Part 8 (1/2)
”But while I believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of G.o.d; that it was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life--if I be superst.i.tious enough (as thank G.o.d I am) to hold that Creed, shall I not believe that though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have had a general in Heaven; and that in spite of all their sins the hosts of our forefathers were the hosts of G.o.d?”--_Charles Kingsley_.
CHAPTER XI.
INFLUENCE, AND THE STRATEGIC ELEMENT IN OPPORTUNITY.
The history of a Jewish battle includes a dramatic incident. In the thick of the fight an officer brought to one of his soldiers an important prisoner. ”Keep thou this man,” said he, ”with the utmost vigilance. Upon his person hang the issues of this campaign. His skill in leading the enemy, his courage and treachery have cost our side many lives. If by any means thou shalt suffer him to escape thy life shall be for his life.”
Then, straining more tightly the cords knotted around the prisoner's hands and feet, the officer turned and plunged again into the thick of the fight. From that moment the soldier's one duty was to guard the prisoner whose escape would work such havoc.
Strangely enough, he became negligent. Careless, he leaned his bow and spear against the tent. Hungry, he busied himself with baking a few small cakes. Weary, he cast himself upon the ground, dozing upon his elbow. Suddenly a noise startled his nap. He sprang up just in time to see his prisoner make one leap, then disappear into the thicket.
A concealed knife had cut the thongs. Negligence had let ”slip the dogs of war.” That night when the general returned to his tent he found the prisoner had escaped.
Fronting his master the terror-stricken soldier had no excuse to offer save this; ”While thy servant was busy here and there the man was gone.” Gone opportunity!--and lightning could not equal its swift flight. Gone forever opportunity!--and the wings of seraphim could not overtake and bring it back. Gone honor, gone fidelity, gone good name!--all lost irretrievably. For though dying be long delayed, coming at last death would find the soldier's task unfulfilled. From ”It might have been,” and ”It is too late,” G.o.d save us all! For not Infinity himself can reverse the wheel of events and bring back lost opportunities.
The genius of opportunity lies in its strategic element. In every opportunity two or more forces meet in such a way that the one force so lends itself to the other as momentarily to yield plasticity. Nature is full of these strategic times. Iron pa.s.ses into the furnace cold and unyielding; coming out it quickly cools and refuses the mold; but midway is a moment when fire so lends itself to iron, and iron so yields its force to flame as that the metal flows like water.
This brief plastic moment is the inventor's opportunity, when the metal will take on any shape for use or beauty. Similarly the fields offer a strategic time to the husbandman. In February the soil refuses the plow, the sun refuses heat, the sky refuses rain, the seed refuses growth. In May comes an opportune time when all forces conspire toward harvests; then the sun lends warmth, the clouds lend rain, the air lends ardor, the soil lends juices. Then must the sower go forth and sow, for nature whispers that if he neglects June he will starve in January.
The planets also lend interpretation to this principle. Years ago our nation sent astronomers to Africa to witness the transit of Venus.
Preparations began months beforehand. A s.h.i.+p was fitted up, instruments packed, the ocean crossed, a site selected and the telescopes mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that opportune time when the sun and Venus and earth should all be in line.
That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively each astronomer knew that his eye must be at the small end of the gla.s.s when the planet went scudding by the large end. Once the period of conjunction had pa.s.sed no machinery would offer itself for turning the planet back upon her axis. Not for astronomers only are the opportune times brief. For all men alike, failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives. When nature has fully ripened an opportunity man must stretch out his hand and pluck it. Inventions may be defined as great minds detecting the strategic moment in nature; Galileo finding a lens in the ox's eye; Watt witnessing steam lift an iron lid; Columbus observing an unknown wood drifting upon the sh.o.r.e. To untold mult.i.tudes nature offered these opportune moments for discovery, but only Galileo, Watt and Columbus were ready to seize them. As for the rest, this is our only answer to nature: ”While thy servant was busy here and there, the strategic moment was gone.”
This majestic principle often appears in history. There is a strategy in Providence. Nations, like individuals, have their crisis hours.
Through events G.o.d makes all society plastic, and then raises up some great man to stamp his image and superscription upon the nation's hot and glowing heart. As scholars move back along the pathway of history, they discern in each great epoch these strategic conditions. How opportune the moment when Jesus Christ appeared!
Alexander's march had scattered every whither the seeds of learning; the Greek language had turned the whole world into one great whispering gallery, in which the nations were a.s.sembled; all the provinces around the Mediterranean were linked together by the newly completed system of roads; the Roman judge was in every town to set forth the rights of citizens of the empire; the Roman soldier was there to protect all who brought messages of peace; the long-expected hour had struck. Then Christianity set forth from Bethlehem upon its errand of love. Along every highway ran the eager feet of the messengers of peace and good-will. Events were fully ripe, and soon Christianity was upon the throne of the Caesars.
How strategic that epoch called the fourth century! He who sat in Caesar's palace looked out upon a dying empire. The old race was worn out with war and wine and wealth and luxury. Civilization seemed about to perish, and society was fast sinking back into barbarism. To the north of the Alps were the forest children, ruddy and robust, with their glorious youth full upon them. These young giants needed the dying language and literature and religion, and these great inst.i.tutions needed their young, fresh blood. But between lay the granite walls builded from sea to sea. Now mark what Charles Kingsley called ”the strategy of Providence.” Suddenly a blind impulse fell upon the forest children. Two columns started southward. The one rested upon the North Sea and marched southeast; the other rested upon the Ural Mountains and marched southwest; the two met and converged upon Trieste. Without maps or military tactics or plans, wholly ignorant that Napoleon's favorite method of attack was being carried out by them, these two columns converged toward the Alpine pa.s.s, and for ten years pounded and pounded against the Roman walls until these yielded and fell. Then the forest children poured down into the vineyards and villages and cities of the dying empire. Mult.i.tudes remained to intermarry and preserve the dying race. Other mult.i.tudes returned to their old home to sow the northern forests with those great ideas that were to carry civilization through the long night of the dark ages.
