哲学与爱默生间的较量.doc

原文：Philosophy vs. Emerson (Excerpt)“HE is,” said Matthew Arnold of Emerson, “the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit.” These well-known words are perhaps the best expression of the somewhat vague yet powerful and inspiring effect of Emerson,s courageous but disjointed philosophy.Descended from a long line of New England ministers, Emerson, finding himself fettered by even the most liberal ministry of his day, gently yet audaciously stepped down from the pulpit and, with little or no modification in his interests or utterances, became the greatest lay preacher of his time. From the days of his undergraduate essay upon “The Present State of Ethical Philosophy” he continued to be preoccupied with matters of conduct: whatever the object of his attentionan ancient poet, a fact in science, or an event in the morning newspaperhe contrives to extract from it a lesson which in his ringing, glistening style he drives home as an exhortation to a higher and more independent life.Historically, Emerson marks one of the largest reactions against the Calvinism of his ancestors. That stern creed had taught the depravity of man, the impossibility of a natural, unaided growth toward perfection, and the necessity of constant and anxious effort to win the unmerited reward of being numbered among the elect. Emerson starts with the assumption that the individual, if he can only come into possession of his natural excellence, is the most godlike of creatures. Instead of believing with the Calvinist that as a man grows better he becomes more unlike his natural self (and therefore can become better only by an act of divine mercy), Emerson believes that as a man grows in excellence he becomes more like his natural self. It is common to hear the expression, when one is deeply stirred, as by sublime music or a moving discourse: “That fairly lifted me out of myself.” Emerson would have said that such influences lift us into ourselves.For one of Emersons most fundamental and frequently recurring ideas is that of a “great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere,” an “Over-Soul, within which every mans particular being is contained and made one with all other,（The phrase originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay by that name）”which “evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.”This is the incentivethe sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which is ours by nature and by divine intentionthat Emerson holds out when he asks us to submit us to ourselves and to all instructive influences.Nature, which he says“is loved by what is best in us,”is all about us, inviting our perception of its remotest and most cosmic principles by surrounding us with its simpler manifestations.“A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions of nature.”Thus man “carries the world in his head.” Whether he be a great scientist, proving by his discovery of a sweeping physical law that he has some such constructive sense as that which guides the universe, or whether he be a poet beholding trees as“imperfect men,”who“seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground,”he is being brought into his own by perceiving “the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of material objects, whether inorganic or organized.”Ranging over time and space with astonishing rapidity and binding names and things together that no ordinary vision could connect, Emerson calls the Past also to witness the need of self-reliance and a steadfast obedience to intuition.The need of such independence, he thought, was particularly great for the student, who so easily becomes overawed by the great names of the Past and reads “to believe and take for granted.”This should not be, nor can it be if we remember what we are. When we sincerely find, therefore, that we cannot agree with the Past, then, says Emerson, we must break with it, no matter how great the prestige of its messengers. But often the Past does not disappoint us; often it assists us in our quest to become our highest selves. For in the Past there have been many men of genius; and, inasmuch as the man of genius has come nearer to being continually conscious of his relation to the Over-Soul, it follows that the genius is actually more ourselves than we are. So we often have to fall back upon more gifted souls to interpret for us what we mean