"So each man gets out of the world of men the rebound, the increase and development of what he brings there. Three men stand in the same field and look around them, and then they all cry out together. One of them exclaims, 'How rich!' another cries, 'How strange!' another cries, 'How beautiful!' And then the three divide the field between them, and they build their houses there, and in a year you come back and see what answer the same earth has made to each of her three questioners. They have all talked with the ground on which they lived, and heard its answers. They have all held out their several hands, and the same ground has put its own gift into each of them. What have they got to show you? One cries, 'Come here and see my barn,' another cries, 'Come here and see my museum;' the other says, 'Let me read you my poem.' That is a picture of the way in which a generation, or the race, takes the great earth and makes it different things to all its children. With what measure we mete to it, it measures to us again. This is the rebound of the hard earth—sensitive and soft, although we call it hard, and feeling with an instant keen discrimination the different touch of each different human nature which is laid upon it. Reaction is equal to action."—Phillips Brooks.
CHAPTER XII.
INFLUENCE, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF REACTION IN LIFE AND CHARACTER.
To the mystery of life and death must be added the mystery of growth. When Demosthenes exclaimed: "Yesterday I was not here; I shall not be here to-morrow; to-day I am here," he suggested a hard problem. Having solved the enigma, what went before life, and answered that mystery, what follows after death, there still remains this question: "How can a babe in twenty years take on the proportions of the great orator and reformer?" Rocks do not grow, nor diamonds, nor dirt, but a shrunken bulb does become a lily, and a tiny seed a mustard tree. In vain does the scientist struggle with this problem—how an acorn can expand into an oak; how in a single summer a grain of corn can ripen a thousand grains, like that from which the cornstalk sprang.
Men are indeed familiar with the bursting of buds, the cracking of eggs and the growth of children; yet familiarity robs these facts of no whit of their mystery. No jeweler ever goes into the field with a basket of watches to plant them in rows, expecting when autumn hath come to pick two or three wagon-loads of stem-winders from iron branches; yet, were this possible, it would be no more strange than that in the autumn the husbandman should stand under the branches to fill his basket with peaches or bunches of figs. For wise men it is no more difficult to think of a growing engine than of a growing oak. What if to-morrow an engineer should plant a cannon ball. Having watered it well and kept the ground loose through hoe or spade, suppose that when a few weeks have passed the outline of a smokestack should push through the soil, to be followed a little later by a rudimentary steam whistle, the outlines of a boiler, and, rising through the sod, rude drive-wheels, piston-rods and cylinders, until after six months the great engine should stand forth in full completion. This phenomenon would be no more wonderful than that which actually goes on before man's blind eyes, when a tiny seed enlarges into the big tree of California and constructs a vegetable engine that lifts thousands of hogsheads of water up to the topmost boughs without any rattle of chains or the din of machinery.
With difficulty man constructs that musical instrument called a mouthharp, but nature, in six weeks, out of a little blue or brown egg constructs a feathered music-box that automatically conveys itself from tree to tree. But the mystery that has gone on in that tiny blue egg lying in the nest is just as great as if some housewife had planted an old spinning-wheel in the full expectation of reaping a Jacquard loom, or had buried a jew's-harp in the garden expecting in the fall to pick a grand piano. To the mystery that is involved in enlargement by growth must be added the mystery of intelligence. It is not an easy thing for an expert housewife, using the same formula, always to achieve the same happy results in the white loaf. He who plants a strawberry seed will find that the tiny seed will construct a plant, lay in the red tints according to rule and mix the flavor of the berry to a nicety that is the despair of the chef. In the tropic forests there is a flower with a deep cup and the pollen at the bottom. This pollen lies upon a little platter, and underneath the platter is that form of trap known as a figure four, much loved by boys. When the bee, creeping down into the flower, touches that platter, it springs the trap that throws the fertilizing pollen upon the legs of the bee, to be conveyed to the next flower. Wise men can, indeed, imitate this device, but a single seed will in a few months construct many scores of these mechanical devices. To-morrow morning the embryologist in his laboratory will place an egg under a glass cylinder in an atmosphere of 98 degrees. Four hours pass and suddenly the scientist perceives an atom in the heart of that egg give a quick lashing movement. Another moment witnesses two quick throbs. Growth has begun and in four months' time the young eagle with firm strokes will lift itself into the soft air. From the chamber of life and the chamber of death God hath never drawn the curtains. The chamber of growth is another most holy place in which God alone doth stand.
