“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 attention—an ancient poet, a fact in science, or an event in the morning newspaper—he 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 Emerson’s 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 man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other,”which “evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.”This is the incentive—the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which is ours by nature and by divine intention—that 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 because he thought Fourier “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 up—not 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.
译文:
哲学与爱默生（节选）
（本次寒素因大赛的英译汉部分，这段时间为此纠结了许久，拿来和大家分享~）
马修·阿诺德曾这样评价爱默生，“他，是活在精神世界里的人们的良师益友。”也许，这句名言正是对爱默生哲学思想所产生影响的最佳阐释，尽管他的哲学理念大胆而又零乱，有时显得模棱两可，但是却能带来充满力量而又鼓舞人心的影响。
爱默生出生于一个历史久远的新英格兰教牧师家庭，然而，即便面对当时最开明的宗教教义他也深感束缚。为此，他大胆却不失风度地走下讲坛，秉持着自己的兴趣或是言论，成为了当时最伟大的世俗布道者。在大学时代，爱默生就写了关于《论道德哲学现状》的论文，从那以后他就一直专注于思考行为问题：无论他关注的是什么——一位古代诗人，一个科学真相，或是晨报中的一则新闻报道，他都试图从中截取精华，并以其清脆闪耀的文风将其升华为布道宣言，指引人们通向更高境界也更为独立的人生。
在历史上，爱默生是反对其先人加尔文主义的最强劲力量之一。加尔文主义严苛的教条宣扬人性堕落，否定人性自然、自主地趋于完美的可能性，倡导人们通过饥渴不懈地努力来获取非分福报以跻身完美之列的必要性。然而，爱默生从一开始就认为，如果一个人能拥有自我的完美本性，那他就是世上最具神性的产物。爱默生反对加尔文主义所谓的一个人越是摆脱自我，就越接近完美的观点（因此只有仰仗上帝的慈悲才能趋于完美），而是认为如果一个人越是趋于完美，那么他就越是接近自我。我们常会听说，当一个人深受一段恢弘的音乐或是动人的演讲所触动时，就会感叹道“那真像是让我灵魂出了窍”。但是爱默生却可能会说，正是那些影响将我们真正带入了自己的内心世界。
爱默生反复提到的一个最基本的观点就是，“正如地球安枕于大气温软的怀抱那样，人类休憩于伟大的自然之中。”有一个“超灵（又称为普遍的灵魂），包含了人类每个单独个体的灵魂，并将他们相互融合，源源不断地融入我们的思维和行动，形成智慧、道德、力量和美”。它是一种动力——一种驱使我们去追求那上天注定与生俱来的完美的极致动力，爱默生对它寄予厚望，也由此要求我们遵循自我本性以及所有那些能够启发这些本性的外在影响。
自然，在爱默生看来“总是吸引着人性中最美好的部分”，它无处不在，通过在我们周围呈现各种简单质朴的表象，引导我们去感知那些深邃广袤的宇宙之理。“人必须意识到即便是系鞋带这样的小事也与自然界中最为深远奥妙的领域紧密相联”，这样才能做到“大千世界系于一心”。无论是一个伟大的科学家，通过发现了一项重大的物理法则从而影响世界的发展；还是一位诗人，将树木喻为“不完美的人”，“为它们自己扎根泥土、失去自由而黯然神伤”，他们都在此刻，通过“认知自然物质，不管这种物质有无生命，对心灵带来的崇高而又深刻的影响”，而真正回归到自我的本性之中。
