By clashing with both, Emerson illustrated and intricate web of connection between nature and soul, closely

interlinked.

Civil Disobedience by Thoreau
“It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.” (10)
This quote seemed to make a connection between nature and the conscience, and therefore, nature and the intuition. The quote illustrates how our experiences and decisions (these include the ones that take into account our conscience) can trigger a chain-reaction further shaping human’s character and morality (basically it played a critical role in shaping our soul).

“If one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their action, but partly by their intentions, they would be deserved to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.” (7)
Along with the previous quote, seems to address in further detail how the role of nature as a interlinking for to the soul which is essential in the constitution of our paradigm of the world.

“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?” (7)
By describing in vivid details the impact of a corrupted and depraved government that brainwashed its armies into “a steeping marching indeed” “marching in admirable order over the hill and dale against their common consciences,” “[not] men at all,” but “movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power,” and also of ignoring human instinct, Thoreau established a link between nature and the soul. He inferred that, not only does nature shaped out perception of the world, just like how the image of these uniformed war machines inspire within our mind this conjecture of how it symbolizes “a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity,” our thoughts conscience, actions and what is intrinsically human in us also foster great changes to the environment around us. Transcendentalist ideals, and Emerson’s Nature, depicts this external force as “all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE.” Thus, by illustrating how this army, a product of “a palpitation of the heart,” “marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars against their will,” providing that their lack of moral viewpoints also have an impact on the external world, nature – in this case in form of wars to spread expansionism. Thus, by making this link, Thoreau suggested that nature and the soul is closely interweaved, interrelated by nature.

“I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one” (11)
The fourth quote makes specific references to nature in the form of God. Thoreau seemed to be almost convinced that, if you act upon what is right and just, not what is expedient yet morally depraved, then you have nature on your side, giving you her blessing, just as a pious man would believe that God may protect you.

“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man” (15)
The last quote underlines the importance of nature and how the soul and nature is interconnected. They followed the same pattern, and nature seems to influence much of what humanity is based upon, like the idea of acting on moral value and what your nature compelled you to do, or as Thoreau would say while maintain the context and use of simile, metaphor: “a plant cannot live according to its nature,” just as if a man cannot abide by his moral standings, “it [he] dies.”

Walden by Thoreau
“Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.” (21)
From this quote, Thoreau noted that what the poet brought with him that day was his experience and his perspective of the land, of its beauty and energy flow. Thoreau made his opinion clear: he believed that this knowledge and perception of the land is more important and valuable than what you actually profited from it – the skimmed milk basically, while the knowledge of its beauty is the rich ‘metaphorical’ cream. Thoreau considered nature to be the source to all spiritual affinity that does not necessarily need the physical representation or materialistic value to truly benefit from, or elevated by. It is the beauty and the tranquility the land brought to its beholders that is spiritually and psychologically enriching, not the profit made with