Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative

by George Wharton James

In the face of such facts one is compelled to the conclusion that personal idiosyncrasy or individual preference alone can decide what it wants, needs, and must have, in this large diversity that is offered it.

The fact that ten men who have equal powers of observation and reflection as myself love the things that I hate, and reject the things that I receive, has absolutely no influence in deciding me in regard to the things that I hate and receive, any more than the fact that I hate and receive things to which they have the antagonistic feeling influences them; hence it is useless for me to attempt to enforce my likings and antipathies upon others, even as it is useless for them to attempt to force theirs upon me.

So I have been led to accept the philosophy, which I wish to radiate to all men, that it appears to me the Divine Wisdom has provided for these personal idiosyncrasies of human nature by giving to us the extremes of things with everything that lies between. So, regardless of my own preference, I believe that the strong wind is as much a beneficent force of Nature as is the zephyr; the thundering cataract of Yosemite as the placid Mirror Lake; the avalanche as the snowflake; the thunder as the violet; the earthquake as the rippling rill; the blazing meteor as the Milky Way; the flaming sun-spots as the sparkling dewdrop; the fiery volcano as the quiet glowworm; the giant sequoia as the tiny forget-me-not; the thundering breakers of ocean as the gentle pattering raindrop; the fiery boiling geyser as the silently flowing fountain; the dazzling comet as the serene fixed star; the rugged Grand Canyon as the flower-besprinkled sward; the monster whale as the tiny gold-fish; the giant elephant as the timid mouse; the blaring trumpet as the soothing guitar; the startling kettle-drum as the smoothly flowing 'cello; the clanging cymbals as the seductive oboe.

I firmly believe and wish to radiate my belief that God has as much use for the man of the farm as for the man of the drawing-room; the rudeness of "The man with the hoe" as the smoothness of the man with the higher education. He needs the arid desert as well as the fertile plain; the wild ruggedness of the ravine as well as the cultivated garden; the colorless abysses of the glacier as well as the flower-besprinkled foothills. He has use for the snowy plains of the north as well as the rice fields of the south; the cactus as well as the orchid; the giant suaharo as well as the shrinking gilia; the prickly pear, as the velvety peach; the sword-fish, as the nautilus; the shark as the flying-fish; the flaming sunrises and sunsets, as the tender tints of the lily, and the night-blooming cereus; the deep purples, as well as the blush rose; the glowing yellows as the softer blues; the piercing greens as the quieter violets. The bluffs and promontories that thrust their heads out into the ocean are as much a part of God's great out-of-doors and of as much use as are the placid landscapes; the mountain heights as much needed as are the flower-bespangled levels; the vast reaches of prairie as the secluded and confined valley. The piercing cold of the Arctic has as much a place in Nature as the alluring mildness of Southern California or the Riviera; the monster tides of the Bay of Fundy as the ripples of the placid pool.

The sturdy and warlike Viking has as much a place in history as the diplomatic and artistic Italian; the Negro as the Caucasian; the Chinaman as the French; the Oriental as the English; the Japanese as the American.

El Capitan and Gibraltar are not exquisitely carved statues by Canova or Thorwaldsen, but they have just as much a place in the history of the world's development.

The wilds of the high Sierras, in all their rude and majestic splendor, rugged and tremendous vastness, where clear-eyed, horny-handed, strong-oathed, and rudely clad men wander and labor, are very different from the city drawing-rooms,—those places of pink teas and white kid-gloved men and women; those breeding places of superficial conventionality and effete conceptions of people and life, but I doubt not that the high Sierras have produced more of benefit to mankind than all the drawing-rooms of all the civilizations.

I love the pastoral and quiet landscapes of the Connecticut River Valley, of placid Killarney, of the quiet vale of Avoca, of picturesque Normandy, but the passion, power, majesty, sublimity, solitude, dreariness and desolation of the far-reaching Colorado Desert, deep descending Grand Canyon, bold escarpments of the Red Rock country, and other tremendous and solitary places of Nature command me, allure me, appeal to me, and dominate me quicker than the quiet places of beauty.

What, in Nature, to some men is the end of things to others is the beginning. The sacred writer says that God even "maketh the wrath of men to praise him," as well as their love and tenderness.