Essays: First Series
History | Ralph Waldo Emerson
|爱默生历史
There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all: And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere.
I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain.
历史
创造万物的灵魂,
心目中大小不分,
所到之处万物生,
五湖四海留行踪。
我拥有整个儿地球,
也把七星和太阳年占有,
还有凯撒的手和柏拉图的头脑,
基督的心和莎士比亚的诗稿。
ESSAY I History
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world.
This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We as we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and depravations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaning for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, 'Under this mask did my Proteus nature hide itself.' This remedies the defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into perspective: and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance, and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Catiline.
The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. Every thing tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the point of view from which history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens and London to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, and if England or Egypt have any thing to say to him, he will try the case; if not, let them for ever be silent. He must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome, are passing already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign? London and Paris and New York must go the same way. "What is History," said Napoleon, "but a fable agreed upon?" This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colonization, Church, Court, and Commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind.
随笔 I 历史History
对所有的个人来说,存在着一个共同的心灵。每一个人都是一个入口,通向这同一个心灵,以及它的各个方面。一个人一旦获得了理性的权利,他就成为拥有全部财富的自由人。柏拉图思考过的,他也可以思考;圣徒感受到的,他也可以感受;任何时候任何人的遭遇,他都能够理解。谁一旦进入这一普遍的心灵,谁就参与了一切现有的或可行的活动,因为这是独一无二、至高无上的力量。
历史是这一心灵工作的记录。它的精神由整个一连串的岁月来阐明。人只有靠他的全部历史来做出解释。不慌不忙,无止无息,人的精神从一开始出发就把属于它的每一种本领、每一种思想、每一种感情,体现在适当的事件中了。然而思想总是先于事实,所有的历史事实都以规律的形式预先存在于心灵里。反过来,每一条规律又是由起主导作用的环境造成的,而自然的限制只能一次使一个规律发挥作用。一个人是一整部事实的百科全书。一千座森林的创造包孕在一颗橡实里,而埃及、希腊、罗马、高卢、不列颠、美国,已经蕴藏在第一个人身上了。一个时代又一个时代,野营、王国、帝国、共和国、民主国,仅仅是把一个人多方面的精神应用到这个多方面的世界上罢了。
