In his 1886 essay Nature, Emerson outlined the germ of a new philosophy, a key element of this, was the importance of American ( 1 ) . In its opening lines, Emerson wrote:Our age is (2 ).It builds the (3 ) of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism.The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face. We, through their eyes.Why should not we also enjoy an original (4 )to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by (5) to us, and not the history of theirs?