The end of the leases of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company will find many of our problems solved.
It will find, however, the real work of man just beginning. The abstract work of the intellect, the proper organization of society as expressed in human pa.s.sions, the study of the wonderful and beautiful universe outside of our own little planet, will then begin with the conquest of our material conditions.
THE AZORES--A SMALL LOST WORLD IN A UNIVERSE OF WATER
As you cross the Atlantic by the Southern route the "sighting of the Azores" is one incident of your voyage. Just before daybreak the ship is shaking and the pa.s.sengers roused by the deep tones of the big steam whistle.
One by one shivering forms straggle up from below, like reluctant spirits answering a premature last call. Bare feet in slippers, and shivering forms with overcoats over nightgowns, gradually line the rails.
On the left there appears, apparently, a heavy, dark bank of clouds:
"The Azores!" shouts down from the bridge your yellow-whiskered captain, looking as cheerful and warm as though it were noon.
You watch, shiver and blink as the light grows stronger behind the pinkish clouds in the east. The dark cloud settles into solid land. You see it clearly. Sharply outlined against the sky stands, forty miles long, a mammoth saw with huge teeth, irregular, sharp. The power of old-time volcanoes made all of that land, and those sharp saw-teeth, pointing toward the sky, are the destroyers of long ago, cold and dead now, but telling ominously of the power that lies hidden below.
Between you and the brightening sunrise, suspended in the "crow"s nest," half way up the mast, stands the sailor who watches the sea for you through the night. He calls out, and ahead to the left you see a small boat filled with human beings that seem scarcely as big as your finger. Your ship could plough through miles of such small boats-- but out there in the ocean, just as well as inside the biggest court-house, LAW rules, and the big ship must turn out for the small fishing boat.
You realize the power and beauty of law, as our governor and sustainer. You see that laws of little men reach out two thousand miles into the sea. You think of the laws of the universe that stretch across the immeasurable distances of time and s.p.a.ce, protecting ALL, and insuring ultimate fulfilment of the destinies of all the worlds.
As those fishermen of the Azores work safely, under full protection, in their little lost corner of the great ocean, so we, in our little world, our little insignificant corner of s.p.a.ce, work out our tiny problems safely under the splendid protection of Divine Law and wisdom sent to us from some far- off point of which we know nothing.
The light of the rising sun brings out from sh.o.r.e many other small boats, each with its load of men who wave their arms to the steamship and cheer against the sound of the waves and wind. To them that ship is like the fast express that pa.s.ses the country railroad station, or the comet that whirls round our sun and off again.
Those fishermen feel that THEY are the REAL world; the steamship and outside creation are only half imagined, interesting phenomena. You look down from the deck and the fishermen seem unreal little ornaments of your European excursion. And so the two sets of human beings go their ways--to each nothing is important, save that which each is doing.
There are great planets and suns that roll past us across this cosmic ocean of ether. Our pathetic little round earth looks to them as that fishing-boat of the Azores looks to you. And WE think of those great interstellar travellers as the fisherman in his little boat thinks of the ocean liner--the great star to us is merely an interesting feature of OUR sky. And we actually wonder whether there is any thought on that big, distant sun; any intelligence on the vast ship that ploughs the ocean of limitless s.p.a.ce. ----
The high ridge of volcanic peaks and the others near it are made fertile and green by soil gradually developed through the centuries by seeds brought across the ocean by winds and birds.
The tops of the mountains are black lava. Lakes of black water fill some of the quiet craters. Only, here and there, the rising sulphur smoke from rocky fissures tells of heat and power smouldering.
The last great eruption of the volcanoes occurred a little more than two hundred years ago--so the inhabitants laugh if you speak of danger. They forget that two hundred years in the earth"s life is as two minutes in the life of a man--and that what a man did two minutes since he may do again.
Fences are built across the fields of thin soil that cover the lava. Each inch of that land thrown up by fire "belongs" to some man. White houses stand at the edges of deep lava canyons running from the mountain tops to the sea"s edge canyons made by pouring lava or by the splitting of the mountains under fearful pressure.
Children play about the blocks of lava--and all their lives, no matter where they may go, those children will think of that far-off island as the only real home, and of black lava blocks as the only REAL kind of stone.
From your pa.s.sing boat you cannot see these children. Their little lives, lost in the far-off sea, seem as unimportant as the lives of the fish that swim below you.
But some child playing there to-day may be like that other island child, Napoleon, and live to make the rest of the world talk about the island that bred him. Or, better still, some one of those children, with a brain made powerful by solitude and n.o.ble thought, may have the idea that shall help us all, teach us more and more to think kindly of each other and help each other, instead of pa.s.sing each other coldly and indifferently as the big ship pa.s.ses the little, far-off island.
NO NAPOLEONIC CHESS PLAYER ON AN AIR CUSHION ZANGWILL"S IDEA IS FALSE--WHY CHESS PLAYING STUNTS GENIUS
Mr. Zangwill"s keen intellect, straining hard for striking pictures and word effects, sees falsely the great general of the future. He says:
"The Napoleon of the future will be an epileptic chess player, carried about the field of battle on an air cushion."
