Emerson, "Circles" as an "expanding spiral" metaphor:

These two geometric metaphors underlie the ideas of the essay (and a circle plus a rising line will give you a spiral):

The circle: "The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second....every end is a beginning....The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul....Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law....Conversation is a game of circles....Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, through which a new one may be described....The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire, is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety...in short, to draw a new circle."

The generator (line, base): "God [is described as] a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere".... the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect....There are no fixtures in nature....Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known....Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder....I unsettle all things....I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back....whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides.

Questions:

What are the implications of Emerson's "geometric" philosophy of life, positive and negative? How would one live, practically speaking, according to this philosophy? What would be the problems? What might relationships be like? Your response to religion and tradition? How might literature offer us a relatively painless way to find the excitement of perpetual experimentation and avoid the more disturbing results?

Introduction to "Illusions" One could call this essay the "dropped shoe," because it is exploring some of the more disturbing consequences of his ideas about self-reliance and the subjective nature of truth. The question here is simple, but tough. If reality is subjective (or at least, we can only verify that which we actually experience), then are we caged within our own heads and immersed in a world of illusions? What was so exciting in "Nature" and "Self-Reliance" (the truth is within you, so "build therefore your own world," expressing the Spirit/spirit within) has another side. Just as our literal vision can be distorted without our knowing it (e.g. nearsightedness, astigmatism, color-blindness), what about our vision of reality? There are no glasses to correct that. How do we live in the "kingdom of Illusions"? Good questions. Does he have any answers?