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Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882

"Representative Men"

" He called
it super-essential. He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, to
demonstrate that it was so,--that this Being exceeded the limits of
intellect. No man ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffable. Having
paid his homage, as for the human race, to the Illimitable, he then
stood erect, and for the human race affirmed, "And yet things are
knowable!"--that is, the Asia in his mind was first heartily
honored,--the ocean of love and power, before form, before will, before
knowledge, the Same, the Good, the One; and now, refreshed and empowered
by this worship, the instinct of Europe, namely, culture, returns; and
he cries, Yet things are knowable! They are knowable, because, being
from one, things correspond. There is a scale: and the correspondence
of heaven to earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is
our guide. As there is a science of stars, called astronomy; a science
of quantities called mathematics; a science of qualities, called
chemistry; so there is a science of sciences,--I call it
Dialectic,--which is the intellect discriminating the false and the
true. It rests on the observation of identity and diversity; for, to
judge, is to unite to an object the notion which belongs to it.


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