B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own; [[186]]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:
Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though often baffled, e’er is won.
Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:
Those oracles that set the world aflame,
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;
and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death. Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”