United States or Botswana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Fields was suggesting to Emerson one day that he should give a series of lectures, when, as they were discussing the topics to be chosen, Emerson said: "One shall be on the Doctrine of Leasts, and one on the Doctrine of Mosts; one shall be about Brook Farm, for ever since Hawthorne's ghastly and untrue account of that community, in his 'Blithedale Romance, I have desired to give what I think the true account of it."
Nor did she hear another word from him about his disappointment. It made her dislike Henry's boasts more than ever; and she used to cut them short as fast as she could, till the young chatterer decided that she was "cross," and reserved all his wonderful "at leasts" for his sisters, and his proofs of manliness for the Grevilles.
You ask in your last note for "Leasts and Mosts" for the "Atlantic." Ever your debtor, R. W. EMERSON. At another time he wrote: "I received the account rendered of the Blue and Gold Edition of the 'Essays' and 'Poems. I keep the paper before me and study it now and then to see if you have lost money by the transaction, and my prevailing impression is that you have."
"The principle of all things entrails made Of smallest entrails; bone, of smallest bone, Blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one; Gold, of small grains; earth, of small sands compacted Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted:" and which Malpighi had summed in his maxim, that "nature exists entirely in leasts," is a favorite thought of Swedenborg.
In any form or in different forms there can be no least thing the same as any other, for the reason that in greatest forms there are like degrees, and the greatest are made up of leasts.
Malpighi, following the high doctrines of Hippocrates, Leucippus, and Lucretius, had given emphasis to the dogma that nature works in leasts, "tota in minimis existit natura."
In some cases we see the All in the little; the law that spheres a tear spheres a globe. That Nature is seen in leasts is an old Latin maxim. The soap bubble explains the rainbow. Steam from the boiling kettle gave Watt the key to the steam engine; but a tumbler of water throws no light on the sea, though its sweating may help explain the rain.
Word Of The Day