April 16, 2025 • 39 mins
EMERSON’S "THE OVER-SOUL": The Hidden Force Behind Success and Self-Mastery - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841) - HQ Full Book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay The Over-Soul, first published in 1841, is one of his most profound and spiritually significant works. It presents a transcendentalist vision of a divine, all-encompassing spirit that connects every individual to a universal source of wisdom and power. Emerson’s philosophy in The Over-Soul deeply influenced the development of self-help and success literature, particularly in the works of authors such as Napoleon Hill, James Allen, Wallace D. Wattles, and others who emphasized the role of the mind, intuition, and the power of thought in achieving success. This essay explores The Over-Soul in depth, analyzing its key themes and its enduring impact on the self-improvement movement.
Understanding Emerson’s Concept of the Over-Soul
At the core of Emerson’s essay is the idea that there exists an eternal, divine essence—the Over-Soul—that permeates all existence. It is beyond the material world and serves as the true source of knowledge, inspiration, and moral guidance. Unlike traditional religious views that separate God from man, Emerson suggests that the Over-Soul is within each individual, connecting them to a higher truth. He describes it as an infinite spirit that transcends personal ego and allows people to tap into universal wisdom when they move beyond superficial distractions. Emerson writes, “The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of truth and right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.” This suggests that when individuals rise above their personal desires, they gain access to higher knowledge and inner peace. In many ways, this perspective foreshadows modern success philosophies that emphasize self-mastery, intuition, and alignment with universal principles.
Self-Reliance and Intuition as Pathways to the Over-Soul
A key theme in The Over-Soul is Emerson’s insistence that intuition is superior to reason. He argues that true wisdom does not come from books, traditions, or external authorities but rather from direct communion with the Over-Soul. This aligns with the ideas presented in his earlier essay Self-Reliance, where he encourages individuals to trust their inner voice. He writes, “Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence.” This suggests that we are continuously receiving inspiration from a higher source, and our task is to trust and act upon it. This emphasis on intuition influenced later self-help authors who argued that success comes not just from external effort but from inner alignment with a greater power. Napoleon Hill, in Think and Grow Rich, echoes this sentiment in his discussions on Infinite Intelligence—a concept that closely resembles the Over-Soul. Hill advises readers to trust their instincts and seek inspiration from a higher power, reinforcing the idea that great ideas and success strategies are often received rather than constructed through logical analysis alone.
The Over-Soul and the Law of Attraction
One of the most enduring influences of The Over-Soul on modern self-help literature is its connection to the Law of Attraction—the belief that thoughts and emotions shape one’s reality. Emerson’s assertion that the Over-Soul allows individuals to tap into a higher plane of wisdom parallels the idea that aligning one’s thoughts with universal principles can bring about tangible success. He states, “Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related.” This suggests that by tuning into the Over-Soul, individuals align themselves with a greater force that guides them toward their best possible outcomes. Authors such as Wallace D. Wattles (The Science of Getting Rich) and Rhonda Byrne (The Secret) expand on this notion, arguing that the universe responds to one’s thoughts and beliefs. Emerson’s philosophy provides the foundation for these modern interpretations, positioning the mind as a powerful force capable of shaping external reality when in harmony with the Over-Soul.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
Through the Over-Soul Emerson suggests that by connecting with the Over-Soul, individuals can transcend fear, doubt, and limiting beliefs. He criticizes those who remain trapped in material concerns and social conventions, arguing that true power comes from recognizing one’s divine nature. He writes, “We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related.” This implies that when people stop identifying with their limited, individual selves and instead recognize their connection to a greater whole, they unlock extraor
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay The Over-Soul, first published in 1841, is one of his most profound and spiritually significant works. It presents a transcendentalist vision of a divine, all-encompassing spirit that connects every individual to a universal source of wisdom and power. Emerson’s philosophy in The Over-Soul deeply influenced the development of self-help and success literature, particularly in the works of authors such as Napoleon Hill, James Allen, Wallace D. Wattles, and others who emphasized the role of the mind, intuition, and the power of thought in achieving success. This essay explores The Over-Soul in depth, analyzing its key themes and its enduring impact on the self-improvement movement.
Understanding Emerson’s Concept of the Over-Soul
At the core of Emerson’s essay is the idea that there exists an eternal, divine essence—the Over-Soul—that permeates all existence. It is beyond the material world and serves as the true source of knowledge, inspiration, and moral guidance. Unlike traditional religious views that separate God from man, Emerson suggests that the Over-Soul is within each individual, connecting them to a higher truth. He describes it as an infinite spirit that transcends personal ego and allows people to tap into universal wisdom when they move beyond superficial distractions. Emerson writes, “The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of truth and right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.” This suggests that when individuals rise above their personal desires, they gain access to higher knowledge and inner peace. In many ways, this perspective foreshadows modern success philosophies that emphasize self-mastery, intuition, and alignment with universal principles.
Self-Reliance and Intuition as Pathways to the Over-Soul
A key theme in The Over-Soul is Emerson’s insistence that intuition is superior to reason. He argues that true wisdom does not come from books, traditions, or external authorities but rather from direct communion with the Over-Soul. This aligns with the ideas presented in his earlier essay Self-Reliance, where he encourages individuals to trust their inner voice. He writes, “Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence.” This suggests that we are continuously receiving inspiration from a higher source, and our task is to trust and act upon it. This emphasis on intuition influenced later self-help authors who argued that success comes not just from external effort but from inner alignment with a greater power. Napoleon Hill, in Think and Grow Rich, echoes this sentiment in his discussions on Infinite Intelligence—a concept that closely resembles the Over-Soul. Hill advises readers to trust their instincts and seek inspiration from a higher power, reinforcing the idea that great ideas and success strategies are often received rather than constructed through logical analysis alone.
The Over-Soul and the Law of Attraction
One of the most enduring influences of The Over-Soul on modern self-help literature is its connection to the Law of Attraction—the belief that thoughts and emotions shape one’s reality. Emerson’s assertion that the Over-Soul allows individuals to tap into a higher plane of wisdom parallels the idea that aligning one’s thoughts with universal principles can bring about tangible success. He states, “Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related.” This suggests that by tuning into the Over-Soul, individuals align themselves with a greater force that guides them toward their best possible outcomes. Authors such as Wallace D. Wattles (The Science of Getting Rich) and Rhonda Byrne (The Secret) expand on this notion, arguing that the universe responds to one’s thoughts and beliefs. Emerson’s philosophy provides the foundation for these modern interpretations, positioning the mind as a powerful force capable of shaping external reality when in harmony with the Over-Soul.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
Through the Over-Soul Emerson suggests that by connecting with the Over-Soul, individuals can transcend fear, doubt, and limiting beliefs. He criticizes those who remain trapped in material concerns and social conventions, arguing that true power comes from recognizing one’s divine nature. He writes, “We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related.” This implies that when people stop identifying with their limited, individual selves and instead recognize their connection to a greater whole, they unlock extraor
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The over Soul Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There is
a difference between one and another hour of life in
their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments,
Our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in
those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality
to them than to all other experiences. For this reason,
(00:21):
the argument which is always forthcoming to silence those who
conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely the appeal to experience,
is forever invalid and vain. We give up the past
to the objector, and yet we hope he must explain
this hope. We grant that human life is mean? But
how did we find out that it was mean? What
(00:42):
is the ground of this uneasiness of ours, of this
old discontent? What is the universal sense of want and ignorance?
