Home

“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilised, it is Christianised, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. […] The civilised man has built a coach, but has lost the use of feet. He is supported on crutches; but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. […] The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate them. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good.”

Ralph W. Emerson, 1841

Dies ist ein zufällig ausgewähltes Zitat. Hier finden sich alle Zitate.