Circles

I’m going to agree with the thought that this epigraph comments or elucidates the meaning of the text. The idea that Nature centres into balls is cohesive to Emerson’s entire text, it isn’t simply describing the title. Not only is nature made up of these spheres or “circles” as the title describes, but man thinking is also made up this way. The idea that man as well as nature has this outward circling, ripple effect is described in the text. Every thought for which a man takes action has a reaction or another sphere just as nature has several indefinable spheres. “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles and that without end the extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul.”
The next line discusses her proud ephemerals or nature’s short lived organisms. I believe this is describing the part of the text where he basically says nothing is permanent. “There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.”
Fast to surface and outside scan the profile of the sphere. Knew they what that signified. With every action we are causing unpredictable outcomes. Nature and men are creating new beginnings (A new genesis were here). It is implying what comes from the end of the text, “The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle.” A new genesis is his way of saying to draw a new circle. The epigraph is describing what is to come from the text. It is giving little hints to what the text actually means.