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Updated: May 31, 2025
He will come to perceive that between the Civil War and the crusade that is now upon us, we were under the evil spell of materialism. Now materialism is the very negation of democracy, which is a government by the demos, or over-soul; it is equally the negation of joy, the negation of reverence, and it is without conviction because it cannot believe even in itself.
He recognizes the various life-values in reality not by reason of their closeness or remoteness, but because he sympathizes with men who live them, and the majority do. "The private store of reason is not great would that there were a public store for man," cries Pascal, but there is, says Emerson, it is the universal mind, an institution congenital with the common or over-soul.
The courage of righteous indignation, of stammering eloquence, of spiritual insight, a courage ever contracting or unfolding a philosophy as it grows a courage that would make the impossible possible. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that Emerson attempted the impossible in the Over-Soul "an overflow of spiritual imagination."
The semi-materialistic idealism of Milton was a gross and clumsy medium compared to the imponderable ether of "The Over-soul" and the unimaginable vacuum of "Brahma." He followed in the shining and daring track of the Graius homo of Lucretius: "Vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi."
"I still recall," he says, "the impressions produced by Emerson's delivery of his address on 'The Over-Soul' in Mr. Hartshorn's school-room in Providence. He seemed to speak as an inhabitant of heaven, and with the inspiration and authority of a prophet.
It is the God, not "who dwelleth in inaccessible light, who is enthroned on the floors of the heavens," or "walks on the wings of the winds"; it is the God who is "not very far from any one of us," for he is in us, in very deed and truth; he is the mind, the intelligence; he is the soul of man, and yet the "Over-soul," the soul of all souls, and we are not so much made in his image, as it was taught of old, but we are he, we are the Divine, there is no line of division 'twixt us and him; the light in man, the good in man is God.
And yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being." In the following Essay, "The Over-Soul," Emerson has attempted the impossible.
Contents: History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art. Emerson's Account of his Mode of Life in a Letter to Carlyle. Death of Emerson's Son. Threnody "The Young American." Address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies. Publication of the Second Series of Essays.
Not only is this true among the Hindus; but even among the Mahommedans, of all countries, there is an Inner Circle of Mystics, known as the Sufis, holding to this Truth. And the inner teachings of the philosophies of all ages and races, have held likewise. And the highest thought of the philosophers of the Western races, has found refuge in this idea of the Over-soul, or Universal Self.
And yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being." In the following Essay, "The Over-Soul," Emerson has attempted the impossible.
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