What words cannot hold
Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most, will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were, distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in propositions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it.
He who knows (the Tao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it.
The Editors’ note
Both hold that the highest thing refuses speech. Emerson writes of the ineffable essence he calls Spirit that “he that thinks most, will say least”, and that it “refuses to be recorded in propositions”. Laozi puts it in a single line: he who knows the Tao does not speak about it, and he who is ever ready to speak about it does not know it.
Emerson still names what he cannot describe, God and Spirit, and gives nature a voice: it stands as the apparition of God, the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual. Laozi gives the Tao no such voice, and his silence is a mark of the one who knows rather than a failure of language.