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Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leading author of the mid-19th century. As head of the Transcendental movement, he led a group of Transcendentalists. Emerson’s writing falls into two types, poetry and essays, and all his fundamental ideas can be found in his famous essay Nature. Based on Emerson’s early lectures, Nature expresses the main principles of the Transcendentalism. Thus, Nature has been called the manifesto of American Transcendentalism. In Nature, Emerson states that our energy and excitement in creating something new has been lost because we try to understand the world around us by using only theories and histories about nature rather than personally observing it. One solution to this problem involves our casting off impersonal theories or descriptions that distance us from nature and ourselves; afterwards, we can reexamine the actual thing that we are a part of—namely, nature. Direct experience with nature is best because it provides better insight into the contemporary world than does the historian’s teachings or the scientist’s theories.

艾默生丢弃传统的方式研究世界，在文章中表示了进步的重要性。在1849年的碑铭诗的人与自然的关系包含动词“奋斗”和“坐骑”，即蕴含进步的理念。

Emerson’s discarding traditional ways of viewing the world indicates the importance that progress will play in the essay. Note that the human and nature relationship in the 1849 epigraphic poem contains verbs—“striving” and “mounts”—that connote the idea of progress. But Emerson also draws attention to the backward steps we readily think of as progressive. He characterizes these steps as groping “among the dry bones of the past,” and he quickly moves from this notion of a stagnant death to one of a revitalized future in which original thoughts reign.

为了帮助我们更加清楚地认识自然，艾默生区分艺术的本质。艺术，他说，是很自然的物体或材料改变我们自己的目的 - 例如，一尊雕像或图画。 “自然是为了智慧，灵魂的最后一件事图像或仿制;作为一个自然的事全部脱去做的，但不知道“（普罗提诺，1836题词）。

In order to help us focus more clearly on nature, Emerson distinguishes nature from art. Art, he says, is natural objects or materials that we alter for our own purposes—for example, a statue or a picture. “Nature is but an image or imitation of wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which doth do, but not know.”(Plotinus, 1836: epigraph)

II. Biography of Emerson 艾默生简介
2.1 Lifestyle and Beliefs
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid 19th century. Emerson was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New England, and he was recognized throughout his life as the leader of the movement, yet he never applied the term “Transcendentalist” to himself or to his beliefs and ideas. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movements of 1800s. Emerson was seen as a champion of individualism. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay. Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are connected to God and, therefore, all things are divine. And he did not become an ardent abolitionist until later in his life, though his journals show he was concerned with slave