cause it makes them comprehensible. The philosophy
into which he had already transmuted all his earlier theology at the
time we first meet him consisted of a very simple drawing together of a
few ideas, all of which had long been familiar to the world. It is the
wonderful use he made of these ideas, the closeness with which they
fitted his soul, the tact with which he took what he needed, like a bird
building its nest, that make the originality, the man.

The conclusion of Berkeley, that the external world is known to us only
through our impressions, and that therefore, for aught we know, the
whole universe exists only in our own consciousness, cannot be
disproved. It is so simple a conception that a child may understand it;
and it has probably been passed before the attention of every thinking
man since Plato's time. The notion is in itself a mere philosophical
catch or crux to which there is no answer. It may be true. The mystics
made this doctrine useful. They were not content to doubt the
independent existence of the external world. They imagined that this
external world, the earth, the planets, the phenomena of nature, bore
some relation to the emotions and destiny of the soul. The soul and the
cosmos were somehow related, and related so intimately that the cosmos
might be regarded as a sort of projection or diagram of the soul.

Plato was the first man who perceived that this idea could be made to
provide the philosopher with a vehicle of expression more powerful than
any other. If a man will once plant himself firmly on the proposition
that _he is_ the universe, that every emotion or expression of his mind
is correlated in some way to phenomena in the external world, and that
he shall say how correlated, he is in a position where the power of
speech is at a maximum. His figures of speech, his tropes, his
witticisms, take rank with the law of gravity and the precession of the
equinoxes. Philosophical exaltation of the individual cannot go beyond
this point. It is the climax.

This is the school of thought to which Emerson belonged. The sun and
moon, the planets, are mere symbols. They signify whatever the poet
chooses. The planets for the most part stay in conjunction just long
enough to flash his thought through their symbolism, and no permanent
relation is established between the soul and the zodiac. There is,
however, one link of correlation between the external and internal
worlds which Emerson considered es