Farewell, a God immortal now am I, having ascended to divinity, and earnestly striving to become similar to him.” 1 A less mystic explanation of the manner in which intellectual activity makes for immortality is found in the feeling of absoluteness attendent upon the vision of truth. "Salt," Emerson explains, "is a good preserver; cold is: but a truth cures the taint of mortality better, and 'preserves from harm until another period.' A sort of absoluteness attends all perception of truth-no smell of age, no hint of corruption. It is self-sufficing, sound, entire." 2 As the quotation Emerson uses shows, the idea is Plato's. In his Phædrus Plato explains how the human soul, which is immortal, lived in the eternal world before it appeared on earth. Its main care in that world was to behold truth. "And this is the reason," Plato adds, "for the great anxiety to behold the field of truth, where it is; the proper pasture for the best part of the soul happens to be in the meadow there, and it is the nature of the wing by which the soul is borne aloft, to be nourished by it; and this is a 1 Select Works, 243. 2 Complete Works, VIII., 340. law of Adrastia, that whatever soul, in accompanying a deity, has beheld any of the true essences, it shall be free from harm until the next revolution, and if it can always accomplish this, it shall be always free from harm." 1 Eternity, then, in which intellect has its being, takes the place in Emerson's thought of immortality; it involves, as he says, "not duration but a state of abandonment to the Highest, and so the sharing of His perfection." " "Is immortality," he asks, "only an intellectual quality, or, shall I say, only an energy, there being no passive? He has it, and he alone, who gives life to all names, persons, things where he comes. No religion, not the wildest mythology dies for him; no art is lost. He vivifies what he touches. Future state is an illusion for the ever-present state. It is not length of life, but depth of life. It is not duration, but a taking of the soul out of time, as all high action of the mind does: when we are living in the sentiments we ask no questions about time. The spiritual world takes place that which is always the same." 1 Bohn translation, I., 324. 3 Ibid., 347. " 3 This conception is identical with the teaching of Platonism. "According to the oracle," says Proclus, "eternity is the cause of neverfailing life, of unwearied power, and unsluggish energy. Eternity is the father and supplier of infinite life; since eternity is also the cause of all immortality—and perpetuity. And Plotinus, exhibiting, in a most divinely inspired manner, the peculiarity of eternity, according to the theology of Plato defines it to be infinite life, at once unfolding into light the whole of itself, and its own being For eternity is infinite power abiding in one, and proceeding stably." 1 In his conception of intellect, then, Emerson agrees with the teachings of Platonism in regarding the nature of the intellect's vision as an actual union with the thing seen, in holding that thinking is receptivity and at the same time an onward progress of the mind, and in maintaining the triumph of intellect over fate and time. 1 On the Theology of Plato, I., 190–191. III. THE WORLD-SOUL. Thus far Emerson has spoken of soul as present chiefly in the consciousness of men; but he holds with the Platonists that there is a soul at work in the universe outside of man as well as in his inward life. This is with him "the sublime creed that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise." 1 This belief corresponds to the tenet of Universal Soul taught by Platonism. Below the One and Intellect is the Anima Mundi, the Universal Soul, which is the intermediating principle between the world of pure intelligence and the world of matter. "Every soul," writes Plotinus, "ought to consider in the first place, that soul produced all animals, and inspired them with life: viz., those animals which the earth and sea nourish, those which live in the air, and the divine stars contained 1 Complete Works, I., 123–124. in the heavens. Soul also made the sun; soul made and adorned this mighty heaven. Soul, too, circumvolves it in an orderly course, being of a nature different from the things which it adorns, which it moves, and causes to live, and is necessarily more honourable than these. What the mode is, however, by which life is supplied to the universe, and to each of its parts, may be considered to be as follows: Let a quiet soul behold that other mighty soul, externally as it were, on all sides flowing and infused into, penetrating and illuminating the quiescent mass. For just as the rays of the sun darting on a dark cloud cause it to become splendid, and golden to the view, thus also, soul entering into the body of heaven gave it life, gave it immortality, and excited it from its torpid state. But heaven being moved with a perpetual motion, through the guidance of a wise soul, became a blessed animal. It also acquired dignity through soul becoming its inhabitant, since, prior to soul it was a dead body, viz., earth and water, or rather the darkness of matter and non-entity; and as some one says, 'that which the Gods abhor.' Emerson uses the conception of the Anima 1 Select Works, 256–258. |