Emerson's Belief that Nature is a Metaphor for the Spiritual
Emerson believed that everything in nature was a symbolic representation
of a spiritual world that "shined through" nature.
For him, objects of nature were just like the words of a book.
He believed that everything in the world has a dual nature. On the one hand, it
is mundane, but on the other it is divine!
It is true that the brute facts of existence are boring, but we supply each of those
facts with meaning that makes them valuable and gives them a spiritual side.
Each object is only a clump of atoms, but there are millions of possibilities for
what each object could become. When we see those possibilities and select
the best, the object becomes meaningful to us.
We can stare at a book and only see the words on the page, or we can see past those
words to see their underlying meanings.
Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost followed in the Emersonian tradition.
They saw the dual nature of everything.
Thoreau wrote about it what most people thought were the most boring details of
existence.
Robert Frost also seemed to be writing about very earthly matters (gardens, trees,
etc.). However, once one realizes that the two roads that diverged in a yellow wood
were more than just two physical trails, it becomes obvious that he also saw the
world in the same way that Emerson had years before.
Hartman saw "meaning" as being one of the key ingredients of valuing an object.
According to him, objects become more valuable to us when they are more meaningful
to us - that is when they are capable of helping us fulfill more concepts.
Emerson and Hartman may have been seeing the same world of value "shining through"
nature.