What is the exact wording of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 'In the woods, we return to reason and faith...' passage and where does it appear in his essay Nature? Please cite an authoritative text source (e.g., Gutenberg or Wikisource).

Below is the passage as it appears in one version of Emerson’s essay—as reproduced on Emerson Central—and the location where it appears. In that text the passage reads exactly as follows:^[5]

'In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.'^[5]

In this version the passage appears near the beginning of the essay—in the section titled “The Beauty About The Nature” (a heading used by Emerson Central to present the opening part of Nature, where Emerson explores how solitude in nature leads to a return of reason and to the spiritual renewal of the individual). This rendering closely matches other online reproductions such as the version featured on OutdoorHub,^[3] which, though not published by Gutenberg or Wikisource, confirms the wording of the passage as found in Emerson’s celebrated essay Nature.

If you seek an authoritative full-text source, you may consult the Project Gutenberg version of Emerson’s Nature, which—despite its different formatting—contains the same “transparent eyeball” and nature-restorative imagery in its early sections.