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.
——————————————————————
HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the
words large enough to command respect. In the hope that you are
listening, and that you have confidence in me, I will proceed.
Dates are difficult things to acquire; and after they are
acquired it is difficult to keep them in the head. But they are
very valuable. They are like the cattle-pens of a ranch–they
shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within its
own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates are
hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are
monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don’t take hold,
they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to
help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick.
They can make nearly anything stick–particularly IF YOU MAKE THE
PICTURES YOURSELF. Indeed, that is the great point–make the
pictures YOURSELF. I know about this from experience. Thirty
years ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every night, and
every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep
from getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of
sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like
this:
“IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER–”
“AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM–”
“BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD–”
Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the
lecture and protected me against skipping. But they all looked
about alike on the page; they formed no picture; I had them by
heart, but I could never with certainty remember the order of
their succession; therefore I always had to keep those notes by
me and look at them every little while. Once I mislaid them; you
will not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening. I now
saw that I must invent some other protection. So I got ten of