But the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its
enormous claim. Why do men feel that the natural history
of man has never been written? But he is always
leaving behind what you have said of him when it
becomes old, and books of metaphysics worthless. The philosophy of
(01:04):
six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines
of the soul in its experiments, there has always remained
in the last analysis or residual, it could not resolve.
Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being
is descending into us from we know not. Whence the
most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may
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not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every
moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the
will I call mine. As with events, so is it
with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which out
of regions I see not pours for a season, it
streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner,
not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal
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water that I desire and look up and put myself
in the attitude of reception. But from some alien energy
the visions come the supreme critic on the errors of
the past and the present, and the The only profit
of that which must be is that great nature in
which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft
arms of the atmosphere, that unity, that over soul, within
which every man's particular being is contained and made one
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with all other, That common heart of which all sincere
conversation is the worship to which all right action is submission,
that overpowering reality, which confutes our tricks and talents, and
constrains every one to pass for what he is, and
to speak from his character and not from his tongue,
and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and
hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.
(02:35):
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles,
meantime within man is the soul of the whole, the
wise silence, the universal beauty to which every part and
particle is equally related, The eternal one, and this deep
power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all
accessible to us, is not only self sufficing and perfect
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in every hour, but the act of seeing and the
thing scene, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and
the object are one. We see the world peace by peace,
as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree. But
the whole of which these are the shining parts, is
the soul. Only by the vision of that wisdom can
the horoscope of the ages be read. And by falling
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back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit
of prophecy, which is innate in every man. We can
know what it saeth. Every man's words who speaks from
that life must sound vain to those who do not dwell,
and the same thought on their own part. I dare
not speak for it. My words do not carry its
august sense. They fall short and cold. Only itself can
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inspire whom it will, and behold their speech shall be
lyrical and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind.
Yet I desire even by profane words, if I may
not use sacred to indicate the heaven of this deity,
and to report what hints I have collected of the
transcendent simplicity and energy of the highest law. If we
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consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in
times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams,
wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade, the droll disguises,
only magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it
on our distinct notice, we shall catch many hints that
will broaden and enlighten into knowledge of the secret of nature.
(04:24):
All goes to show that the soul in man is
not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs.
Is not a function like the power of memory, of calculation,
of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet. Is
not a faculty, but a light. Is not the intellect
or the will, but the master of the intellect, and
the will is the background of our being, in which
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they lie, an immensity not possessed, and that cannot be
possessed from within or from behind. A light shines through
us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing,
But the light is all. A man is the facade
of a temple, where in all wisdom and all good abide.
What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting
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man does not, as we know him, represent himself, but
misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect. But the soul,
whose organ he is. Would he let it appear through
his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes
through his intellect, it is genius. When it breathes through
his will, it is virtue. When it flows through his affection,
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it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins
when it would be something of itself. The weakness of
the will begins when the individual would be something of himself.
All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the
soul have its way through us, in other words, to
engage us to obey of this pure nature every man is,
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at some time sensible. Language cannot paint it with his colors.
It is too subtle. It is undefinable, unmeasurable. But we
know that it pervades and can attains us. We know
that all spiritual being is in man. A wise old
proverb says, God comes to see us without bell. That is,
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as there is no screen or sealing between our heads
and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or
wall in the soul. Where Man the effect ceases and
God the cause begins. The walls are taken away. We
lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature,
to the attributes of God. Justice. We see and know love, freedom, power.
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These natures no man ever God above, but they tower
over us, and most in the moment when our interests
tempt us to wound them. The sovereignty of this nature
whereof we speak, is made known by its independency of
those limitations which circumscribe us. On every hand, the soul
circumscribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all experience.
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In like manner, it abolishes time and space. The influence
of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind
to that degree that the walls of time and space
have come to look real and insurmountable. And to speak
with levity of these limits is in the world the
sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse
measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports
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with time, can crowd eternity into an hour, or stretch
an hour to eternity. We are often made to feel
that there is another youth in age than that which
is measured from the year of our natural birth. Some
thoughts always find us young and keep us so. Such
a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
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Every Man parts from that contemplation with the feeling that
it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. The
least activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a
degree from the conditions of time, in sickness, in Languor
give us a strain of poetry or a profound sentence,
and we are refreshed, Or produce a volume of Plato
or Shakspeer or remind us of their names, and instantly
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we come into a feeling of longevity. See how the
deep divine thought reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself
present through all ages. Is the teaching of Christ less
effective now than it was when first his mouth was opened?
The emphasis of facts and persons in my thought has
nothing to do with time, And so always the soul's
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scale is one the scale of the senses, and the
understanding is another. Before the revelations of the soul, time, space,
and nature shrink away. In common speech we refer all
things to time, as we habitually refer the immensely sundered
stars to one concave sphere. And so we say that
the judgment is distant or near, that the millennium approaches,
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that a day of certain political, moral, social reforms is
at hand, and the like, when we mean that, in
a nature of things, one of the facts we contemplate
is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and
connate with the soul. The things we now esteem fix
shall one by one detach themselves like ripe fruit from
our experience, and fall the wind shall blow them. None
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knows whither the landscape. The figures Boston, London are facts
as fugitive as any institution passed, or any whiff of
mist or smoke, And so is society, and so is
the world. The soul luketh steadily forwards, creating a world
before her, leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates,
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nor rights, nor persons, nor specialties nor men. The soul
knows only the soul. The web of events is the
flowing robe in which she is clothed, after its own law,
and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progress
to be computed. The soul's advances are not made by gradation,
such as can be represented by motion in a straight line,
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but rather by a sension of state, such as can
be represented by metamorphosis from the egg to the worm,
from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius
are of a certain total carriage that does not advance
the elect individual. First over John, then Adam, then Richard,
and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority. But
by every throe of growth, the man expands there where
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he works, passing at each pulsation classes populations of men.
With each divine impulse, the mind rends the thin rinds
of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity
and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths
that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes
conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Rian than
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with persons in the house. This is the law of
moral and of mental gain. The simple rise is by
specific levity, not into a particular virtue, but into the
region of all the virtues. They are in the spirit
which contains them all. The soul requires purity, but purity
is not It requires justice. But justice is not that
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requires beneficence, but is somewhat better, so that there is
a kind of descent and accommodation felt. When we leave
speaking of moral nature to urge a virtue which it
enjoins to the well born child, all the virtues are
natural and not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and
the man becomes suddenly virtuous. Within the same sentiment is
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the germ of intellectual growth, which obeys the same law.
Those who are capable of humility, of justice, of love,
of aspiration stand already on a platform that commands the
sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace, for
whoso dwells in this moral beatitude already anticipates those special
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powers which men prize so highly. The lover has no talent,
no skill, which passes for quite nothing with his enamored maiden,
however little she may possess of related faculty, and the heart,
which abandons itself to the supreme Mind, finds itself related
to all its works, and will travel a royal road
to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending to this primary
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and aboriginal sentiment, we have come from our remote station
on the circumference instantaneously to the center of the world,
where as in the closet of God we see causes
and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect.
