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

should appear in our village he would create, in those who conversed
with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to
unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable
equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as
every one would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. The
rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes
and their resources.
But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is her
remedy. The soul is impatient of masters and eager for change.
Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valuable, "She had lived
with me long enough." We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none
of us complete. We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives.
Rotation is the law of nature. When nature removes a great man, people
explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will.
His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite
different field the next man will appear; not Jefferson, not Franklin,
but now a great salesman, then a road-contractor, then a student of
fishes, then a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage Western
general. Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but against
the best there is a finer remedy. The power which they communicate
is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to
Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.
I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class.
Life is a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank of our great men are
wide intervals. Mankind have in all ages attached themselves to a
few persons who either by the quality of that idea they embodied or by
the largeness of their reception were entitled to the position of
leaders and law-givers. These teach us the qualities of primary
nature,- admit us to the constitution of things. We swim, day by
day, on a river of delusions and are effectually amused with houses
and towns in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. But life is
a sincerity. In lucid intervals we say, "Let there be an entrance
opened for me into realities;*(3) I have worn the fool's cap too
long." We will know the meaning of our economies and politics. Give us
the cipher, and if persons and things are scores of a celestial music,
let us read off the strains. We have been cheated of our reason; yet
there have been sane men, who enjoyed a rich and related existence.
What they know, they know for us. With each new mind, a new secret
of nature transpires; nor can the Bible be closed until the last great
man is born. These men correct the delirium of the animal spirits,
make us considerate and engage us to new aims and powers. The
veneration of mankind selects these for the highest place. Witness the
multitude of statues, pictures and memorials which recall their genius
in every city, village, house and ship:-

"Ever their phantoms arise before us,
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood;
At bed and table they lord it o'er us
With looks of beauty and words of good."