THE OVER-SOUL
For one of Emerson’s most fundamental and frequently recurring ideas〖Perhaps most clearly put in “The Over-Soul,” Harvard Classics, V, 133ff.〗 is that of a “great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere,” an “Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other,” which “evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.”〖H. C., V, 134.〗 This is the incentive—the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which is ours by nature and by divine intention—that Emerson holds out when he asks us to submit us to ourselves to all instructive influences.
These instructive influences, according to Emerson, are chiefly Nature, the Past, and Society. Let us notice how Emerson bids us use these influences to help us into our higher selves.