Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature, published anonymously by James Munroe and Company in 1836, is the founding text of American Transcendentalism, setting out Emerson's argument for a direct, unmediated spiritual relationship between the individual and the natural world, independent of inherited religious institution or doctrine. Its strength is that it is the primary founding document of the movement, the correct source for what Emerson himself actually argued rather than a later summary of Transcendentalist thought. Its limit is that it is a work of philosophical and spiritual argument rather than a historical or descriptive account, so a claim about how Transcendentalism was received, who else belonged to the movement, or how it influenced later American religious thought needs a historical or biographical source alongside Emerson's own founding essay.