RADIANCIES OF EXTREMES
Life is made up of extremes and everything that comes between them.
There is the North Pole and there is the South Pole. There is the heat
of the fiery furnace and the cold of the Arctic Zone. There is the
height of heaven and the depth of hell; the voice of the thunder and the
whisper of the gentle zephyr.
Man is a singular being. He is as diverse as is the manifold face of
Nature upon which he gazes. His likes and dislikes are many and varied.
Men of equal intelligence and equal powers differ in their ways of
looking at the same thing. The poet Browning effectively states this
when he says:
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match mine.
In the face of such facts one is compelled to the conclusion that
personal idiosyncrasy or individual preference alone can decide what it
wants, needs, and must have, in this large diversity that is offered
it.
The fact that ten men who have equal powers of observation and
reflection as myself love the things that I hate, and reject the things
that I receive, has absolutely no influence in deciding me in regard to
the things that I hate and receive, any more than the fact that I hate
and receive things to which they have the antagonistic feeling
influences them; hence it is useless for me to attempt to enforce my
likings and antipathies upon others, even as it is useless for them to
attempt to force theirs upon me.
So I have been led to accept the philosophy, which I wish to radiate to
all men, that it appears to me the Divine Wisdom has provided for these
personal idiosyncrasies of human nature by giving to us the extremes of
things with everything that lies between. So, regardless of my own
preference, I believe that the strong wind is as much a beneficent force
of Nature as is the zephyr; the thundering cataract of Yosemite as the
placid Mirror Lake; the avalanche as the snowflake; the thunder as the
violet; the earthquake as the rippling rill; the blazing meteor as the
Milky Way; the flaming sun-spots as the sparkling dewdrop; the fiery
volcano as the quiet glowworm; the giant sequoia as the tiny
forget-me-not; the thundering breakers of ocean as the gentle pattering
raindrop; the fiery boiling geyser as the silently flowing fountain; the
dazzling comet as the serene fixed star; the rugged Grand Canyon as the
flower-besprinkled sward; the monster whale as the tiny gold-fish; the
giant elephant as the timid mouse; the blaring trumpet as the soothing
guitar; the startling kettle-drum as the smoothly flowing 'cello; the
clanging cymbals as the seductive oboe.
I firmly believe and wish to radiate my belief that God has as much use
for the man of the farm as for the man of the drawing-room; the rudeness
of "The man with the hoe" as the smoothness of the man with the higher
education. He needs the arid desert as well as the fertile plain; the
wild ruggedness of the ravine as well as the cultivated garden; the
colorless abysses of the glacier as well as the flower-besprinkled
foothills. He has use for the snowy plains of the north as well as the
rice fields of the south; the cactus as well as the orchid; the giant
suaharo as well as the shrinking gilia; the prickly pear, as the velvety
peach; the sword-fish, as the nautilus; the shark as the flying-fish;
the flaming sunrises and sunsets, as the tender tints of the lily, and
the night-blooming cereus; the deep purples, as well as the blush rose;
the glowing yellows as the softer blues; the piercing greens as the
quieter violets. The bluffs and promontories that thrust their heads out
into the ocean are as much a part of God's great out-of-doors and of as
much use as are the placid landscapes; the mountain heights as much
needed as are the flower-bespangled levels; the vast reaches of prairie
as the secluded and confined valley. The piercing cold of the Arctic has
as much a place in Nature as the alluring mildness of Southern
California or the Riviera; the monster tides of the Bay of Fundy as the
ripples of the placid pool.
The sturdy and warlike Viking has as much a place in history as the
diplomatic and artistic Italian; the Negro as the Caucasian; the
Chinaman as the French; the Oriental as the English; the Japanese as the
American.
El Capitan and Gibraltar are not exquisitely carved statues by Canova or
Thorwaldsen, but they have just as much a place in the history of the
world's development.
The wilds of the high Sierras, in all their rude and majestic splendor,
rugged and tremendous vastness, where clear-eyed, horny-handed,
strong-oathed, and rudely clad men wander and labor, are very different
from the city drawing-rooms,--those places of pink teas and white
kid-gloved men and women; those breeding places of superficial
conventionality and effete conceptions of people and life, but I doubt
not that the high Sierras have produced more of benefit to mankind than
all the drawing-rooms of all the civilizations.
