I
If I understand the idea, the _Bazar _invites several of us to write
upon the above text. It means the change in my life’s course which
introduced what must be regarded by me as the most _important
_condition of my career. But it also implies—without intention,
perhaps—that that turning-point _itself _was the creator of the new
condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too
much credit. It is only the _last _link in a very long chain of
turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not
any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors.
Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed
date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have
left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought
about _some other_ result. I know we have a fashion of saying “such and
such an event was the turning-point in my life,” but we shouldn’t say
it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain
makes it the most _conspicuous _link; in real importance it has no
advantage over any one of its predecessors.
Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on
the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, “We may
still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for
us but to fight it out in arms.”
This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big
and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage
by stage, link by link. This was the _last _link—merely the last one,
and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the
inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of
Neptune.
You, the reader, have a _personal _interest in that link, and so have
I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.
While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river
with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to
the other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: “Let us go whither the
omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. _The Die Is
Cast_.”
So he crossed—and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar’s life-chain, too; and a
necessary one. We don’t know his name, we never hear of him again; he
was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he
was there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying
blast that was to make up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping
down the aisles of history forever.
If the stranger hadn’t been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed. With
such results! Such vast events—each a link in the _human race_’s
life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next
one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the
empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon
its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands—and so on; link by
link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of
America being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of
English and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my
ancestors among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in
Missouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidable
results of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with his
trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he _couldn’t_, for he was an
appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What would have
happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only know that the
things that did happen would not have happened. They might have been
replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and
results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that interests me
personally is that I would not be _here _now, but somewhere else; and
probably black—there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he crossed.
And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared anything
about it before.