"Nor yet, my young friend, shall you take this matter to be of a seriousness, to be sorrow-worthy. If you take of the courage, you shall find the world to smile to your face, and father-mother you. You recall what the English Huxley says—Ah! what fine, dear man, the good Huxley—he says, yes, in the 'Genealogy of the Beasts,' 'It is a probable hypothesis that what the world is to organisms in general, each organism is to the molecules of which it is composed.' So you laugh at the world, the world it laugh back 'ha! ha! ha!'—then—soly—all your little molecules obediently respond—you thrill with the happiness—with the power—the desire—the capacity—you out-go and achieve. Yes? So fret not. Ach! we fret so much of what it shall be unwise to fret of. It is funny to fret. Why? Why fret? Yet but the month last, they have excavated at Nippur, from the pre-Sargonic strata, a lady and a gentleman of the House of Ptah. What you say in New York—'a damned fine old family,' yes, is it not? I am read their description, and seen of the photographs.
"They have now the expressions of indifference—of disinterest—without the prejudice—as if they say, 'Ach! those troubles of ours, three thousand eight hundred years in the B.C.—nearly come to six thousand years before now—Ach! those troubles,' say this philosophic-now lady and gentleman, of the House of Ptah of Babylonia—'such a silliness—those troubles and frets; it was not the while-worth that we should ever have sorrowed, because the scheme of time and creation is suchly big; had we grasped but its bigness, and the littleness of our span, should we have felt griefs? Nay, nay—nit,' like the street-youths say—would say the lady and gentleman now so passionless as to have philosophers become. And you, it should mean to you much. Humans are funniest when they weep and tremble before, like you say, 'the facts in the case.' Ha! I laugh to myself at them often when I observe. Their funniness of the beards and eyebrows, the bald head, of the dress, the solemnities of manner, as it were they were persons of weight. Ah, they are of their insignificance so loftily unconscious. Was it not great skill—to compel the admiration of the love-worthiest scientist—to create a unit of a numberless mass of units and then to enable it to feel each one the importance of the whole, as if each part were big as the whole? So you shall not fret I say.
"If the fret invade you, you shall do well to lie out in the friendly space, and look at this small topspinning of a world through the glass that reduces.
Yes? You had thought it of such bigness—its concerns of a sublime tragicness? Yet see now, these funny little animals on the surface of the spinning-ball. How frantic, as if all things were about to eventuate, remembering not that nothing ends. So? Observe the marks of their silliness, their unworthiness. You have reduced the ball to so big as a melon, yes? Watch the insects run about in the craziness, laughing, crying, loving their loves, hating their hates, fearing, fretting—killing one the other in such funny little clothes, made for such funny little purpose precisely—falling sick over the money-losings—and the ball so small, but one of such many—as many stars under the earth, remember, as above it.
"So! you are back to earth; you are a human like the rest, so foolish, so funny as any—so you say, 'Well, I shall not be more troubled again yet. I play the same game, but it is only a game, a little game to last an afternoon—I play my part—yes—the laughing part, crying part—loving, hating, killing part—what matter if I say it is good?' If the Maker there be to look down, what joys him most—the coward who fears and frets, and the whine makes for his soul or body? Ach! no, it is the one who say, it is good—I could not better have done myself—a great game, yes—'let her rip,' like you West-people remark—'let her rip—you cannot lose me,' like you say also. Ach, so! And then he say, the great Planner of it,' Ach! I am understood at last—good!—bright man that,' like you say, also—'bright man that—it is of a pleasure to see him do well!'
"So, my young friend, you shall pleasure yourself still much yet. It is of an excellence to pleasure one's self judiciously. The lotus is a leguminous plant—so excellent for the salad—not for the roast. You have of the salad overeaten—you shall learn of your successful capacity for it—you shall do well, then. You have been of the reckless deportment—you may still be of it. That is not the matter. You shall be reckless as you like—but without your stored energy surplus to harm you. Your environment from the now demands of you the faculties you will most pleasure yourself in developing. You shall produce what you consume. The gods love such. Ach, yes!"
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring
He awoke early, refreshed and intensely alive. With the work done he became conscious of a feeling of disassociation from the surroundings in which he had so long been at home. Many words of the talkative German were running in his mind from the night before. He was glad the business was off his mind. He would now go the pleasant journey, and think on the way.