The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays. 1st series [Vol. 2]

and instruments,—fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.1Open page

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden hour of friendship we are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it

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Title
The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays. 1st series [Vol. 2]
Author
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Canvas
Page 196
Publication
Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,
[1903-1904].

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"The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays. 1st series [Vol. 2]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0002.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 10, 2025.
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