I love the pastoral and quiet landscapes of the Connecticut River
Valley, of placid Killarney, of the quiet vale of Avoca, of picturesque
Normandy, but the passion, power, majesty, sublimity, solitude,
dreariness and desolation of the far-reaching Colorado Desert, deep
descending Grand Canyon, bold escarpments of the Red Rock country, and
other tremendous and solitary places of Nature command me, allure me,
appeal to me, and dominate me quicker than the quiet places of beauty.
What, in Nature, to some men is the end of things to others is the
beginning. The sacred writer says that God even "maketh the wrath of men
to praise him," as well as their love and tenderness.
Life is not all comprised about a slender figure and transparent
profile; faultless coils of hair; soft, rich, clinging garments; laces
falling over taper fingers; graceful and dignified demeanor; low and
sweetly modulated voice, and the perfection of faultless manners. There
may be a place for the rude, uncouth clodhopper with disfigured
features; tousled hair; clad in homespun or cheap denim; rags taking the
place of lace; boorish and clumsy demeanor; a voice like a steamer
foghorn; and the apotheosis of all that is blundering and awkward in
manner.
I do not, for one moment, defend any unnecessary boorishness or
uncouthness of manner, and must not be understood as doing so, but at
the same time, in spite of these things, I am impelled to state my
conviction that the latter class is more needful to the real progress
of the world than the former. I notice that several times in the history
of the world, canal-drivers, shepherd-boys, wood-choppers, and
rail-splitters have made wonderful pilots for the Ship of State.
God has use in His world for the rough as well as the polished; the roar
of the thunder as well as the coo of the dove; the stentorian
trumpet-tone as well as the still, small voice. John the Baptist came
from the desert robed in skins and camel's hair; his voice, doubtless,
was not soft and well-modulated as were those of Herodias and Salome. He
was "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." His call contained the
thunder tones of the storm and wild cry of the lonely eagle seeking its
solitary aerie; the strength and the roar of the lion. It was neither
refined, pleasing, nor cultured, but it possessed life and power and it
was chosen to herald the coming of the Messiah.
Nowhere have we been told that Elijah, Jeremiah and Daniel were noted
for the soft and dulcet tones of their voices, yet they were the chosen
instruments of the Divine in overthrowing dynasties and changing the
history of nations. Peter the Hermit was not a sweet-voiced singer in
Israel, but he started a movement that led to the civilization of
Europe. I doubt not that the charges of the British against Joan of Arc
that she cried in a coarse military voice when she led the armored
hosts of France were true, but she drove the foreign invader from the
soil of her beloved France where they had held footing for nigh upon a
hundred years and no one else had been able to win a victory from them.
I doubt not there were times when Grant's voice did not possess the
mellow and refined quality of the drawing-room exquisite, but he won
victories and made a united people possible. John Brown was rude, rough,
uncouth, boorish, when compared with the refined and polished cavaliers
of the South. They called him a bandit, an invader, a revolutionist, an
anarchist, and they captured and hanged him, but to thousands of men his
crazy dream of the invasion of the South to forcibly compel the freedom
of the slave is being more and more seen by hundreds of thousands of
wise men to have been one of the most practical and effective means of
calling the attention of men to the moral principle involved in the
question of slavery, as to whether men of one color of blood or skin had
the right to hold in bondage men of a different color.
When Theodore Parker was denouncing the iniquities of any and all
slavery, his voice was not as soft and gentle and sweetly modulated as
that of Longfellow, yet it played as important a part in the history of
the development of mankind and stirred men to higher endeavor on the
part of their suffering and down-trodden fellows.
What, then, is the upshot of the whole matter? It seems to me it is
this: Listen to the voice that appeals to your own soul; that lifts you
from the lower to the higher; that thrills you to deeds of heroism, that
stimulates you to acts of nobleness, that calls you to a life of helpful
self-sacrifice; and while doing this, cease to criticise, to find fault,
to censure the kind of voice to which you do not care to listen. The
strong, vigorous, robust, red-blooded man of the out-of-doors generally
will not speak nor act with the perfect restraint and conventionality of
the man born in the atmosphere of the drawing-room, but his message may
be just as helpful to the world, and as divinely inspired as that of his
more refined and dignified prototype.