The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men [Vol. 4]

Gold, of small grains; earth, of small sands compacted;Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted:"

and which Malpighi had summed in his maxim that "nature exists entire in leasts,"—is a favorite thought of Swedenborg. "It is a constant law of the organic body that large, compound, or visible forms exist and subsist from smaller, simpler and ultimately from invisible forms, which act similarly to the larger ones, but more perfectly and more universally; and the least forms so perfectly and universally as to involve an idea representative of their entire universe." The unities of each organ are so many little organs, homogeneous with their compound: the unities of the tongue are little tongues; those of the stomach, little stomachs; those of the heart are little hearts. This fruitful idea furnishes a key to every secret. What was too small for the eye to detect was read by the aggregates; what was too large, by the units. There is no end to his application of the thought. "Hunger is an aggregate of very many little hungers, or losses of blood by the little veins all over the body." It is a key to his theology also. "Man is a kind of very minute heaven, corresponding to the world of spirits and to heaven. Every particular idea of man, and every affection, yea, every

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Title: The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men [Vol. 4]
Author: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Canvas: Page 114
Publication: Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,; [1903-1904].

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Collection: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Full citation: "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men [Vol. 4]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0004.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 31, 2025.

The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men [Vol. 4]

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