and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand, and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem. But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind?"

1

Such correlation of nature and mind is everywhere present in Emerson's work: it is one of his fixed ideas. As a moralist he sees in the theory a proof of the essentially ethical character of all natural law. On this he insists. "The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. "The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible.' The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus 'the whole is greater than its part;' 'reaction is equal to action;' 'the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight be1 Complete Works, I., 85-86.

ing compensated by time;' and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use." 99 1

This ethical interpretation of natural laws is a favorite exercise with Emerson. The specific instances of the correlation of mind. and matter he calls "by-laws of the mind." 2 As example he dwells on the correspondence of gravity to truth. "The first quality we know in matter," he writes in explanation of the equivalence of the soul to nature, “is centrality-we call it gravity-which holds the universe together, which remains pure and indestructible in each mote as in masses and planets, and from each atom rays out illimitable influence. To this material essence answers Truth, in the intellectual worldTruth, whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere, whose existence we cannot disimagine; the soundness and health of things, against which no blow can be struck but it recoils on the striker; Truth, on whose side we always heartily are. And the first

1 Ibid., I., 32-33.

2 Ibid., XII., 15.

measure of a mind is its centrality, its capacity of truth, and its adhesion to it."

Other instances of analogies between the natural and the moral worlds are to be found in his paralleling diamagnetism, or cross magnetism, of gases with a law of personality which he calls bias.2 The chemical rulecorpora non agunt nisi soluta-he says holds true in mind.3 In fact, a long series of such analogies drawn from the laws of physics and vegetation constitutes a considerable part of what Emerson loves to call the Natural History of Intellect.1

The suggestion to gather such by-laws of the mind arose in Emerson's mind as a result of his reading in Bacon. Coleridge had placed Bacon side by side with Plato and had pointed out the relation of his natural philosophy to Plato's system of ideas. Whether or not first directed to Bacon by Coleridge, Emerson certainly used Bacon in accordance with Coleridge's theory of correlation and came to associate Bacon's philosophy with that of Plato.

1 Complete Works, VIII., 221. 2 Ibid., VIII., 306.

8 Ibid., XI., 533.

4 Ibid., XII., 23 et sq.

1

In his review of Bacon's work Emerson notes that Bacon "explained himself by giving various quaint examples of the summary or common laws of which each science has its own illustration." This is a reference to a passage in the Advancement of Learning which Bacon cites in his explanation of the province of a First Philosophy. This philosophy Bacon says is to be "a receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of philosophy or sciences, but are more common and of a higher stage." 2

As instances of such observations and axioms he gives the following: "For example; is not the rule 'Si inæqualibus æqualia addas, omnia erunt inæqualia,' an axiom as well of justice as of mathematics? And is there not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and geometrical proportion? Is not that other rule, 'Quæ in eodem tertio conveniunt, et inter se conveniunt,' a rule taken from the mathematics, but so potent in logic as all syllogisms are built upon it? Is not the observation, 'Omnia mutantur, nil interit,' a contempla

1 Ibid., V., 240.

2 The Works of Francis Bacon, II., 126.

tion, in philosophy thus, that the quantum of nature is eternal? in natural theology thus, that it requireth the same omnipotence to make somewhat nothing, which at the first made nothing somewhat? according to the Scripture, 'Didici quod omnia opera, quæ fecit Deus, perseverunt in perpetuum; non possumus eis quicquam addere nec auferre.' Is not the ground, which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them is to reduce them 'ad principia,' a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration? Was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature to the rules and policy of government? Is not the precept of a musician, to fall from a discord or harsh. accord upon a concord or sweet accord, alike true in affection? Is not the trope of music, to avoid or slide from the close or cadence, common with the trope of rhetoric of deceiving expectation? Is not the delight of the quavering upon a stop in music the same with the playing of light upon the water?

'Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus:'