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

two perfect animals. The ever-proceeding detachment appears not less
in all thought and in society. Children think they cannot live without
their parents. But, long before they are aware of it, the black dot
has appeared and the detachment taken place. Any accident will now
reveal to them their independence.

But great men:- the word is injurious. Is there caste? Is there
fate? What becomes of the promise to virtue? The thoughtful youth
laments the superfoetation of nature. "Generous and handsome," he
says, "is your hero; but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is
his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of Paddies." Why are the
masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder? The
idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love,
self-devotion; and they make war and death sacred;- but what for the
wretches whom they hire and kill? The cheapness of man is every
day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be as low as
that we should be low; for we must have society.

Is it a reply to these suggestions to say, Society is a Pestalozzian
school: all are teachers and pupils in turn? We are equally served
by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things are not
long the best company for each other. But bring to each an intelligent
person of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a
lake by cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and
great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his
thought to himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from
dignity to dependence. And if any appear never to assume the chair,
but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company
in a sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to
come about. As to what we call the masses, and common men,- there
are no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true art is only
possible on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis
somewhere. Fair play and an open field and freshest laurels to all who
have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature.
Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave
sphere and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.

The heroes of the hour are relatively great; of a faster growth;
or they are such in whom, at the moment of success, a quality is
ripe which is then in request. Other days will demand other qualities.
Some rays escape the common observer, and want a finely adapted eye.
Ask the great man if there be none greater. His companions are; and
not the less great but the more that society cannot see them. Nature
never sends a great man into the planet without confiding the secret
to another soul.

One gracious fact emerges from these studies,- that there is true
ascension in our love. The reputations of the nineteenth century
will one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. The genius of
humanity is the real subject whose biography is written in our annals.