What Is Man? and Other Essays 7 – Twain · Verses Across
Freethought · Agnosticism
What Is Man? and Other Essays 7Part 2 · Chapter 1
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Freethought · Agnosticism
What Is Man? and Other Essays 7
Part 2 · Chapter 1
TwainEnglish
If I understand the idea, the Bazar invites several of us to write upon the above text. It means the change in my life’s course which introduced what must be regarded by me as the most _important _condition of my career. But it also implies—without intention, perhaps—that that turning-point itself was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the last link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought about some other result. I know we have a fashion of saying “such and such an event was the turning-point in my life,” but we shouldn’t say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain makes it the most conspicuous link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors.
Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, “We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms.”
This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link. This was the last link—merely the last one, and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.
You, the reader, have a personal interest in that link, and so have I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in his decision.
While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: “Let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The Die Is Cast.”
So he crossed—and changed the future of the whole human race, for all time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar’s life-chain, too; and a necessary one. We don’t know his name, we never hear of him again; he was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast that was to make up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping down the aisles of history forever.
If the stranger hadn’t been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed. With such results! Such vast events—each a link in the human race’s life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands—and so on; link by link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he couldn’t, for he was an appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. They might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that interests me personally is that I would not be here now, but somewhere else; and probably black—there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he crossed. And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared anything about it before.
