爾夫·沃爾多·愛默生/Ralph Waldo Emerson
爾夫·沃爾多·愛默生（1803—1882），美國思想家、詩人和散文家。生於波士頓牧師家庭，畢業於波士頓à-丁學校和哈佛大學。21歲時成為神職人員，不久便對基督教產生懷疑，1832年辭職遠遊，遍訪歐洲文化名人。曾經深入研究過荷馬、柏拉圖、但丁、蒙田和莎士比亞。代表作有《論自然》、《美國學者》、《神學院致辭》、《散文選》和《詩集》等。
Life will be imaged,but cannot be divided nor doubled.Any invasion of its unity would be chaos.The soul is not twin-born,but the only beg otten,and though revealing itself as child in time,child in appearance,is of a fatal and universal power,admitting no co-life.Every day,ev ery act betrays the ill-concealed deity.We believe in ourselves,as we do not believe in others.We permit all things to ourselves,and that wh ich we call sin in others,is experiment for us.It is an instance of ou r faith in ourselves,that men never speak of crime as lightly as they t hink,or,every man thinks a latitude safe for himself,which is nowise to be indulged to another.
The act looks very differently on the inside,and on the outside;in its quality,and its consequences.Murder in the murderer is no such rui nous thought as poets and romancers will have it;it does not unsettle h im,or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles:it is an act quit e easy to be contemplated,but in its sequel,it turns out to be a horri ble jangle and confounding all relations.Especially the crimes that spr ing from love,seem right and fair from the actor's point of view,but,when acted,are found destructive of society.No man at last believes th at he can be lost,nor that the crime in him is as black as in the felon.Because the intellect qualifies in our own case the moral judgments.F or there is no crime to the intellect.That is antinomian or hypernomian,and judges law as well as fact.
生命可以被想象，但是不能被割裂，也不能被複製。生命的整體一旦被破壞就會引起混亂。靈魂不是孿生兒，而是獨生苗。雖然它早晚都要像嬰兒那樣被孕育成熟，長得也像嬰兒，卻有著一種無敵的力量能決定命運，不會接受同一個生命。生命有著一種唯我獨尊的神聖，這種神聖無須掩蓋，每一天都顯露在人們的舉手投足之中。我們對自己深信不疑，同時去懷疑他人。我們可以讓自己為所欲為，但同樣的事，別人做，我們稱之為罪孽，我們隻要自己來實驗。我們充滿自信的一個例子就是：人們從來不像他們想象的那樣蔑視罪惡。換句話說，人人都為自己想好一個不受約束的自由，而這個自由是不能讓別人來享用的。
行為從內在和外表，從性質和後果去看，各有不同。凶手行凶時所抱的意圖絕不像詩人以及傳奇作家所描述的那樣傷天害理，通常人們也覺察不出他心神不寧或誠惶誠恐的蛛絲馬跡。行凶一事並不難謀劃，但去考慮後果的話，它卻能愈演愈烈，發出一係列叮當作響的恐怖聲，把一切的關聯都破壞。尤其是愛情所激發的罪行，從施罪者的角度看，似乎一切都理所當然，但一旦發生畢竟貽害社會。然而，還是沒有人會最終相信犯罪的人是迷失了自我，也沒有人會認為那罪行如同重罪犯的所為那麽惡不可赦。這是因為，就我們自身的情形而言，智力修正著道義判斷，在智力的眼中，世上萬事並無罪過。智力是反律法主義或超律法主義的，它判斷著法律就像判斷著事實一樣。