"Emerson, Ralph W. - The Transcendentalist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

neglect, but even contravene every written commandment. In the play
of Othello, the expiring Desdemona absolves her husband of the
murder, to her attendant Emilia. Afterwards, when Emilia charges him
with the crime, Othello exclaims,

"You heard her say herself it was not I."

Emilia replies,

"The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil."

Of this fine incident, Jacobi, the Transcendental moralist,
makes use, with other parallel instances, in his reply to Fichte.
Jacobi, refusing all measure of right and wrong except the
determinations of the private spirit, remarks that there is no crime
but has sometimes been a virtue. "I," he says, "am that atheist,
that godless person who, in opposition to an imaginary doctrine of
calculation, would lie as the dying Desdemona lied; would lie and
deceive, as Pylades when he personated Orestes; would assassinate
like Timoleon; would perjure myself like Epaminondas, and John de
Witt; I would resolve on suicide like Cato; I would commit sacrilege
with David; yea, and pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, for no other
reason than that I was fainting for lack of food. For, I have
assurance in myself, that, in pardoning these faults according to the
letter, man exerts the sovereign right which the majesty of his being
confers on him; he sets the seal of his divine nature to the grace he
accords."

In like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in human
thought or virtue, any reliance on the vast, the unknown; any
presentiment; any extravagance of faith, the spiritualist adopts it
as most in nature. The oriental mind has always tended to this
largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. The Buddhist who thanks
no man, who says, "do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his
conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its
reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has
done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.

You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a
Transcendental _party_; that there is no pure Transcendentalist; that
we know of none but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that
all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in
doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many
harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history
has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned
entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to
his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for
universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed,
sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his
own hands. Only in the instinct of the lower animals, we find the