这个人的心灵写出了历史,这个人的心灵又必须阅读历史。斯芬克司必须解她自己的谜。如果全部历史体现在一个人身上,那么全部历史就需要从个人经历的角度来解释了。我们一生中的时时刻刻与千秋万代都息息相关。我所呼吸的空气是从大自然的仓库里吸取来的,我书上的亮光是从亿万英里之遥的星球上发出来的,我身体的均衡依赖于离心力和向心力的平衡,同样的道理,时刻应当受时代的指导,时代应当被时刻来说明。所以每一个个人是普遍心灵的又一个化身。它的所有特点都表现在他身上。他个人经历中的每一件新鲜事情都闪现着千千万万人的所作所为,而他生活中的危机又与民族危机休戚相连。每一场革命最初都是一个人心灵里的一种思想,一旦同一种思想在另一个人的心灵里出现,那对于这个时代就至关重要了。每一次改革原先只是一种个人的见解,一旦它又成为一种个人的见解,它就会解决那个时代的问题。别人叙述过的事实必须符合我身上的某种情况,才显得可信,可以理解。在读书的时候,我们必须变成希腊人、罗马人、土耳其人、教士和国王、殉道者和刽子手,必须把这些形象拴到我们秘密经历中的某种实体上,否则我们就不能正确地学到任何东西。哈斯德鲁巴或恺撒·波吉亚的遭遇跟我们的遭遇一样,都是关于这心灵的能力和堕落的一种例证。每一种新的法律和政治运动对你来说都是有意义的。你就站在它的每一个旗号前说:“在这个面具下面隐藏着我的普洛透斯式的性格。”这就纠正了我们太接近自己的这一毛病。这就使我们的行为客观逼真地展现出来:螃蟹、山羊、蝎子、秤、水壶,用做黄道十二宫的标志时,一下子成了非同小可的东西,同样的道理,在所罗门、亚西比德、喀提林这样一些古人身上,我能够冷静地看到我自己的罪恶。
这个世界之所以存在,就是为了教育每一个人。历史上没有一个时代,没有一个社会形态,没有一个行为方式,不跟每个人的生活有某种相符之处的。每一件事物都倾向于用奇妙的方式缩略自己,并把自己的优点贡献给每一个人。他应当看到他可以亲身体验历史。他必须足不出户,免受国王、帝国欺凌之苦,却知道他比世界上的一切地理、一切政府都要伟大;他必须把普通读史的观点从罗马、雅典和伦敦转移到自己身上,他必须确信他就是法庭,如果英国或埃及有话要对他说,他就要审判这个案件;如果没有,就让它们永远保持沉默。他必须养成并保持那种高尚的见地,事实从此透露出它们秘密的含义,诗歌与编年史也会如此。在我们利用重大的历史记载的时候,心灵的本能、自然的目的就会暴露无遗。时间把事实峥嵘的棱角化为闪光的以太。没有一个铁锚,没有一个巨缆,没有一个篱笆会使一个事实永远也是一个事实。巴比伦、特洛伊、推罗、巴勒斯坦,甚至早期的罗马,都已经快成为虚构的故事了。伊甸园,日头停在基遍,后来已成为世界各国的诗歌了。当我们已经把事实制成一个星座挂在天空,当成一个不朽的标志时,谁还管什么事实呢?伦敦、巴黎、纽约必须走同一条路。“历史是什么?”拿破仑说,“不过是约定俗成的一则寓言罢了。”我们的生活四周点缀着埃及、希腊、高卢、英国、战争、殖民化、教会、法庭、商业,就像点缀着许多花朵和杂乱无章的装饰品,有的严肃,有的轻佻。对于这些,我无意再做更多的标榜。我相信永恒。我能够在自己的心灵里发现希腊、亚洲、意大利、西班牙和英伦三岛——每个时代和所有时代的天才和创造原理。
对所有的个人来说,存在着一个共同的心灵。每一个人都是一个入口,通向这同一个心灵,以及它的各个方面。 一个人是一整部事实的百科全书。一千座森林的创造包孕在一颗橡实里,而埃及、希腊、罗马、高卢、不列颠、美国,已经蕴藏在第一个人身上了。一个时代又一个时代,野营、王国、帝国、共和国、民主国,仅仅是把一个人多方面的精神应用到这个多方面的世界上罢了。 如果全部历史体现在一个人身上,那么全部历史就需要从个人经历的角度来解释了。 我们一生中的时时刻刻与千秋万代都息息相关。 所以每一个个人是普遍心灵的又一个化身。它的所有特点都表现在他身上。他个人经历中的每一件新鲜事情都闪现着千千万万人的所作所为,而他生活中的危机又与民族危机休戚相连。 每一场革命最初都是一个人心灵里的一种思想,一旦同一种思想在另一个人的心灵里出现,那对于这个时代就至关重要了。每一次改革原先只是一种个人的见解,一旦它又成为一种个人的见解,它就会解决那个时代的问题。别人叙述过的事实必须符合我身上的某种情况,才显得可信,可以理解。
以上万分熟悉,分别对应: 共同的心灵是禅思中心,涅槃中心; 分形原理;禅思的分身与聚焦; 每个人的真正的财富遗产;禅思如黑洞叠加态组合 的特性,如量子纠缠; 推理过推背图是纳兰禅思所致
More familiar with the above, corresponding to:
The common mind is the center of meditation, the center of Nirvana;
Fractal principle;
Meditation and focus of meditation;
Everyone’s true heritage of wealth; meditations such as black hole superposition combinations
Characteristics, such as quantum entanglement;
Reasoning to push back map is caused by Nalan meditation