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 established, and in which he believed
almost literally, namely, the moral law. This idea he drew from Kant
through Coleridge and Wordsworth, and it is so familiar to us all that
it hardly needs stating. The fancy that the good, the true, the
beautiful,--all things of which we instinctively approve,--are somehow
connected together and are really one thing; that our appreciation of