Nature is a famous essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836. The essay is the cornerstone of transcendentalism in which Emerson divides nature into four stages: Commodity, Beauty, Language, and Discipline. Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American poet and lecturer who led the Transcendentalist movement in the mid-19th century. Emerson and his friend Henry David Thoreau were both seen as early champions of individualism.