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will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice; and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. Every good which comes to us is by obedience to the law of God, an obedience which we shall freely elect to accept, when we know what it is; and in it we shall find all our freedom. "The last lesson of life, the choral song which rises from all elements and all angels, is a voluntary obedience, a necessitated freedom." 2

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He illustrates moral and spiritual obedience by reference to the laws of nature. Water drowns us; but, if we obey its conditions, we can float our ship on it through all seas. There is no porter, he says, like gravitation. There are laws of force, however; and we can not tamper with or warp them. The man must bend to the law, never the law to him." All the forces of nature, when man obeys their conditions, become his servants. Then "no force but is his force. He does not possess them; he is a pipe through which their currents flow. If a straw be held still in the direction of the ocean-current, the sea will pour through it as through Gibraltar. If he should measure strength with them, if he should fight the sea and the whirlwind with his ship, he would snap his spars, tear his sails, and swamp his bark; but by cunningly dividing the force, tapping the tempest for a little side-wind, he uses the monsters, and they carry him where he would go." 3 Until the other day steam was a devil to be dreaded; but we have learned its law, become obedient to it, and now it is one of our best servants. Emerson finds that right drainage destroys typhus, that every other pest is not less in the chain of cause and effect, and may be fought off. 4 As we make all material forces our servants and helpers by

1 Essays, first series, p. 124.

2 Conduct of Life, p. 209

3 Perpetual Forces, North American Review, September, 1877, p. 274. 4 Conduct of Life, pp. 27, 28.

accepting their conditions and obeying their laws, so "we arrive at virtue by taking its direction instead of imposing ours.'

"The forces are infinite. Every one has the might of all; for the secret of the world is that its energies are solidaires; that they work together on a system of mutual aid, all for each and each for all; that the strain made on one point bears on every arch and foundation of the structure. But if you wish to avail yourself of their might, and in like manner if you wish the force of the intellect and the force of the will, you must take their divine direction, not they yours. Obedience alone gives the right to command. It is like the village operator who taps the telegraph-wire and surprises the secrets of empires as they pass to the capital. So this child of the dust throws himself by obedience into the circuit of the heavenly wisdom, and shares the secret of God."

"1

grows Emerson's We are

From his doctrine of universal law first moral principle, that of self-renunciation.

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We

to renounce all that is individual, personal, and selfish, and to follow the universal ends of nature. can not handy words with nature; and if we measure our individual forces against hers, we may easily feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny." 2 Wę can not bring the heavenly powers to us; but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that they never go out of their road." 3 But if we take their way, all is strength and peace for us. for us. By renouncing our own will and accepting theirs, we gain all the might of their power, and all wisdom comes in upon us. "We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word." 4 "There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord; we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon; and to this homage there is a consent of all thoughtful and just men in all ages and conditions.' How im

1 Perpetual Forces, p. 279.
3 Society and Solitude, p. 26.
5 Conduct of Life, p. 185.

2 Essays, second series, p. 188. 4 Essays, first series, p. 124.

perative he makes this condition of self-renunciation and obedience to God may be seen when he says that the true artist "must disindividualize himself, and be a man of no party and no manner and no age, but one through whom the soul of all men circulates, as the common air through the lungs. He must work in the spirit in which we conceive a prophet to speak, or an angel of the Lord to act; that is, he is not to speak his own words, or do his own works, or think his own thoughts; but he is to be an organ through which the universal mind acts." 1 Not only is this the manner of action for the artist, but for all men in all vocations. It is the method by which wisdom is to be obtained, and that by which character is to be possessed. Emerson would say as strongly as Epictetus does, that we are to be absolutely resigned to the will of God. We are to have no other thought, no other wish, than to become per"fectly obedient to God, accepting his laws, doing his will, becoming the organs through which he acts. By renouncing all that is individual and particular, by obedience to the law of God, the Over-soul becomes our guide, and we are drawn into the methods of the universal mind. Then all truth opens before us, and we' are led in the way of peace.

Nature is a perfect symbol of the spiritual; a picture, to the senses and the understanding, of the heavenly laws. It is an object-lesson in the truths of the soul, and it presents objectively all the realities of the Infinite. It is, especially, a lesson in moral truths, a method of discipline to the soul. It leads us to freedom through obedience, and to know that we can come to the highest self-realization only as we become the organs of the Universal Spirit.

Emerson has been as constant an observer of nature as Tyndall or Darwin, but his method of interpretation has been that of Schelling and Wordsworth. The value of investigation he fully realizes, and he makes no mistakes in his own use of scientific facts. To one who

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1 Society and Solitude, p. 43.

spoke to him of the help received from his pages, he gave this statement of his own method:

"The fields and forests, the life of plants and animals, and the teeming industries of men, on every hand, are open to the vision of us all. These have been my teachers. You are free to gather from the original sources as well as I. What is needed by students is the habit of original investigation, and the courage to write down personal thoughts and observations."

He has seen in the study of nature a corrective to the speculations of the mind, and his interest in this study has grown largely out of his regarding the laws of nature as really laws of the spiritual world. Elizabeth P.. Peabody reports that in one of his lectures in Boston, in 1860, he said, "If you wish to understand intellectual philosophy, do not turn inward by introversion, but study natural science. Every time you discover a law of things you discover a principle of mind." Thus has he found a corrective against the fancies of too great subjectivity, and a test for the speculative conclusions of the intuitive method. He has made a faithful application of both corrective and test in working out his own theories.

He has caught up with quick avidity the ripest conclusions of modern science, and made them take their place in the world he interprets. He knows the value of scientific facts, and where they belong. "Emerson has a scientific method, said his friend Agassiz, of the severest kind, and can not be carried away by any theories." Another great scientific teacher, Tyndall, as the result of his careful and frequent reading of Emerson's books, pronounces this striking judgment:

"In him we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science, past, present, and prospective. In his case, poetry, with the joy of a bacchanal, takes her graver brother science by the hand, and cheers him with immortal laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer lines of an ideal world.”

XXII.

MIND, AND THE OVER-SOUL.

IND is the positive manifestation of the Universal Spirit. Because positive, it is the source and center of things. Emerson thinks we can not define it, that we know not what it is but as we see and realize it in ourselves. In man it appears as intellect, but it is susceptible of no divisions. It is the same power, the same faculty, when it acts as will, reason, or affections, and in every manifestation acts as a single force. This view of mind is shared in by the school of thinkers to which he belongs, and has been made prominent in the writings of Carlyle. The mind is both that which sees and that which is seen. It is hid from our cunning definitions, as from our comprehension, through its perfect transparency, and is too near for us to realize its nature. All the terms of mind, he says, are derived from those of matter; and all the laws of matter can be applied to thought by evident analogy. This is true, because mind and matter are one in the Universal Spirit, corresponding precisely with each other. Every law of nature, he said in his lectures on the Natural History of the Intellect, is a law of mind; and these laws are to be discovered by the solar microscope of analogy. To gravity or centrality in matter corresponds truth in the mind. Polarity is the next most universal law of nature, and to this corresponds sex in mind. So he would understand the mind, not by any a priori process, but through the study of nature and the observation of their constant correspondence in methods and laws.

A brief synopsis of this course of lectures will give a clearer understanding of his theory of mind, though it

1 Essays, fir series, p. 295.

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