In "Nature," Emerson lays out an abstract problem that he attempts to solve throughout the essay: that humans do not fully accept nature's beauty and all that it has to offer. According to Emerson, people are distracted by the world around them; nature gives to humans, but humans do not reciprocate. Emerson breaks his essay into eight sections--Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects--each of which sheds a different perspective on the relationship between humans and nature.