Kristy Pawlak
LITR 5535
Dr. White
9/29/03  

The Changing Attitudes Towards God, Nature, and Man in American Romanticism

            In any work of philosophy or literature, treatments of nature, God, and man reflect the dominant thinking of the time period.  American Romanticism appears at a time when a transition is underway in philosophical and religious thinking in America.  By examining Pre-Romantic writers such as Jonathan Edwards and Anne Bradstreet, and by looking at the ideas of the Age of Reason as seen in the writings of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, the “predictive elements in ‘pre-romantic’ writings” can be used as tools to study the transition underway in Cooper’s writings as he moves towards transcendental thoughts much like those seen in the writings of Emerson. 

            The role of nature occupies an important place in all early American writing.  However, as time moves on and America is influenced by European movements and thought, the place nature holds in literature changes significantly.  Writings from the Seventeenth Century, such as the poetry of Anne Bradstreet, show an attitude of admiration for nature, but this admiration centers on nature’s role as visible evidence of God’s greatness.  Bradstreet writes, “If so much excellence abide below, How excellent is He that dwells on high, Whose power and beauty by His works we know” (134).  The contemplation of nature takes place not for personal gratification or even for simple enjoyment, but, rather, nature serves as a reassurance that God exists and is omnipotent.  In a time when so little was assured, this was a very necessary role. 

            As early as the writings of Jonathan Edwards, the Romantic idea of the “individual in nature or separate from the masses” begins to emerge.  Edwards tells us that he has, “particular secret places of my own in the woods, where I used to retire by myself, and used to be from time to time much affected” (Norton 176).  Nature is, for Edwards, a place to be, “sweetly conversing with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in God” (Norton 178).  While these aspects of Edward’s relationship with nature look forward to Romantic ideas, he, like Bradstreet, still sees nature as evidence of God’s greatness, not something to be worshiped itself, but something to point to its all-powerful Creator.  Edwards writes:

And as I was walking there, and looked up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God that I know not how to express.  I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction, majesty and meekness joined together.  It was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness (Norton 178).

 

He also tells us that “God’s excellency, His wisdom, His purity and love, seemed to appear in everything: in the sun, moon and stars; in the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature” (Norton 178).  Edwards never admires nature without calling attention to what it shows about God’s greatness.

            Nature’s role undergoes a change with the coming of the Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment.  Thinkers during this time revered nature not because it highlighted the immense and unmeasurable power and majesty of God, but because it showed the orderliness and predictability  of the universe.  Scientific discoveries were highly valued during this time and the value of nature was in its natural process.  Deism is a prevalent theory during this time period.  In regards to nature, deism explained God’s role as a regulator of natural events.  Unlike writers before them, writers during this time were not awestruck by nature’s phenomena, in fact, they did not believe in miracles as usually defined.  Paine writes in his work The Age of Reason:

Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they call nature is supposed to act; and that miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of those laws; but unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether anything that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting (Part 1, Section 14).

 

The emphasis on the laws of nature in this quote from Paine is also evident in Jefferson’s writings.  In fact, Jefferson secures a place in history for the reverence of the laws of nature when he writes in the Declaration of Independence, “... to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them” (325).  All this is not to say that these writers and philosophers did not believe in God or give Him credit for His creations, they did.  They revere Him for the precision and thoughtfulness of nature.  While Bradstreet is awed by the Creator of the inexplicable vastness and beauty of what she saw, Paine and those of his age are awed by a Creator who had made a system that man could rationalize and predict.   

