American Ideals 39. Emerson's Nature

Abstract

Professor Konvitz’s introduction to Emerson has not been recorded here, and this lecture appears incomplete. For Emerson, Professor Konvitz asserts, man’s mind is prior to the natural world and that world is as man perceives it. Nature, Emerson tells us, appears chaotic until the human mind begins to classify it, to understand its laws, and to provide coherence. As man understands and experience expands, the world expands for him.