Page:Henry Mulford Tichenor - A Guide to Emerson (1923).djvu/22

 Rh words 'I' and 'mine' constitute ignorance. What is the great end of all, you shall now learn from me. It is Soul—one in all bodies, pervading, uniform, perfect, pre-eminent over Nature, exempt from birth, growth and decay, omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, independent, unconnected with unrealities, with name, species, and the rest, in time past, present, and to come. The knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one's own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of things. As one diffusive air, passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit is single, though its forms be manifold, arising from the consequences of acts. When the difference of the investing form, as that of a god, or the rest, is destroyed, there is no distinction. … The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the wise, as not differing from, but as the same as themselves. I neither am going nor coming; nor is my dwelling in any one place; nor art thou, thou; nor are others, others; nor am I, I."

It is "as if he had said," writes Emerson, "All is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient painting; and light is whitewash; and durations are deceptive; and form is imprisonment and heaven itself a decoy."

Emerson thus analyzes: "If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all