Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

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I perceive my friends are uneasy—“Take care,” they say, “an Idée fixe is dangerous.”

But is it quite certain that an Idée fixe is always harmful? Have they never seen a man wandering in a forest without any fixed determination to quit it? Is it credible that our first parents had no fixed idea of discovering the import towards themselves, of the vast world in which they had been placed, knowing nothing of the reason of their position? Equally ignorant of the reason why the sun, the moon, fire, hurricanes, storms, thunder, rivers, mountains existed, always above and around them. The whole of nature itself required to be interrogated. In what way could this settled determination have harmed them? It is true that they are all dead, but determination did not kill them. And their Idée fixe must have been very tenacious and powerful for this thirst for knowledge to have descended with their blood into our own veins; their wish to gain information is reproduced in us; this is the legacy that our fathers have left us, and the singular feature of the legacy is that unlike others, of which the parts are subdivided and diminished, this in its entirety has passed down to each of the milliards and milliards of inheritors.