Abstract

As this writer reads him, Emerson's thinking falls into three loose and broad categories. He held soul to be divine, that intuition or divine spark within every man, whereby every man is capable of infinite growth. He regarded Nature as the lengthened shadow of God cast upon human sense, a kind of incarnation of some Divine Power here on earth. And he believed Deity ever near to man, and every soul possessed of access to Deity, not continuously, but at least in moments of exaltation. This triple structure--the primacy of the soul, the immediacy of Nature, and Divine Immanence--might be called the skeleton framework of his message.