Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.
Interpretation
Mysticism can lead to misunderstanding, mistaking personal symbols for universal truths.
In this quote, Emerson suggests that mysticism, which often relies on individual experiences and interpretations, can result in confusion when personal symbols are misidentified as universally applicable. This reflects a deeper philosophical discourse on perception, meaning, and the nature of reality, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the difference between subjective experiences and objective truths.
In practice
In a philosophy class, when discussing perception, I quoted Emerson to illustrate the difference between personal and universal interpretations.
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?
Not everything that steps out of line, and thus "abnormal", must necessarily be "inferior".
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.
Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.
I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it.
...nature seems very conversant with the rules of pure mathematics, as our own mathematicians have formulated them in their studies, out of their own inner consciousness and without drawing to any appreciable extent on their experience of the outer world.
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