"Ralph Waldo Emerson - Man the Reformer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

scholar flies for refuge to the world of ideas, and aims to recruit
and replenish nature from that source. Let ideas establish their
legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and
the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.

It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old
nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions of a
hundred cities, are built on other foundations. The demon of reform
has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker, of every
inhabitant of every city. The fact, that a new thought and hope have
dawned in your breast, should apprize you that in the same hour a new
light broke in upon a thousand private hearts. That secret which you
would fain keep, -- as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one
standing on the doorstep, to tell you the same. There is not the
most bronzed and sharpened money-catcher, who does not, to your
consternation, almost, quail and shake the moment he hears a question
prompted by the new ideas. We thought he had some semblance of
ground to stand upon, that such as he at least would die hard; but he
trembles and flees. Then the scholar says, `Cities and coaches shall
never impose on me again; for, behold every solitary dream of mine is
rushing to fulfilment. That fancy I had, and hesitated to utter
because you would laugh, -- the broker, the attorney, the market-man
are saying the same thing. Had I waited a day longer to speak, I had
been too late. Behold, State Street thinks, and Wall Street doubts,
and begins to prophesy!'

It cannot be wondered at, that this general inquest into abuses
should arise in the bosom of society, when one considers the
practical impediments that stand in the way of virtuous young men.
The young man, on entering life, finds the way to lucrative
employments blocked with abuses. The ways of trade are grown selfish
to the borders of theft, and supple to the borders (if not beyond the
borders) of fraud. The employments of commerce are not intrinsically
unfit for a man, or less genial to his faculties, but these are now
in their general course so vitiated by derelictions and abuses at
which all connive, that it requires more vigor and resources than can
be expected of every young man, to right himself in them; he is lost
in them; he cannot move hand or foot in them. Has he genius and
virtue? the less does he find them fit for him to grow in, and if he
would thrive in them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of
boyhood and youth as dreams; he must forget the prayers of his
childhood; and must take on him the harness of routine and
obsequiousness. If not so minded, nothing is left him but to begin
the world anew, as he does who puts the spade into the ground for
food. We are all implicated, of course, in this charge; it is only
necessary to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles
of commerce from the fields where they grew, to our houses, to become
aware that we eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred
commodities. How many articles of daily consumption are furnished us
from the West Indies; yet it is said, that, in the Spanish islands,