lent and cautious stretches,The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar,The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe ad looks at the oats and rye,The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case," (41)This passage exemplifies the feeling of unity. A section of "Passage to India" also supports the idea of the world as a single entity:"Passage to India!Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first?The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,The lands to be welded together." (412)Another of Emerson's images that affected me is the "transparent eyeball." This concept is an extension of the value he placed on the present, and the importance of one's immediate perception of the present. In his essay Nature Emerson stated that when standing in the woods, contemplating nature, "I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." (193) The focus of this passage is on the way sensory impulses flow into one's consciousness. Emerson eliminated boundaries between his soul and the physical world. A clear line can be drawn to the passage from this section of his journals: "as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads & the infinity of space, so is there no bar or wall in the Soul where man the effect ceases & God the cause begins." (65) In another journal entry Emerson wrote, "The conduct of intellect must respect nothing so much as preserving the sensibility. The mind is best which is most impressionable." (180) This idea of intellectual impressionism had occurred to me in spirit (usually when canoeing or otherwise passively observing some aspect of nature), but I had never found the words to describe my feelings unt...
