Emerson had some very interesting ideas. There were a few that stood out. I analyzed them as to what I thought Emerson meant.

“Every day,the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Everyday, men and women conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle his value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of god, but always circular power returning into itself.”(pg1)

I found this quote to be very true. Different things happen everyday. The wind blows and pushes the hat off your head. There is something beyond us. It’s all a spectacle, “life is a play and we are all just characters in it”. (Shakespeare)  He is saying that everything just continues, it’s infinite.  All living things are born to die to be born again. We are the universe experiencing itself.  Man himself is nature so he has to think about his place in nature. Just how nature grows, man grows as well.  Man will forever be growing.

“The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar,is, the mind of the past,…The scholar of the first age received into him the world around… gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts…It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires.” (pg3)

Therefore stuff that has been said before, that they read and learned is influencing their own way of thinking. You know what has influenced by how important it seems to be to that person. Mary Shelley read a poem before she wrote Frankenstein. “Alone- alone-all-all-alone. Upon the wide , wide sea – And god will not take pity on My soul in agony!” (Frankenstein,  xiii) It made quite an impression on her that it stuck while writing Frankenstein.  With all the incidents in her life she was able to relate to the poem. She came to know it and then believe it. It’s how she truly felt because most of her books were about loneliness. People have beliefs because of their experiences. So whatever happens to them it shapes and molds their opinions to become their truth. Everyone has their own truths and inspirations.