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

suggestion of the methods of it, and something higher than our
understanding. The squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey,
without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without
selfishness or disgrace.

Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or
excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his
integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the
satisfaction of his wish. Nature is transcendental, exists
primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet takes no thought
for the morrow. Man owns the dignity of the life which throbs around
him in chemistry, and tree, and animal, and in the involuntary
functions of his own body; yet he is balked when he tries to fling
himself into this enchanted circle, where all is done without
degradation. Yet genius and virtue predict in man the same absence
of private ends, and of condescension to circumstances, united with
every trait and talent of beauty and power.

This way of thinking, falling on Roman times, made Stoic
philosophers; falling on despotic times, made patriot Catos and
Brutuses; falling on superstitious times, made prophets and apostles;
on popish times, made protestants and ascetic monks, preachers of
Faith against the preachers of Works; on prelatical times, made
Puritans and Quakers; and falling on Unitarian and commercial times,
makes the peculiar shades of Idealism which we know.

It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism of
the present day acquired the name of Transcendental, from the use of
that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to the
skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing
in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the
senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas, or
imperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through which
experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind
itself; and he denominated them _Transcendental_ forms. The
extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man's thinking have
given vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, to that
extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought, is
popularly called at the present day _Transcendental_.

Although, as we have said, there is no pure Transcendentalist,
yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them, at
least in our creed, all authority over our experience, has deeply
colored the conversation and poetry of the present day; and the
history of genius and of religion in these times, though impure, and
as yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, will be the history
of this tendency.

It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest
observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw