"LIT ETHC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

mountains, they may believe in the adaptations of the eye.
Undoubtedly, the changes of geology have a relation to the prosperous
sprouting of the corn and peas in my kitchen garden; but not less is
there a relation of beauty between my soul and the dim crags of
Agiocochook up there in the clouds. Every man, when this is told,
hearkens with joy, and yet his own conversation with nature is still
unsung.

Is it otherwise with civil history? Is it not the lesson of
our experience that every man, were life long enough, would write
history for himelf? What else do these volumes of extracts and
manuscript commentaries, that every scholar writes, indicate? Greek
history is one thing to me; another to you. Since the birth of
Niebuhr and Wolf, Roman and Greek History have been written anew.
Since Carlyle wrote French History, we see that no history, that we
have, is safe, but a new classifier shall give it new and more
philosophical arrangement. Thucydides, Livy, have only provided
materials. The moment a man of genius pronounces the name of the
Pelasgi, of Athens, of the Etrurian, of the Roman people, we see
their state under a new aspect. As in poetry and history, so in the
other departments. There are few masters or none. Religion is yet
to be settled on its fast foundations in the breast of man; and
politics, and philosophy, and letters, and art. As yet we have
nothing but tendency and indication.

This starting, this warping of the best literary works from the
adamant of nature, is especially observable in philosophy. Let it
take what tone of pretension it will, to this complexion must it
come, at last. Take, for example, the French Eclecticism, which
Cousin esteems so conclusive; there is an optical illusion in it. It
avows great pretensions. It looks as if they had all truth, in
taking all the systems, and had nothing to do, but to sift and wash
and strain, and the gold and diamonds would remain in the last
colander. But, Truth is such a flyaway, such a slyboots, so
untransportable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to
catch as light. Shut the shutters never so quick, to keep all the
light in, it is all in vain; it is gone before you can cry, Hold.
And so it happens with our philosophy. Translate, collate, distil
all the systems, it steads you nothing; for truth will not be
compelled, in any mechanical manner. But the first observation you
make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest
trifle, may open a new view of nature and of man, that, like a
menstruum, shall dissolve all theories in it; shall take up Greece,
Rome, Stoicism, Eclecticism, and what not, as mere data and food for
analysis, and dispose of your world-containing system, as a very
little unit. A profound thought, anywhere, classifies all things: a
profound thought will lift Olympus. The book of philosophy is only a
fact, and no more inspiring fact than another, and no less; but a
wise man will never esteem it anything final and transcending. Go
and talk with a man of genius, and the first word he utters, sets all