One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of
the spirit in a form, in forms like my own.
I live in society with persons who answer to thoughts
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in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to
the great instincts to which I live. I see its
presence to them. I am certified of a common nature,
and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as
nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions
we call passion of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity. Thence
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come conversation, competition, persuasion, cities, and war. Persons are supplementary
to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth. We
are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the
world in them. But the larger experience of man discovers
the identical nature appearing through them. All persons themselves acquaint
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us with the impersonal. In all conversation between two persons
tacit reference is made as to a third party, to
a common nature. That third party or common nature is
not social, it is impersonal is God. And so in
groups where debate is earnest, and especially on high questions,
the company become aware that the thought rises to an
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equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual
property in what was said as well as the sayer.
They all become wiser than they were. It arches over
them like a temple, this unity of thought, in which
every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty,
and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious
of attaining to a higher self possession. It shines for all.
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There is a certain wisdom of humanity, which is common
to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our
ordinary education often labors to silence and abstruct. The mind
is one and the best minds who love truth for
its own sake think much less of property in truth.
They accept it thankfully everywhere, and do not label or
stamp it with any man's name, for it is theirs,
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long beforehand and from eternity. The learned and the studious
of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of
direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We
owe many valuable observations to people who are not very
acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort
which we want and have long been hunting in vain.
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The action of the soul is oftener in that which
is felt and left unsaid than in that which is
said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and
they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know
better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves,
and we know at the same time that we are
much more. I feel the same truth, how often in
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my trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat h in
each of us overlooks this byplay, and jove nods to
jove from behind. Each of us men descend to meet
in their habitual and mean service to the world, for
which they forsake their native nobleness. They resemble those Arabian
sheikhs who dwell in mean houses and effect in external
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poverty to escape the rapacity of the peshah, and reserve
all their display of wealth for their interior and guarded retirements.
As it is present in all persons, so it is
in every period of life. It is adult already in
the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my
Latin and Greek, my accomplishments, and my money stead me
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nothing but as much soul as I have avails. If
I am wilful. He sets his will against mine, one
for one, and leaves me if I please the degradation
of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if
I renounce my will and act for the soul, setting
that up as umpire between us, two out of his
young eyes looks the same soul, he revers and love
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with me. The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth.
We know truth when we see it. Let skeptic and
scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when
you have spoken what they do not wish to hear,
how do you know it is truth and not an
error of your own? We know truth when we see
it from opinion, as we know when we are awake
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that we are awake. It was a grand sentence of
a manual Speedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of
that man's perception. It is no proof of a man's
understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases, but
to be able to discern that what is true is true,
and that what is false is false. This is the
mark and character of intelligence. In the book I read,
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the good thought returns to me, as every truth will,
the image of the whole soul. To the bad thought,
which I find in it, the same soul becomes a discerning,
separating sword and lops it away. We are wiser than
we know if we will not interfere with our thought,
but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands.
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In God, we know the particular thing and every thing
and every man, for the maker of all things and
all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscions
through us over things. But beyond this recognition of its own,
in particular passages of the individual's experience, it also reveals truth,
and here we should seek to reinforce ourselves by its
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very presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier strain
of that advent. For the soul's communication of truth is
the highest event in nature, since it then does not
give somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or passes
into and becomes that man whom it enlightens, or in
proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him to itself.
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We distinguish the announcements of the soul its manifestations of
its own nature, by the term revelation. These are always
attended by the emotion of the sublime, For this communication
is an influx of the divine mind into our mind.
It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the
flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension
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of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight.
A thrill passes through all men at the reception of
new truth, or at the performance of a great action
which comes out of the heart of nature. In these communications,
the power to see is not separated from the will
to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and the
obedience proceeds from a joyful perception. Every moment when the
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individual feels himself invaded by it is memorable by the
necessity of our constitution. A certain enthusiasm attends the individual's
consciousness of that divine presence. The character and duration of
this enthusiasm varies with the state of the individual. From
an ecstasy in trance and prophetic inspiration, which is its
rarer appearance, to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in
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which form it warms like our household, fires all the
families and associations of men, and makes society possible. A
certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of
the religious sense in men, as if they had been
blasted with excessive light. The trances of Socrates, the union
of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul,
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the Aurora of Baymen, the convulsions of George Fox and
his Quakers, the illumination of Speedenborg are of this kind.
What was in the case of these remarkable persons. A
ravishment has in innumerable instances in common life been exhibited
in less striking manner everywhere. The history of religion betrays
a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and Quietest,
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the opening of the internal sense of the word in
the language of the New Jerusalem Church, the revival of
the Calvinistic churches, the experiences of the Methodists are varying
forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which
the individual's soul always mingles with the universal soul. The
nature of these revelations is the same. They are perceptions
of the absolute law. They are solutions of the soul's
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own questions. They do not answer the questions which the
understanding asks. The soul answers never by words, but by
the thing itself that is inquired. After revelation is the
disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation
is that it is a telling of fortunes. In past
oracles of the soul, the understanding seeks to find answers
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to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how
long men shall exist, what their hands shall do, and
who shall be their company, adding names and dates and places.
But we must pick no locks. We must check this
low curiosity. An answer in words is delusive. It is
really no answer to the questions you ask. Do not
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require a description of the countries towards which you sail.
The description does not describe them to you, and tomorrow
you arrive there and know them by inhabiting them. Men
ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the use the
employments of heaven, the state of the sinner, and so forth.
They even dream that Jesus has left replies to precisely
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these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak
in their patois to truth, justice, love, the attributes of
the soul. The idea of immutableness is essentially associated Jesus,
living in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding
only the manifestations of these, never made the separation of
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the idea of duration from the essence of these attributes,
nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul.
It was left to his disciples to sever duration from
the moral elements and to teach the immortality of the
soul as a doctrine and maintain it by evidences. The
moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught. Man
is already fallen in the flowing of love, in the
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adoration of humility. There is no question of continuance. No
inspired man ever asks this question or condescends to these evidences,
For the soul is true to itself, and the man
in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the present,
which is infinite, to a future which would be finite.
These questions which we lust to ask about the future
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are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them.
No answer in words can reply to a question of things.
It is not in an arbitrary decree of God, but
in the nature of man that a veil shuts down
on the facts of tomorrow. For the soul will not
have us read any other cipher than that of cause
and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs
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the children of men to live in today. The only
mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the
senses is to forego all low curiosity and accepting the
tide of being, which floats us into the secret of nature,
work and live work and live, and all unawares. The
advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition,
And the question and the answer are one by this
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the same fire, vital consecrating celestial, which burns until it
shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of
an ocean of light. We see and know each other,
and what spirit each is of Who can tell the
grounds of his knowledge of the character of the several
individuals in his circle of friends? No man, Yet their
(23:19):
acts and words do not disappoint him. In that man,
though he knew no ill of him, He put no
trust in that other, though they had seldom met, authentic
signs had yet passed to signify that he might be
trusted as one who had an interest in his own character.
We know each other very well. Which of us has
been just to himself? And whether that which we teach
(23:41):
or behold is only an aspiration or is our honest effort.
