Emerson declares that " the impulse to seek proof of immortality is itself the strongest proof of all."
Stripped of its definitely miraculous character, the doctrine of the inner light may be regarded as the familiar mystical protest against formalism, literalism, and scripture-worship. Swedenborg, though selected by Emerson in his Representative Men as the typical mystic, belongs rather to the history of spiritualism than to that of mysticism as understood in this article.
Examples of this are men like Novalis, Carlyle and Emerson, in whom philosophy may be said to be impatient of its own task.
Emerson, the poets Bryant, Longfellow, pre-eminently Whittier and Whitman, have spoken on this theme with no uncertain sound.
Some years before Thoreau took to Walden woods he made the chief friendship of his life, that with Emerson.
