One May Ask, How Can The
Beginner Paint, Or Draw Conveyances, Till He Has Learnt How To Do
So?
The answer is, How can he learn, without at any rate trying to
do?
If he likes his subject, he will try: if he tries, he will
soon succeed in doing something which shall open a door. It does
not matter what a man does; so long as he does it with the
attention which affection engenders, he will come to see his way to
something else. After long waiting he will certainly find one door
open, and go through it. He will say to himself that he can never
find another. He has found this, more by luck than cunning, but
now he is done. Yet by and by he will see that there is ONE more
small, unimportant door which he had overlooked, and he proceeds
through this too. If he remains now for a long while and sees no
other, do not let him fret; doors are like the kingdom of heaven,
they come not by observation, least of all do they come by forcing:
let them just go on doing what comes nearest, but doing it
attentively, and a great wide door will one day spring into
existence where there had been no sign of one but a little time
previously. Only let him be always doing something, and let him
cross himself now and again, for belief in the wondrous efficacy of
crosses and crossing is the corner-stone of the creed of the
evolutionist. Then after years - but not probably till after a
great many - doors will open up all round, so many and so wide that
the difficulty will not be to find a door, but rather to obtain the
means of even hurriedly surveying a portion of those that stand
invitingly open.
I know that just as good a case can be made out for the other side.
It may be said as truly that unless a student is incessantly on the
watch for doors he will never see them, and that unless he is
incessantly pressing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will never
find it - so that the kingdom does come by observation. It is with
this as with everything else - there must be a harmonious fusing of
two principles which are in flat contradiction to one another.
The question whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantage
of opportunities that come, or to go further afield in search of
them, is one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal
with. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy arose
in what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The
schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects - animals
and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of prey
is formulated in animals; the other - that it is better on the whole
to stay at home and profit by what comes - in plants.
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