...in a peculiar sort of dizziness, indeed a sort of vertigo. As Emerson writes in Nature, the ruin or blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our...things, and so they appear not transparent but opake. (43) Even more disorienting is the passage in the much later essay "Experience," where Emerson writes...

...rather than land. Property, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder, not the deed of the proprietor. "The ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye," Emerson wrote. "... The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because...

...richest of them—to the study of nature, and that is why he ddes not penetrate very far, and he says: "The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things." When he wishes to explain how all the moral and physical truths are contained in each other, and each...

...binocular vision that restores to the world "original and eternal beauty."89 For, as Emerson continues, "The ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at...things, and so they appear not transparent but opake." Reasserting the vitality of his chosen role, Emerson warns that "he cannot be a naturalist, until he...

...books, Emerson identifies the solution to what he has termed the "problem of doubleconsciousness": The problem of restoring to the world original and...solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or blank that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with...

...—JOURNAL, 1836 Where, if anywhere, do you see God? Do you find the universal coming to life in you? The problem of restoring to the world original and...of things, and so they appear not transparent but opaque. The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited...

..."to more earnest vision." Mounting to his splendid peroration in "Prospects," Emerson reminds us that "the ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at...things, and so they appear not transparent but opake." A cleansing of our vision is all that is required for "the redemption of the soul." In such a case,...

...of as a slightly privileged 2 This is what Emerson is referring to when he writes, in Nature, that "The problem of restoring to the world original and...when we look at nature, is in our own eye. [...] The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself....

...is we ourselves who blanch the excellence of the external world through human defects of character: "The ruin or the blank that we see when we look at...things, and so they appear not transparent but opake" (E, 47). For Milton, by contrast, we do not see enough white, since the "Eternal Coeternal beam" loses...

...the metaphoric energies are absorbed by each figure, reflecting no greater glory. We are left with "the ruin or the blank that we see when we look at nature," when man is "disunited with himself."24 Thus: the anguish of concreteness, when the discourse between...