Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Private and public is equivalent to inner and outer, related to immortaland mortal. Emerson (born under the sign of Gemini) experiencedman as twins, as immortal Pollux and mortal Castor.So when a man is victim of his fate … he is to rally on his relation tothe universe which his ruin benefits. Leaving the demon who suffers, he isto take sides with the deity who secures universal benefit by his pain.The marriage is no end, just a sober revelation. The pendulum stillswings. But with refined thought one can, rather than resist the beneficentlimitations of fate, penetrate them, acquiesce, accept them and in acceptingtranscend one’s mortal, particular self for one’s universal self. “To offset thedrag of temperament and race, which pulls down, learn this lesson … that… whatever lames or paralyzes you draws in with it the divinity, in someform, to repay.”The keynote resounds. “We can only obey our own polarity.” Finallyhe was able to articulate the paradox “Freedom is necessary.” The worksexplored in this sketch reveal Emerson to have come to the point in 1852 ofneither ignoring, nor simply bowing before, but building, in active freedom,altars to the “Beautiful Necessity.”BibliographyWagenknecht, Edward. Ralph Waldo Emerson–Portrait of a Balanced Soul.New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.Whicher, Stephen, ed., Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston:Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957.Whicher, Stephen. Freedom and Fate. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1953.Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization.Bollingen Series, Philadelphia: Princeton University Press, 1953.177