R. W. B. Lewis The American Adam: Innocence ... - UK-Online
R. W. B. Lewis The American Adam: Innocence ... - UK-Online
R. W. B. Lewis The American Adam: Innocence ... - UK-Online
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Hawthorne <strong>The</strong> House of the Seven Gables „If each generation were allowed and expected to build<br />
its own houses, that single change, comparatively unimportant in itself, would imply almost every<br />
reform which society is now suffering for. I doubt whether even our public edifices our capitols,<br />
statehouses, courthouses, city-halls and churches ought to be built of such permanent materials as<br />
stone or brick. It were better that they should crumble to ruin once in twenty years or thereabouts, as<br />
a hint to people to examine and reform the institutions which they symbolise.“<br />
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and<br />
detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish<br />
in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the<br />
alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. <strong>The</strong> intellect is a<br />
cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with<br />
my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet” (71).<br />
“All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant” (12).<br />
“Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the<br />
wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the<br />
wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if<br />
the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the<br />
greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as<br />
the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it<br />
imparts to it” (87).<br />
“By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all<br />
things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either<br />
the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical<br />
exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me<br />
much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and<br />
affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as<br />
from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a<br />
part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking<br />
note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over,<br />
the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was<br />
concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes” (94).<br />
“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were<br />
permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by<br />
slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and<br />
secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our<br />
lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of<br />
them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmers door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the<br />
clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. <strong>The</strong> birds with their<br />
plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with<br />
the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they<br />
reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth” (136).<br />
“If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual<br />
phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our