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

of new days. Government has been a fossil; it should be a plant. I
conceive that the office of statute law should be to express, and not
to impede the mind of mankind. New thoughts, new things. Trade was
one instrument, but Trade is also but for a time, and must give way
to somewhat broader and better, whose signs are already dawning in
the sky.

3. I pass to speak of the signs of that which is the sequel of
trade.

In consequence of the revolution in the state of society
wrought by trade, Government in our times is beginning to wear a
clumsy and cumbrous appearance. We have already seen our way to
shorter methods. The time is full of good signs. Some of them shall
ripen to fruit. All this beneficent socialism is a friendly omen,
and the swelling cry of voices for the education of the people,
indicates that Government has other offices than those of banker and
executioner. Witness the new movements in the civilized world, the
Communism of France, Germany, and Switzerland; the Trades' Unions;
the English League against the Corn Laws; and the whole _Industrial
Statistics_, so called. In Paris, the blouse, the badge of the
operative, has begun to make its appearance in the saloons. Witness,
too, the spectacle of three Communities which have within a very
short time sprung up within this Commonwealth, besides several others
undertaken by citizens of Massachusetts within the territory of other
States. These proceeded from a variety of motives, from an
impatience of many usages in common life, from a wish for greater
freedom than the manners and opinions of society permitted, but in
great part from a feeling that the true offices of the State, the
State had let fall to the ground; that in the scramble of parties for
the public purse, the main duties of government were omitted, -- the
duty to instruct the ignorant, to supply the poor with work and with
good guidance. These communists preferred the agricultural life as
the most favorable condition for human culture; but they thought that
the farm, as we manage it, did not satisfy the right ambition of man.
The farmer after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love,
to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant. This
result might well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from
cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages
and the auctioneer's flag, and removing from bad to worse. It is
time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criticism
ascertained who is the fool. It seemed a great deal worse, because
the farmer is living in the same town with men who pretend to know
exactly what he wants. On one side, is agricultural chemistry,
coolly exposing the nonsense of our spendthrift agriculture and
ruinous expense of manures, and offering, by means of a teaspoonful
of artificial guano, to turn a sandbank into corn; and, on the other,
the farmer, not only eager for the information, but with bad crops
and in debt and bankruptcy, for want of it. Here are Etzlers and
mechanical projectors, who, with the Fourierists, undoubtingly affirm