Also we are all deserns of spirits that diagnosis lies
aloft in our life or unconscious power. The intercourse of society,
its trade, its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one
wide judaei investigation of character in full court, or in
(24:03):
small committee, or confronted face to face. Accuser and accused
men offer themselves to be judged against their will. They
exhibit those decisive trifles by which character is read. But
who judges and what not our understanding? We do not
read them by learning or craft know The wisdom of
(24:25):
the wise man consists herein that he does not judge them.
He lets them judge themselves, and merely reads and records
their own verdict. By virtue of this inevitable nature, private
will is overpowered and mauger our efforts or our imperfections.
Your genius will speak from you, and mine from me
that which we are. We shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily.
(24:49):
Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never
left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through
avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head.
The infallible index of true progress is found in the
tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding,
nor company, nor books, nor actions, nor talents, nor altogether
(25:12):
can hinder him from being deferential to a higher spirit
than his own, if he have not found his home
in God, his manners, his forms, of speech, the turn
of his sentences. The build shall I say, of all
his opinions, will involuntarily confess it. Let him brave it
out how he will. If he have found his center,
the Deity will shine through him through all the disguises
(25:34):
of ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. The tone
of seeking is one and the tone of having is another.
The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary, between poets
like Herbert and poets like Pope, between philosophers like Spinoza,
Comte and Coleridge and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and Stuart.
(25:57):
Between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers,
and here and their af fervent mystic prophesying, half insane
under the infinitude of his thought. Is that one class
speak from within or from experience, as parties and possessors
of the fact, and the other class from without, as
spectators merely or perhaps as acquainted with the fact. On
(26:17):
the evidence of third persons, it is of no use
to preach to me from without. I can do that
too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within and in
a degree that transcends all others. In that is the miracle.
I believe beforehand that it ought so to be. All
men stand continually in the expectation of the appearance of
(26:40):
such a teacher. But if a man do not speak
from within the veil, where the word is one with
that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. The
same omissions flows into the intellect and makes what we
call genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is
not wisdom, And the most illuminated class of men are
no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers.
(27:03):
Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no
hallowing presence. We are sensible of a knack and skill,
rather than of inspiration. They have a light and know
not whence it comes, and call it their own. Their
talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that
their strength is a disease. In these instances, the intellectual
gifts do not make the impression of virtue, but almost
(27:25):
a vice. And we feel that a man's talent stand
in the way of his advancement in truth. But genius
is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.
It is not anomalous, but more like and not less
like other men. There is in all great poets a
wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.
(27:46):
The author, the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman does
not take place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer,
in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakspeer, in Milton. They are
content with truth. They use the positive degree. They seem
frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with
(28:06):
the frantic passion and violent coloring of inferior but popular writers.
For they are poets by the free course which they
allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes beholds
again and blesses the things which it hath made. The
soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of
its works. The great poet makes us feel our own wealth,
(28:27):
and then we think less of his compositions. His best
communication to our mind is to teach us to despise
all he has done. Shakspeer carries us to such a
lofty strain of intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth
which beggars his own, And we then feel that the
splendid works which he has created, and which in other
hours we extol as a sort of self existent poetry
(28:48):
take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow
of a passing traveler on the rock. The inspiration which
uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as
good from day to day forever. Why why then, should
I make account of Hamlet and Lear as if we
had not the soul from which they fell as syllables
from the tongue. This energy does not descend into individual
(29:08):
life on any other condition than entire possession. It comes
to the lowly and simple. It comes to whomsoever will
put off what is foreign and proud. It comes as insight.
It comes as serenity and grandeur. When we see those
whom it inhabits, we are apprized of new degrees of greatness.
From that inspiration. The man comes back with a changed tone.
(29:30):
He does not talk with men with an eye to
their opinion. He tries them. It requires of us to
be plain and true. The vain traveler attempts to embellish
his life by quoting my Lord and the Prince and
the Countess who thus said or did to him. The
ambitious vulgars show you their spoons and brooches and rings,
and preserve their cards and compliments. The more cultivated, in
(29:54):
their account of their own experience, call out the pleasing,
poetic circumstance. The visit to Rome, the man of genius,
they saw, the brilliant friend they know still further on,
perhaps the gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts
they enjoyed yesterday, and so seek to throw a romantic
color over their life. But the soul that ascends to
(30:14):
worship the Great God is plain and true, has no
rose color, no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures, does
not want admiration, dwells in the hour that now is
in the earnest experience of the common day. By reason
of the present moment, and the mere trifle having become
poorest to thought and bibulous of the sea of light,
converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature
(30:37):
looks like word catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to
be written. Yet are they so cheap and so things,
of course, that in the infinite riches of the soul,
it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground,
or bottling a little air in a file. When the
whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours, nothing can
pass there or make you one of the circle, but
(30:57):
the casting aside your trappings, and dealing man to man
in naked truth, plain, confession, and omniscient affirmation. Souls such
as these treat you as gods would walk as gods
in the earth, excepting without any admiration, your wit, your bounty,
your virtue, even say, rather your act of duty for
your virtue. They own as their proper blood royal as
(31:18):
themselves and over royal, and the father of the gods.
But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing castes on the
mutual flattery with which authors solace each other and wound themselves.
These flatter not. I do not wonder that these men
go to see Cromwell and Christina, and Charles the Second,
and James the First and the Grand Turk. For they are,
(31:39):
in their own elevation the fellows of kings, and must
feel the servile tone of conversation in the world. They
must always be a godsend to princes, for they confront
them a king to a king, without ducking or concession,
and give a high nature the refreshment and satisfaction, of resistance,
of plain humanity, of even companionship, and as new ideas,
(32:01):
they leave them wiser and superior men. Souls like these
make us feel that sincerity is more excellent than flattery.
Deal so plainly with man and woman as to constrain
the utmost sincerity, and destroy all hope of trifling with you.
It is the highest compliment you can pay. Their highest praising,
said Milton, is not flattery, and their plainest advice is
(32:25):
a kind of praising. Ineffable is the union of man
and God in every act of the soul. The simplest
person who in his integrity worships God becomes God. Yet
forever and ever, the influx of this better and universal
self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment,
how dear, how soothing to man horises the idea of
(32:47):
God peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our
mistakes and disappointments. When we have broken our God of
tradition and ceased from our God of rhetoric, then may
God fire the heart with his presence. It is the
doubling of the heart itself. Nay, the infinite enlargement of
the heart, with the power of growth to a new
infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust.
(33:12):
He has not the conviction, but the sight that the
best is the true, and may, in that thought easily
dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the
sure revelation of time, the solution of his private riddles.
He is sure that his welfare is dear to the
heart of being, in the presence of law. To his mind.
He is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it
(33:33):
sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects
of mortal condition. In its flood, he believes that he
cannot escape from his good. The things that are really
for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek
your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need
not if you do not find him. Will you not
acquiesce that it is best you should not find him?
(33:56):
For there is a power which, as it is in you,
is in him also, and could therefore very well bring
you together if it were for the best. You are
preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to
which your talent and your taste invite you the love
of men and the hope of fame. Has it not
occurred to you that you have no right to go
unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going. Oh, believe,
(34:20):
as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over
the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate
on thine ear. Every proverb, every book, every byword that
belongs to THEE for aid or comfort, shall surely come
home through open or winding passages. Every friend, who not
thy fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in
(34:40):
THEE craveth, shall lock THEE in his embrace. And this
because the heart in THEE is the heart of all.
