The Difficulty of Reconciling Philosophy and Life
The basic view of the relationship between God, man, and nature expressed in "Experience" is essentially that found in Emerson's earlier idealistic expressions of Transcendental philosophy. Emerson stresses that God is the source of man's unlimited strength and power, and that insight into the divine is the ultimate goal of living. Emphasizing the unity of the universe, he writes that "Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection; the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam."
Emerson presents the divine "First Cause" as the inspiration behind all the nobler actions of man, as opposed to material influence. He vigorously dismisses materially based interpretations of human nature (like phrenology), which view character as the fixed result of physical traits, and disregard the influence of the divine spirit. Intuition affords vision of divine unity, imparting meaningful wholeness and coherence to the many separate expressions of God in the material world and in human life. It also inspires man's hitherto unrealized inner potential. He metaphorically alludes to the undiscovered capabilities within man as analogous to the unexplored American west: "I am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West." (Thoreau, too, developed the metaphor of "the West" in his work, notably in the essay "Walking.") Moreover, Emerson equates man's openness to spirit not only with his personal insight into the universal but with the ultimate transformation of society itself — "the transformation of genius into practical power."
However, as steadfastly as Emerson holds to his idealistic optimism, he recognizes in "Experience" that there is a discrepancy, a tension, between philosophical idealism and the experience of life. In the prefatory poem and throughout the essay, he acknowledges the thoughtful man's confusion as he confronts the forces that distort perception and prevent vision beyond the material into the divine, absolute, and permanent. He openly admits that philosophy is not life, that we cannot successfully alter the world we inhabit by imposing on it our sense of what it should be. Efforts to reform society don't achieve their desired results because, in the end, the gap between the ideal and the material cannot be so easily bridged. Grief at the loss of loved ones, one of the deepest human emotions, provides no insight into the relationship between the spiritual and the material, and leaves us empty and baffled. Even nature herself, our ally and tool for comprehending the universal, does not readily allow us to make sense of her operations in human life.
