For Emerson the two principal defects of Plato as a philosopher are, first, that he is intellectual and therefore always literary, and second, that he has no system. He sees so much that he argues first on one side and then on another. Finally, says Emerson, the way to know Plato is to compare him, not with nature (an enigma now, as it was to Plato), but with other men and to see that through the ages none have approached him.
<br>
Emerson would have preferred to discuss Jesus as the representative mystic, but to do so would have meant sailing into dangerous waters: the orthodox believers of the time would probably have objected to the inclusion of Jesus as a representative man. Emerson chose Swedenborg instead, but in reading this chapter of the book one gets the notion that Emerson was forcing himself to praise this eighteenth century mystic. Emerson remarks that this colossal soul, as he calls him, requires a long focal distance to be seen. Looking more closely, he finds in Swedenborg a style "lustrous with points and shooting spiculae of thought, and resembling one of those winter mornings when the air sparkles with crystals." He summarizes some of Swedenborg's leading ideas: "the Platonic doctrine of the scale or degrees; the version or conversion of each into other, and so the correspondence of all the parts; the fine secret that little explains large, and large, little; the centrality of man in nature, and the connection that subsists throughout all things." He quotes a passage of Swedenborgian theology which must have appealed to the Unitarian Emerson: "Man is a kind of very minute heaven, corresponding to the world of spirits and to heaven. Every particular idea of man, and every smallest part of his affection, is an image and effigy of him. A spirit may be known from only a single thought. God is the grand old man." Yet when Emerson comes to the Swedenborgian mystical view that each natural object has a definite symbolic value―as, a horse signifies carnal understanding; a tree, perception; the moon, faith―he rebels at its narrowness. As for Swedenborg's theological writings in general, Emerson complains of their immense and sandy diffuseness and their delirious and their delirious incongruities. Emerson warns that such a book as Swedenborg's Conjugal Love should be used with caution, and he suggests that a contemplative young man might read these mysteries of love and conscience once, and then throw them aside for ever.
<br>
<br>
As Emerson continues his examination he finds Swedenborg's heavens and hells dull, he objects to the theologic determination of Swedenborg's mind and to the failure of Swedenborg in attaching himself "to the Christian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which carries innumerable christianizers, humanities, divinities, in its bosom." When Emerson imagines the impatient reader complaining, "What have I to do with jasper and sardonic, beryl and chalcedony," and so on, Emerson's own writing awakes as from a semi-slumber, and one is reminded of his warning in "Self-Reliance" that when a man "claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old moldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not."
<br>
As Emerson perhaps felt relieved after having completed his lecture on Swedenborg, he surely must have anticipated with great pleasure his next on the skeptic Montaigne. He confesses to having had a love ofr the Essays since he was a young man. "It seemed to me," he say, "as if I had written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience," He is not repelled by Montaigne's grossness, his frank intimacy about himself, because the Frenchman is scrupulously honest in his confessions. As Emerson had found Swedenborg disagreeable wise and therefore repellent, he is in contrast drawn to Montaigne whose motto Que scais je? was a constant reminder to the essayist to stick to the things he did know: such as his farm, his family, himself, and his likes and dislikes in food and friends. Emerson is charmed by Montaigne's conversational style, his calm balance, and his stout solidity, The skeptic is not the impassioned patriot, the dogmatic adherent of creed or party. He is wary of an excess of belief, but he turns also from an excess of unbelief. he believes in the moral design of the universe and that "it exists hospitably for the weal of souls."thus ,concludes Elmerson, skepticism is finally dissolved in the moral sentiment which remains forever supreme. the skepticism is on the surface only, it questions specifics, but the skeptic can serenely view man's high ambitions defeated and the unequal distribution of power in the world because he believes that deity and moral law control the universe. Emerson himself was at bottom such a believer, though he had passed through his skeptical stage in life to arrive at his belief.
<br>
<!-- -->
