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Side 45 av 112
One side of our nature, no doubt, finds its satisfaction in the
regular, the proper, the conventional. But there is another side of
our nature, underneath, that takes delight in the strange, the free,
the spontaneous. We like to discover what we call a law of Nature,
and make our calculations about it, and harness the force which lies
behind it for our own purposes. But we taste a different kind of
joy when an event occurs which nobody has foreseen or counted upon.
It seems like an evidence that there is something in the world which
is alive and mysterious and untrammelled.
The weather-prophet tells us of an approaching storm. It comes
according to the programme. We admire the accuracy of the
prediction, and congratulate ourselves that we have such a good
meteorological service. But when, perchance, a bright, crystalline
piece of weather arrives instead of the foretold tempest, do we not
feel a secret sense of pleasure which goes beyond our mere comfort
in the sunshine? The whole affair is not as easy as a sum in simple
addition, after all,--at least not with our present knowledge. It
is a good joke on the Weather Bureau. "Aha, Old Probabilities!" we
say, "you don't know it all yet; there are still some chances to be
taken!"
Some day, I suppose, all things in the heavens above, and in the
earth beneath, and in the hearts of the men and women who dwell
between, will be investigated and explained. We shall live a
perfectly ordered life, with no accidents, happy or unhappy.
Everybody will act according to rule, and there will be no dotted
lines on the map of human existence, no regions marked "unexplored."
Perhaps that golden age of the machine will come, but you and I will
hardly live to see it. And if that seems to you a matter for tears,
you must do your own weeping, for I cannot find it in my heart to
add a single drop of regret.
The results of education and social discipline in humanity are fine.
It is a good thing that we can count upon them. But at the same
time let us rejoice in the play of native traits and individual
vagaries. Cultivated manners are admirable, yet there is a sudden
touch of inborn grace and courtesy that goes beyond them all. No
array of accomplishments can rival the charm of an unsuspected gift
of nature, brought suddenly to light. I once heard a peasant girl
singing down the Traunthal, and the echo of her song outlives, in
the hearing of my heart, all memories of the grand opera.
The harvest of the gardens and the orchards, the result of prudent
planting and patient cultivation, is full of satisfaction. We
anticipate it in due season, and when it comes we fill our mouths
and are grateful. But pray, kind Providence, let me slip over the
fence out of the garden now and then, to shake a nut-tree that grows
untended in the wood. Give me liberty to put off my black coat for
a day, and go a-fishing on a free stream, and find by chance a wild
strawberry.
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