            American Romanticism takes a few characteristics from the Age of Reason in its treatment of nature, but for the most part this is one area where a rapid movement towards the Transcendental way of thinking can be seen.  For instance, in the beginning of Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans,  Hawk-eye attempts to give a very reasoned and logical explanation of tides and currents to Chingachgook.  He is somewhat unsuccessful, though neither he nor his Indian friend seem to really press the point.  Later in the novel, Hawk-eye even indulges in the very Romantic–and very unreasonable–notion of the supernatural when they are met by the French soldier outside the fort.  The most important shift towards the Transcendental view of nature which occurs in Cooper’s novel is the subtle, but very important attitude of nature as an object of worship in and of itself.  While Cooper and many Transcendentalists do state that nature proves God’s existence, there is a definite attitude difference from previous writers.  In previous writings nature’s beauty immediately leads to the worship of God.  Cooper, through the character of Hawk-eye, takes a step towards the Transcendental.  After arguing a point of doctrine with the scout, Gamut gives up realizing that he “battled with a disputant who imbibed his faith from the lights of nature, eschewing all subtleties if doctrine” (117).  For earlier writers, nature reinforces doctrine, for Romantics, nature begins to replace doctrine.

            Attitudes towards nature are not the only change occuring during the Romantic time period.  Man’s role in philosophy and religion undergoes some radical changes as well.  In Seventeenth Century writings man exists entirely to glorify his Maker.  Man is at best inadequate and at worst abominable.  Bradstreet writes, “Man at the best a creature frail and vain, In knowledge ignorant, in strength but weak” (139).  Edwards talks about his “conflicts with wicked inclinations”  (176).  He struggles with his inherent sinfulness saying that he cannot say how his “sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite” (185).  Through all of this man exists to praise God and lives at His pleasure.  Man’s only sense of superiority in this system is derived from his place over nature and his promise of eternal life with God.  This ties together with the important distinction that man does not worship nature in Bradstreet’s words, “Shall I then praise the heavens, the trees, the earth, Because their beauty and their strength last longer?... Nay, they shall darken, perish, fade, and die... But man was made for endless immortality” (137).

            When discussing man’s place in a system of thinking, it naturally follows to discuss God’s place, and by association, religion’s place.  For writers like Bradstreet and Edwards, it is apparent that God occupied the first and foremost position in their lives, thoughts, and actions.  It can be hypothosized that because scientific discoveries were not a prominent topic of thought in America at this time and that because these writers were at the mercy of a wild and untamed country, they needed to place their unquestioning faith in something bigger and more powerful than themselves.  Krissan Muskievicz notes, “as a part of the settlers’ noble adventure, surely they were also scared.  As they fulfilled their quest for independence, the ability to conquer fears and challenges became a trait that defined America.”  Faith in God was one tool they used to face their difficulties.   Not only this, but they also relied on the doctrines of the church to provide a stable force in their lives.  Edwards writes, “The doctrines of God’s absolute sovereignty and free grace... These doctrines have been much to my delight,” and “I have loved the doctrine’s of the gospel; they have been to my soul like green pastures” (183).  While these writers looked to nature as a visible reminder of God’s holiness, they never allowed anything to replace the importance of the word of God–the Bible.  Edwards tells us that he has “an affecting sense of the excellency of the word of God, as a word of life” (184).  Indeed, in Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, her Bible and the Scripture are her constant sources of support.  She calls on scripture to sustain her, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and to help her comfort others, “Wait on the Lord, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine Heart, wait I say on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14) (155). 

            During the Age of Reason, deism profoundly affected man’s place in the grand scheme of things.  While earlier writers seem to almost degrade man in an effort to elevate God, these thinkers begin to elevate man in order to bring him closer to God.  They believed that God had favored man over other creatures by giving them the power to reason.  They further believed that man was called to use this gift of reason to decipher the laws of nature.   Prominent figures of this time such as Jefferson did not go as far as to say that all men had this ability to intelligently reason.  The Norton anthology quotes Dumas Malone as saying that Jefferson, “trusted the common man, if measurably enlightened and kept in rural virtue” (323).

            In relation to God and religion, writers from this period generally feel that belief in God is a natural extension of a logical examination of the natural world.  Paine writes that “The belief of a God... is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity” (Part 1, Section 14).  It is during this time that the shift from God being worshiped for who He is to God being worshiped for what He does occurred.  The value of God was now seen in the value of his best creation–man.