"Emerson, Ralph Waldo - The Conservative (1841)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

THE CONSERVATIVE

_A Lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple,
Boston, December 9, 1841_

The two parties which divide the state, the party of
Conservatism and that od have disputed the possession of the world
ever since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of civil
history. The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies
and monarchies of the most ancient world. The battle of patrician
and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and
accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in
all countries and times. The war rages not only in battle-fields, in
national councils, and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every
man's bosom with opposing advantages every hour. On rolls the old
world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still
the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and
hot personalities.

Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must have a
correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution. It is the
opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the
Understanding and the Reason. It is the primal antagonism, the
appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature.

There is a fragment of old fable which seems somehow to have
been dropped from the current mythologies, which may deserve
attention, as it appears to relate to this subject.

Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with none but the great
Uranus or Heaven beholding him, and he created an oyster. Then he
would act again, but he made nothing more, but went on creating the
race of oysters. Then Uranus cried, `a new work, O Saturn! the old
is not good again.'

Saturn replied. `I fear. There is not only the alternative of
making and not making, but also of unmaking. Seest thou the great
sea, how it ebbs and flows? so is it with me; my power ebbs; and if I
put forth my hands, I shall not do, but undo. Therefore I do what I
have done; I hold what I have got; and so I resist Night and Chaos.'

`O Saturn,' replied Uranus, `thou canst not hold thine own, but
by making more. Thy oysters are barnacles and cockles, and with the
next flowing of the tide, they will be pebbles and sea-foam.'

`I see,' rejoins Saturn, `thou art in league with Night, thou
art become an evil eye; thou spakest from love; now thy words smite
me with hatred. I appeal to Fate, must there not be rest?' -- `I
appeal to Fate also,' said Uranus, `must there not be motion?' -- But