I had a reply in mind, wanting to respond to a comment of x made some time ago about how Michael Oakeshott is a very different fellow from Strauss. I wanted to add and say that Oakeshott is to Aristotle, as Strauss is to Plato, but I was shy of making that claim. So I pulled out Rationalism in Politics and read the essay on his view of the science of history. It was a good read, and good for clarity of thought, as Oakeshott moves with such calculated prose (Strauss is cursory and flighty). But that was a week ago.
I'm here now because I happend to be reading Inge and ran into a citation of Emerson which Inge calls Oriental pantheism, the "classical form of mystical philosophy, which by obliterating all outlines makes all things equally divine, and leaves no room for distinctions between right and wrong. Emerson has drunk deeply of this intoxicating draught of self-deification:
There is no great and no small To the soul that maketh all: Where it cometh, all things are, And it cometh everywhere.I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespear's strain."