...central tenet of Transcendentalism: "The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face. . . . Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" Indeed, much of Transcendentalism can be summed up as the individual's quest for an "original relation...

...even as it also helped to inspire modern democracy. Emerson asks in his first book, Nature (1836), "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" (7). American democratic wildness often stems from that very impulse, anarchic, desocialized, religious,...

...willfulness, Emerson began Nature with a blunt challenge to the past, which meant for him the dead: "Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of...also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" The need was great for a direct, unmediated experience of the divine: "Why should not we have a poetry...

...Nature. it was something basic to intellectual life that had once been articulated, but now was lost: Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of...their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?24...

...of Religion, 453. 8 A True History of Ourselves: Augustine, Carlyle, and the Case for Biography Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of...God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1840) IDOK AT THE BOOKSHELVES IN THE LOCAL BARNES AND NOBLE, one would...

...as basis for knowledge". In 1836, in his book, Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson thus complains that "our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of...beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes"1078. Some eighteen years later, in his famous Walden, Thoreau bemoans the rampant vanishing of...

...searing indictment of a backwards-looking culture of death. "Our age is retrospective," he complains. "It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes...criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face-to-face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?...

...Emerson began. "It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not...also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" At the end, mounting higher, he had "a certain poet" sing out for him, '"A man is a god in ruins,'"...

...while sustaining the principles of the powers of human reason. Part Two CAPITOL OF BEST INTENTIONS Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of...fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836) Have we not molded a giant statue, not out of marble or brass,...

...Obey thy heart," and "God enters by a private door into every individual" (from "Intellect") and then "The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face...also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" (from Nature). They heard each of these, blinking, and all remained silent when I asked for comments....