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Plato Profile Directory 16
Page 08
The truth is that national life has to go on, and that very elaborate arrangements are made by statesmen and politicians for its administration. But it is in reality very unimportant. The wisest statesman in the world cannot affect it very much; he can only take advantage of the trend of public opinion. If he outruns it, he is instantly stranded; and perhaps the most he can do is to foresee how people will be thinking some six weeks ahead. But meanwhile the writer is speaking from the soul and to the soul; he is suggesting, inspiring, stimulating; he is presenting thoughts in so beautiful a form that they become desirable and adorable; and what the average man believes to-day is what the idealist has believed half a century before. He must take his chance of fame; and his best hope is to eschew rhetoric, which implies the consciousness of opponents and auditors, and just present his dreams and visions as serenely and beautifully as he can. The statesman has to argue, to strive, to compromise, to convert if he can, to coerce if he cannot. It is a dusty encounter, and he must sacrifice grace and perhaps truth in the onset. He may gain his point, achieve the practicable and the second best; but he is an opportunist and a schemer, and he cannot make life into what he wills, but only into what he can manage. Of course the writer in a way risks more; he may reject the homely, useful task, and yet not have the strength to fit wings to his visions; he may live fruitlessly and die unpraised, with the thought that he has lost two birds in the hand for one which is not even in the bush. He may turn out a mere Don Quixote, helmeted with a barber's basin and tilting against windmills; but he could not choose otherwise, and he has paid a heavier price for his failure than many a man has paid for his success.
The fact, of course, is that it is just the variety of experience which makes life interesting,--toil and rest, pain and relief, hope and satisfaction, danger and security,--and if we once remove the idea of vicissitude from life, it all becomes an indolent and uninspiring affair. It is the process of change which is delightful, the finding out what we can do and what we cannot, going from ignorance to knowledge, from clumsiness to skill; even our relations with those whom we love are all bound up with the discoveries we make about them and the degree in which we can help them and affect them. What the mind instinctively dislikes is stationariness; and an existence in which there was nothing to escape from, nothing more to hope for, to learn, to desire, would be frankly unendurable.
The Siasin, or Antelope of India, roams over the open and rocky plains of that immense country. It is distinguished from the rest of its family by the beauty and singular shape of its horns, which are annulated or ringed, and spirally convoluted or curved together, making two or more turns, according to the age of the animal. The fakirs and dervishes of India, who are enjoined by their religion from carrying swords, frequently wear at their girdles the polished horns of the siasin instead of the usual military arm. This antelope is one of the fleetest-footed of its family, and its leap is something wonderful. It is not uncommon for it to vault to the height of twelve or thirteen feet, passing over ten or twelve yards at a single bound. In color it is almost black on the upper part of the body, and light-colored beneath. When full grown, it is about the size of our common deer.
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