ing, as it were, stamped with the impression or signature of one and the same seal. From whence it cometh to pass, that all minds, in the several places and ages of the world, have ideas or notions of things exactly alike, and truths indivisibly the same. Truths are not multiplied by the diversity of minds that apprehend them; because they are all but ectypal participations of one and the same original or archetypal mind and truth. As the same face may be reflected in several glasses; and the image of the same sun may be in a thousand eyes at once beholding it; and one and the same voice may be in a thousand ears listening to it; so when innumerable created minds have the same ideas of things, and understand the same truths, it is but one and the same eternal light that is reflected in them all ("that light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world"), or the same voice of that one everlasting Word, that is never silent, reechoed by them." 1

1

The conception of a universal mind goes back to the Neo-Platonic doctrine of one supreme intellect. In this mind all particular minds are contained, each expressing the whole in its own way. This supreme intellect

1 The True Intellectual Systems of the Universe, III., 71.

is one of the absolute principles. An account of the manner in which all minds exist in this one great mind is found in Plotinus. "They likewise see all things, not those with which generation, but those with which essence is present. And they p And they perceive themselves in others. For all things there are diaphanous; and nothing is dark and resisting, but everything is apparent to every one internally and throughout. For light everywhere meets with light; since everything contains all things in itself, and again sees all things in another. So that all things are everywhere, and all is all. Each thing likewise is everything." 1

Emerson's account compared with Cudworth's and Plotinus' shows a characteristic manner of approach. Cudworth and Plotinus are concerned with the nature and existence of the supreme mind considered in and for itself, while Emerson views the question from the standpoint of the individual man who shares in this supreme mind as an inherited right. He thus emphasizes the individual's claim to such a mind.

But Emerson elaborates the idea in an even more characteristic fashion. In the statement of the doctrine as thus far made, the

1 Select Works, Introduction, p. lxxx., note.

universal mind is described as merely present to each individual; no more specific account of the relation between the two is given. But in the name Over-Soul, which Emerson applies to the universal mind, there is a clear indication of a change in the relation between it and the individual; the universal soul presides over the former, gives it its life and directs its energies.

This advance in the idea recognizes the teaching of the Platonists concerning the inter-relation of their three great principles of all things. These principles are arranged in a causal series. At the head is the One, out of which proceeds logically Universal Mind or Intellect; and this latter in turn gives rise to Universal Soul. Each of the two principles below the One finds above it a greater principle out of which it comes and toward which its energies are directed. Proclus speaking of the relation of the third principle to the second says that "she [soul] sees above all souls, intellectual essences and orders. For above every soul a deiform intellect resides, which imparts to the soul an intellectual habit. She also sees prior to these, the monads of the gods themselves which are above intellect, and from which the intellec

For it is

tual multitudes receive their unions. necessary that unific causes should be placed above things united, in the same manner as vivifying causes are above things vivified, causes that impart intellect are above things intellectualized, and in a similar manner unparticipable hypostases are above all participants." 1

Plotinus, in like manner, describes the relation of soul to the world. "For it [soul] governs, abiding on high. And the world is animated after such a manner, that it cannot with so much propriety be said to have a soul of its own, as to have a soul presiding over it; being subdued by, and not subduing it, and being possessed, and not possessing. For it lies in soul which sustains it, and no part of it is destitute of soul; being moistened with life, like a net in water." 2

In such statements as these is to be found the suggestion of that theory of the Over-Soul which Emerson expounds in the following passage: "The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great

1 Proclus, On Providence and Fate, in On the Theology of Plato, II., 455-456.

2 Select Works, 343.

nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One." "

1

In this passage there is an accumulation of detail which shows how Emerson uses the various doctrines of Platonism to do honor to his great idea, the Over-Soul. He identifies it with "that Unity" and with "the eternal One," both of which expressions refer to the first of the absolute principles of the Platonists, the One. In stating that in the OverSoul every man's particular being is contained 1 Complete Works, II., 268–269.