Sitting by a flat rock one summer morning, on my home acres in the
Catskills, I noticed that the wild strawberry-vines sent out their
runners over the rock, the surface of which is on a level with the turf,
just as over the ground. Of course they could not take root, but they
went through all the motions of taking root; the little clusters of
leaves developed at intervals, the rootlets showed their points or stood
at "attention," and the runners pushed out two or three feet over the
barren surface and then seemed to hesitate like a traveler in the desert
whose strength begins to fail. The first knot, or, one might say, the
first encampment, was about one foot from the last one upon the turf,
the next one about eight inches farther in; then the distance dropped to
six inches, then to four. I think the runner finally gave it up and
stopped reaching out. Each group of leaves apparently draws its main
sustenance from the one next behind it, and when this one fails to reach
the soil it loses heart and can give little succor to the next in front.
The result is that the stools become smaller and smaller, and the
distances between them less and less, down the whole line.
Nature's methods are seen in the little as well as in the big, and these
little purple runners of the vine pushing out in all directions show the
all-round-the-circle efforts of Nature as clearly as do the revolving
orbs in sidereal space. Her living impulses go out in all directions.
She scatters her seeds upon the barren as well as upon fertile spots.
She sends rains and dews upon the sea as well as upon the land. She
knows not our parsimony nor our prudence. We say she is blind, but
without eyes she is all-seeing; only her creatures who live to
particular ends, and are limited to particular spheres, have need of
eyes. Nature has all time and all space and all ends. Delays and failure
she knows not. If the runners of her strawberries do not reach their
goal, the trouble corrects itself; they finally stop searching for it in
that direction, and the impulse of the plant goes out stronger and
fuller on other sides.
If the rains were especially designed to replenish our springs and
supply our growing crops, the clouds might reasonably be expected to
limit their benefactions, as do our sprinkling carts; but the rains are
older than are we and our crops, and it is we who must adjust ourselves
to them, not they to us.
The All-Seeing, then, has no need of our specialized vision. Does the
blood need eyes to find its way to the heart and lungs? Does the wind
need eyes to find the fertile spots upon which to drop its winged seeds?
It drops them upon all spots, and each kind in due time finds its proper
habitat, the highly specialized, such as those of the marsh plants,
hitting their marks as surely as do others.
Our two eyes serve us well because our footsteps are numbered and must
go in a particular direction, but the goal of all-seeing Nature is
everywhere, and she arrives before she starts. She has no plan and no
method, and she is not governed.
These conceptions express too little, not too much. Nature's movements
are circular; her definite ends are enclosed in universal ends. The
rains fall because the vapors rise. The rain is no more an end than is
the rising vapor. Each is a part of the great circuit of beneficent and
malevolent forces upon which our life (and all life) depends, upon which
the making of the soil of the earth and the shaping of the landscape
depend; all vegetable and animal life, all the bloom and perfume of the
world, all the glory of cloud and sky, all the hazards of flood and
storm, all the terror of torrents and inundations, are in this circuit
of the waters from the sea to the sky, and back again through the rivers
to the sea. In our geologic time there is, in this circuit of the
waters, more that favors life than hinders it, else, as I so often say,
we should not be here. The enormous destruction of human life, of all
life, which has taken place and will continue to take place, in this
beneficent circuit, is only an incident in the history of the globe; the
physical forces are neither for nor against it; they are neutral; life
to be here at all has to run these risks; has to run the gantlet of
these forces, and to get many a lash and gash in the running. Against
the suffering and death incident thereto there is no insurance save in
the wit of man himself. All this wit has been developed and sharpened by
much waste and suffering. We learn to deal with difficulties through the
discipline of the difficulties themselves. If man were finally to learn
to control the rains and the floods, it would be through the experience
which they themselves bring him. The demons that destroy him are on his
side when he strikes with the strength which they give him. Gravity,
which so often crushes and overthrows him, is yet the source of all his
might. The fire that consumes his towns and cities is yet the same fire
that warms him and drives his engines across the continent.
There is no god that pities us or weeps over our sufferings, save the
god in our own breasts. We have life on heroic terms. Nature does not
baby us nor withhold from us the bitter cup. We take our chances with
all other forms of life. Our special good fortune is that we are capable
of a higher development, capable of profiting to a greater extent by
experience, than are the lower forms of life. And here is the mystery
that has no solution: we came out of the burning nebulæ just as our
horse and dog, but why we are men and they are still horse and dog we
owe to some Power, or, shall I say, to the chance working of a multitude
of powers, that are beyond our ken. That some Being willed it, designed
it, no; yet it was in some way provided for in the constitution of the
world.