" for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its
own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the
wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of
the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of
Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to
age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There
seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day
and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in
necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding
affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit.
The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible
world. “Material objects,” said a French philosopher, “are necessarily kinds of
scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve
an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible nature must
have a spiritual and moral side. "

― Ralph Waldo Emerson , Emerson: The Ultimate Collection