Not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is
there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly in
endless circulation through all men. As the water of the
globe is all one sea, and truly seen its tide
is one. Let man then learn the revelation of all
(35:03):
nature and all thought to his heart, this namely, that
the Highest dwells with him, that the sources of nature
are in his own mind. If the sentiment of duty
is there, but if he would know what the great
God speaketh. He must go into his closet and shut
the door. As Jesus said, God will not make himself
manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing
(35:26):
himself from all the accents of other men's devotion. Even
their prayers are hurtful to him until he have made
his own. Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers.
Whenever the appeal is made, no matter how indirectly, to numbers,
proclamation is then and there maide that religion is not.
He that finds God a sweet enveloping thought to him
(35:48):
never counts his company. When I sit in that presence,
who shall dare to come in? When I rest in
perfect humility, when I burn with pure love? What can
Calvin or Swedenborg say? It makes no difference whether the
appeal is to numbers or to one. The faith that
stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority
(36:09):
measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.
The position men have given to Jesus now for many
centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves.
It cannot alter the eternal facts. Grave is the soul
and plain. It is no flatterer, It is no follower.
(36:31):
It never appeals from itself. It believes in itself before
the immense possibilities of man, all mere experience, all past biography, however,
spotless and sainted, shrinks away before that heaven which our
presentiments foreshow us. We cannot easily praise any form of
life we have seen or read of. We not only
(36:52):
affirm that we have few great men, but absolutely speaking
that we have none. That we have no history, no
record of any character or mode of living that entirely
contents us. The saints and demigods whom history worships we
are constrained to accept with a grain of allowance, though
in our lonely hours we draw a new strength out
of their memory. Yet pressed on our attention as they are,
(37:15):
by the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade. The
soul gives itself alone, original and pure to the lonely,
original and pure, who, on that condition gladly inhabits, leads
and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young and nimble?
It is not wise, but it sees through all things.
(37:37):
It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It
calls the light its own, and feels that the grass
grows and the stone falls by a law inferior two
and dependent on its nature. Behold it seth. I am
born into the great, the universal mind, I the imperfect,
adore my own perfect. I am somehow receptive of the
(38:00):
great soul. And thereby I do overlook the sun and
the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents
and effects which change and pass. More and more the
surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become
public and human in my regards and actions. So come
I to live in thoughts and act with energies which
are immortal, Thus revering the soul and learning as the
(38:22):
ancient said that its beauty is immense. Man will come
to see that the world is the perennial miracle which
the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders.
He will learn that there is no profane history, that
all history is sacred, that the universe is represented in
an atom. In a moment of time. He will weave
no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but
(38:44):
he will live with a divine unity he will cease
from what is base and frivolous in his life, and
be content with all places and with any service he
can render. He will calmly front the moral in the
negligency of that trust which carries God with it. And
so hath already the whole future in the bottom of
the heart.
The over Soul Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There is
a difference between one and another hour of life in
their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments,
Our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in
those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality
to them than to all other experiences. For this reason,
(00:21):
the argument which is always forthcoming to silence those who
conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely the appeal to experience,
is forever invalid and vain. We give up the past
to the objector, and yet we hope he must explain
this hope. We grant that human life is mean? But
how did we find out that it was mean? What
(00:42):
is the ground of this uneasiness of ours, of this
old discontent? What is the universal sense of want and ignorance?
But the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its
enormous claim. Why do men feel that the natural history
of man has never been written? But he is always
leaving behind what you have said of him when it
becomes old, and books of metaphysics worthless. The philosophy of
(01:04):
six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines
of the soul in its experiments, there has always remained
in the last analysis or residual, it could not resolve.
Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being
is descending into us from we know not. Whence the
most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may
(01:26):
not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every
moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the
will I call mine. As with events, so is it
with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which out
of regions I see not pours for a season, it
streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner,
not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal
(01:49):
water that I desire and look up and put myself
in the attitude of reception. But from some alien energy
the visions come the supreme critic on the errors of
the past and the present, and the The only profit
of that which must be is that great nature in
which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft
arms of the atmosphere, that unity, that over soul, within
which every man's particular being is contained and made one
(02:12):
with all other, That common heart of which all sincere
conversation is the worship to which all right action is submission,
that overpowering reality, which confutes our tricks and talents, and
constrains every one to pass for what he is, and
to speak from his character and not from his tongue,
and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and
hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.
(02:35):
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles,
meantime within man is the soul of the whole, the
wise silence, the universal beauty to which every part and
particle is equally related, The eternal one, and this deep
power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all
accessible to us, is not only self sufficing and perfect
(02:57):
in every hour, but the act of seeing and the
thing scene, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and
the object are one. We see the world peace by peace,
as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree. But
the whole of which these are the shining parts, is
the soul. Only by the vision of that wisdom can
the horoscope of the ages be read. And by falling
(03:19):
back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit
of prophecy, which is innate in every man. We can
know what it saeth. Every man's words who speaks from
that life must sound vain to those who do not dwell,
and the same thought on their own part. I dare
not speak for it. My words do not carry its
august sense. They fall short and cold. Only itself can
(03:42):
inspire whom it will, and behold their speech shall be
lyrical and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind.
Yet I desire even by profane words, if I may
not use sacred to indicate the heaven of this deity,
and to report what hints I have collected of the
transcendent simplicity and energy of the highest law. If we
(04:03):
consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in
times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams,
wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade, the droll disguises,
only magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it
on our distinct notice, we shall catch many hints that
will broaden and enlighten into knowledge of the secret of nature.
(04:24):
All goes to show that the soul in man is
not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs.
Is not a function like the power of memory, of calculation,
of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet. Is
not a faculty, but a light. Is not the intellect
or the will, but the master of the intellect, and
the will is the background of our being, in which
(04:46):
they lie, an immensity not possessed, and that cannot be
possessed from within or from behind. A light shines through
us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing,
But the light is all. A man is the facade
of a temple, where in all wisdom and all good abide.
What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting
(05:07):
man does not, as we know him, represent himself, but
misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect. But the soul,
whose organ he is. Would he let it appear through
his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes
through his intellect, it is genius. When it breathes through
his will, it is virtue. When it flows through his affection,
(05:28):
it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins
when it would be something of itself. The weakness of
the will begins when the individual would be something of himself.
All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the
soul have its way through us, in other words, to
engage us to obey of this pure nature every man is,
(05:49):
at some time sensible. Language cannot paint it with his colors.
It is too subtle. It is undefinable, unmeasurable. But we
know that it pervades and can attains us. We know
that all spiritual being is in man. A wise old
proverb says, God comes to see us without bell. That is,
(06:09):
as there is no screen or sealing between our heads
and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or
wall in the soul. Where Man the effect ceases and
God the cause begins. The walls are taken away. We
lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature,
to the attributes of God. Justice. We see and know love, freedom, power.
