Nature

Emerson’s text abounds in similes and metaphors, which use comparisons to distance the reader enough from everyday phenomena to see them anew. For example, Emerson uses metaphor to support his argument that the present age deserves its own philosophy when he questions why “we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe” when “the sun shines to-day also” (15). Here, the dim, abject imagery of dry bones and worn, faded clothing juxtaposes with the brilliant light of today’s sun, as Emerson encourages the reader to seek wonder in the bright contemporary rather than the obsolete past. The most explicit use of metaphor is when Emerson claims that “the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind” (32), as its processes of discipline and hierarchy echo those of the intellect. The idea of metaphor is important to Emerson’s argument, as it encourages the reader to appreciate nature beyond its sensuous surface.

Although Emerson complains at the excessive retrospection of his age and argues that contemporary philosophy should replace the classical tradition, he still makes references to the classical world—for example, to the pagan wind god Aeolus and the philosopher Plato’s allegory of the cave. Still, in both cases Emerson makes the allusion to prove its relative irrelevance to the current age. While human ingenuity has made steamships more powerful than any classical personification of the wind, Plato’s questioning of the natural world’s reality is a mere “noble doubt” that can be dismissed as tangential to Emerson’s inquiry (41). While Emerson makes allusions to show that he has been schooled in the classical tradition, he practices what he preaches when he refuses to put them before his own experience and intuition.