Selection from Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays, First Series: The Over-Soul, Part 1 of 2 s

The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which each person's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom, virtue and beauty.