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

solitude, -- and for whose sake they wish to exist. To behold the
beauty of another character, which inspires a new interest in our
own; to behold the beauty lodged in a human being, with such vivacity
of apprehension, that I am instantly forced home to inquire if I am
not deformity itself: to behold in another the expression of a love
so high that it assures itself, -- assures itself also to me against
every possible casualty except my unworthiness; -- these are degrees
on the scale of human happiness, to which they have ascended; and it
is a fidelity to this sentiment which has made common association
distasteful to them. They wish a just and even fellowship, or none.
They cannot gossip with you, and they do not wish, as they are
sincere and religious, to gratify any mere curiosity which you may
entertain. Like fairies, they do not wish to be spoken of. Love me,
they say, but do not ask who is my cousin and my uncle. If you do
not need to hear my thought, because you can read it in my face and
behavior, then I will tell it you from sunrise to sunset. If you
cannot divine it, you would not understand what I say. I will not
molest myself for you. I do not wish to be profaned.

And yet, it seems as if this loneliness, and not this love,
would prevail in their circumstances, because of the extravagant
demand they make on human nature. That, indeed, constitutes a new
feature in their portrait, that they are the most exacting and
extortionate critics. Their quarrel with every man they meet, is not
with his kind, but with his degree. There is not enough of him, --
that is the only fault. They prolong their privilege of childhood in
this wise, of doing nothing, -- but making immense demands on all the
gladiators in the lists of action and fame. They make us feel the
strange disappointment which overcasts every human youth. So many
promising youths, and never a finished man! The profound nature will
have a savage rudeness; the delicate one will be shallow, or the
victim of sensibility; the richly accomplished will have some capital
absurdity; and so every piece has a crack. 'T is strange, but this
masterpiece is a result of such an extreme delicacy, that the most
unobserved flaw in the boy will neutralize the most aspiring genius,
and spoil the work. Talk with a seaman of the hazards to life in his
profession, and he will ask you, "Where are the old sailors? do you
not see that all are young men?" And we, on this sea of human
thought, in like manner inquire, Where are the old idealists? where
are they who represented to the last generation that extravagant
hope, which a few happy aspirants suggest to ours? In looking at the
class of counsel, and power, and wealth, and at the matronage of the
land, amidst all the prudence and all the triviality, one asks, Where
are they who represented genius, virtue, the invisible and heavenly
world, to these? Are they dead, -- taken in early ripeness to the
gods, -- as ancient wisdom foretold their fate? Or did the high idea
die out of them, and leave their unperfumed body as its tomb and
tablet, announcing to all that the celestial inhabitant, who once
gave them beauty, had departed? Will it be better with the new
generation? We easily predict a fair future to each new candidate