We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organ of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing by ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that we are all part of a greater intelligence that reveals truth and justice to us, and our understanding is a conduit for these concepts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects the idea that humanity is intertwined with a larger, intelligent force that imparts truth and justice. Rather than claiming independent knowledge or understanding, we are merely recipients of deeper truths that flow through us. This perspective challenges the pursuit of philosophical answers by emphasizing that the essence of these virtues cannot be fully understood or captured, but rather experienced as they manifest in our lives.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of truth in a philosophy class.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.
Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.
Isaiah was so attuned to God, because of the great crisis he had just endured, that the call of God penetrated his soul. The majority of us cannot hear anything but ourselves. And we cannot hear anything God says. But to be brought to the place where we can hear the call of God is to be profoundly changed.
Being human means there's a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we're all one, yet we still divide wherever we look.
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
Rampaging horsemen can conquer; only the city can civilize.
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