but cannot say. Any supreme triumph of expression, therefore, should arouse in us not humility, still less discouragement, but renewed consciousness that “one nature wrote and the same reads.”So it is in travel or in any other form of contact with the Past: we cannot derive any profit or see any new thing except we remember that “the world is nothing, the man is all.”Similar are the uses of Society. More clearly than in Nature or in the Past, we see in certain other people such likeness to ourselves, and receive from the perception of that likeness such inspiration, that a real friend “may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”Yet elsewhere Emerson has more than once urged us not to be “too much acquainted”: all our participation in the life of our fellows, though rich with courtesy and sympathy, must be free from bending and copying. We must use the fellowship of Society to freshen, and never to obscure,“the recollection of the grandeur of our destiny.”Such, in some attempt at an organization, are a few of Emerson, s favorite ideas, which occur over and over again, no matter what may be the subject of the essay. Though Emerson was to some degree identified, in his own time, with various movements which have had little or no permanent effect, yet as we read him now we find extraordinarily little that suggests the limitations of his time and locality. Often there are whole paragraphs which if we had read them in Greek would have seemed Greek. The good sense which kept him clear of Brook Farm布鲁克农场because he thought Fourier (Charles Fourier，1772年 - 1837，是法国著名哲学家，经济学家，空想社会主义者。和谐社会概念最早由法国思想家傅立叶(Charles Fourier，1827)提出，他描绘了这样一种制度图景：上天赋予人们的各种欲望是协调的，必须得到满足。欲望的需要把整个世界组织、协调起来，形成一种和谐制度，使妇女彻底解放，使个人幸福与一切人的幸福相一致，人们沉浸在自己的情欲与爱好之中。) “had skipped no fact but one, namely life,”kept him clear from many similar departures into matters which the twenty-first century will probably not remember. This is as it should be in the essay, which by custom draws the subject for its “dispersed meditations”from the permanent things of this world, such as Friendship, Truth, Superstition, and Honor. One of Emerson, s sources of strength, therefore, is his universality.Another source of Emerson, s strength is his extraordinary compactness of style and his range and unexpectedness of illustration. His gift for epigram is, indeed, such as to make us long for an occasional stretch of leisurely commonplace. But Emerson always keeps us upnot less by his memorable terseness than by his startling habit of illustration. He loves to dart from the present to the remotest past, to join names not usually associated, to link pagan with Christian, or human with divine, in single rapid sentences, such as that about “Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who worshiped Beauty by word or by deed.”If, in spite of all these admirable qualities, Emerson, s ideas seem too vague and unsystematic to satisfy those who feel that they could perhaps become Emersonians if there were only some definite articles to sign, it must be remembered that Emerson wishes to develop independence rather than apostleship, and that when men revolt from a system because they believe it to be too definite and oppressive, they are likely to go to the other extreme. That Emerson did go so far toward this extreme identifies him with a period notable for its enthusiastic expansion of thought. That he did not systematize or restrict means that he was obedient to the idea that what really matters is not that by exact terminology, clever tactics and all the niceties of reasoning a system of philosophy shall be made tight and impregnable for others to adopt, but rather that each of us may be persuaded to hitch his own particular wagon to whatever star for him shines brightest. 我的译文：哲学与爱默生间的较量马修.阿诺德有句名言，说爱默生“有益于人类精神生活。”此话不假，爱默生隐晦的哲学断想中充满了勇气，力量和启示。爱默生曾是一名新英格牧师。这一当时最自由的职务仍令他倍感束缚。于是，他勇敢地走下神坛，优雅从容，兴趣不改，言谈不变，成为了当时最伟大的在俗传道员。他写过关于“道德哲学现状”的毕业论文，并从此钻研起人的品行：古代诗人、科学事实、或晨报新闻都能启发他写出琅琅上口的隽语以激励世人追求更高尚独立的生活。历史上，爱默生是反加尔文主义运动的标志性人物。此严苛教义倍受其先人推崇，认为人生而堕落，无外力相助弗能自然趋于完善，凡觊觎蒙主恩赐，灵魂获救者，须不懈努力，潜心忏悔。爱默生假说人若尽具其才，则堪比万物之神。加尔文主义认为完人舍其本（于是乎莫有天佑，弗能趋善也），爱默生不以为然，认为完人近其本。世人深感于仙乐雄辞之时，常道因之“灵魂出窍”，爱默生则以此为“灵魂入窍”。爱默生认为“人栖身自然，如地球栖身大气超灵包容每个人，并使之合一”，它“试图进入我们的思想，从而化为智与德，力与美。”爱默生望我辈听从自我及一切具有指导性的影响力，为此反复提及上述基本观点。此观点令人赞叹，它顺应自然，遵照神旨，激励人们追求完美。他认为，自然乃“人心至善所向”。自然之理，关乎众人，或小或大，皆寓于无所不在的自然现象之中。“自然之理寓于细枝末节。”世人当“心怀世界”：一个重大物理学发现可以证明某个大科学家统领宇宙的建设感；树木在诗人笔下成了“不