Self Reliance and Other Essays Lesson Plan

Reread the following passage from the introduction: "Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is referred to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result." How do you interpret this passage after having read the whole essay? How do these statements affect you as a contemporary reader? Does Nature, in the common sense, remain unchanged by man? Using Emerson's sense of the...