"SCHOLAR" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his
forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever
talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity
is not his; -- cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.
There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative
words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or
authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of
good and fair.

On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it
receive from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of
light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery, and a
fatal disservice is done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of
genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me
witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two
hundred years.

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly
subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.
Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God
directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's
transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness
come, as come they must, -- when the sun is hid, and the stars
withdraw their shining, -- we repair to the lamps which were kindled
by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn
is. We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, "A fig
tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful."

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from
the best books. They impress us with the conviction, that one nature
wrote and the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great
English poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the most
modern joy, -- with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part caused
by the abstraction of all _time_ from their verses. There is some
awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in
some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies
close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and
said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical
doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some
preestablished harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and
some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact
observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the young grub
they shall never see.

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any
exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, that,
as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled
grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any
knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed, who had almost no
other information than by the printed page. I only would say, that