Now what interests me, as regards these details, is
not the details themselves, but the fact that none
of them was foreseen by me, none of them was planned
by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
working in harness with my temperament, created them
all and compelled them all. I often offered
help, and with the best intentions, but it was rejected—as
a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing
and get it to come out the way I planned it.
It came out some other way—some way I
had not counted upon.
And so I do not admire the human being—as
an intellectual marvel—as much as I did
when I was young, and got him out of books, and did
not know him personally. When I used to read
that such and such a general did a certain brilliant
thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
Circumstance did it by help of his temperament.
The circumstances would have failed of effect with
a general of another temperament: he might see
the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature
too slow or too quick or too doubtful. Once
General Grant was asked a question about a matter
which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers;
he answered the question without any hesitancy.
“General, who planned the the march through
Georgia?” “The enemy!” He added
that the enemy usually makes your plans for you.
He meant that the enemy by neglect or through force
of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you
see your chance and take advantage of it.
Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt,
by help of our temperaments. I see no great
difference between a man and a watch, except that
the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and
the man tries to plan things and the watch doesn’t.
The watch doesn’t wind itself and doesn’t
regulate itself—these things are done exteriorly.
Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the
man and regulate him. Left to himself,
he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort
of time he would keep would not be valuable.
Some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case,
compensation balance, and all those things, and some
men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys.
I am a Waterbury. A Waterbury of that kind,
some say.
A nation is only an individual multiplied. It
makes plans and Circumstances comes and upsets them—or
enlarges them. Some patriots throw the tea overboard;
some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The
plans stop there; then Circumstance comes in,
quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest riots into
a revolution.
And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a
deep plan to find a new route to an old country.
Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found
a new world. And he gets the credit
of it to this day. He hadn’t anything
to do with it.
