爱默生—美国学者—中英译文

似乎这样

才能获得真正的身高。这是什么样的证词

——

崇伟，怜悯，诞生自学者天性中的需求，

为那

他们 欢欣喜悦于他们酋长的荣耀。那可怜人和

卑贱者发现，他们安于政治社会低下地位和自身 巨大道德容量的补偿。

平凡者满足于如蚊

蝇般在伟人的道路上被拂过，

为带来公正，

为了全体人们期 盼和赞颂的最高贵的愿望。

平凡

大众沐浴于那伟人的光芒，

并感受那光芒有如自身的元素。

他们把出自被蹂躏自我的人的尊

严，

放置于英雄的双肩，

不惜一死的为那伟 大心脏的跳动加入一滴鲜血，

那些巨大的筋骨战

斗并征服。他为 我们活着，我们活在他的生命里。

from Addresses, published as part of Nature; Addresses and Lectures

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837

Mr. President and Gentlemen,

I greet you on the re-commencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, per

haps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of histo

ries, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troub

adours; nor for the advancement of science, like our cotemporaries in the British and European ca

pitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters a

mongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such, it is precious as the sign of an indes

tructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will be, something els

e; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids, and fill the postp

oned expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our da

y of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The milli

ons, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harve

sts. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that poetry

will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our ze

nith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole- star for a thousand years?

In this hope, I accept the topic which not only usage, but the nature of our association, seem to pre

scribe to this day,

—

the AMERICAN SCHOLAR. Year by year, we come up hither to read one

more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire what light new days and events have thrown on his c

haracter, and his hopes.

It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that

the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just a

s the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man,

—

present to all part

icular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find t

he whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and

scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are

parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other

performs his. The fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return fro

m his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this original unit, this fountai

n of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled ou

t, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the mem

bers have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,

—

a goo

d finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into t

he field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees hi

s bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. T

he tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craf

t, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the me

chanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man

Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, o

r, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the theory of his office is contained. Him nature solicits wit

h all her placid, all her monitory pictures; him the past instructs; him the future invites. Is not, inde

ed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof? And, finally, is not th

e true scholar the only true master? But the old oracle said, `All things have two handles: beware o

f the wrong one.' In life, too often, the scholar errs with mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us s

ee him in his school, and consider him in reference to the main influences he receives.

I. The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Ev

ery day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.

Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men wh

om this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There

is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but a

lways circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, w

hose ending, he never can find,

—

so entire, so boundless. Far, too, as her splendors shine, system

on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without centre, without circumference,

—

in the

mass and in the particle, nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind. Classification be

gins. To the young mind, every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join

two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by

its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering root

s running under ground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one ste

m. It presently learns, that, since the dawn of history, there has been a constant accumulation and c

lassifying of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, a

nd are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discove

rs that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The ch

emist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; and science is nothing but the fi

nding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each refr

actory fact; one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and t

heir law, and goes on for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, the outskirts of nature, by i

nsight.

Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it procee

d from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what

is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul?

—

A thought too bold,

—

a dream too wild. Yet when

this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly natures,

—

when he has learned to

worship the soul, and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its

gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator. He

shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one i

s print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature the

n becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much

of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept,

e modern precept,

II. The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past,

—

in whatever fo

rm, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of th

e influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth,

—

learn the amount of this influence

more conveniently,

—

by considering their value alone.

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; broo

ded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, l

ife; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal

thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick tho

ught. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportio

n to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.

Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth. In prop

ortion to the completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the produc

t be. But none is quite perfect. As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neith

er can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write

a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to cotem

poraries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, eac

h generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.

Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation,

—

the act

of thought,

—

is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: hencefor

th the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the boo

k is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes no

xious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the i

ncursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and

makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, no

t by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas,

not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their dut

y to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero,

Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who valu

e books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third

Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the biblioma

niacs of all degrees.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is th

e one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see

a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead

of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; t

his every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The

soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privil

ege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive.

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance o

f genius. This is good, say they,

—

let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward an

d not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhe

ad: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of t

he Deity is not his;

—

cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative mann

ers, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of n

o 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 disserv

ice 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 hundre

d 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 direc

tly, 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 thei

r 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,

king 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 E

nglish poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the most modern joy,

—

with a pleasure, I m

ean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction of all time from their verses. There is some a

we 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 thoug

ht 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 Bo

ok. We all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled gra

ss 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 it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb

says,

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and i

nvention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sen

tence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what

is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so

is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shak

speare, only that least part,

—

only the authentic utterances of the oracle;

—

all the rest he rejects,

were it never so many times Plato's and Shakspeare's.

Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact scienc

e he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,

—

to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; whe

n they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrate

d fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparat

us and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can

never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will

recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year.

III. There goes in the world a notion, that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,

—

as u

nfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a penknife for an axe. The so-called `practical men' snee

r at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing. I have heard it sai

d that the clergy,

—

who are always, more universally than any other class, the scholars of their da

y,

—

are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear,

but only a mincing and diluted speech. They are often virtually disfranchised; and, indeed, there ar

e advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. A

ction is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, th

ought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we ca

nnot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic min

d. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the con

scious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loa

ded with life, and whose not.

If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Ye

ars are well spent in country labors; in town,

—

in the insight into trades and manufactures; in fran

k intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their

facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any

speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lie

s behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This

is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the w

ork-yard made.

But the final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is, that it is a resource. That

great principle of Undulation in nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath

; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; and as yet

more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is known to us under the name of Polarity,

—

these

cause they are the law of spirit.

The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted h

is materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and book

s are a weariness,

—

he has always the resource to live. Character is higher than intellect. Thinkin

g is the function. Living is the functionary. The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be st

rong to live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? He can

still fall back on this elemental force of living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Le

t the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those

'far from fame,' who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings an

d passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and designed display. Time shal

l teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ

of his instinct, screened from influence. What is lost in seemliness is gained in strength. Not out of

those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to dest

roy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and B

erserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakspeare.

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to e

very citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hand

s. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observ

ed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgment

s and modes of action.

I have now spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by books, and by action. It remains to

say somewhat of his duties.

They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be comprised in self-trust. The office of the

scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies

the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed obs

ervatories, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the results being splendid and u

seful, honor is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of t

he human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such,

—

watching days and months, somet

imes, for a few facts; correcting still his old records;

—

must relinquish display and immediate fa

me. In the long period of his preparation, he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in po

pular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his s

peech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept,

—

how often! poverty and

solitude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, t

he religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the