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

prevent the protuberances of the continent, or even of lesser
mountains cast up at any time by earthquakes, from continually
deranging the axis of the earth. The census of the population is
found to keep an invariable equality in the sexes, with a trifling
predominance in favor of the male, as if to counterbalance the
necessarily increased exposure of male life in war, navigation, and
other accidents. Remark the unceasing effort throughout nature at
somewhat better than the actual creatures: _amelioration in nature_,
which alone permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind. The
population of the world is a conditional population; these are not
the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of
soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could _yet_ live;
there shall be a better, please God. This Genius, or Destiny, is of
the sternest administration, though rumors exist of its secret
tenderness. It may be styled a cruel kindness, serving the whole
even to the ruin of the member; a terrible communist, reserving all
profits to the community, without dividend to individuals. Its law
is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing to yourself. For
Nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding economy, working
up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; -- not a
superfluous grain of sand, for all the ostentation she makes of
expense and public works. It is because Nature thus saves and uses,
laboring for the general, that we poor particulars are so crushed and
straitened, and find it so hard to live. She flung us out in her
plenty, but we cannot shed a hair, or a paring of a nail, but
instantly she snatches at the shred, and appropriates it to the
general stock. Our condition is like that of the poor wolves: if one
of the flock wound himself, or so much as limp, the rest eat him up
incontinently.

That serene Power interposes the check upon the caprices and
officiousness of our wills. Its charity is not our charity. One of
its agents is our will, but that which expresses itself in our will,
is stronger than our will. We are very forward to help it, but it
will not be accelerated. It resists our meddling, eleemosynary
contrivances. We devise sumptuary and relief laws, but the principle
of population is always reducing wages to the lowest pittance on
which human life can be sustained. We legislate against forestalling
and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the
selfishness which hoards the corn for high prices, is the preventive
of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any
legislation can be. We concoct eleemosynary systems, and it turns
out that our charity increases pauperism. We inflate our paper
currency, we repair commerce with unlimited credit, and are presently
visited with unlimited bankruptcy.

It is easy to see that the existing generation are conspiring
with a beneficence, which, in its working for coming generations,
sacrifices the passing one, which infatuates the most selfish men to
act against their private interest for the public welfare. We build