Self-Reliance 论自立 拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生 Ralph Waldo Emerson（1803–1882） 1841 年；1847 年修订 冷冻图书馆 · 开架书库 · S-005012 · https://coldlibrary.com/s/005012 权利：1841 年初版，1847 年修订；爱默生卒于 1882 年。已按澳大利亚、欧盟、英国、中国大陆和美国的规则核对（截至 2026 年 10 月 11 日）。仅供参考，不是法律意见。 来源：Project Gutenberg，https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2944/pg2944.txt（取于 2026-10-11） 中文译文：Claude（AI），2026 · CC0 1.0 生成于 2026-10-14，来自 https://coldlibrary.com/open-stacks/self-reliance ---- “Ne te quæsiveris extra.” “Man is his own star; and the soul that can / Render an honest and a perfect man, / Commands all light, all influence, all fate; / Nothing to him falls early or too late. / Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, / Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.” *Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune.* Cast the bantling on the rocks, / Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat, / Wintered with the hawk and fox. / Power and speed be hands and feet. * * * I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what *they* thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him; he does not court you. But the man is as it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with *éclat* he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges and, having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence,—must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and put them in fear. These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” my friend suggested,—“But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, ‘Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.’ Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, *Whim*. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they *my* poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man *and* his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,—as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers,—under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation. For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend’s parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham’s voice, and dignity into Washington’s port, and America into Adams’s eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;—and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Cæsar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called “the height of Rome”; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, ‘Who are you, Sir?’ Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince. Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day’s work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist and afterwards see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving;—the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind,—although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away,—means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,—one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear. If therefore a man claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light: where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—the way, the thought, the good shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death. Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates; that the soul *becomes;* for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul. Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches. But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—‘Come out unto us.’ But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. “What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.” If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, ‘O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,—but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you: if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.’—But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing. The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the *direct*, or in the *reflex* way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others! If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction *society*, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is *ruined*. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who *teams it, farms it, peddles*, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations; that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more but thank and revere him;—and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor and make his name dear to all history. It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views. 1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher’s Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies,— “His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; / Our valors are our best gods.” Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide; him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. “To the persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.” As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, ‘Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.’ Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother’s, or his brother’s brother’s God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man’s relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master’s mind. But in all unbalanced minds the classification is idolized, passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see,—how you can see; ‘It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.’ They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning. 2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes, the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and not like an interloper or a valet. I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. 3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves. Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian? There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch’s heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and in his turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, “without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself.” Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental,—came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. “Thy lot or portion of life,” said the Caliph Ali, “is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support and stands alone that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. ---- 中文译文 · Claude（AI）译 “Ne te quæsiveris extra.”（不要到你自身之外去寻找你自己。） “人是他自己的星辰；那能够 / 成就一个诚实而完美之人的灵魂， / 号令一切光、一切感应、一切命运； / 对他来说，没有什么来得太早或太迟。 / 我们的行为就是我们的天使，或善或恶， / 是始终伴我们同行的命定之影。” *博蒙特与弗莱彻《诚实人的命运》跋诗。* 把这婴孩抛到岩石上， / 让他吮吸母狼的乳头， / 与鹰和狐一同过冬。 / 让力量与迅捷做他的手和脚。 * * * 前几天我读到一位著名画家写的几行诗，它们新颖独到，不落俗套。无论题目是什么，灵魂总能从这样的诗行里听到一声告诫。它们灌注给人的情感，比其中可能含有的任何思想都更有价值。相信你自己的思想，相信在你内心深处对你为真的东西，对所有人也为真，这就是天才。说出你潜藏的信念，它就会成为普遍的见识；因为最内在的东西到了时候就会成为最外在的，我们最初的思想，会由末日审判的号角回响给我们。心灵的声音人人都熟悉，可我们归于摩西、柏拉图和弥尔顿的最高功绩，正是他们无视书本与传统，说出的不是别人怎么想，而是*他们自己*怎么想。一个人应当学会发现、留意那从内心掠过他心灵的一线光亮，胜过留意诗人与圣贤的满天星辉。可是他不加注意就把自己的思想打发掉了，只因为那是他自己的。在每一部天才之作里，我们都认出了自己曾经弃置的思想；它们带着一种疏远了的威严回到我们面前。伟大的艺术作品给我们的教训，没有比这更动人的了。它们教我们，带着和颜悦色的不屈，坚持自己自发的印象，尤其是在所有的声音都站在另一边的时候。否则，明天就会有一个陌生人，以老练的见识，恰好说出我们一直在想、一直在感觉的东西，而我们将不得不羞愧地从别人那里领回自己的意见。 每个人在受教育的过程中，都会有这样一个时刻：他终于确信，嫉妒是无知，模仿是自杀；他必须接受自己，不论好坏，作为自己的那一份；虽然广大的宇宙充满了善，但若不在分给他耕种的那块土地上付出劳动，就不会有一粒养人的谷子落到他手里。寓于他身上的力量，在自然中是新的，除了他自己，没有人知道他能做什么，而他自己在尝试之前也不知道。一张面孔、一种性格、一件事实给他留下深刻的印象，另一张、另一种、另一件却毫无印象，这并非无缘无故。记忆中的这种雕刻，并非没有预定的和谐。眼睛被安放在某一道光线将要落下的地方，好让它为那一道光线作证。我们只表达了一半的自己，还为我们每个人所代表的那个神圣观念感到羞愧。只要忠实地传达出来，它就可以放心地被信赖，它是相称的，会有好的结果；但上帝不愿让懦夫来彰显他的作品。一个人把心放进工作、尽了全力之后，会感到轻松愉快；而他用别的方式所说所做的，不会给他安宁。那是一种不能解脱的解脱。在这样的尝试里，他的天才离他而去；没有缪斯相助；没有发明，没有希望。 相信你自己：每一颗心都随着这根铁弦振动。接受神意为你找到的位置，接受你同时代人的社会，接受事件的关联。伟大的人物一向如此，他们像孩子一样把自己托付给他们时代的精神，流露出他们的觉悟：那绝对可信的东西就坐在他们心中，通过他们的双手工作，主宰着他们整个的存在。而我们如今已是成人，必须以最高的心志接受同样超越的命运；不做躲在受保护角落里的未成年人和病弱者，不做在变革面前逃跑的懦夫，而做向导、救赎者和施惠者，服从那全能的努力，向混沌与黑暗进发。 关于这个题目，自然在孩子、婴儿甚至动物的面容和举止中，给了我们多么可爱的神谕！那种分裂的、叛逆的心，那种因为我们的算计已算出与目的相对的力量和手段、便不信任一种情感的态度，他们都没有。他们的心是完整的，他们的眼睛还未被征服，我们看着他们的脸，会感到不安。婴儿不迁就任何人；所有人都迁就他；所以一个婴儿常常能让四五个对他咿呀逗弄的大人变成孩子。上帝也同样用青春、少年和成年各自的锋芒与魅力武装了它们，使它们令人羡慕、讨人喜欢，只要它们能自立，它们的要求就不容推却。不要以为那少年没有力量，只因为他不能同你我说话。听！在隔壁房间里，他的声音够清楚、够有力的。看来他知道怎样对他的同辈说话。那么，不论羞怯还是大胆，他都会知道怎样让我们这些长辈变得多余。 那些吃饭有着落的男孩子满不在乎，像贵族一样不屑于为讨好谁去做什么、说什么，这是人性健康的姿态。男孩在客厅里，就像戏院里的池座观众：独立，不负责任，从他的角落里看着经过的人和事，按照他们自身的长短，用男孩子那种迅速、简捷的方式加以审判、判决：好，坏，有趣，傻，有口才，讨厌。他从不为后果、为利害所累；他给出的是独立而真诚的裁决。你得讨好他；他不讨好你。可成年人仿佛被自己的意识关进了监牢。他一旦以引人注目的方式做过或说过什么，就成了一个受约束的人，被成百人的同情或憎恨注视着，从此他们的好恶都得算进他的账里。对此没有忘川可饮。啊，但愿他能重新回到他的中立！谁能这样避开一切承诺，在观察过之后，又能以同样不做作、不偏颇、不受贿、不畏惧的天真再去观察，他就必定是令人敬畏的。他会对一切眼前的事务发表意见，这些意见被看出不是私见而是必然，便会像飞镖一样扎进人们的耳朵，让他们害怕。 这些是我们在独处时听到的声音，可一旦我们走进世界，它们就变得微弱，听不见了。社会处处都在密谋反对它每一个成员的男子气概。社会是一家股份公司，成员们约定，为了更好地保障每个股东的面包，交出吃面包者的自由与修养。最受欢迎的美德是从众。自立是它所厌恶的。它不爱实在之物与创造者，只爱名号与习俗。 谁要做一个人，就必须做一个不从众者。谁想采集不朽的棕榈枝，就不能被“善”这个名义所阻挡，而必须去探究它是否真是善。归根结底，除了你自己心灵的完整，没有什么是神圣的。你先在自己面前赦免自己，就会得到世界的赞同。我记得很年轻的时候，有一位我所敬重的顾问，常拿教会那些可亲的古老教义来纠缠我，我曾一时兴起这样回答他。我说：“如果我完全从内心生活，传统的神圣同我有什么相干？”我的朋友提醒说：“可这些冲动也许来自下界，而不是来自上天。”我回答：“在我看来它们不像；不过，如果我是魔鬼的孩子，那我就照着魔鬼去生活。”除了我自己本性的法则，没有什么法则对我是神圣的。善与恶不过是名称，很容易从这个移到那个上去；唯一的对，就是合乎我的禀性的；唯一的错，就是违背它的。一个人面对一切反对时，应当这样自处：仿佛除了他，一切都只是徒有虚名、转瞬即逝的。想到我们多么轻易地向徽章和名号、向庞大的社团和僵死的机构投降，我就感到羞愧。每一个体面而能言善道的人，都比应有的程度更多地影响我、左右我。我应当挺直腰杆、生气勃勃地走路，用一切方式说出粗糙的真话。如果恶意和虚荣穿上了博爱的外衣，就该让它蒙混过关吗？如果一个愤怒的偏执者揽下废奴这项慷慨的事业，带着他从巴巴多斯得来的最新消息来找我，我为什么不该对他说：“去爱你的孩子吧；去爱你的劈柴工吧；要和善，要谦虚；要有这样的雅量；永远不要用这种对千里之外的黑人难以置信的温柔，去粉饰你那冷酷无情的野心。你对远方的爱，就是对家里的恶意。”这样的招呼是粗鲁而不雅的，但真实比假装的爱更好看。你的善必须有一点锋芒，否则就不是善。当爱的教义变得哼哼唧唧、哭哭啼啼时，就必须宣讲恨的教义，作为对它的抵消。当我的天才召唤我时，我就避开父亲、母亲、妻子和兄弟。我要在门楣上写下：*随兴*。我希望它到头来比随兴要好一些，可我们不能把一整天都花在解释上。