... against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, developing instead their own faith centering on the divinity of man and nature. Transcendentalism derived some of its idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy notably that of Immanuel Kant, and from such English ... with a wonder known to few people. Nature's purpose was clear to Emerson: "All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man" and "the endless circulation of divine charity nourish man." Nature's beauty comes through "the plastic power of the human eye" which ...

• Word Count: 1093
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... his poetics of transcendental idealism by shifting the rhetorical grounding from metaphor to metonymy. Emerson proposes metonymy as the primary figure in his new scientific poetics, a natural-analogical basis of all writing, all thinking, and life itself. Emerson's "metonymy," I argue, figures a more empirical, if not ecological, way of thinking about writing and writing about thinking. In this way, "metonymy" names or anticipates ... drink the atmosphere with the planet dissolved in it." Thoreau continues in the journal entry, "The man of science discovers no world for the mind of man ...

• Word Count: 9971
• Approx Pages: 40
• Grade Level: Undergraduate