"Emerson,_Ralph_Waldo_-_An_Address" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator,
something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty,
to come short of another man's.

Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, -- cast behind you
all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to
it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and
money, are nothing to you, -- are not bandages over your eyes, that
you cannot see, -- but live with the privilege of the immeasurable
mind. Not too anxious to visit periodically all families and each
family in your parish connection, -- when you meet one of these men
or women, be to them a divine man; be to them thought and virtue; let
their timid aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled
instincts be genially tempted out in your atmosphere; let their
doubts know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you
have wondered. By trusting your own heart, you shall gain more
confidence in other men. For all our penny-wisdom, for all our
soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, that all
men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of
life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the
vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few
interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin,
with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought;
that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we inly
were. Discharge to men the priestly office, and, present or absent,
you shall be followed with their love as by an angel.

And, to this end, let us not aim at common degrees of merit.
Can we not leave, to such as love it, the virtue that glitters for
the commendation of society, and ourselves pierce the deep solitudes
of absolute ability and worth? We easily come up to the standard of
goodness in society. Society's praise can be cheaply secured, and
almost all men are content with those easy merits; but the instant
effect of conversing with God, will be, to put them away. There are
persons who are not actors, not speakers, but influences; persons too
great for fame, for display; who disdain eloquence; to whom all we
call art and artist, seems too nearly allied to show and by-ends, to
the exaggeration of the finite and selfish, and loss of the
universal. The orators, the poets, the commanders encroach on us
only as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. Slight them by
preoccupation of mind, slight them, as you can well afford to do, by
high and universal aims, and they instantly feel that you have right,
and that it is in lower places that they must shine. They also feel
your right; for they with you are open to the influx of the
all-knowing Spirit, which annihilates before its broad noon the
little shades and gradations of intelligence in the compositions we
call wiser and wisest.

In such high communion, let us study the grand strokes of
rectitude: a bold benevolence, an independence of friends, so that