不要指望我说明我为什么寻求或为什么谢绝与人交往。还有，不要像今天一位好人对我说的那样，跟我说我有义务让所有的穷人都过上好日子。他们是*我的*穷人吗？我告诉你，你这愚蠢的慈善家，那些不属于我、我也不属于他们的人，我给他们的每一块钱、每一角、每一分，我都舍不得。有一类人，凭着一切精神上的亲缘，我是被卖给了他们、属于他们的；为了他们，必要时我愿意去坐牢；可是你们那些五花八门的大众慈善事业：让傻瓜去上大学的教育；为了如今许多会堂所服务的那种虚空的目的去修建会堂；施舍给酒鬼的钱；还有那成千上万的救济会——虽然我羞愧地承认，有时我也屈服，给出那一块钱，但那是一块邪恶的钱，迟早我会有足够的男子气概把它扣下来。 在一般人的估量里，美德与其说是常规，不如说是例外。人是一回事，他的美德*又*是一回事。人们做一件所谓的善事，比如某种勇敢或慈善之举，就像为了弥补平日没去参加检阅而交一笔罚款一样。他们做这些事，是为他们活在世上而道歉或开脱，就像病人和疯子要付高昂的膳宿费一样。他们的美德是苦行赎罪。我不想赎罪，我想生活。我的生活是为了它自身，而不是为了给人看。我宁愿它的调子低一些，只要它真实而均衡，也不愿它光彩夺目而摇摆不定。我希望它健全而甘美，不需要节食和放血。我要的是你是一个人的第一手证据，我拒绝这种从人本身转而求诸他的行为的申诉。我知道，对我自己来说，做或不做那些被认为卓越的行为，并没有什么差别。在我本来就有权利的地方，我不能同意为一项特权付钱。不论我的天赋多么少、多么平庸，我确实存在着，无论是为了我自己确信，还是为了让我的同伴确信，我都不需要任何第二手的证明。 我必须做的事，才是与我有关的一切，而不是别人怎么想。这条规则在实际生活和精神生活中同样艰难，它或许可以作为伟大与渺小的全部分界。它之所以更难，是因为你总会遇到一些人，自以为比你更清楚你的本分是什么。在世上按照世人的意见生活是容易的；在独处时按照我们自己的意见生活也是容易的；而伟大的人，是那个在人群之中仍以完美的温和保持着独处时的独立的人。 遵从那些对你已经僵死的惯例，问题在于它会分散你的力量。它耗费你的时间，模糊你品格的印记。如果你维持一个僵死的教会，捐助一个僵死的圣经会，跟着一个大党投票，无论是拥护政府还是反对政府，像庸俗的主妇那样摆开你的餐桌——在所有这些屏风后面，我很难看出你究竟是怎样一个人：而你本来的生活自然也就被抽走了这么多力量。可是去做你的事吧，我就会认识你。去做你的事，你就会增强你自己。一个人必须想一想，这场从众的游戏是怎样一场捉迷藏。如果我知道你的教派，我就能预料到你的论点。我听见一位牧师宣布，他的经文和讲题是他教会的某项制度的适宜性。我难道不是事先就知道，他绝不可能说出一句新鲜而自发的话吗？我难道不知道，他摆出那副审察这项制度根据的架势，其实根本不会去审察吗？我难道不知道，他已经对自己立下誓约，只看一面，那被允许的一面，不是作为一个人，而是作为一个教区牧师？他是一个受雇的律师，那些法官席上的派头是最空洞的做作。唉，大多数人都用这样或那样的手帕蒙住了自己的眼睛，依附于这些意见团体中的某一个。这种从众使他们不只是在几件细事上虚假，不只是说了几句谎，而是在一切细节上都虚假。他们的每一条真理都不完全真。他们的二不是真正的二，他们的四不是真正的四；所以他们说的每一句话都让我们懊恼，我们不知道该从哪里开始纠正他们。与此同时，自然也不慢于给我们穿上我们所依附的党派的囚服。我们渐渐长成了同一种脸型和身形，一点一点地学会了最温顺的驴子般的表情。尤其有一种令人难堪的经验，在普遍的历史中也必定会表现出来；我说的是“那张愚蠢的恭维的脸”，那种我们在不自在的场合里，为了回应自己并不感兴趣的谈话而硬挤出来的笑容。那些肌肉不是自发地动起来的，而是被一种低下的、篡夺了主权的任性牵动起来的，它们绷紧在脸的轮廓周围，带着一种最令人不快的感觉。 因为你不从众，世界就用它的不快来鞭打你。所以，一个人必须懂得怎样估量一张酸脸。旁观者在大街上、在朋友的客厅里斜眼看他。如果这种反感像他自己的一样，是出于轻蔑和抵抗，他也许真该愁容满面地回家；可是众人的酸脸，就像他们的笑脸一样，没有什么深刻的原因，而是随着风怎么吹、报纸怎么指挥，戴上又摘下。不过，众人的不满比元老院和学院的不满更可怕。对一个了解世事的坚定的人来说，忍受有教养阶层的怒气是够容易的。他们的怒气是得体而谨慎的，因为他们胆怯，自己就很容易受伤。可是，当他们那女人气的怒气之外，再加上民众的义愤，当无知者和穷人被激怒，当潜伏在社会底层的那股不明事理的蛮力被弄得咆哮、龇牙咧嘴时，就需要有宽宏大量和虔诚的习惯，才能像神一样，把它当作无关紧要的小事来对待。 另一种吓得我们不敢自信的恐惧，是我们的一贯性：对我们过去的言行的一种敬畏，因为别人的眼睛除了我们过去的行为，没有别的数据来推算我们的轨道，而我们不愿让他们失望。 可是你为什么要总是回头张望呢？为什么要拖着你记忆的这具尸体到处走，生怕与你在这个或那个公共场合说过的话有所矛盾？假如你自相矛盾了，那又怎样？似乎有一条智慧的规则：永远不要只依赖你的记忆，即使在纯粹记忆的行为中也几乎不要，而要把过去带到千眼的当下来受审，永远活在新的一天里。在你的形而上学里，你曾否认神有人格，可当灵魂的虔诚冲动来临时，就全心全意地顺从它们吧，即使它们给上帝披上了形状和颜色。把你的理论丢下，就像约瑟把衣服丢在那妇人手里，逃走吧。 愚蠢的一贯性是小心眼的妖怪，受到小政客、小哲学家和小神学家的崇拜。伟大的灵魂与一贯性根本毫无关系。他还不如去关心墙上自己的影子。用坚硬的字眼说出你现在所想的，明天再用坚硬的字眼说出明天所想的，即使它与你今天所说的一切都相矛盾。——“啊，这样你一定会被误解。”——被误解就那么糟糕吗？毕达哥拉斯被误解过，苏格拉底、耶稣、路德、哥白尼、伽利略、牛顿，以及每一个曾经化身为人的纯洁而智慧的精神，都被误解过。伟大就是被误解。 我想，没有人能违背他的本性。他意志的一切冲动，都被他存在的法则圈定在其中，就像安第斯山和喜马拉雅山的起伏，在球体的曲线上无足轻重。你怎样测量他、试验他，也都无关紧要。品格就像一首藏头诗或亚历山大体的诗节——正着读，倒着读，横着读，拼出来的都是同一样东西。在上帝允许我过的这种愉快而谦卑的林中生活里，让我一天天地记下我诚实的思想，不瞻前，也不顾后；我不能怀疑，它会被发现是匀称的，虽然我并没有这个意思，也看不出来。我的书应当散发着松树的气味，回荡着昆虫的嗡嗡声。我窗外的燕子，应当把它嘴里衔着的那根线或那根草，也织进我的网里。我们是什么，就被看作什么。品格的教导高于我们的意志。人们以为，他们只是通过外露的行为来传达他们的美德或恶行，却看不到美德或恶行每时每刻都在呼出一口气息。 无论行为多么多样，只要每一个在它的时刻都是诚实而自然的，它们之间就会有一种一致。因为出于同一个意志，行为就会是和谐的，无论它们看上去多么不同。稍微隔开一点距离，在思想上稍微站高一点，这些差异就看不见了。一种趋向把它们统统联结起来。最好的船，航程也是一条由上百次抢风调向构成的之字形线路。从足够远的地方看这条线，它就会自己伸直，成为平均的趋向。你真实的行为会解释它自己，也会解释你其他真实的行为。你的从众什么也解释不了。独立地去做，你过去已经独立做过的事，此刻就会为你辩护。伟大诉诸未来。如果我今天能坚定到去做正确的事而蔑视众人的目光，那我以前一定已经做过足够多正确的事，此刻来为我辩护。不管怎样，现在就去做正确的事吧。永远蔑视表面，你就永远能够蔑视它。品格的力量是累积的。以往所有行善的日子，都把它们的健康注入了此刻。