"METHOD N" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

THE METHOD OF NATURE

_An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in
Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841_


GENTLEMEN,
Let us exchange congratulations on the enjoyments and the pros
literary anniversary. The land we live in has no interest so dear,
if it knew its want, as the fit consecration of days of reason and
thought. Where there is no vision, the people perish. The scholars
are the priests of that thought which establishes the foundations of
the earth. No matter what is their special work or profession, they
stand for the spiritual interest of the world, and it is a common
calamity if they neglect their post in a country where the material
interest is so predominant as it is in America. We hear something
too much of the results of machinery, commerce, and the useful arts.
We are a puny and a fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following,
are our diseases. The rapid wealth which hundreds in the community
acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population
and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the
hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold
mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and
the very body and feature of man.

I do not wish to look with sour aspect at the industrious
manufacturing village, or the mart of commerce. I love the music of
the water-wheel; I value the railway; I feel the pride which the
sight of a ship inspires; I look on trade and every mechanical craft
as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein.
There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual
step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the
spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand
times. And I will not be deceived into admiring the routine of
handicrafts and mechanics, how splendid soever the result, any more
than I admire the routine of the scholars or clerical class. That
splendid results ensue from the labors of stupid men, is the fruit of
higher laws than their will, and the routine is not to be praised for
it. I would not have the laborer sacrificed to the result, -- I
would not have the laborer sacrificed to my convenience and pride,
nor to that of a great class of such as me. Let there be worse
cotton and better men. The weaver should not be bereaved of his
superiority to his work, and his knowledge that the product or the
skill is of no value, except so far as it embodies his spiritual
prerogatives. If I see nothing to admire in the unit, shall I admire
a million units? Men stand in awe of the city, but do not honor any
individual citizen; and are continually yielding to this dazzling
result of numbers, that which they would never yield to the solitary
example of any one.