(06:33):
These natures no man ever God above, but they tower
over us, and most in the moment when our interests
tempt us to wound them. The sovereignty of this nature
whereof we speak, is made known by its independency of
those limitations which circumscribe us. On every hand, the soul
circumscribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all experience.
(06:56):
In like manner, it abolishes time and space. The influence
of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind
to that degree that the walls of time and space
have come to look real and insurmountable. And to speak
with levity of these limits is in the world the
sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse
measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports
(07:18):
with time, can crowd eternity into an hour, or stretch
an hour to eternity. We are often made to feel
that there is another youth in age than that which
is measured from the year of our natural birth. Some
thoughts always find us young and keep us so. Such
a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
(07:39):
Every Man parts from that contemplation with the feeling that
it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life. The
least activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a
degree from the conditions of time, in sickness, in Languor
give us a strain of poetry or a profound sentence,
and we are refreshed, Or produce a volume of Plato
or Shakspeer or remind us of their names, and instantly
(08:02):
we come into a feeling of longevity. See how the
deep divine thought reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself
present through all ages. Is the teaching of Christ less
effective now than it was when first his mouth was opened?
The emphasis of facts and persons in my thought has
nothing to do with time, And so always the soul's
(08:23):
scale is one the scale of the senses, and the
understanding is another. Before the revelations of the soul, time, space,
and nature shrink away. In common speech we refer all
things to time, as we habitually refer the immensely sundered
stars to one concave sphere. And so we say that
the judgment is distant or near, that the millennium approaches,
(08:45):
that a day of certain political, moral, social reforms is
at hand, and the like, when we mean that, in
a nature of things, one of the facts we contemplate
is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and
connate with the soul. The things we now esteem fix
shall one by one detach themselves like ripe fruit from
our experience, and fall the wind shall blow them. None
(09:07):
knows whither the landscape. The figures Boston, London are facts
as fugitive as any institution passed, or any whiff of
mist or smoke, And so is society, and so is
the world. The soul luketh steadily forwards, creating a world
before her, leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates,
(09:28):
nor rights, nor persons, nor specialties nor men. The soul
knows only the soul. The web of events is the
flowing robe in which she is clothed, after its own law,
and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progress
to be computed. The soul's advances are not made by gradation,
such as can be represented by motion in a straight line,
(09:49):
but rather by a sension of state, such as can
be represented by metamorphosis from the egg to the worm,
from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius
are of a certain total carriage that does not advance
the elect individual. First over John, then Adam, then Richard,
and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority. But
by every throe of growth, the man expands there where
(10:10):
he works, passing at each pulsation classes populations of men.
With each divine impulse, the mind rends the thin rinds
of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity
and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths
that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes
conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Rian than
(10:33):
with persons in the house. This is the law of
moral and of mental gain. The simple rise is by
specific levity, not into a particular virtue, but into the
region of all the virtues. They are in the spirit
which contains them all. The soul requires purity, but purity
is not It requires justice. But justice is not that
(10:54):
requires beneficence, but is somewhat better, so that there is
a kind of descent and accommodation felt. When we leave
speaking of moral nature to urge a virtue which it
enjoins to the well born child, all the virtues are
natural and not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and
the man becomes suddenly virtuous. Within the same sentiment is
(11:15):
the germ of intellectual growth, which obeys the same law.
Those who are capable of humility, of justice, of love,
of aspiration stand already on a platform that commands the
sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace, for
whoso dwells in this moral beatitude already anticipates those special
(11:36):
powers which men prize so highly. The lover has no talent,
no skill, which passes for quite nothing with his enamored maiden,
however little she may possess of related faculty, and the heart,
which abandons itself to the supreme Mind, finds itself related
to all its works, and will travel a royal road
to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending to this primary
(11:58):
and aboriginal sentiment, we have come from our remote station
on the circumference instantaneously to the center of the world,
where as in the closet of God we see causes
and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect.
One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of
the spirit in a form, in forms like my own.
I live in society with persons who answer to thoughts
(12:21):
in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to
the great instincts to which I live. I see its
presence to them. I am certified of a common nature,
and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as
nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions
we call passion of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity. Thence
(12:43):
come conversation, competition, persuasion, cities, and war. Persons are supplementary
to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth. We
are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the
world in them. But the larger experience of man discovers
the identical nature appearing through them. All persons themselves acquaint
(13:05):
us with the impersonal. In all conversation between two persons
tacit reference is made as to a third party, to
a common nature. That third party or common nature is
not social, it is impersonal is God. And so in
groups where debate is earnest, and especially on high questions,
the company become aware that the thought rises to an
(13:27):
equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual
property in what was said as well as the sayer.
They all become wiser than they were. It arches over
them like a temple, this unity of thought, in which
every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty,
and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious
of attaining to a higher self possession. It shines for all.
(13:52):
There is a certain wisdom of humanity, which is common
to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our
ordinary education often labors to silence and abstruct. The mind
is one and the best minds who love truth for
its own sake think much less of property in truth.
They accept it thankfully everywhere, and do not label or
stamp it with any man's name, for it is theirs,
(14:14):
long beforehand and from eternity. The learned and the studious
of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of
direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We
owe many valuable observations to people who are not very
acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort
which we want and have long been hunting in vain.
(14:35):
The action of the soul is oftener in that which
is felt and left unsaid than in that which is
said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and
they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know
better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves,
and we know at the same time that we are
much more. I feel the same truth, how often in
(14:56):
my trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat h in
each of us overlooks this byplay, and jove nods to
jove from behind. Each of us men descend to meet
in their habitual and mean service to the world, for
which they forsake their native nobleness. They resemble those Arabian
sheikhs who dwell in mean houses and effect in external
(15:17):
poverty to escape the rapacity of the peshah, and reserve
all their display of wealth for their interior and guarded retirements.
As it is present in all persons, so it is
in every period of life. It is adult already in
the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my
Latin and Greek, my accomplishments, and my money stead me
(15:37):
nothing but as much soul as I have avails. If
I am wilful. He sets his will against mine, one
for one, and leaves me if I please the degradation
of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if
I renounce my will and act for the soul, setting
that up as umpire between us, two out of his
young eyes looks the same soul, he revers and love
(16:00):
with me. The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth.
We know truth when we see it. Let skeptic and
scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when
you have spoken what they do not wish to hear,
how do you know it is truth and not an
error of your own? We know truth when we see
it from opinion, as we know when we are awake
(16:21):
that we are awake. It was a grand sentence of
a manual Speedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of
that man's perception. It is no proof of a man's
understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases, but
to be able to discern that what is true is true,
and that what is false is false. This is the
mark and character of intelligence. In the book I read,
(16:42):
the good thought returns to me, as every truth will,
the image of the whole soul. To the bad thought,
which I find in it, the same soul becomes a discerning,
separating sword and lops it away. We are wiser than
we know if we will not interfere with our thought,
but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands.
(17:02):
In God, we know the particular thing and every thing
and every man, for the maker of all things and
all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscions
through us over things. But beyond this recognition of its own,
in particular passages of the individual's experience, it also reveals truth,
and here we should seek to reinforce ourselves by its
(17:25):
very presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier strain
of that advent. For the soul's communication of truth is
the highest event in nature, since it then does not
give somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or passes
into and becomes that man whom it enlightens, or in
proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him to itself.
