"Emerson, Ralph W. - The Method of Nature" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

Whilst the multitude of men degrade each other, and give
currency to desponding doctrines, the scholar must be a bringer of
hope, and must reinforce man against himself. I sometimes believe
that our literary anniversaries will presently assume a greater
importance, as the eyes of men open to their capabilities. Here, a
new set of distinctions, a new order of ideas, prevail. Here, we set
a bound to the respectability of wealth, and a bound to the
pretensions of the law and the church. The bigot must cease to be a
bigot to-day. Into our charmed circle, power cannot enter; and the
sturdiest defender of existing institutions feels the terrific
inflammability of this air which condenses heat in every corner that
may restore to the elements the fabrics of ages. Nothing solid is
secure; every thing tilts and rocks. Even the scholar is not safe;
he too is searched and revised. Is his learning dead? Is he living
in his memory? The power of mind is not mortification, but life.
But come forth, thou curious child! hither, thou loving, all-hoping
poet! hither, thou tender, doubting heart, who hast not yet found any
place in the world's market fit for thee; any wares which thou
couldst buy or sell, -- so large is thy love and ambition, -- thine
and not theirs is the hour. Smooth thy brow, and hope and love on,
for the kind heaven justifies thee, and the whole world feels that
thou art in the right.

We ought to celebrate this hour by expressions of manly joy.
Not thanks, not prayer seem quite the highest or truest name for our
communication with the infinite, -- but glad and conspiring
reception, -- reception that becomes giving in its turn, as the
receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in infancy. I cannot, --
nor can any man, -- speak precisely of things so sublime, but it
seems to me, the wit of man, his strength, his grace, his tendency,
his art, is the grace and the presence of God. It is beyond
explanation. When all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the
only logician. Not exhortation, not argument becomes our lips, but
paeans of joy and praise. But not of adulation: we are too nearly
related in the deep of the mind to that we honor. It is God in us
which checks the language of petition by a grander thought. In the
bottom of the heart, it is said; `I am, and by me, O child! this fair
body and world of thine stands and grows. I am; all things are mine:
and all mine are thine.'

The festival of the intellect, and the return to its source,
cast a strong light on the always interesting topics of Man and
Nature. We are forcibly reminded of the old want. There is no man;
there hath never been. The Intellect still asks that a man may be
born. The flame of life flickers feebly in human breasts. We demand
of men a richness and universality we do not find. Great men do not
content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them
conspicuous. There is somewhat indigent and tedious about them.
They are poorly tied to one thought. If they are prophets, they are
egotists; if polite and various, they are shallow. How tardily men