Ralph Waldo Emerson · Philosophy

The Over-Soul: The One Within the Many

Emerson’s vision of the one universal soul - the Over-Soul - present and whole within every person. Beneath our separate, divided lives runs a single divine consciousness, so that to look deeply into any individual soul is to touch the infinite.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that the Over-Soul is the one universal soul within which every particular being is contained and made one with all others, that we live ‘in parts, in particles’ while the whole soul dwells within us, and that this makes the individual, at the deepest level, divine. Explain these ideas in your…

Leads to Plato.

Begin this lesson →
← All lessons on Ralph Waldo Emerson

epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.