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 every man'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; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character, and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.

"The Over-Soul." Sounds deep. What's it mean? Basically, we're all One. Yes, with a capital O. In other words, we're all part of the Over-Soul. We all correspond to nature, and we all correspond to each other. It may sound like some New Agey philosophy sprinkled with yoga mats and granola on top, but nope, it's the Transcendentalist idea of correspondence.

As Emerson states, we're all part of nature. After all, we're made up of cells and organs and tissues, and all that stuff is natural. When we die, we return to dust. Meaning, we literally become a part of the earth. Can't correspond much more than that.

Oh, but we can. Because on the other hand, as Emerson also states, we contain all of nature and all of the universe within us. For instance, we wouldn't be here if it weren't for the Big Bang. You know, that big explosion billions of years back which basically popped out the universe. In that sense, our bodies are storage units of Big Bang leftovers—and therefore specks from pretty much all of the universe—because we are the products of it.

Was the Big Bang around (like, in science land) when Emerson was writing? Not quite. Still, the whole "dust into dust" idea was, plus the all-powerful link to nature. So the idea holds: what's inside us corresponds to what's outside us, what's come before us, what's coming after us. Yep, all of it. Everything corresponds to, and reflects, everything else.

"The Over-Soul" is another classic essay by Emerson, the essay-writing king. That guy produced essays like bunnies produce bunnies.

But this ain't your typical essay. Emerson's language is quite mystical here, because he's talking about mystical things. Seriously, the Over-Soul? Hel-lo? So what he's doing here is he's fusing a literary form that we think of as quite "rational" and "logical"—yep, his beloved form of the essay—with subject matter that is, in some ways, beyond logic. And kinda spooky, when you think about it. But because Emerson's such a good writer, he can pull it off.