Another strategic hour came in the thirteenth century. Then all Europe was stirred with new and awakening life. It was dawn after darkness.
Constantinople had fallen and scholars laden with ma.n.u.scripts went forth to sow Europe with the new learning. The times were fully ripe for another great forward movement for society. Only one thing was lacking--great men for leaders. In that strategic crisis six leaders appeared. G.o.d gave each wing of the army of civilization a genius for its general. Copernicus overthrew superst.i.tion and brought in science; Luther gave religion, Gutenberg the printing-press, Calvin individualism, Michael Angelo art and the beautiful, Erasmus critical scholars.h.i.+p; and because the old world was filled with debris, and the new ideas needed room, Columbus gave the new world, offering what Emerson calls ”the last opportunity of Providence for the human race.”
Surely this was a strategic moment in history, giving each citizen unique opportunity.
The strategic element enters into the individual career. Destiny is determined by our use of our critical hours. It is as if life's great issues were staked upon a single throw. Not but that the forces we neglect are permanent. It is that the strategic condition has pa.s.sed out of them. The sluggard driving his plow into the field in July has sun, soil and seed, but the torrid summer refuses to perform the gentle processes of April. The man who in youth's strategic days denied to memory the great facts of nature and history, in maturer years still has his memory, but the plasticity has gone. It now refuses to hold the facts he gives it. The Latin poet interprets our principle by the story of the maiden in the boat, holding her hand in the water while she toyed with a string of pearls until the string snapped and the treasure sank into the abyss. The miner interprets opportunity lost through him who, for a rifle and a blanket, traded a rich copper mine that has since paid its owner millions. The historian interprets it by Napoleon's bitter signal to his General, tardy at Waterloo, ”Too late!
the critical hour has pa.s.sed.” Froude interprets it through the old hero bitterly condemning himself over his wife's grave, knowing that his wild love and fierce outburst of affection were impotent now to warm the heart that froze to death in a home.
Ruskin interprets it through a nation that allowed her n.o.blest to descend into the grave, garlanding the tombstone when they refused to crown the brow; paying honors to ashes that were denied to spirit; wreathing immortelles only when they had no use save for laying on a grave where was one dead of a broken heart through a nation's ingrat.i.tude. Above all, Jesus Christ interprets it at midnight in Gethsemane, when he saw the torches fluttering in the darkness, heard the clanking of sabers and soldiers' armor, and in sad, reproachful irony wakened his disciples with these words: ”Sleep on, now; sleep forever if you will! Henceforth no stress of your vigilance can help me; no negligence of your duty can harm me beyond the harm you have already wrought. Take your ease now. Sleep; the opportunity has gone.” Then was the disciples' joy turned into mourning, and for garments of praise did they put on ashes and sackcloth. An irreparable loss was theirs. Yet for all of us each neglected duty means a tragedy. It is always now or never. The treasure wrapped up in each strategic opportunity is of infinite value. To-morrow can hold no joy when yesterday holds this memory: ”While I was busy here and there my opportunity was gone.”
How strategic the period of youth! Then the chiefest forces of life flow together in sensitive conjunction. Then four great gifts like four great rivers unite in one majestic current to bear up the young man's enterprises, and sweep him on to fame and fortune. Opportune are all the days when health spills over at the eye and ear and laughs through the lips. Men worn out are like overshot wheels--the life trickles and the buckets are filled slowly by long rests and frequent vacations. Young men are like undershot wheels--always, by day and night, the water overflows the banks.
Each morning the young soul wakens to the supreme luxury of living.
The world is a great beaker brimmed with wine of the G.o.ds. The truth and beauty of field and forest and river give a pleasure that is exquisite to a keenly sensitive and perfectly healthy youth. Like an Aeolian harp, the slightest breath avails for wakening melody midst its strings. But years multiply cares. Age increases heaviness. Time destroys its own children. The poet says: ”In youth we carry the world like Atlas; in maturity we stoop and bend beneath it; in age it crushes us to the ground.” For the overtaxed and invalided, the dew-drops do not sparkle as diamonds; the wet gra.s.s suggests red flannels and cough sirups. For the nervous the bird's song is a meaningless chatter. For the sickly the clouds are big black water-bottles, though time was when they were chariots for G.o.d's angels, curtains for hiding ministering spirits trooping homeward at night, leaving all the air sweetly perfumed. It is the body that grants the soul permission to be happy.
To the opportunity offered by health may be added the years lying in front of the young heart like a great estate, as yet uninc.u.mbered.
Powerful enthusiasms, too, are the inheritance of youth. n.o.ble feelings, fine aspirations then pa.s.s through the mind, as in May the perfumed winds from the South pa.s.s over the fields. These motives beat upon the mind as steam upon the iron piston. Workmen excavating at Pompeii threw up soil that had been covered for 1,800 years. Exposed to the sun, young trees sprang up. Without the force of light and heat and dew and rain these seeds were dormant or dead. Thus each mind is a dead mind until the full warmth of great impulses quickens the dormant energies. The hopes, the ambitions, the aspirations of youth all conspire to make this a most strategic period. Then all the forces of life unite in a great gulf stream for bearing the soul up and sweeping it forward to new climes and richer sh.o.r.es.