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Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes
page 115 of 449 (25%)

We must not quarrel with his peculiar expressions. He says, in this same
paragraph, "I cannot,--nor can any man,--speak precisely of things so
sublime; but it seems to me the wit of man, his strength, his grace, his
tendency, his art, is the grace and the presence of God. It is beyond
explanation."

"We can point nowhere to anything final but tendency; but tendency
appears on all hands; planet, system, constellation, total nature is
growing like a field of maize in July; is becoming something else;
is in rapid metamorphosis. The embryo does not more strive to be
man, than yonder burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring,
a comet, a globe, and parent of new stars." "In short, the spirit
and peculiarity of that impression nature makes on us is this, that
it does not exist to any one, or to any number of particular ends,
but to numberless and endless benefit; that there is in it no
private will, no rebel leaf or limb, but the whole is oppressed by
one superincumbent tendency, obeys that redundancy or excess of life
which in conscious beings we call ecstasy."

Here is another of those almost lyrical passages which seem too long for
the music of rhythm and the resonance of rhyme.

"The great Pan of old, who was clothed in a leopard skin to signify
the beautiful variety of things, and the firmament, his coat of
stars, was but the representative of thee, O rich and various Man!
thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning
and the night and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry
of the City of God; in thy heart the bower of love and the realms of
right and wrong."
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