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

and once having passed the bounds shall never again be quite the
miserable pedants we were.

The high functions of the intellect are so allied that some
imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, even in
arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in meditative men of
an intuitive habit of thought. This class serve us, so that they
have the perception of identity and the perception of reaction. The
eyes of Plato, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either
of these laws. The perception of these laws is a kind of metre of
the mind. Little minds are little through failure to see them.

Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in reason
degenerates into idolatry of the herald. Especially when a mind of
powerful method has instructed men, we find the examples of
oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the
credit of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke;- in religion the history of
hierarchies, of saints, and the sects which have taken the name of
each founder, are in point. Alas! every man is such a victim. The
imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. It is the
delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind the beholder. But true
genius seeks to defend us from itself. True genius will not
impoverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. If a wise man
should appear in our village he would create, in those who conversed
with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to
unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable
equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as
every one would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. The
rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes
and their resources.

But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is her
remedy. The soul is impatient of masters and eager for change.
Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valuable, "She had lived
with me long enough." We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none
of us complete. We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives.
Rotation is the law of nature. When nature removes a great man, people
explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will.
His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite
different field the next man will appear; not Jefferson, not Franklin,
but now a great salesman, then a road-contractor, then a student of
fishes, then a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage Western
general. Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but against
the best there is a finer remedy. The power which they communicate
is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to
Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class.
Life is a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank of our great men are
wide intervals. Mankind have in all ages attached themselves to a