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TWELVE ESSAYS.

BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Author of "natuke, an ESSAY," &c.

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There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all;
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh every where.

BLIOTHEQUE CANTONAL
LAUSANNE

UNIVERSITAIR

ESSAY I.

HISTORY.

I am owner of the sphere,

Of the seven stars and the solar year,

Of Cæsar's hand, and Plato's brain,

Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain.

THERE is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.

Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. But always the thought is prior to the fact; all the facts of history pre-exist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give

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