是什么造就了元老院和战场上的英雄们那充满人们想象的威严？是对身后一连串伟大日子和胜利的意识。它们一起把光投在这位前进中的行动者身上。他仿佛有一队看得见的天使护卫着。正是这个，把雷霆注入了查塔姆的声音，把尊严注入了华盛顿的仪态，把美国注入了亚当斯的眼睛。荣誉之所以令我们敬重，是因为它不是朝生暮死之物。它永远是古老的美德。我们今天崇拜它，是因为它不属于今天。我们爱它，向它致敬，是因为它不是诱取我们的爱和敬意的陷阱，而是自立的、出于自身的，因此有着古老而纯洁的血统，即使它显现在一个年轻人身上。 我希望，在这些日子里，我们已经听够了从众和一贯性。从今以后，就让这两个词登报示众，成为笑柄吧。让我们不再听开饭的锣声，而听斯巴达横笛吹出的一声哨响。让我们再也不要鞠躬和道歉。一位伟人要到我家来吃饭。我不想讨好他；我希望他想要讨好我。我要在这里为人性挺身而立，我愿意让它仁慈，却更要让它真实。让我们冒犯、斥责这个时代圆滑的平庸和卑琐的知足，把那个作为全部历史之归结的事实，摔到习俗、生意和官职的脸上：凡是有人工作的地方，就有一位伟大的、负有责任的思想者和行动者在工作；一个真正的人不属于别的时间或地点，而是万物的中心。他在哪里，自然就在哪里。他衡量你，衡量所有的人和所有的事件。在社会上，通常每一个人都让我们想起别的什么东西，或别的什么人。品格，实在，却不让你想起任何别的东西；它取代了整个造化。这个人必须如此丰足，以致他能使一切环境都变得无关紧要。每一个真正的人都是一个事业、一个国家、一个时代；需要无限的空间、数目和时间才能充分完成他的构想——后世的人似乎像一队门客那样追随着他的脚步。一个叫恺撒的人诞生了，此后许多世代，我们有了一个罗马帝国。基督诞生了，千百万心灵如此生长、如此依附于他的天才，以致他与美德、与人的可能被混为一谈。一个制度是一个人被拉长了的影子；比如，修道制度是隐士安东尼的影子；宗教改革是路德的影子；贵格会是福克斯的影子；循道宗是卫斯理的影子；废奴运动是克拉克森的影子。弥尔顿称西庇阿为“罗马的顶峰”；全部历史都很容易化解为少数几个刚毅而诚挚的人的传记。 那么，让一个人知道自己的价值，把万物踩在脚下吧。不要让他在这个为他而存在的世界上偷偷张望、偷偷摸摸，带着一副慈善学校孩子、私生子或闯入者的神气鬼鬼祟祟地走来走去。可是街上的普通人，在自己身上找不到任何与建造一座高塔或雕刻一尊大理石神像的力量相当的价值，看着这些东西就觉得自己贫乏。在他眼里，一座宫殿、一尊雕像或一本昂贵的书，都带着一种陌生而拒人于千里之外的神气，很像一辆华丽的马车，似乎也像马车那样在说：“先生，您是谁？”可是它们全都是他的，它们在求他垂顾，恳请他的才能走出来，把它们据为己有。那幅画在等待我的裁决；不是它来命令我，而是我来裁定它有无资格受到赞美。那个流行的寓言说，一个酒鬼烂醉在街上被人拾起来，抬进公爵府里，洗干净，穿好衣服，放在公爵的床上，醒来时被众人以种种奉承的礼节当作公爵来侍候，还被告知他先前是疯了；这个寓言之所以流行，是因为它如此恰当地象征了人的处境：人在世上是一种醉汉，但时不时醒过来，运用他的理性，发现自己是一位真正的王子。 我们的阅读是乞讨式的、谄媚式的。在历史中，我们的想象欺骗了我们。王国与领地、权力与产业，比起住在小房子里、做着寻常一天工作的普通的约翰和爱德华来，是一套更花哨的词汇；可是生活中的事情对两者是一样的；两者的总和也是一样的。为什么对阿尔弗雷德、斯坎德培和古斯塔夫斯如此恭敬？就算他们有德行；难道他们把德行用尽了吗？今天你的私人行为所关系的赌注，与追随他们那些公开而著名的脚步的赌注一样重大。当普通人以独创的眼光行事时，光彩就会从国王的行为转移到绅士的行为上来。 世界一直受它的国王们教导，国王们如此吸引了各国人民的目光。借着这个巨大的象征，世界学会了人与人之间应有的相互尊敬。人们在各处都以欢喜的忠诚容忍国王、贵族或大地主按照他自己的法则走在他们中间，订立他自己衡量人与事的尺度、颠倒他们的尺度，不用金钱而用荣誉来酬答恩惠，以他一身代表法律：这种忠诚是一种象形文字，他们借它隐约表达了对自己的权利与美好的意识，那是每一个人的权利。 一切独创的行为所施加的吸引力，在我们探究自信的理由时就得到了解释。那位受托者是谁？那个原初的自我是什么，可以让一种普遍的信赖建立在它上面？那颗令科学困惑的星辰，没有视差，没有可计算的要素，只要有一丝独立的迹象出现，它甚至会把一道美的光芒射进琐碎而不纯的行为之中——它的本性和力量是什么？这个探究把我们引向那个源泉，它同时是天才的本质、美德的本质和生命的本质，我们称之为自发或本能。我们把这种原初的智慧称为直觉（intuition），而后来的一切教导都只是传授（tuition）。在那股深沉的力量里，在分析无法越过的那最后的事实里，万物找到了它们共同的起源。因为在宁静的时刻，不知怎样在灵魂里升起的那种存在之感，与万物、与空间、与光、与时间、与人并无不同，而是与它们合一的，显然出自同一个源泉，它们的生命与存在也出自那里。我们先是分享了万物借以存在的那个生命，后来才把它们看作自然中的表象，忘记了我们曾分享过它们的原因。这里是行动与思想的源泉。这里是那赐人以智慧的灵感之肺，否认它就不能不是不敬和无神论。我们躺在无边智慧的怀抱里，它使我们成为它的真理的接受者，它的活动的器官。当我们辨识出正义，当我们辨识出真理时，我们自己什么也没有做，只是给它的光芒让出了一条通道。如果我们问这是从哪里来的，如果我们想窥探那作为原因的灵魂，一切哲学都会失灵。我们所能断言的，只是它在场或不在场。每个人都能分辨他心灵的自主行为和他不由自主的知觉，并且知道，对他不由自主的知觉，应当给予完全的信任。他在表达它们时可能会出错，但他知道这些事情就是如此，就像白天和黑夜一样，无可争辩。我有意的行为和获得的东西，不过是游荡；——最闲散的遐想，最微弱的天然情感，却赢得我的好奇和尊重。不善思考的人，反驳知觉的陈述就像反驳意见的陈述一样轻易，或者说轻易得多；因为他们不区分知觉和观念。他们以为我是选择去看这样或那样东西的。可是知觉不是随意的，而是命定的。如果我看出了一种特征，我的孩子们会在我之后看出来，到时候全人类都会看出来——虽然也许碰巧在我之前没有人看出过它。因为我对它的知觉，就像太阳一样，是一个事实。 灵魂与神圣精神的关系是如此纯粹，以致想在中间插进什么帮助都是亵渎。上帝说话时，必定不是传达一样东西，而是传达一切东西；必定以他的声音充满世界；必定从当下思想的中心散发出光、自然、时间和灵魂；必定为整体重新纪年、重新创造。每当一颗心灵单纯而接受了神圣的智慧，旧的事物就过去了——手段、教师、经文、庙宇都倒塌了；它活在现在，把过去和未来都吸收进当下的时刻。一切事物都因为与它的关系而成为神圣的——这一样与那一样同样神圣。一切事物都被它们的原因溶解到它们的中心，在普遍的奇迹中，琐碎而个别的奇迹消失了。所以，如果有人声称认识上帝、谈论上帝，却把你带回到另一个国家、另一个世界里某个古老朽败的民族的措辞里去，不要相信他。橡子会比作为它的充实与完成的橡树更好吗？父母会比他们把自己成熟的存在倾注其中的孩子更好吗？那么，这种对过去的崇拜从何而来？世世代代都是密谋反对灵魂的健全与权威的同谋。时间和空间不过是眼睛制造出来的生理色彩，而灵魂是光：它在哪里，哪里就是白昼；它曾在哪里，哪里就是黑夜；历史如果不只是我的存在与生成的一则愉快的寓言或譬喻，而是别的什么，那它就是一种冒昧，一种伤害。 人是胆怯的，惯于道歉；他不再挺直；他不敢说“我想”“我是”，而是引用某位圣徒或贤哲的话。他在一片草叶或一朵迎风的玫瑰面前感到羞愧。