"Emerson, Ralph W - Man the Reformer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

MAN THE REFORMER

_A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library
Association, Boston, January 25, 1841_

Mr. President, and Gentlemen,
I wish to offer to your consideration some thoughts on the
particular and general relations of man as a reformer. I shall
assume that the aim of each young man in this association is the very
highest that belongs to a rational mind. Let it be granted, that our
life, as we lead it, is common and mean; that some of those offices
and functions for which we were mainly created are grown so rare in
society, that the memory of them is only kept alive in old books and
in dim traditions; that prophets and poets, that beautiful and
perfect men, we are not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some
sources of human instruction are almost unnamed and unknown among us;
that the community in which we live will hardly bear to be told that
every man should be open to ecstasy or a divine illumination, and his
daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual world. Grant
all this, as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors will deny
that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in such disciplines and
courses as will deserve that guidance and clearer communication with
the spiritual nature. And further, I will not dissemble my hope,
that each person whom I address has felt his own call to cast aside
all evil customs, timidities, and limitations, and to be in his place
a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip
along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by his
nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and
upright man, who must find or cut a straight road to everything
excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make
it easier for all who follow him, to go in honor and with benefit.

In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never
such scope as at the present hour. Lutherans, Hernhutters, Jesuits,
Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, Bentham, in their
accusations of society, all respected something, -- church or state,
literature or history, domestic usages, the market town, the dinner
table, coined money. But now all these and all things else hear the
trumpet, and must rush to judgment, -- Christianity, the laws,
commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory; and not a kingdom, town,
statute, rite, calling, man, or woman, but is threatened by the new
spirit.

What if some of the objections whereby our institutions are
assailed are extreme and speculative, and the reformers tend to
idealism; that only shows the extravagance of the abuses which have
driven the mind into the opposite extreme. It is when your facts and
persons grow unreal and fantastic by too much falsehood, that the
scholar flies for refuge to the world of ideas, and aims to recruit