...both Locke and the transcendentalists meant to clear the ground for a new start. As Emerson asked, "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" (CW 1:7). Locke's Essay is permeated by a heady anti-authoritarianism and a demand that men think for...

...sides. It is the very rare American scholar who actually delivers an answer to the Emersonian question "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" But despite these caveats, James's central point remains, that the world described is always our world,...

...in the root sense of the word) and intimate relation to the silence. In Nature, Emerson says, "Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of...nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" Perhaps the greatest irony of poetry, and...

...individual—his escape from history. In the midst of a people without history, Emerson could still say: Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of...biographies, histories and criticism. The foregoing generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy...

...reinforce and expand my discussion of his reading of Webster's speech. Nature's fourth sentence — "The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we through their eyes" — alludes to I Corinthians 13: 9-13: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,...

...basic tenets. He said that earlier generations beheld "God and Nature face to face."29 He then asked "[w]hy should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" A closer relationship to nature, however, would have its benefits at various levels. In the final analysis...

...of his first book, he wrote: "Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers.... The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face...we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?" Nature, in Essays and...

...stresses Origen's role as a type of Logos. A pun on "Origen" arguably points to Emerson's famous query: "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" ( Works, 1:3). This suggestion may sound far-fetched, but Origen's actual failure to be an origin or...

...Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who visited Muir in his cabin, had written, 'The foregoing generanons beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their...also enjoy an original relation to the universe?' (1835, in Finch and Elder, p.45.) Most nations, including those of Native Americans, have a bloody...

...has brought about a similar shake-up in many a reader as well. "Our age is retrospective," he begins. "It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism." Emerson clears the agenda with a dismissive sweep, pointing out that "the foregoing generations beheld...