In this condensed, picturesque fashion Mr. Zangwill expresses sententiously a number of mistaken ideas. He thinks that the game of war is like the game of chess, and that the future world conqueror will be a great chess player, using men as p.a.w.ns and the world as his chess-board.
He observes the curious and interesting historical fact that of the world"s great conquerors many, including the two greatest, Napoleon and Alexander, were afflicted with that mysterious disease, epilepsy. He concludes that the great general of the future will probably be a confirmed epileptic.
The ability of a fighting man to-day resides largely, of course, in the brain. The general"s MUSCLES no longer count as a fighting factor. His battles are won or lost inside of his SKULL. Mr. Zangwill concludes that the future great general will have a mind developed to an abnormal extent at the expense of the body--he sees in the future world conqueror an abnormal creature, a giant brain perched on a miserable, wasted body, so feeble and delicate that it must be carried about the field of battle on an air cushion to prevent shocks. ----
The quotation from Zangwill which we print above contains only twenty-one words. Rarely have so many errors, so many fundamental yet plausible errors, been crowded into so little s.p.a.ce.
The Napoleon of the future, the great conqueror, will NOT be a chess player. The real Napoleon whom we know had no love for chess or any other waste of time, or any other form of self- indulgence.
Chess is no game for a Napoleon, or for any other man who wants to embody real accomplishment in the story of his life.
CHESS IS A WEAK GAME, FOR IT ADMITS ALL KINDS OF RULES AND ALL KINDS OF FOREORDAINED IMPOSSIBILITIES.
The man who makes the world"s great success will not be bound by rules. The great men of the world are great because they refuse to ADMIT impossibilities.
The man who plays chess has two knights, and these knights he can only send two squares in one direction and one square in another, or one square in one direction and two squares in the other. His two bishops can only move diagonally across the board, one on the white and one on the black. His castles lumber along on straight lines. His king cannot be touched or taken, and the game ends when the king is in fatal danger. The queen, in the dull game we call chess, can do almost anything.
But Napoleon was really a great man, and the game of life that he played was very different from the chess game.
When the king was in hopeless danger, Napoleon"s game had just begun. Others before him had looked upon kings on the board of life as the chess player looks upon the wooden or ivory king before him.
But to Napoleon kings were p.a.w.ns, to be moved around and made ridiculous. When he felt like it, he made p.a.w.ns into kings--the descendant of one of his p.a.w.n-kings reigns to-day in Sweden.
Napoleon"s game deprived the queen of all power--she was less than a p.a.w.n. HIS game sent the bishops hopping back and forth, diagonally or at right angles, as he saw fit. He created knights to his heart"s content, and he taught them to move as he wanted.
Napoleon was great because there was nothing of the chess player about him. He did not admit of regular, foreordained moves on the chess-board or on the board of life. HE REFUSED TO CONSIDER ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL HE HAD TRIED IT. He tells us himself that he deserved credit for crossing the Alps, not that he accomplished a difficult feat, but because he refused to believe those who declared the feat impossible.
If anybody said "Check" to Napoleon, he kicked over the chess-board and began a new game of his own--that was what surprised the poor, dull old Austrian generals in Italy.
No; the real great man is no chess player, he has no chess player"s mind. And do you, Mr. Reader, waste no time at chess, if you have any idea of being WORTH WHILE in a big or a little way. ----
The Napoleon of the future will be no epileptic. That terrible disease has afflicted many of the n.o.blest intellects, and it is undoubtedly a disease brought on, or at least intensified, by great intellectual activity and a lack of co-ordination between the mental and physical operations of the body. But some great men have been great, not because of that terrible disease, but in spite of it. Science will conquer that trouble, as it has conquered others, and the scientist to do this work will be, himself, one of the world"s great men. ----
The Napoleon of the future will be no huge-brained dwarf, with feeble body, carried on an air cushion.
It is true that many great men of to-day are relatively small in body. The gigantic muscle, thick legs, broad shoulders and hairy chests of the successful Viking have nothing to do with modern achievement.
But it is also true that to-day, as always, the healthy mind lives in a healthy body, and lives ON a healthy body.
As well expect to find the most perfect fruit on a withered, half-dead tree, as to find the most able brain in a withered, half-dead body. The blood is the life of the brain, and unless a HEALTHY body supplies HEALTHY blood the brain"s chance is small.
Napoleon, it"s true, was at one time a physical wreck--BUT DON"T FORGET THAT HIS GREATNESS WAS ALSO A WRECK AT THAT TIME.
The GREAT Napoleon operated in a body tireless and powerful enough to remain thirty consecutive hours on horseback. It was a body so powerful that criminal neglect and stupid ignorance of the laws of health were powerless against it for many years.
The Napoleon that went to St. Helena dwelt in a worn-out body, a fat, degenerate perversion of the Napoleon that conquered the world.