"REP MEN" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

self-reliance; and if we indulge them to folly, they learn the
limitation elsewhere.
We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust is
permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no
office thou canst render. Be the limb of their body, the breath of
their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. Who cares for that, so thou
gain aught wider and nobler? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism: the
devotion may easily be greater than the wretched pride which is
guarding its own skirts. Be another: not thyself, but a Platonist; not
a soul, but a Christian; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a
poet, but a Shakespearean. In vain, the wheels of tendency will not
stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself hold
thee there. On, and forever onward! The microscope observes a monad or
wheel-insect among the infusories circulating in water. Presently a
dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes
two perfect animals. The ever-proceeding detachment appears not less
in all thought and in society. Children think they cannot live without
their parents. But, long before they are aware of it, the black dot
has appeared and the detachment taken place. Any accident will now
reveal to them their independence.
But great men:- the word is injurious. Is there caste? Is there
fate? What becomes of the promise to virtue? The thoughtful youth
laments the superfoetation of nature. "Generous and handsome," he
says, "is your hero; but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is
his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of Paddies." Why are the
masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder? The
idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love,
self-devotion; and they make war and death sacred;- but what for the
wretches whom they hire and kill? The cheapness of man is every
day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be as low as
that we should be low; for we must have society.
Is it a reply to these suggestions to say, Society is a Pestalozzian
school: all are teachers and pupils in turn? We are equally served
by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things are not
long the best company for each other. But bring to each an intelligent
person of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a
lake by cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and
great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his
thought to himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from
dignity to dependence. And if any appear never to assume the chair,
but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company
in a sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to
come about. As to what we call the masses, and common men,- there
are no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true art is only
possible on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis
somewhere. Fair play and an open field and freshest laurels to all who
have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature.
Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave
sphere and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.
The heroes of the hour are relatively great; of a faster growth;