Mundi in his poem, The World-Soul. As a refuge, from the vice of men in the centers of wealth and trade he turns to glances of a spirit which haunts him, in the broad aspects of nature, in human beings, in strains of music. Its secret has never been fully solved but its operations in the world are constant and relentless. "But soul," observes Plotinus, speaking of the soul of the world, "by the power of essence has dominion over bodies in such a way, that they are generated and subsist, just as she leads them, since they are unable from the first to oppose her will." as Emerson puts it:

"For Destiny never swerves

Nor yields to men the helm;

He shoots his thoughts, by hidden nerves,
Throughout the solid realm.

The patient Daemon sits,

With roses and a shroud;

He has his way, and deals his gifts-
But ours is not allowed." 2

Or

In this power Emerson finds the hope of the world, which will be fulfilled in a fairer

1 Ibid., 345.

2 Complete Works, IX., 18,

world which the world-soul will create out of this one.

A finer poetic result of Emerson's musings on the world-soul is to be found in his little lyric, Music, in which he works out a suggestion he found in a note appended by Taylor to a passage in Proclus. Commenting on the mutual sympathy shared by all things in the universe, Taylor remarks that he who holds to such a belief "will survey the universe as one great animal, all whose parts are in union and consent with each other; so that nothing is foreign and detached; nothing, strictly speaking, void of sympathy and life. For though parts of the world, when considered as separated from the whole, are destitute of peculiar life; yet they possess some degree of animation, however inconsiderable, when viewed with relation to the universe. Life indeed may be compared to a perpetual and universal sound; and the soul of the world resembles a lyre, or some other musical instrument, from which we may suppose this sound to be emitted. But from the unbounded diffusion as it were of the mundane soul, everything participates of this harmonical sound, in greater or less perfection, according to the dignity of its nature. So that while life

everywhere resounds, the most abject of beings may be said to retain a faint echo of the melody produced by the mundane lyre." 1

In the last sentence of this quotation is the motif of Emerson's poem, Music.

"Let me go where'er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,

From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.

'It is not only in the rose,

It is not only in the bird,

Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.

"Tis not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings."

And thus it appears that Emerson follows

1 On the Theology of Plato, II., 395, note 1.

the Platonists in their account of the spiritual principles of the universe. His doctrines of the Over-soul, of Intellect, of a World-Soul are in general agreement with the three principles of the Platonists. But he is not careful to distinguish them scientifically as the Platonists do; they all go to inform his conception of Soul. Soul he thus finds everywhere in the highest and lowest of created things; but his main purpose was to assert its presence, the presence of the Divine, in man, who comes to experience it in a mystical resolution of his own life into that of the Divine. This is the center of Emerson's thought, as it was of Plotinus', and it shows itself in his repeated emphasis upon the need of soul in life. So absorbing is this power of soul that it includes not only the life of man but the very life of

nature.

Α

CHAPTER IV

LOVE AND BEAUTY

A DISCUSSION of love and beauty fig

ures somewhat conspicuously in Emerson's work. In his examination into the meaning of nature he finds beauty serving a noble want of man. To this subject he devotes a separate essay in his Conduct of Life and he gives a poetical rendering of the theme in the Ode to Beauty. Likewise in his treatment of love, a separate essay deals with the question and his poem Initial, Dæmonic and Celestial Love presents the subject in a poetical trilogy. Reference to such topics is frequent in his work; for as an admirer of Platonism he came to feel the inspiration which its philosophy of love and beauty stirs within the mind of all its true students.

Plenty of material in his Platonic sources was at hand. Plato had given impetus to the discussion in his Banquet and Phædrus. His quickening influence is felt in Plutarch, who leaves a dialogue on love, and in Plotinus