Deeply impressed by the fact of growth, scientists have also marveled at the principle that controls the harvest. Rocks enlarge by accretion, but from what a rock is at the beginning, the geologists cannot tell what will be the shape of that rock when all deposits are finally made. As to growth in seed and shrub, like produces like. He who sows wheat reaps wheat, not tares. He who plants a grape receives a purple cluster, not a bunch of thorns or thistles. He who sows honor shall reap confidence. He who sows frankness shall reap openness. No Peabody sowing industry and thrift reaps the harvest of indolence and idleness. Theodore Parker, loving knowledge and for it denying himself sleep and exercise, reaped wisdom, and also wan and hollow cheeks, while the iron frame and ruddy cheek are for the child of the woods who loves exercise in the open air. He who aspires to leadership and would have the multitude cheer his name, he who longs for the day when his appearance upon the street shall mean an ovation from the people, must make himself the people's slave, defy all demagogues, brave the fury of party strife, oft be execrated by politicians and sometimes be hated by the multitude. Having sown self-sacrifice and love, he shall reap fame and adulation. For nature's law is universal and inexorable—like produces like. The sheaf is simply the seed enlarged and multiplied. The sowing contains the germ of all the harvests to be reaped.
The new biography of Benedict Arnold tells us of the despair of the traitor's final days, the remorse that gnawed his heart, the agony that filled his life. Yet no arbitrary degree was imposed upon Arnold. He plotted the surrender of the interests committed to him as a general, planned the stratagem that ended in the capture and execution of Andre, and received $30,000 in gold for his treachery. Having gone over to the enemy, he placed himself at the head of a band of English troops and went forth to destroy the towns and villages of his boyhood and pillaged the homes of his old friends. He sowed avarice, and of avarice he reaped $30,000. He sowed distrust in America; he reaped distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and, dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the goddess of harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man's career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that shall he also reap is the law of nature and of God.
The heroes of the Old Testament are common people capitalized. What is unique in the experience of these sons of greatness holds true of all of lesser rank. The career of one of these giants is a pictorial exhibition of this principle of the spiritual harvest. Young Jacob was shrewd, crafty and full of foresight. If Esau, his brother, was a "hail fellow well met," the child of his impulses, Jacob was a diplomat and very wily. One day, when the father, Isaac, was blind and old, Esau grew restless, and at last went away with his companions, for he dearly loved to hunt. In that hour ambition tempted Jacob and avarice led him away. Advantaging himself of his brother's absence, Jacob used the skin of a kid to make his hands hairy, like the hands of Esau, and, simulating the brother's voice, he extorted from his dying father those tokens that, according to the Eastern custom, made him the successor to his father's title, wealth and power. Full twoscore years passed swiftly by and the deceit seems to have brought is large money returns to crafty Jacob.
But silently nature was working out the harvest of retribution, through that law of heredity that makes sons repeat the qualities of their father. When Jacob was now advanced in years his ten sons began, to develop craftiness, and soon they plowed great furrows of care in the father's face. In those days of care his young son Joseph stole into Jacob's heart like a sweet sunbeam, and, with his open, loving ways, filled his father's heart with gladness. When the elder brothers knew Jacob had given Joseph a coat of many colors they remembered the craft of their father in his early career. One evening, when the herds and flocks were scattered widely over the hills, Simeon sent out messengers and called his brothers together for a conference. In that hour he said: "Wist ye not how our father, being a younger son, supplanted his elder brother, Esau? And behold his craft will now make his younger child, Joseph, to supplant his elder brothers! Do ye not remember how our father, Jacob, took a kid and made his hands like unto the hands of Esau? Let us now take a kid and make its blood represent the blood and death of Joseph. What Jacob did for his father, Isaac, let his sons do to their father, Jacob." Thus, with subtle irony, nature made the man's sins to come back to him. A boy, Jacob deceived his father, now, grown gray and old, his boys brought their father an armful of deceits. In that hour when Reuben and Simeon held up the coat of many colors, all red with blood, great nature might have whispered to Jacob: "It is the blood of the kid that you slew for deceiving your father returning to enable your sons to deceive you." For, having sowed deceit, deceit also and stratagem Jacob reaped. Himself a son, he thrust a dart into his father's heart. Become a father, his ten sons became archers, skilled with darts that filled their father's heart with agony. For nature loves justice; her rule is law, sometimes her rod is iron.