(17:45):
We distinguish the announcements of the soul its manifestations of
its own nature, by the term revelation. These are always
attended by the emotion of the sublime, For this communication
is an influx of the divine mind into our mind.
It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the
flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension
(18:07):
of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight.
A thrill passes through all men at the reception of
new truth, or at the performance of a great action
which comes out of the heart of nature. In these communications,
the power to see is not separated from the will
to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and the
obedience proceeds from a joyful perception. Every moment when the
(18:30):
individual feels himself invaded by it is memorable by the
necessity of our constitution. A certain enthusiasm attends the individual's
consciousness of that divine presence. The character and duration of
this enthusiasm varies with the state of the individual. From
an ecstasy in trance and prophetic inspiration, which is its
rarer appearance, to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in
(18:52):
which form it warms like our household, fires all the
families and associations of men, and makes society possible. A
certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of
the religious sense in men, as if they had been
blasted with excessive light. The trances of Socrates, the union
of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul,
(19:15):
the Aurora of Baymen, the convulsions of George Fox and
his Quakers, the illumination of Speedenborg are of this kind.
What was in the case of these remarkable persons. A
ravishment has in innumerable instances in common life been exhibited
in less striking manner everywhere. The history of religion betrays
a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and Quietest,
(19:39):
the opening of the internal sense of the word in
the language of the New Jerusalem Church, the revival of
the Calvinistic churches, the experiences of the Methodists are varying
forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which
the individual's soul always mingles with the universal soul. The
nature of these revelations is the same. They are perceptions
of the absolute law. They are solutions of the soul's
(20:02):
own questions. They do not answer the questions which the
understanding asks. The soul answers never by words, but by
the thing itself that is inquired. After revelation is the
disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation
is that it is a telling of fortunes. In past
oracles of the soul, the understanding seeks to find answers
(20:25):
to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how
long men shall exist, what their hands shall do, and
who shall be their company, adding names and dates and places.
But we must pick no locks. We must check this
low curiosity. An answer in words is delusive. It is
really no answer to the questions you ask. Do not
(20:46):
require a description of the countries towards which you sail.
The description does not describe them to you, and tomorrow
you arrive there and know them by inhabiting them. Men
ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the use the
employments of heaven, the state of the sinner, and so forth.
They even dream that Jesus has left replies to precisely
(21:07):
these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak
in their patois to truth, justice, love, the attributes of
the soul. The idea of immutableness is essentially associated Jesus,
living in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding
only the manifestations of these, never made the separation of
(21:29):
the idea of duration from the essence of these attributes,
nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul.
It was left to his disciples to sever duration from
the moral elements and to teach the immortality of the
soul as a doctrine and maintain it by evidences. The
moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught. Man
is already fallen in the flowing of love, in the
(21:53):
adoration of humility. There is no question of continuance. No
inspired man ever asks this question or condescends to these evidences,
For the soul is true to itself, and the man
in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the present,
which is infinite, to a future which would be finite.
These questions which we lust to ask about the future
(22:14):
are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them.
No answer in words can reply to a question of things.
It is not in an arbitrary decree of God, but
in the nature of man that a veil shuts down
on the facts of tomorrow. For the soul will not
have us read any other cipher than that of cause
and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs
(22:37):
the children of men to live in today. The only
mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the
senses is to forego all low curiosity and accepting the
tide of being, which floats us into the secret of nature,
work and live work and live, and all unawares. The
advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition,
And the question and the answer are one by this
(22:59):
the same fire, vital consecrating celestial, which burns until it
shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of
an ocean of light. We see and know each other,
and what spirit each is of Who can tell the
grounds of his knowledge of the character of the several
individuals in his circle of friends? No man, Yet their
(23:19):
acts and words do not disappoint him. In that man,
though he knew no ill of him, He put no
trust in that other, though they had seldom met, authentic
signs had yet passed to signify that he might be
trusted as one who had an interest in his own character.
We know each other very well. Which of us has
been just to himself? And whether that which we teach
(23:41):
or behold is only an aspiration or is our honest effort.
Also we are all deserns of spirits that diagnosis lies
aloft in our life or unconscious power. The intercourse of society,
its trade, its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one
wide judaei investigation of character in full court, or in
(24:03):
small committee, or confronted face to face. Accuser and accused
men offer themselves to be judged against their will. They
exhibit those decisive trifles by which character is read. But
who judges and what not our understanding? We do not
read them by learning or craft know The wisdom of
(24:25):
the wise man consists herein that he does not judge them.
He lets them judge themselves, and merely reads and records
their own verdict. By virtue of this inevitable nature, private
will is overpowered and mauger our efforts or our imperfections.
Your genius will speak from you, and mine from me
that which we are. We shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily.
(24:49):
Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never
left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through
avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head.
The infallible index of true progress is found in the
tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding,
nor company, nor books, nor actions, nor talents, nor altogether
(25:12):
can hinder him from being deferential to a higher spirit
than his own, if he have not found his home
in God, his manners, his forms, of speech, the turn
of his sentences. The build shall I say, of all
his opinions, will involuntarily confess it. Let him brave it
out how he will. If he have found his center,
the Deity will shine through him through all the disguises
(25:34):
of ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. The tone
of seeking is one and the tone of having is another.
The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary, between poets
like Herbert and poets like Pope, between philosophers like Spinoza,
Comte and Coleridge and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and Stuart.
(25:57):
Between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers,
and here and their af fervent mystic prophesying, half insane
under the infinitude of his thought. Is that one class
speak from within or from experience, as parties and possessors
of the fact, and the other class from without, as
spectators merely or perhaps as acquainted with the fact. On
(26:17):
the evidence of third persons, it is of no use
to preach to me from without. I can do that
too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within and in
a degree that transcends all others. In that is the miracle.
I believe beforehand that it ought so to be. All
men stand continually in the expectation of the appearance of
(26:40):
such a teacher. But if a man do not speak
from within the veil, where the word is one with
that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. The
same omissions flows into the intellect and makes what we
call genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is
not wisdom, And the most illuminated class of men are
no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers.
(27:03):
Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no
hallowing presence. We are sensible of a knack and skill,
rather than of inspiration. They have a light and know
not whence it comes, and call it their own. Their
talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that
their strength is a disease. In these instances, the intellectual
gifts do not make the impression of virtue, but almost
(27:25):
a vice. And we feel that a man's talent stand
in the way of his advancement in truth. But genius
is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.
It is not anomalous, but more like and not less
like other men. There is in all great poets a
wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.
(27:46):
The author, the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman does
not take place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer,
in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakspeer, in Milton. They are
content with truth. They use the positive degree. They seem
frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with
(28:06):
the frantic passion and violent coloring of inferior but popular writers.
For they are poets by the free course which they
allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes beholds
again and blesses the things which it hath made. The
soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of
its works. The great poet makes us feel our own wealth,
(28:27):
and then we think less of his compositions. His best
communication to our mind is to teach us to despise
all he has done. Shakspeer carries us to such a
lofty strain of intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth
which beggars his own, And we then feel that the
splendid works which he has created, and which in other
hours we extol as a sort of self existent poetry
(28:48):
take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow
of a passing traveler on the rock. The inspiration which
uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as
good from day to day forever. Why why then, should
I make account of Hamlet and Lear as if we
had not the soul from which they fell as syllables
from the tongue. This energy does not descend into individual
(29:08):
life on any other condition than entire possession. It comes
to the lowly and simple. It comes to whomsoever will
put off what is foreign and proud. It comes as insight.
