Emerson prefaces “Experience” with a poem describing the solemn procession of the “lords of life”—the forces that affect all men’s experience of common life. God—the “inventor of the game”—is an unnamed presence in the poem. Man walks in confusion among the lords of life. He is comforted by nature, who assures him that the lords will “wear another face” tomorrow, and that his position is, in fact, one of ascendancy over them. In the essay, Emerson explores the action of these forces on the way we live and understand our lives.
The experience of life is confusing, Emerson writes at the beginning of the essay. Gaining perspective on life while we are engaged in living is difficult. This confusion affects our perception of our place in relation to nature, and of our powers. We are unable to see beyond our material existence and to utilize the creative vigor that nature has given us, and cannot distinguish between our productive and unproductive efforts. The distance created by time’s passage sometimes reveals that what we thought were unoccupied hours were actually our most fruitful periods. Only in the long view do we understand the proper value of everyday occupations and actions. In taking the short view, we lose sight of the quality and significance of our lives in the present. Moreover, everyday details so preoccupy us that little time is left for more serious considerations. Emerson writes that “the pith of each man’s genius contracts itself to a very few hours.” As the history of literature contains only a few original ideas that have been worked and reworked, so the history of society reveals only a very few spontaneous human actions beyond “custom and gross sense.” Although we attribute great importance to the calamities of life, they actually have no lasting meaning. Grief does not bring us any closer to the people we have lost, and it does not change who we are. Emerson refers specifically to his own grief at the death of his son Waldo in 1842. Grief cannot teach us anything, nor can it bring us closer to understanding the material world. Moreover, nature does not like to be observed and prevents us from focusing too clearly on objects that might offer insight through the material.
Emerson turns to the subject of perspective, and to the way temperament and mood—both parts of man’s makeup—affect perspective. He writes of dream and illusion, and of how we see only what we are capable of seeing. Genius is useless if receptivity is limited by some temperamental trait that prevents “a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life.” A man’s talents cannot be effectively applied if he does not care sufficiently for higher truth to look for it, if he is overly sensitive, if he wants to reform but is not equal to the task. Mood even influences the ebb and flow of the religious sentiment, and temperament cannot be fully transcended by the moral sentiment. But “so-called sciences”—medicine and phrenology (the study of the size and shape of the skull to determine a man’s character and abilities)—exaggerates temperamental limitations on human possibilities by suggesting that temperament is materially predetermined. Pseudoscience defines man by his physical traits and reduces inner qualities to the level of matter. Although temperament does color our perceptions and constrains our potential, the material approach to it discounts higher intuitive capabilities altogether and fails to recognize the direct, spontaneous transforming connection between God and the individual. Emerson summarily dismisses the approach.
Like temperament, man’s need to move in succession from one object of focus to another—his disinclination to regard any one thing for too long—also influences his perception of experience and the world. Our innate love of absolutes draws us toward the permanent, but our human constitution requires “change of objects.” After we have formed an impression of a book or a work of art, we want to move on, even though our lasting sense of that object may not be fully developed. We crave the larger, broader picture. Each book or work of art offers only partial insight into the whole. Individual men, too, only represent particular aspects of human nature and capability, and do not expand to illuminate traits or ideas beyond those they possess. Each man has a particular talent, and his tendency is to reinforce and capitalize upon that talent rather than to grow in other ways. This self-limitation necessitates our examining all of humankind to gain a sense of the whole. We must look at the weak as well as the admirable examples, because God underlies all of them. Each individual has his own educational value, as do all aspects of human experience in society—commerce, government, the church, marriage, and the various occupations. Power (used by Emerson to signify a kind of divinely imparted life force) speaks alternately through various examples of humanity but does not remain permanently in any one of them.
