THE MAN AND THE ELEPHANT
In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, who created the soul and gave to the tongue words of wisdom, Listen! and I will tell you the story of a king and an elephant; of a man who rose above environment and of an elephant who was a victim of it; though this is not the rule.
Let me illustrate. If a hog is shifted from the sty to a state of nature, he lifts his snout from the mud and in time acquires the courage of a wild boar; if a man returns to a state of nature, he becomes a savage. Take an Indian, educate him in your great school Harvard; if he returns to his tribe, he cuts the seat from his trousers and wraps himself in a blanket. The desert nomads, wandering over the site of the birthplace of civilization, philosophy and religion, scarcely glance at the half-buried ruins about them, and live as did their fathers five thousand years ago.
In your youth, do not let conceit shut your mind to the acquisition of wisdom. Do not think that the world was in darkness until you were born. Old age will shatter hope and you will lose confidence in your generation and become an ancestor worshiper, because you are birth-marked mentally and physically by your ancestors; because old age loves youth, and the present the past, and contrasts the joys and sports of childhood with the toil and pain and poverty of old age; because the evil days have come, the clouds return after the rain, the house you live in trembles, your grinders cease because they are few, [pg 342] your windows are darkened; and having eaten, you know you are naked and are ashamed and afraid.
Solomon the Wise, philosopher and preacher, says: “All is vanity * * * one generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. * * * Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”