Emerson pursued his own train of thought. He seemed to forget that we had come together to pursue Margaret’s. He said it was impossible that men or events should stand out in a population of twenty millions as they could from a population of a single million, to which the whole population of the ancient world could hardly have amounted. As Hercules stood to Greece, no modern man could ever stand in relation to his own world.
Margaret thought Hercules and Jupiter quite different creations. The first might have been a deified life. The second could not.
Charles Wheeler said that R. W. E.’s view carried no historical obligation of belief with it. We could not deny the heroic origin of the Greek demigods, but the highest dynasty was the exponent of translated thought.
Sophia Ripley asked if the life of an individual fitly interwoven with her experience was not as fine a Poem as the story of Ceres, her wanderings and her tears? Did not Margaret know such lives?
R. W. E. thought every man had probably met his Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Venus, or Ceres in society!
Margaret was sure she never had!
R. W. E. explained: “Not in the world, but each on his own platform.”
William Story objected. The life of an individual was not universal. (!)
Sophia Ripley repeated, “The inner life.”
William Story claimed to be an individual, and did not think individual experience could ever meet all minds,—like the story of Ceres, for example.