The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. Oliver Wendell Holmes

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СКАЧАТЬ direction look bright or dark to one who observes them from the north or south, according to the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and moralized thus:—

      SUN AND SHADOW.

      As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green,

       To the billows of foam-crested blue,

       Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,

       Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:

       Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray

       As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;

       Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,

       The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

      Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun—

       Of breakers that whiten and roar;

       How little he cares, if in shadow or sun

       They see him that gaze from the shore!

       He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,

       To the rock that is under his lee,

       As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,

       O’er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

      Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves

       Where life and its ventures are laid,

       The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves

       May see us in sunshine or shade;

       Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark,

       We’ll trim our broad sail as before,

       And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,

       Nor ask how we look from the shore!

      —Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are called religious mental disturbances. I confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his discredit in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions are? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races—anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated—no matter by what name you call it—no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it—if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a normal one, under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of human beings, they would become non-compotes at once.

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