"Emerson, Ralph W. - Representative Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

1849

REPRESENTATIVE MEN

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

USES OF GREAT MEN

IT IS NATURAL to believe in great men. If the companions of our
childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal it
would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the
circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount.
In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth and found
it deliciously sweet.

Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by
the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who
lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and
tolerable only in our belief in such society; and, actually or
ideally, we manage to live with superiors. We call our children and
our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of
language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every
circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them.

The search after the great man is the dream of youth and the most
serious occupation of manhood. We travel into foreign parts to find
his works,- if possible, to get a glimpse of him. But we are put off
with fortune instead. You say, the English are practical; the
Germans are hospitable; in Valencia the climate is delicious; and in
the hills of the Sacramento there is gold for the gathering. Yes,
but I do not travel to find comfortable, rich and hospitable people,
or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. But if there were any
magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the
persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, I would sell all
and buy it, and put myself on the road today.

The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge that in the
city is a man who invented the railroad, raises the credit of all
the citizens. But enormous populations, if they be beggars, are
disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants or of fleas,- the
more, the worse.

Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. The gods
of fable are the shining moments of great men. We run all our
vessels into one mould. Our colossal theologies of Judaism, Christism,
Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and structural action of the
human mind. The student of history is like a man going into a
warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new article.
If he go to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still
repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the interior walls