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Emerson has much more to say of this communion with the Over-Soul. He agrees with the old mystics in holding that the “union with God” is possible, and even frequent. He teaches the attainment of “cosmic consciousness,” by the power of contemplation and the silence. St. Theresa and Madame Guyon, Plotinus and Swedenborg, would have recognized him as a brother illuminatus . He speaks of the power of communion with the Over-Soul as “always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder.” He says, in one of his essays:

“The path is difficult, secret, and beset with terror. The ancients called it ecstacy or absence—a getting out of their bodies to think. All religious history contains traces of the trance of saints—a beatitude, but without any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even sad; the ‘flight’ Plotinus called it, ‘of the alone to the alone;’ the closing of the eyes— whence our word ‘mystic.’…This beatitude comes in terror, and with shocks to the mind of the receiver.”

These experiences are common in the writings of all the mystics, ancient and modern—it is their distinctive mark and sign. Undeterred by the unfeeling suggestion of modern material science that these strange experiences are pathological rather than spiritual—the result of overwrought emotions, rather than of the opening of spiritual faculties—the mystic ever clings to his transcendental experiences, and hold them to be the most real moments of his existence. The mystic smiles in a superior manner at the presumption of modern psychology which seeks to place these experiences in the category of the abnormal, rather than of the super-normal. He has experienced — and is content.

But, in the end, Emerson, like all of the Mystics, is compelled to report that he finds it impossible to express in words the experiences he wishes to describe. He confesses that repeatedly, but perhaps at no time more beautifully than when he declares: “Words from a man who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will; and behold; their speech shall be lyrical and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if sacred I may not use, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law.”

A careful examination and study of the Transcendental Movement of New England, of 1830–1850, especially as expressed through the writings of Emerson and more especially through his “Nature” and his “Over-Soul,” will convince any fair-minded person that in this movement, and in this one writer, may be found the direct and immediate channel through which has come to us the popular philosophic spirit of the day; the trend of modern religious thought; and the fundamental principles of what has been called the “New Thought” in all of its philosophical and mystical phases. We may find Emerson voicing these “new” truths of to-day, in almost the very words used by the latter-day teachers and writers, many of whom seem unwilling to acknowledge his influence. Over the space of sixty to eighty years these teachings have traveled, and are now awakening into full vigor and power. As important elements in the bubbling and seething Crucible of Modern Thought, Transcendentalism and Emersonianism must be accorded first place. Someone has said that when we seek a cause, we are really seeking “something to put the blame on.” In this case the cause and the blame must be placed upon Emerson and his band of earnest seekers after truth who formed the “Transcendental Club” in 1836, all of whom passed from the field of conflict without realizing the harvest which has resulted from their industrious seed-sowing. To them must be accorded the praise or the blame—according to one’s particular viewpoint of the subject.

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IN THE preceding chapter we considered the influence and direct effect of Transcendentalism, and of Emerson in particular upon modern popular thought. But behind Emerson and the Transcendental school there were many other influences, which we shall now proceed to consider in these articles. One of the great primary sources or causes of the modern trend of thought—that strange revival of old thought in new forms—is that of the philosophy of ancient Greece. Not alone does the present movement show the strong influence of the old Greek philosophical thought, but the Greek ideals are also to be found at the very heart of the “advanced” religious thought of to-day. The “New Theology” and the “New Religion” of which we hear so much contain many of the essential ideals of the ancient Greek religio-philosophic schools.

Wherever there has been a tendency toward transcendentalism, there we find the subtle but powerful influence of Neo-Platonism. And, so, in the great Transcendental Movement of New England, of which Emerson was the high priest, Neo-Platonism was the chief inspiration. Realizing the influence of Emerson and the Transcendental Movement on modern thought, we may see the important part played by the spirit of Neo-Platonism in supplying many of the leading ingredients to the Crucible of Modern Thought. The soul of this old school of thought persists in “marching on” throughout the centuries of thought, although its original body has long been “mouldering in the grave.” Or, may we not say that its soul persists in “reincarnating” in new bodies, from time to time? It certainly seems to have taken on a new body of flesh of considerable size and strength in this first decade of the twentieth century.

In modern scientific Monism, we find a decided going back to Heraclitus, with his doctrine of “the universal flux;” of “everything Becoming and nothing Being;” of his conception of the ever changing, shifting, moving, universe of things, with its successive cycles. In Herbert Spencer, and other schools of modern scientific thought, we see the thought of Anaximander and Heraclitus revived. And in Spencer’s conception of “The Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed”— his “Unknowable”—we hear the distinct echo of the voices of the earliest thinkers of the older schools of ancient Greece. The spirit of Athens is walking abroad today in the great Universities of Europe and America—and many of the world’s greatest minds are bidding her welcome to her new home. The broth that is being brewed in the great pot has a decided flavor of the Attic herb.

At the very heart of all Greek thought is the idea of a oneness, which is expressed as monism in philosophy, and as pantheism in the higher religious thought of the educated classes. One breathes the pantheistic atmosphere when he enters the enchanted realm of the old Greek thought Mr. E. F. Benson, in his latest novel. “A Reaping,” speaks of this subtle spirit of pantheism, which, while condemned in all orthodox religions, has nevertheless managed to creep in and make its home in the newer creeds, as it did in all the old ones, at the last. The following quotation will give Benson’s conception of this subtle spirit of thought and belief:

“There is no myth that grew so close to the heart of things as the story of Pan, for it implies the central fact of all, the one fact that is so indisputably true, that all the perverted ingenuity of man has been unable to split into various creeds about it. For Pan is all, and to see Pan or hear him playing on his pipes means to have the whole truth of the world and the stars, and Him who, as if by a twisting thumb and finger, set them endlessly spinning through infinite space, suddenly made manifest. Flesh and blood, as the saying is, could not stand that, and there must be a bursting of the mortal envelope. Yet that, indisputably also, is but the cracking of the chrysalis. How we shall stand, weak-eyed still and quivering, when transported from the dusk in which we have lived this little life in the full radiance of the eternal day! How shall our eyes gain strength and our wings expansion and completeness, when the sun of which we have seen but the reflection and image is revealed? That is to see Pan. It killed the mortal body of Psyche—the soul—when she saw him on the hilltop by the river, and heard the notes of his reed float down to her; but she and every soul who has burst the flimsy barrier of death into life joins in his music, and every day makes it the more compelling. Drop by drop the ocean of life, made up of the lives that have been, rises in the bowl in which God dips His hands. He touches every drop.”