Emerson, Paris, and the Opening of the Scientific Eye

Abstract

We start with a crystallizing moment in Emerson's career: the famous moment, ecstatically recorded in his 1833 journal, when Emerson recognized the future shape of his work in the vast natural history displays at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle (Jardin des Plantes) in Paris. Brooding over “this bewildering series of organized forms,” Emerson found himself driven into making a vow: “I am moved by strange sympathies, I say continually, ‘I will be a naturalist’” (JMN, vol. 4, p. 200). The vow would soon be heard again in his first lyceum lecture, “The Uses of Natural History,” and many times throughout his career Emerson would remind audiences of his central calling as a “natural historian” of life, the intellect, and the soul. Emerson's vision of natural history in Paris gave definitive focus to ambitions that had found no proper outlet in his earlier life in America. The results were almost immediate: by the time he began his return trip to America, he was settled on the subject of his early lectures and was already contemplating the larger project ofNature. Emerson came back to America to found himself as an institution of private research and public presentation not unlike the Museum itself, methodically gathering specimens from the exotic frontiers of experience and setting them out, in their multiple dark affinities, on common ground.