Fresh Fields

by John Burroughs

"Man," says Carlyle, "little as he may suppose it, is necessitated to obey superiors; he is a social being in virtue of this necessity; nay, he could not be gregarious otherwise; he obeys those whom he esteems better than himself, wiser, braver, and will forever obey such; and ever be ready and delighted to do it." Think in how many ways,

through how many avenues, in our times, the wise man can reach us and place himself at our head, or mould us to his liking, as orator, statesman, poet, philosopher, preacher, editor. If he has any wise mind to speak, any scheme to unfold, there is the rostrum or pulpit and crowds ready to hear him, or there is the steam power press ready to disseminate his wisdom to the four corners of the earth. He can set up a congress or a parliament and really make and unmake the laws, by his own fireside, in any country that has a free press. "If we will consider it, the essential truth of the matter is, every British man can now elect himself to Parliament without consulting the hustings at all. If there be any vote, idea, or notion in him, or any earthly or heavenly thing, cannot he take a pen and therewith autocratically pour forth the same into the ears and hearts of all people, so far as it will go?" ("Past and Present.") Or, there is the pulpit everywhere waiting to be worthily filled. What may not the real hero accomplish here? "Indeed, is not this that we call spiritual guidance properly the soul of the whole, the life and eyesight of the whole?" Some one has even said, "Let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes the laws." Certainly the great poet of a people is its real Founder and King. He rules for centuries and rules in the heart.

In more primitive times, and amid more rudely organized communities, the hero, the strong man, could step to the front and seize the leadership like

the buffalo of the plains or the wild horse of the pampas; but in our time, at least among English-speaking races, he must be more or less called by the suffrage of the people. It is quite certain that, had there been a seventeenth or eighteenth century Carlyle he would not have seen the hero in Cromwell, or in Frederick, that the nineteenth century Carlyle saw in each. In any case, in any event, the dead rule us more than the living; we cannot escape the past. It is not merely by virtue of the sunlight that falls now, and the rain and dew that it brings, that we continue here; but by virtue of the sunlight of æons of past ages.

"This land of England has its conquerors, possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following and their representatives, if you can find them: all the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, each in their degree; all the men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England." "Work? The quantity of done and forgotten work that lies silent under my feet in this world, and escorts and attends me and supports and keeps me alive, wheresoever I walk or stand, whatsoever I think or do, gives rise to reflections!" In our own politics, has our first President ever ceased to be President? Does he not still sit there, the stern and blameless patriot, uttering counsel?

Carlyle had no faith in the inherent tendency of

things to right themselves, to adjust themselves to their own proper standards; the conservative force of Nature, the checks and balances by which her own order and succession is maintained; the Darwinian principle, according to which the organic life of the globe has been evolved, the higher and more complex forms mounting from the lower, the true palingenesia, the principle or power, name it Fate, name it Necessity, name it God, or what you will, which finally lifts a people, a race, an age, and even a community above the reach of choice, of accident, of individual will, into the region of general law. So little is life what we make it, after all; so little is the course of history, the destiny of nations, the result of any man's purpose, or direction, or will, so great is Fate, so insignificant is man! The human body is made up of a vast congeries or association of minute cells, each with its own proper work and function, at which it toils incessantly night and day, and thinks of nothing beyond. The shape, the size, the color of the body, its degree of health and strength, etc.,—no cell or series of cells decides these points; a law above and beyond the cell determines them. The final destiny and summing up of a nation is, perhaps, as little within the conscious will and purpose of the individual citizens. When you come to large masses, to long periods, the law of nature steps in. The day is hot or the day is cold, the spring is late or the spring is early; but the inclination of the earth's axis makes the winter and

summer sure. The wind blows this way and blows that, but the great storms gyrate and travel in one general direction. There is a wind of the globe that never varies, and there is the breeze of the mountain that is never two days alike. The local hurricane moves the waters of the sea to a depth of but a few feet, but the tidal impulse goes to the bottom. Men and communities in this world are often in the position of arctic explorers, who are making great speed in a given direction while the ice-floe beneath them is making greater speed in the opposite direction. This kind of progress has often befallen political and ecclesiastical parties in this country. Behind mood lies temperament; back of the caprice of will lies the fate of character; back of both is the bias of family; back of that, the tyranny of race; still deeper, the power of climate, of soil, of geology, the whole physical and moral environment. Still we are free men only so far as we rise above these. We cannot abolish fate, but we can in a measure utilize it. The projectile force of the bullet does not annul or suspend gravity; it uses it. The floating vapor is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.

Carlyle, I say, had sounded these depths that lie beyond the region of will and choice, beyond the sphere of man's moral accountability; but in life, in action, in conduct, no man shall take shelter here. One may summon his philosophy when he is beaten in battle, and not till then. You shall not shirk the hobbling Times to catch a ride on the

sure-footed Eternities. "The times are bad; very well, you are there to make them better." "The public highways ought not to be occupied by people demonstrating that motion is impossible." ("Chartism.")