tions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy." If, then, a mystical experience is the highest experience life can know, the highest truths concerning nature can be known only by virtue of such an experience. Nature, then, must be mysticized.

As has been noted already, the method of nature is presented by Emerson as an eternal flux or change due to a superabundance of energy in a metaphysical source. As he views this ceaseless energy he calls it by the name which Plotinus had given to the mystic experience. Plotinus describes the participant in such an experience as "being as it were in an ecstacy, or energizing enthusiastically." Emerson applies the term ecstasy to the method of nature. "In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that impression nature makes on us is this, that it does not exist to any one or to any number of particular ends, but to a numberless and endless benefit; that there is in it no private will, no rebel leaf or limb, but the whole is oppressed by one superincumbent

1 Complete Works, I., 3-4.

2 Select Works, 503.

tendency, obeys that redundancy or excess of life which in conscious beings we call ecstasy." 1

When Emerson retired to Nantasket Beach to write The Method of Nature he took with him Plato's Phædrus, Meno, and Banquet, which he diligently read. He also had with him Proclus, Ocellus Lucanus and certain Pythagorean Fragments, either those of Demophilus, or those to be found in the Life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus. It is natural, then, to expect a decided influence in his essay of such reading.

2

Now Ocellus Lucanus, in a short treatise, set forth the eternal nature of the universe as it was understood by the Platonists. "It is credible," he says, "that the universe is without beginning, and without an end, from its figure, from motion, from time and its essence; and, therefore, it may be concluded that the world is unbegotten and incorruptible: for the form of its figure is circular; but a circle is on all sides similar and equal, and is, therefore, without a beginning, and without an end. The motion, also, of the universe is circular, but this motion is stable and without 1 Complete Works, I., 203-204.

2 Ibid., IV., 310.

transition. Time, likewise, in which motion exists is infinite, for this neither had a beginning, nor will have an end of its circulation. The essence, too, of the universe is without egression [into any other place], and is immutable, because it is not naturally adapted to be changed, either from the worse to the better, or from the better to the worse. From all these arguments, therefore, it is obviously credible that the world is unbegotten and incorruptible." 1

Such a conception was easily caught up by Emerson. It taught the eternity of nature whose operations indicated a ceaseless round of energizing. Emerson's adherence to the truth of the correlation of matter and mind made it easy to transfer the idea of ecstasy, which strictly applies to conscious beings, to the method of nature. He thus speaks of nature as "a work of ecstasy, to be represented by a circular movement, as intention might be signified by a straight line of definite length." "

2

But this application of the doctrine of correlation leads to a palpable over-statement. Usually, Emerson argues from a law of nature to a law of mind; but in this case he

1 On the Nature of the Universe, 8-9.

It

has done the reverse. Ecstasy is attributed to nature and not deduced from her method. is true that in the opening of his essay he approaches the subject in his usual manner of studying nature for what it reveals of the mind, but in reality it is the idea of ecstasy as a law of the mind that forms the true subject of his work. Its closing part thus shows how there is no function or office in man but is rightly discharged by this divine method. True science is ecstatic. In the pursuit of virtue he who aims at progress should aim at an infinite, not a special benefit. The law of ecstasy holds also in love, in genius, and in history. Filled with the idea, then, he strained truth somewhat in boldly teaching ecstasy as the law of nature.

Emerson is more successful in identifying man and nature when he describes the mystic experience. A complete union of the soul of man with the Divine means an absolute oneness of man with all things as well. "In that deep force," he writes, "the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but

one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist and afterwards see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause." 1

This is a conception of being which Plotinus had taught him to appreciate. "This is that which is entirely being," writes Plotinus; "and this again is that which in no respect is deficient in existence. But since it is perfectly being, it is not in want of any thing in order that it may be preserved and be, but to other things which appear to be, it is the cause of their apparent existence. is necessary, however, that it should be perfectly being. Hence it is requisite it should accede to existence, possessing all things in itself, and being at once all things, and one all, if by these peculiarities we define being."

It

The mysticism of Plotinus was also effective in providing another solution of the question of the origin of the outward universe. When we ask the questions, Whence is matter? and Whereto? we learn, so Emerson tells us, "that the highest is present to the soul of man;

1 Complete Works, II., 64. 2 Select Works, 137-138.