It comes as serenity and grandeur. When we see those
whom it inhabits, we are apprized of new degrees of greatness.
From that inspiration. The man comes back with a changed tone.
(29:30):
He does not talk with men with an eye to
their opinion. He tries them. It requires of us to
be plain and true. The vain traveler attempts to embellish
his life by quoting my Lord and the Prince and
the Countess who thus said or did to him. The
ambitious vulgars show you their spoons and brooches and rings,
and preserve their cards and compliments. The more cultivated, in
(29:54):
their account of their own experience, call out the pleasing,
poetic circumstance. The visit to Rome, the man of genius,
they saw, the brilliant friend they know still further on,
perhaps the gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts
they enjoyed yesterday, and so seek to throw a romantic
color over their life. But the soul that ascends to
(30:14):
worship the Great God is plain and true, has no
rose color, no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures, does
not want admiration, dwells in the hour that now is
in the earnest experience of the common day. By reason
of the present moment, and the mere trifle having become
poorest to thought and bibulous of the sea of light,
converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature
(30:37):
looks like word catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to
be written. Yet are they so cheap and so things,
of course, that in the infinite riches of the soul,
it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground,
or bottling a little air in a file. When the
whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours, nothing can
pass there or make you one of the circle, but
(30:57):
the casting aside your trappings, and dealing man to man
in naked truth, plain, confession, and omniscient affirmation. Souls such
as these treat you as gods would walk as gods
in the earth, excepting without any admiration, your wit, your bounty,
your virtue, even say, rather your act of duty for
your virtue. They own as their proper blood royal as
(31:18):
themselves and over royal, and the father of the gods.
But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing castes on the
mutual flattery with which authors solace each other and wound themselves.
These flatter not. I do not wonder that these men
go to see Cromwell and Christina, and Charles the Second,
and James the First and the Grand Turk. For they are,
(31:39):
in their own elevation the fellows of kings, and must
feel the servile tone of conversation in the world. They
must always be a godsend to princes, for they confront
them a king to a king, without ducking or concession,
and give a high nature the refreshment and satisfaction, of resistance,
of plain humanity, of even companionship, and as new ideas,
(32:01):
they leave them wiser and superior men. Souls like these
make us feel that sincerity is more excellent than flattery.
Deal so plainly with man and woman as to constrain
the utmost sincerity, and destroy all hope of trifling with you.
It is the highest compliment you can pay. Their highest praising,
said Milton, is not flattery, and their plainest advice is
(32:25):
a kind of praising. Ineffable is the union of man
and God in every act of the soul. The simplest
person who in his integrity worships God becomes God. Yet
forever and ever, the influx of this better and universal
self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment,
how dear, how soothing to man horises the idea of
(32:47):
God peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our
mistakes and disappointments. When we have broken our God of
tradition and ceased from our God of rhetoric, then may
God fire the heart with his presence. It is the
doubling of the heart itself. Nay, the infinite enlargement of
the heart, with the power of growth to a new
infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust.
(33:12):
He has not the conviction, but the sight that the
best is the true, and may, in that thought easily
dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the
sure revelation of time, the solution of his private riddles.
He is sure that his welfare is dear to the
heart of being, in the presence of law. To his mind.
He is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it
(33:33):
sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects
of mortal condition. In its flood, he believes that he
cannot escape from his good. The things that are really
for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek
your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need
not if you do not find him. Will you not
acquiesce that it is best you should not find him?
(33:56):
For there is a power which, as it is in you,
is in him also, and could therefore very well bring
you together if it were for the best. You are
preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to
which your talent and your taste invite you the love
of men and the hope of fame. Has it not
occurred to you that you have no right to go
unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going. Oh, believe,
(34:20):
as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over
the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate
on thine ear. Every proverb, every book, every byword that
belongs to THEE for aid or comfort, shall surely come
home through open or winding passages. Every friend, who not
thy fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in
(34:40):
THEE craveth, shall lock THEE in his embrace. And this
because the heart in THEE is the heart of all.
Not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is
there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly in
endless circulation through all men. As the water of the
globe is all one sea, and truly seen its tide
is one. Let man then learn the revelation of all
(35:03):
nature and all thought to his heart, this namely, that
the Highest dwells with him, that the sources of nature
are in his own mind. If the sentiment of duty
is there, but if he would know what the great
God speaketh. He must go into his closet and shut
the door. As Jesus said, God will not make himself
manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing
(35:26):
himself from all the accents of other men's devotion. Even
their prayers are hurtful to him until he have made
his own. Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers.
Whenever the appeal is made, no matter how indirectly, to numbers,
proclamation is then and there maide that religion is not.
He that finds God a sweet enveloping thought to him
(35:48):
never counts his company. When I sit in that presence,
who shall dare to come in? When I rest in
perfect humility, when I burn with pure love? What can
Calvin or Swedenborg say? It makes no difference whether the
appeal is to numbers or to one. The faith that
stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority
(36:09):
measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.
The position men have given to Jesus now for many
centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves.
It cannot alter the eternal facts. Grave is the soul
and plain. It is no flatterer, It is no follower.
(36:31):
It never appeals from itself. It believes in itself before
the immense possibilities of man, all mere experience, all past biography, however,
spotless and sainted, shrinks away before that heaven which our
presentiments foreshow us. We cannot easily praise any form of
life we have seen or read of. We not only
(36:52):
affirm that we have few great men, but absolutely speaking
that we have none. That we have no history, no
record of any character or mode of living that entirely
contents us. The saints and demigods whom history worships we
are constrained to accept with a grain of allowance, though
in our lonely hours we draw a new strength out
of their memory. Yet pressed on our attention as they are,
(37:15):
by the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade. The
soul gives itself alone, original and pure to the lonely,
original and pure, who, on that condition gladly inhabits, leads
and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young and nimble?
It is not wise, but it sees through all things.
(37:37):
It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It
calls the light its own, and feels that the grass
grows and the stone falls by a law inferior two
and dependent on its nature. Behold it seth. I am
born into the great, the universal mind, I the imperfect,
adore my own perfect. I am somehow receptive of the
(38:00):
great soul. And thereby I do overlook the sun and
the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents
and effects which change and pass. More and more the
surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become
public and human in my regards and actions. So come
I to live in thoughts and act with energies which
are immortal, Thus revering the soul and learning as the
(38:22):
ancient said that its beauty is immense. Man will come
to see that the world is the perennial miracle which
the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders.
He will learn that there is no profane history, that
all history is sacred, that the universe is represented in
an atom. In a moment of time. He will weave
no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but
(38:44):
he will live with a divine unity he will cease
from what is base and frivolous in his life, and
be content with all places and with any service he
can render. He will calmly front the moral in the
negligency of that trust which carries God with it. And
so hath already the whole future in the bottom of
the heart.
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