Ralph Waldo Emerson always went his good friend Margaret Fuller one better: she stood ready to “accept the universe.” To Emerson mere acceptance seemed paltry. He didn’t just accept the universe, he congratulated it. He bestowed approbation on the rivers and mountain ranges. He tipped his hat to the bright-faced flowers of the field. He gazed on the judicious modulations of the seasons with a congratulatory eye. He applauded the firmament on high. Everything in nature upon which his shrewd assessing glance alighted he found to be not just good but lavishly, indeed sumptuously, ordered and appointed for a single and momentous end. As he put it in a very early journal entry, “The human soul, the world, the universe are labouring on to their magnificent consummation.” To this he appended the Byronic apostrophe, “Roll on then thou stupendous Universe in sublime incomprehensible solitude, in an unbeheld but sure path.”

Given the adolescent Emerson’s billowing self-regard, we might be forgiven for suspecting that the ultimate end of the universe could be summed up in his favorite formula: My Genius (emphasis his). Throughout his published writings, as well as in his vast, posthumously published journals, Emerson often stops to bequeath firm pats of approval on the head of a deserving cosmos. These flurries of approval usually presage a rush of self-aggrandizement. At such moments—and there are many in the journals—Emerson’s cosmic complacency puffs him aloft and there he basks, calling on awesome and unseen powers. “Wander after moon-beams, fairies!”