Nature.".

In the "Rhodora" the flower is made to answer that

"Beauty is its own excuse for being."

In this Essay the beauty of the flower is not enough, but it must excuse
itself for being, mainly as the symbol of something higher and deeper
than itself.

He passes next to a consideration of _Language_. Words are signs of
natural facts, particular material facts are symbols of particular
spiritual facts, and Nature is the symbol of spirit. Without going very
profoundly into the subject, he gives some hints as to the mode in
which languages are formed,--whence words are derived, how they become
transformed and worn out. But they come at first fresh from Nature.

"A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual
processes, will find that always a material image, more or less
luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought,
which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence good writing and
brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories."

From this he argues that country life is a great advantage to a powerful
mind, inasmuch as it furnishes a greater number of these material
images. They cannot be summoned at will, but they present themselves
when great exigencies call for them.

"The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been
nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year,