Such is the common mistake of reason when imagination has taken charge of a mind; and in combating it we must first distinguish between its cause and its effects. These shadows which we fear only have power upon us after we have irrevocably ceased to exist. It is not the darkness which destroys us; on the contrary, it is profoundly creative, doing its work, with that odd prudishness of creation, by choice out of sight.
It was in such a blank darkness underground that the sequoia seed germinated and burst open under the life-impulse. The cotyledons, rich in vivifying substances, gave a beginning of nourishment to the seedling until it was able itself to select the elements which would assist its growth. The darkness cradled the budding plant, and would continue to prove its definite base after it had grown up to strength. In all these functions there was no destructiveness, nothing to excuse our fear of it. The shades stand attentive about the seeds of plants, as they surround the young of birds in the hatching egg, as they contain the foetus in its mother's womb. In the dark is the beginning of nearly all creative processes: even the diamond forms itself so, in the very bowels of the earth, remote from us—there, in a solid blackness, it takes to itself that faceted shape which later will reflect the light from its every point. These unfortunate shadows for which we harbour so unjust a fear!—and so illogical a fear, for when our cells are worn out by the strain and stridency of life and day it is to darkness that we turn for the renewal of our vital force; and when our hearts and spirits demand either calm in which to rest after the blows of misfortune, or mending after the shock of disillusion, again it is to the shadows that we have recourse, and among them that we find hope—which is either the salve of fresh illusions or the satisfaction of reviewing our obtained petitions.
In this shadow-land our pine-microcosm accumulated the strength which enabled it to make an essay at living. First it absorbed the starchy liquid which the cotyledons had prepared for it; then it began itself to hunt in plant fashion for its own necessary sustenance. Through all its pores the tiny rootlet sucked up the particular juices and essences it needed. It grew, and divided itself into branches that it might tap more sub-soil with these many extensions. It is warm down there underground, and the soil was wet, for it was spring-time outside. The earth was pulsating mightily with the sense of new movement, was transmitting its excitement to the air. The light of day and the darkness of the pit communicate with one another by exchanging invisible and indescribable rays. The decaying bodies of men, animals, and vegetable growths affect and influence their corresponding numbers at the moment of conception and during growth—reaching them as freely through the pellucid air as through the solid layers of the soil. Life and death everywhere run into one another: every beginning is an end, and everything ends only to begin again. Innumerable unknown forces come down from heaven to earth, and as many shoot up from earth into the blue sky, all crossing one another, tangled together. Some are destructive, some productive. We cannot classify or estimate these millions of indiscoverable elements. Most of them never enter our orbit; for we must remind ourselves that there are an infinity of creations, of every sort and kind and lot and fate in our universe, ranging from suns to microscopic cells, each subject to tens of thousands of varying conditions, and tending towards an incalculable number of predestined ends—and it is vain for our curious but purblind spirits to try to estimate separately or to distinguish these appalling problems, for our limitations in kind forbid us ever to know the infinity of evolutions in earth and heaven, in the depths of the seas, in the depths of the earth. It is impossible that we should ever learn what are the hidden powers which sway our courses, what are the unknown and unsearchable emanations which breathe around us, or over us, and give us in hardly perceptible fashion a sense of confused joy, a vague sadness, or some heedless inexplicable fear.
CHAPTER 4
Contrasts which are not Contrasts
On the earth it was spring: and the excitement of it drove underground. Our sprouting seed was caught up in this frenzy of living, expanded itself, and pushed downwards and upwards in a double movement, under cover of that odd buckler, the pileorhiza. The light attracted it; but at the same time it plunged deeper into the night, for there it found hidden sympathies, and encouragements which made it fierce and greedy. It grew enormously, draining to itself the scattered nourishment about it. If other existences were starved thereby, so much the worse for them.
Not long ago our plant was a humble seed, ready to beg its tiny life from each powerful menacing blade of grass. To-day it was a successful bully, drinking up all the ichor of its patch of soil: and such conduct is the general rule, even with us men. When we are weak and know it, we are timid crawling things, hating all powers since they seem directed against us: but let us gain a little strength, and we grow proportionately rude, beating down the weaker. So true is it that evolution in nature is only a re-direction of energy. The Eye which controls the universe really seems to have foreseen and planned everything; and things which appear unjust or horrible to us may appear so only because we do not know the full logic of their existence.
It is pleasant to imagine what happens deep down in that secret mansion of the lower earth. The press of life can be no less there than on the face of the ground. Yet we call it a mystery, and rank it with all that is beyond our sense, with that class of event which even our imaginations fail to visualize precisely. If only we could see the sequoia root with our eyes, or had some yet unexpressed means with which to analyse or share its likes and dislikes, watch its battles, follow its sorrows, its joys! Why were we not endowed with some special sense able to feel the satisfied tremor of the growing root when it made contact with kindly elements in the blank night?
From some distance, somewhere deep under the ground, a trickle of water sent it refreshing vibrations, like a call. How did our plant discover the presence of this distant and friendly liquid? Did it experience that familiar feeling of cool freshness which we men have near water, which we would have felt in its place? Yet the plant had no skin like ours, nor nerves, nor sense of smell. It is a mystery how it should have known things, and how it guessed where lay the foodstuffs it needed, and by what resources beyond our knowledge it perceived their existence. It never missed its aim, though it had to reach out, twist, even ramify, to get at these food-elements, and absorb them. In nature there are hundreds of such instincts, and senses, and faculties, besides the feelings, or nerves, or other appurtenances of the flesh of which we are made. In life there are thousands of unknown energies, of secret perceptions, of indescribable vibrations, which we never feel, and shall never know while we are what we are....
Yes, outside it was spring-time. Its light and heat bathed all the surface of the ground, instilling into the under-soil a whole range of influences to affect some of the thousands of embryos which there come to life, by stages which we cannot follow, and of most of which we never become aware. Creation is so leisurely and so retiring that it makes little impression on us. It is destruction which is the striking thing, because it is quick and clear and violent. An instant destroys a thing which we have long seen living and developing. A tree many hundreds of years old is crashed down in a minute by lightning; in a few days a forest fire will destroy a forest which has existed for thousands of years; and this wanton annihilation instils in us a great terror, together with an unintelligent belief in the goddess of destruction, that savage and formidable power which seems to rule the world, and fills us with devout awe: she seems so mighty and so bold and ruthless that we think her the sole goddess of life.