“I considered the ways of water. It springs out of the dark earth, is a rivulet, a brook, a river. It labors, and never ceases to be useful till, laden with impurities which are not its own, it falls into the ocean. It has wet the lips of fever, washed the stains of labor, helped to bear malaria from the crowded city, revived the drooping plant, quenched the devouring flame, sung its little song along the roof and eaves, stretched its little film to soften a sunbeam in the hot noon. It rests. No, it rests not. It climbs into the sky only to return, and go over it all again. It was depressing to think that we may come again to go through the same round. But who knows that the drop of water makes the same round a second time? The variety may be infinite. And so, I thought, the soul may come and come, till it learns to sympathize with all. May we not guess who has made many upward-growing circles by saying, he can sympathize with people in circumstances which have never surrounded his apparent life, he can be compassionate where others condemn, he can stand firm where others fail, he is not moved by clamor?”
“Who can say?” said the master, passing his hand across his forehead. “It is wiser not to ask.”
“Is it forbidden to speculate?” asked the boy in a low tone.
“It is not forbidden, Ion. But to spend the present in speculating on the unrecallable past and the unknown future is to throw away a treasure. What happens when you try to look at the sun at midday? You see nothing but a palpitating fire that scorches your brain. Turn your eyes to earth again, and do you see it as it is? No: everything is discolored, and over it all are floating livid disks that mimic the sun’s shape and slander his color, the only souvenirs of an attempt to strain a power beyond its limits. Do not try to read the poetry and philosophy of a language till you shall have learned its alphabet and grammar.”
“Yet I learned German so, and was at the head of my class,” said Ion boldly. “I opened a book with Goethe’s name on the title-page, and turned the leaves till I saw a poem that was as clearly shaped for music as a bird is. I took the first letter and learned its name and sound, and then the next and the next, till I had a word. I learned that word, and the next in the same way, till I had a verse and a thought. O master, what delight when the dark shadows slid off that thought, and it shone out like a star from under a cloud! When, thought by thought, I had got the whole poem out, every phrase perfect, and each delicate grace with its own curves, then I knew German! I plunged into the sea and learned to swim!”
He laughed with joyous triumph, and lifting his arms, crossed them above his head, bending backward for a moment, as if to draw a full breath from the zenith.
The old man smiled.
“Thou hast an answer ever ready,” he said, “and thou art not all wrong, boy. I would not clip thy wings. I like thy life and courage. But I would that thou hadst something also of Holy Fear.”
“I like not the name of fear,” the boy said, clouding over.
“Yes; if a man fear to do right,” said the master. “But there is a noble fear of presumption, and of setting a bad example. You have quoted from our highly-honored Plutarch. Do you remember what he tells of Alexander on the vigil of the battle of Abela? He stood on the height and saw over against him Darius reviewing his troops by torchlight. They marched interminably out of the darkness into the glare and out into darkness. Those moving shadows on the morrow would become to him and to his army showers of arrows and shock of spears, and trampling hoofs, and crushing chariot-wheels, an avalanche of fierce death to bear them down.