"Representative Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

with a fore-plane borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. Life
is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of
men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky.
Engineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, and every
man, inasmuch as he has any science,- is a definer and map-maker of
the latitudes and longitudes of our condition. These roadmakers on
every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life and multiply our
relations. We are as much gainers by finding a new property in the old
earth as by acquiring a new planet.

We are too passive in the reception of these material or
semi-material aids. We must not be sacks and stomachs. To ascend one
step,- we are better served through our sympathy. Activity is
contagious. Looking where others look, and conversing with the same
things, we catch the charm which lured them. Napoleon said, "You
must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all
your art of war." Talk much with any man of vigorous mind, and we
acquire very fast the habit of looking at things in the same light,
and on each occurrence we anticipate his thought.

Men are helpful through the intellect and the affections. Other help
I find a false appearance. If you affect to give me bread and fire,
I perceive that I pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves
me as it found me, neither better nor worse: but all mental and
moral force is a positive good. It goes out from you, whether you will
or not, and profits me whom you never thought of. I cannot even hear
of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without
fresh resolution. We are emulous of all that man can do. Cecil's
saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, "I know that he can toil terribly," is
an electric touch. So are Clarendon's portraits,- of Hampden, "who was
of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the
most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle
and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts";- of
Falkland, "who was so severe an adorer of truth, that he could as
easily have given himself leave to steal, as to dissemble." We
cannot read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the
saying of the Chinese Mencius: "A sage is the instructor of a
hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid
become intelligent, and the wavering, determined."

This is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for departed men to
touch the quick like our own companions, whose names may not last as
long. What is he whom I never think of? Whilst in every solitude are
those who succor our genius and stimulate us in wonderful manners.
There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than
that other can, and, by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task.
What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever
virtue is in us? We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or
of life. We are piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the
diggers on the railroad will not again shame us.