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

There is however a speedy limit to the use of heroes. Every genius
is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness. They are
very attractive, and seem at a distance our own: but we are hindered
on all sides from approach. The more we are drawn, the more we are
repelled. There is something not solid in the good that is done for
us. The best discovery the discoverer makes for himself. It has
something unreal for his companion until he too has substantiated
it. It seems as if the Deity dressed each soul which he sends into
nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to other men,
and sending it to perform one more turn through the circle of
beings, wrote, "Not transferable" and "Good for this trip only," on
these garments of the soul. There is somewhat deceptive about the
intercourse of minds. The boundaries are invisible, but they are never
crossed. There is such good will to impart, and such good will to
receive, that each threatens to become the other; but the law of
individuality collects its secret strength: you are you, and I am I,
and so we remain.

For nature wishes every thing to remain itself; and whilst every
individual strives to grow and exclude and to exclude and grow, to the
extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on
every other creature, Nature steadily aims to protect each against
every other. Each is self-defended. Nothing is more marked than the
power by which individuals are guarded from individuals, in a world
where every benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor only by
continuation of his activity into places where it is not due; where
children seem so much at the mercy of their foolish parents, and where
almost all men are too social and interfering. We rightly speak of the
guardian angels of children. How superior in their security from
infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought! They
shed their own abundant beauty on the objects they behold. Therefore
they are not at the mercy of such poor educators as we adults. If we
huff and chide them they soon come not to mind it and get a
self-reliance; and if we indulge them to folly, they learn the
limitation elsewhere.

We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust is
permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no
office thou canst render. Be the limb of their body, the breath of
their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. Who cares for that, so thou
gain aught wider and nobler? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism: the
devotion may easily be greater than the wretched pride which is
guarding its own skirts. Be another: not thyself, but a Platonist; not
a soul, but a Christian; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a
poet, but a Shakespearean. In vain, the wheels of tendency will not
stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself hold
thee there. On, and forever onward! The microscope observes a monad or
wheel-insect among the infusories circulating in water. Presently a
dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes