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and in the end of " Art," Society and Solitude, and as the "three children of the Universe" in the first pages of "The Poet," Essays, Second Series. Sidney Lanier, in his last lecture before his death, at the Johns Hopkins University,' spoke of this Trinity of Emerson's.

In Thomas Taylor's Substance of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, Plato's and Plotinus's Trinity, the Good, Intellect and the Soul, is discussed, and the author adds, "This theory, the progeny of the most consummate science, is in perfect conformity with the theology of the Chaldæans. And hence is it said in one of their oracles, In every world a triad shines forth, of which a monad is the ruling principle.'

Page 27, note 1.

Πάντα ῥεῖ, the doctrine of the flowing of all things, taught by Heracleitus of Ephesus (536-470 B. C.), and often quoted by Plato.

Far seen, the river glides below,

Tossing one sparkle to the eyes.

I catch thy meaning, wizard wave;

The river of my life replies.

"Walden," Poems, Appendix.

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I "Moral Purpose in Art," published in the Century Magazine for

May, 1883.

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.

66

Nature," Fragments, Poems, Appendix.

See also the last passage in the poem "Monadnoc." Page 34, note 1. "Can such things be?" etc. Shakspeare, Macbeth, iii. 4.

Page 39, note I. 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.

66

Page 42, note 1. The oracle of Nature is overheard by the listener in the wood; Fragments on the Poet," IV.,

Poems, Appendix.

66

Page 42, note 2.

Teach me your mood, O patient stars!

Who climb each night the ancient sky,

Leaving on space no stain, no scars,

No trace of age, no fear to die.

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Fragments on the Poet," Poems, Appendix.

Page 43, note 1.

SeeXenophanes," Poems.

Xenophanes of Elea, the rhapsodist and philosopher (570480 B. C.), taught the unity of God and Nature.

His doc

trine, "Ev kaì âv, the 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. This passage occurs in a lecture given in December, 1832, before the Boston Society of Natural History.

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Page 45, note I. Although the degradation 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 I. 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.”

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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

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.

Page 53, note 3.

Shakspeare, Sonnet lxx.

Shakspeare, Sonnet cxxiv.

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:

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"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. mont, 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, But the internal evi

and those for Beaumont and Fletcher. dence is all for one, none for the other.

If he did not write

it, they did not, and we shall have some fourth unknown What care we who sung this or that? It is we at

singer.

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Page 56, note I.

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 I.

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 I.

pendix.

Page 64, note 1.

Page 67, note I.

"The Bohemian Hymn," Poems, Ap

Milton, Comus, 13, 14.

This passage refers to Mr. Emerson's Plantes in Paris a few months before. See note to the motto of this essay.

visit to the Jardin des

Page 70, note I. 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,

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