Subject: [Depfis] Humboldt, animal...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:58:54 -0300

Hola a todos, 
 
Un buen amigo, ex becario de la fundacion Humboldt, me recrimino 
amargamente que hubiera tipeado mal el ilustre nombre, en mi mail  
de felicitacion a Juan Pablo por su premio. 
 
Vaya como desagravio esta bellisima cita de Von Humboldt, que conociera 
gracias a Hernan, incluida en el libro de Noam Chomsky "The Chomsky reader", 
New York, Pantheon, 1987: 

"Man never regards what he possesses as much his own as what he does; and 
the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner,  
than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits... In view of this  
consideration, it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be  
elevated into artists: that is, men who 
love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic 
genius and inventinve skills, and thereby cultivate their intellect,  
ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures.  
And so humanity  would be ennobled by 
the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often 
degrade it... But still freedom is undoubtely the indispensable  
condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to  
individual human nature  can never proceed in producing such salutary  
influences.  Whatever does not spring from a a man's free choice,  
or is only the result of instruction and guidance 
does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature: 
he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical 
exactness.... we admire what he does, but despise what he is." 
  
Wilhelm Von HUmboldt 

un cordial saludo, 
 
Gabriel