Mundane Magic http://lesswrong.com/lw/ve/mundane_magic/(October 2008)
“You are an Universe of Universes and your soul a source of songs.”
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: The universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny.
The world globes itself in a drop of dew.
Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)
Context: The universal Intellect is the intimate, most real, peculiar and powerful part of the soul of the world. This is the single whole which filleth the whole, illumineth the universe and directeth nature to the production of natural things, as our intellect with the congruous production of natural kinds.
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17
“The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul”
As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, i. 15.
[Low, Frank, 2001, May, Obituary: Frederick Gillett (1937-2001), Nature, 411, 6840, 906]
Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.255
“What is the body? That shadow of a shadow
of your love, that somehow contains
the entire universe.”
"Where are we?" in Ch. 2 : Bewilderment
Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)
