In the second part of the essay, when Emerson moves on from discussing his grief to discussing the joys of his life, he argues that the way to get the most out of life is to find balance between letting our bodies feel and letting our minds analyze those feelings. He uses imagery and a metaphor to describe what he means:
Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone. We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry,—a narrow belt. Moreover, in popular experience, everything good is on the highway.
The "highway" Emerson mentions is not a physical road. Rather, it is a metaphorical continuum between two "extremes." Emerson has noticed that many people in his intellectual community in Boston and Concord tend to spend most of their time analyzing their lives. These people are always "climb[ing] into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science." This image, of climbing an intellectual mountain until the air grows too thin and cold to breathe suggests that a life spent chasing mental greatness looks impressive but has little payoff. He prefers to allow himself to shut his analytical mind off from time to time and simply enjoy "small mercies" and "the potluck of life." At the same time, Emerson does not want to "sink into [the realm] of sensation" so deeply that he cannot come up for air. He describes the "narrow belt" of "highway" between lofty thought and embodied sensation as the "equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry." He believes that the best way to spend a life is in this liminal space between the body and the mind.
Emerson's metaphor and imagery capture the nuance of his argument against the empiricism of the Enlightenment. Empiricists believed in objective reality that could be observed through bodily sensation. Emerson believes instead in subjective reality, but that does not mean that he outright rejects the value of bodily sensation. Instead, he believes that when we are at our best, our bodies and our minds work together to create a transcendent experience of life.
