"Nature Adresses and Lectures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but
is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work
into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the
seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the
field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on
this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus
the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man.

The useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the
wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. He no longer waits for
favoring gales, but by means of steam, he realizes the fable of
Aeolus's bag, and carries the two and thirty winds in the boiler of
his boat. To diminish friction, he paves the road with iron bars,
and, mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, animals, and
merchandise behind him, he darts through the country, from town to
town, like an eagle or a swallow through the air. By the aggregate
of these aids, how is the face of the world changed, from the era of
Noah to that of Napoleon! The private poor man hath cities, ships,
canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the
human race run on his errands; to the book-shop, and the human race
read and write of all that happens, for him; to the court-house, and
nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, and the
human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the snow, and cut a
path for him.

But there is no need of specifying particulars in this class of
uses. The catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, that I
shall leave them to the reader's reflection, with the general remark,
that this mercenary benefit is one which has respect to a farther
good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work.




_Chapter III_ BEAUTY

A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of
Beauty.

The ancient Greeks called the world {kosmos}, beauty. Such is
the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the
human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the
tree, the animal, give us a delight _in and for themselves_; a
pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This
seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of
artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of
light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of
objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded
globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting,