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Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nonunalists and Realities

Young people admire talents and particular excellencies. As we grow older, we value total powers and effects – as the impression, the quality, the spirit of men and things. The genius is all ….

The magnetism which arranges tribes and races in one polarity, is alone to be respected; the men are steel filings. Yet we unjustly select a particle and say 'O steel filing number one! What heart drawings I feel to thee! What prodigious virtues are these or thine! How constitutional to thee and incommunicable! Whilst we speak, the loadstone is withdrawn, down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our mummery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for universals, for the magnetism not the needles.

Care is taken that the whole tune shall be played. If we were not kept among surfaces everything would be large and universal; Nature keeps herself whole and her representation complete in the experience of each mind. She suffers no seat to be vacant in her college. It is the secret of the world that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again.

All persons, all things which we have known, are here present ….. the world is full. As the ancients said, the world is a plenum or solid. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well in some strange disguise.