EMERSON: THE MIND ON FIRE, EXCERPT

"Religion for [Mme.Anne Louise Germaine Necker, baronne] de Stael centers in 'the feeling of the infinite,' which she carefully separates from the infinite itself. The infinite, she explains, 'consists in the absence of limits: but the feeling of the infinite, such as the imagination and the heart experience is positive and creative.' De Stael is interested, as is Mary Moody Emerson and her nephew and later William James, in religious experience, not in dogma, theology, history, or ritual. ... "'Religion is nothing,' she says, 'if it is not everything, if existence is not filled with it, if we do not incessantly maintain in the soul this belief in the invisible, this self-devotion, this elevation of desire. Her ideal was that the whole of life should be 'naturally and without effort, an act of worship at every moment.' "She thought nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm... Enthusiasm was more strongly linked to its etymology than it was to any particular place. As de Stael pointed out, it means 'god in us.'" P.53-54, EMERSON: THE MIND ON FIRE, A Biography, by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (1995)