Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Method of Nature.pdf - Ralph Waldo Emerson - snakieee

THE METHOD OF NATURE

Ralph Waldo Emerson

THE METHOD OF NATURE

Table of Contents

THE METHOD OF NATURE ..........................................................................................................................1

Ralph Waldo Emerson. ............................................................................................................................1

THE METHOD OF NATURE

Ralph Waldo Emerson

http://www.blackmask.com

_An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in

Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841_

GENTLEMEN,

Let us exchange congratulations on the enjoyments and the pros literary anniversary. The land we live in has

no interest so dear, if it knew its want, as the fit consecration of days of reason and thought. Where there is no

vision, the people perish. The scholars are the priests of that thought which establishes the foundations of the

earth. No matter what is their special work or profession, they stand for the spiritual interest of the world, and

it is a common calamity if they neglect their post in a country where the material interest is so predominant as

it is in America. We hear something too much of the results of machinery, commerce, and the useful arts. We

are a puny and a fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following, are our diseases. The rapid wealth which

hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts,

enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the

neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and

feature of man.

I do not wish to look with sour aspect at the industrious manufacturing village, or the mart of commerce. I

love the music of the water−wheel; I value the railway; I feel the pride which the sight of a ship inspires; I

look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein.

There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act

or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times. And I will not be

deceived into admiring the routine of handicrafts and mechanics, how splendid soever the result, any more

than I admire the routine of the scholars or clerical class. That splendid results ensue from the labors of stupid

men, is the fruit of higher laws than their will, and the routine is not to be praised for it. I would not have the

laborer sacrificed to the result, −− I would not have the laborer sacrificed to my convenience and pride, nor to

that of a great class of such as me. Let there be worse cotton and better men. The weaver should not be

bereaved of his superiority to his work, and his knowledge that the product or the skill is of no value, except

so far as it embodies his spiritual prerogatives. If I see nothing to admire in the unit, shall I admire a million

units? Men stand in awe of the city, but do not honor any individual citizen; and are continually yielding to

this dazzling result of numbers, that which they would never yield to the solitary example of any one.

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.

THE METHOD OF NATURE

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 arrive at any result! how tardily they pass from it to another! The crystal sphere of thought is as

concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so

do all men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically. Here comes by a great inquisitor with auger and

plumb−line, and will bore an Artesian well through our conventions and theories, and pierce to the core of

things. But as soon as he probes the crust, behold gimlet, plumb−line, and philosopher take a lateral direction,

in spite of all resistance, as if some strong wind took everything off its feet, and if you come month after

month to see what progress our reformer has made, −− not an inch has he pierced, −− you still find him with

new words in the old place, floating about in new parts of the same old vein or crust. The new book says, `I

will give you the key to nature,' and we expect to go like a thunderbolt to the centre. But the thunder is a

surface phenomenon, makes a skin−deep cut, and so does the sage. The wedge turns out to be a rocket. Thus

a man lasts but a very little while, for his monomania becomes insupportably tedious in a few months. It is so

with every book and person: and yet −− and yet −− we do not take up a new book, or meet a new man,

without a pulse−beat of expectation. And this invincible hope of a more adequate interpreter is the sure

prediction of his advent.

In the absence of man, we turn to nature, which stands next. In the divine order, intellect is primary; nature,

secondary; it is the memory of the mind. That which once existed in intellect as pure law, has now taken body

as Nature. It existed already in the mind in solution; now, it has been precipitated, and the bright sediment is

the world. We can never be quite strangers or inferiors in nature. It is flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone.

But we no longer hold it by the hand; we have lost our miraculous power; our arm is no more as strong as the

frost; nor our will equivalent to gravity and the elective attractions. Yet we can use nature as a convenient

standard, and the meter of our rise and fall. It has this advantage as a witness, it cannot be debauched. When

man curses, nature still testifies to truth and love. We may, therefore, safely study the mind in nature, because

we cannot steadily gaze on it in mind; as we explore the face of the sun in a pool, when our eyes cannot

brook his direct splendors.

