ever-varying figures along the highway of
consciousness, the soul is possessed by a single all-absorbing idea,
which, in the highest state of spiritual exaltation, becomes a vision.
Both Plotinus and Porphyry believed they were privileged to look upon
Him whom "no man can see and live."

But Emerson states his own position so frankly in his Essay entitled
"Circles," that the reader cannot take issue with him as against
utterances which he will not defend. There can be no doubt that he would
have confessed as much with reference to "The Over-Soul" as he has
confessed with regard to "Circles," the Essay which follows "The
Over-Soul."

"I am not careful to justify myself.... But lest I should mislead
any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the
reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value
on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I
pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all
things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply
experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back."

Perhaps, after reading these transcendental essays of Emerson, we might
borrow Goethe's language about Spinoza, as expressing the feeling with
which we are left.

"I am reading Spinoza with Frau von Stein. I feel myself very near
to him, though his soul is much deeper and purer than mine.

"I cannot say that I ever read Spinoza straight through, that at any
time the complete architecture of his intellectual system has
stood clear in view before me. But when I look into him I seem to
understand him,--that is, he always appears to me consistent with
himself, and I can always gather from him very salutary influences
for my own way of feeling and acting."

Emerson would not have pretended that he was always "consistent with
himself," but these "salutary influences," restoring, enkindling,
vivifying, are felt by many of his readers who would have to confess,
like Dr. Walter Channing, that these thoughts, or thoughts like these,
as he listened to them in a lecture, "made his head ache."

The three essays which follow "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "Intellect,"
"Art," would furnish us a harvest of good sayings, some of which we
should recognize as parts of our own (borrowed) axiomatic wisdom.

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then
all things are at risk."