我窗下的这些玫瑰，并不参照以前的玫瑰或更好的玫瑰；它们是什么就是什么；它们今天与上帝同在。对它们来说没有时间。只有玫瑰；它在存在的每一刻都是完美的。在叶芽绽开之前，它整个的生命已经在活动；盛开的花里并不更多；无叶的根里也并不更少。它的本性在一切时刻都同样得到满足，它也在一切时刻同样满足着自然。可是人却拖延，或者回忆；他不活在现在，而是回过头去哀叹过去，或者无视环绕着他的财富，踮起脚尖去预见未来。除非他也同自然一起活在超越时间的现在之中，否则他不可能幸福而强壮。 这应当是够明白的了。可是看看，那些强大的智力还不敢听上帝本人说话，除非他说的是某个大卫、耶利米或保罗的措辞。我们不会永远把那么高的价钱放在几段经文、几个人的生平上。我们就像孩子，死记硬背祖母和家庭教师的句子，长大一些，又背诵碰巧见到的那些有才能、有品格的人的句子——吃力地回想他们说过的原话；后来，当他们到达了说这些话的人所站的那个视点，他们就理解了这些话，也愿意放下这些字句了；因为一旦有了机会，他们随时都能用同样好的字句。如果我们真实地生活，我们就会真实地看见。强者要强，就像弱者要弱一样容易。当我们有了新的知觉，我们会乐于把记忆里囤积的财宝当作旧垃圾卸掉。当一个人与上帝同住，他的声音就会像溪水的潺潺和玉米的沙沙声一样甜美。 现在，关于这个题目，最高的真理终究还是没有说出来；也许是说不出来的；因为我们所说的一切，都是对直觉的遥远的回忆。那个思想，用我现在所能最接近的方式说出来，就是这样：当善临近你，当你在自己身上有了生命，那不是通过任何已知的或惯常的途径；你不会辨认出任何别人的足迹；你不会看见人的面孔；你不会听见任何名字；——那途径、那思想、那善，都将全然陌生、全然崭新。它会排除先例和经验。你是从人那里走开，而不是走向人。所有曾经存在过的人，都是它被遗忘了的仆役。恐惧和希望同样在它之下。即使在希望里，也有某种低下的东西。在洞见的时刻，没有什么可以称为感激的，严格说来也没有欢乐。超越了激情的灵魂注视着同一与永恒的因果，察觉到真理与正义的自在，并以知道万物都运行良好而使自己平静下来。自然的广大空间，大西洋，南海；时间的漫长间隔，年月，世纪，都无足轻重。我此刻所想所感的这个东西，曾经是以往一切生活状态和境遇的基础，正如它是我现在的基础，是所谓的生、所谓的死的基础。 有用的只是生活，而不是已经活过。力量在静止的一刻就停止了；它寓于从过去的状态向新的状态过渡的那一刻，寓于冲过深渊的那一下，寓于向目标疾射的那一刻。世界憎恨这一个事实：灵魂在*生成*；因为这永远贬低了过去，把一切财富变成贫穷，把一切名声变成耻辱，把圣徒与恶棍混为一谈，把耶稣和犹大一样推到一边。那我们为什么还要侈谈自立？只要灵魂在场，就会有力量，不是有所依恃的力量，而是在起作用的力量。谈论依恃，是一种贫乏的、外在的说法。不如说说那依凭者：它之所以有所依凭，是因为它在工作、它存在。谁比我更能服从，谁就能主宰我，即使他连一根手指都不抬。我必须凭着精神的引力绕着他旋转。我们谈到卓越的美德时，以为那是修辞。我们还没有看出，美德就是高度；一个人或一群人，只要对原则是柔顺而可渗透的，按照自然的法则就必定会压倒、驾驭一切不是这样的城市、国家、国王、富人和诗人。 这就是我们在这个题目上、也像在每一个题目上那样很快就会达到的最终事实：一切都归结为那永远蒙福的太一。自在是至高原因的属性，它进入一切较低形式的程度，构成了善的尺度。一切实在的东西之所以实在，取决于它们包含多少这种德性。商业、农耕、狩猎、捕鲸、战争、雄辩、个人的分量，都有几分价值，作为它在场、作为它不纯的作用的例证，赢得我的尊重。我看到同样的法则在自然中为保存和生长而运作。在自然中，力量是正当的根本尺度。凡是不能自助的东西，自然都不容许它留在她的王国里。一颗行星的生成与成熟，它的平衡与轨道，被狂风压弯后又挺直起来的树，每一种动物和植物的生命资源，都证明了那自足、因而自立的灵魂。 所以一切都汇聚起来：我们不要游荡；我们要同那原因一起安坐家中。让我们用一句关于神圣事实的简单宣告，去震慑、去惊倒那些闯进来的乌合之众——人、书籍和制度。叫那些入侵者把脚上的鞋脱下来，因为上帝就在这里面。让我们的单纯去审判他们，让我们对自己法则的顺从，去证明自然和命运在我们天生的财富旁边是多么贫乏。 可是现在我们是一群乌合之众。人不敬畏人，他的天才也不受告诫留在家中、同内在的海洋相通，而是跑到外面，向别人的瓮里乞讨一杯水。我们必须独自前行。我喜欢礼拜开始之前那安静的教堂，胜过任何布道。那些人看上去多么遥远、多么清凉、多么纯洁，每一个都被一片圣域或圣所环绕着！让我们永远这样坐着吧。为什么只因为我们的朋友、妻子、父亲或孩子坐在我们的炉边，或者据说与我们同血，我们就该承担他们的过错呢？所有的人都有我的血，我也有所有人的血。我不会因此就接受他们的暴躁或愚蠢，甚至不会为之感到羞愧。但你的孤立不能是机械的，而必须是精神的，也就是说，必须是一种升高。有时候，整个世界似乎都在密谋，用一些煞有介事的琐事来纠缠你。朋友、主顾、孩子、疾病、恐惧、匮乏、慈善，都一齐来敲你密室的门，说：“出来到我们这里来吧。”可是要守住你的威仪；不要走进他们的混乱。人们所拥有的烦扰我的力量，是我出于一种软弱的好奇心给他们的。除非通过我自己的行为，没有人能靠近我。“我们所爱的，我们就拥有；可是由于欲望，我们使自己失去了爱。” 如果我们不能一下子上升到服从与信仰的神圣境界，至少让我们抵抗我们的诱惑；让我们进入战斗状态，在我们撒克逊人的胸膛里唤醒托尔和沃登，唤醒勇气和坚贞。在我们这个太平的时代，做到这一点的方法是说真话。制止这种虚假的殷勤和虚假的亲热吧。不要再为了与我们交往的这些受骗也骗人的人的期待而活着。对他们说：“啊，父亲，啊，母亲，啊，妻子，啊，兄弟，啊，朋友，直到现在，我一直按照表面跟你们一起生活。从今以后，我属于真理。让你们知道，从今以后，我所服从的，没有一条是低于永恒法则的法则。我不要任何盟约，只要亲近。我会努力奉养我的父母，供养我的家庭，做一个妻子的忠贞丈夫——但这些关系，我必须以一种新的、前所未有的方式去履行。我要越过你们的习俗去申诉。我必须做我自己。我不能再为了你或者你而折断自己。如果你们能因为我本来的样子而爱我，我们会更幸福。如果你们不能，我仍会努力让自己配得上你们的爱。我不会隐藏我的喜好或厌恶。我会如此相信深沉的东西就是神圣的，以至于我会在日月之下，坚决地去做一切让我内心欢喜、由我的心所指定的事。如果你们高贵，我会爱你们；如果你们不高贵，我不会用虚伪的殷勤伤害你们，也伤害我自己。如果你们是真实的，只是与我不在同一种真实里，那就守着你们的伙伴吧；我会去找我自己的。我这样做不是出于自私，而是出于谦卑和真诚。无论我们在谎言中住了多久，活在真实里，对你、对我、对所有的人都同样有益。这在今天听起来刺耳吗？你很快就会爱上你的本性和我的本性所指示的东西，如果我们追随真理，它最终会把我们平安地带出来。”——可是这样你也许会让这些朋友痛苦。是的，可是我不能为了顾全他们的感受，就出卖我的自由和我的力量。何况，所有的人都有他们理智的时刻，那时他们会望向绝对真理的领域；那时他们会为我辩护，也会做同样的事。 众人以为，你拒绝大众的标准，就是拒绝一切标准，就是纯粹的反律法主义；而大胆的纵欲者也会借哲学之名来给他的罪行镀金。但意识的法则依然存在。有两个告解室，我们必须在其中一个或另一个里得到赦罪。你可以用*直接*的方式，也可以用*反射*的方式来洗清自己，履行你的一系列职责。想一想，你是否满足了你对父亲、母亲、表亲、邻居、城镇、猫和狗的关系；他们之中是否有谁能责备你。但我也可以不理会这种反射的标准，在我自己面前赦免我自己。