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

pair off into insane parties, and learn the amount of truth each
knows, by the denial of an equal amount of truth. For the present,
then, to come at what sum is attainable to us, we must even hear the
parties plead as parties.

That which is best about conservatism, that which, though it
cannot be expressed in detail, inspires reverence in all, is the
Inevitable. There is the question not only, what the conservative
says for himself? but, why must he say it? What insurmountable fact
binds him to that side? Here is the fact which men call Fate, and
fate in dread degrees, fate behind fate, not to be disposed of by the
consideration that the Conscience commands this or that, but
necessitating the question, whether the faculties of man will play
him true in resisting the facts of universal experience? For
although the commands of the Conscience are _essentially_ absolute,
they are _historically_ limitary. Wisdom does not seek a literal
rectitude, but an useful, that is, a conditioned one, such a one as
the faculties of man and the constitution of things will warrant.
The reformer, the partisan loses himself in driving to the utmost
some specialty of right conduct, until his own nature and all nature
resist him; but Wisdom attempts nothing enormous and disproportioned
to its powers, nothing which it cannot perform or nearly perform. We
have all a certain intellection or presentiment of reform existing in
the mind, which does not yet descend into the character, and those
who throw themselves blindly on this lose themselves. Whatever they
attempt in that direction, fails, and reacts suicidally on the actor
himself. This is the penalty of having transcended nature. For the
existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as
a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the ground on which you
stand, it is the mother of whom you were born. Reform converses with
possibilities, perchance with impossibilities; but here is sacred
fact. This also was true, or it could not be: it had life in it, or
it could not have existed; it has life in it, or it could not
continue. Your schemes may be feasible, or may not be, but this has
the endorsement of nature and a long friendship and cohabitation with
the powers of nature. This will stand until a better cast of the
dice is made. The contest between the Future and the Past is one
between Divinity entering, and Divinity departing. You are welcome
to try your experiments, and, if you can, to displace the actual
order by that ideal republic you announce, for nothing but God will
expel God. But plainly the burden of proof must lie with the
projector. We hold to this, until you can demonstrate something
better.

The system of property and law goes back for its origin to
barbarous and sacred times; it is the fruit of the same mysterious
cause as the mineral or animal world. There is a natural sentiment
and prepossession in favor of age, of ancestors, of barbarous and
aboriginal usages, which is a homage to the element of necessity and
divinity which is in them. The respect for the old names of places,