.
"All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am
nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate
through me; I am part and particle of God." The existence and
attributes of God are not deducible from history or from natural
theology, but are thus directly given us in consciousness. In his
essay on the _Transcendentalist_, Emerson says: "His experience
inclines him to behold the procession of facts you call the world
as flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded center
in himself; center alike of him and of them and necessitating
him to regard all things as having a subjective or relative
existence--relative to that aforesaid Unknown Center of him. There is
no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the
cause, begins. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual
nature, to the attributes of God."

{447}

Emerson's point of view, though familiar to students of philosophy, is
strange to the popular understanding, and hence has arisen the
complaint of his obscurity. Moreover, he apprehended and expressed
these ideas as a poet, in figurative and emotional language, and not as
a metaphysician, in a formulated statement. His own position in
relation to systematic philosophers is described in what he says of
Plato, in his series of sketches entitled _Representative Men_, 1850:
"He has not a system. The dearest disciples and defenders are at
fault. He attempted a theory of the universe, and his theory is not
complete or self-evident. One man thinks he means this, and another
that; he has said one thing in one place, and the reverse of it in
another place." It happens, therefore, that, to many students of more
formal philosophies Emerson's meaning seems elusive, and he appears to
write from temporary moods and to contradict himself. Had he attempted
a reasoned exposition of the transcendental philosophy, instead of
writing essays and poems, he might have added one more to the number of
system-mongers; but he would not have taken that significant place
which he occupies in the general literature of the time, nor exerted
that wide influence upon younger writers which has been one of the
stimulating forces in American thought. It was because Emerson was a
poet that he is our Emerson. And yet it would be impossible to
disentangle his peculiar philosophical ideas from the body of his {448}
writings and to leave the latter to stand upon thei