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Page 267. The thirteen poems which follow, beginning with "Experience," were selected by Mr. Emerson from the mottoes of the Essays, of which they—all but two—bear the names, for publication in May-Day and Other Pieces in 1867. He there called the group "Elements." The
motto of the essay on Behavior he called "Manners," the essay of that name having no original motto, but one from Ben Jonson. To the motto of "The Over-Soul" he gave the title "Unity."
It has seemed to the editor that the readers of the Poems would be glad to have the other mottoes which Mr. Emerson gave to his chapters included in this volume. They therefore are printed, with a few exceptions, after the thirteen which the author preferred. The exceptions are as follows: the motto of Self-Reliance is found where Mr. Emerson placed it among the Quatrains as "Power;" the motto to "The Poet," with the exception of its first two lines, is a part of the long poem of that name in the Appendix; most of the lines of "Fate" belong among the fragments on "The Poet," in the Appendix, and the last four lines form the ending of the poem "Fate;" the motto to "Considerations by the Way" seemed better placed with the "Song of Merlin." The second motto of "Character" and that of "Beauty" are portions respectively of the "Ode to Beauty" and of "In Memoriam, E. B. E." The titles "Promise" and "Caritas" seemed appropriate to the mottoes respectively of "Nominalist and Realist" and "New England Reformers." "Love" had only a verse from the Koran as motto. The Essays in the volumes which followed Conduct of Life had no mottoes in Mr. Emerson's lifetime, and, with Mr. Cabot's sanction, I supplied these for Lectures and Biographical Sketches, in the Riverside Edition, from fragments of verse, never published by Mr. Emerson, which were printed in the Appendix. I have now ventured to do the same for Society and Solitude and Letters and Social Aims.
Page 271, note 1. Journal, 1840. "I read to-day in Ockley [History of the Saracens] a noble sentence of Ali, son-in-law
of Mahomet: 'Thy lot or portion of life is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.'"
See also "The Over-Soul" (Essays, First Series, p. 293).
Page 272, note 1. Compare the quatrain "Northman."
Page 273, note 1. The first six lines of this motto are from "The Poet" (see Appendix).
Page 273, note 2. This poem in the verse-book begins,—
Ah me! can maxims educate.There is in "Fate" (Conduct of Life, p. 44) a passage on the necessity for the great to be impressionable.
Page 274, note 1. In the notes to "Friendship," Essays, First Series, p. 412, are two passages on ideal friendship from letters by Mr. Emerson.
Page 275, note 1. This poem sheds light on "Uriel" and on "Brahma." The essay on Circles, especially pages 317-318, contains much to the same purpose,—the beneficent compensations in Morals, as in Nature. Had Mr. Emerson ever resorted to italics, the use of them in the word "living" would have helped the reader in the first line, which is condensed to the last point. Thy prayers are concerned with a Heaven which is alive, is the meaning. This is shown in the first rhapsody in the verse-book:—
Heaven is alive; Self-built and quarrying itself, Upbuilds eternal towers; Self-commanded works In vital cirque By dint of being all; Its loss is transmutation. Fears not the craft of undermining days, Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that's lodged In reaction and recoil, Makes flames to freeze and ice to boil, And thro' the arms of all the fiends Builds the firm seat of Innocence.
Page 276, note 1. Mr. Emerson's note-books are full of verses about the joyful Seyd (or Said) seeking beauty in Nature and man. These may be found in the Appendix, in "Fragments on the Poet." A few of these were taken by him for this motto.
Page 277, note 1. In "Love," Essays, First Series, pp. 176, 177, is a passage which these lines recall.
Page 277, note 2. In a letter to a near friend, written in 1841, Mr. Emerson speaks of himself as "an admirer of persons. I cannot get used to them; they daunt and dazzle me still. … Blessed be the Eternal Power for those whom fancy even cannot strip of beauty, and who never for a moment seem to me profane."1 1.1
Page 279, note 1. Mr. Emerson thus changed the title of the motto of "The Over-Soul."
Page 280, note 1. See "Fate" (p. 21 in Essays, First Series) and also the poems "Nemesis" and "Voluntaries."
Page 280, note 2. Compare the passage in the Address to the Divinity Students (Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 121).
Letters to a Friend, edited by Charles Eliot Norton. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.