"Essays 1st Series" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as
good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers
himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an
independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court
you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his
consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he
is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of
hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is
no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality!
Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again
from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted
innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all
passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary,
would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow
faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere
is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the
better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the
liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is
conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities
and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would
gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness,
but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but
the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you
shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which
when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was
wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On
my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I
live wholly from within? my friend live wholly from within? my friend suggested, -- "But these impulses
may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to
me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from
the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good
and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the
only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is
against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all
opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I
am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to
large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken
individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go
upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice
and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an
angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to
me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him,
`Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and
modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable
ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand