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

cave of memory. See the play of thoughts! what nimble gigantic
creatures are these! what saurians, what palaiotheria shall be named
with these agile movers? The great Pan of old, who was clothed in a
leopard skin to signify the beautiful variety of things, and the
firmament, his coat of stars, -- was but the representative of thee,
O rich and various Man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in
thy senses the morning and the night and the unfathomable galaxy; in
thy brain, the geometry of the City of God; in thy heart, the bower
of love and the realms of right and wrong. An individual man is a
fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. The
history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the
experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a
particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder
into order. Each individual soul is such, in virtue of its being a
power to translate the world into some particular language of its
own; if not into a picture, a statue, or a dance, -- why, then, into
a trade, an art, a science, a mode of living, a conversation, a
character, an influence. You admire pictures, but it is as
impossible for you to paint a right picture, as for grass to bear
apples. But when the genius comes, it makes fingers: it is pliancy,
and the power of transferring the affair in the street into oils and
colors. Raphael must be born, and Salvator must be born.

There is no attractiveness like that of a new man. The sleepy
nations are occupied with their political routine. England, France
and America read Parliamentary Debates, which no high genius now
enlivens; and nobody will read them who trusts his own eye: only they
who are deceived by the popular repetition of distinguished names.
But when Napoleon unrolls his map, the eye is commanded by original
power. When Chatham leads the debate, men may well listen, because
they must listen. A man, a personal ascendency is the only great
phenomenon. When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to
do it. Follow the great man, and you shall see what the world has at
heart in these ages. There is no omen like that.

But what strikes us in the fine genius is that which belongs of
right to every one. A man should know himself for a necessary actor.
A link was wanting between two craving parts of nature, and he was
hurled into being as the bridge over that yawning need, the mediator
betwixt two else unmarriageable facts. His two parents held each of
one of the wants, and the union of foreign constitutions in him
enables him to do gladly and gracefully what the assembled human race
could not have sufficed to do. He knows his materials; he applies
himself to his work; he cannot read, or think, or look, but he unites
the hitherto separated strands into a perfect cord. The thoughts he
delights to utter are the reason of his incarnation. Is it for him
to account himself cheap and superfluous, or to linger by the wayside
for opportunities? Did he not come into being because something must
be done which he and no other is and does? If only he _sees_, the
world will be visible enough. He need not study where to stand, nor