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?