"Emerson,_Ralph_Waldo_-_An_Address" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small,
that I may be not virtuous, but virtue;' -- then is the end of the
creation answered, and God is well pleased.

The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the
presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game
of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles
that astonish. The child amidst his baubles, is learning the action
of light, motion, gravity, muscular force; and in the game of human
life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, and God, interact. These
laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written out on
paper, or spoken by the tongue. They elude our persevering thought;
yet we read them hourly in each other's faces, in each other's
actions, in our own remorse. The moral traits which are all globed
into every virtuous act and thought, -- in speech, we must sever, and
describe or suggest by painful enumeration of many particulars. Yet,
as this sentiment is the essence of all religion, let me guide your
eye to the precise objects of the sentiment, by an enumeration of
some of those classes of facts in which this element is conspicuous.

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the
perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves.
They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.
Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are
instant and entire. He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled.
He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. He who
puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart
just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of
God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. If a
man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of
acquaintance with his own being. A man in the view of absolute
goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step so downward, is a
step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

See how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh everywhere,
righting wrongs, correcting appearances, and bringing up facts to a
harmony with thoughts. Its operation in life, though slow to the
senses, is, at last, as sure as in the soul. By it, a man is made
the Providence to himself, dispensing good to his goodness, and evil
to his sin. Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms
never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least
admixture of a lie, -- for example, the taint of vanity, the least
attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance, -- will
instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the truth, and all nature
and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the
truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots
of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you
witness. See again the perfection of the Law as it applies itself to
the affections, and becomes the law of society. As we are, so we
associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by