Chile and Nature

“But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.”
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In 1836 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “Nature”
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Within the essay, he divides nature into four: Commodity, Beauty, Language and Discipline. These define the ways by which humans use nature for their basic needs, their desire for delight, their communication with one another and their understanding of the world.
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I came across this essay at uni and have kept a copy of it ever since. Here are some of my favourite words for you:
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To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.
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The ancient Greeks called the world {kosmos}, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal.
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Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
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Vanessa Digoncelli – Popcorn English Founder