Thus, self-reliance permits intuition, which allows the individual to grasp the divinity that enfolds the human and natural realms. Conformity is passive, while openness to intuition is part of an active, dynamic process. Reliance on tradition fixes values and understanding, preventing growth. Intuition, on the other hand, a force of intense flux, results in the ever-higher perfection of man toward godliness.
Idealist though he was, Emerson was keenly aware of the difficulty of reconciling the material and the spiritual. He attempted to bridge the gap between the two with the theory of correspondence, which he understood in large part through the thought and work of mystical Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, and through that of Sampson Reed, Swedenborg's American disciple. Emerson developed the idea of correspondence in Nature. He perceived the physical world as a manifestation of spirit — of the creator's mind — and therefore as symbolic of the divine, and saw a one-for-one correspondence between natural laws and spiritual laws. In its symbolism, he wrote, nature is designed to afford man comprehension of God. Human expressions and constructs such as language, architecture, and even morality are based upon and reflect the forms and laws of nature, and consequently also provide evidence of and insight into God.
The principle of correspondence allowed Emerson to frame external reality within the context of divine absolutes and, at the same time, to harness the material world to man's striving to spiritualize and to make himself a more perfect reflection of God. Emerson wrote of correspondence in "Language," Chapter IV of Nature:
This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. . . . There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preëxist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by the virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. . . . The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.
Toward the end of understanding correspondence and of perceiving the divine through it, Emerson advocated a "life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue." Gradually, he wrote, the relationship between the material world and the ideal in the mind of God will be understood. Through intuition, which works on the human mind as it observes nature, "the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause."
