Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details
themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of
them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled
them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it
was rejected—as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and
get it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other
way—some way I had not counted upon.
And so I do not admire the human being—as an intellectual marvel—as
much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not
know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general
did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstance would
have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might
see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or
too quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question
about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the
newspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy. “General,
who planned the march through Georgia?” “The enemy!” He added that the
enemy usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by
neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you,
and you see your chance and take advantage of it.
Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our
temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch,
except that the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and the man TRIES
to plan things and the watch doesn’t. The watch doesn’t wind itself and
doesn’t regulate itself—these things are done exteriorly. Outside
influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left
to himself, he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he
would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,
with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some
men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury.
A Waterbury of that kind, some say.
A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and
Circumstance comes and upsets them—or enlarges them. Some patriots
throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The
PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and
turns these modest riots into a revolution.
And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new
route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he
found a new _world_. And _he _gets the credit of it to this day. He
hadn’t anything to do with it.
Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of
yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was
forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me
into the literary guild. Adam’s TEMPERAMENT was the first command the
Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only
command Adam would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, “Be weak, be
water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable.” The latter command,
to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam
himself, but by his _temperament_—which he did not create and had no
authority over. For the _temperament _is the man; the thing tricked out
with clothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law
of the tiger’s temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep’s
temperament is Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring
the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to
imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those
commands _can’T_ be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law
of _temperament_, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other
authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That
is, in their temperaments. Not in _them_, poor helpless young
creatures—afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter
was commanded to get into contact with fire and _be melted_. What I
cannot help wishing is, that Adam and EVE had been postponed, and
Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place—that splendid pair
equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By
neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled
_them _to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed, yes.
The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there
would be no YOU; there would be no _me_. And the old, old creation-dawn
scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have
been defeated.