It seems to me, therefore, that it were some suitable paean, if we should piously celebrate this hour by

exploring the _method of nature_. Let us see _that_, as nearly as we can, and try how far it is transferable to

the literary life. Every earnest glance we give to the realities around us, with intent to learn, proceeds from a

THE METHOD OF NATURE

holy impulse, and is really songs of praise. What difference can it make whether it take the shape of

exhortation, or of passionate exclamation, or of scientific statement? These are forms merely. Through them

we express, at last, the fact, that God has done thus or thus.

In treating a subject so large, in which we must necessarily appeal to the intuition, and aim much more to

suggest, than to describe, I know it is not easy to speak with the precision attainable on topics of less scope. I

do not wish in attempting to paint a man, to describe an air−fed, unimpassioned, impossible ghost. My eyes

and ears are revolted by any neglect of the physical facts, the limitations of man. And yet one who conceives

the true order of nature, and beholds the visible as proceeding from the invisible, cannot state his thought,

without seeming to those who study the physical laws, to do them some injustice. There is an intrinsic defect

in the organ. Language overstates. Statements of the infinite are usually felt to be unjust to the finite, and

blasphemous. Empedocles undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought, when he said, "I am God;" but the moment

it was out of his mouth, it became a lie to the ear; and the world revenged itself for the seeming arrogance, by

the good story about his shoe. How can I hope for better hap in my attempts to enunciate spiritual facts? Yet

let us hope, that as far as we receive the truth, so far shall we be felt by every true person to say what is just.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it? That rushing stream will not stop to be observed. We can

never surprise nature in a corner; never find the end of a thread; never tell where to set the first stone. The

bird hastens to lay her egg: the egg hastens to be a bird. The wholeness we admire in the order of the world, is

the result of infinite distribution. Its smoothness is the smoothness of the pitch of the cataract. Its permanence

is a perpetual inchoation. Every natural fact is an emanation, and that from which it emanates is an emanation

also, and from every emanation is a new emanation. If anything could stand still, it would be crushed and

dissipated by the torrent it resisted, and if it were a mind, would be crazed; as insane persons are those who

hold fast to one thought, and do not flow with the course of nature. Not the cause, but an ever novel effect,

nature descends always from above. It is unbroken obedience. The beauty of these fair objects is imported

into them from a metaphysical and eternal spring. In all animal and vegetable forms, the physiologist

concedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can account for the facts, but a mysterious principle of life must

be assumed, which not only inhabits the organ, but makes the organ.

How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom, −− in graceful succession,

in equal fulness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a

strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unravelled, nor shown.

Away profane philosopher! seekest thou in nature the cause? This refers to that, and that to the next, and the

next to the third, and everything refers. Thou must ask in another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou

must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists, ere thou canst know the law. Known it will not

be, but gladly beloved and enjoyed.

The simultaneous life throughout the whole body, the equal serving of innumerable ends without the least

emphasis or preference to any, but the steady degradation of each to the success of all, allows the

understanding no place to work. Nature can only be conceived as existing to a universal and not to a

particular end, to a universe of ends, and not to one, −− a work of _ecstasy_, to be represented by a circular

movement, as intention might be signified by a straight line of definite length. Each effect strengthens every

other. There is no revolt in all the kingdoms from the commonweal: no detachment of an individual. Hence

the catholic character which makes every leaf an exponent of the world. When we behold the landscape in a

poetic spirit, we do not reckon individuals. Nature knows neither palm nor oak, but only vegetable life, which

sprouts into forests, and festoons the globe with a garland of grasses and vines.

That no single end may be selected, and nature judged thereby, appears from this, that if man himself be

considered as the end, and it be assumed that the final cause of the world is to make holy or wise or beautiful

men, we see that it has not succeeded. Read alternately in natural and in civil history, a treatise of astronomy,

for example, with a volume of French _Memoires pour servir_. When we have spent our wonder in

THE METHOD OF NATURE

Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Method of Nature.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: