Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson
page 42 of 178 (23%)
page 42 of 178 (23%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
magnetic, and I educate, not by lessons, but by going about my
business." He said, Culture; he said, Nature; and he failed not to add, "There is also the divine." There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power, and organizes a huge instrumentality of means. Plato, lover of limits, loved the illimitable, saw the enlargement and nobility which come from truth itself, and good itself, and attempted, as if on the part of the human intellect, once for all, to do it adequate homage,--homage fit for the immense soul to receive, and yet homage becoming the intellect to render. He said, then, "Our faculties run out into infinity, and return to us thence. We can define but a little way; but here is a fact which will not be skipped, and which to shut our eyes upon is suicide. All things are in a scale; and, begin where we will, ascend and ascend. All things are symbolical; and what we call results are beginnings." A key to the method and completeness of Plato is his twice bisected line. After he has illustrated the relation between the absolute good and true, and the forms of the intelligible world, he says:--"Let there be a line cut in two, unequal parts. Cut again each of these two parts,--one representing the visible, the other the intelligible world,--and these two new sections, representing the bright part and the dark part of these worlds, you will have, for one of the sections of the visible world,--images, that is, both shadows and reflections; for the other section, the objects of these images,-that is, plants, animals, and the works of art and nature. Then divide the intelligible world in like manner; the one section will be of opinions and hypotheses, and the other section, of truths." To these four sections, the four operations of the soul correspond,--conjecture, faith, |
|