1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Oversoul

OVERSOUL (Ger. Überseele), the name adopted by Emerson to describe his conception of that transcendent unity which embraces subject and object, mind and matter, and in which all the differences in virtue of which particular things exist are absorbed. The idea is analogous to the various doctrines of the absolute, and to the ἰδέα of Plato.