爱默生迅疾地穿梭于时间和空间之中，将那些常人看来毫不相干的人名和事物相互联系，从而让“历史”也来见证人类信赖自己，忠实直觉的必要性。他认为，对学生而言尤其需要这种独立性，因为他们很容易被历史上那些伟大的名号所震慑，并且“一读就信，认为是理所当然”。但如果我们能坚守自我，那这样的事就不该，也不可能发生。因此，当我们发现自己从心底无法认同历史上的观点的时候，爱默生就提出，我们必须与它决裂，不管那些历史缔造者们的威望有多么显赫。但是，历史并不会经常让我们失望，在我们完善自我的过程中，历史往往会助我们一臂之力。因为，历史上有许多天才，鉴于他们能够愈加清晰地意识到自我与“超灵”的联系，所以事实上，他们比我们更接近人的自我本性。因而，我们常常不得不选择让那些更具天赋的人替我们阐明内心难以言表的思想。然而，任何杰出精湛的表述都不该让我们感到自卑，或是气馁，而应在我们内心重新树立这样的观念“不管是作者还是读者，读到的都是同一个自然。”所以，在以游历或任何其他方式与”历史”交流时，我们只有牢记“世界无他，唯人而已”，才能从中获益博采。
“社会”对我们也有相同的帮助。与“自然”和“历史”相比，在社会中我们能从其他人身上更直观地看到相似的自我本性，并且通过认识这些相似之处，还会启发我们思考：一位挚友“更应被视为是自然的杰作”。然而在其他场合，爱默生却曾不止一次地力劝我们不要“过从甚密”——在与朋友相处时，尽管我们彼此之间尊重礼让意气相投，但是一定要避免亦步亦趋，相互仿效。我们必须将社会中人与人之间的情谊用来重新激发而非混淆“对自己恢宏命运的思考”。
以上，我们尽可能有条理地展现了一些爱默生津津乐道的观点，无论他的文章涉及何种主题，这些观点都反复出现贯穿其中。尽管从某种程度上来说，爱默生在当时所参加的各种运动都没有对社会造成很大的或是永久性的影响，但当今天我们再读爱默生的文章时，却会惊奇地发现他的思想很少受到时代和地域的限制。在他的文章中，常常会有整段整段的文字，如果我们用希腊语去阅读，就会感觉像是用希腊文写成的。爱默生认为傅立叶“关注了所有事实，却惟独忽略了生命”，这种清晰的见地让他与“布鲁克农场派”划清界线，也使他的哲学思想不至于像其他同时代的各种思潮一样，为二十一世纪所忘记。这种良好的判断力也贯穿于他的论文之中，自然地为他从那些世间永恒的事物中挑选了各种主题，如友谊、真理、迷信和荣耀，从而形成了他那“天马行空、包罗万象的思考内容”。所以说，普遍性是爱默生哲学强大生命力的源泉之一。
爱默生哲学生命力的另一个来源，是他那及其简洁凝练的写作风格，以及视野开阔、出人意表的表述方式。实际上，他在妙语警句方面的造诣犹如神赐，以至于我们在阅读时甚至会渴望偶尔能享受片刻平淡无奇的慢条斯理、轻松悠闲。然而，爱默生却总是可以让我们亢奋不已——这不仅是由于他的表达方式令人惊叹，还因为他的文风简洁凝练令人印象深刻。他喜欢纵今博古，用简短精练的语句将一些通常情况下毫不相干的名字联系到一起，将异教徒和基督徒，凡夫俗子和圣贤神明相提并论，如“西庇阿、席德、菲利普·悉尼、华盛顿和所有纯洁勇敢的心灵，他们都用语言或是行为表达了对美的尊崇。”
尽管爱默生的哲学思想具备以上种种值得称道的特点，但他的思想却看起来太过含混不清，不成体系，让那些有意成为爱默生主义者的人们非常失望，对他们而言，也许只要能签署一点点明确的契约条文，他们就能成为爱默生的门徒。但是我们必须记住的是，爱默生所希望培养的，是精神上的独立而非使徒般的虔诚；并且当人们因为一个体系太过绝对、压抑而选择彻底与其决裂时，往往会走向另一个极端。而爱默生就走向了这样一个极端，并成就了一段引人瞩目的开拓思想的热潮。他的不成体系和不拘一格正体现出了他的信念：对一个哲学体系而言，重要的并非精确的术语，诡辩的技巧，和详尽的论证，以至于如此周密严谨、无懈可击让人顶礼膜拜；相反，一套真正的哲学体系，能指引我们每一个人驾着只属于自己的马车驰骋夜空，驶向心底那颗最闪耀的星星。