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

weapons to fight with and disciples to explain it. The true artist has
the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife,
has nothing broader than his own shoes.

Our common discourse respects two kinds of use or service from
superior men. Direct giving is agreeable to the early belief of men;
direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal
youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power and prophecy. The
boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches
believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not much
cognizant of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and education is his
unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical compared with the
discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the
doing, and the effect remains. Right ethics are central and go from
the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. Serving
others is serving us. I must absolve me to myself. "Mind thy
affair," says the spirit:- "coxcomb, would you meddle with the
skies, or with other people?" Indirect service is left. Men have a
pictorial or representative quality, and serve us in the intellect.
Behmen* and Swedenborg saw that things were representative. Men are
also representative; first, of things, and secondly, of ideas.

As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each man
converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of
fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk,
cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the
geometer; the engineer; the musician,- severally make an easy way
for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is by
secret liking connected with some district of nature, whose agent
and interpreter he is; as Linnaeus, of plants; Huber, of bees;
Fries, of lichens; Van Mons, of pears; Dalton, of atomic forms;
Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions.

A man is a centre for nature, running out threads of relation
through every thing, fluid and solid, material and elemental. The
earth rolls; every clod and stone comes to the meridian: so every
organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the
brain. It waits long, but its turn comes. Each plant has its parasite,
and each created thing its lover and poet. Justice has already been
done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine,
to corn and cotton; but how few materials are yet used by our arts The
mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expectant. It
would seem as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy
tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each must be disenchanted and
walk forth to the day in human shape. In the history of discovery, the
ripe and latent truth seems to have fashioned a brain for itself. A
magnet must be made man in some Gilbert*(2), or Swedenborg, or
Oerstad, before the general mind can come to entertain its powers.

If we limit ourselves to the first advantages, a sober grace adheres