我有我自己严格的要求和完满的圆周。它对许多被称为职责的事务不给予职责之名。但如果我能清偿它的债务，它就让我可以免受大众法典的约束。如果有人以为这条法则是宽松的，就让他遵守它的诫命一天看看。 的确，一个抛开了人类的寻常动机、敢于把自己托付给自己作监工的人，需要有某种神一般的东西。他的心要高，他的意志要忠，他的目光要明，他才能真正成为他自己的教义、社会和法律，一个单纯的目的对他来说才能像铁一般的必然对别人那样强大！ 如果有人想一想那被特别称为*社会*的东西的现状，他就会看到这些伦理的必要。人的筋骨和心胆似乎都被抽走了，我们变成了胆小、沮丧、哭哭啼啼的人。我们害怕真理，害怕命运，害怕死亡，也彼此害怕。我们的时代产生不出伟大而完美的人。我们需要能使生活和我们的社会状况焕然一新的男人和女人，可是我们看到，大多数人的天性都已无力偿付，满足不了他们自己的需要，有着与他们实际力量完全不相称的野心，日日夜夜不停地倚靠、乞求。我们的持家是乞讨式的；我们的技艺、我们的职业、我们的婚姻、我们的宗教，都不是我们自己选择的，而是社会替我们选择的。我们是客厅里的士兵。我们躲避命运那艰苦的战斗，而力量正是在那里诞生的。 如果我们的年轻人第一次创业失败，他们就完全灰心丧气。如果年轻的商人失败了，人们就说他*完了*。如果最出色的天才在我们的某所学院读书，毕业后一年之内没有在波士顿或纽约的城里或郊区谋到一个职位，在他的朋友和他自己看来，他就有理由灰心，有理由抱怨一辈子。一个从新罕布什尔或佛蒙特来的结实小伙子，轮番尝试过所有的行当，*赶过车，种过地，做过小贩*，教过书，讲过道，编过报纸，进过国会，买下过一个镇区，诸如此类，一年接着一年，总像猫一样四脚着地，这样一个人抵得上一百个这种城里的玩偶。他与他的日子并肩而行，不因为没有“学一门专业”而感到羞愧，因为他不推迟他的生活，而是已经在生活了。他不是只有一次机会，而是有一百次机会。让一位斯多葛派来揭示人的资源，告诉人们他们不是倚靠在别处的柳树，而是能够、也必须让自己独立；告诉他们，只要运用自信，新的力量就会出现；告诉他们，人是道成肉身，生来要为万国带去医治；告诉他们，他应当为我们的怜悯感到羞愧，而他从自己出发去行动、把法律、书籍、偶像崇拜和习俗统统扔出窗外的那一刻，我们就不再怜悯他，而是感谢他、尊敬他——这样的导师将使人的生命恢复光彩，使他的名字为全部历史所珍爱。 不难看出，更大的自立必定会在人的一切职务和关系中引起一场革命；在他们的宗教中；在他们的教育中；在他们的事业中；在他们的生活方式中；在他们的结社中；在他们的财产中；在他们的思辨观点中。 一、人们放任自己作的是什么样的祈祷啊！他们称之为神圣职责的东西，连勇敢、有男子气都谈不上。祈祷向外张望，求某种外来的添加通过某种外来的德能降临，迷失在自然与超自然、中保与奇迹的无尽迷宫里。祈求某种特定的货品、任何少于全部之善的东西的祈祷，是邪恶的。祈祷是从最高的视点对生活事实的静观。它是一个凝视着、欢欣着的灵魂的独白。它是上帝的灵宣告他的作品是好的。可是，作为达到私人目的的手段的祈祷，就是卑劣和偷窃。它假定了自然与意识中的二元，而不是统一。一个人一旦与上帝合一，就不会乞求。那时他会在一切行动中看到祈祷。农夫跪在田里除草的祈祷，划手随着桨的划动屈膝的祈祷，都是整个自然都听得见的真正的祈祷，虽然目的是寻常的。弗莱彻的《邦杜卡》里，卡拉塔奇被告诫要去探问奥达特神的心意时，回答说：—— “他隐秘的意旨就在我们的努力之中； / 我们的勇气就是我们最好的神。” 另一种虚假的祈祷是我们的懊悔。不满是缺乏自立：是意志的虚弱。如果你能借此帮助受苦的人，就为灾难懊悔吧；如果不能，就去做你自己的工作，祸害就已经开始被修补了。我们的同情也同样卑下。我们来到那些愚蠢地哭泣的人身边，坐下来陪着他们哭，而不是用粗暴的电击般的方式把真理和健康传给他们，让他们重新同自己的理性相通。好运的秘诀，是我们手中的欢乐。自助的人永远受到众神和众人的欢迎。为他，所有的门都敞开；所有的舌头都向他致意，所有的荣誉都为他加冕，所有的眼睛都带着渴慕追随他。我们的爱走出去拥抱他，因为他并不需要它。我们殷勤而带着歉意地抚慰他、颂扬他，因为他坚持走自己的路，蔑视我们的不赞同。众神爱他，因为众人恨过他。琐罗亚斯德说：“对坚忍不拔的凡人，蒙福的不朽者来得很快。” 正如人们的祈祷是意志的疾病，他们的信条是智力的疾病。他们同那些愚蠢的以色列人一起说：“不要让上帝对我们说话，免得我们死亡。你对我们说吧，随便什么人对我们说吧，我们都会服从。”我处处都被阻碍，无法在我的兄弟身上遇见上帝，因为他关上了自己的庙门，只背诵他兄弟的上帝、或者他兄弟的兄弟的上帝的故事。每一个新的心灵都是一种新的分类。如果它证明是一个非同寻常地活跃而有力的心灵，一个洛克、一个拉瓦锡、一个赫顿、一个边沁、一个傅立叶，它就把它的分类强加于别人，看哪！一个新体系。门徒的自满，与思想的深度成正比，因而也与它所触及、并带到门徒手边的对象的数目成正比。但这一点在信条和教会里表现得最明显，它们也是某个强大心灵作用于关于职责、关于人与至高者的关系这一基本思想时所作的分类。加尔文主义、贵格会、斯韦登堡主义就是如此。门徒把一切都隶属于新的术语之下，从中得到的乐趣，就像一个刚学了植物学的女孩借此看到了一个新的大地和新的四季。有一段时间，门徒会发现，研究他老师的心灵使他的智力增长了。但是在一切失去平衡的心灵里，分类被奉为偶像，被当作目的，而不是当作很快就会用尽的手段，以至于在他们眼里，体系的墙壁在遥远的地平线上与宇宙的墙壁混成了一片；天上的星辰在他们看来都挂在他们老师所建的拱顶上。他们无法想象，你们这些外人怎么有权利看见——你们怎么能看见；“一定是你们不知怎么从我们这里偷走了光。”他们还没有察觉，光是不成体系的、不可征服的，它会闯进任何一间小屋，甚至闯进他们的小屋。让他们叽叽喳喳一阵子，说那是他们自己的吧。如果他们诚实，做得好，不久他们那整洁的新羊圈就会变得太窄、太矮，会裂开，会倾斜，会腐烂、消失，而那不朽的光，永远年轻而欢乐，有百万个光球、百万种颜色，会像在第一个早晨那样照耀整个宇宙。 二、正是因为缺乏自我修养，以意大利、英格兰、埃及为偶像的旅行迷信，才对所有受过教育的美国人保持着它的魔力。那些在人们的想象中使英格兰、意大利或希腊变得可敬的人，是靠牢牢地守在原地，像地球的轴一样，才做到这一点的。在有男子气概的时刻，我们感到职责就是我们的位置。灵魂不是旅行者；智者待在家里；当他的需要、他的职责在什么时候召唤他离开家、或者去往异国时，他仍然在家，他会让人们从他脸上的神情感到，他是作为智慧和美德的传教士而去的，他像一位君主、而不是像一个闯入者或一个仆从那样去访问城市和人们。 我并不粗鲁地反对为了艺术、研究和慈善的目的而环游地球，只要这个人先已在家中安顿下来，或者不是怀着找到比他所知更伟大的东西的希望出国。为了消遣、或者为了得到某种他自己没有带着的东西而旅行的人，是在旅行着离开他自己，即使在青春年少时，也会在古老的事物中间变老。在底比斯，在帕尔米拉，他的意志和心灵都变得像它们一样衰老、颓圮。他把废墟带到了废墟里去。 旅行是傻瓜的天堂。我们最初的几次旅行就让我们发现，地方是无所谓的。在家里，我梦想着在那不勒斯、在罗马，我能陶醉于美，忘掉我的忧伤。我收拾好行李，拥抱我的朋友，登船出海，最后在那不勒斯醒来，而在我身边的，是那冷峻的事实，那悲伤的自我，毫不留情，一模一样，正是我逃离的那个。我去寻访梵蒂冈和那些宫殿。我装作陶醉于种种景象和联想，可是我并没有陶醉。我的巨人无论我走到哪里都跟着我。 