Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of America’s greatest philosophers. He was part of an extraordinary spiritual renaissance in America about 100 years ago — a synthesis of Eastern and Western thought.
The Over-Soul
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 accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.
February 1983Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We’d love to hear about it.
SEND US A LETTER