At what point will people realize how blatantly obvious the LLM-style is? The internet is beginning to sound like band of cult initiates who imitate the voice of their supreme leader.

The stakes are high. “The soul of man is incorporate in his words,” wrote Donne in one of his sermons, “as he speaks, we think he thinks.” As St. Maximus the Confessor suggested, language is the symbol of the soul’s cognitive energy.

Where previous generations of writers had their compositional taste tutored by an acquaintance with literature, the next generation may be those whose most prolonged encounters with writing has constituted an engagement with a machine.

So here’s an analysis of Emerson’s style and, more broadly, an account of what makes him one of the best American prose-writers of his day.