_The Genus trembles into Consciousness_
One day the stream of water by which the seed was carried along sank
suddenly--whirling down a funnel in the ground. Slowly the grey
light of day grew less as the seed dived deeper and deeper, till in
absolute darkness it was rushing madly down the water-spout. Hoarse
bellowings resounded about its long subterranean voyage, asserting
themselves above the stifled noises of the passage of the buried
river through the bowels of the earth. For weeks and months the
pine-kernel revolved in these invisible currents, at times slipping
slowly along the twisting flow, at other times hurled forward at a
dizzy speed in the dwelling coolness of the under-ground.
Suddenly the booming of the flood deepened. A hesitating cautious
light came trembling down the waves, and with a huge guggling the
seed found itself thrown out into a greenish mass of translucent
water, the volume of a river which now took charge of its further
course, and in whose stream it long drifted, while the sun gilded the
changing surface or the moon turned it all to silver. The tiny seed
seemed lost in time, swallowed up in space, as it floated on top of
the water or sank into its depth. The contrasts were overwhelming,
when the insignificant grain was set beside the river which carried
it along, beside the wide champaigns of the two banks, beside the
unplumbed void above, in whose pale-blue transparency some far grey
and white clouds were fading or floating. How small it looked so set
in infinite space! and yet the pine-kernel had its own part to play,
and of the thousands of interacting forces in earth and heaven some
were specially appointed to fulfil its destiny.
Where did it go in this great smooth-running river? How was it that
the immensities among which it wandered did not blot out its faint
existence? Had the all-seeing Eye really appointed each one of the
many incidents which marked its start in life? Can we, in view of
this case, believe that everything has been fore-ordained since the
beginning of time (which has never been), and is ordained to the end
of time (which also will never be)? No doubt there are the same laws
for beings and for things, for constellations of dazzling size as for
atoms too small to see, laws which operate in a like spirit and
entail like inevitable consequences of related sense. Worlds and
beings, objective things and abstractions of thought and instinct all
run a similar course of birth, climax, and decline. They begin in
nameless processes, develop in phases according to their kinds, and
end one day to make room for other transformations equally
indescribable.
Accordingly the pine-seed was carried by the river in devious
courses, thrown up on the bank, snatched away by the wind, rolled
over the plains, cast up the mountain-side, tossed back into the
fields, led here and there for an incalculable time, the sport of
inapprehensible caprice. A hundred times it nearly fell into a spot
favourable for taking root, and as often it was driven away from its
goal by forces apparently hostile. If the little seed had been
gifted with an observing sense it would probably have seen the lot
and end of every event in its own destiny. Once it hung for years a
few inches from a suitable hole in some fat land, and was left there
unmoved by the fresh winds of spring-time, by the ardent summers, by
the icy falls of snow. Nothing helped it; till finally a pebble
slipped--for some unrecorded reason--picked it up on one of its muddy
faces and held it there for weeks, to set it free again on a path of
turf.
Such incidents often happened, to make the seed entertain the common
hope of its species, the chance of taking root; but always some
unknown force dashed the near fulfilment from it. However, one
morning, at the edge of a forest and on rain-softened ground, the
sequoia seed at last got leave to germinate. The leave was given
suddenly and precisely. A gust of wind, blowing across a dead calm,
lifted it some hundreds of yards at a bound, and put it down on the
slope of a mound of soil by an open hole. None the less the seed
might have lain short of its place for years, for it was fixed firmly
enough to nullify the impulse of the winds, and the many and various
undulations of the ground-surface; but now at length its natural
purpose was nearly achieved. A few minutes later a dung-beetle
arrived, took it up between its claws, easily avoided the several
obstacles of the mound, and dropped it, as though intelligently, on
the very edge of the pit. The insect then, as in obedience to some
non-apparent but exact will, began heedlessly to fill in the hole
with rich earth.
So from a little seed and a little soil there will be born here a
_sequoia gigantea_, the hugest plant of earth. It seems a miracle
that the future bulk of the tree, its grain, its pith, the shape and
colour of its needles, the special nature of its sap, the many tens
of hundreds of years of its life should be found in a pin-head of
vegetable fibre; and another miracle that the microscopic seed should
already contain not merely its plant's organic nature, but also its
tastes and distastes, its pleasures and its pains, all the range of
yet unformed impressions which would colour its existence in the
world.
In such changeless fashion does the vital spark of species run
through a myriad centuries. It was for the sequoia, as it is for the
innumerable forms of life upon earth, for the solar planets, and for
those unknown planets circulating in space, fragments perhaps of suns
beyond our ken. From this aspect the law of perpetuity seems to be
an eternal re-beginning of the same careers, to be pursued through
similar stages to a like end.
How often we find in ourselves hopes, desires, griefs, apparently
unrelated to our own experiences and circumstances! They come to us
from very far, these feelings, and in answering to them we follow a
mysterious and indiscoverable chain of forerunners. Their fate is to
some extent our own. Like memory (activity's retreating shadow),
their sensations mix and mirror themselves brokenly in us, quickening
in us hesitant, half-felt surmises about their final cause, or as to
why these reflections of a long-lost age are sent to us.
The play of external events upon our destiny seems to us as
inexplicable as the inherited influences which direct us from within.
The tiny seed, for example, in circumstances apparently hostile and
unfavourable to its development, yet by a few exact but unexpected
actions of others, found itself free to work out its fate; and to
work it out just after a moment when it had seemed indefinitely
delayed.
We men living under the sun can usefully apply the lessons of our own
existence to this case. We are very far from grasping the whole
scheme of the forces which dispose our lives; indeed, we get only
faint occasional sidelights upon them. They strike our attention
often because of the mysterious symmetry with which certain things
seem to happen. We call them good and bad periods when an order of
events occurs to help or hinder our fortunes; and it is significant
that there should be a family likeness in such series of affairs.
The vision of the lean and fat cows in the Bible is only one instance
of this age-old observation; and we have also noted that cases
apparently hopeless sometimes contain, beyond our sight, their own
happy issue which bursts into view through a union of unexpected and
apparently unrelated circumstances. This law sways not merely our
human affairs but universal fate. Does the all-creating Eye really
see and set in motion His whole universe rhythmically, in tune with
one principle which is concealed from our sight by the terrifying
complexity of detail in daily life in the visible and invisible
worlds?
If so, the universe takes shape as a harmonious whole. What we know
and what we do not know of the millions of existences everywhere at
any time all are driving towards a common end. From the littlenesses
here and the greatnesses there would emerge, perhaps, for those who
could see it, a whole immeasurably, inconceivably huge. The atoms
seem a mass to us, sometimes, though doubtless they differ among
themselves. Men, despite their individual characters, appear, when
seen in bulk and from a distance, as a group-whole, comparable with
bees or ants. From far enough our earth, despite its diversifying
hills and plains and valleys, would seem a smooth body; and if some
being could comprehend the entire universe at once, by means and from
a view-point beyond our understanding, what would it look like
all-together?
That no man will ever tell us.