Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves

“Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance.”

“We forget that nature itself is one vast miracle transcending the reality of night and nothingness,” Loren Eiseley wrote in his exquisite meditation on nature, human nature, and the meaning of life. “We forget that each one of us in his personal life repeats that miracle.” In the same epoch, Rachel Carson invited an elemental ...