尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生/Ralph Waldo Emerson
尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生（1803—1882），美国思想家、诗人和散文家。生于波士顿牧师家庭，毕业于波士顿à-丁学校和哈佛大学。21岁时成为神职人员，不久便对基督教产生怀疑，1832年辞职远游，遍访欧洲文化名人。曾经深入研究过荷马、柏拉图、但丁、蒙田和莎士比亚。代表作有《论自然》、《美国学者》、《神学院致辞》、《散文选》和《诗集》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，也不能被复制。生命的整体一旦被破坏就会引起混乱。灵魂不是孪生儿，而是独生苗。虽然它早晚都要像婴儿那样被孕育成熟，长得也像婴儿，却有着一种无敌的力量能决定命运，不会接受同一个生命。生命有着一种唯我独尊的神圣，这种神圣无须掩盖，每一天都显露在人们的举手投足之中。我们对自己深信不疑，同时去怀疑他人。我们可以让自己为所欲为，但同样的事，别人做，我们称之为罪孽，我们只要自己来实验。我们充满自信的一个例子就是：人们从来不像他们想象的那样蔑视罪恶。换句话说，人人都为自己想好一个不受约束的自由，而这个自由是不能让别人来享用的。
行为从内在和外表，从性质和后果去看，各有不同。凶手行凶时所抱的意图绝不像诗人以及传奇作家所描述的那样伤天害理，通常人们也觉察不出他心神不宁或诚惶诚恐的蛛丝马迹。行凶一事并不难谋划，但去考虑后果的话，它却能愈演愈烈，发出一系列叮当作响的恐怖声，把一切的关联都破坏。尤其是爱情所激发的罪行，从施罪者的角度看，似乎一切都理所当然，但一旦发生毕竟贻害社会。然而，还是没有人会最终相信犯罪的人是迷失了自我，也没有人会认为那罪行如同重罪犯的所为那么恶不可赦。这是因为，就我们自身的情形而言，智力修正着道义判断，在智力的眼中，世上万事并无罪过。智力是反律法主义或超律法主义的，它判断着法律就像判断着事实一样。