Page 61 of 172 THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE - What Is Man?

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.

Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENT was the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The latter command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his TEMPERAMENT--which he did not create and had no authority over. For the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands CAN'T be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which is supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments. Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and BE MELTED. What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed, yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there would be no YOU; there would be no ME. And the old, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have been defeated.

		"To be good not because of them, but to be in peace with ourselves." Achile Tournier

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