从书本中走出来，创造

在《美国学者》中，爱默生呼唤年轻人从书本中走出来，去创造。他说：生活就像一座采石场，我们从中采集砖瓦石料，用在自己的创造里。常人怀抱希望，天才却去创造。要用强劲的知识火焰，点燃年轻人的心智，鼓励他们创造。创造是从心灵自身的良知中自然喷涌而出的。

下面是《美国学者》中的一些话：

• 谦和温顺的青年在图书馆里长大，认为他们的职责是去接受西赛罗、洛克、培根的观点，却忘记了一点：当西赛罗、洛克与培根写作这些著作时，自己也不过是图书馆里的年轻人。

• 我们拥有的只是书虫，不是“思想着的人”。我们读书的知识阶层，确实爱书如命，却与自然和人类的天性没有关系，而是在世界与灵魂之外建立起一种“第三类秩序”。于是，便有了各种藏书家、校勘家和狂热的注释学者。

• 书籍使用得当时，它是最好的东西。将它被滥用时，是最坏的东西。怎样才使用得当呢？那使用所有手段才可以达到的唯一目标是什么呢？无非是从中得到启发。我宁可不读书，也不愿意由书的引力把我拖出自己的轨道，以至于我从一个宇宙变成一颗卫星。

• 世上唯一有价值的东西是活跃的心灵。这是每个人都有权享有的，每个人身上都已经包含的，尽管在大多数人的身上，它受到了滞塞，或者还没有诞生。活跃的心灵能看见绝对的真理、说出真理，或者创造。在创造这一动作中，心灵就是天才。它不是少数几个人蒙上天垂赐的特权，而是人人都有的坚实的资产。

• 在本质上，心灵是循序渐进的。书籍、大学、艺术流派和各类机构，都停在了一些天才的某一句过去的话前了。人们说，这样也很好，让我们坚持这一点吧。就这样他们把我钉在了地上。他们总是向后看，而不是向前。然而，天才是向前看的。人的眼睛长在他的前额上，而不是长在脑后。

• 常人总是抱着希望，而天才却去创造。无论一个人的天赋有多高，如果他不创造，那么他就不会拥有上帝智慧的清纯泉涌 —— 或许已经有了煤块与烟雾，但却点不着火焰。这里有创造性的方式、创造性的行动和创造性的言词。这些方式、动作和言辞，并是传统习俗或权威的反映，而是从心灵对“善与公平”的感知中自然喷涌而出的。

• 当然，对一个聪明的学生，一些阅读材料是必不可少的。比如历史与精确的自然科学，他就必须通过艰辛的阅读才能学会。与此相仿，大学也有各种不可或缺的部门，教给学生基础知识。但是，大学要更好地为我们服务，目标就不能是简单的练习，而是创造。它们必须把各种各样的天才聚集到它们宜人的校园里，再用高度聚焦的火焰，点燃他们年轻的心。

• 一个学者，即使是为了寻找一个词汇，他也应当贪婪地行动。生活是我们的字典。我们将会过得很好，在乡间的劳动中，在城镇中，在对各种商业与制造业的深入观察中，在与那里众多男女的开诚布公的交往中，在科学中，在艺术中。掌握所有这些东西的唯一目的是，掌握一门语言，用它来描绘和呈现我们的感受和看法。从一个人言谈的贫穷和华丽上，我立刻就可以看出，他是否充分地生活过。我们身后的生活，就像一座采石场，我们从中可以采集砖瓦石料，用于我们今天的建筑。这正是学习语法的方法。田野和工场创造语言，而大学与书籍仅仅是抄录它们。

• 耐心，再耐心 —— 和所有善良的人、伟大的人的身影呆在一起。我们的安慰是无限宽广的生活远景，我们的工作是研究和传播原理，让人的本能普及开来，让世界改变。人生在世，如若不能兀自独立，被人当作有个性的人看待，或者不能结出应有的果实，反而与众人混为一体，被人成千上万地笼统评估，以我们所属的政党或地域人口来计算，以地理分布来预测我们的意见，称我们为北方或南方 —— 这岂不是莫大的耻辱？不能这样，兄弟们和朋友们 —— 上天作证，我们不希望这样。我们要用自己的脚走路；我们要用自己的手来工作；我们要发表自己的意见。

从书本中走出来，进行创造，这确实是我们教育的终极目标。只有创造，才会有我们的未来。这是爱默生代表时代发出的呼唤。

参考文献

• 拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生，论自然·美国学者，译者：赵一凡，生活·读书·新知三联书店，2015

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, The American Scholar，1841，网页链接

附录：美国学者英文原文

• 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.
• Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
• Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.
• Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
• The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man.
• In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,–let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead:
• man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his;–cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind’s own sense of good and fair
• Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,–to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.
• If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town,–in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.
• Patience,–patience;–with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace, the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work, the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit;–not to be reckoned one character;–not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and friends,–please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.