The essay is bounteous with familiar and deep epiphany; that which never ceases to resonate deeply; hence, two offerings:
A deed — you know not why or whence — is concluded before you, and as you have not predicted it, it is forever a revelation. Nothing is inconceivable in the present, by virtue of the fact that a shrouded future will eventually render it feasible.
Nature promises the liver of a life isolation: both past and future existence is concealed; and as neither human design nor intention carry any influence over moments, this yields the certainty of intuition, or primary intellect, and spontaneity.
“In like manner, for practical reasons, there must not be too much design. A man will not be observed in doing that which he can do best. There is a magic about his properest action which stupefies your powers of observation; so that, though it is done before you, you wist not of it. The art of life has a pudence, which will not be exposed. Every man is an impossibility until he is born; everything impossible until we see a success.”
“Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day and hide us from the past and the future. We would look about us; but, with grand politeness he draws down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky. ‘You will not remember,’ he seems to say, ‘and you will not expect.’ All good conversation, manners and actions come from a spontaneity which forgets usages, and makes the moment great.”
~ Emerson, Experience
Because…who would want to know by how much the Rangers beat the Senators before the game starts anyway?
A Classicist Writes... 