Nature

Reading Check

1. What does Emerson reject in the opening paragraph of “Nature?”

2. What is nature, according to Emerson?

3. What should people do to simultaneously lose their egos and find the truth?

4. What term does Emerson give to the use of nature that involves providing people with what they need to live their daily lives?

5. While nature is beautiful in and of itself, what element perfects its beauty?

6. How is art (including poetry) related to nature?

7. From where does language, particularly the language that expresses moral or intellectual fact, derive?

8. In his chapter titled “Discipline,” what does Emerson claim to be “the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process?”

9. To what do poets and philosophers alike subordinate “the apparent order and relations of things” in nature?

10. If “the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us,” from where does Emerson think nature comes?

Multiple Choice

1. Of what is the universe composed, according to Emerson?

A) constantly fluctuating phenomena

B) nature and the soul

C) the earth and the heavens

D) fundamental matter

2. What does Emerson imagine himself to be when he immerses himself in the woods and sheds his everyday identity?

A) a transparent eyeball

B) a beam of light

C) a rising breeze