《英文文学》轩海如歌

15、文章

　　Self-Reliance
　　Ralph Waldo Emerson

　　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 that bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

　　Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place that the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men has always done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

　　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.

　　Who so 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 our own mind.

　　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.

　　A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman 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. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunderstood! It is a right fool\'s word. 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 every took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

　　I hope in these days we heard the last about 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 life. Let us bow and apologize nevermore. 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 moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature... Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time to fully accomplish his though; --and prosperity seem to follow his steps as a procession. A man Caesar 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, 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 biograph of a few stout and earnest persons.

　　解析：
　　这篇文章写于美国独立战争之后的第二次大觉醒，也是即大觉醒后第二次的宗教复兴。这一次的大觉醒推动了很多的改革运动，例如妇女权利，公共教育，还有废除奴隶制度的改革。而Emerson的这篇文章主要讨论的是人们本身的想法和社会的关系。所有人都在追逐潮流，不想被社会遗忘，但是在这之中人们抹去了他们自己的独特性，慢慢地淹没在人海。所以Emerson总结道，“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. ”追逐潮流和保持自我都是非常简单的事情，但是要想同时做到这两者则非常难。而这也是他想让人们去思考的事情，怎么才能找到两者的平衡。还有一点就是，Emerson他非常注重个人。所以里面有很多都是关于每个人的独特性还有思维的忠告。例如不要去考虑别人的眼光，做好你自己，做你想做的事。还有这一句，“you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it”。感觉他文中所提及的事情在现在的社会也是成立的，并且处处可见。从有人会对他人指指点点，很多人也活在他人的观点之下，这一切就如Emerson写道。当然这里也不得不提及他的那句名言：“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. ”这句好再次证明了Emerson对于人们思想的观点。他认为人们独特的想法是这个社会的根基，人们有了想法才会去执行，这样才会建立一个更好的社会。所以他才说：“there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man”