三、但是旅行狂热是一种更深的不健全的症状，这种不健全影响着整个智力活动。智力是流浪的，我们的教育制度助长了躁动不安。当我们的身体被迫待在家里时，我们的心灵在旅行。我们模仿；而模仿不就是心灵的旅行吗？我们的房子按照外国的品味建造；我们的架子上装点着外国的饰物；我们的意见、我们的品味、我们的才能，都倚靠着、追随着过去与远方。艺术无论在哪里繁荣，都是灵魂创造的。艺术家是在自己的心里寻找他的范本的。那是把他自己的思想运用到要做的事情和要遵守的条件上。我们为什么需要照抄多立克式或哥特式的范本呢？美、便利、思想的宏伟和别致的表达，离我们就像离任何人一样近；如果美国的艺术家怀着希望和爱，去研究他要做的那件确切的事，考虑到气候、土壤、白昼的长度、人们的需要、政府的习惯和形式，他就会创造出一所房子，所有这些都会在其中各得其所，品味和情感也会得到满足。 坚持你自己；永远不要模仿。你自己的天赋，你每时每刻都能带着一生修养的累积之力呈现出来；可是别人的才能，你借来之后只能临时地、一半地拥有。每个人最擅长做的事，除了他的造物主，没有人能教他。在那个人把它展示出来之前，还没有人知道它是什么，也不可能知道。哪里有能教出莎士比亚的老师？哪里有能指导富兰克林、华盛顿、培根或牛顿的老师？每一个伟人都是独一无二的。西庇阿身上的西庇阿气质，恰恰是他无法借来的那一部分。研究莎士比亚永远造就不出莎士比亚。做分派给你的事，你就怎样希望都不算太多，怎样敢为都不算太过。此刻就有一种表达在等着你，它像菲狄亚斯巨大的凿子、埃及人的泥刀、摩西或但丁的笔那样勇敢而宏伟，却与它们都不相同。那无比丰富、无比雄辩、有着千条分叉之舌的灵魂，绝不屑于重复它自己；但如果你能听见这些先祖说的话，你必定能用同样的音调回答他们；因为耳朵和舌头是同一本性的两个器官。安住在你生命那单纯而高贵的领域里，听从你的心，你就会重现那太古的世界。 四、正如我们的宗教、我们的教育、我们的艺术都向外张望，我们的社会精神也是如此。人人都以社会的改进自夸，却没有一个人改进。 社会从不前进。它在一边得到多少，就在另一边同样快地后退多少。它经历着不断的变化；它野蛮过，开化过，基督教化过，富裕过，科学化过；但这种变化并不是改良。每给予一样东西，就拿走一样东西。社会获得了新的技艺，失去了旧的本能。一个衣着体面、能读能写能思考、口袋里装着一块表、一支铅笔和一张汇票的美国人，与一个赤身裸体的新西兰人相比，是多么鲜明的对照！后者的财产是一根棍棒、一支长矛、一张席子和一间供睡觉的棚屋里未分割的二十分之一。可是比一比这两个人的健康，你就会看到，白人已经失去了他原初的力气。如果旅行者告诉我们的是实话，那么用一把宽斧砍那野蛮人一下，一两天之内，肉就会长合、愈好，就像你那一斧砍进了软沥青里；而同样的一击，却会把白人送进坟墓。 文明人造了马车，却失去了双脚的用处。他有拐杖支撑，却缺少了那么多肌肉的支撑。他有一块精美的日内瓦表，却没有了看太阳辨时辰的本领。他有一本格林尼治航海历书，因为确信需要时就能查到，街上的人连天上的一颗星都不认得。他不观察夏至冬至；对春分秋分也知之甚少；一年那整部明亮的历法，在他心里没有一个刻度盘。他的笔记本损害了他的记忆；他的藏书压垮了他的才智；保险公司增加了事故的数目；也许还可以问一问：机器是否成了累赘；我们是否因为精致而失去了一些活力，因为一种在机构和形式中筑起了壕沟的基督教，而失去了一些野性美德的劲头。因为每一个斯多葛派都是斯多葛派；可是在基督教世界里，基督徒在哪里呢？ 道德的标准，并不比身高或体积的标准有更多的偏差。如今的伟人并不比从前任何时候的更伟大。在最早的时代和最晚的时代的伟人之间，可以看到一种奇特的平等；十九世纪的全部科学、艺术、宗教和哲学，也不能培养出比普鲁塔克笔下的英雄们更伟大的人，而那些英雄生活在二十三四个世纪之前。人类并不是在时间中进步的。福基翁、苏格拉底、阿那克萨戈拉、第欧根尼，都是伟人，可是他们身后没有留下一个流派。真正属于他们那一类的人，不会以他们的名字被称呼，而会做他自己，并且轮到他时，成为一个宗派的创始人。每个时代的技艺和发明，只是它的服装，并不能使人强健。改进了的机器带来的害处，也许抵得上它的好处。哈得孙和白令驾着他们的渔船所完成的事业，令帕里和富兰克林惊叹，而后两人的装备用尽了科学和技艺的资源。伽利略用一架观剧望远镜，发现了一系列比后来任何人所发现的都更辉煌的天象。哥伦布驾着一艘没有甲板的船发现了新大陆。看到那些几年前或几个世纪前在高声赞美中引进的手段和机器周期性地被弃置、消亡，是件有趣的事。伟大的天才回归到本质的人。我们曾把战争技艺的改进算作科学的胜利，可是拿破仑却靠露营征服了欧洲，而露营就是退回到赤裸的勇气，卸掉它一切的辅助。拉斯卡斯说，皇帝认为，要建立一支完美的军队是不可能的，“除非废除我们的武器、弹药库、军需官和车辆，直到仿照罗马人的习惯，士兵领取自己的那份谷物，用手磨磨好，自己烤面包。” 社会是一道波浪。波浪向前移动，组成它的水却并不移动。同一个水粒并不从波谷升上波峰。它的统一只是现象上的。今天组成一个国家的人，明年就死了，他们的经验也随他们而去。 所以，对财产的依赖，包括对保护财产的政府的依赖，就是缺乏自立。人们把目光从自己身上移开、投向外物，已经太久了，以致他们把宗教的、学术的和公民的机构都看作财产的卫兵，反对对这些机构的攻击，因为他们觉得那是对财产的攻击。他们衡量彼此的尊重，是看每个人有什么，而不是看每个人是什么。可是一个有修养的人，出于对自己本性的新的尊重，会为自己的财产感到羞愧。尤其是当他看到他所拥有的东西是偶然得来的——通过继承、赠予或罪行来到他手中——他就憎恨它；于是他觉得那不算拥有；它不属于他，在他身上没有根，只是因为没有哪场革命或哪个强盗把它拿走，才躺在那里。可是一个人的所是，必然总在获得，而一个人所获得的，是活的财产，它不等候统治者、暴民、革命、火灾、风暴或破产的召唤，而是无论这个人在哪里呼吸，都永远在自我更新。哈里发阿里说：“你的命运或你一生的份额正在寻找你；所以，不必再去寻找它了。”我们对这些外在财物的依赖，使我们奴性地崇拜数目。政党召开人数众多的大会；聚集的人越多，每一次新的宣告声越响——“埃塞克斯代表团到！”“新罕布什尔的民主党人到！”“缅因的辉格党人到！”——那年轻的爱国者就觉得自己又多了一千双眼睛和手臂，比以前更强大了。同样，改革家们召集大会，以众多的人数投票、决议。朋友们，不是这样的！上帝不会屈尊进入你们、住在你们里面，除非用恰恰相反的方法。只有当一个人卸下一切外来的支持、独自站立时，我才看到他是强大的，会获胜的。他的旗帜下每多一个新兵，他就更弱一分。一个人难道不比一个城镇更好吗？不向人们求任何东西，在无尽的变迁之中，你这唯一坚定的柱子，必定很快就会显现为你周围一切的支柱。一个人若知道力量是天生的，知道他之所以弱，是因为他在自身之外、在别处寻求善，并且有了这样的觉悟，就毫不犹豫地投身于自己的思想，他就会立刻纠正自己，挺直站立，指挥自己的四肢，创造奇迹；正如一个用双脚站立的人，比一个用头倒立的人更强壮一样。 所以，要这样运用一切所谓的命运。大多数人同她赌博，随着她的轮子转动，赢得一切，又输掉一切。可是你要把这些赢来的东西当作不正当的放到一边，去同原因和结果——上帝的大臣们——打交道。在意志中工作、获取，你就锁住了机运之轮，从此可以坐着，不再害怕它的旋转。一场政治胜利，租金的上涨，你生病的亲人康复了，你远行的朋友归来了，或者别的什么顺遂的事，会使你精神振奋，你以为好日子正在为你准备着。不要相信它。除了你自己，没有什么能给你带来安宁。除了原则的胜利，没有什么能给你带来安宁。