Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most influential writers of the mid-nineteenth century. He, along with other well know writers, produced some of the early masterpieces of American literature. Each one possessed dissimilar writing tactics; as this is true with all writers. No two people think alike or write about the same things, and everyone's opinions differ on certain matters. However, I found Emerson's technique and the state of affairs he wrote about to be more appealing to me. He and the other writers of his time tended to relate their writings and ideas to Transcendentalism, which made reading his thoughts and opinions more exhilarating for me. .
Within these passages, he gives us a copious amount of information about the stars and the universe, telling us what we should know about not only the universe, but also ourselves and nature. Emerson comments, "One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with the design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime." This is anthropocentric, which means considering human beings as the most significant entity of the universe, to think that the stars might be designed primarily to teach us. On the other hand, if what they are teaching is our own relative insignificance and the sublimity of the universe, then perhaps it is a lesson we need desperately. I consider this to be true because when I stop and think about it, it makes perfect sense. Humans should appreciate the universe and everything in it. We as humans should not try to set ourselves apart from other things in this world like nature and the "perpetual" universe. Emerson also felt that in view of Transcendentalism, there are new lands, new men, and new thoughts, and that we should demand our own works and laws and worship. We cannot ask questions that are unanswerable or unreasonable, which I agree with also because then we would not be using our intuition or rationalism.
