Page 32, note 1. The mountain utters the same sense Unchanged in its intelligence, For ages sheds its walnut leaves, One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. "Nature," Fragments, Poems, Appendix. See also the last passage in the poem "Monadnoc." Page 34, note I. "Can such things be?" etc. Shakspeare, Macbeth, iii. 4. Page 39, note 1. Αεὶ γὰρ εὖ πίπτουσιν οἱ Διὸς κύβοι. The dice of Zeus ever fall aright. From a lost play of Sophocles, Fragment 763; used also in "Compensation," Essays, First Series; also "Worship," Conduct of Life. Page 41, note I. This doctrine expanded in "Sovereignty of Ethics," Lectures and Biographical Sketches; ten commandments; compare end of " Prudence," Essays, First Series. Page 42, note 1. The oracle of Nature is overheard by the listener in the wood; "Fragments on the Poet," IV., Poems, Appendix. Page 42, note 2. Teach me your mood, O patient stars! Who climb each night the ancient sky, No trace of age, no fear to die. "Fragments on the Poet," Poems, Appendix. Page 43, note 1. See "Xenophanes," Poems. Xenophanes of Elea, the rhapsodist and philosopher (570 480 B. C.), taught the unity of God and Nature. His doc trine, "Ev kai râv, the Xenophanes said, One and the All, constantly recurs in Emerson's writings. Xenophanes said, "There is one God, the greatest among gods and men, comparable to mortals neither in form nor thought." Mr. Arthur K. Rogers, in his Student's History of Philosophy, says that what Xenophanes taught was "that what we name God is the one immutable and comprehensive material universe which holds within it and determines all those minor phenomena to which an enlightened philosophy will reduce the many deities of the popular faith. The conception is not unlike that of Spinoza in later times." Page 43, note 2. in December, 1832, History. This passage occurs in a lecture given before the Boston Society of Natural Page 45, note I. Although ther degradation was a Platonic doctrine, I think it so contrary to Mr. Emerson's steady belief in amelioration that the expression here implies merely that the animals are lower steps in an ascending series. Page 46, note 1. This image, slightly varied, is found in Pan," Poems, Appendix. Page 46, note 2. Mr. Emerson's brilliant brothers, Edward Bliss Emerson and Charles Chauncy Emerson, had died within the two years before the publication of Nature. Of Edward's powers and nobility, his brother tells in his poem, "The Dirge." Of Charles he wrote: Beautiful without any parallel in my experience of young men was his life. I have felt in him the inestimable advantage, when God allows it, of finding a brother and a friend in one.” Page 47, note I. Mr. Emerson wrote in one of his Journals, I remember when a child, in the pew on Sundays, amusing myself with saying over common words, as ‘black,' 'white,' 'board,' etc., twenty or thirty times, until the 66 words lost all meaning and fixedness, and I began to doubt which was the right name for the thing, when I saw that neither had any natural relation, but were all arbitrary. It was a child's first lesson in Idealism.' Page 52, note I. The flowing universe is told of in many of the poems, as in "Woodnotes," II., "The rushing metamorphosis," etc., and later "Onward and on, the eternal Pan," etc. Page 53, note 1. Page 53, note 2. Shakspeare, Sonnet lxx. Shakspeare, Sonnet cxxiv. Page 53, note 3. In a letter written in December, 1838, to Rev. James Freeman Clarke, then editing in Ohio The Western Messenger, to which Mr. Emerson contributed "The Humble-Bee," he says: "I remember in your letter you mentioned the remark of some friend of yours that the verses, Take, O take those lips away,' were not Shakspeare's; I think they are. Beaumont, nor Fletcher, nor both together were ever, I think, visited by such a starry gleam as that stanza. I know it is in Rollo, but it is in Measure for Measure also; and I remember noticing that the Malones, and Stevens, and critical gentry were about evenly divided, these for Shakspeare, and those for Beaumont and Fletcher. But the internal evidence is all for one, none for the other. If he did not write it, they did not, and we shall have some fourth unknown singer. What care we who sung this or that? It is we at last who sing." Page 55, note 1. The solid, solid universe Is pervious to love, etc. "Cupido," Poems. Page 56, note 1. Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), a Swiss mathematician of remarkable gifts; also a man of character and wide culture. He was called by Catherine of Russia to the Academy of St. Petersburg as professor of physics, and later of mathematics. Frederick the Great induced him to come to Berlin, where he remained many years, returning, however, to Russia. In total blindness during his last years, he did important work. Page 57, note 1. Proverbs viii. 23, 27, 28, 30. Page 58, note 1. Plotinus (204-269 a. D.), of Lycopolis in Egypt, a disciple of Ammonius Saccus of Alexandria, sometimes called the founder of Neo-Platonism, went to Rome and taught philosophy there. Plotinus accompanied the Emperor Gordian in his expedition into Persia, and thus came in contact with the teachings of Zoroaster. He said, “The sensuous life is a mere stage play — all misery in it is only imaginary, all grief a mere cheat of the players; the soul is not in the game; it looks on.” —Student's History of Philosophy, by Arthur K. Rogers. Page 62, note 1. "The Bohemian Hymn," Poems, Appendix. Page 64, note I. Page 67, note 1. Milton, Comus, 13, 14. This passage refers to Mr. Emerson's visit to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris a few months before. See note to the motto of this essay. Page 70, note 1. It is very possible that Mr. William T. Harris is right where he says, in speaking of Mr. Alcott's philosophy: "I have been obliged to think . . . that Mr. Emerson attempted to preserve in the last chapter of his book on Nature . . . a picture of Mr. Alcott as Orphic Poet' by writing out in his own words and with an effort to reproduce the style of thought, words and delivery of Mr. Alcott, the idealistic theory which he had heard with such great inMemoir of Bronson Alcott, by F. B. Sanborn and terest." W. T. Harris. Page 72, note I. "He who desires to signify divine concerns through symbols is orphic, and, in short, accords with those who write myths concerning the Gods."- Proclus, Theology of Plato, I. iv. Page 73, note I. Alexander Leopold Franz Emmerich Hohenlohe (1794-1849), a priest, born at Würtemberg, of a princely family, known for the miraculous cures, attributed to his prayers, in Germany and England, and at Washington, of a Mrs. Mattingly, in 1824. Page 73, note 2. I am indebted to Dr. Ralph Barton Perry, of Harvard University, for the following information with regard to these expressions: The phrase (vespertina cognitio) signifies the twilight knowledge of man that is contrasted with the full-day knowledge of God (matutina cognitio). Knowledge of things in their several natures and particularity is twilight knowledge, while the knowledge of the ideas that constitute the plan of creation is day knowledge. This distinction corresponds to the technical distinction between a posteriori and a priori knowledge. The distinction. between morning and evening knowledge refers to the direction of the partial knowledge. To glorify God, or to see him from the standpoint of darkness, is cognitio matutina; to fall away to darkness is cognitio vespertina. The angels have both in one, the vespertina being contained in the matutina. The angels have the vespertina in so far as they know the lower only through the higher- or see the higher in the lowerand so always glorify God. The use of these phrases is very curiously mingled with the problem of morning and evening as applying to the period preceding the creation of the sun and |